ABSTRACT
The Freikorps added to the impetus of the nationalist youth the experienced skill of the army cadres. During 1919, the civil war in Germany represented a repetition of the initial stage: government and Freikorps troops marching into the industrial regions and liquidating the administrations of the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils. The first Bavarian council government has always been depicted as a half-crazy adventure of literati and intellectuals. The Bavarian Council Republic must be viewed against the background of both continuing civil war in Germany and unrest throughout Central Europe, Italy, and the Balkans. One Lindner, a butcher by trade, a member of the Workers’ Council, shot and wounded Auer in the Landtag; he blamed the Social Democrats, “the murderers of Luxemburg and Liebknecht,” for the assassination of Eisner. The Bavarian Social Democrats, weaker than in the Reich, had a rather large fringe of intellectuals and artists but relatively little contact with the peasantry.
