Pearson Edexcel International GCSE in History · 4HI1 · Free · no account needed

Challenges from Right and Left: Spartacists and the Kapp Putsch

Why did the same army that crushed the left in 1919 refuse to fire on the right in 1920?

Option 3 · Germany: development of dictatorship, 1918–45 › Key topic 1 · The establishment of the Weimar Republic and its early problems — one of 5 lessons in this key topic. Paper 1 — depth study: Germany: development of dictatorship, 1918–45, key topic 1 (30 marks: 6 · 8 · 16).

Learn it, teach it to an AI pupil, then defend it in a marked debate — this lesson carries all three.

What the specification asks for

“Challenges from Right and Left, including the Kapp Putsch and the Spartacist uprising” — examined through causation and similarity and difference. Incandio is aligned to specification 4HI1; it is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson.

1 · Understand it

The left: January 1919

The Spartacist rising began on 5 January 1919 with the occupation of newspaper offices and public buildings in Berlin, triggered by the dismissal of the Berlin police chief. It had no coherent plan; Rosa Luxemburg thought it premature and said so. Ebert's government called on the Freikorps — volunteer units of demobilised soldiers, nationalist and violently anti-communist — and Noske accepted the role, saying somebody had to be the bloodhound. The rising was over within a week. Liebknecht and Luxemburg were murdered on 15 January.

Further risings followed: a Bavarian Soviet Republic in Munich in April 1919, crushed by Freikorps with several hundred killed, and a Communist rising in the Ruhr in 1920 put down with comparable violence.

The right: March 1920

The trigger was the treaty. Ordered to disband under the Versailles limits, the Marine Brigade Ehrhardt marched on Berlin on 13 March 1920 with Wolfgang Kapp, a nationalist civil servant, and General Walther von Lüttwitz. The government asked the army to stop them. General Hans von Seeckt refused, in the sentence that defines the Republic's position: Reichswehr does not fire on Reichswehr.

The government fled to Dresden and then Stuttgart and called a general strike. Berlin stopped — no transport, no power, no water, no civil service. Kapp discovered that he could occupy the capital and not govern it, and after four days he fled to Sweden. The Republic had been saved by the trade unions and not by the state.

The asymmetry, which is the examinable point

Set the two side by side and the comparison writes itself. The left's rising was suppressed by the state with lethal force inside a week; hundreds died. The right's putsch was met by an army that declined to act, and was ended by civilians withdrawing their labour.

The punishments confirm the pattern. Of the 705 people prosecuted for involvement in the Kapp Putsch, one received a prison sentence; Lüttwitz was granted a pension. Freikorps members who murdered Liebknecht and Luxemburg received light sentences or none. A study of political murders in the early Republic found that killings by the left were punished with an average sentence of many years and killings by the right with an average of a few months.

The reason is not conspiracy but sympathy. The judiciary, officer corps and civil service were staffed by men appointed under the Empire who regarded the left as a mortal threat and the nationalist right as misguided patriots. The Republic's institutions treated its enemies differently according to which side they came from, and it never fixed this.

What each rising left behind

The left was permanently divided. The KPD never forgave the SPD for Noske and the Freikorps, and its refusal to cooperate with the Social Democrats — hardened into doctrine by 1929 with the label 'social fascists' — is why the two largest anti-Nazi blocs in the Reichstag of 1932 could not combine.

The right learned that the army would not stop it, and that a putsch alone was not enough. Hitler was watching in Munich, and the lesson he drew in 1923 was the wrong half of it.

2 · Learn it — the notes

The dates that earn marks

5–12 January 1919
Spartacist rising in Berlin, suppressed by Freikorps under Noske. Why this date: The state used lethal force against the left within weeks of the revolution that created it.
15 January 1919
Liebknecht and Luxemburg murdered in custody. Why this date: The founding grievance of the KPD against the SPD, and the reason the left never reunited.
13–17 March 1920
The Kapp Putsch; the army declines to intervene; a general strike ends it in four days. Why this date: The clearest evidence in the option that the Republic did not control its own army, and that it survived on the loyalty of organised labour.

The figures, and how far to trust them

  • 705 prosecuted, 1 imprisoned — The judicial outcome of the Kapp Putsch. (Figures for the prosecutions vary slightly between accounts; the ratio, not the exact number, is what the argument needs.)
  • 4 days — The length of the Kapp Putsch, ended by a general strike rather than by the state.

The people to place

  • Gustav Noske — SPD defence minister who deployed the Freikorps in January 1919.
  • Wolfgang Kapp — Nationalist civil servant installed as Chancellor for four days in March 1920.
  • Walther von Lüttwitz — General who led the putsch and was pensioned rather than punished.
  • Hans von Seeckt — Head of the army; refused to act against the putsch and then rebuilt the Reichswehr as a state within the state.

What students say — and what is actually the case

Not this: The Weimar Republic was constantly nearly overthrown and only just survived.

This: It survived every one of these challenges comfortably, and quickly. The damage was not that it nearly fell but that surviving cost it the reform of the army, the courts and the civil service, and the permanent hostility of the KPD.

Not this: The Freikorps were part of the German army.

This: They were volunteer paramilitary units of demobilised soldiers, used by the government because it did not trust the regular army to act. Many later joined the SA. The government armed the men who would go on to attack it.

Two things students merge

Blurred: The Spartacist uprising and the German Revolution.

The distinction: The revolution of November 1918 installed Ebert. The Spartacist rising of January 1919 tried to overthrow him. Treating them as one event makes the Freikorps deployment incomprehensible.

Blurred: A putsch and a revolution.

The distinction: A putsch is a seizure of the state by a small armed group; a revolution is a change carried by mass action. Kapp had a brigade and no population; the general strike had the population and no weapons, and the population won.

What a Grade 9 answer holds here

A Grade 9 answer treats the two challenges as one piece of evidence rather than two events. The Republic could defeat the left because the state was willing, and could only defeat the right because civilians were — and it never held anyone to account for the difference. That is why the same institutions were still available to the right in 1932.

3 · How it is examined

This strand is genuinely set through: Paper 1 (b) (8 marks — “Explain two effects of … on ….”); Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii) (16 marks — “'[A statement about the period.]' You may use the following in your answer: • [prompt] • [prompt]. You must also use information of your own. How far do you agree? Explain your answer.”).

What earns marks: The comparison, made explicitly. The strongest answers do not describe two risings; they state the asymmetry and evidence it with Seeckt's refusal and the sentencing pattern.

The cap that bites here: On the 8-mark question, an answer that gives two examples of the SAME thing (two left-wing risings) risks reading as one cause. Make the two genuinely different.

4 · Prove it — the questions

Answered inside Incandio, where a marker checks what a correct answer must contain and tells you which half was missing. The marking stays in the app; the questions are here.

  1. Explain two reasons why the Kapp Putsch failed. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
  2. Explain two effects of the Spartacist uprising on Germany. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
  3. Explain two differences between the challenge from the Left in 1919 and the challenge from the Right in 1920. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
  4. 'The Weimar Republic survived the challenges of 1919–23 because of its own strength.' How far do you agree? Explain your answer. [16 marks · Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]
  5. 'The judiciary was the Weimar Republic's greatest weakness in the years 1919–23.' How far do you agree? Explain your answer. [16 marks · Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]

Decide it

This lesson feeds a Decide History judgement — a position you commit to, an objection you answer, a criterion you name: Was the Weimar Republic doomed from birth?.

Think you understand it?

Reading is the start. On Incandio a topic counts as mastered only once you have taught it and defended it — the two things a revision guide cannot ask of you.

Incandio this topic → Prove it. Teach it. Defend it. What does “Incandio it” mean?

  1. Prove it — five questions on Challenges from Right and Left: Spartacists and the Kapp Putsch, marked on the spot, that tell you what was missing rather than just what was wrong.
  2. Teach it — Explain Challenges from Right and Left: Spartacists and the Kapp Putsch — what happened, why, and what it made possible — to Ember, an AI pupil who asks the awkward question. Understanding is credited; wording is not required.
  3. Defend it — Argue Challenges from Right and Left: Spartacists and the Kapp Putsch against the historical mind with the strongest claim on it — three rounds, marked against descriptors you can read before you begin.
  4. Then the exam — 15 authored exam-style questions on this option, marked on Incandio with the mistake you actually made named.

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The debate is against The Case for the Army's Neutrality — the case itself, argued at its strongest, because on this strand there is no single person whose position the learner has to defeat.

Carry on through the option