the left wing movement

SPD represented moderate socialist aims and was led by Freidrich Ebert and phillip Scheidemann. In the election of 1912 it had become the largest party in the Reichstag with a membership of over a million people. It's fundamental aim was to create a socialist republic but being wholly devoted to parliamentary democracy, it rejected anything that may have been linked to soviet-style communism.

On the extreme left was the spartacists league led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.

The spartacists had been formed in 1905 and by 1918 they had around 5000 members. From 1914 they had opposed the war and were inbfluenced by Lennin and Bolshevism. They believed that Germany should follow the same path as communist Russia. Their fundamental aim was to create a soviet republic based on the rule of the proletariat (the industrial working class who would ultimately take charge of the state) through workers' and soldiers' councils.

Was formed in 1917 as a breakaway group from the SPD. It was led by Hugo Haase and Karl Kautsky. Although the USPD was in a minority in the assembly in the Reichstag, it had a substantial following of 300,000 members.

They demanded radical social and economic change as well as political movement, it was far from united and internal divisions and squabbles seriously curtailed it's influence. The main disagreement was between those who sympathised with the creation of a parliamentary democracy and those who advocated a much more revolutionary democracy based on the workers council