Soldiers guard an entrance to the Reichstag in Berlin during the Kapp Putsch in 1920. Photo by Getty Images
A century ago in Germany, radical-right insurrectionists who had tried to topple the government during the failed Kapp Putsch were set free by a blanket amnesty. What ensued was not law and order but political violence that rocked the fragile young democracy and ultimately led to Adolf Hitler’s rise to power.
On Jan. 6, 2021, America had its own version of the Kapp Putsch with Donald Trump’s acolytes storming the U.S. Capitol. And the aftermath has been strikingly similar: pardons for the perpetrators, and violent crimes committed by the far right.
History shows that impunity emboldens extremism. And now it’s happening again.
The Kapp Putsch is one of those chapters in history that Americans may have some vague idea about but not a full grasp of how it set the stage for dictatorship. At dawn on March 13, 1920, columns of right-wing paramilitary troops in field-gray uniforms and steel helmets, some painted with swastikas, marched into Berlin, occupied government buildings, declared the national government to be illegitimate and that a military regime was taking over to restore the country’s order and dignity.
Wolfgang Kapp, an ultranationalist civil servant, was going to be the new chancellor, they proclaimed. President Friedrich Ebert and other legitimate government leaders fled the city. But the Kapp Putsch didn’t last long. From exile, Ebert called for a general strike in Berlin, one that would make it impossible for the insurrectionists to rule. Berlin ground to a halt—no trains, no electricity, no newspapers. Crucially, most civil servants refused to cooperate with Kapp’s regime. It worked. After four days, the uprising was over.
After the Kaiser’s abdication in 1918, while Germany was losing World War I, Ebert took over as head of a provisional government and later was elected president of the newly born Weimar Republic. But Ebert, a socialist, had to deal with unrest from both the left and the right.
When a Communist organization called the Spartacists rose up in a revolt in January 1919, Ebert called in the Freikorps — paramilitary units of ex-soldiers — to put down the rebellion in bloody street fighting that killed up to 200 people, including many civilians and the movement’s leaders.
A year later, a clash erupted when Defense Minister Gustav Noske ordered the disbanding of two Freikorps brigades. One of them, the Marinebrigade Ehrhardt, refused and marched into Berlin. Backed by General Walther von Lüttwitz, Wolfgang Kapp declared himself chancellor, dissolved the Reichstag, and called for new elections.
Although the Kapp Putsch failed, the vast majority of insurrectionists were either never charged or were set free by a general amnesty. Some resumed military or civilian careers without consequence.
The collapse of the Kapp Putsch did nothing to deflate threats from the right. Far from it. Though nominally democratic, the Weimar Republic was riddled with institutions nostalgic for imperial rule. These included the courts, many of whose judges spurned democracy and were openly sympathetic with right-wing extremists. Between 1918 and 1922, there were 354 political murders by the radical right, compared to just 22 by the left. Of those right-wing murders, only one resulted in a conviction with a significant prison sentence.
The message was clear: If your treason was politically motivated and aligned with nationalist goals, the state was willing to look the other way. Such leniency not only undermined the rule of law but also emboldened future anti-democratic actors, including Hitler and the Nazis.
The demise of the Weimar Republic is a textbook case of how impunity can metastasize into systemic collapse. And it’s happening in America under Trump. His pardons for more than 1,500 insurrectionists in the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol signaled that violent action in defense of a political cause may not only be forgiven — but valorized.
According to a Reuters investigation, there have been 213 documented cases of political violence in the U.S. since the Capitol attack. Most of the deadly incidents were perpetrated by individuals aligned with far-right ideologies. These include politically motivated killings — such as the 2022 murder of an Ohio man by a neighbor who believed he was a Democrat, and the assassination in June of a Minnesota state legislator and her husband in their home, and the same perpetrator’s failed attempt to murder another state legislator and his wife.
Trump’s authoritarian impulses were mostly checked during his first term. But they’ve returned with a vengeance. The stage was set by the U.S. Supreme Court before Trump was elected the second time around, when it ruled a year ago that presidents — including Trump — have immunity from prosecution when carrying out “official acts.”
Trump’s power grabs have run into obstacles with preliminary injunctions or temporary restraining orders issued by lower courts, but he just shrugs them off and keeps sledgehammering chunks out of the foundations of American democracy, enabled by sycophantic GOP politicians who fear him and a base that treats him with messianic reverence.
The Kapp Putsch was near the start of a timeline that led up to Hitler becoming chancellor in 1933. What kind of timeline is America on? With images of masked federal agents chasing immigrants across farm fields, ambushing them at court hearings, and rounding them up at Home Depots and factories where they work, the rule of law is being subverted, principles of decency abandoned, and cruelty used as a weapon. Tens of thousands of people are in hiding. Segments of the populace having to worry about losing their rights seem to grow by the week — foreign students, holders of green cards, and, most recently, naturalized U.S. citizens who can be deported if even tiny infractions from years back are found in their records.
This does not feel like democracy to me. It feels like something else. Maybe it could be called pre-authoritarianism. Or maybe it’s a horrible hybrid, where some Americans enjoy their usual rights but others feel like they’re living under despotic rule.
Democracy isn’t lost in a single blow. It’s bled out, institution by institution, precedent by precedent, until only some are free and others vanish into silence.
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