in close contact with their allies in the Reichswehr. On 13 March 1920 during the Kapp Putsch, 12,000 Freikorps soldiers occupied Berlin and installed Wolfgang Kapp, a right-wing journalist, as chancellor. The national government fled to Stuttgart and called for a general strike against the putsch. The strike meant that no "official" pronouncements could be published, and with the civil service out on strike, the Kapp government collapsed after only four days on 17 March. Inspired by the general strikes, a workers' uprising began in the Ruhr region when 50,000 people formed a "Red Army" and took control of the province. The regular army and the Freikorps ended the uprising on their own authority. The rebels were campaigning for an extension of the plans to nationalise major industries and supported the national government, but the SPD leaders did not want to lend support to the growing USPD, who favoured the establishment of a socialist regime. The repression of an uprising of SPD supporters by the reactionary forces in the Freikorps on the instructions of the SPD ministers was to become a major source of conflict within the socialist movement and thus contributed to the weakening of the only group that could have withstood the Nazi movement. Other rebellions were put down in March 1921 in Saxony and Hamburg. One of the manifestations of the sharp political polarisation that had occurred were the right-wing motivated assassinations of important representatives of the young republic. In August 1921, Finance Minister Matthias Erzberger and Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau were murdered by members of the Organisation Consul. While Erzberger was attacked for signing the armistice agreement in 1918, Rathenau as foreign minister was responsible, among other things, for the reparations issue. He had also sought to break Germany's isolation after World War I through the 1922 Treaty of Rapallo with the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. However, he also drew right-wing extremist hatred as a Jew (see also Weimar antisemitism). The solidarity expressed in large, public funeral processions for those murdered, and the passage of a were intended to put a stop to the right-wing enemies of the Weimar Republic. However, right-wing state criminals were not permanently deterred from their activities, and the lenient sentences they were given by judges influenced by imperial conservatism were a contributing factor. In 1922, Germany signed the Treaty of Rapallo with the Soviet Russia, which allowed Germany to train