The small pro-democracy Monday demonstrations soon swelled into crowds of hundreds of thousands of people in cities across East Germany. The East German leadership considered using force but ultimately backed down, lacking support from the Soviet Union for a violent Tiananmen Square-style military intervention.[165] Reformist members of the East German Politbüro sought to rescue the situation by forcing the resignation of the hardline Party chairman Erich Honecker, replacing him in October 1989 with the marginally less hardline Egon Krenz.[166]