Revolutions that are defeated are soon forgotten. Yet of all the upheavals after the First World War, it was the events in Germany that prompted British Prime Minister Lloyd George to write: ?The whole existing order, in its political, social and economic aspects, is questioned by the masses from one end of Europe to another.? Here was a great revolutionary upheaval in an advanced industrial country- in the heart of Europe. Without an understanding of this defeat the great barbarisms that swept Europe in the 1930s cannot be understood. The swastika first entered modern history in the uniforms of the German counter-revolutionary troops of l918 to 1923- and because of the defeat in Germany, Russia fell into the isolation that gave Stalin his road to power



Chris Harman's book is a necessary book on a not widely known or understand defeated revolution. Many know the name and tragic fate of Rosa Luxemburg, but hardly known the details of the spartacist uprising much less the following years of revolutionary Germany.