The violent clashes were a disaster for the German far left. But they were not a prelude to a military dictatorship. A week after the suppression of the Spartakist uprising on 19 January 1919, 30 million men and women, over 83 per cent of Germany’s adult population, cast their votes for the Constituent Assembly. It was by far the most impressive democratic display anywhere in the Western world in the aftermath of World War I. Three million more Germans voted than in the US presidential election of 1920, though Germany’s population was 61 million versus the 107 million of the United States.
