When the strike halted a coup: March 1920
7 October 2026 11 minutes
On 13 March 1920, putschists occupied Berlin’s government district. The Reichswehr in Berlin refused to take action against them, and the government fled. After around a hundred hours, the putsch had failed — following the largest general strike in German history, in which some twelve million people took part. Two weeks later, the same government ordered troops to march into the Ruhr region, where the strike had turned into an uprising.
Eight Hours, and What They Cost: Chicago 1886
8 October 2026 11 minutes
On ‘1 May 1886’, several hundred thousand workers in the United States went on strike to force the introduction of the eight-hour working day. Three days later, a bomb at Haymarket in Chicago killed one police officer instantly; six further police officers and at least four members of the crowd died as a result. Four men were hanged — convicted not for the act itself, but for inciting it.
Clearing away and building up: what the Allied Control Council decided for the trade unions
30 September 2026 6 minutes
Between 1945 and 1948 the Allied Control Council exercised joint supreme authority over Germany as a whole. It dissolved the German Labour Front, repealed the National Socialist labour order and, with labour courts, works councils and voluntary arbitration, created a framework within which free trade unions could grow anew. The wage freeze and the end of the Council in 1948 set limits to this reconstruction.
Smashed and Refounded: The Trade Unions from the Ban on the SPD in 1933 to the New Beginning
30 September 2026 8 minutes
In the spring of 1933 the trade unions were smashed and the SPD was banned. For twelve years there was no free representation of working people; those who organised did so in exile or in secret, at the risk of their lives. After 1945 a unitary trade union emerged, and the Basic Law enshrined freedom of association.
Organised despite the ban: the trade unions under the Anti-Socialist Laws
30 September 2026 8 minutes
From 1878 to 1890, Social Democracy was banned in the German Empire, and with it a large part of the trade unions. They survived in local trade associations, relief funds and through trusted contacts, while Bismarck combined the ban with social insurance. The outcome was a stronger movement: the SPD as the party with the most votes, and the General Commission of German Trade Unions.
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