The night of January 7th was marked by hard fighting. Spartacans repeatedly attacked government troops at the Anhalt Railway Station in the Königgrätzerstrasse, but were repulsed with heavy losses. They also attacked the government troops defending the Potsdam Railway Station, a quarter of a mile north from the Anhalt Station, but were also repulsed there. Government soldiers, however, had considerable losses in an unsuccessful attempt to retake the Wolff Bureau building at Charlottenstrasse and Zimmerstrasse. On Wednesday, the section of the city around the Brandenburger Tor was again filled with parading Bolsheviki, but the government had plucked up enough courage and decision to decree that no parades should be permitted to enter Wilhelmstrasse, where the seat of government is situated. Spartacans attempted to invade this street in the afternoon, but scattered when government soldiers fired a few shots, although the soldiers fired into the air. The Independent go-betweens again assailed the cabinet in an effort to secure the "compromise" government suggested the day before. The delegation was hampered, however, both by the fact that the cabinet realized what such a compromise would mean and by the fact that the Independents could promise nothing. The Spartacans stubbornly refused to surrender the captured newspaper plants, and the Independents themselves were committed to the retention in office of Eichhorn.
Eichhorn, still at his desk in Police Headquarters, refused even to admit to the building Police-President Richter of Charlottenburg, who had been named as his successor, and he and his aides were still busily arming deluded workingmen and young hooligans of sixteen and seventeen, as well as some women. The People's Marine Division announced that it sided with the government, but it played little part in its defense.
The rattle of machine-guns and the crack of rifles kept Berliners awake nearly all night. The hardest fighting was at the Tageblatt plant, in front of the Foreign Office and the Chancellor's Palace, and around the Brandenburger Tor. Thursday morning found the government decided to put an end to the unbearable conditions. It was announced that no parades would be tolerated and that government soldiers had been ordered to shoot to kill if any such aggregations disobeyed orders to disperse. Spartacus, realizing that the government meant what it said, called no meetings, and the streets were free of howling demonstrants for the first time since Sunday.
The government further addressed a proclamation to the people, addressing them this time as Mitbürger (fellow-citizens), instead of Genossen. It announced that negotiations had been broken off with the rebels, and assailed the dishonest and dishonorable tactics of the Independent Socialists represented by the Haase-Dittmann delegation. Die Freiheit and Der rote Vorwärts assailed the government; still the proclamation had a good effect and decent elements generally rallied to the government's support. The day's fighting was confined to the Tageblatt plant, where three hundred Bolsheviki were entrenched to defend the liberty of other people's property. The place could have been taken with artillery, but it was desired to spare the building if possible.
Friday passed with only scattered sniping. The Spartacans and their Independent helpers grew boastful. They had not yet learned to know what manner of man Gustav Noske, the new cabinet member, was. They made his acquaintance early Saturday morning. Before the sun had risen government troops had posted themselves with artillery and mine-throwers a few hundred yards from the Vorwärts plant. The battle was short and decisive. A single mine swept out of existence the Spartacans' barricade in front of the building, and a few more shots made the building ripe for storm. The government troops lost only two or three men, but more than a score of Bolsheviki were killed and more than a hundred, including some Russians and women, were captured. The Vorwärts plant was a new building and much more valuable than some of the other plants occupied by the Spartacans, but it was selected for bombardment because the cabinet members wished to show, by sacrificing their own party's property first, that they were not playing favorites.
The fall of the Vorwärts stronghold and the firm stand of the government disheartened the mercenary and criminal recruits of the Spartacans. Police Headquarters, the real center of the revolutionary movement, was taken early Sunday morning after a few 10.5-centimeter shells had been fired into it. The official report told of twelve Spartacans killed, but their casualties were actually much higher. Eichhorn had chosen the better part of valor and disappeared. The Bolsheviki occupying the various newspaper plants began deserting en masse over neighboring roofs and the plants were occupied by government troops without a contest. News came that Liebknecht's followers had also abandoned the Boetzow Brewery in the eastern part of the city, one of their main strongholds. Late in the afternoon they also fled from the Silesian Railway Station, where they had been storing up stolen provisions, assembling arms and ammunition and preparing to make a last desperate stand.
The government, averse though it was to the employment of force to maintain its authority, had realized at the beginning of December the increasing strength of the Spartacans, and had begun assembling a military force of loyal soldiers in various garrisons outside the city. Three thousand of these troops now marched into the city. Hundreds of the men in the ranks carried rifles slung across officers' shoulder-straps. They marched as troops ought to march, sang patriotic songs and looked grimly determined. For miles along their route they were greeted by frantic cheering and even by joyous tears from the law-abiding citizens who had been terrorized by the scum of a great capital. [61]
[ [61] The task of the government was made harder throughout its darkest days by the aid and comfort given its enemies by the character of the reports published in certain enemy papers regarding conditions in Germany. Nearly the entire Paris press regularly published extravagantly untrue reports concerning the situation, and many English and American papers followed suit. The London Times of December 10th gravely told its readers that "in a political sense Ebert is suspected of being a mere tool of the old régime, whose difficult task it is to pave the first stages of the road to the restoration of the Hohenzollerns months or years hence." Three days later it declared that "the German army chiefs propose to let the Spartacans upset the government so that they can summon Hindenburg to save the day and reëstablish the monarchy." Articles of this stamp were eagerly pounced upon and republished by Independent Socialist and Spartacan organs of the stamp of Die Freiheit, Die Republik, Liebknecht's Die rote Fahne, and others, and were of great assistance to the enemies of good government in their efforts to convince the ignorant and fanatical that the government was organizing a "white guard" for counter-revolutionary purposes and was plotting the restoration of the monarchy. One dispatch from Paris, published extensively in the American press on February 26th, quoted in all seriousness "a prominent American Socialist in close touch with German Liberals and with exceptional sources of secret information," who had learned that "the German revolution was a piece of theatrical manipulation by agents of the militaristic oligarchy to win an armistice." That such a report could be published in responsible organs is a staggering commentary on the manner in which the war-psychosis inhibited clear thinking. The Conservative Deputy Hergt, speaking in the Prussian Diet on March 15th, said: "We Conservatives are not conscienceless enough to plunge the land into civil warfare. We shall wait patiently until the sound sense of the German people shall demand a return to the monarchic form of government." American papers carried the following report of this statement: "Speaking before the new Prussian Diet in Berlin, Deputy Hergt proposed that Prussia should restore the monarchy." Volumes could be written about these false reports alone.
The week of terror had practically ended. There was still some sniping from housetops and some looting, but organized resistance had been crushed. Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg had gone into hiding. Liebknecht's seventeen-year-old son and sister had been arrested. Ledebour, more courageous or, perhaps, more confident that a veteran Genosse had nothing to fear from a Socialist government, remained and was arrested.
It had been no part of the cabinet's plan or desire to have their veteran colleague of former days arrested. On January 12th the writer, speaking with one of the most prominent Majority Socialist leaders, said: