Freikorps
Freikorps (English: Free Corps) are German volunteer military or paramilitary units. The term was originally applied to voluntary armies formed in German lands from the middle of the 18th century onwards. Between World War I and World War II the term was also used for the paramilitary organizations that arose during the period of the Weimar Germany. Freikorps units fought both for and against the German state. They formed the vanguard of the Nazi movement.
Contents |
[edit] First Freikorps
 |
This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2011) |
The first Freikorps were recruited by Frederick II of Prussia in the 18th century during the Seven Years' War. The Freikorps were regarded as unreliable by regular armies, so they were mainly used as sentries and for minor duties.
During the Napoleonic Wars, Freikorps were formed for the purpose of shaking off French rule in Germany. Those led by Ferdinand von Schill were decimated in the Battle of Stralsund (1809), many of their members were killed in battle or executed at Napoleon's command in the aftermath. Later, Ludwig Adolf Wilhelm von Lützow, a survivor of Schill's Freikorps, formed the Lützow Free Corps which took part in the German War of Liberation. The anti-Napoleonic Freikorps often operated behind French lines, as a kind of commando or guerrilla force.
Throughout the 19th Century, these anti-Napoleonic Freikorps were greatly praised and glorified by German Nationalists, and a heroic myth built up around their exploits. It was this myth which was invoked, in considerably different circumstances, the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I.
[edit] Post-World War I
The meaning of the word "Freikorps" changed over time. After 1918, the term was used for the paramilitary organizations that sprang up around Germany as soldiers returned in defeat from World War I. They were the key Weimar paramilitary groups active during that time. Many German veterans felt disconnected from civilian life, and joined a Freikorps in search of stability within a military structure. Others, angry at their sudden, apparently inexplicable defeat, joined up in an effort to put down Communist uprisings or exact some form of revenge (see Dolchstoßlegende). They received considerable support from Minister of Defense Gustav Noske, a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, who used them to crush the German Revolution of 1918–1919 and the Marxist Spartacist League and arrest Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who were killed on 15 January 1919. They were also used to defeat the Bavarian Soviet Republic in May 1919.[1]
On 5 May 1919, 12 workers (most of them members of the Social Democratic Party, SPD) were arrested and killed by members of Freikorps Lützow in Perlach near Munich based on a tip from a local cleric saying they were communists. A memorial on Pfanzeltplatz in Munich today commemorates the incident.[2][3][4]
Freikorps also fought in the Baltic, Silesia, and Prussia after the end of World War I, sometimes with significant success. They raped and murdered with abandon, and Anti-slavic racism was present, although the ethnic cleansing ideology and anti-Semitism that would be expressed in later years was not developed yet.[5]
Though officially "disbanded" in 1920, many Freikorps attempted, unsuccessfully, to overthrow the government in the Kapp Putsch in March 1920. Their attack was halted when German citizens who were loyal to the state went on strike, cutting off many services, and making daily life so problematic that the Putsch was called off.
In 1920, Adolf Hitler had just begun his political career as the leader of the tiny and as-yet-unknown German Workers Party (soon renamed the National Socialist German Workers Party, NSDAP) in Munich. Numerous future members and leaders of the Nazi Party had served in the Freikorps, including Ernst Röhm, future head of the Sturmabteilung, or SA, Heinrich Himmler, future head of the Schutzstaffel, or SS, and Rudolf Höß, the future Kommandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Hermann Ehrhardt, founder and leader of Marinebrigade Ehrhardt, and his deputy Commander Eberhard Kautter, leaders of the Viking League, refused to help Hitler and Erich Ludendorff in their Beer Hall Putsch and conspired against them.
[edit] Relations with Hitler
Freikorps leaders symbolically gave their old battle flags to Hitler's Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS) on November 9, 1933 in a huge ceremony.[6] Historian Robert Waite claims that Hitler had many problems with certain aspects of the Freikorps. Many of the Freikorps had joined the SA, so when the Night of the Long Knives came, they were among those targeted for killing or arrest, including Ehrhardt and Röhm. He claims that in Hitler's "Röhm Purge" speech to the Reichstag on July 13, 1934, the third group of "pathological enemies of the state" that Hitler lists are, in fact, the Freikorps fighters.[7] As the following list shows, the Freikorps were largely fanatically right wing fighters, part of Europe wide conflict like the White Guard in Finland, and subsequently formed the core of the Nazi establishment.[citation needed]
[edit] Notable Freikorps members
|
|
|
Resources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freikorps
[edit] Notable Freikorps units
- Freikorps Oberland
- Kurt Benson
- Volunteer Division of Horse Guards (Garde-Kavallerie-Schützendivision)
- murdered Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, Jan 15, 1919[10]
- led by Captain Pabst[10]
- disbanded on order of Defense Minister Gustav Noske, Jul 7, 1919, after Pabst threatened to kill him[11]
- Freikorps Maercker (Maercker's Volunteer Rifles, or Freiwillige Landesjägerkorps)[12]
- had Reinhard Heydrich as a member[13][14]
- founded by Ludwig Maercker
- Freikorps Roßbach (Rossbach)
- founded by Gerhard Roßbach
- rescued the Iron Division after an extremely long march across Eastern Europe.[15]
- had Rudolph Hoess as a member.
- Marinebrigade Ehrhardt (The Second Naval Brigade)
- participated in the Kapp Putsch of 1920[16]
- disbanded members eventually formed the Organisation Consul, which performed hundreds of political assassinations[17]
- Iron Division (Eiserne Division, related to Eiserne Brigade)
- Fought in the Baltic.
- Got trapped in Thorensberg by the Latvian Army. Was rescued by the Rossbach Freikorps.[15]
- Freikorps Lützow
- Occupied Munich following the revolution of April, 1919.
- Commanded by Major Schulz[18]
- Sudetendeutsches Freikorps
- Formed by Czech German nationalists with Nazi sympathies which operated from 1938 to 1939
- Part of Hitler's successful effort to absorb Czechoslovakia into the Third Reich
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] Bibliography
- Blanke, Richard. Orphans of Versailles: The Germans in Western Poland, 1918-1939, University Press of Kentucky, 1993, ISBN 081311803
- Hoess, Rudolf. Constantine Fitzgibbon, and Primo Levi. Commandant of Auschwitz: The Autobiography of Rudolf Hoess, Sterling Publishing Co., 2000. Translated by Constantine Fitzgibbon, Joachim Neugroschel. ISBN 1-84212-024-7, 9781842120248
- Morris, Douglas G. Justice Imperiled: The Anti-Nazi Lawyer Max Hirschberg in Weimar Germany, 2005, University of Michigan Press, ISBN 0-472-11476-X
- Mueller, Michael. Canaris, Naval Institute Press, 2007
- Read, Anthony. The Devil's Disciples: Hitler's Inner Circle, W. W. Norton & Company, 2004. ISBN 0-393-04800-4, 9780393048001
- Waite, Robert G L. Vanguard of Nazism, 1969, W W Norton & Co
[edit] Notes
- ^ Carlos Caballero Jurado, Ramiro Bujeiro (2001). The German Freikorps 1918-23: 1918-23. Osprey Publishing. ISBN 1841761842.
- ^ Max Hirschberg & Reinhard Weber. Jude und Demokrat: Erinnerungen eines Münchener Rechtsanwalts 1883 bis 1939.
- ^ Morris, Justice Imperiled: The Anti-Nazi Lawyer Max Hirschberg in Weimar Germany
- ^ Freikorps Lützow in the Axis History Factbook
- ^ Fascists Michael Mann,page 153 Cambridge University Press 2004
- ^ Waite, p 197
- ^ Waite, pg 280-281. See also the full text of the speech at http://members.tripod.com/~Comicism/340713.html
- ^ Hoess et al., pg 201
- ^ Axis History Forum
- ^ a b Waite, pg 62
- ^ Waite, pg 145
- ^ Waite, pg 33-37
- ^ "Axis History Factbook". http://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=5788. Retrieved 2009 1 3.
- ^ Mueller, p 61
- ^ a b Waite, pg 131, 132
- ^ Waite, pg 140-142
- ^ Waite, pg 203, 216
- ^ Waite, pg 89
[edit] External links
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Freikorps |
- Axis History Factbook; Freikorps section – By Marcus Wendel and contributors; site also contains an apolitical forum
- Freikorps Master list on Axis History Forum {reference only}
