Plot Summary

This award-winning film documents the only uprising of communists ever to occur in Germany. During the post-World War I period, Germany suffered from hyperinflation and the near-starvation of many working people. Working conditions were extremely bad, and there was a very vocal socialist movement. Despite fears that communists of one sort or another might take over the country, there was only one communist-led uprising, in 1923, and it was brutally suppressed. The uprising was a useful stick for governmental forces seeking greater social control, however, and it strengthened the tendency of the already weak Weimar regime to govern by emergency decree. An additional consequence was that the use of private militias was legitimized. These tendencies laid the groundwork for Hitler's takeover of power not too many years later. This documentary uses rare and never-before seen film footage from the strike and from that era.