In January 1919, the German Social Democratic Party turned guns on its own supporters, brutally putting down the Spartacist uprising. In this article historian and writer Klaus Geitinger argues that as right-wing mass movements rock countries across Europe and the good old SPD seems doomed to collapse, the party must finally confront its own history. The end of the First World War unleashed a revolutionary wave that broke across all of Europe. It began in October 1917 with the Russian Revolution, and would inspire revolutionary movements as far flung as Spain one year later. Radical changes took place in the countries that lost the war: the monarchy was toppled in Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria, and Turkey, while council movements rose up across Hungary, Austria and Italy. Mass strikes, social movements, and radicalizations also took place in the victor countries of France, Great Britain, and the US, which were only held in check by social concessions like trade union