The Berlin March Battles of 1919 (German: Berliner Märzkämpfe), also known as Bloody Week[1] (German: Berliner Blutwoche[2][3]), were the final decisive phase of the German Revolution of 1918–1919. The events were the result of a general strike by the Berlin working class to enforce the widely anticipated socialization of key industries, as well as the legal safeguarding of the workers' and soldiers' councils and thus the democratization of the military. The strike action was met with violence from the paramilitary Freikorps, resulting in street fighting and house-to-house fighting around the Alexanderplatz and the city of Lichtenberg.
On 3 March, workers from AEG Hennigsdorf drafted a resolution for a general strike in order to enforce the so-called "Hamburg Points" for democratizing the military that had been approved by the Reichsrat Congress in Berlin in December 1918. The strike was supported by the Communist Party of Germany and the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany. The German government, under the leadership of the Majority Social Democratic Party of Germany, responded with the imposition of a siege on Berlin and Spandau by the military on the orders of Defence Minister Gustav Noske. The Volksmarinedivision, which had previously taken a neutral role during the Spartacist Uprising, distributed weapons to the strikers and fought government troops after a member was fatally wounded. The general strike was ended on 8 March by the orders of the strike leadership led by Richard Müller. There were some concessions made by the Weimar government following negotiations with the workers' councils. However, the clashes only ended on 16 March with the lifting of the shooting order by Noske.
The fighting ended, according to Noske, with more than 1,200 dead, 75 of them on the government side. Estimates from Richard Müller suggest as much as 2,000 deaths, with other estimates being as high as 3,000. There was no official count conducted by government authorities. Much of this bloodshed can be attributed to orders from Freikorps commander Waldemar Pabst that permitted the summary execution of all individuals caught with a firearm, which resulted in the killing of many civilians and war veterans who were uninvolved in the strike. Among those killed was Communist Party leader Leo Jogiches, the former personal partner of murdered revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg.[4][5] The March Battles represent one of the bloodiest but largely forgotten conflicts within the revolutionary struggles in Germany after the First World War.
^Storer, Colin (2013). A Short History of the Weimar Republic. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 43. ISBN 978-0-85772-384-0.
^Möller, Horst (1985). Weimar : die unvollendete Demokratie (in German). München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag. p. 121. ISBN 978-3-423-04512-4.
^Pfändtner, Bernhard; Schell, Reiner (2000). Weimarer Republik und NS-Staat (in German). Bamberg: Buchner. p. 25. ISBN 978-3-7661-4681-6.
^Müller, Richard (2011). Eine Geschichte der Novemberrevolution. Berlin: Die Buchmacherei. p. 772. ISBN 978-3-00-035400-7.
^Broué, Pierre (2005). The German Revolution, 1917-1923. Netherlands: Brill. pp. 269–277. ISBN 90-04-13940-0.
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