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Freikorps were irregular German and other European military volunteer units, or paramilitary, that existed from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. They effectively fought as mercenaries or private military companies, regardless of their own nationality. In German-speaking countries, the first so-called Freikorps were formed in the 18th century from native volunteers, enemy renegades, and deserters. These, sometimes exotically equipped, units served as infantry and cavalry ; sometimes in just company strength and sometimes in formations of up to several thousand strong. There were also various mixed formations or legions. The Prussian von Kleist Freikorps included infantry, jäger, dragoons and hussars. The French Volontaires de Saxe combined uhlans and dragoons.
The Sturmabteilung was the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party. It played a significant role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s. Its primary purposes were providing protection for Nazi rallies and assemblies, disrupting the meetings of opposing parties, fighting against the paramilitary units of the opposing parties, especially the Roter Frontkämpferbund of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), and intimidating Romani, trade unionists, and especially Jews.
The Beer Hall Putsch, also known as the Munich Putsch, was a failed coup d'état by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler, Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff and other Kampfbund leaders in Munich, Bavaria, on 8–9 November 1923, during the Weimar Republic. Approximately two thousand Nazis marched on the Feldherrnhalle, in the city centre, but were confronted by a police cordon, which resulted in the deaths of 16 Nazis, four police officers, and one bystander.
The Kapp Putsch, also known as the Kapp–Lüttwitz Putsch, was an attempted coup against the German national government in Berlin on 13 March 1920. Named after its leaders Wolfgang Kapp and Walther von Lüttwitz, its goal was to undo the German Revolution of 1918–1919, overthrow the Weimar Republic, and establish an autocratic government in its place. It was supported by parts of the Reichswehr, as well as nationalist and monarchist factions.
The Ruhr Red Army was an army of between 50,000 and 80,000 left-wing workers who conducted what was known as the Ruhr Uprising (Ruhraufstand), in the Weimar Republic. It was the largest armed workers' uprising in the nation's history, and ran from 13 March to 2 April, 1920, in Germany's most important industrial area. The workers were reacting to the Kapp Putsch, an effort by right-wing forces in March 1920 to overthrow the elected government.
Reichswehr was the official name of the German armed forces during the Weimar Republic and the first years of the Third Reich. After Germany was defeated in World War I, the Imperial German Army was dissolved in order to be reshaped into a peacetime army. From it a provisional Reichswehr was formed in March 1919. Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the rebuilt German Army was subject to severe limitations in size, structure and armament. The official formation of the Reichswehr took place on 1 January 1921 after the limitations had been met. The German armed forces kept the name 'Reichswehr' until Adolf Hitler's 1935 proclamation of the "restoration of military sovereignty", at which point it became part of the new Wehrmacht.
Der Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten, commonly known as Der Stahlhelm, was a German First World War veteran's organisation existing from 1918 to 1935. It was part of the "Black Reichswehr" and in the late days of the Weimar Republic closely affiliated to the monarchist German National People's Party (DNVP), placed at party gatherings in the position of armed security guards.
The Kampfbund ("Battle-league") was a league of nationalist fighting societies and the German National Socialist Party in Bavaria, Germany, in the 1920s. It included Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party (NSDAP) and its Sturmabteilung (SA), the Oberland League and the Bund Reichskriegsflagge. Hitler was its political leader, while Hermann Kriebel led its militia.
Gustav Noske was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). He served as the first Minister of Defence (Reichswehrminister) of the Weimar Republic between 1919 and 1920. Noske was known to use army and paramilitary forces to suppress the socialist/communist uprisings of 1919.
In the fourteen years the Weimar Republic was in existence, some forty parties were represented in the Reichstag. This fragmentation of political power was in part due to the use of a peculiar proportional representation electoral system that encouraged regional or small special interest parties and in part due to the many challenges facing the nascent German democracy in this period.
These are terms, concepts and ideas that are useful to understanding the political situation in the Weimar Republic. Some are particular to the period and government, while others were just in common usage but have a bearing on the Weimar milieu and political maneuvering.
This Weimar Timeline charts the chronology of the Weimar Republic, dating the pre-history before the adoption of the actual Weimar Constitution. This timeline stops when Hitler establishes the Third Reich.
Hermann Ehrhardt was a German naval officer in World War I who became an anti-republican and anti-Semitic German nationalist Freikorps leader during the Weimar Republic. As head of the Marine Brigade Ehrhardt, he was among the best-known Freikorps leaders in the immediate postwar years. The Brigade fought against the local soviet republics that arose during the German Revolution of 1918–1919 and later was among the key players in the anti-democratic Kapp Putsch of March 1920. After the Brigade's forced disbanding, Ehrhardt used the remnants of his unit to found the Organisation Consul, a secret group that committed numerous politically motivated assassinations. After it was banned in 1922, Ehrhardt formed other less successful groups such as the Bund Viking. Because of his opposition to Adolf Hitler, Ehrhardt was forced to flee Germany in 1934 and lived apolitically in Austria until his death in 1971.
Antifaschistische Aktion was a militant anti-fascist organisation in the Weimar Republic started by members of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) that existed from 1932 to 1933. It was primarily active as a KPD campaign during the July 1932 German federal election and the November 1932 German federal election and was described by the KPD as a "red united front under the leadership of the only anti-fascist party, the KPD."
Organisation Consul (O.C.) was an ultra-nationalist and anti-Semitic terrorist organization that operated in the Weimar Republic from 1920 to 1922. It was formed by members of the disbanded Freikorps group Marine Brigade Ehrhardt and was responsible for political assassinations that had the ultimate goal of destroying the Republic and replacing it with a right-wing dictatorship. The group was banned by the German government in 1922.
The Black Reichswehr was the name for the extra-legal paramilitary formations promoted by the German Reichswehr army during the time of the Weimar Republic; it was raised despite restrictions imposed by the Versailles Treaty. The secret organisation was dissolved in 1923 upon the failed Küstrin Putsch.
Josef "Beppo" Römer was a member of the Freikorps Oberland, one of the paramilitary organizations that sprang up around Germany as soldiers returned in defeat from World War I. He was later an organizer for the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). He was involved in German resistance to Nazism and plotted to assassinate Hitler in 1934. Römer was executed in 1944 by the Nazi regime.
Carl Wilhelm Severing was a German union organizer and Social Democratic politician during the German Empire, Weimar Republic and the early post-World War II years in West Germany. He served as a Reichstag member and as interior minister in both Prussia and at the Reich level where he fought against the rise of extremism on both the left and the right. He remained in Germany during the Third Reich but had only minimal influence on reshaping the Social Democratic Party after World War II.
The Freikorps Oberland was a voluntary paramilitary organization that, in the early years of the Weimar Republic, fought against communist and Polish insurgents. It was successful in the 1921 Battle of Annaberg and became the core of the Sturmabteilung (SA) in Bavaria while several members later turned against the Nazis.
The Ruhr uprising or March uprising (Märzaufstand) was a left-wing workers' revolt in the Ruhr region of Germany in March 1920. It initially took place in support of the call for a general strike issued by the Social Democrat members of the German government, the unions, and other parties in response to the right-wing Kapp Putsch of 13 March 1920.
References
Notes
- ↑ Payne, Stanley G. (1995) The History of Fascism 1914-1945. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. p.171. ISBN 9780299148744
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Bibliography
- Koepp, Roy G. (2010). Conservative Radicals: The Einwohnerwehr, Bund Bayern Und Reich, and the Limits of Paramilitary Politics in Bavaria, 1918–1928 (PhD thesis). Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska.
- Payne, Stanley G. (1995). The History of Fascism, 1914–1945 . Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0299148744.
- Rosenhaft, Eve (1983). Beating the Fascists?: The German Communists and Political Violence 1929-1933. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521089388.
Further reading
- Waite, Robert G. L. (1952) Vanguard of Nazism: The Free Corps Movement in Postwar Germany 1918-1923, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.