January 15, 1919: Comrades Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, leaders of the revolutionary Spartacus League during World War I and founding members of the Communist Party of Germany, are murdered.
The militarist right-wing Freikorps and the opportunist Social-Democratic government of Ebert and Noske collaborated in plotting their arrest and assassination as part of their effort to crush the revolutionary struggle known as the Spartacist Uprising (January 4-15, 1919).