Gustav Noske (9 July 1868 – 30 November 1946) was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). He served as the first Minister of Defence () of the Weimar Republic between 1919 and 1920. Noske was known for using army and paramilitary forces to suppress the socialist/communist uprisings of 1919.
Early life
Noske was born on 9 July 1868 in Brandenburg an der Havel, Prussia. He was the son of the weaver Karl Noske (born 1838) and the manual labourer Emma Noske (née Herwig, born 1843). From 1874 to 1882, he went to primary and secondary school ( and ). In 1882 to 1886 he was apprenticed as a basket maker at the and travelled to Halle, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Liegnitz as a journeyman. In 1884, Noske joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and he also became a union member. In 1892, Noske was elected chairman of the Brandenburg SPD. He married Martha Thiel (1872–1949) at Brandenburg in 1891. They had one son and two daughters. After the insurgents seized Berlin's city centre and the newspaper district, Ebert attempted to negotiate with them. When the discussions broke down, his major concern was with maintaining internal peace. He ordered the rebellion quashed, and Noske, who was in charge of the Army and Navy, used both regular forces and Freikorps units to end the uprising. Around 165 people lost their lives.
Over the first half of 1919 Ebert and Noske repeated what they had done in Berlin throughout the Reich. Left-wing uprisings were crushed by brutal military force, employing both regular army and paramilitary Freikorps.
As one of the conditions for ending the general strike, the unions demanded the resignation of Noske as '. Moreover, some within the SPD were unhappy with his conduct during the crisis and deemed him to have been lacking in energy dealing with the putsch.
He died in Hanover on 30 November 1946 from a stroke while preparing for a lecture tour of the United States. He is buried at in Hanover.
Reception
Noske has been called "one of the most forceful and at the same time controversial personalities of his time". For some, Noske had the courage to be (in his own words) "the bloodhound" and prevent Germany from falling into chaos and then tyranny of the type previously experienced by Russia after the Bolshevik October Revolution.