Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
In January 1923, the Ruhr region was occupied by French and Belgian troops: During the Ruhr occupation, some 137 Germans died as a result of acts of violence and accidents caused by the occupiers, and more than 600 were injured. The working masses were plunged into misery as a result of Germany's economic collapse. A huge revolutionary strike wave rolled in, which ended in defeat at the hands of opportunists in their own ranks.
historical Overview
After the First World War, Soviet diplomacy helped Germany escape from its isolation by the victorious powers. France and Belgium were among the victorious powers and Germany was among the defeated countries. France and Belgium took advantage of Germany's suspension of reparations payments and occupied the Ruhr on 11 January 1923. Germany thus lost 88% of its coal production, 70% of its pig iron production, and much more.
The occupation of the Ruhr undermined the economy once and for all and increased inflation and hunger. The number of unemployed rose to 5 million. The masses were driven to the brink of despair. The American monopolists enriched themselves from the inflation prevailing in Germany by buying up the shares of German companies for a mockery of money. The Cuno government (November 1922 to August 1923), which had announced a policy of "passive resistance" in response to the occupation of the Ruhr, shifted all the burdens of the occupation onto the shoulders of the workers and paid huge subsidies to the industrial magnates. The social democrats, who supported this anti-grassroots policy, called on the workers for "castle peace". However, their attempts to avert revolutionary action by the proletariat failed. The Ruhr crisis became the starting point of strong social upheavals. A huge wave of strikes spread across the country. The workers demanded wage increases. The struggle of the proletariat took on particularly sharp forms in the Ruhr, where about 400,000 workers went on strike in May 1923. At the head of the growing revolutionary movement were the factory committees, which used revolutionary tactics of struggle. Ernst Thälmann, who led the Hamburg organisation of the KPD at the time, took a firm stand against the opportunist, treacherous Brandler-Thalheimer clique (see the attached collection of articles from "Die Internationale" organ of the KPD's 1923 headquarters), which had managed to sneak into the leadership of the KPD and had pushed through a resolution at the Leipzig party congress of the KPD (1923 to DISARM the German proletariat. The centrist and later revisionist Wilhelm Pieck was also involved in this betrayal. In contrast to the opportunist slogans of the Brandlerists of a united front with the Social Democratic leadership (as later also the revisionist Dimitroff Popular Front), Ernst Thälmann issued the slogan of building a united front with the Social Democratic working masses. Throughout the country, workers' combat troops were formed, proletarian hundred-man squads, the Red Front Fighters' League.
