the spartacist rebellion

Friedrich Ebert now saw his own power under threat and called in the German Army and the Freikorps to bring an end to the rebellion. By 13th January the rebellion had been crushed and its leaders, including Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, had been captured and executed.

The German Revolution

) Ebert justifies his actions in Source 1 by predicting what would of happened if the changes he made, didn't take place. He states "that if we had replaced the heads of the Reich offices with people who did not possess the necessary knowledge and experience, then we should have faced failure within a few days". This reinforces Eberts point of view and makes him look politically strong, giving him the German leaders respect.

2a) Groener explains that he and Ebert have been contacting eachother by a 'secret' phone line. By this he means a phone line which for certain no-one can interfere with. This would be especially important as then no spies would be able to interfere and everything said on the phone would be personal, intimate information between Groener and Ebert. Groener later states that "the alliance proved successful", by this he means that he joined forces as such with Ebert and their political differences and similarities where combined together with friendship. This theoretically made them politically more powerful.

2b) Ebert and Groener combined together and made an alliance. They did share many views on political parties; however they did have their differences. Ebert was trying to handle a situation where many communists were pushing for a workers' revolution, similar to what had just happened in Russia. Whereas Groener was trying to take care of many decommissioned army officers who were jobless and starving and were beginning to form paramilitary groups in Berlin. Groener and Ebert both wanted strong discipline in the army, which is why two appointed leaders would make more of an impact than just the one. They both wanted to gain a share of power in the new state and the officer corps. If this succeeded they would of recovered most of Prussia and would have been seen as a powerful country, despite the revolution.

3) Many different people shared conflicting opinions about the nature of the revolution. An SPD leader, Philipp Scheidermann, believes that everything has been done successfully to maintain Germany as a country in power. He is glad that the 1918 revolution has occurred as he believes that what has come out of it is satisfactory. This contradicted with Lenin as he believed that the German revolutionaries where 'tame' and did not do things with excessive force (which is what Germany needed at the time). An Industrialist, Bocshe, states that even though Germany seems to be stationary at the bottom of the 'hierarchy', changes and sacrifices have been made and it will show in time. This Source shows that different people of conflicting Professions do not generally share the same political view on things.

4) To say what happened in 1918 was a revolution could actually be seen as very misleading. This is because even though certain changes, such as the discipline in army or the struggle for power, were taking place no real change in leadership or government actually succeeded. This was mainly due to political differences and the way things where dealt with. Both Ebert and Groener, wanted changes but where too focused on the working peoples 'revolutions' or the army's succession to being making changes for the countries power. This is why Germany, at this time, didn't seem to get them out of the trouble they got themselves into during the First World War. Germany was still seen as 'unchanged'.