Kaiser's Holocaust (43 page)

The first real confrontation between the Army of Bavaria’s government-in-exile and Munich’s ‘Red Army’ militia took place (ironically enough given what was to emerge from Munich) at a little town north of Munich called Dachau. When the Reds won that encounter, the Bamberg government turned to Berlin for help. The force that was then dispatched to crush Red Munich included units of the
Freikorps
– the Free Army.

The
Freikorps
were veterans of the regular army, who in the immediate aftermath of the war had bonded together in volunteer militias. Many fought with the devout aim of saving their nation from the forces of socialism. Others were merely unwilling to accept their nation’s defeat and psychologically unable to find a way back to civilian life. Robbed of their youth, they were men whose closest bonds were to each other and to the unit. In their private war against the socialists and revolutionaries, they sought to recreate the camaraderie they had known at the front.

While the soldiers and junior officers of the
Freikorps
were the ‘youths of the trenches’, many of their officers were former colonial soldiers, and a surprising number of the most important figures in the movement had taken part in the genocides against the Herero and Nama, or been involved in Germany’s other colonial wars. The first
Freikorps
unit, which provided the model for the entire movement, was formed by General Ludwig von Maercker, who had served in German South-West Africa. In the aftermath of the Nama War, von Maercker had overseen the internment of the Nama survivors of the Shark Island concentration camp in the former stables at Okawayo, where they had remained until the arrival of the South Africans in 1915.

By 1918 von Maercker was a veteran not only of the wars for
Lebensraum
in South-West Africa, but also of Germany’s attempt to create an empire in the East, leading the 214th Infantry Division. In late 1918 von Maercker found himself back in Berlin as the German Revolution began. A traditional Prussian conservative, he was deeply fearful of revolution and of socialism, so in December 1918 he took the fateful step of re-forming what was left of his division into the
Freiwillige Landesjägerkorps
(the Volunteer Riflemen’s Corps). This was a force dedicated to confronting socialist revolutionaries, upholding law and order, and defending the borders of the Reich. Von Maercker also forged the ethos of the
Freikorps
, in which the intense camaraderie of the trenches was invoked to bond officers and men together, re placing the suffocating hierarchy of rank and class that had, it was claimed, been a factor in the army’s defeat.

By Christmas 1918 von Maercker’s
Freikorps
had received official recognition from the government in Berlin. In January 1919 the
Freiwillige Landesjägerkorps
and several other newly formed
Freikorps
units entered Berlin and crushed the uprising of the Marxist Sparticist League in open battle on the streets of the capital. They then marched on to the city of Weimar and the northern ports of Bremen and Hamburg before confronting communist and revolutionary forces in the industrial cities of the Ruhr. As was the case with many
Freikorps
units, several of the men who served under von Maercker went on to hold key positions during the Third Reich. By far the most important of von Maercker’s former comrades was the young Reinhardt Heydrich, later the head of the Reich Main Security Office and architect of the Final Solution.

Another veteran of the Herero and Nama genocides who formed a
Freikorps
unit in 1919 was Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck, who had conducted a brilliant four-year-long guerrilla war in German East Africa finally surrendering two weeks after the Armistice in Europe had been signed. In one of his last acts before abdicating, Kaiser Wilhelm had promoted von Lettow-Vorbeck to the rank of Major General, and when he returned to
Germany, von Lettow-Vorbeck and his East Africa
Schutztruppe
were the only unit in the entire German army to be permitted a victory parade through the Brandenburg Gate.

Within months of his return von Lettow-Vorbeck had formed a
Freikorps
unit, and in May 1919 they saw action in the violent suppression of renewed left-wing rioting in Hamburg and Berlin. Although now fighting on the streets of Germany, von Lettow-Vorbeck continued to wear his
Schutztruppe
uniform and broad hat. An ardent monarchist and a conservative, von Lettow-Vorbeck did not become a member of the Nazi party. However, many of the men who fought under him made an effortless transition from the ranks of the
Freikorps
to the rallies of the early Nazi party.

The largest of the Bavarian
Freikorps
that assembled for an assault on ‘Red Munich’ in April 1919 was commanded by a man who had fought alongside von Lettow-Vorbeck at the battle of the Waterberg and in the Omaheke Desert. Knighted, elevated to the rank of General, and a recipient of Germany’s most prestigous military decoration, the Pour le Mérite, Franz Xavier Ritter von Epp was a war hero and now commander of a menacing new force –
Freikorps von Epp
. They were 600 strong, had retained their field grey army uniforms but on their
Stalhelm
(steel helmets) they had painted a white ‘E’ – for Epp. On their sleeves they wore their unit’s badge, a black diamond out of which stared a lion’s head – an appropriate symbol for a unit commanded by a colonial soldier. General von Epp’s fanatical belief in Germany’s great racial destiny was undiminished by four years of war, much of it spent in the East. Two years after the formation of his
Freikorps
unit, von Epp was formally reprimanded by his superiors in
Reichswehr
(the official post-war German army) for distributing racist pamphlets to soldiers under his command.
7

In 1919, however, most of the men who had been recruited to the
Freikorps von Epp
were in no need of indoctrination. The membership of von Epp’s unit reads like a
Who’s Who
list of the later Nazi elite. Among the future Nazis who marched on
Munich with an ‘E’ on their steel helmets was Wilhelm Stukart, the Nazi lawyer who was involved in drafting the Nuremberg Laws and attended the Wannsee Conference, at which the Nazis devised their ‘Final Solution’ to the Jewish question. Another of von Epp’s men, Karl Astel, went on to become leader of the Nazis’ Racial Hygiene Office in Munich and co-publisher of the magazine
Volk und Rass
. Astel also sat as a judge on Nazi Genetic Health courts in Jena and authorised thousands of forced sterilisations of the mentally ill and socially undesirable. Gerhard Wagner went on to hold the Nazi title ‘Führer’s Commissioner for National Health’. As such, Wagner was one of the men behind the sterilisation programmes of the Jews and the pre-war Nazi adult euthanasia programme. Walther Schultze, another of von Epp’s followers, was one of the earliest members of the Nazi party and rose to become their Reich Leader of University Teachers. He too was implicated in the euthanasia of the mentally ill. Gregor Strasser was the Nazis’ Reich Propaganda Leader, former commanding officer of Heinrich Himmler and the man who recruited Joseph Goebbels into the party. The figure from the
Freikorps
who was to play the most critical role in the birth of Nazism was General von Epp’s
aide-
de-
camp
Ernst Röhm, Hitler’s right-hand man and the driving force within the Nazi Brown Shirts.

Alongside
Freikorps von Epp
on the march on Munich in April 1919 was another
Freikorps
unit commanded by a veteran of German South-West Africa. Hermann Ehrhardt had fought as a marine in the war in the south against the Nama between 1905 and 1906. Having risen to naval lieutenant-commander, Ehrhardt was a proud veteran of the battle of Jutland, and by the end of April 1919 he had formed a
Freikorps
unit that had fought with von Maercker’s men across central Germany.
Freikorps Ehrhardt
were renowned for their fanaticism and excessive violence. Like the Thule Society, they had already adopted the swastika as their emblem, painting it on their steel helmets.
Freikorps Ehrhardt
even sang a marching tune that, with a few small changes, became the official song of Hitler’s personal bodyguard.
8
From
the ranks of Ehrhardt’s unit came yet more future Nazis. In fact, most of the men who dominated the Nazi party, Martin Bormann, Reinhardt Heydrich, Hans Frank, Otto Strasser, Wilhelm Keitel and many others, had been members of one or other of the
Freikorps
. Hitler was a notable exception.

In late April 1919,
Freikorps
units, including those of von Epp and Ehrhardt, were marshalling their forces on the outskirts of Munich. In the city itself, the more determined members of Munich’s ‘Red Army’ had taken around one hundred members of the city’s bourgeoisie hostage in the Luitpold Gymnasium. On 30 April, the order was given to kill them; of the twenty or so who were shot, seven were members of the Thule Society. News of these atrocities was carried out of Munich by right-wing students and members of the Thule Society, who slipped through the frontlines to join the
Freikorps
on the edge of the city. Among them was Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s future deputy, who now joined the ranks of
Freikorps von Epp
.

When reports of the massacre in Luitpold Gymnasium reached von Epp and Ehrhardt, they redrafted their plans and launched an early assault on the city. On 1 May, as Lenin stood before an enormous May Day crowd in Moscow’s Red Square and declared that ‘The liberated working class is celebrating its anniversary freely and openly not only in Soviet Russia, but in Soviet Hungary and Soviet Bavaria’, the
Freikorps
were breaking into Munich.
9

There was determined resistance in some working-class areas, but in much of the city opposition melted away as the Red Army volunteers deserted their posts. In the attack on Munich, the
Freikorps
and the other units of the ‘White Guard’ deployed machine-guns, artillery, aircraft and even an armoured train. Within three days the city was pacified, but it was after the resistance had ended that much of the worst violence took place. With the population cowed, the
Freikorps
began a wave of retribution and executions. Citizens who had welcomed von Epp, Ehrhardt and others as their liberators now recoiled in revulsion as over a thousand communists, communist sympathisers and many
hapless innocents were murdered. Some of the killings were carried out in the Hofbrauhaus, later the scene of Hitler’s failed coup. The
Freikorps
were aided in this grim work by members of Munich’s far-right organisations, including the Thule Society, who now emerged from hiding.
10

The coming of the
Freikorps
marked the end of Munich’s brief civil war and the beginning of the period during which the city became a sanctuary for disparate elements of the far right, including many disaffected former
Freikorps
men. For much of 1919 Munich was run directly by the army, with General von Epp at one point installed as a virtual dictator. In August the Bamberg government-in-exile returned to the city. However, the army soon overthrew the civilian regime they had ostensibly fought to defend. In its place a right-wing, anti-republican government, with strong links to the army, was installed under the presidency of Gustav von Kahr. With the arrival of the
Freikorps
and the transformation of Munich into a haven for the ultra-nationalist, much of the cast who were to take leading roles in the Nazi epic tragedy were assembled in one city: the future Nazis of the Thule Society were joined by their future comrades from the
Freikorps
.

In one of his later essays Arthur Count de Gobineau, the nineteenth-century philosopher regarded by many as the spiritual father of modern racism, described the fate that would befall an authoritarian state such as Germany if the ruling elite were toppled and a weak government set in their place. A firm believer in aristocracy, Gobineau claimed:

In the Munich of 1919, as the
Freikorps
of Ritter von Epp and Hermann Ehrhardt rampaged through the street with swastikas on their helmets, in a corner of the Türken-Strasse barracks of the 2nd Bavarian Infantry Regiment sat Gobineau’s corporal.

Hitler’s meteoric rise to political prominence has been well documented elsewhere. Less well explored is the importance of a series of patrons who eased Hitler’s ascendancy. One of the most important and most often overlooked of these figures was von Epp.

Von Epp’s initial involvement with the Nazis was somewhat detached. Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles,
Freikorps
von Epp
was incorporated into the 21st Bavarian Infantry Brigade – part of the
Reichswehr
, Germany’s official post-war army. One of the units that came under von Epp’s influence was a new intelligence and propaganda unit commanded by Captain Karl Mayr. In May 1919 Mayr had come across Adolf Hitler, and recruited him as an informer and political re-educator. In September Hitler had been assigned the task of monitoring the Deutsches Arbeiterpartie, one of the fifty or so parties that had emerged on the
Völkisch
fringes of Munich beer-hall politics. The Deutsches Arbeiterpartie (DAP) had been founded in January 1919 by Anton Drexler, an associate member of the Thule Society. It had just a handful of committed members, but within three months Hitler became its public face, later renaming it the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei – the NAZIS for short.