Political violence in Germany (1918–1933)
| Political violence in Germany (1918–1933) | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the interwar period | ||||||||
Johann Lehner (*1901) photographed with government troops on May 3, 1919, moments before they murdered him because they had mistaken him for Bavarian Soviet Republic official Fritz Seidel | ||||||||
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| Belligerents | ||||||||
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| Commanders and leaders | ||||||||
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Friedrich Ebert Paul von Hindenburg |
Rosa Luxemburg Karl Liebknecht Karl Radek Ernst Thälmann Wilhelm Pieck Richard Müller Kurt Eisner † Ernst Toller Eugen Leviné Erich Mühsam |
Erich Ludendorff Walther von Lüttwitz Hermann Ehrhardt Adolf Hitler Ernst Röhm | ||||||
Germany saw significant political violence from the fall of the Empire and the rise of the Republic through the German Revolution of 1918–1919, until the rise of the Nazi Party to power with 1933 elections and the proclamation of the Enabling Act of 1933 that fully broke down all opposition. The violence was characterised by assassinations and by confrontations between right-wing groups such as the Freikorps (sometimes in collusion with the state), and left-wing organisations such as the Communist Party of Germany.
Between 1919 and 1922, there were at least 354 politically-motivated murders by right-wing extremists, primarily Freikorps, and a minimum of 22 murders by left-wing extremists. Compared to right-wing murders, left-wing motivated murders were criminally prosecuted much more frequently and received significantly harsher sentencing (Ten executions, three life sentences, and 249 total years of imprisonment compared to one life sentence and 90 total years of imprisonment).