Friedrich Ebert

Friedrich Ebert led the Social Democratic Party from 1913, immediately splitting it by backing war loans for World War I and pushing the Burgfrieden policy to silence domestic opposition until victory. When Germany became a republic in November 1918, he became chancellor and made a cold bargain: he allied with General Wilhelm Groener's military leadership and right-wing Freikorps militias to crush socialist, communist, and anarchist uprisings from the left, then turned the same forces against right-wing coups like the Kapp Putsch. In 1919 he became the Weimar Republic's first president, a job…