Witness to the German Revolution by Victor Serge

expected; the reactionary pro-fascist Munich government was making preparations. On the significance of these events, Vorwärts, which had a great deal at stake, said some very shrewd things. The difference between the Munich cabinet and the Bavarian ultra-fascists consists in one thing only: the latter believe the time is now ripe to resolve the situation by striking at “Bolshevism which is growing in Berlin”; the former think it is better to wait a little while yet. On the question of principle they agree.
    So the establishment of reinforced martial law in Bavaria and the nomination of von Kahr had the effect of sounding the alarm throughout the Reich. Von Kahr is an old “fanatical anti-socialist” ( Vorwärts ) . Whether he imposes his will on Hitler and Ludendorff or whether he comes to an agreement with them, in either case Bavaria forms a fortified camp of reaction from which we can expect daring raids to be launched any day.
    The government of the Reich provided its reply the same evening by establishing in turn reinforced martial law throughout German territory. All constitutional liberties are suspended. Penalties
for political crimes have been stepped up. Death penalty for high treason, insurrection, riot, resistance to lawful force, etc. Herr Gessler, the Reichswehr minister, has full powers to apply this decree immediately.
    Herr Gessler! The measure is, it is said, in defense of the republic, and was made necessary by the Bavarian threat. And it is to Herr Gessler that the social democratic ministers and citizen Ebert have given the responsibility of applying it: Gessler, the official decoy for the fascist leaders of the Reichswehr, their friend, their accomplice, Gessler, whose chief collaborator is von Seeckt! So much naïvety must be suspect. The reactionary Reichswehr, organized in secret nationalist associations, commanded by the imitation dictator Gessler, will only march all out against the working class. All the provisions of the decree establishing martial law can moreover be applied much more easily to the Communists than to the Bavarian fascists. This final attempt by Stresemann and Hilferding to prevent civil war therefore seems in reality merely to increase the immediate possibilities for the reactionaries.
    But only the immediate possibilities, for, in the present state of the working-class forces, it is certainly not reaction which will have the last word.

The fascist advance
    The other Sunday Herr von Knilling, Bavarian prime minister, addressed a scarcely veiled ultimatum to the Reich government. On September 23 at the “German evening” in Augsburg, in the presence of Ludendorff, captain D. Heiss addressed his audience in these very words: “The time has come for rifles, machine-guns and our pair of cannon to go into action… And if we don’t have the horses, then we shall harness ourselves to our guns!” “The Bavarian
fist will resolve in Berlin the problem of German liberty.” Ludendorff showed his approval.
    That day’s issue of the National Socialist Völkischer Beobachter carried the headline: “Let us arm ourselves for civil war.”
    These are not just words. Hitler is officially mobilizing his “shock troops.” On September 22, the police proceeded to arrest a number of railway workers: to be precise, 25. The same day in Munich fascists from the Oberland fired on workers in the street, wounding one seriously.
    Attacks on homes followed by disgraceful acts of brutality—in the Italian style—became widespread in Bavaria.
    On September 22 again, at the other end of Germany, 16,000 fascists mobilized by the Olympia association gathered in Hohenburg (Mecklenburg).
    On September 25, not far from Leipzig, on the frontier between Saxony and Prussia, there were clashes between fascists and Communists, leaving 11 wounded.
    Elsewhere disturbances over food continued. Those in Dresden provided the bourgeois press