ABSTRACT
The Cuno cabinet itself contributed to the weakening of legality by sponsoring the Black Reichswehr and instigating sabotage in the Ruhr. If the union leaders had supported the strike, the successor to Cuno would have been a trade-union man; Germany would have had a trade-union government, backed by militant workers able to face all the consequences this implied. Since 1918, Germany had seen two kinds of strikes: the wildcat strikes characteristic of the civil war, and the official trade-union strike, begun only after mature reflection and along prudent constitutional lines, following the tradition developed by Carl Legien at the end of the nineteenth century. The inflation brought the trade-unions of Germany to the greatest crisis since their formation. Under the pressure of the Berlin workers, an emergency conference of the city’s Trade-Union Council was convoked in order to deliberate on whether to endorse the strike, which was already complete in the Berlin area.
