Kapp
Putsch, the
Kim Il Sung
KPFA
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Kapp
Putsch, the
The Kapp putsch
was a right-wing coup mounted in Berlin in March 1920. Although led
by General von Lüttwitz, it installed the right-wing journalist
Wolfgang Kapp as Chancellor, from whom it takes its name. Instead of
disbanding when ordered to do so (in accordance with the terms of the
Treaty of Versailles), the 5,000 men of the Erhardt Freikops Brigade
-- early popularisers of the swastika as a symbol of rightist counter-revolution
-- marched on Berlin on the night of 12 March 1920. Sympathetic army
units declined to defend the new Weimar Republic and its Social Democrat-led
coalition, which fled the city after calling for a general strike: "No
proletarian must help the military dictatorship!" The new government
was announced on 13 March, and it quickly won support from the military
and much of the bureaucracy. The strike began on 14 March in Berlin,
and had spread across the country the following day with armed Red militias
springing up in the Ruhr. Berlin was immobilised and the new regime
unable to govern, so a string of deals between the coup leaders, the
bourgeois political leaders and the ousted SPD ministers was prepared
in order to return the country to democratic rule. The Freikorps killed
twelve civilians with their machine guns as they withdrew from the city
on 19 March; the SPD ministers returned and set about disarming the
workers' militia, before going down to defeat in national elections,
which saw their vote halve from 12 to 6 million.
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Kim
Il Sung
You can read a brief
and uncritical account of the activities of the young Kim Il Sung here,
a part of The Voice of the Turtle's Apologies for Tyrants series.
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KPFA
Berkeley's KPFA
community radio is the oldest listener-supported station in the United
States, and has recently celebrated 50 years of free-speech broadcasting
to the people of Northern California. Read about the ongoing struggle
between the Pacifica Foundation and KPFA radio in the inaugural Salute
of the Turtle from August 1999, and visit the SavePacifica!
website for up-to-date information.
