Spartacist uprising crushed

January 15, 1919

In Berlin, communist revolutionaries led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht tried to seize power. Government troops and right-wing Freikorps put them down within days. Luxemburg was beaten with a rifle butt and shot; her body was thrown into the Landwehr Canal. The German left, split between Social Democrats and Communists, would never recover.