In March 1920, just over a year after the birth of the Weimar Republic, armed troops entered Berlin with almost no resistance. The government fled the capital, and for a few days, Germany had a new chancellor: Wolfgang Kapp. It seemed like the beginning of a military dictatorship.
Germany emerged from the First World War as a profoundly unstable country. Military defeat and the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles were compounded by economic crisis and political unrest. Many conservative and nationalist circles had never accepted the new democratic republic established in 1918. They viewed the Weimar government as weak, treacherous, and responsible for the defeat. In this climate, the Freikorps were born: paramilitary units composed of former soldiers, nationalists, and war veterans. They had fought communist uprisings and defended the government in the preceding months, but they remained hostile to parliamentary democracy. In 1920, the government attempted to disband some of these units, partly under pressure from the Allies. This was the spark. General Walther von Lüttwitz refused to obey and, together with the conservative politician Wolfgang Kapp, organised a coup d'état. On the night of March 13, 1920, Freikorps brigades marched on Berlin. The government called on the regular army to intervene, but the army commander, Hans von Seeckt, uttered a now-famous phrase: "The Reichswehr does not fire on the Reichswehr." In effect, the army refused to defend the democratic government. President Friedrich Ebert and the government fled Berlin, while Kapp entered the capital and proclaimed a new cabinet.
The coup plotters controlled buildings and ministries, but they were unable to truly govern. They lacked popular support and the cooperation of the bureaucratic apparatus. Furthermore, the unions and workers' parties launched a general strike. Millions of workers took to the streets and squares, and Germany came to a complete standstill. Within days, the coup began to collapse. Without fuel, administration, and consensus, Kapp realised he could not maintain power. On March 17, just four days after the putsch began, it was all over. Kapp fled to Sweden, and the government returned to Berlin.
The Weimar Republic had survived, but Kapp's putsch demonstrated that much of the army was not truly loyal to democracy, and the German state was extremely fragile. It showed how vulnerable the Weimar Republic was.