Blutmai

The Blutmai (English: Bloody May) was a period of unrest in May 1925 in the country of Baden-Württemberg that saw predominately left-wing strikers and protesters clash with the police and army.
The events were triggered by a heavy handed response from police to an illegal May Day general strike that had been organized by left-wing trade unionists. The strike was organized in part by the German Socialist United Front (DSEF), a clandestine organization established by the Free Socialist Republic of Germany.
== History ==
The initial general strike on 1 May involved about 6,000 strikers in Stuttgart and another 3,000 in Mannheim, the two main industrial cities in the country. Authorities explicitly banned any strike actions from taking place on that day and cracked down on illegal efforts to organize it in the workplaces, but they were unable to deter it entirely. The police responded immediately with violence, beating the strikers with truncheons and firing with live ammunition. They also began raiding workplaces and arresting workers holding private meetings, which only caused further anger and increased sympathies for the strikers. A large gathering on the Friedrichstraße in Stuttgart was fired upon with machine guns and rifles after small arms fire by the strikers was falsely reported. This caused at least 57 deaths.
Within a few hours the ranks of the strikers had increased to at least 10,000 in Stuttgart and 6,000 in Mannheim, with a total of 20,000 workers and strikers across the country. The industrial sector was crippled and the police were quickly overwhelmed, which led to the intervention of the military and eventually the French Army the following day. This notably occurred without the authorization by the French government under Édouard Herriot, and the subsequent revelation was a factor in the political crisis that led to a military coup on 25 May.
The strikers, though numerous, were unprepared for street fighting and lacked the arms to face the military. Some strikers managed to break into a police arms depot in Stuttgart on 2 May and fought back, and this followed by similar actions in Mannheim. That same day it was ordered that any civilian caught with a weapon be summarily executed, which was a factor in the large amount of casualties. By 3 May the government crackdown had largely succeeded in suppressing the strike, though violence continued until 6 May. At least 30,000 strikers participated, and approximately 1,400 were killed according to government estimates, while another 5,000 were arrested. 31 policemen and soldiers, along with 1 French soldier, were killed.
Category:Conflicts