Vanguard of Nazism: The Free Corps Movement in Postwar Germany 1918-1923

by Robert G. Waite

Overview

Vanguard of Nazism is the first full history of the Free Corps Movement which arose in Germany after World War I. Robert Waite's closely documented account shows how proto-Nazi thinking developed in this movement, and how the Free Corp contributed to the growth of National Socialism.

The Free Corps Movement had its origins in the pre-war youth movement and on the battlefields of the war. The returning soldiers, embittered by defeat, believing themselves betrayed by a cowardly government, and psychologically incapable of demobilizing, formed into volunteer bands throughout Germany. These groups, immensely powerful by 1919, were hired by the newly established Weimar Republic to fight against the Communists. They fought for the Republic (which they despised) from Munich to Berlin, from Düsseldorf to the Baltic. When the Republic tried to disband them, they went underground until they emerged in Hitler's Germany.

The savage actions and warped ideology of the men whom Hermann Goering called "the first soldiers of the Third Reich" are revealed in this book by contemporary newspaper accounts, government documents, and previously untranslated memoirs of the Free Corp fighters themselves. With this material, Mr. Waite substantiates the thesis that National Socialism began in the months and years immediately following World War I, and that the history of the Free Corps Movement—its ideas, attitudes, and organization—is an indispensable part of Germany's history in the inter-war period and the Second World War.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393001815
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	01/17/1969
Series:	Historical Studies
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	356
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.00(d)

Table of Contents

1. THE REVOLUTIONARY SETTING AND THE ARRIVAL OF NOSKE

The Ebert-Groener Conversations

The Imperial Army Fails to Crush the Radicals

The Arrival of Noske

2. ORIGINS OF THE FREE CORPS

The Inheritance of the Prewar Youth Movements

The Inheritance of the War

The Stab in the Back

3. ORGANIZATION AND CHARACTER OF THE FREE CORPS

Noske Collects His Army

Reasons for Entering the Free Corps

The Captains and Lieutenants

Twentieth-Century Freebooters

The Bourgeois Revolt against a Bourgeois World

4. THE FREE CORPS CRUSH LEFTIST REVOLTS

The Conquest of Berlin, January 1919

The Free Corps Defend the National Assembly

The Free Corps Crush Sporadic Revolts

The Week of Bloodshed in Berlin

The Conquest of Munich, May 1919

5. THE BALTIC ADVENTURE

The Loss of Posen

The Call of the Baltic

The Spring Offensive of 1919

The Putsch of April 16, 1919

Reaction against the Free Corps

Revolt and Entry into Russian Service

Defeat and Return to the Reich

6. THE SERVICE OF REACTION: THE KAPP PUTSCH

The March on Berlin

Background of the Putsch

The Ides of March, 1920

The Failure of the Kapp Putsch

Free Corps Reaction to the Putsch

7. IN THE SERVICE OF THE REPUBLIC: THE KAPP AFTERMATH

The Ebert-Seeckt Conversations

The Ruhr Intervention

The Severing Negotiations

Free Corps Victory

8. THE FREE CORPS UNDERGROUND: "THE WAR IN DARKNESS"

Freebooters and the 100,000 Men Army

In the Shaddows of Illegality

"Compromising with Bürgerlich Activity"

The Freebooters as Leaders of Youth

"Traitors Fall to the Feme!"

The Free Corps in Upper Silesia

The French Occupation of the Ruhr: Albert Leo Schiageter

9. DER TAG, 1923

The Black Reichswehr

The Kustrine Putsch

The Beer Hall Putsch

Failure in 1923

10. CONCLUSION

The Freebooters as Political Soldiers

"We Bolshevists of the Right"

From Reaction to Action

Freebooters in Brown Shirts

APPENDIX

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX