ABSTRACT
Brandler wanted to win over the Social Democrats and the trade-unionists, not so much the rank and file as the conservative and unimaginative middle brackets, the rock on which Social Democracy was built. Brandler made himself familiar with administrative procedure and began to draft proposals for decrees to augment relief allowances to the unemployed and to improve labor relations. Brandler, the principal Communist delegate to the Chemnitz conference, asked it to proclaim the general strike. On October 22, the same week that the Chemnitz conference began and Muller entered Dresden, an uprising had started in Hamburg, an isolated fight of a handful of militants. The evening before the Chemnitz conference, the Central Committee of the Communist Party had gathered couriers from all parts of Germany there to await the signal for the revolt. Hermann Remmele, a member of the Central Committee, had taken the train for Hamburg, and with him Ernst Thalmann, a delegate to the conference from Hamburg.
