BERLIN IN MARCH 1920: HOW THE "GENERALSTREIK" ENDED THE COUP

In 2020, four years ago from now, our everyday lives were turned upside down by the worldwide COVID pandemic – a pandemic which still has us in its grip. Nothing is as it used to be: the virus threatens lives in both direct and indirect ways. Then Putin’s army attacked Ukraine, beginning a new war in Europe – one which is on the verge of engulfing all of us as we helplessly watch the atrocities being committed, innocent civilians dying or fleeing to save their and their children’s lives.

Many of us are, quite understandably, so preoccupied with the new reality we have no time or energy to busy ourselves with the past. But perhaps now is exactly the moment to look over our collective shoulder and carefully consider what we think that we know. Maybe it is time to do what Mr Keating, the unforgettable college teacher in the unforgettable film “Dead Poets Society”, tried to convey to his pupils: whatever you think you know looks different when instead of sitting at your desk, you stand on it and change your perspective.

Exactly a hundred years before the COVID-pandemic broke out, in March 1920, the city of Berlin found itself in the state of chaos. Reactionary militant groups marched in, threatening to upturn the new German republic, using direct and indirect violence – 2020 marked the centennial of what came to be known as Kapp-Lüttwitz-Putsch.

What the men behind the coup did not expect was millions standing up against them. What they expected even less was that this protest would extinguish their flame-throwers and bring their well-oiled, rubble-rousing machinery to a halt.