SPD defence minister who said “someone has to be the bloodhound” and used the Freikorps to crush the left risings of 1919
A basket-maker from Brandenburg who became an SPD journalist, he entered the Reichstag in 1906 and was known as its military expert. Sent to Kiel as the government’s representative in November 1918, he calmed the mutiny and became governor. After the Christmas crisis he joined the Council of People’s Deputies for military affairs and, saying “someone has to be the bloodhound”, organised the Freikorps that crushed the January rising and the March battles. First defence minister from February 1919, he resigned after the Kapp Putsch of 1920, later governed the province of Hanover and was arrested after the July 1944 plot.