The Bavarian Soviet Republic was a short-lived state formation proclaimed on April 6, 1919, in Munich by the council of workers' and soldiers' deputies. The highest governing body in the republic was the Bavarian Congress of Councils of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies, while the Bavarian Executive Committee of Workers' Councils operated in the intervals between congresses.

This republic played an important role in spreading revolutionary sentiments. For the first time, left radicals managed to seize power in a major German city for several weeks. Supporters of the Soviet republic organized courses for workers, teaching the basics of Marxism-Leninism, while their opponents spread rumors about Russian Jews supposedly arriving in large numbers from Russia.

Thomas Mann, usually politically correct and resistant to propaganda, wrote that the only way to combat such "dreamy, fanatical, Christ-like Jewish revolutionaries" was to shoot them on the spot.

The Jewish origins of many Prussian Marxists and the fact that the leaders of the Bavarian communists, Levine and Levin (executed in Moscow on June 17, 1937), were considered immigrants from Russia contributed to the rise of anti-Semitism, which had previously been suppressed by Bismarck in Bavaria as a manifestation of barbarism. Among those whom the Prussians planned to execute was Adolf Hitler, elected to the Soldiers' Councils. However, by the decision of Ernst Röhm, his life was spared, and he was later tasked with conducting political work in the garrison, believing that the soldier mass of Bavarian Catholics would trust him.

The brutal actions of the communists, including the execution of innocent civilian hostages, alienated most of the population from them, paving the way for the formation of the National Socialist German Workers' Party.