The End of the Freebooter Tradition; The Forgotten Freikorps Movement of 1944-45

The The

End

of

Forgotten

the

Freebooter Movement

Freikorps

Perry

Tradition: of

1944/45

Biddiscombe

ofthe difficulties in thinking about postwar German history in trying to explain the apparent absence of a paramilitary ONE effervescence accompanying the collapse of the Third Reich. In? dependent military formations?Freikorps?had played a role during the 1806-1813 and such units had period, appeared again during the stormy from 1918 to so the 1923, years seeming absence of such formations in comes

1944/45

is quite noticeable. Charles Maier called it one of the major of postwar European politics.1 To some extent, this perception surprises is illusory; in truth, there were a number of Freikorps launched in 1944/ 45, although they failed to make a military or political impact and were the integral connection therefore quickly forgotten. Considering between of modern German nationalism, previous Freikorps and the development their relative absence in 1944/45 warrants the historian's attention. volunteer formations failed to materialize Explaining why autonomous in 1944/45 is, requires the analysis of normal, historical evidence?that and radio documents, memoirs, reports, trial summaries, interrogation or para? intercepts. Such evidence suggests that any German volunteer military units would have had difficulties operating against the advancing Western Allies and Soviets near the end of World War II or in postwar, occupied Germany. This objective failure,

does not in itself explain the absence however, of a corresponding mythology or a historical resonance; colorless personalities and groups throughout history have often been awarded a historiographical Thanks to my colleague Michael Hadley (Germanic Studies Department, University of Victoria) for reading an early version of this article and making many helpful comments. 1. Charles S. Maier, "AHR Forum: The Two Postwar Eras and the Conditions for Stability in Twentieth-Century Western Europe," The AmericanHistoricalReview 86, no. 2 (April 1981): 330. Central EuropeanHistory, vol. 32, no. 1, 53-90 53

THE END OF THE FREEBOOTER

54

TRADITION

and literary importance that they do not merit.2 Earlier generations of the Freikorps movement had been celebrated by memoirists, poets and patriotic historians,3 endowing the movement with a nobility and sense of purpose that was never entirely deserved, but which became an important part of German collective memory. Since the failings of the second wave

modern

ofthe movement (1918-1923) were even more notable than those ofthe demanded first (1806-1813), the task of poetically remembering/forgetting efforts by writers of considerable power and skill, such as Ernst von Salomon Bronnen. By 1944/45, lacked the however, the movement the Allies and of Western advocacy accomplished storytellers. Moreover, Soviets prohibited the publication of any pyrogenic forms of literature. and Arnolt

Thus, the process of forgetting was total, and the Nazi Freikorps movement slipped into historiographical limbo, enjoying none of the patriotic afterglow experienced by its antecedents. The adjectival component of the compound noun "Freikorps" (free corps) has traditionally referred to the voluntarism of Freikorps troopers; they were Freiwillige (free-willed, and the process of raising i.e., volunteers), forces outside of normal state levying mechanisms suggested that these forces were also "free." The Freiheit (freedom) involved in military formations originally reflected a pattern tionships; i.e., the adjective/re/ referred to relations between was a strong German tradition for this sense of "Freiheit,"

pendent

forming indeof social rela?

people. There derived partly from older customs such as class-oriented (standisch) corporatism, the limitation of imperial authority, and Protestant sectarianism; but it also drew from a more recent "natural rights" doctrine that had spread to Germany during the eighteenth century. Knowledge about ancient German freedoms, as described in Tacitus's Germania, was also an important factor after Ger? man intellectuals became familiar with Germania around the end of the Middle

Ages.4

2. Peter Burke, "History as Collective Memory," in Memory:History, Cultureand the Mind, ed., Thomas Butler (Oxford, 1989). 3. For the Freikorpsof 1806-13, see I. C. L. Haken, Ferdinandvon Schill: Eine LebensEin Beitrag des Lutzowschen beschreibung Freikorps: (Leipzig, 1824); Adolph Schlusser,Geschichte derfahre 1813 und 1814 (Berlin, 1826); J. F. G. Eiselen, Geschichtedes zur Kriegsgeschichte LutzowschenFreicorps (Halle, 1841); Georg Barsch,Ferdinandvon Schill'sZug und Tod imfahre 1809 (Berlin);and Binder von Krieglstein,Ferdinandvon Schill:Ein Lebensbild (Berlin, 1902). of 1918-23, see Ludwig Maercker, VomKaiserheer zum Reichsheer: Geschichte For the Freikorps d. Freiwilligen Landsjagerkorps (Leipzig, 1922); Arnolt Bronnen, S.O.S. (London, 1930); Ernst von Salomon, The Outlaws(London, 1931); Ford B. Parkes-Perret,ed., Hannsfohst's Nazi DramaSchlageter (Stuttgart,1984); Kurt Eggers, Annaberg(Berlin, 1933); Hans Zoberlein, Der Befehldes Gewissens(Munich, 1937); Edgar v. Schmidt-Pauli, GeschichtederFreikorps19181924 (Stuttgart,1936); FriedrichW. von Oertzen, Die deutschen 1918-1923 (Munich, Freikorps (Berlin 1938). 1936); and Ernst von Salomon, ed., Das Buchvom deutschenFreikorpskdmpfer 4. Leonard Krieger, The GermanIdea of Freedom(Chicago, 1957), sections I?II; Hans Maier, "Die Deutschen und die Freiheit," Zeitschriftfiir Politik 36, 1 (1989): 1-4; Werner

55

PERRY BIDDISCOMBE

in Germany or anywhere else in medieval were at one time independently raised and owed loyalty primarily to their commanders. During the Middle Ages, both feudal levies and free companies of professional soldiers were cre? ated outside the practical purview of the sovereign. The duration of mili? tary service was limited generally to the length of a single campaign or

Of course, whether formed Europe, all military formations

even less. Even after the creation of the first standing armies, an important role was played by military entrepreneurs, who typically were held on a government retainer and were given a mandate in time of war to raise companies or regiments of volunteers in order to beef up the sometimes

size and capabilities of the standing coming rare by the late seventeenth

this practice was becenturies,5 it was still even for eighteenth-century not unknown enlightened despots to raise II found forces when seemed to dictate. Frederick When special necessity himself facing overwhelming odds at the outset of the Seven Years' War, he immediately issued patents authorizing officers to raise so-called Freibataillone (free battalions), which were assembled outside of the Prus? sian cantonal

system.

army. Although and eighteenth

These were essentially

units of minutemen

Prussian

legionnaires, including prisoners-of-war, engaged only for the length of the campaign.6 Similar companies and battalions were created

life-and-death

with

the French

who

were

and nonvolunteers

at the time of Prussia's

between

1806 and 1813. How? struggles these what ever, early nineteenth-century Freikorps particularly distinguished was that their members were imbued with the new spirit of nationalism, as espoused by Ernst Moritz Arndt, Gottlieb Fichte, and Friedrich Jahn. This added another layer of meaning to the adjective/rei, which now also came to suggest individuals collectively coming to realize themselves through service to a greater ideal, in this case that of national liberation. This is the key issue?Freikorpsmanner (Free Corps men) now became fighters for freedom, "breaking the bold hubris of tyranny, so freedom's holy glow could in all hearts flame."7 This idealist understanding of freedom was quite different from traditional German ideas. In this new articulation, ideas existed on a transcendent plane above social groups and individuals, and it was to ideas that groups and individuals were responsible?not to persons.8

Conze, "The Political Concept of Freedom in German History," in Conceptsof Freedom: 1776-1976, ed., Hans-JoachimZimmermann(Heidelberg, 1977), 111-14; andJost Hermand, Der alte Traumvom neuen Reich (Frankfurtam Main, 1988), 19-20. 5. Archer Jones, The Art of War in the WesternWorld(Oxford, 1987), 199, 254. 6. Curt Jany, Geschichteder PreussichenArmee (Osnabriick, 1967) 2: 679-88; and Paul von Schmidt, Der Werdegangdes PreussichenHeeres(Krefeld, 1975), 134?35. 7. "Lied zur feierlichen Einsegnung des preussichen Freikorps," KbrnerssdmtlicheWerke (Stuttgart, 1893) 1-2:52. 8. Peter Brandt, "Einstellungen, Motive und Ziele von Kriegsfreiwilligen 1813/14: Das

56

THE END OF THE FREEBOOTER

TRADITION

The independent action involved in shaping Freikorps also implied that in the view of certain soldiers, the regular authorities had given up the fight prematurely or had otherwise betrayed the national interest; it was therefore now imperative that individual patriots take up arms. This was, for instance, the driving force behind the formation of Ferdinand von SchiU's famous 1809 Freikorps, a unit disavowed by the Prussian monarchy. Thus was born the idea that love for the fatherland allowed?even sometimes outside of a legal framework. As during the era of II, a conspicuous role was played by men of the nobility, who were not subject to conscription but nonetheless wanted to play a role in demanded?actions Frederick

national liberation. The Freikorps were mainly light infantry and cavalry units led by professional officers (i.e., noblemen) and raised from elements of the "better" classes previously exempt from military service: students, civil officials, the sons of businessmen and skilled tradesmen, and a few middling farmers. Marxists contend with some justice that Freikorps leaders declined to reach out to journeymen, day laborers, or peasants; Adolf von Liitzow's Royal Prussian Freikorps, for instance, was supposed to ignite a widespread insurrection in western Germany, but it failed to rouse the masses in a genuine Volkskrieg.9 Women were not included either, mainly on the grounds of there being a natural division of labor between the sexes. This period also marked an increasingly close association between voluntary military service, popular ideas of "manliness," German nationalism, and the code of middle-class rights and obligations.10

3 (1994): 222-23, 231-32; Emil FreikorpsLiitzow,"fahrbuchfiir HistorischeFriedensforschung Obermann,Soldaten?Burger?Militaristen (Stuttgart,1958), 149-66; Hans Schulze, TlxeCourse of GermanNationalism(Cambridge,1991), 55-56; Elie Kedourie, Nationalism(London, 1960), 38-42; George Mosse, Fallen Soldiers:Reshapingthe Memoryof the WorldWars(New York, Allemandet I'Etat(Paris,1966), 187-89; Hermand, 1990), 27-28; JacquesDroz, Le Romantisme Der alte Traumvom neuen Reich, 33-40; Albert Portmann-Tinguely, Romantikund Krieg 90, 100-2, 104-5, 119-38. (Freiburg,1989), 23-25; and Krieger, The GermanIdeaof Freedom, 9. Heinz Heitzer, Insurrectionen zwischenWeserund Elbe (Berlin, 1959), chap. 3; Droz, Le RomantismeAllemandet I'Etat, 175-76; and Mosse, Fallen Soldiers,26-27. For a revisionist analysis of the composition of the 1813 volunteer units, see Rudolf Ibbeken, Preussen 1807-1813 (Cologne, 1970), 406-20. 10. Hans-MartinKaulbach, "Mannliche Ideale von Krieg und Frieden in der Kunst der 3 (1994): 141; KarenHagemann, napoleonischenAra,"Jahrbuch fiir Historische Friedensforschung "Of 'Manly Valor' and 'German Honor': Nation, War and Masculinity in the Age of the Prussian Uprising against Naploeon," CentralEuropeanHistory30 (1997): 208, 214, 219; Karen Hagemann, "'Heran, heran, zu Sieg oder Tod!' Entwiirfe patriotisch-wehrfacher Mannlichkeit in der Zeit der Befreiungskriege," in Mannergeschichte/Geschlechtergeschichte: im WandelderModerne,ed., Thomas Kiihne (Frankfurtam Main, 1996), 51-64; Mannlichkeit Ute Frevert, "Das Militar als Schule der Mannlichkeit:Erwartungen,Angebote, Erfahrungen im 19. Jahrhundert;KarenHagemann,"Heldenmutter,Kriegerbraute und Amazonen:Entwiirfe im 'patriotischer'Weiblichkeit zur Zeit der Freiheitskriege,"both in Militarund Gesellschaft 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Ute Frevert (Stuttgart,1997), 151-53, 180; and George Mosse, Nationalismand Sexuality(Madison, 1985), 100-1.

PERRY BIDDISCOMBE

57

Freikorps units attracted the attention of many important poets and writers? these intellec? Theodor Korner actually served as Lutzow's adjutant?and tuals succeeded in creating the impression that the volunteers were crack troops. As a result, a heroic mythology and '40s: the graves of "martyrs" became built, museum exhibits were organized,

as early as the 1830s developed national shrines, memorials were

and veterans were given public funerals. Thus, Freikorpsmanner became a unique ingredient of the modern German mentalite: individualists from a hierarchical society hostile to indi?

was validated by service to a higher vidualism, yet whose individuality cause. The only irony is that, in reality, light Freikorps units typically had been chased down without much difficulty by the French and their allies, who had regarded Freikorpsmanner as brigands, and even Lutzow's famous had suffered from a high rate of desertion.11 of a somewhat similar character developed Organizations

formation

in 1918/19, was less than in the leader? although conspicuous of the "volunteer formations." of the ship original Many junior officers who created these new units had bourgeois and petit-bourgeois roots. these forces still had a certain elite character based on the Nonetheless, ofthe trenches."12 At in least terms of readiness and "meritocracy toughness, they were supposed to represent the best of the mass armies characthe aristocratic

teristic

of World

War

element

I. On

the other

the numbing horror of modern war had broken down the value systems of these men to a much Wars; this greater degree than had ever happened during the Napoleonic effect was further heightened by the influence of bastardized Nietzscheanism and Social Darwinism. These new Freikorpsmanner fled the constrictions of hand,

their bourgeois by a retreat into nihilism and fanaticism. backgrounds Thus, masculine hardness often crossed an invisible line and became brutality, existential adventurism, and a general buccaneer attitude toward authority. Moreover, the misogynous obsessions of such volunteers were much more extreme than the similar tendencies of their forerunners in the 1807-13 11. Walther Eckermann, Ferdinandvon Schill: Rebel und Patriot (Berlin, 1963); Brandt, "Einstellungen," 209-33; Fritz Lange, ed., Die Lutzower:Erinnerungen,Berichte,Dokumente (Berlin, 1953); Ibbeken, Preussen1807-1813, 155-58, 405-27; Helena Szepe, "Opfertod und Poesie: Zur Geschichte der Theodor-Korner-Legende," ColloquiaGermanica9 (1975): 291?303; Barsch, Ferdinandvon Schill's Zug und Tod; Eiselen, Geschichtedes Liitzowschen Karl Berger, TheodorKomer(Bielefeld, 1912), chaps. 6-7; von Krieglstein, Ferdinand Freicorps; von Schill;Schultz, The Courseof GermanNationalism,53-54; Jany, GeschichtederPreussischen Armee,3:618-22, 625-31; 4:77-80, 87-89; Droz, Le RomantismeAllemandet VEtat, 17475; Martin Kitchen, A MilitaryHistory of Germany(London, 1975); 51-52; Mosse, Fallen Soldiers,19-24; Obermann, Soldaten?Burger?Militaristen,149-50; and Heitzer, Insurrectionen, 135-38, 166-73. 12. Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring(Toronto, 1989), 309; and Giinter Berghaus, Futurism and Politics(Providence, 1996), 93-94. See also HannsjoachimW. Koch, Der deutsche Burgerkrieg: Eine Geschichteder deutschenund osterreichischen Freikorps1918-1923 (Berlin, 1978), 54.

58

THE END OF THE FREEBOOTER

TRADITION

period. This was the essence of the Freikorpskultur described by Klaus Theweleit in his groundbreaking work, MdnnerphantasienP At the end of 1918, as the men ofthe regular army were formally and volunteer corps took shape in order to cover the informally demobilized, retreat of the German Army in Russia, Poland, and the Baltic states. the Schill Uprising and the 1813 War of Liberation, these Remembering units called themselves Freikorps, and as early proponents of the Fuhrerprinzip, they natually began to name themselves after their leaders, or sometimes after the districts in which they were raised. Comprised of "Ludendorffite" officers, NCOs, cadets, and former soldiers from elite guard units and shock forces, these formations were organized along a scale anywhere from company to division size; at their peak in March 1919, they numbered roughly 250,000 men. Functioning as self-sufficient Kampfgruppen Baltic states, (combat groups), they manhandled the newly-independent particularly Latvia; they specialized in fighting the Poles, most notably in Upper Silesia; and they suppressed the extreme Left during the German Civil War of January-May 1919. Units like Freikorps Ehrhardt and Freikorps also organized special murder teams called Fehme, a name that recalled the secret, vigilante courts of the Middle Ages. This new Fehme dealt rough justice to "traitors" from within the ranks of the Freikorps and

Rossbach

also targeted external, political opponents. Like the Freikorps of the early nineteenth century, the twentieth-century version was skeptical about the civil of who were presumed to have authorities, contemporary tenacity "stabbed Germany in the back," and they rose against these erstwhile republican masters in the abortive Kapp Putsch of 1920. After this fiasco, the Freikorps were dissolved or annexed by the Reichswehr, although small fragments went underground and remained active until the mid-1920s, doing their best to conduct white terrorism.14 Even despite such unsavory elements of their history, the interwar Freikorps, like their nineteenth-century antecedents, again attracted the attention of writers. of these men, such as Ernst von Salomon, Some many gifted Hans Zoberlein, and Kurt Eggers, were onetime participants in the Freikorps; others, like Arnolt Bronnen

and Hanns Johst, were former expressionists

13. Klaus Theweleit, Mannerphantasien (Reinbek, 1980). 14. Ralph Waite, Vanguardof Nazism: The Free Corps Movementin PostwarGermany, 1918-1923 (Cambridge,1952); Nigel Jones, Hitler'sHeralds:The Storyofthe Freikorps19181923 (London, 1987); Hagen Schulze, Freikorpsund Republik 1918-1920 (Boppard am Rhein, 1969); Dominique Venner, Baltikum(Paris, 1974); Koch, Der deutscheBiirgerkrieg; Harold Gordon, The Reichswehrand the GermanRepublic(Princeton, 1957), chaps. 1-2, 4; Politicsin WeimarGermany(Bloomington, 1977), chaps. 1-4; James James Diehl, Paramilitary Wiengartner,"Massacreat Mechterstadt:The Case ofthe MarburgerStudentenkorps,1920," Mord(Heidelberg, Historian37 (1975): 598-618; and Emiljulius Gumbel, VierJahrepolitischer 1980), 128-40, 174. For the concept of "White Terror," see Theweleit, Mannerphantasien, 2: chap. 2.

PERRY BIDDISCOMBE

59

in the final stage of an intellectual migration toward right-radicalism.15 breech between reality and the demands Despite the talents of such men, the of a romantic narrative was even wider than it had been in the early nineteenth century, and Freikorps writers were forced to put a patriotic gloss over the units' barbarous behavior and their often less-than-glorious combat record. On the other hand, the spirit of the modern age?aliena? made awe at the deadly power of technology?also tion, disillusionment, itself felt in Freikorps memoirs, literature, and historiography. Many of the Freikorps chroniclers were directly or indirectly influenced by the revolu? tionary militarism of Ernst Jiinger. leadership of the "New Germany" a profound ambiguity. While they to their own movement, they were of and insubordination rowdyism Freikorps

the National Socialist After 1933/34, back upon the Freikorps with recognized the Freikorps as a precursor

looked

still wary of the characteristic chiefs. This sense of suspicion increased after the SA leadership was supwere organizationally and pressed in June 1934, since the Stormtroopers of descended from the freebooters the Hitler postwar period. spiritually

who had considered Freikorps leaders as creative rabble-rousers "saved Germany" with an "army of liberation," yet he regarded them as expendable after the crisis had passed. In fact, he noted, if any freebooters in the way that Freikorps leaders had the ever threatened his government he knock such ideas out of their heads Weimar would early Republic,

himself

and have them strung up. Thus, when Freikorps banners were retired and in 1933, the Na? the Freikorps stood down in an impressive ceremony tional Socialists hoped to have heard the last of the formations. They tolerated them only as a sentimental memory, reduced to superfluity through NSDAP authorities subsequently made only dignified commemoration.16 rare use of the term Freikorps, although they did apply it to the armed bands that helped

to provoke

a border crisis with Czechoslovakia

in 1938

15. Klaus Petersen, LiteraturundJustiz in der Weimarer Republik(Stuttgart,1988), 154-59; Uwe K. Ketelsen, Literaturund DrittesReich (Vierow bei Greifswald, 1994), 228-30; J. M. underNationalSocialism(London, 1983), 46-47, 56-62; Parkes-Perret, Ritchie, GermanLiterature 54-71; Ursula Miinch, Wegund WerkArnoltBronnens: ed., Hannsjohst'sNazi DramaSchlageter, Wandlungenseines Denkens (Frankfurtam Main, 1985), 125-40, 180-94. For the way that literatureexpanded upon themes first evident in the poetry of the War of Liberation, Freikorps see Walter Pape, " 'Mannergluck': Lyrische Kriegsagitationund Friedenssehnsuchtzur Zeit 3 (1994): 124-25. der Befreiungskriege,"Jahrbuchfiir HistorischeFriedensforschung 16. Waite, Vanguardof Nazism, 278-81; Koch, Der deutscheBurgerkrieg, 378; Kriiger, Die Brigade Ehrhardt, 123-25, 127; Hans Ebeling and Dieter Hespers, eds., Jugend contra Nationalsozialismus (Frechen, 1968), 155-57, 199-200; and Venner, Baltikum,324-26, 32829. For Hitler's feelings on veteran Freikorpsleaders, see Felix Gilbert, ed., Hitler Directs His War (New York, 1950), 136, 140.

60

THE END OF THE FREEBOOTER

TRADITION

(i.e., the Sudetendeutsche Freikorps),17 as well as to designate certain units of foreign defectors that fought under the banner of the SS during World War II (e.g., the Britische Freikorps, Freikorps Denmark, Freikorps Turkel).18 Prominent Freikorps authors, such as Ernst von Salomon, were too closely associated with "National Bolshevism" for their works to be included in the Nazi canon.19 Two factors contributed to the disappearance of some of this reticence during the summer of 1944. First, the momentous advances of both the Western Allies and the Soviets had created a set of conditions not unlike earlier periods when the German heartland was in danger, and German propaganda organs were soon unleashed in an attempt to revive the spirit ofthe 1813 War of Liberation. Werner Naumann, state secretary in the Propaganda Ministry, regarded the situation as analogous to the circum? War One period, and noted that the whole stances of the post-World country was "breathing the spirit of the German Freikorps."2? Heinrich Himmler too claimed that "for five generations,'' Germans has rallied to the colors of the Freikorps and other volunteer units, as they would now have to do again.21 These were supposed to be times in which it would be possible to recruit patriots for the duration of a one-shot campaign to protect the homeland, very much in the Freikorps tradition. Moreover, the extremity of Germany's position seemed to justify irregular modes of fighting, which had also been typical ofthe 1807-13 and 1918-23 periods. Second, the abortive July 20 Putsch had created a situation where, once had allegedly betrayed German national again, the "old establishment" interests, and had undercut the patriotic spirit of resistance. Although the official National Socialist line was that only a small clique had actually been involved in the coup, the entire officer corps was discredited. This group comprised as much of a ruling caste as still existed (apart from the 17. Emil Schneemann,"Kampfum den Sorgof,"in Das Buchvomdeutschen Freikorpskdmpfer, ed., von Salomon, 338-42; Rudolf Absolon, Die Wehrmachtim Dritten Reich (Boppard, 1979), 4:270-72; Martin Broszat, "Das Sudetendeutsche Freikorps," Vierteljahrshefte fiir 9 (1961): 30-49; and Zdanek Liska, "Vznik tzv. Assku v Zavri," Historiea Zeitgeschichte Vojenstvi34 (1985): 56-68. 18. Ronald Seth, Jackalsof the ThirdReich: The Story of the BritishFree Corps(London, 1973); Lucien Rebatet, Us memoiresd'unfasciste1941-1947 (Paris, 1976), 2:209-10; J. Lee Ready, The ForgottenAxis (Jefferson, NC, 1987), 67, 197-98; and Henry Picker, ed., Hitlers Tischgesprache im Fuhrerhauptquartier (Stuttgart, 1976), 369-70. Prince Anton Turkel was a Tsarist emigre who led a Schutzkorpsof expatriateRussians formed in order to fight partisansin Yugoslavia. For specific reference to Turkel's unit as a Freikorps,see Ultra Document KO 1007, 21 April 1945, reel 12, Ultra Microfilm Collection (hereafterUMC). 19. Ketelsen, Literaturund DrittesReich, 87. 20. As reported by DNB and cited in German Propagandaand the German, 2 Oct. 1944, Public Records Office (hereafterPRO), Foreign Office (hereafterFO) 898/187. 21. Ansprachean Volkssturmmannerin Bartensteinon 18 Oct. 1944, Bundesarchiv,NS 19/4016.

PERRY BIDDISCOMBE

61

party Fuhrerkorps and the so-called new aristocracy of the SS). Thus the Freikorps ethos, long anathema to orthodox militarists wary of the Freikorps pluralism and lax discipline,22 once again found favor. Naumann noted in early September 1944 that this time, unlike 1918, "determined men ready for action will not stand alone at the frontiers, let alone be betrayed by collaborationist The National Socialist leaders and the entire politicians. German people will act as they did [i.e., the Freikorps men of 1918/19]."23 in Not surprisingly, as the last shreds of National Socialist confidence officers began to act on the army disappeared, Gauleiter and SS-police their own in forming regional defense units. Some of these organizations predated the formation of the mass militia, or Volkssturm (home guard), in October 1944. But whether or not they antedated the national militia, they were all eventually included under its banner. A party chancellery circular of 2 October 1944 prohibited distinctive local names for Volkssturm for especially reliable battalions, but the approval of such designations Gaue was reserved for the discretion of the Fiihrer. As was his wont, he consented to numerous breeches ofthe general rule. In addition, volunteers in special volunteer units.24 to the Volkssturm were typically concentrated Memoirs and surviving records from 1945 describe a number of volun? teer battalions active on the eastern front, where rumors about possible territorial losses to the Poles prompted the formation of Freikorps:25 A Freikorps Oberschlesien, numbering from 700 to 1,000 men, was organized by NSDAP personnel; it fought in both Upper and Lower Silesia. About half the members of this unit were trained in guerrilla warfare at a camp in Neisse set up by the Werwolf the SS resistance movement.26 In Pomerania, a Freikorps Kamienski appeared in late winter of 1945 near Kolberg,27 a town whose historic resistance to the French in 1807 had involved Freikorps, and whose tradition was being currently celebrated in the film Kolberg. In 22. For the historic antipathy of senior military leaders to the formation of Freikorps during the Seven Years' War, the Napoleonic Wars, and the post-World War I period, see Koch, Der deutscheBiirgerkrieg, 45; von Krieglstein, Ferdinandvon Schill, 90, 95-96; Gordon, The Reichswehrand the GermanRepublic,53-54; and Waite, Vanguardof Nazism, 183-88. 23. As reported by DNB and cited in German Propaganda and the German, 2 Oct. 1944, PRO, FO 898/187. 24. Grundsatzliche Anordnung fur die Erfassung zum Deutschen Volkssturm, Records ofthe NSDAP, microcopy #T-81, reel 93, frame 107816, German Military Records Microfilm Collection (hereafter GMRMC). 25. A German officer taken prisoner and interrogated by the Soviets said that creation of was a naturalresponseto pending Polish territorialgains in the east. Stimmungsbericht Freikorps uber die Versammlungon 10 Aug. 1944 Lager 97. Zur Deklaration des polnischen Komitees der nat. Befreiung, 10 Aug. 1944, Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv, NY 4036/572. 26. Czeslaw Golabek and Ryszard Tryc, "Z Genezy Powstania i Dzialalnosci Werwolfu na Polskich Ziemiach Zachodnich," WojskowyPrzegladHistoryczny8 (1963): 133, 136. 27. Silke Spieler, ed., Vertreibung und Vertreibungsbrechen 1945-1948 (Bonn, 1989), 241.

62

THE END OF THE FREEBOOTER

TRADITION

Posen, a senior SS-police commander attempted to create a Freikorps, but to Walter Gorlitz, it remained a chimera.28 In early April, a

according

Freikorps Bohmen was also formed, based apparently at Leitmeritz, and a handful of SS officers were transferred to its ranks.29 Probably the most important of these independent units on the eastern front was Freikorps Mohnke. It was organized in Berlin in late April by a radical young Turk named Wilhelm Mohnke, SS-Brigadefiihrer and chief of the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. Mohnke was the commander of the "Citadel," the Government

Quarter in central Berlin, and to help defend it he raised a of disbanded rear-echelon corps personnel and civil service bureaucrats. Like many such last ditch, scratch units, this was a "bring-your-ownaffair: an appeal on 25/26 April called upon recruits to gun-and-rations" their own needs rather than depend on overburdened authorities.30 supply Similar groups took shape behind the Western Front. In Munich, local party chieftains began to create a volunteer militia in August 1944, and in the Tyrol, the Gauleitung also revived the traditional Alpine minutemen, or Standschutzen, with the hope of raising a local army of 50,000 men. In Hamburg as well, regional NSDAP authorities organized several paramilitary units of party stalwarts, together totaling 1,200 men.31 The best documented of these formations was a Westphalian outfit called Freikorps Sauerland. It was formed in September 1944 and was headquartered at a Gauleitung command post in Wetter Harkortberg, on the edge of the hilly and wooded terrain of the Sauerland. The main driving force be? hind the unit was the South Westphalian Gauleiter Albert Hoffmann, who felt so proprietorial Freikorps Hoffmann.

that he had originally wanted to call the formation battalions of Freikorps Sauerland were Twenty-one clad in hand-me-down Wehrmacht uniforms, eventually arrayed, mostly the first several units had been clothed in their own initially although shirts and trousers. As with volunteers were Mohnke, Freikorps brown-grey asked to bring their own haversacks, blankets, and eating utensils. Medi? cal services were provided by the German Red Cross. Trained on Sunday mornings by German army and SS officers, Freikorps members were schooled 28. Walter Gorlitz, Der zweite Weltkrieg1939-1948 (Stuttgart, 1952), 2:476. 29. Ultra Documents BT 9963, 9 April 1945, reel 69; and KO 1581, 28 April 1945, reel 73, both in UMC. 30. Tony le Tissier, The Battle of Berlin, 1945 (London, 1988), 31, 141, 158; Peter Gostony, ed., Der Kampf um Berlin 1945 (Diisseldorf, 1970), 269; Arno Rose, Werwolf 1944-1945 (Stuttgart,1980), 282-83; Ian Sayer and Douglas Botting, Hitler'sLast General (London, 1989), 293, 296; and Pierre Galante and Eugene Silianoff, Last Witnessesin the Bunker(London, 1979), 160. 31. Willy Timm, Freikorps"Sauerland"1944-1945: Zur Geschichte des Zweiten Weltkrieges in Sudwestfalen(Hagen, 1976), 8; Martin Kitchen, Nazi Germanyat War (London, 1995), 21; and FranzHofer, "National Redoubt," 6-7, WorldWarII GermanMilitaryStudies,ed., Donald S. Detwiler (New York, 1979), 24.

PERRY BIDDISCOMBE

63

in regular infantry tactics, as well as sabotage and demolition. They were in bomb damage also deployed over the winter of 1944/45 controlling and patrolling for looters, a process in which they first drew blood.32 of these efforts toward reviving the Freikorps came The culmination of senior figures in the regime, who began to think with the involvement about forming a national concentration of party fanatics and activists or? ganized loosely under the banner of the Volkssturm.33 Although the idea was probably Hitler's, the guiding hand behind the project was Robert Ley, head of the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (DAF) and organizational boss of In a military conference in early March 1945 the Fiihrer the NSDAP. had noted a desperate shortage of forces along the Upper Rhine, and a need, at least in this region, for Freikorps-type leaders to form ad hoc formations.34 When Ley subsequently organized such units he designated them Freikorps Adolf Hitler, no doubt in order to credit the Fiihrer with the original idea.35 Ley was a strange figure to lead an "elite" paramilitary organization. He was considered dissolute and a loose cannon in public; his biographer, that he was afflicted Ronald diffuse Smelser, suggests by chronic a condition linked no doubt to frontal lobe damage sufencepholopathy, fered during a plane crash in 1917. This condition prevented him from his emotions and was compounded controlling or fine-tuning by alcohol abuse. Ideologically, Ley had a passing sympathy with the radical wing of the NSDAP.36 Among senior Nazi leaders, no one had so much unbridled 32. Timm, Freikorps"Sauerland,"8-25; Franz Seidler, "DeutscherVolkssturm": Das letzte Aufgebot1944/45 (Munich, 1991), 54, 113-14; Rose, Werwolf 282; Hermann Meyerhoff, ed., Herne1933-1945: Die Zeit desNationalsozialismus (Herne, 1963), 140-41; Ultra Documents BT 7217, 14 March 1945, reel 65; BT 7457, 17 March 1945, reel 65, both in UMC; Brause to all Kreisstabsfuhrer,Regimentsfuhrer and Bataillonsfuhrerof FreikorpsSauerland, 23 Jan. 1945, frame 108558, reel 94; Wehnert to Schwenk, 5 March 1945, frame 107804, reel 93; Hoth to DRK-Bereitschaften in Kreisstelle Ennepe-Ruhr, 2 Feb. 1945, frame 107807, reel 93, all in Records of the NSDAP, microcopy no. T-81, GMRMC; Fritz Bauer et al, eds., Justiz und NS-Verbrechen(Amsterdam, 1972/73), 8: 419-21; and 10:282. was trained for guerrillawarfare,see the interrogationrecords For evidence that the Freikorps of B. Sievening, 326th Infantry Division, captured on 15 January 1945 near Fech. Mobile Field Interrogation Unit no. 1, PW Intelligence Bulletin no. 1/32, 30 Jan. 1945, US National Archives (hereafter NA), G-2 Intelligence Division Captured Personnel and Ma? terial Branch, Enemy POW Interrogation File (MIS-Y), 1943-1945, Record Group (here? after RG) 165. am 33. Rose, Werwolf,281; and Herbert Schwarzwalder, Bremenund Nordwestdeutschland Kriegsende1945 (Bremen, 1973), 2:70. 34. Gilbert, ed., Hitler DirectsHis War, 136, 140. 35. Goebbels told the Gauleiter on 30 March 1945 that "on the recommendation of leading party comrades," the Fuhrer had agreed to let the Freikorpsbear his name. Gauleiter K. Wahl, Rundspruch no. 11 an alle Kreisleiter, 30 March 1945, frame 300554, reel 162, Records ofthe NSDAP, microcopy no. T-81, GMRMC. 36. Ronald Smelser, RobertLey: Hitler'sLabourFrontLeader(Oxford, 1988), 11-17, 3031, 309; Rose, Werwolf,280; Hugh Trevor-Roper, ed., Final Entries, 1945?The Diaries of

64

THE END OF THE FREEBOOTER

TRADITION

hatred for the nobility, and no one was so openly opposed to the army officer corps in the wake of the July 20 Putsch. In forming the Freikorps, Ley told Walter Funk and Hans Lammers "that the generals were worthless and the ministers

had to lead the Army."37 Ley became interested in the Freikorps idea while on a tour of Vienna and Lower Austria. British intelligence analysts later surmised that the DAF chief was consciously attempting to rival the Werwolf which had a major base in eastern Austria. "It is difficult to believe," they noted, "that the formation

[of the Freikorps] was not due to the sudden belated realihad of the party 'bosses' that the direction of the Werewolves the than into hands of who were hostile rather friendly to gotten people * the established party hierarchy. The Freikorps Adolf Hitler' is nothing but the quasi-military organization of all these 'bosses,' from the local at the bottom, to the fat, drunken Reichsleiter Ley at Ortsgruppenleiter sation

disown."38 the top, whom the Werewolves It also seems likely that Ley heard about Hitler's remarks at the staff conference in early March, and that he then decided to step forward and corps. Because it was doubtful whether the Gauleiter would participate in any such initiative if it was organized by army officers, Ley wanted to employ National Socialist officials, particularly those who had been chased out of enemy-occupied territories. With his feverish fixed upon this plan, Ley rushed back to Berlin and was imagination form a volunteer

ushered into Hitler's presence. "I can promise you at least forty thousand fanatical fighters, mein Fiihrer. They can hold the Upper Rhine and passes through the Black Forest. You can rely on that."39 Hitler, at first, did not seem overly impressed by the idea of Ley lead? ing a paramilitary unit; he would have preferred to use surviving Freikorps he gradually warmed to the idea. In leader Major von Kirchheim?but fact, two days after Ley had suggested the formation of the Freikorps, Hitler was already observing that if gaps in the Western Front could be plugged for the immediate future, "The Adolf Hitler Freikorps can then slowly make its appearance." Ley, he said, was "a real fanatic who, within certain limitations, can be useful for tasks requiring fanaticism."40 Joseph Goebbels(New York, 1978), 269-70; U.S. 7th Army InterrogationCenter, Interro? gation of Dr. Robert Ley, 29 May 1945, NA, State Dept. Decimal Files 1945-1949, 740.00119 Control (Germany),RG 59; and German Propagandaand the German, 23 April 1945, PRO, FO 898/187. 37. U.S. 7th Army InterrogationCenter Interrogationof Dr. Robert Ley, 29 May 1945, NA, State Dept. Decimal Files 1945-1949, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59. 38. German Propagandaand the German, 23 April 1945, PRO, FO 898/187. einesSoldaten(Neckargemund,1960), 381; and Gilbert, 39. Heinz Guderian,Erinnerungen ed., Hitler DirectsHis War, 136, 140. Ley's reference to the Upper Rhine front strongly suggests that he had knowledge of the Fuhrer'searlier comments. 40. Trevor-Roper, ed., Final Entries, 1945, 243, 278-79. Rudolf Semmler noted that

PERRY BIDDISCOMBE

65

Ley argued that the purpose of Freikorps Adolf Hitler was to ambush tank spearheads with Panzerfduste. These were radically new antitank grenades that had been produced in increasing numbers since 1943. During the last year of the war, the menace increasingly severe. It was nonetheless

of tank breakthroughs had become that once these occurred on hoped

German soil, a concerned civilian population armed with Panzerfduste could help turn the tide. In late 1944, military and political authorities formed an antitank organization from various elements of replacement troops and Volkssturm; in 1945 regular civilians were also inducted into the early warning system of that organization.41 Although the Freikorps did not wholly replace these antitank formations, it definitely represented a party initia? tive to consolidate and control efforts in this direction. It is no surprise that it was eventually organized along the basis of four regional Panzerjagd (antitank) units, each named after a Freikorps training base: Panzer Jagdverband Panzer Jagdverband Munster in the northwest, Heuberg in the southwest, Panzer Jagdverband Doberitz in the northeast, and Panzer Jagdverband Hohenfeld in the midlands. Each of these formations was attached to regional Wehrmacht combat

commands.42

Ley, from the very beginning, envisaged the Freikorps skirting certain laws of war. As early as 2 April, a Propaganda Ministry official mentioned in his diary that the Freikorps was being prepared to "go into battle in civilian dress," and Ley himself hinted at the same point, contending that his forces would be "invisible and therefore hard to catch."43 In fact, in a speech at Heuberg on 3 April, Ley announced in plain language that he was looking for volunteers to serve as partisans behind the front.44 In accord

with this strategy, secret arms caches were laid, identity papers were forged, and cadres were given alternate missions, such as terrorizing "collaborators" and working together with the Werewolves should their frontline

positions

be overrun.45 Freikorps members

were organized

as seven

"Ley is being enthusiasticallybacked by Hitler." Rudolf Semmler, Goebbels?The Man Next to Hitler (London, 1947), 190. 41. General-Inspekteurd. Pz.-Truppen, Richtlinien fur die Durchfuhrungder Panzerabwehr im riickwartigen Gebiet und in den Grenzwehrkreisen, 1 Jan. 1945, frames 109899-903; Kommandant,Wehrmachtkommandanteur,Hamburg to Koppenberg, 11 April 1945, frames 109887-8, both in reel 95, Records ofthe NSDAP, microcopy no. T-81, GMRMC; and Seidler, "DeutscherVolkssturm",149-50, 317-18. 42. Rose, Werwolf 281. 43. Semmler, Goebbels,190; and German Propaganda and the German, 23 April 1945, PRO, FO 898/187. 44. Bauer et al., eds., Justiz und NS-Verbrechen(Amsterdam, 1969), 3:94-95. 45. History of the Counter Intelligence Corps, 10:98; 26:44, NA; British Troops Austria, Joint Weekly Intelligence Summary no. 9, 31 Aug. 1945, PRO, FO 1007/300; and CSDIC/WEA BAOR, Appendix C, Report on Nursery, SIR 28, Part I, 18 April 1946, NA, ETO MIS-Y-Sect. Miscellaneous Intelligence and Interrogation Reports 19451946, RG 332.

THE END OF THE FREEBOOTER

66

TRADITION

to ten man combat squads and were provided with camouflage fatigues, although they were free to change into civilian clothes for partisan warfare and reconnaissance patrols.46 The official nature of the Ley Freikorps was made clear in a trio of circulated to party officials on 28 March and published several First of these was a Fiihrer directive which decreed the crea? later. days and ordered that it should be formed of volun? tion of the movement, teers from the NSDAP, the Volkssturm, and the Wehrmacht. Significantly, this was no ordinary comb-out of extraneous personnel, but a plain effort

documents

to rob these other organizations of their best people in order to create a supposedly elite band of tank destroyers and partisans. The Volkssturm, military and business concerns were all under compulsion to release vol? unteers of eighteen years and older who wished to enlist in the Freikorps, a measure which angered even some hardened Nazis.47 Proponents of the Volkssturm feared that their organization little strength it possessed.48

in particular

would

lose what

A second inaugural document consisted of a hysterical appeal by Ley that stressed the antitank role of Freikorps fighters: "A small number of enemy tank packs are engaged in utilising critical situations at the front to break into the Reich. In fact, they are nothing but a bogey. We have the men and arms to annihilate

them and the small groups of infantry It is only a question of our will and our readiness to act." Ley also outlined the organizational structure ofthe Freikorps, noting that, like the Volkssturm, detachments would be led by the Gauleiter and set up by the Kreisleiter and Ortsgruppenleiter.49

which

follow

without

remainder.

A third document

was distributed by Goebbels, who overcame his own the Freikorps as soon as he heard of the Fuhrer's to original opposition he received Ley for a visit and negotiated for con? Thereafter, approval. trol of Freikorps propaganda.50 Goebbels's text dealt with further organiza? tional matters, particularly the fact that volunteers would be employed full-time by the Freikorps Adolf Hitler regardless of the importance of their civilian or military jobs. He also noted that Freikorps volunteers were expected to supply their own field kit and clothes, preferably of military cut and color, plus three days worth of rations. Their transport was to be not by railway but by bicycles provided by the recruits accomplished 46. Rose, Werwolf,281-82; and Historyof the CounterIntelligenceCorps,26:43, NA. 47. German Propagandaand the German, 23 April 1945, PRO, FO 898/187. 48. Trevor-Roper, ed., Final Entries, 1945, 269. 49. German Propagandaand the German, 23 April 1945, PRO, FO 898/187. 50. Trevor-Roper, ed., Final Entries,1945, 234, 261, 269-70. Doubts about the Freikorps by senior party figures like Goebbels involved Ley's problematicleadershipskills, as well as the questionable wisdom of launching a new paramilitarygroup at a time of great short? ages in manpower and material. Rose, Werwolf,280.

PERRY BIDDISCOMBE

67

or drawn from a communal stock. Finally, Goebbels noted Gau was supposed to contribute one hundred men, although this may have been only an initial allotment.51 In his diary, the propa? his conviction that the Gauleiter were actually ganda minister mentioned themselves

that each

ten thousand "activists" to the movement.52 capable of contributing Formation of the Freikorps proceeded apace in the next several weeks. An organizational staff and a main supply depot were established at Heuberg, in Swabia, and an operational staff was set up in Berlin.53 Would-be Freikorpsmanner began to show up as Ley's orders disseminated and his representatives fanned out over cupied areas of the Reich, attempting to spur local into action. At Munich, Kreisleiter Schulte made

for recruitment

were

the remaining unocNSDAP functionaries

a stirring speech on 1 April, inspiring 500 volunteers to sign up for the Freikorps; in Berlin, the Reichsstudentenfuhrung (National Student Leadership) sent groups of young people out of the city and south to Salzburg, where they were quartered and prepared for service with the Freikorps; in Klagenfurt, a Ley emissary Kreisleiter appeared in early April and recruited 45 men; in Nuremberg, 23 men, who were dispatched for training in partisan warfare at a secret base.54 Enlistees were instructed to appear by 2 April 1945 at a number of regional collection centers organized by the Ausstellungsstab Freikorps Adolf Hitler. Within several days, considerable Volkert

selected

of recruits had been assembled at Doberitz, Heuberg, Paderborn, In the first three camps, 2,000 recruits and Doemersheim. Hohenfels, estimate of were trained, which suggests that a postwar Allied intelligence claims that 3,000 militants was probably accurate. Arno Rose, however, anywhere from 600 to 800 Freikorps Adolf Hitler squads were actually numbers

deployed,

which

in turn implies

a larger membership

figure.55

51. Gauleiter K. Wahl, Rundspruch no. 11 an alle Kreisleiter, 30 March 1945, frames 300554-5, reel 162, Records ofthe NSDAP, microcopy no. T-81, GMRMC. 52. Trevor-Roper, ed., Final Entries, 1945, 270. 53. Ultra Document KO 1402, 25 April 1945, reel 72, UMC; and Air P/W Interrogation Unit, 1st Tactical AF (Prov.) (Adv.), Detailed Interrogation of an ME 109 Pilot, 25 April 1945, NA, 127823, RG 226. Ley told American interrogators that the Freikorpswas organized by the staff of the DAF. U.S. 7th Army Interrogation Center, Interrogation of Dr. Robert Ley, 29 May 1945, NA, State Dept. Decimal Files 1945-1949, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59. 54. Burgel to Walkenhorst, 4 April 1945, Biographical Records (NSDAP, Reich Ministries, etc), reel 78, microform no. T-580, GMRMC; Erich Kastner, Notabene45 (Berlin, 1961), 94; British Troops in Austria, Joint Weekly Intelligence Summary no. 5, 3 Aug. 1945, PRO, FO 1007/300; and History of the CounterIntelligenceCorps, 20:98, NA. For mention of the FreikorpsAdolf Hitler in Vorarlberg,see Manfred Rauchensteiner, Osterreich 1945 (Vienna, 1970), 256. 55. SHAEF G-5, Weekly Journal of Information no. 11, 4 May 1945, PRO, War Of? fice (hereafterWO) 219/3918; CSDIC/WEA BAOR, Report on Nursery, SIR no. 28, 18 April 1946, Appendix "H," NA, ETO MIS-Y-Sect. Intelligence and InterrogationRecords 1945-1946, RG 332; and Rose, Werwolf 281-82.

68

THE END OF THE FREEBOOTER

TRADITION

When this rabble assembled in early April, Army and SS instructors found that they were not generally the type of people who responded easily to the tasks put before them. However, the trainees were still forced to race through an extremely restricted training schedule; at most, prepa? of two weeks training, emphasizing tankand guerrilla tactics such as laying booby traps and blowing up sabotage targets with high explosives.56 Deep in the Alpine 135 pupils received instruction in partisan warfare at a special Redoubt, near Admont, which was established on Ley's authority and was camp " as a Werwolf facility; the Werwolf" label was already in the designated of the intellectual process becoming property of anyone who wanted to use it.57 Significantly, this particular aspect of Freikorps Adolf Hitler train? ing was not undertaken without both internal and external debate. In ration

busting

for combat

consisted

techniques,

Gau Weser-Ems, for example, the commander of the Oldenburg Freikorps learned in early April that his men were being schooled like "Werewolves," and he immediately demanded that the local Gauleiter, Wegener, from allow him to withdraw the Gau's one hundred man contingent Munster and relocate it at aerodrome "Joel," near Wildeshausen, for an altered regime of training. Wegener gave his consent and the Weser-Ems " Volkssturmbataillon Kampfgruppe seceded from the Freikorps and was renamed 122."58 In Vienna, Gauleiter Baldur von Schirach would not even allow the formation of a Freikorps unit. Von Schirach associated the Freikorps with the effort to launch a Werwolf guerrilla campaign, an undertaking he the fact that fighters would be dethought not only futile, but?given as well.59 ployed in civilian clothes?illegal When Ley began Freikorps Adolf Hitler, he worried about adequate armament for his troops, and in late March he told Hitler that the Armed Forces High Command (OKW) would guns available. Ley thereafter went from of arms until he finally arrived at the army ordnance. Once conducted along like a king, Wehrmacht.

have to make 80,000 submachine one authority to another in search office of General Juttner, head of the right channel, Ley was treated

his needs

even over those of the being given precedence A first lieutenant from army ordnance was attached to his

56. Historyof the CounterIntelligenceCorps,26:43, NA; and CSDIC/WEA BAOR Appendix H, Report on Nursery, SIR 28, Part I, 18 April 1946, NA, ETO MIS-Y-Sect. Intelligence and InterrogationRecords 1945-1946, RG 332. 57. 5th Corps, Weekly Intelligence Summaryno. 1, 11 July 1945, PRO, FO 1007/299. 58. Bauer et al, eds., Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, 2:138; 3:385; and 11:102. 59. Trialof the MajorWar Criminalsbeforethe International MilitaryTribunal(Nuremburg, 1948), 14:580; Summaryno. 166?Baldur von Schirach, ImperialWar Museum, Office of the U.S. Chief Counsel, Subs. Proceedings Div., Interrogation Branch; and Jochen von Jugenderzog (Ham? Lang, Der Hitler-Junge?Baldurvon Schirach:Der Mann, der Deutschlands burg, 1988), 380.

PERRY BIDDISCOMBE

69

staff, and his Freikorps partisans were given access to the best remaining small arms in the Reich, including submachine guns and rifles with telescopic sights. Hitler himself was induced to pressure a section chief in the Armaments Ministry to make 20,000 Panzerfauste available to the new and it is also likely that stocks of poison gas were issued, a dangerous state of affairs since Ley was known to favor the use of gas in battle.60 Ley was also busy trying to develop "death rays," a project he accused the Armaments Ministry of inconscionably ignoring.61 organization,

Given the fact that the Freikorps Adolf Hitler and its sister organizations had sufficient small arms and probably even poison gas in hand, one wonders about their battlefield capabilities (even if they were bereft of "death rays"). The cold truth is different from what one might expect. A roman tie, nationalist hagiography has disregarded the fact that through the entire of the Freikorps, from the eighteenth century onward, half-trained light infantry and light cavalry volunteer formations have never been a real factor on the battlefield. Only when deployed against other irregulars, such as Polish bands, were the Freikorps ever able to achieve much. Thus when facing head-to-head confrontations with professional and battlehistory

tested enemy forces, the 1944/45 version of the movement also seemed destined to play a minor role in the fighting. In truth, the advance of had left unsupported light infantry even more ineffecmilitary technology tive

than had traditionally been the case, and the development of the was not for the Panzerfaust enough to compensate enemy's vast superiority in armor and air power.62 This was precisely the reason why the Freikorps were trained for a less debilitating form of endeavor than open partisan warfare. Although Freikorpsmanner were supposed to be "a living example of action for the people and the Wehrmacht,"63 and even though several German POWs warned that the fanaticism of the Freikorps could make them a dangerous opponent for the Allies, this alleged militancy rarely

combat?namely,

In mid-March, units of Freikorps impact on the battlefield. Sauerland were called to the front by Army Group B, which was defending made much

60. Enemy Personnel Exploitation Section, Field InformationAgency Technical CC(BE), Two Brief Discussions of German CW Policy with Albert Speer, 12 Oct. 1945, NA, XL 22959, RG 226; Air P/W Interrogation Unit, 1st Tactical AF (Prov.) (Adv.); detailed Interrogationof an ME 109 Pilot, 15 April 1945, NA, 12723, RG 226; Guderian,Erinnerungen, 381; and History ofthe CounterIntelligenceCorps,26:43, NA. 61. Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (New York, 1970), 549-50. 62. Goebbels recognized this factor and asked Ley, tongue in cheek, whether the Freikorps would challenge Allied bomber formations. Ley, too dumb to recognize sarcasm at his expense, replied "that even the enemy air force would have to give way before such fanaticism." Semmler, Goebbels,190. 63. Gauleiter K. Wahl, Rundspruch no. 11 an alle Kreisleiter, 30 March 1945, frame 300554, reel 162, Records ofthe NSDAP, microcopy no. t-81, GMRMC.

70

THE END OF THE FREEBOOTER

TRADITION

the Ruhr. Yet these battalions played a generally lackluster part in fighting as American forces surrounded and eventually overran the Ruhr pocket. Freikorps members suffered heavy losses in street fighting at Siegen on 1 April, and a week later they were among 120 Germans killed in a sharp battle at Olsberg. Freikorps Adolf Hitler troopers were also deployed at a number

of points, but only in a few cases did they earn any commendation. In the Black Forest, convalescent Wehrmacht officers and NCOs in the Freikorps gave the French a difficult time, suffering bad losses in the process, and in Berlin, 2,000 Freikorps members fought alongside WaffenSS units in last ditch fighting for the Government Quarter, the kind of where Soviet armor became less decisive than was usually engagement the case. Ley later testified that Freikorps formations in the German capital were wiped out almost completely.64 As the end approached, the Freikorps were selves in a final furioso, but most members still busy establishing Gau contingents of the as 24 April 1945,65 but he then declined to

supposed to immolate them? demurred. Ley himself was Freikorps Adolf Hitler as late lead his elite units in a final

fight. Instead, he fled into the Alps, supposedly to join a "diehard" effort by the 6th SS Panzer Army, a more credible military force. No such action occurred?Ley claimed that Sepp Dietrich's wife convinced him of the futility of this intention66?and in mid-May the Freikorps chief was discovered by American troops near Berchtesgaden. Hardly the picture of a dangerous buccaneer, he was captured and taken into custody wearing pajamas, a battered homburg, and a pair of ski boots.67 Much like their post-World War One antecedents, the 1944/45 Freikorps were more successful in causing death and destruction to fellow Germans than to foreign antagonists. In Freikorps Sauerland, the commander of regiment Hollweg, SS-Obersturmfuhrer Vogel, formed a special "hit squad" reminiscent of the Fehme and led by SA man Friedrich Jager. This team was responsible for the deaths of two deserters and a woman, and they pro? vided an escort for a local Ortsgruppenleiter who tracked down and murdered an invalid dissident who had supposedly besmirched his reputation. Their most infamous act was the clumsy execution of mine-manager Ignatz Bruck, who was arrested by German soldiers after a white flag was seen flying 64. Henri Navarre, Le tempsdes verites(Paris, 1957), 183; Bauer et al., eds., Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, 3:90; Seidler, "DeutscherVolkssturm," 346; le Tissier, The Battleof Berlin,31; and U.S. 7th Army InterrogationCenter, Interrogationof Dr. Robert Ley, 29 May 1945, NA, State Dept. Decimal Files 1945-1949, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59. 65. Ultra Document KO 1581, 28 April 1945, UMC. 66. U.S. 7th Army Interrogation Center, Interrogation of Dr. Robert Ley, 29 May 1945, NA, State Dept. Decimal Files 1945-1949, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59; and Smeltser, RobertLey, 292. 67. The Daily Express,19 May 1945; and The New YorkTimes, 17 May 1945.

PERRY BIDDISCOMBE

71

over the pithead at his mine in Weidenau. Bruck was handed over to the he was shot in the kidney, in tender mercies of Jager's squad, whereupon and circumstances, then, barely able to stand, was summarily unexplained tried and executed. Jager's fumbling killers hanged Bruck with telephone wire, but the cable snapped and Bruck fell to the ground. The hapless was then shot with a carbine

victim

was finished

off with

several bullets

at point blank range and, still alive, from a service revolver.68

Freikorps Adolf Hitler was involved in similar brutalities. After failing to halt the French in Baden, members of the southwest battalion, Jagdverband Heuberg, were recruited for a Fehme group called Sturmabteilung Freikorps Adolf Hitler. This unit specialized in spreading Werwolf leaflets?"Our it was unleashed on 28 April 1945 by Gauleiter vengeance is death"?and Paul Giesler, who was seeking to crush a Bavarian anti-Nazi rebellion. A section of Munich, where platoon was dispatched to the Theresienhohe and number of rebels "defeatists." In two in? assaulted a alleged they a marked lack stances, they attempted to hang people, but demonstrated In one case, an innkeeper was marched out to be hanged of determination. from a signpost, only to be released when he refused to climb up on a barrel and have a noose

looped around his neck.69 Sturmabteilung task force, which was sent to the working-class of Penzberg, showed no such restraint. This unit was led by the 50

Another town

one of the year-old Reserve Major and SA Brigadier Hans Zoberlein, most famous veterans of the post-World War I Freikorps and a member of the NSDAP since 1922. In fact, Theweleit a rightly credits Zoberlein, writer of considerable ability, with recording some of the seminal manifestations

of Freikorps disdain for the proletariat.70 Faced with the leftist miners of Penzberg, who had been open to anti-Nazi appeals for revolu? tion, Zoberlein ran wild. After receiving orders from Giesler, Zoberlein's one hundred-man 1945.

arrived in Penzberg on the evening of 28 contingent in half-military and half-civilian clothing and armed the men clambered out of their armored Freikorps weapons,

Clad

April with automatic

cars, looking more like partisans than a proper security force. After a bout of heavy drinking at the town hall, the unit broke up into ten-man teams, each led by a local policeman and each equipped with plenty of rope. As Zoberlein crisply told disapproving army officers, who had themselves already

put several

rebels

in front

of a firing

squad,

"the

Wehrmacht

68. Bauer et al, eds., Justiz und NS-Verbrechen,8:419-29; 10:255-63, 281-91. It should be noted, in favor of FreikorpsSauerland, that when white flags were seen flying from houses near Herne on 8 April, and the local Kreisleiter ordered Freikorpstroopers to de? stroy these homes, the mission was refused. Meyerhoff, ed., Herne 1933?1945, 142. 69. Bauer et al, eds., Justiz und NS-Verbrechen,2:787-97. 70. Theweleit, Mannerphantasien, 1:74-77, 83.

72

THE END OF THE FREEBOOTER

TRADITION

shoots, [but] the Werwolf hangs." Over the next hours, seven suspected troublemakers were tracked down and lynched, and another was killed in a skirmish. Zoberlein left town around 11:00 P.M. and repaired to Weilheim, leaving several of his teams to wreak further havoc until the early morn? ing hours of 29 April.71 It is no surprise that the Freikorps' barbarity, combined with their inan integral part eptitude, rendered them unpopular organizations?hardly envisioned in of the kind of spontaneous national liberation movement propaganda. In retrospect, one wonders whether these formations rightly qualified as eigentliche Freikorps (real Free Corps), to use Ernst von Salomon's telling expression.72 Four points of contrast between these bands and their forerunners seem to stand out. First of all, where the Freikorps of the nineteenth century had been patriotic but apolitical, the post-WWI Nazi

version of the movement the Nazi during

had been aggressively antipolitical. By contrast, were tied to a political ideology absent of the movement. Freikorps Sauerland, for generations

Freikorps of 1944/45

previous example, actually reorientated its training schedule in February 1945 to? ward political indoctrination.73 Thus, like the SA, which was never a took shape as parapolitical the Freikorps of 1944/45 genuine Freikorps, auxiliaries of the party. It was precisely this party spirit, so integral to the NSDAP since its formation, that had always tainted National Socialism in the opinion of many Freikorps leaders ofthe 1918-23 generation. Hermann party fanaticism,"74 and others equated it with a type of superficial fetishism that was a poor substitute for more genuine ideas through which to unite the country and revive the mood of 1914. In much the same sense, the authentic Freikorps ethos allowed for a

Ehrhardt had called it an "un-German

rudimentary form of the Fuhrerprinzip, the concept that charismatic lead? ership is more important than either sound administration or the rule of law. But traditionaUy, Freikorps pluralism had inhibited the next step in the evolution of this idea, namely, that a political system could be based upon this principle and should be led by an ultimate fuhrer. It is true that some Freikorpsmanner fresh from the trenches of World War I had dreamed 71. Bauer et al, eds., Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, 3:67-128; 8:560-657; 13:478-582; Klaus Tenfelde, "ProletarischeProvinz: Radikalisierungund Widerstandin Penzberg/Oberbayern 1900 bis 1945"; Hildebrandt Troll, "Aktionen zur Kriegsbeendung im Fruhjahr 1945", both in Bayem in der NS Zeit, eds., Martin Broszat, Elke Frohlich, Anton Grossmann (Munich, 1981), part C, 4:375-77, 380-81, 671-72; and Heike Bretschneider,Der Widerstand in Miinchen1933 bis 1945 (Munich, 1968), 236. gegen den Nationalsozialismus 72. Waite, Vanguardof Nazism, 186. Von Salomon argued that "real Freikorps"had to have the "primitive Freebooter spirit." 73. Setzer to all Kreisstabsfuhrerdes Deutschen Volkssturms, 1 Feb. 1945, Records of the NSDAP, frame 108548, microcopy no. T-81, GMRMC. 74. Kriiger, Die BrigadeEhrhardt,127.

PERRY BIDDISCOMBE

73

ofa Third Reich and a dictator inspired by the Fronterlebnis (front experience). However, they had never been able to give content to these ideas, and there was doubt among many of them about whether the demagogic Hitler was really a man of such mythic dimensions.75 One can hardly imagine most ofthe survivors ofthe 1918-23 period agreeing that the name Adolf Hitler was a proper appellation for any Freikorps. The second point of contrast with traditional Freikorps is that even though Freikorps were supposed to be volunteer in character (as suggested by the adjective frei), one cannot escape the impression that some of the soin 1944/45 had been dragooned into service. In the called volunteers Ruhr, for instance, Freikorps Sauerland was formed from "invited volun? teers" who were urged forward by a circular distributed in the fall of 1944, bearing the signature of the Gauleiter of South Westphalia.76 In Swabia, two Freikorps Adolf Hitler leaders were called up by a "secret order" disseminated on 2 April 1945. These two men, one a Stamrnfiihrer in the Hitler Youth, the other a Sturmfuhrer in the SA, later told Ameri? that they had been summoned to the Kreisleitung in can interrogators Augsberg, "where they were told of a special mission for which they had been selected; membership in the 'Sonderformation Adolf Hitler.'"77 Similarly, a Munich metalworker and block warden of the National Socialist Welfare (NSV) told of refusing a direct appeal from Ley to volun? Organization teer as a Freikorps guerilla, but nonetheless being drafted into the Freikorps and being included in the column that terrorized Penzberg.78 "If this new collapse," said von Salomon, "were to contain the germ of rebirth, as had that of 1918, then all that mattered was that it be encouraged with the compost of willingness." But neither he, nor anyone else, could find genuine evidence of such voluntarism.79 The third point marks the main distinction between the 1944/45 Freikorps and its antecedents: the absence of any elite character in the movement were formed by political auth? Freikorps. The Freikorps of 1944/45 or orities, not by military officers, and they lacked either meritocratic aristocratic elements. Hitler's own comments are instructive in this regard: part of his belated appreciation for Freikorps was that regular army officers Nazi

could not make do with inadequate or ill-trained manpower. could to his mind "make something

type leader, by contrast,

A Freikorpsout of piles

75. Ibid, 127;Waite, Vanguard of Nazism, 266, 277-78; and Koch, Der deutscheBurgerkrieg, 72. 76. Mobile Field Interrogation Unit no. 1, PW Intelligence Bulletin no. 1/32, 30 Jan. 1945, NA, G-2 Intelligence Division CapturedPersonnel and Material Branch Enemy POW Interrogation File (MIS-Y), 1943-1945, RG 165. 77. History of the CounterIntelligenceCorps,26:43, NA. 3:94-5. 78. Bauer et al., eds., Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, 79. von Salomon, Fragebogen,497-98.

THE END OF THE FREEBOOTER

74

TRADITION

of rubbish," mainly because he did not demand the normal administrative and material prerequisites needed to field proper forces. Such a person, Hitler claimed, "works completely independent of any routine . . . and he gets things from all conceivable sources."80 What are we to think about the quality of Freikorps manpower when the Fuhrer himself called poten? tial recruits "rubbish"? In truth, the various Freikorps did direct some at? toward the recruitment of soldiers or SS men, at least to serve as unit leaders. Ley and Zoberlein are on record making a speech on 14

tention

April at an air force facility in Sulz am Neckar, trying to convince ground to join the Freikorps Adolf Hitler.81 Such efforts yielded few

personnel results.

As a rule, military officers did not interest themselves in the half-hearted Freikorps renaissance. In the first place, in 1945 the Wehrmacht s moral and military responsibility for defeat was inescapable and could not be shifted to anyone else's shoulders. The Dolchstosslegende (stab-in-the-back myth), so crucial to the post-World War One Freikorps, was not reproducible, at least in full form, and the particularity of the Fronterlebnis, based on camaraderie and common peril, had been destroyed by bombing and ground

fighting in the Reich, which had made the civilian familiar with combat conditions.82 National Socialist

population fanaticism, equally essential for keeping the Wehrmacht in the field,83 and a potential source of the kind of Kriegsfreiwillige necessary for Freikorps, collapsed in the last year of the war. The final, senseless rounds of fighting had convinced even many stolid Nazi troopers that their faith in Hitler had been misplaced, and as the Wehrmacht retreated into German territory, officers and soldiers got a shattering look at the party Fuhrerkorps, whose cadres supposed to help organize the defense of the homeland.84 Other officers had long given up on the idea of the officer corps as a bearer of

were

nationalistic

values,85 but had become

increasingly

technocratic.

This type

80. Gilbert, ed., Hitler DirectsHis War,133-36, 140. 81. Air P/W InterrogationUnit, 1st TacticalAF (Prov.) (Adv.), Detailed Interrogationof an ME 109 Pilot, 25 April 1945, NA, 127823, RG 226. 82. Maier,"AHR Forum:Two PostwarEras,"330; James Diehl, The Thanksof the Father? land: GermanVeteransafter the SecondWorldWar(Chapel Hill, 1993), 70, 227-28, 230-32, 235; and Mosse, Fallen Soldiers,201-3, 209-10, 212. im NS-Staat(Hamburg,1969);VolkerBerghahn, 83. ManfredMesserschmidt,Die Wehrmacht "NSDAP und'geistige FiihrungderWehrmacht1939-1945,'" Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte 17 (1969): 17-71; and Omer Bartov, The EasternFront, 1941-1945 (London, 1985). 84. The fact that the Wehrmachtleadershipkept order at the front by executing 30,000 of its own troops, many of them in the final phase of the war, does not suggest possibilities for the kind of voluntarism needed to launch Freikorps.See Manfred Messerschmidtand einerLegende Friz Wiillner, Die Wehrmachtjustiz im Dienst des Nationalsozialismus: Zerstbrung (Baden-Baden, 1987), chaps. 4-5. 85. A National SocialistLeadershipCorps reportin 1943 noted that afterthe Machtergreifung "the German officer corps lost its unity as a school of thought and thus its characteras an

PERRY BIDDISCOMBE saw war as a forum

for the exercise

with the romanticism

75

of their professionalism, but being or high-minded patriotism of their

hardly possessed predecessors,86 they were unlikely to risk their precious careers through Freikorps activity. By 1945, still other frontline officers had been hurriedly recruited from the supply and paymaster corps, and they were neither nor likely to volunteer for any extra measure of service.87 battle-ready of Wehrmacht Finally, from a sociological point of view, the cohesion

platoons and companies had also been badly shaken, thus rendering these units unsuitable to provide scaffolding for the organization of Freikorps. There is some debate about when Wehrmacht recruitment and training so disorganized that they undid the usually excellent cohesion "primary group" typical of German forces,88 but there is no doubt that this process was complete by 1945, particularly on the eastern front. Thus, for a number of reasons, German soldiers were no longer

practices

became

ready or able to play an important role in building Freikorps, and although the possibility was discussed at several battle commands, particularly the headquarters of Army Group Courland, it was rejected.89 Because of the lack of military willingness or availability, the Freikorps were

recruited

from

elderly civilians, Hitler Youth members, or tasks were so important that they had been production as "UK" essential for regular military duty. (unabkommlich)?too designated The Freikorps Adolf Hitler was raised mainly from the ranks of Ley's own group, the DAF, although enlistees also reported from the Hitler Youth, workers

mainly

whose

'order' [i.e., comparable to the Jesuits, the Freemasons, the SS, etc] It was hitherto the weltanschauliche pillar of the German people, but it then stood pushed to the side, where it still sometimes stands today, devoid of ideas or with, at best, a weak ideological character." Dr. Huebner, Abschrift, 4 Oct. 1943, Biographical Records (NSDAP, Reich Ministeries, etc), reel 78, microform no. T-580, GMRMC. 86. See, for instance, Michael Geyer, AufrustungoderSicherheit:Die Reichswehrin der Krise der Machtpolitik1924-1936 (Wiesbaden, 1980). 87. Lt. Priester, Schule VI fiir Fahnenjunker der Infanterie, 2 Feb. 1945, Biographical Records (NSDAP, Reich Ministries, etc), reel 78, microform no. T-580 GMRMC. 88. Omer Bartov claims that German small unit cohesion had begun to break down as early as the end of 1941, at least on the Russian Front. Omer Bartov, Hitler'sArmy: Sol? diers,Nazis, and War in the Third Reich (Oxford, 1992), chap. 2. Earlier writers who had emphasized the importance of primary groups claimed that complex German recruitment and training arrangements only collapsed in the last phase of the war, thus eroding the tightness and high morale earlier typical of German formations. EdwardA. Shils and Morris Janowitz,"Cohesion and Disintigration in the Wehrmacht in WorldWar II,"in idem, Military Conflict:Essays in the InstitutionalAnaylsis of Warand Peace (Beverly Hills, 1975), 178-90; and Martin van Creveld, Fighting Power: German and U.S. Army Performance,1939-1945 (Westport, 1982), 75-76. 89. Hans Kissel, Der deutscheVolkssturm1944/45; Eine territorialeMiliz im Rahmen der (Frankfurt am Main, 1962), 81; Marlis Steinert, Capitulation 1945: The Landesverteidigung Story of the Donitz Regime (London, 1969), 182-83; and Muller to Donitz, 5 May 1945, frame 5611862, reel 864, Records of OKW, microcopy no. T-77, GMRMC.

76

THE END OF THE FREEBOOTER

TRADITION

the SA, and the Gau staffs. The Ley organization also drew heavily upon cadres of the Politische Stajfeln, which were paramilitary goon squads formed to the by Ley in 1943 in order to give the Kreisleiter a counterweight Gestapo. Leaders in all the various Freikorps were comprised of NSDAP the case of Freikorps Sauerland? officials, Hitler Youth chieftains and?in minor state employees such as teachers.90 As a result, the Freikorps tended to gather the same mix of middle aged officials, disabled veterans, and confused teenagers as characterized the Volkssturm more generally. Any fit males still on the loose were usually professional slackers who had previ? ously used every possible dodge to escape active service and were not likely to set an example of courage in the field. Thus, the Nazi Freikorps assumed a "mass spirit," a euphemism for saying it lacked the best and brightest elements of society, although "mass character" was again one of the aspects of National Socialism that had most alienated the leaders of an earlier generation of the Freikorps movement, such as Hermann Ehrhardt.91 The most crucial corollary of this lack of elite character was the nearabsence of talented writers who (given the right conditions) could have romanticized their Freikorps experiences on paper, although the potential leap between reality and literary convention was so broad that it could have challenged even the most expansive capabilities of the fascist imagi? of Hans Zoberlein, to which the nation. Except for the participation narrative will return, the bottom-of-the-barrel character of Freikorps re? cruits suggested weakness and powerlessness, the epitome of the kind of people who lack a voice in history. For better or for worse, literature and institutional memory have always been the handmaidens of power, and the absence of power and ability means the lack of a later presence in collective memory. It is true that some

literati saw of the interwar, radical-conservative in 1945; for or radical action paramilitary political opportunities of that were born out for often chaos, instance, said great things Junger, and that the wild behavior of the Red Army and of liberated slave labor? ers could well give rise to the kind of vigilantism that Hermann Lons had renewed

90. U.S. 7th Army InterrogationCenter, Interrogationof Dr. Robert Ley, 29 May 1945, NA, State Dept. Decimal Files 1945-1949, 740.00119 Control (Germany),RG 59; Hofinann of the German Volkssturm, and Leadersof the Kreiskomissionen, to Kreisleiter,Kreistabsfuhrer 22 Feb. 1945, frames 107805-6, reel 93; NSDAP Gauleitung Schwaben, Rundschreiben no. 96/45, 18 April 1945, frame 300551, reel 162, both in Records ofthe NSDAP, microcopy no.T-81, GMRMC; SHAEF Rear G-2, EDS to SHAEF Main for G-2 (CI), 19 June 10-11. For the description of 1945, PRO.WO 219/1603; and Timm, Freikorps"Sauerland," a seventy man FreikorpsAdolf Hitler unit that withdrew into the Alps in April 1945 and was comprised almost entirely of "PolitischeLeiter,"see lere Armee francaise,2eme Bureau, "Bulletin de renseignements,"16 May 1945, Annex 4, Service historique de l'armee de terre, 7P 125. 91. Kriiger, Die BrigadeEhrhardt,127.

PERRY B1DDISCOMBE

77

described in Der Wehrwolf (1910). In addition, he claimed that stragglers he had met on the Liineburger Heide believed in a new version of the Dolchstosslegende.92 Jiinger's old associate Karl Paetel also noted that such sentiments were alive in 1945, and he readily admitted that there were certain

Nazi rebels?much Werewolves, elements?neo-Freikorpsmanner, influenced by the "heroic realist" literature of the interwar period.93 Jiinger and his circle, however, had always been suspicious of National Socialism and they did not regard it as a suitable base for a new nationalist move? ment

analogous to that of 1919/20. Von Salomon expressed the general view in noting that Nazis were too populist, too easily led, and too unwilling to assume responsibility for their mistakes. Former officers of the Waffen-SS held potential promise, but their bitterness at being bear a tremendous burden of guilt was causing their "front-line harden into the kind of destructive negativism and pomposity

forced

to

spirit" to that von

Salomon associated with the interwar Stahlhelm.94 Given such supposiSalomon school naturally had nothing to tions, writers of the Jiinger-von (nor did they have much com? say about the Nazi Freikorps of 1944/45 ment on the Werwolf). was the polar A fourth sense in which the new Freikorps movement a way in which it was also at odds even opposite of its antecedents?and in its inclusion of females. Al? with National Socialist philosophy?was the Reichsfrauenschaftsfiihrerin Gertrude Scholz-Klink, (National though Women's Leader), later claimed to have opposed putting "her women" in uniform, she was apparently not opposed to having women fighting with the much more dangerous status of franc tireurs. Indeed, she readily sancof females in the volunteer tioned and organized the involvement She was chief of the women's section of herself appointed paramilitaries. the Adolf Hitler Freikorps, and she personally trained with a submachine gun as the Soviets advanced upon Berlin. Women were enrolled in east? ern front formations such as Freikorps Kamienski and Freikorps Mohnke, fifteen percent of the membership in Freikorps Adolf in the Freikorps included clerical and medical work, were also given infantry training, and were thrown into

and they comprised Hitler. Their duties

although they in the defensive combat where necessity dictated. Women participated campaign in northwest Germany, and they also played a role in the Battle of Berlin. In addition, they were used extensively sions, usually while wearing civilian clothes.95

for reconnaissance

mis-

92. Ernst Jiinger, Tagebucher 3: Strahlungen?ZweiterTeil (Stuttgart, 1960), 462, 466-68. 93. Karl O. Paetel, ErnstJiinger (Stuttgart, 1949), 193-94, 196. For "heroic realism,"see Ulrich Herbert, Best (Bonn, 1996), 88-100. 94. Von Salomon, Fragebogen, 495-97. 95. CSDIC (WEA)/BAOR, Report on Nursery, SIR no. 28, 18 April 1945, Appendix H, NA, ETO MIS-Y-Sect. Intelligence and Interrogation Records, 1945-1946, RG 226;

THE END OF THE FREEBOOTER

78

TRADITION

Such involvement by women reveals a phenomenon wildly at odds with the (pre-Nazi) "Freikorpskultur" described by Theweleit, where the com? munity of Frontsoldaten was understood as a sanctuary from women and from the "femininity" of civil society. Psychologically isolated by their male narcissism, the 1918-23 characterized Freikorpsmanner by Theweleit only two images of the opposite gender: "red," pro? harpies, arrayed either as frenzied mobs or as individual vixens attempting to penetrate the chinks of male armor; and "white," asexual, virginal figures, personified especially by the Krankenschwester (nurses) of could accommodate

letarian

the Great War.96 National Socialism inherited this image of women, or at least part of it, since their eugenic obsessions did not allow for as pristine a conception of "white" women. Nonetheless, women were supposed to for the current crop of German male stay at home, providing support warriors

and producing future generations of cannon fodder. As a result, the Nazis strictly limited the role of women in the armed forces until, by with their backs to the wall, they were compelled to allow 1944/45, women to fight. Even the Fuhrer himself was forced, by pressure of circumstances, to approve the entry of women into the Freikorps Adolf Hitler. The members and ex-members of the Bund deutscher Madel who joined the Freikorps were not exactly red women, but they were the sort of that the Freikorpsmanner of the post-World War I period impossible to fit into their mental universe. There is some fragmentary evidence from 1945 suggesting that the soldiers and SS troopers who fought alongside the Freikorps either opposed deploying women activist militants would

have found

that they treated such female in combat?despite their obvious courage?or warriors with condescension.97 In general, modern culture has not reserved much psychological or literary space for images of women as heroes, particularly warrior-heroes, From the and popular culture in Germany was (and is) no exception. time of the War of Liberation, a democratized cult of heroism, specifically associated with manliness and supposedly masculine values, had become fixed at the core of German

nationalism. Some of the most popular Ger? man poets, including Korner and Arndt, had specialized in pseudo-erotic that explic? rhymes about voluntarist "bands of brothers," a terminology excluded females. were Women an itly assigned essentially "private" role, 5th Corps Weekly Intelligence Summary no. 1, 11 July 1945, PRO, FO 1007/299; and Claudia Koonz, Mothersin the Fatherland(New York, 1987), xxiii-xxiv, 398. 96. Theweleit, Mannerphantasien 1: chap. 1. 97. Note, for instance, the bemused reaction of SS Leibstandarte men outside the Fiihrer's bunker when they were approached (circa 24/25 April) by a female Freikorpsvolunteer. They immediately identified the woman as a prostitute,and while they appreciatedthe way she filled out her field tunic and riding breeches, there was no question of their accepting her help. Ernst-Gunther Schenck, Ich sah Berlinsterben(Herford, 1970), 87-88.

PERRY BIDDISCOMBE

79

of fallen the achievements their menfolk and remembering motivating heroes.98 Certainly, Germans who came of age in the first half of the twentieth century seemed to find the inclusion of women in Freikorps a of the concept. Tradisharp deviation from the customary understanding could integrate only a few, tionally, the spirit of German voluntarism token women who had rallied to the colors by disguising themselves as men, and who thereby negated their femininity. Eleanora Proschaska, a volunteer in the Lutzow Freikorps, was the most celebrated of these cases. women were either killed in combat or they wound up being discovered, whence, as Mosse notes, "they were sent home to resume their assigned roles without complaint."99 After German military forces surrendered in early May 1945, demoralmade prospects for the formation of Freikorps ization and war-weariness even dimmer. A significant debate about such prospects developed at the These

turn of 1945/46, revolving around F. O. Ulm's article "Landsknecht Schmidt," was published in a number of German newspapers and depicted the apocryphal "Schmidt" as the stereotypical discontented veteran. Based

which

on discussions with former soldiers, Ulm drew several conclusions: first, that veterans were uninterested in the problems of peace and reconstruc? tion; second, that in the wake of combat, life for ex-soldiers had become they wanted in the territories for? merly occupied by Germany, they particularly resented having to work, to provisionment stand in line, or go cap-in-hand agencies; and third, that veterans were waiting to once again come together and fight, formdull, and that after taking

whatever

ing Vereine and Freikorps. Since there was no world war underway, would fight other Germans, as had their historical predecessors.

they

Ulms assertions generated a huge volume of mail to German newspapers, most of it from incensed veterans. One of their main objections was that Ulm had badly misread the popular mood. Most former soldiers, they 98. Hagemann, "Of 'Manly Valor' and 4German Honor,'" 193-94, 208, 211-14, 219; Hagemann,"Heldenmiitter, Kriegerbrauteund Amazonen,"179,185-95, Pape,"'Mannergluck,'" 116-24; Mosse, Nationalismand Sexuality, 18, 90-95, 97-99; and Ellen Spickernagel,"'So soil dein Bild auf unseren Fahnen schweben': Kultur und Geschlechterpolitik in der 3 (1994): 160-63, 166-68. Napoleonischen Ara,"Jahrbuchfur HistorischeFriedensforschung The best representationof this dichotomy, especially as it pertained to Freikorps,was a pair of famous paintings by the Saxon romantic artist Georg Friedrich Kersting, both dating from 1815. In the first picture, Kersten, a veteran ofthe Liitzow Freikorps,portrayed three of his comrades?all eventually killed?on duty at a forward post in an oak grove. The second painting depicted a lonely blond woman in white, again situated amid a cluster of oaks, winding wreaths.The names of the fallen heroes were shown engraved in the oaks. Spickernagel,"'So soil dein Bild,'" 1966-69. 99. Dirk-Alexander Reder," 'Natur und Sitte verbieten uns die WafFeder Zerstorung zu fiihren . . .': Patriotische Frauen zwischen Frieden und Krieg," Jahrbuchfiir Historische 3 (1944): 174-75; Hagemann, "Heldenmiitter," 196-99; and Mosse, Na? Friedensforschung tionalismand Sexuality, 101.

80

THE END OF THE FREEBOOTER

TRADITION

claimed, were fed up with war, with militarism, and with the doctrine of blind obedience, and if they still clothed themselves in their uniforms, as had been critically noted by Ulm, it was because they had nothing else to wear. There was, admittedly, a limited constituency for Freikorps voluntarism line, a among former POWs whose homes lay east of the Oder-Neisse group constituting (in 1947) perhaps one-fourth the total number of re? cently released prisoners. These men, said sympathetic comrades, "play with the idea of getting back their homes through armed service on behalf of one or another side in a possible war." Many of Ulm's critics felt, however, that he had grossly overestimated the number of veterans with such propensities. "Everybody back from the front is accused of wanting to form Freikorps" noted one letter-writer. "That is a very dangerous generalization." Fred Thide, writing from Munich in early 1947, agreed with this view: he noted that German youths were consumed by the mundane problems of existence, not by the possibilities for Freikorps ac? tivity that had kept the generation of 1920 enthralled.100 An even more important factor vis-a-vis Freikorps was the dense pres? of the occupation forces. After the First World War, not only because German authorities encouraged their

ence and vigilance Freikorps flourished

efforts to protect the established order, but because the Allies for a time allowed them to operate. Only the Rhineland was occupied, and although the Freikorps did not operate in that region, they successfully recruited zones. Worried about the threat of Bolshevism in from Allied-occupied Central and Eastern Europe, the Allies temporarily condoned Freikorps activities in the Baltic (1919) and the Ruhr (1920).101 The British, more? over, assumed an attitude in Upper Silesia that appeared sympathetic to German Selbstschutz (self-defense) formations; they were actually aiming 5 Dec. 1945; 29 Dec. 1945; 3 Jan. 1946; 5 Jan. 1946; 9 Jan. 1946; 16 100. Weser-Kurier, Jan. 1946; 26 Jan. 1946; 2 March 1946; and Die Neue Zeitung,28 Feb. 1947. For rigureson 28 May 1947. released POWs from the lost eastern provinces, see Weser-Kurier, 101. For allied policy toward Freikorpsin the Baltic provinces,see Venner,Baltikum,119; Hans-ErichVolkmann,"Der Bericht GeneralleutnantsWaltervon Eberhardt'Meine Tatigkeit 13 (1964): 728-33; Hans-ErichVolkmann,"Die im Baltikum,'" Zeitschrift fiir Ostforschung fiir Ostforschung jiingste Veroffentlichungzur BaltischenFrageder Jahre 1918-1919," Zeitschrift 14 (1965): 329-32; Arno Mayer, Politicsand Diplomacyof Peacemaking(New York, 1967), 135-37; Sullivan,"German Free Corps in the Bal? 317-18; Koch, Der deutscheBurgerkrieg, tic," 125; Jones, Hitler's Heralds, 114-15; Waite, Vanguardof Nazism, 100-3; and Arthur Walwort, Wilson and His Peacemakers (New York, 1968), 251-52. For Allied tolerance of Freikorpsactivity in the Ruhr, see J. H. Morgan, Assize of Arms (London, 1945), 146-53; George Eliasberg, Der Ruhrkriegvon 1920 (Bonn-Bad Godesberg, 1974), 212-17; Koch, und MilitdrKontrollein Der deutscheBurgerkrieg, 219-22; and Michael Salewski, Entwaffnung Deutschland1919-1921 (Munich, 1966), 40-49. Although the British and Italians were willing to allow German volunteer units to suppressa leftist uprising in the demilitarized areas of the Ruhr, the French continued to fear the German military more than the Red Army.As a reprisalfor Freikorpsoperations in the demilitarizedzone, they briefly occupied several towns in Hesse, including Frankfurt.

81

PERRY BIDDISCOMBE

to be impartial and to provide a balance to French support for insurgent of the 1919-21 Polish bands.102 In 1945, however, the conditions period did not obtain. This time, the Western Allies had fought alongside the Soviets, and they had no intention of allowing German volunteer forma? to operate against their eastern ally, nor did they intend to raise such units themselves. There were some German generals being held in captivity, such as Heinz Guderian and Felix Steiner, who were only too keen to form anti-Soviet Freikorps, but their illusions were eventually bro-

tions

ken.103 As for Allied policy vis-a-vis the Poles, even the British were more sympathetic to Polish irredentism, and if they had any doubts about shiftline, they certainly never ing the border as far west as the Oder-Neisse considered armed Germans as an acceptable counterweight. In addition, since the Allies prohibited all political activity for the first months of the occupation, there was a conspicuous absence of was for There little said a British targets Freikorps thuggery. political crime, Control Commission because the of a study, "partly emergence political party and national leaders on which the Allied authorities can rely must several

take time."104 Even once

German politicians acceptable to the Allies had were in shifting blame to the omnipresent occupiers successful reappeared, they for difficult situations.105 Politicians of the Weimar period had tried this same approach but without as much success, mainly because they had the Left signed a peace treaty with the victors. In this new environment, also comported itself far differently than was the case after the First World War, and thus provided less of a foil for potential bands of armed veterans. The Nazi regime had so thoroughly suppressed working-class parties and organizations that there were no insurrections or mass strikes in the faltering Third Reich, nor did the occupying powers have to face such outbursts. Even the Communists sheepishly played down demands for radical eco? nomic

at least, to channel prole? change and were willing, momentarily tarian exasperation into calls for intensified Allied denazification measures.106 The occupying powers of 1945 had also studied the Freikorps tradition and hoped

to benefit

from experience.107

"Forewarned

is forearmed"

was

102. Patricia Gajda, Postscriptto Victory:British Policy and the German-PolishBorderlands, 1919-1925 (Washington, D.C., 1982), 96-97, 122-33, 139-40. 103. Hartmann Lauterbacher,Erlebt und mitgestaltet:Kronzeugeeiner Epoche 1923-1945. Zu neuen Ufern nach Kriegsende(Preussisch Oldendorf, 1984), 342-43. For the only serious study contending that the Allies considered using German volunteer formations against the Russians, see Arthur Smith, Churchill'sGermanArmy:WartimeStrategyand Cold WarPolitics, 1943-1941 (Beverly Hills, 1977). 104. CCG(BE) Research Branch, HQ/2404 (Res), The Freikorps, 7 June 1945, PRO, FO 371/46876. 105. Diehl, The Thanks of the Fatherland,229-30. 106. Maier, "AHR Forum: The Two Postwar Eras,"331-32. 107. CCG(BE) Research Branch, HQ/2424 (Res), The Freikorps, 7 June 1945, PRO,

82

THE END OF THE FREEBOOTER

TRADITION

the Allied watchword.108 They realized that past Freikorps had been sup? ported materially and spiritually by the German Army, hence they recog? nized the importance of quickly dissolving the Wehrmacht.109 During a brief period after the war, when large bodies of disarmed German forces were still in formation, the Allies resolved to keep these men under the control of their commanders and under the precepts of German military justice,110 a decision that has recently drawn critical attention.111 Germans were prohibited from cheering their defeated armies or providing receptions for men marching home from the few areas outside Germany still occupied by the Wehrmacht.112 The Allies also ensured that when German they were not allowed to march troops were released from confinement, in from areas formed but were dispatched piecedetention bodies, away meal via rail or road transport.113 Moreover, tens of thousands of soldiers defined as potentially dangerous were only gradually and belatedly re? leased, particularly officers and NCOs ofthe Waffen-SS.114 Veterans' orga? nizations were banned, as were Herrenklubs, i.e., elite groupings of nobles, businessmen, militarists, and ex-Freikorps officers. Where such Herrenklubs were discovered in existence, they were raided and their leading members arrested (as happened to the Nationalklub von 1919 in Hamburg).115 And 371/46876; NA, Study on the Freikorps,NA, XL 17275, RG 226; and 21st AG, CI News Sheet no. 7, 5 Oct. 1944, Part I, PRO, WO 205/997. See also Diehl, The Thanksof the Fatherland,56-57. Influential officers like Colonel Dick White in SHAEF Counter-Intelligence?a future head of MI-5?were struck by the Freikorpsprecedent, and the "problems it created for the occupying forces."White called this an "interestingand important"issue. White to Sheen and MacLoed, 12 Feb. 1945, PRO, WO 219/1602. 108. USFET G-2 Weekly Intelligence Summary no. 33, 28 Feb. 1946, NA, State Dept. Decimal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Control (Germany),RG 59. 109. MI-14/15/530/44, The possibility of short and long-term German guerrilla and underground resistance,NA, 1097987, RG 226. 110. SHAEF G-3, Post-Hostilities Handbook, 20, PRO, WO 219/3868. 111. See, for instance, Chris Madsen,"Victims of Circumstance:The Execution of Ger? man Deserters by Surrendered German Troops under Canadian Control in Amsterdam, May 1945," CanadianMilitaryHistory2 (1993): 93-113; and Chris Madsen, The Royal Navy and GermanNaval Disarmament,1942-1941 (London, 1998), 87-90. 112. Daily Express,1 June 1945; and Maj. Elliot, Scarletto Green:A Historyof Intelligence in the CanadianArmy, 1903-1963 (Toronto, 1981), 347. 113. H. G. Sheen, SHAEF G-2 (CI) to SHAEF G-2 AOCC, 31 Jan. 1945, PRO, WO 67. Unauthorized movement of German 219/1578; and Diehl, The Thanksof the Fatherland, soldiers away from Wehrmacht concentration areas was rare because no one without discharge papers could obtain a ration card. Lt. Col. J. H. B. Lowe, Report on the Visit to the British Zone in Germany and British Sector in Berlin, Sept. 1945, PRO, FO 371/ 46935. Die EntlassungderdeutschenKriegs114. Arthur Smith, Heimkehraus demZweitenWeltkrieg: gefangenen(Stuttgart, 1985), 27-32, chaps. 2-4, 7; and Diehl, Thanks of the Fatherland, 57-58. 115. 21st Army Group Weekly Intelligence Summaryno. 3, 21 July 1945; no. 4, 28 July 1945, both in PRO, FO 371/46933; and BAOR Forthnightly Intelligence Summary no. 12, 6 Oct. 1945, PRO, FO 371/46935.

PERRY BIDDISCOMBE

83

finally, the provision of pensions was forbidden, which meant that veter? ans were forced to concern themselves with putting food on their tables rather than marching around in paramilitary formations.116 The Allies also "decommemorated" Freikorps as part of a wider policy of denazification and demilitarization. Freikorps monuments, many of them built

during the Nazi period, were destroyed under the stipulations of Control Council Directive no. 30, which called for memorials preserving the military or Nazi tradition to come under the wrecking ball. In Munich, for instance, the Americans stripped the Freikorps denkmal at the Giesinger Berg of the Freikorps emblems and unit names that had adorned it, and on the city council finished the job by order ing the demo? Communists lition of a martial-looking, nude statue that the Americans had left standing.117 In much the same way, Allied censorship control also reinforced the absence of mythologizers of the von Salomon ilk who could have tried, at least, to convert the tawdry performance of the few bands launched in legend. In the U.S. Zone, the Military Control Division maintained a watch over German literature that was supposed to unfold in two stages: "corrective" and "con1944/45

into the stuff of romantic

Government s Information

structive." The first of these phases was openly intrusive and was based on in assembling blacklists getting the help of German advisory committees of militaristic and nationalist writings, whereafter such works were culled from library holdings, starting in October 1945 with the Berlin Lending Library. In July 1946, the Americans issued a master list, banning 1,000 titles. The second, "constructive" phase was based on subtler interventions: through licensing the occupiers were supposed to arrangements, orientate

German publishers in "appropriate" directions.118 As noted above, no major literary figures emerged from the mediocre ranks of the Freikorps, but even if they had, they would have found it impossible to function under hostile Allied and Soviet oversight. The one in the new Freikorps was Zoberlein, who had all of Ley's Freikorps authority in southwest Germany.119 After May 1945, however, Zoberlein was too harassed to devote time toward propagandizing the Freikorps. He spent a short and precarious

writer

of any consequence been delegated seemingly

116. Diehl, The Thanks of the Fatherland,55, 58-60, 64-65, 71, 232, 240. 117. Gavriel D. Rosenfeld, "Monuments and the Politics of Memory: Commemorating Kurt Eisner and the Bavarian Revolutions of 1918-1919 in Postwar Munich," CentralEu? ropeanHistory 30 (1997): 234-35. 118. Die Neue Zeitung,21 Oct. 1945; 12 July 1946; Hermann Glaser, Kulturgeschichte der Deutschland derBundesrepublik (Munich, 1985), 1:138-39; Ralf Schnell,Die Literatur Bundesrepublik (Stuttgart, 1986), 84-85; and Edward Peterson, The AmericanOccupationof Germany:Retreat to Victory(Detroit, 1977), 157, 162. 119. ACC Report for the Moscow Meeting ofthe CFM, 1947, section II-Denazification, Part 9, Report on the French Zone of Occupation, PRO, FO 371/64352.

84

THE END OF THE FREEBOOTER

TRADITION

period underground, and then was interned by the Allies. In 1947 he was transferred to German custody and stood trial in the summer of 1948 on multiple counts of murder and attempted murder, charges related to the Penzberg massacre. Totally unreformed, Zoberlein argued that the Penzberg although he had operation was a justified suppression of Communism, his sense to claim that men had the enough reigns of control, and slipped that he had never authorized summary executions. He told the court that he had happily killed many enemies during the First World War, but was not capable of hanging his own countrymen. The court was not convinced and?judging Zoberlein a "fanatic National Socialist"?it condemned him to death. Although this sentence was commuted in 1949, Zoberlein spent the next nine years under lock and key, an experience he did not find conducive to literary productivity.120 Other surviving voices of the Front Generation?-Jiinger, von Salomon, muzzled and their books put on an "index." Jiinger's existing Johst?were body of work was tolerated by the Americans, although not by the Soviets, who restricted most of it. Jiinger was, however, subjected to a ban on publishing new material, partly because he refused to cooperate with the process, and deigned not even to fill out a Fragebogen. The were eager to see him gagged, a priority which they appar? ently impressed upon the British. Both Allied powers were cognizant of the fact that his pamphlet "Der Friede" was circulating illegally, and that denazification

Americans

some of its readership consisted Von Salomon was incarcerated

of underground Hitler Youth remnants.121 at the end of the war, being labeled a in 1946.122 Johst so drew the ire of the

"security threat," but released Americans that his entire catalogue was banned, although the Soviets per? mitted the circulation of eleven of his titles, including his earlier, pacifist works. Johst was also subject to denazification and after numerous hear? ings and appeals, was classified as a "major offender." Thereafter, he was sent to a labor camp and prohibited from publishing for ten years.123 Given the weight exercised by the Allied authorities, the most signifi? cant danger during the early occupation period lay not with the reconsti-

3: 67, 70, 87-89, 112-15; Tenfelde, 120. Bauer et al, eds., Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, "ProletarischeProvinz,"380-81; and J. M. Ritchie, GermanLiteratureunderNationalSocial? ism (London, 1983), 101. 121. Die Neue Zeitung,31 May 1946; 12 July 1946;Jiinger, Tagebucher 3, 548-49; Paetel, ErnstJiinger,173, 194; Franz Baumer, ErnstJiinger(Berlin, 1967), 80; Wolfgang Kaempfer, ErnstJiinger(Stuttgart,1981), 47; S. D. Stark,"ErnstJiinger and the Peace," Queen'sQuarterly 54 (1947): 147-51; Louis Clair, "ErnstJiinger: From Nihilism to Tradition,"Partisan Review 14, no. 5 (1947): 462; and USFET G-2 Weekly Intelligence Summary no. 31, 14 Feb. 1946, NA, State Dept. Decimal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Control (Germany),RG 59. 122. von Salomon, Fragebogen, 416-525. 123. Die Neue Zeitung,31 May 1946; 12 July 1946; and ChristianZentner and Friedmann of the ThirdReich (New York, 1991), 1:475. Bedurftig, eds., The Encyclopedia

PERRY BIDDISCOMBE

85

could hardly train or drill under tution of open military forces?which with a revival of the Fehme and the watchful eyes of the occupiers124?but of the 1920-23 Freikorps squads typical period.125 Evidence underground collected by Allied counterintelligence agencies suggests that several groups of this type actually took shape in occupied Germany. Although the Nazi Freikorps were supposed to have been dissolved in May 1945 and mem? bers were prohibited from killing occupation troops,126 the Counter Intel? ligence Corps believed that some members had been assigned "special missions," such as terrorizing Germans trying to cooperate with the oc? cupying powers.127 Certainly, local Freikorps fragments went to ground and continued to enjoy a nebulous existence, particularly in southwest Germany. The French charged in 1946 that there were 2,000 Freikorpsmanner in this area, still under the leadership of Zoberlein, and the Americans identified elements of Freikorps Adolf Hitler in Ingolstadt, Munich, and Garmisch Partenkirchen. Analogous resistance movements were reported in Eastern Bavaria and Franconia, where a Freikorps Schill busily drew up documents membership rosters and issued clothing and false identification to its special assignment teams.128 Fehme movements were identified in the area and the Saarland?the latter, interestingly, was both antiNuremberg Allied and anti-Nazi in character.129 In the eastern provinces occupied by the Soviets and the Poles, similar organizations took shape. In the Cosel were region of Upper Silesia, fifteen members of Freikorps Oberschlesien uncovered by the Poles, and at Gross Strehlitz, an outfit called Freikorps 124. For instances of young Germans caught conducting drill exercises or attempting to hold maneuvres, see The Stars and Stripes,12 July 1945; USFET G-2 Weekly Intelligence Summary no. 31, 14 Feb. 1946; Eucom Intelligence Summary no. 37, 6 July 1948, both in NA, State Dept. Decimal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59; and US Constabulary G-2 Weekly Intelligence Report no. 17, 4 Oct. 1946, Annex no. 1, NA, WWII Operations Reports, RG 407. 125. CCG (BE) Research Branch, HQ/4155 (Res), Intermediate Resistance in Ger? many, 25 April 1945, NA, 129323, RG 226; CCG(BE) Research Branch, HQ/4204 (Res), The Freikorps,7 June 1945, PRO, FO 371/46876; and USFET G-2 Weekly Intelligence Summary no. 33, 28 Feb. 1946, NA, State Dept. Decimal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Con? trol (Germany), RG 59. 126. GSI 8th Army,Joint Weekly Intelligence Summary no. 5, 3 Aug. 1945, PRO, FO 371/46611; CSDIC/WEA BAOR, Report on Nursury, SIR 28, 18 April 1946, Appendix H, NA, ETO MIS-Y-Sect. Intelligence and Interrogation Records 1945-46, RG 332; Brit? ish Troops Austria, Joint Weekly Intelligence Summary no. 5, 3 Aug. 1945, PRO, FO 1007/300; 5 Corps, Weekly Intelligence Summary no. 1, 11 July 1945, PRO, FO 1007/ 299; and MI-14, Mitropa no. 4, 8 Sept. 1945, PRO, FO 371/46967. 127. History of the CounterIntelligenceCorps,26:44, NA. 128. ACC Report of the Moscow CFM Meeting, Feb. 1947, section II, Denazification, part 9, French Report, PRO, FO 371/64352; and MI-14, Mitropa no. 12, 29 Dec. 1945, PRO, FO 371/55630. 129. USFET G-2 Weekly Intelligence Summary no. 42, 2 May 1946, NA, State Dept. Decimal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59; and 250 British Liaison Mission Report no. 7, April 1947, PRO, FO 371/64350.

86

THE END OF THE FREEBOOTER

TRADITION

Gross Mossdorf

of thirty men.130 managed to assemble a complement What was notable about these various movements was their almost uniform

quiescence and lethargy, especially when compared to Freikorps remnants that had waged a brutal terrorist campaign in the early 1920s. In the summer of 1945, Freikorps Adolf Hitler warned several Germans in Ba? varia not to cooperate with the Americans, and in Westphalia, the west? ern Freikorps Fiihrer abused the Regierungsprasident of Arnsberg for anti-Nazi detach? sentiments. This group even threatened a Military Government ment in Hagen because of a death sentence passed on three war crimi? nals. However, no one associated with these cells actually assaulted anybody. In fact, the only underground Freikorpsmanner who even called for immediate attacks against the Allies were in Carinthia, where British authorities that such enthusiasts were not in fact original members of the Adolf Hitler, as they had claimed, but isolated individuals seek? Freikorps a ing greater notoriety for their efforts than they would otherwise have merited.131 Young men in Freikorps Schill were specifically instructed "to suspected

refrain from all political activity," in order to be available should more favorable circumstances eventually arise.132This hesitancy to engage in violence mentioned sense of demoralization was due partly to the overwhelming above. But even more so, it was due to the presence and wariness of forces, who devoted considerable efforts toward infiltrating pseudo-Freikorps and severely prosecuted participants brought be? fore military courts. The Allies knew that their own lack of prudence after World War I, combined with an absence of political courage on the part of Weimar authorities, had contributed to a revival ofthe nationalist

Allied

occupation

in Germany133?and they had no intention of repeating this mistake. In fact, the authorities went so far as to arrest and try surviving members ofthe post-World War I Vehme squads,134 if only as a warning to would-be successors. movement

VoiskaSSSR Mai 1945-1950 (Moscow, 1975), 157; and Jan Misztal, 130. Pogranichnye "Dzialalnosc PropagandowaPodziemiaPoniemieckiego na SlaskuOpolskim w Latach 19451949," KwartalnikHistoryczny85 (1978): 53. 131. USGCC, Observationson the Situation in Munich, 16 July 1945, NA, State Dept. Decimal Files 1945-1949, 740.00119 Control (Germany),RG 59; MI-14, Mitropa no. 4, 8 Sept. 1945, PRO, FO 371/46967; and ACA Intelligence Organisation,Joint Weekly In? telligence Summary no. 11, 14 Sept. 1945, PRO, FO 371/46967. 132. MI-14, Mitropa no. 12, 29 Dec. 1945, PRO, FO 371/55630. 133. CCG(BE) Research Branch, HQ/4204 (Res), The Freikorps,7 June 1945, PRO, FO 371/46876; and Robert Kempner,Blueprint for the Nazi undergroundas Revealed in Confidential Police Reports, 30 Oct. 1943, NA, OMGUS ODI Miscellaneous Reports, RG 260. 134. Die Neue Zeitung, 16 Aug. 1946; 2 Sept. 1946; 17 Feb. 1947; 28 Feb. 1947; 3 4 Dec. 1946; 7 Dec. 1946; Neue Wiirttembergische March 1947; Weser-Kurier, Zeitung,28 Feb. 1947; and 4 March 1947.

PERRY B1DDISCOMBE

87

reach of the Allies diminEventually, of course, the interventionary and the proclaished, especially after the creation of the Bundesrepublik Statute in 1949. Still, even at this point, one mation of the Occupation sees neither signs of a paramilitary revival nor any belated celebration of the mediocre units that had taken the field in 1944/45. Recent work by provides some of the reasons why. Diehl argues that sensitive undertaken legislation by the new Bundesrepublik, including the War Vic? tims Benefit Law, the 131 Law, and the Prisoner-of-War Compensation to create a package of social welfare that gave veterans Law, combined

James Diehl

little to complain about, and which gave them an important stake in the new system. The economic boom of the 1950s greased the wheels of and gave the Bundesrepublik a cushion unavailable to its reintegration, Weimar predecessor. Thus, the "veterans issue" seemed to fade away after the early 1950s. In addition, the authorities of the new Bundesrepublik were willing

to use the full authority of the state against anything that its liberal-democratic character. In 1953, for instance, after a outfit called Freikorps Deutschland had shown paramilitary-cum-political signs of growth in the Hamburg and Bremen areas, it was outlawed and challenged

its leaders taken into custody on charges of conspiracy and subversion.135 Another factor of equal importance was that the Cold War created an consensus about the role of military power in a modern unprecedented and that the new army was provided with a fresh, civilianized society, ethos of responsibility.136 By the mid-1950s, the Bundesrepublik was al? within a of limited a restrictions, ready rearming regime only develop? ment which occurred a full seven years quicker than the corresponding rearmament during the interwar period. There was no conceivable need for independent volunteer formations, and even some right-wingers said that Germany was better off in the absence of such a spirit.137 In fact, the kind of military brushfires typical of Freikorps fighting became impossible in a Cold War climate,

at least in Central

Europe.

135. Wellington Long, The New Nazis of Germany(Philadelphia, 1968), 98-99; Hans Helmuth Knutter, Ideologiendes Rechtsradikalismus in Nachkriegsdeutschland (Bonn, 1961), 37; and Kurt Tauber, Beyond Eagle and Swastika:GermanNationalismsince 1945 (Middletown, 1967), 2: 1116-17. After its formation in the summer of 1951, FreikorpsDeutschlandmanaged to train about 2,000 men, although arms had not been obtained before the group was dissolved. Most of the leaders were former mid-level Nazis, although a few old Freikorps and SA figures were also involved, particularlyWalter Stennes. The Freikorpswas probably dissolved in order to prevent it from becoming a legal channel for elements of the Socialist Reich Party,which had already been prohibited. 136. Diehl, The Thanks of the Fatherland,chaps. 4-7, 233-42. See also Smith, Heimkehr aus dem ZweitenWeltkrieg,180-86. A few German training officers and NCOs attempted to create a Freikorpsethos in the Bundeswehr'snew airborne infantry,but the plot was uncovered and the offending officers and noncoms arrested or transferredto other units. Tauber, The Eagle and the Swastika,1:312-13. 137. Tauber, The Eagle and the Swastika,1:850.

88

THE END OF THE FREEBOOTER

TRADITION

However

one thinks about the past and its relationship to the present? and there are several different perspectives on this question138?it is apparent that the 1944/45

Freikorps had little claim for inclusion in collective memory. of thought suggests that there is no single truth about the past or that if such a truth exists, it is irrevocable; thus institutional "memory" meets the needs of the present, reflecting contemporary and hegemonies One

school

structures of power.139 The reasons why Nazi Freikorps fail to measure up in such an interpretation are obvious: recalling the movement suited the needs of none of the groups dominating postwar German society, and seen in Foucauldian terms, the movement fell outside the bounds of rea? son and thus rendered itself bereft of meaning. Considered in terms of doctrine of "positive forgetting," disregarding the Freikorps free Germany from the burdens of its past, thus, in a small for a renewal of values. A second school way, creating the preconditions of thought on collective memory suggests that the past cannot be twisted too far in service of the present, but that a sense of the past reinvigorates the Nietzschean

also helped

the organic to oblivion

bonds that supposedly unite society, and that people relegate Once again, whatever is not worth commemorating.140 if such Durkheimian commemoration is the central however, issue, the 1944/45 Freikorps movement fails to qualify as intrinsically important. The

relative failure and barbarism of the Nazi Freikorps did not leave a good taste in most mouths, and the movement did not generate the rhetoric or the related material artifacts necessary to forge historical memory. If Freikorpsmanner did not brag of their exploits

and if there was no attempt to save

138. The categories on which this discussionis based are drawn (albeit in much amended form) from Barry Schwartz,"The Reconstruction of Abraham Lincoln," in CollectiveReed. David Middleton and Derek Edwards (London, 1990), 81-82; and Barry membering, Schwartz,"The Social Context of Commemoration:A Study in Collective Memory,"Social Forces61 (1982): 376-77. 139. James Soderholm,"Byron,Nietzsche, and the Mystery of Forgetting,"Clio 23 (1993): Criticism(Min56; Paul de Man, Blindnessand Insight:Essaysin the Rhetoricof Contemporary neapolis, 1983), 145-51; Arthur Marwick, The Nature of History (London, 1970), 78-81; George Herbert Mead, The Philosophyof the Present(La Salle, 1959), 28-31; Graeme Gilloch, WalterBenjaminand the City (Cambridge,1996), 107-8; Mary Douglas, Myth and Metropolis: Evans-Pritchard (Brighton, 1980), 83-85; Maurice Halbwachs,On CollectiveMemory(Chicago, 1992); David Thelen, "Memory and American History,"Journalof AmericanHistory75 (1989): 1123-27; Vincent Descombes, ModernFrenchPhilosophy(Cambridge, 1980), 116-17; David Lowenthal, The Past Is a ForeignCountry(Cambridge, 1985); and Eric Hobsbawm,"Intro? duction: InventingTraditions,"in The Inventionof Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge, 1983), 12-14. 140. David Middleton and Derek Edwards,"Introduction,"and Schwartz,"The Recon? struction of Abraham Lincoln," both in CollectiveRemaining,7-12, 82-83; Lewis Coser, "Introduction:Maurice Halbwachs, 1877-1945," in On CollectiveMemory,25-26; Ernest Renan, "Qu'est-ce qu'une Nation?" in Oevres Completesde Ernest Renan (Paris, 1947), 1:891-92, 904; Benedict Anderson, ImaginedCommunities(London, 1991), 199-201; and Iwona Irwin-Zarecka,Framesof Remembrance: TheDynamicsof Collective Memory(New Brunswick, 1944), 126-28.

PERRY BIDDISCOMBE documents

89

for a possible archive, then there And finally, a third school of thought that at the basis of a collective un-

or letters as the foundation

was no basis for later remembrance.

on collective memory suggests conscious lay primordial archetypes: subconscious, hereditary patterns of organization that give rise to primal images, myths, and historical memories.141 But yet again, in such a scheme the 1944/45 Freikorps move? signals no basis for recognition. or acts that did not hit the right tone ment

in this view, objects suggested by an archetype were, and therefore forgotten.142 There can be Obviously,

"meaningless" by definition, little doubt that the new Freikorps movement did not suggest the heroic archetype, i.e., the monomyth of knights errant on a mission in service of a higher cause.143 In summing up, one

finds evidence suggesting three distinct reasons version of the Freikorps movement is absent from the why the 1944/45 historical record, and each of these factors is linked. First, Germany's social and political condition at the end of World War II was unsuitable for the support of independent, paramilitary units, mainly because of the of the country's defeat and the limitations imposed by Allied Second, because of the miserable failure of the attempted occupation. the units launched in 1944/45 did not embody the renaissance, Freikorps magnitude

Freikorps tradition (as generally understood), nor did they reflect a broader heroic archetype. Virtually ignored in everyday talk and without much of a material record, these volunteer units did not inspire the resonance necessary for the development of a further phase of the Freikorps legend. In addi? Nazi to force the belated adoption of Freikorps themes as tion, attempts a rallying point for diehard resistance efforts artificial and were drained of the spontaneity

were

too

self-consciously to the original Freikorps idea. And third, even had various factors been more favorable, the ranks of the 1944/45 Freikorps did not include the type of talented writers who could have provided the movement with a historical profile, intrinsic

or have inspired the requisite degree of patriotic panoply. This failing was due directly to the lack of an elite character in the movement. Thus, there were no postwar discourses about the 1944/45 or negative. As for the Freikorps legend?with and no demonstration

regeneration,

Freikorps, either positive

its 140 year genealogy?there was no of applicability to the modern world.

141. C. G. Jung, Die Archetypenund das kollektiveUnbewusste(Olten, 1976), 55-57; Richard Evans,Jung on ElementaryPsychology(New York, 1976), 65-74; and Marie-Louise von Franz, C. G.Jung: His Myth in Our Time (New York, 1975), 126, 128-29, 133-34. 142. Mircea Eliade, cited in Boni Shorter, "Memory in Service of Psyche," in Memory, History,Cultureand the Mind, ed. Thomas Butler (Oxford, 1989), 68. 143. For the heroic archetype, see Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a ThousandFaces (Cleveland, 1956).

90

THE END OF THE FREEBOOTER

TRADITION

Thus, the theme was no longer recognized as an element in a more gen? eral, patriotic history, but became the sole property of the radical, rightwing fringe, which it remains today.144 The

University

of Victoria

144. The term Freikorpsremains a source of inspiration for neo-Nazis. In May 1997, Freikorpsund Bund Oberlandmanagedto gather about 400 people in Schliersee Kameradschaft in order to celebrate the seventy-sixth anniversaryof the Battle of Annaberg. In February of the following year, four teenage members of FreikorpsBerlin were suspected of participating in a string of home invasions,robberies,and beatings."AntifaschitischeNachrichten" 6/1997, http://www.infolinks.de.medien/an/1977/06/011.htm, as of 6 Aprill 1998; and 26 Feb. 1998. BerlinerMorgenpost,