The School of Cadets
29th October, 1918, North Germany. The third squadron of the imperial fleet, located in Kiel, has entered a state of insurrection. The crews have formulated revolutionary demands and have threatened to gun down some officers. It is a Spartacist (and German) Potemkin761 . Soon, the rebels take control of the city. On the 5th of November, a first Council of Sailors and Soldiers sees the light of day. The movement then spreads to the old cities of the Hanse762 , one after the other: Hamburg ‘the red’, Lübeck, Wilhelmshafen, Bremen, and ultimately Berlin.
Wilhelm II abdicates on the 9th of November, and on the same day, Social-Democrat Scheidemann proclaims the birth of the Republic. A few hours later, Spartacist Karl Liebknecht announces the creation of a ‘Socialist Republic’. Then, on the 10th, a Council of People’s Commissars is elected in Berlin by a plenary assembly of workers and soldiers.
Mr Gilbert Badia763 writes:
In the morning hours of 10th November, 1918, actual power is, throughout Germany, in the hands of the councils of workers and soldiers. And yet, although there are more than 10,000 of them in the entire country, these councils are comprised of highly disparate elements. They are rather analogous to the Committees of Liberation that surfaced in France in 1944 and include the most active militants. To claim that their birth had been the result of elections would be a fallacy. (Histoire de l’Allemagne contemporaine764 , volume 1. Ed. Sociales, 1962)
A wave of anti-militarism floods the country, as officers are attacked in the street. Von Salomon, who wore the uniform with pride, recounts at the start of his Outlaws how he himself was subjected to a beating:
I suddenly found myself surrounded by a number of people, including some women. A man wearing a bowler hat brandished his umbrella above my head; another began to laugh, and many were those that imitated him. Yet all I could think of were my shoulder-pieces. Everything depended on them: my honour (a ridiculous thought by any means — what importance did my shoulder-pieces have?), everything. I therefore grabbed my bayonet; and that is when a fist landed on my face.
He had only just turned sixteen.
Ernst von Salomon was born in Kiel on 25th September, 1902 to a family originally from Venice and France. A certain Louis-Frédéric Cassian de Salomon had already participated in the Pichegru plot against Napoleon. Von Salomon’s father had been born in England and died fighting on the front; as for his mother, she was born in Russia. They were all Prussian by affinity: ‘Had I not been born a Prussian, I would have become one by choice’ (The Questionnaire).
Initially raised in an institution in Karlsruhe, von Salomon joins the Emperor’s School of Cadets at a very young age. A Prussian Prytaneion. His education there would be an unforgettable experience, one which he would recount in The Cadets. The defeat of 1918, however, shatters his universe. Like a bullet, the news of the armistice’s signing hits him in the face: all of imperial Germany’s traditions seem to collapse, and he makes the decision never to recover from it.
Then, one day, the soldiers return, haggard. They enter the cities in utter silence, as if they were ghosts.
They were men who heeded an inner calling, a secret call of blood and spirit; one way or another, they were volunteers. They were men who had been taught the rough code of fraternity and who had learnt to perceive what lies beyond things. Fatherland, people, nation — those were great words, but whenever we uttered them, they sounded wrong. For the fatherland was within them, and within them was the nation.
The only thing that henceforth subsists is the mystique of war, heroism and death. And this idea is only exemplified by the ‘outlaws’ (Geächteten), the outcasts of the Freikorps whose gaze the vanquished Germany is reluctant to meet because they long to keep a certain notion of the fatherland alive at a time of defeat. Von Salomon sets off to fight at their side.
The Freikorps Saviours of the Republic
In a book that has become almost a classic and entitled Die deutschen Freikorps, 1918–1923765 (F. Bruckmann, 1936), F. W. von Oertzen766 explains that the Freikorps actually had a twofold origin — they had, on the one hand, stemmed from the troops that had been formed in 1918–1919 to struggle against the Bolshevik agitation and, on the other, from the ones that had been brought back from the Baltic countries after the war.
Mr Droz, a professor at the Sorbonne, reminds us:
In December 1918, the regular army, undermined by Spartacist propaganda, was unable to reclaim Berlin, which remained in the hands of the revolutionaries. General Lequis’ troops had been contaminated and the government chaired by Ebert, the new chancellor, seemed to be their prisoner. (Le nationalisme allemand de 1871 à 1939767 . CDU-SEDES, 1967)
It is under these conditions that a secret agreement with the military staff is reached. So as to counter the ‘ultras’ of the extreme Left, the army commits itself to supporting the socialist government.
At the start of his Outlaws, Ernst von Salomon recounts how, with the support of Social-Democratic minister Noske, General Märker undertook to unite, within a single formation, volunteers whose task was to re-establish order and protect the borders.
A long-overdue decision on his part. During the night of 7th-8th November, 1918, the Republic is proclaimed in Munich. King Ludwig III escapes to Tyrol and is replaced by a socialist government headed by agitator Kurt Eisner,768 who had come out of prison a month earlier. Under the latter’s authority, Bavaria would experience weeks of madness. On 21st February, 1919, however, Eisner is assassinated by a young monarchist, Count Arco-Valley.
A month later, Béla Kun establishes Bolshevik dictatorship in Hungary. Soon, the movement reaches Bavaria and Austria. On the 7th of April, the Commune of Munich is born. A neurotic poet, Ernst Töller, becomes the leader of a ‘Council of People’s Commissars’, whose members also include Russian-born Levien, Axelrod and Leviné. Daftness gives way to terror. Common law detainees are released; one proceeds to arrest suspects, imprison people and organise firing squad executions.
In the meantime, on the 2nd of March, Lenin creates the Third International. On the 28th of June, the Treaty of Versailles is signed and accepted by the Weimar Republic.
The first Freikorps surface in Westphalia. At the end of 1919, they comprise more than 300,000 men. Thanks to them, order is reinstated and Berlin reclaimed. Communist uprisings are crushed in Saxony, Thuringia and Hamburg. In Weimar, the constituent assembly meets under the protection of General Märker’s Hunters.
In Munich, the Freikorps units of Görlitz and Colonel Ritter von Epp are involved in fierce clashes with Rudolf Eglhofer’s Red Army. On the 30th of April, communist militiamen proceed to slaughter hostages, most of whom are members of the Thule Society. On the 2nd of May, the Mathöser brewery, which served as the revolutionaries’ headquarters, is attacked. The city is liberated. On the 6th, the Freikorps withdraw from Munich. In recognition of services rendered, each member receives ten marks, two sausages and two bread rolls, with no rank distinction.
Ever since the assassination of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg (15th January, 1919), the Spartacists had lost control of the workers’ councils. Social-democracy thus gains the upper hand and the Republic of Weimar establishes itself in a climate of treacherous tranquillity.
It is a time of contrasts. Von Salomon writes:
Sweating and breathless as a result of our march, we perceived the sounds of negro chanting coming from the bars and clubs where people were having fun. We crossed paths with profiteers and drunk and noisy tarts. We saw the bourgeois, whose protection we were entrusted with, sitting in chic cabarets in the company of girls who they tightly embraced, with entire tables of shiny bottles and glasses before them, or indulging in sensual and intoxicating dances on the mirror-like floor. Yet in the distance, one could still hear the muffled sound of some of our comrades’ rifles.
Further ahead lay the Baltikum,769 home to the desperados of the fatherland.
‘Baltikum’
In the aftermath
of the armistice, Germany is allowed to maintain its presence in the Baltic countries, as the Allies fear the possibility of a Russian take-over. That is when General Rüdiger von der Goltz, the former leader of the United Patriotic Associations of Germany, comes up with the idea of counterbalancing his country’s recent losses on the western front with achievements in the east. Appointed to Livonia and granted extensive powers, he adopts and modernises the policy of the Teutonic Knights.
Mr Dominique Venner770 recounts:
His plan is quickly outlined: to attract to Courland all the demobilised soldiers that have been unable to find employment, and to transform the region into a vast military-agricultural colony whose soldiers-labourers, supervised by their own officers, would always be ready to jump to their feet and pick up their weapons.
Demobilised soldiers begin to flock together. Von Salomon writes:
The presence of the fatherland still burnt silently within some courageous minds.
In February 1919, von der Goltz has 20,000 men at his disposal. He would write the following in his memoirs:
There were four enemies for me to combat: the Bolshevik army, soldier soviets, the Germanophobic Latvian government, and the Allies. Abiding by the sound precepts of the Warfare School, I chose not to take them on all at once, but rather one at a time, starting with the Bolsheviks (Meine Sendung in Finnland und im Baltikum.771 Leipzig, 1920).
The offensive is launched at the beginning of the month of March. Libau, Mouravievo and Mitau772 are taken following murderous combat. On the 22nd of May, the Freikorps take control of Riga. Once there, they discover the bodies of hundreds of prisoners that had been slaughtered by the Bolsheviks.
This adventure would not have any repercussions. In 1920, France and Germany decide to foster the creation of a Latvian government. The Allies then demand the repatriation of the Freikorps from the Baltic region.
The decision is greeted most negatively. A large number of officers refuse outright to obey. The Freikorps of lieutenant Gerhardt Rossbach, which had reclaimed the city of Culmsee in East Prussia from the hands of the Poles, declares that it has ‘no intention to disband’ (Rossbach would subsequently transform his unit into a working community in Pomerania). Other volunteers opt for the Russian nationality and establish a kind of White Army, one which would continue to wage war in the Riga region. Others still settle in the Baltic countries. The majority, however, returns to Germany, disgruntled and embittered.
In the space of a few months, the anger felt by the young von Salomon and his friends is refocused on the Republic that they had saved from Bolshevism, a Republic that now longs to rid itself of its most turbulent allies.
General von der Goltz exclaims:
I had not discerned that what lay in my hands was a broken sword and that my worst enemy would actually be my own people and government!
On his part, Mr Dominique Venner writes:
In the German chaos, amidst the confrontations of classes and parties, it was the Freikorps that came across as the sole embodiment of the state. They alone enjoyed strength; they alone had displayed indifference towards any and all conflicts of interest; they alone had enabled life to resume. They shared the state’s primitive harshness, and thus were they sought by all and welcomed by none. Yet whenever they passed through, disorder would be smothered, cities pacified and the Reich maintained. And still they went on, their clothes in rags. Being extremely poor, they knew nothing of the temptations of the bourgeois lifestyle, nor of its constraints, peacefulness and comfort. Although reluctant to form ideas themselves, they were the ones who had done what others had failed to achieve — in spite of their plethora of ideas.
In addition to a repugnance for both humanism and bourgeois institutions, what many bore within themselves was bitterness, a taste for war and a nostalgia for action:
War gripped them; it dominated them and would never let them escape. Warfare would always remain in their blood, with death lurking close, alongside horror, drunkenness and iron.
Mr Droz remarks:
What is particularly worth studying is the mentality that developed within the Freikorps, a mentality characterising people who were completely uprooted and disinherited and who could see no salvation for themselves outside a persistence of hostilities. Many of these Freikorps members had previously belonged either to the Youth Movement (Jugendbewegung) or the shock troops. They shared the conviction that the army had been betrayed and Germany backstabbed, and that the army was not responsible for the defeat. Numerous were those among them who, incidentally, knew nothing of life but war, and it was therefore natural for them to feel ill at ease in a world of peace.
The Rancour of ‘Lost Soldiers’
To any soldier that loves what he does, the hunt is always worth more than the prey. Von Salomon writes:
We did not know what we wanted, and what we knew, we did not want. We did, however, feel happy amidst confusion, for we felt that we were one with our time. (The Outlaws)
Ideology mattered little, if at all:
To act, act any old how, while keeping one’s head low; to revolt by principle and extend our energies using all available means and every conceivable boldness — never is blood spilt in vain.
Later on, the hero of The City would utter decisive words:
What one thinks is of little importance. What does matter is the manner in which one thinks.
As in all situations involving ‘lost soldiers’, this led to a putsch. The Kapp-Lütwitz putsch of March 1920 corresponded to the culmination of the Freikorps’ rancour.
The Allies had demanded the dissolution of the Ehrhardt brigade. Established by a corvette captain and a hero of the Imperial Marine, this corps had previously played a significant role and thus came across as a centre of nationalist agitation. Its leader, captain Hermann Ehrhardt, enjoyed a great popularity of his own, and his men had taken on a song of rage and fury: Hakenkreuz am Stahlhelm!773
With its very existence under threat, the Ehrhardt brigade decides to respond. On the 12th of March, the Freikorps claim Berlin, and chancellor Ebert is forced to flee the city. Two officers, Kapp and von Lütwitz, attempt to ‘bring down’ the Reichswehr, but the members of the officer corps hesitate. Soon, the situation deteriorates, and a general strike paralysing the capital puts an end to this undertaking.
Ernst von Salomon himself participated in the putsch. He describes the disgust felt by his companions towards any and all ‘legalist’ political activity. So as to eliminate those that have betrayed their fatherland (Vaterlandsverräter), only radical means will do, he decrees.
Rendered ‘unemployed’, some activists integrate into the small army of 100,000 men that the Allies had allowed Germany to keep; others join the Einwohnerwehren,774 which act as an auxiliary to the Reichswehr and constitute a sort of local police that would officially be dissolved on 1st January, 1921. Most of them become members of veteran associations, shooting clubs, and sport or cultural societies.
Within a climate that one could hardly imagine today, one witnesses a multitude of (secret or official) parties and movements sprouting out everywhere: the Wikingbund, the Friends of the Edda Bund,775 the Bund of Franconia, the Bund Arminius, the Aryan Wandervogel,776 and others. Von Salomon himself joins around eighteen of these associations.
In August 1920, several secret Bavarian societies merge together to form the Escherich Organisation, commonly known as Orgesch. In it, one encounters some veterans of the Stahlhelm (‘Steel Helmet’), the Oberland Korps, the Jungdeutscher Orden, etc.
Shortly afterwards, the Organisation Consul (O.C.), established almost everywhere by captain Ehrhardt and secretly run by the Munich chief of police, Pöhner, sees the light of day. Its watchword is the following: ‘No negotiations — simply open fire’.
Von Salomon writes:
The image that one had of the O.C. resulted in people believing that it was actually involved in every single affair. What is both strange and troubling, however, is that, all
too often, loud indignation mingled with secret joy, and fearful anguish was accompanied by a sort of wicked satisfaction. There have been moments when, even in the heart of the most modest and most loyal minor official, the fantastical rumours spread in connection to the O.C. caused enthusiasm to surface as quickly as foam tends to reach a beer mug’s rim.
In 1921, a new adventure begins. Forcing the Allies’ hand, Poland attempts to seize control of a certain part of Upper Silesia, although the population had, by means of a referendum held on the 4th of March, declared itself in favour of being incorporated into Germany. Warsaw, however, refuses to submit. German civilians are kidnapped, tortured and killed. General Le Rond, the president of the Inter-Allied Commission, sides with the Poles. Once again, conflict turns out to be necessary. Gathered under the command of General Höfer, 15,000 men belonging to the Freikorps proceed to form self-defence groups (Selbstschutze). They organise the defence of cities, as well as the protection of the inhabitants.
That is when Weimar disavows them and the Reich’s border is closed behind their backs. On the 24th of November, the Minister of the Interior orders the dissolution of the Selbstschutze and the disarming of the volunteers. It is the Baltikum affair all over again.
Von Salomon writes:
To those who threatened the Poles with universal reprobation and us with imprisonment, we offered victory with our sacrifice-ready hands, as if it were a precious cup. Yet they let it fall to the ground, and it broke to pieces at their feet.
Having returned from Upper Silesia, Gerhardt Rossbach re-enters his Pomeranian dens. From 1922 onwards, he would begin creating cells within the Reichswehr: the Reichswehrblock Rossbach (RWBR). The ‘outcasts’ disperse once again.
Controversies and Viewpoints Page 31