The Reich Government versus Saxony, 1923: The Decision to Intervene

Abstract

Late in October 1923, troops of the German Reichswehr removed the government of Saxony and in the process touched off yet another political crisis in Berlin, one which nearly destroyed the Weimar Republic. This event in Saxony was not unprecedented, for the Reich had used force to remove state (Land) governments in 1919. But while the earlier interventions demonstrated a new republic's determination to enforce order, the intervention in 1923 reflected the weakness and confusion of a political system prematurely aged by five years of dissension and economic collapse. Gustav Stresemann's Great Coalition, in power at the time of the intervention, appeared to some knowledgeable observers, including Stresemann, the last chance to save the republic during the chaos produced by French intrusion into the Ruhr and the collapse of the currency. Talk of a dictatorship was in the air as men, groping for adequate words to measure catastrophe, went about gravely intoning “finis Germaniae.” Although this time both Germany and the republic escaped doom, the Saxon affair destroyed the Great Coalition and later ended Stresemann's career as chancellor. Since the men responsible understood something of the risks involved for the republic, it seems worthwhile to inquire into the way in which the dispute grew between Saxony and the Reich government and into the process by which the Reich reached its decision to intervene.