The government moved to Dresden, where they hoped to get support from Generalmajor Maercker but he had been ordered by Berlin to take them into "protective custody" and they moved on to Stuttgart. The cabinet proclamation on 13 March, calling on German workers to defeat the putsch by means of a general strike met with enormous success and received massive support from the working class. The majority unions, sympathetic to the government dominated by social democrats, joined the call for a strike on the same day, as did the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) and the Democratic Party; the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) followed one day later. In Berlin, the strike started on 14 March and by the next day it had spread all over the Reich. It was the most powerful strike in the history in Germany, involving up to 12 million workers. The country was paralysed. In Berlin the gas, water and power supply stopped.