Noske, Gustav

Noske, Gustav (gs`täf nôs`kə), 1868–1946, German politician, a Social Democrat. A former member of the Reichstag, he was in charge of the armed forces after the republican revolution of Nov., 1918, and was minister of defense in 1919–20. In these capacities he ruthlessly suppressed radical uprisings throughout Germany, notably the insurrection of the Communist Spartacus party. He was forced to resign after the abortive monarchist Kapp Putsch (1920), because many Social Democrats felt that he had encouraged counterrevolutionary activity through his alliance with the army against radicals. Noske became governor of Hanover in 1920 but was dismissed (1933) by the National Socialists, who otherwise left him unmolested until 1944, when he was arrested on suspicion of having shared in the attempt on Hitler's life. He was released in 1945 by Soviet troops.

---

Noske, Gustav 

Born July 9, 1868, in Brandenburg; died Nov. 30, 1946, in Hannover. Figure of the extreme right wing of the German Social Democratic Party. After the beginning of World War I, a social-chauvinist.

Having become a member of the government—the Council of People’s Commissars—during the November Revolution of 1918, Noske took upon himself the role of a “bloodhound” (his own epithet). He mobilized the military forces of the counterrevolution, which in 1919 crushed the revolutionary actions of the workers of Berlin, Bremen, and other cities of Germany. From February 1919 until March 1920, he was minister of defense. However, Noske was forced to resign after the suppression of the Kapp Putsch of 1920, which was organized by the counterrevolutionary military clique that enjoyed his patronage.

WORKS

Erlebtes aus Aufstieg und Niedergang einer Demokratie. Offenbach-am-Main, 1947.
In Russian translation:
Zapiski o germanskoi revoliutsii. Moscow, 1922.
Ispoved’ krovavoi sobaki. Petrograd, 1924.