Freikorps

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Freikorps were paramilitary militias formed in the aftermath of World War I and during the German Revolution of 1918–19. Freikorps units consisted primarily of demobilised soldiers, disillusioned young men, and fanatical conservative nationalists blaming socialists and communists for Germany's problems.

This article is about far-right paramilitants in the German Republic. For irregular volunteer units in the 18th to 20th centuries, see free corps.
Freikorps paramilitaries in Berlin, 1919

Freikorps were paramilitary militias formed in the aftermath of World War I and during the German Revolution of 1918–19. Freikorps units consisted primarily of demobilised soldiers, disillusioned young men, and fanatical conservative nationalists blaming socialists and communists for Germany's problems.

They were ostensibly mustered to fight on behalf of the Weimar government[1] against the German communists during the Spartacist uprising.[2][3] However, many Freikorps also largely despised the Republic and were involved in assassinations of its supporters, later aiding the Nazis in their rise to power.[4][5][6]

Following the Kapp Putsch in 1920, most Freikorps units were forcibly dissolved by the government, with Freikorps paramilitants often ending up in other far-right paramilitary units.

Interwar

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1919 ad for Freikorps volunteers Minister of the Reichswehr, Gustav Noske, visits the Freikorps Hülsen in Berlin in January 1919. Provisional Freikorps armored vehicle in Berlin during the Kapp Putsch of March 1920

After World War I, the meaning of the word Freikorps changed from its earlier iterations. After 1918, the term referred to various—yet still loosely affiliated—paramilitary organizations established in Germany following Germany's defeat in World War I. Of the numerous Weimar paramilitary groups active during that time, the Freikorps were, and remain, the most notable. While numbers are difficult to determine, historians agree that some 500,000 men were formal Freikorps members, with another 1.5 million men participating informally.[7]

Amongst the social, political, and economic upheavals that marked the early years of the Weimar Republic, the tenuous German government under Friedrich Ebert, leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD), used the Freikorps to quell socialist and communist uprisings.[4] Minister of Defence and SPD member Gustav Noske also relied on the Freikorps to suppress the Marxist Spartacist uprising, culminating in the summary executions of revolutionary communist leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg on 15 January 1919.[8]

Freikorps involvement in Germany and Eastern Europe

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Bavarian Soviet Republic

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The Bavarian Soviet Republic was a short-lived and unrecognized socialist-communist state in Bavaria from 12 April – 3 May 1919 during the German Revolution of 1918–19. Following a series of political revolts and takeovers from German socialists and then Russian-backed Bolsheviks, Noske responded from Berlin by sending various Freikorps brigades to Bavaria in late April totalling some 30,000 men.[8] The brigades included Hermann Ehrhardt's second Marine Brigade Freikorps, the Görlitz Freikorps under Lieutenant Colonel Faupel, and two Swabian divisions from Württemberg under General Haas and Major Hirl as well as the largest Freikorps in Bavaria commanded by Colonel Franz Ritter von Epp.[8]

While they were met with little Communist resistance, the Freikorps acted with particular brutality and violence under Noske's blessing and at the behest of Major Schulz, adjutant of the Lützow Freikorps, who reminded his men that it "[was] a lot better to kill a few innocent people than to let one guilty person escape" and that there was no place in his ranks for those whose conscience bothered them.[8] On 5 May 1919, Lieutenant Georg Pölzing, one of Schulz's officers, travelled to the town of Perlach outside of Munich. There, Pölzing chose a dozen alleged communist workers—none of whom were actually communists, but members of the Social Democratic Party—and shot them on the spot.[8][9] The following day, a Freikorps patrol led by Captain Alt-Sutterheim interrupted the meeting of a local Catholic club, the St Joseph Society, and chose twenty of the thirty members present to be shot, beaten, and bayoneted to death.[8] A memorial on Pfanzeltplatz in Munich commemorates the incident.[10] Historian Nigel Jones notes that as a result of the Freikorps' violence, Munich's undertakers were overwhelmed, resulting in bodies lying in the streets and decaying until mass graves were completed.[8]

Eastern Europe

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The Freikorps also fought against communists and Bolsheviks in Eastern Europe, most notably East Prussia, Latvia, Silesia, and Poland. The Freikorps demonstrated fervent anti-Slavic racism and viewed Slavs and Bolsheviks as "sub-human" hordes of "ravening wolves".[4] To justify their campaign in the East, the Freikorps launched a campaign of propaganda that rightly positioned themselves as protectors of Germany's territorial hegemony over Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia as a result of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and as defenders against Slavic and Bolshevik hordes that "raped women and butchered children" in their wake.[4] Historian Nigel Jones highlights the Freikorps's "usual excesses" of violence and murder in Latvia, which were all the more unrestrained since they were fighting in a foreign land versus their own country.[4] Hundreds were murdered in the Freikorps' Eastern campaigns, such as the massacre of 500 Latvian civilians suspected of harbouring Bolshevik sympathies or the capture of Riga, which saw the Freikorps slaughter some 3,000 people.[4] Summary executions via firing squads were most common, but several Freikorps members recorded the brutal and deadly beatings of suspected communists and particularly communist women.[11]

Freikorps identity and ideals

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Freikorps ranks were composed primarily of former World War I soldiers who, upon demobilization, were unable to reintegrate into civilian society, having been brutalized by the violence of the war physically and mentally. Combined with the government's poor support of veterans, who were dismissed as hysterical when suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, many German veterans found comfort and a sense of belonging in the Freikorps.[12][13] Jason Crouthamel notes how the Freikorps' military structure was a familiar continuation of the frontlines, emulating the Kampfgemeinschaft (battle community) and Kameradschaft (camaraderie), thus preserving "the heroic spirit of comradeship in the trenches".[14] Others, angry at Germany's sudden, seemingly inexplicable defeat, joined the Freikorps to fight against communism and socialism in Germany or to exact some form of revenge on those they considered responsible. To a lesser extent, German youth who were not old enough to have served in World War I enlisted in the Freikorps in hopes of proving themselves as patriots and as men.[13]

Regardless of reasons for joining, modern German historians agree that men of the Freikorps consistently embodied post-Enlightenment masculine ideals that are characterized by "physical, emotional, and moral 'hardness'".[15][16] Described as "children of the trenches, spawned by war" and its process of brutalization, historians argue that Freikorps men idealized a militarized masculinity of aggression, physical domination, the absence of emotion (hardness).[4][16] They were to be as "swift as greyhounds, tough as leather, [and] hard as Krupp steel" to defend what remained of German conservatism in times of social chaos, confusion, and revolution that came to define the immediate interwar era.[17] Although World War I ended in Germany's surrender, many men in the Freikorps nonetheless viewed themselves as soldiers still engaged in active warfare with enemies of the traditional German Empire such as communists and Bolsheviks, Jews, socialists, and pacifists.[17] Prominent Freikorps member Ernst von Salomon described his troops as "full of wild demand for revenge and action and adventure...a band of fighter...full of lust, exultant in anger."[4]

In 1977, German sociologist Klaus Theweleit published Male Fantasies, in which he argues that men in the Freikorps radicalized Western and German norms of male self-control into a perpetual war against feminine-coded desires for domesticity, tenderness, and compassion amongst men.[11][16] Historians Nigel Jones and Thomas Kühne note that the Freikorps' displays of violence, terror, and male aggression and solidarity established the beginnings of the fascist New Man upon which the Nazis built.[8][18]

Demobilization

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The extent of the Freikorps' involvement and actions in Eastern Europe, where they demonstrated full autonomy and rejected orders from the Reichswehr and German government, left a negative impression on the state.[19] By this time, the Freikorps had served Ebert's purpose of suppressing revolts and communist uprisings. After the failed Kapp-Lütwitz Putsch in March 1920, in which the Freikorps participated, the Freikorps' autonomy and strength steadily declined as Hans von Seeckt, commander of the Reichswehr, removed all Freikorps members from the army and restricted the Freikorps' access to future funding and equipment from the government.[19] Von Seeckt was successful, and by 1921 only a small yet devoted core remained, effectively drawing an end to the Freikorps until their resurgence as far-right thugs and street brawlers for the Nazis beginning in 1923.

Cooperation with the Reichswehr

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This section is an excerpt from Reichswehr § Cooperation with the Freikorps.[edit]

Wherever the Treaty of Versailles tied the Reichswehr's hands or its own manpower was insufficient, it left 'national defence' – e.g. border skirmishes against Polish and Lithuanian irregulars,[20] or deployment in 1920 against the Ruhr uprising in the demilitarised Rhineland[21] – to the Freikorps, which continued to operate even though it had been officially disbanded in 1920.[22] In 1923 General von Seeckt, who had the backing of Otto Gessler, organised "civilian work groups" called Arbeits-Kommandos (AKs) that were attached to Reichswehr units and received training and support from them. The AKs, better known as the Black Reichswehr, whose members were largely ex-Freikorps, had a peak strength of about 20,000 men and allowed the Reichswehr to clandestinely exceed the Versailles Treaty's 100,000-man limit. On 1 October 1923, about 4,000 of its members attempted a putsch at Küstrin on the Oder river east of Berlin. After its failure, Seeckt quickly had the Black Reichswehr disbanded.[23][24]

Reichswehr generals also maintained close contacts with politically right-wing, anti-republican military associations such as the Stahlhelm[25] and Kyffhäuserbund,[26] although the Reichswehr officially described itself as "apolitical".[27]

Affiliation with the Nazi Party

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The rise of the Nazi Party led to a resurgence of Freikorps activity, as many members or ex-members were drawn to the party's marrying of military and political life and extreme nationalism by joining the Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS).[4] Unlike in the German Revolution of 1918–19 or their involvement in Eastern Europe, the Freikorps now had almost no military value and were instead utilized by the Nazis as thugs to engage in street brawls with communists and to break up anarchist, communist and socialist meetings alongside the SA to gain a political edge.[7] Moreover, the Nazis elevated the Freikorps as a symbol of pure German nationalism, anti-communism, and militarized masculinity to co-opt the lingering social and political support of the movement.[7]

Eventually, Adolf Hitler came to view the Freikorps as a nuisance and possible threat to his consolidation of power. During the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, an internal purge of Hitler's enemies within the Nazi Party, numerous Freikorps members and leaders were targeted for killing or arrest, including Freikorps commander Hermann Ehrhardt and SA leader Ernst Röhm. In Hitler's Reichstag speech following the purge, Hitler denounced the Freikorps as lawless "moral degenerates...aimed at the destruction of all existing institutions" and as "pathological enemies of the state...[and] enemies of all authority," despite his previous public adoration of the movement.[4]

Nazi legacy

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Numerous future members and leaders of the Nazi Party served in the Freikorps. Martin Bormann, eventual head of the Nazi Party Chancellery and Private Secretary to Hitler, joined Gerhard Roßbach's Freikorps in Mecklenburg as a section leader and quartermaster.[4] Reich Farmers' Leader and Minister of Food and Agriculture Richard Walther Darré was part of the Berlin Freikorps.[4] Reinhard Heydrich, future chief of the Reich Security Main Office (including the Gestapo, Kripo, and SD) and initiator of the Final Solution, was in Georg Ludwig Rudolf Maercker's Freikorps as a teenager.[4] Leader of the SS Heinrich Himmler enlisted in the Freikorps and carried a flag in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch.[4] Rudolf Höss joined the East Prussian Volunteer Freikorps in 1919 and eventually became commander of the Auschwitz extermination camp.[4] Ernst Röhm, eventual leader of the SA, supported various Bavarian Freikorps groups, funnelling them arms and cash.[4] Although many high-ranking National Socialists were former Freikorps fighters, recent research shows that former Freikorps fighters were no more likely to be involved in National Socialist organisations than the average male population in Germany.[28][29]

A recruitment poster for the Freikorps Hülsen

Freikorps groups and divisions

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World War II

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Sudetendeutsches Freikorps members

During World War II, there existed certain armed groups loyal to Germany that went under the name "Freikorps". These include:

See also

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References

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Notes

  1. ^ Haffner, Sebastian (2000). Defying Hitler. Picador. pp. 30–31, 33. ISBN 0-312-42113-3.
  2. ^ William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, New York, Simon & Schuster, 2011, p. 55
  3. ^ Heiden, Konrad (1944). Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. pp. 21–22.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Jones, Nigel (2004). A brief history of the birth of the Nazis (Rev. & updated ed.). London: Robinson. p. 270. ISBN 1-84119-925-7. OCLC 224053608.
  5. ^ Heiden, Konrad (1944). Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. pp. 23–24.
  6. ^ Heiden, Konrad (1944). Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. pp. 88–89.
  7. ^ a b c "Freikorps | International Encyclopedia of the First World War (WW1)". encyclopedia.1914–1918-online.net. Retrieved 6 December 2021.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h Jones, Nigel (2004). A brief history of the birth of the Nazis (Rev. & updated ed.). London: Robinson. p. 151. ISBN 1-84119-925-7. OCLC 224053608.
  9. ^ "Freikorps "Free Corps" in Germany". WW2 Gravestone. 1 May 2018. Retrieved 8 December 2021.
  10. ^ "Freikorps "Free Corps" in Germany". WW2 Gravestone. 1 May 2018. Retrieved 8 December 2021.
  11. ^ a b Theweleit, Klaus (1987–1989). Male fantasies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 184–191. ISBN 0-8166-1448-2. OCLC 14818459.
  12. ^ Blakemore, Erin (24 June 2019). "When Germany Called its Soldiers Hysterical". JSTOR Daily. Retrieved 8 December 2021.
  13. ^ a b Bartov, Omer (2000). Mirrors of destruction: war, genocide, and modern identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 20. ISBN 0-19-507723-7. OCLC 42022246.
  14. ^ Crouthamel, Jason (September 2018). "Homosexuality and Comradeship: Destabilizing the Hegemonic Masculine Ideal in Nazi Germany". Central European History. 51 (3): 424. doi:10.1017/S0008938918000602. ISSN 0008-9389.
  15. ^ Mosse, George L. (1996). The image of man: the creation of modern masculinity. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 1-60256-338-1. OCLC 174114386.
  16. ^ a b c Kühne, Thomas (September 2018). "Protean Masculinity, Hegemonic Masculinity: Soldiers in the Third Reich". Central European History. 51 (3): 395. doi:10.1017/S0008938918000596. ISSN 0008-9389.
  17. ^ a b Jones, Nigel (2004). A brief history of the birth of the Nazis (Rev. & updated ed.). London: Robinson. p. 268. ISBN 1-84119-925-7. OCLC 224053608.
  18. ^ Kühne, Thomas (2011). "The Pleasure of Terror: Belonging through Genocide". In Swett, Pamela E.; Ross, Corey; d'Almeida, Fabrice (eds.). Pleasure and Power in Nazi Germany. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 234–255. doi:10.1057/9780230306905_11. ISBN 978-0-230-30690-5.
  19. ^ a b "Freikorps | International Encyclopedia of the First World War (WW1)". encyclopedia.1914–1918-online.net. Retrieved 11 December 2021.
  20. ^ Winkler, Heinrich August (1993). Weimar 1918–1933: die Geschichte der ersten deutschen Demokratie [Weimar 1918–1933: The History of the First German Democracy] (in German). Munich: C.H. Beck. p. 114. ISBN 3-406-37646-0.
  21. ^ "Years of crisis (1920–23)". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 19 January 2024.
  22. ^ Scriba, Arnulf (1 September 2014). "Freikorps". Deutsches Historisches Museum. Retrieved 19 January 2014.
  23. ^ Southern, David B. (1982). "Anti-Democratic Terror in the Weimar Republic: the Black Reichswehr and the Feme-Murders". In Hirschfeld, Gerhard; Mommsen, Wolfgang J. (eds.). Social Protest, Violence & Terror in Nineteenth- & Twentieth-Century Europe. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan UK. p. 334. ISBN 978-1349169412.
  24. ^ Zabecki, David T., ed. (2015). World War II in Europe. An Encyclopedia. Milton Park, Oxfordshire, UK: Taylor & Francis. p. 650. ISBN 978-1135812423.
  25. ^ Asmuss, Burkhard (14 September 2014). "Der Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten". Deutsches Historisches Museum (in German). Retrieved 14 January 2024.
  26. ^ Elliott, C. J. (1975). "The Kriegervereine and the Weimar Republic". Journal of Contemporary History. 10 (1). Sage: 128. doi:10.1177/002200947501000106. JSTOR 260140. S2CID 154984831.
  27. ^ Wintges, Jorit (2019). Mansoor, Peter R.; Murray, Williamson (eds.). The Culture of Military Organizations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. p. 107. ISBN 978-1108485739.
  28. ^ Pomplun, Jan-Phliipp (2022). Deutsche Freikorps. Sozialgeschichte und Kontinuitäten (para)militärischer Gewalt zwischen Weltkrieg, Revolution und Nationalsozialismus (in German). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck&Ruprecht. pp. 217–276. ISBN 978-3-525-31146-2.
  29. ^ Pomplun, Jan-Philipp (2020). From World War One to the Vanguard of Nazism? A Statistical Approach to the History of German Paramilitarism. In: Christian Gerlach/Clemens Six (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Anti-Communist Persecutions. Palgrave Mcmillan. pp. 347–361. ISBN 978-3-030-54962-6.
  30. ^ The German Freikorps 1918–23. Elite 76. Osprey, 2001. p. 20.
  31. ^ a b Waite 1969, pp. 131, 132.
  32. ^ a b Waite 1969, p. 62.
  33. ^ Waite 1969, p. 145.
  34. ^ a b Davidson 2004, p. 59.
  35. ^ Padfield 2001, p. 13.
  36. ^ Hürter 2007, pp. 624–625.
  37. ^ Geiss & Jacobmeyer 1980, p. 11.
  38. ^ Childers 2017, p. 71.
  39. ^ Waite 1969, p. 89.
  40. ^ Waite 1969, pp. 140–142.
  41. ^ Waite 1969, pp. 203, 216.
  42. ^ Waite 1969, p. 38.
  43. ^ Waite 1969, pp. 33–37.
  44. ^ "Axis History Factbook". Retrieved 3 January 2009.
  45. ^ Mueller, p 61
  46. ^ Wistrich, Robert (2001). Who's Who In Nazi Germany. New York: Routledge. p. 35. ISBN 978-0-415-11888-0.
  47. ^ Sauer, Bernard (2002). Roßbach – Hitlers Vertreter für Berlin. Zur Frühgeschichte des Rechtsradikalismus in der Weimarer Republik (PDF). ZfG. p. 6.
  48. ^ Chinciński, Tomasz (12 August 2009). "Dywersja i sabotaż". www.polityka.pl (in Polish). Retrieved 14 September 2025.
  49. ^ Chinciński, Tomasz (2006). "Niemiecka dywersja w Polsce w 1939 r. w świetle dokumentów policyjnych i wojskowych II Rzeczpospolitej oraz służb specjalnych III Rzeszy". Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość. (in Polish). 9 (1): 165–197. ISSN 1427-7476.

Bibliography

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  • Wikimedia Commons logo Media related to Freikorps at Wikimedia Commons

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