Labor and the End of Weimar: The Case of the KPD in the November 1928 Lockout in the Rhenish-Westphalian Iron and Steel Industry

The decision of German employers in the Rhenish-Westphalian iron and steel industry to lock out workers in November 1928 rather than accept binding arbitration of a dispute over wages marked, in retrospect, the beginning of the dissolution of the Weimar Republic. The strongest group of German capitalists, from the center of German heavy industry, frontally attacked the governing parliamentary coalition. It did so to stop the extension of socioeconomic reforms, if possible to reverse those that had been instituted since 1918, and above all to challenge that policy of state intervention in economic affairs which regulated class conflicts and institutionalized labor union influence.