<P> The Spartacist uprising (German: Spartakusaufstand), also known as the January uprising (Januaraufstand), was a general strike (and the armed battles accompanying it) in Germany from 4 to 15 January 1919 . Germany was in the middle of a post-war revolution, and two of the perceived paths forward were either social democracy or a council / soviet republic similar to the one which had been established by the Bolshevik Party in Russia . The uprising was primarily a power struggle between the moderate Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) led by Friedrich Ebert, and the radical communists of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who had previously founded and led the Spartacist League (Spartakusbund). This power struggle was the result of the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II and the resignation of Chancellor Max von Baden, who had passed power to Ebert, as the leader of the largest party in the German parliament . Similar uprisings occurred and were suppressed in Bremen, the Ruhr, Rhineland, Saxony, Hamburg, Thuringia and Bavaria, and another round of even bloodier street battles occurred in Berlin in March, which led to popular disillusionment with the Weimar Government . </P> <P> After their experiences with the SPD and the USPD, the Spartacists concluded that their goals could be met only in a party of their own, and they founded the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) at the end of 1918 . Because of the unhappiness of many workers with the course of the revolution, they were joined by other left - socialist groups . After deliberations with the Spartacists, the Revolutionary Stewards decided to remain in the USPD . </P> <P> Rosa Luxemburg drew up her founding programme and presented it on 31 December 1918 . In this programme, she pointed out that the communists could never take power without the clear support of the majority of the people . On 1 January she again demanded that the KPD participate in the planned elections, but she was outvoted . The majority hoped to gain power by continued agitation in the factories and by "pressure from the streets". </P> <P> As in November 1918, a second revolutionary wave developed on 4 January 1919 when the government dismissed the Police Chief of Berlin, Emil Eichhorn, who was a member of the USPD and who had refused to act against the demonstrating workers during the Christmas Crisis . The USPD, the Revolutionary Stewards and KPD took up Eichhorn's call for a demonstration to take place on the following day . To the surprise of the organizers, the demonstration turned into a huge, mass demonstration which also attracted the support of many Socialist Party members . On Sunday 5 January, as on 9 November 1918, hundreds of thousands of people poured into the centre of Berlin, many of them armed . In the afternoon the train stations and the newspaper district with the offices of the middle - class press and the SPD's "Vorwärts", which had been printing articles hostile to the Spartacists since the beginning of September, were occupied . Some of the middle - class papers in the previous days had called not only for the raising of more Freikorps but also for the murder of the Spartacists . </P>

Where did the spartacists succeed in taking over