One hundred years ago, on January 15, 1919, two great German revolutionaries — Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg the leaders of the communist forces in the German Revolution of 1918-1919, were killed by the criminal pro-fascist forces.
When World War I began, Karl Liebknecht was the only one who voted in the Reichstag against the approval of a military loan. And on May 1, 1916 r. Liebknecht began his speech during a demonstration at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin with the words: “Down with the war! Down with the government"! No further information was given to him. The police seized him and took him away. He disappeared behind the prison walls for two and a half years. When, on October 23, 1918, Karl Liebknecht was released from prison, for the whole of Germany and far beyond its borders, he was the personification of protest against the war, the personification of the Revolution. On December 30, 1918, Liebknecht and the Union of Spartak headed by him withdrew from the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany and founded the German Communist Party (KKE).
Rosa Luxemburg was released from prison only on November 9, 1918. Almost the entire war she was behind bars: first a year on the political verdict made before the war, and then two and a half years as a “potentially dangerous person for the state”. These years she used to write works devoted to the criticism of German Social Democracy and the lessons of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. Together with Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg founded the Communist Party of Germany, drafted her program, and acted with editorial articles in the CNG newspaper Rote Fahne.
Now the two of them remained to live a little more than two months, the two months during which the revolution in Germany broke out and was wrecked. Everyone knew they were being hunted. The bourgeoisie howled, demanding that they be tracked down, seized, torn to shreds. Scheidemann promised one hundred thousand marks to the one who delivered them alive or dead. Two days before the Forverts murder, the Social Democrats newspaper published a poem that ended with a frank call for the murder of Karl and Rosa: “The dead lie a hundred in a row, but Karl is not there! No Rose with the company!
When the government on January 4, 1919 dismissed Berlin policeman Emil Eichhorn, this was the occasion for an uprising. Hundreds of thousands of Berlin workers in protest on January 5, 1919 took to the streets. In the evening they declared the government deposed. The Red Army was to be headed by Karl Liebknecht. The government decided to suppress the uprising. But who will take on this mission? The deputy of the Reichstag and the editor of the Social-Democratic Party newspaper Gustav Noske called. In his youth, Noske mastered the craft of the basketkeeper, at the age of sixteen he joined the Social Democrats. “One of us must finally take on the role of a bloody suppressor. I am not afraid of responsibility, ”Noske said coldly. The troops on January 12 launched artillery, machine guns and captured Berlin. As a reward for the pacification of Berlin, Gustav Noske was appointed Minister of War and received a nickname “Bloody Dog Noske” in history.
They were looking for popular leaders of the left Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. Karl and Rosa were captured on Wednesday, January 15, at twenty-one and thirty minutes by young men from the Reichstag Social Democratic regiment, who took the prisoners to the Eden Hotel in the western part of Berlin and handed them over to the headquarters of the Guards Cavalry Rifle Division, headed by the captain Pabst, the right hand sock. Karl and Rosa spent a little time in Eden, then they were told that they were being transferred to the Moabit prison.
First brought Liebknecht. He was accompanied by future Nazis - Captain - Lieutenant Pflugk - Gartnung and Ober - Lieutenant Vogel. At the time when Liebknecht was being led to the car, Ranger ranger approached him, as he had been ordered by Pabst, and struck several blows to the head with a rifle butt. Liebknecht was dragged into a car that headed for the Tiergarten. In the middle of the park, the car stopped allegedly due to a breakdown. Liebknecht was told to go out and go ahead. As soon as he walked a few steps, his face accompanied him with shots in the back at close range, he was killed. Liebknecht’s body was taken to an ambulance station located nearby and surrendered as the body of an “unknown”.
Only ten minutes elapsed between the departure of Liebknecht and his murderers from the Hotel Eden and the delivery of the dead body to the ambulance station. At twenty-three hours and twenty minutes Pabst had already received a report that the work was done. Twenty minutes after that, he gave Rosa Luxemburg to Vogel. When Rosa, who was led by the director of the hotel and Vogel, was going down the stairs, the same Runge ran up to her and hit her on the head with the same butt. Rose fainted. She was dragged down by her and thrown into a car. As soon as the car started, Vogel and Lieutenant Krul shot Rosa. The car stopped at the canal between the Cornelius Bridge and the Liechtenstein Bridge. Rosa's body was carried to the pavement, wrapped with wire, attached a load and thrown into the canal. It was discovered only a few months later.
The true reason for the murder was without a doubt that Liebknecht and Luxembourg, like no other, personified in the eyes of both friends and enemies of the Revolution in Germany. They were its symbol, and therefore, by killing them, the Revolution was also killed. Another reason was that they, like no one else, saw the dishonest game that the imaginary leaders had played with the German Revolution from the very beginning, and daily exposed it at the top of their voices. They were qualified witnesses who were killed, since their testimony had nothing to oppose.
“The greatest misfortune and danger of Europe,” wrote V. I. Lenin in his writings, “is that there is no revolutionary party in it. There are lots of traitors, such as the Scheidemans, Renodels, Hendersons, Webbs and Co., or servile souls like Kautsky. There is no revolutionary party.” In this, perhaps, in the weakness of the newly born Communist Party of Germany, and in that heinous, counter-revolutionary, role played by German Social Democracy in 1918-1919. and is the main reason for the defeat of the German Revolution. Then in Germany, as now - in the Russian Federation, the Social Democrats were hated. The revolution is their indelible birthmark. Of great importance in the history of communist doctrine was the restoration and development of V. I. Lenin as the TRUE - REVOLUTIONAL ESSENCE OF MARXISM.
The assassination of January 15, 1919 was the first step, the harbinger of thousands of murders in the months of the power of Noske, millions and millions of murders in the following years of Hitler's power. On February 6, 1919, meetings of the National Assembly began in Weimar, the city of Goethe. From this day began the winding path of the Weimar Republic, which ended in 1933 with the advent of Hitler to power.
S.V.Khristenko
