[1] Munich, the capital of Bavaria, was "an island of anarchic bohemianism and political radicalism in an otherwise predominantly Roman Catholic rural sea of small towns and timber houses scattered across the foothills of the Alps," according to Michael Burleigh.

[5] Beginning on 3 November 1918, protests initiated by the socialist Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) called for peace and demanded the release of detained leaders.

On the afternoon of 7 November 1918, the first anniversary of the Russian revolution, Kurt Eisner, an idealistic Independent Social Democratic Party politician[6][7] addressed a crowd estimated to have been about 60,000 on the Theresienwiese – current site of the Oktoberfest – in Munich.

He demanded an immediate peace, an eight-hour workday, relief for the unemployed, abdication of Bavarian King Ludwig III and the German emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and proposed the formation of workers' and soldiers' councils.

[11] Eisner was a middle-class Jew who had been a drama critic in Berlin before he left his wife and family to come to Munich, where he took up with a female journalist, frequented the cafés of the Schwabing district of the city, and wrote reviews for the Münchener Post – although he later lost his job because he was part of the "revisionist right-wing" of the Social Democratic Party, which wanted the party to drop its attachment to Marxist ideology.

[10] Eisner helped found the Munich branch of the Independent Social Democratic Party and became known for his anti-war stance, which had garnered him eight months in jail after he organized a number of peace strikes in January 1918; he was released under a general amnesty in October 1918.

For a few days, the Munich social market economist Lujo Brentano served as People's Commissar for Trade (Volkskommissar für Handel).

[17] As he was on his way to the Landtag to announce his resignation, Eisner was shot dead by the right-wing nationalist Anton Graf von Arco auf Valley,[18][19][20] an aristocratic former cavalryman now a student at the University of Munich, who was a believer in the "stab-in-the-back myth", which held that Jews, socialists and other undesirable elements had caused Germany to lose World War I.

Acting on these false allegations, Alois Lindner, a butcher and saloon waiter, and a member of the Revolutionary Workers' Council who was a fervent supporter of Eisner, shot Auer twice with a rifle, seriously wounding him.

This prompted other armed supporters of Eisner to open fire, causing a melee, killing one delegate from the Centre Party and provoking nervous breakdowns in at least two ministers.

[2][4][21] These events caused unrest and lawlessness in Bavaria, and a general strike was proclaimed by the soldiers' and workers' councils, which distributed guns and ammunition, provoking the declaration of a state of emergency.

The assassination of Eisner created a martyr for the leftist cause, and prompted demonstrations, the closing of the University of Munich, the kidnapping of aristocrats, and the forced pealing of church bells.

The BSR forces – led by, of all people, Ernst Toller – was victorious in the first battle at Dachau, but Hoffmann made a deal which gave him the services of 20,000 men of the Freikorps under Lt. General Burghard von Oven [de].

[26] The Freikorps broke through the Munich defenses on 1 May,[26] and, after the execution of 1,000–1,200 suspected communists,[20] Oven declared the city to have been secured on 6 May, ending the reign of the Bavarian Soviet Republic.

After the Bavarian Soviet Republic was crushed, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) returned to power, but was subsequently ousted in the Kapp Putsch in March 1920.

The separate strands of Bavarian right-wing extremism found a common enemy in despising the left, and Bavaria became profoundly "reactionary, anti-Republican, [and] counter-revolutionary.