Ludendorff Coup

A coup almost overwhelms Imperial Germany.

The decision to assemble a Weimar Congress following the Paris Offensive was initially met with positive reactions from majority of the Germans that saw this as a victorious end of the war. Overtime, the approval of this action dwindled, especially amongst some German Military leadership, as the Kaiser was willing to relinquish too much of the spoils of the victory in the name of a lasting peace.   While the post-war system engineered by the Kaiser was supposed to give Germany its own place under the sun - including a significant number of colonies - it was much too small for many Germans. Especially after casualties taken while trying to achieve it. It was a peace just barely acceptable for the Entente... they wanted much more.   Some generals opposed it, seeing it as a betrayal of Germany by the Kaiser. What's more, many democrats and socialists were against it, both because they saw it as too much... and because the prolonged war was seen by many as a way of undermining the current political system and preparation for the Revolution to spread from Russia.   There was also one more power that loathed the peace. A power that acted silently, hiding itself behind the Outsiders supporting the German war machine. This power wanted to keep the war running, and would do whatever it took to do so. And if the Kaiser would no longer play along, it was time to discard him and find new, better one.   An unlikely alliance was struck between warmongers regardless of political affiliation. The main strength of the coup was the Spartacus League (under command of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg) and hard-line military commanders under Erich Ludendorff - most of them of lower levels, as the General staff as a whole was disliked Ludendorff a lot. The Outsiders helped them, by supplying them with several techmaturgic trump cards.   The Spartacus League had evolved during the war. From a group of purely socialist revolutionaries, to a vast movement of people unhappy with current state of affairs. Its core was socialists, communists and group of more hardline social democrats, but there were also 'pure' democrats.   It was used as a diversion. It launched mass strikes and riots throughout Germany. While it wouldn't be enough to cripple the victorious Empire, it was enough to trigger a panicked reaction of the government. Soldiers were sent into the streets, many of them secretly under command of the officers loyal to Ludendorff.   What's more, the Kaiser evaccuated from Weimar (the Congress was put on hold... indefinitely, as it soon turned out) to Berlin. His train was derailed by a spartakist bomb, and while he survived mostly unscathed, this put him out of commision for a while and allowed Ludendorff to enter Berlin and arrest most of the government - officially as 'accomplices' of a successful assasination of the Kaiser. At the same time spartakists and freikorps - groups of soldiers under command of the officers loyal to Ludendorff (with their organizational structure existing separately from the one on the surface) began taking over the country.   While Germany would have probably resisted the coup under normal circumstances, as a majority of the soldiers remained loyal (or even fiercely loyal) to kaiser, the loyal forces were early on decapitated (with the Kaiser and his entourage trying to find a way to contact anyone while being pursued by freikorps and spartakist militia, and with the government imprisoned). This caused enough chaos. What's more, the Outsiders gifted Ludendorff with an improved form of techmaturgic radio waves.   It was a forceful, much empowered variant of it. Every radio tower captured by the members of the coup immediately began sending out a brainwashing signal that enforced loyalty to the new, 'Republican' government. With many people on their radios, hoping to know what the heck was happening right now in their country, this was extremely succesful.   While the signal was powerful, it wasn't flawless. People with stronger attachment to the Kaiser (that were a target of an earlier, 'weaker' signal that merely suppressed dissent) could resist it. Because of that, fights erupted throughout the Germany, between the coup supporters and those who stayed loyal.   With the socialist militias strongest in the more industrialized regions, western Germany fell swiftly. In Prussia, however, the signal was massively weakened and loyalists managed to keep ground, quickly resorting to destroying all civilian audio receivers or senders. What's more, soldiers from Poland and Austro-Hungary entered Germany (the former marched into Prussia, Greater Poland and Silesia, while AH entered Bavaria).   The Kaiser himself managed to escape into loyalist controlled territory.