A Freikorps recruitment poster
The Freikorps were German volunteer units that were most famous for their role in the early 1920s fighting against the new Weimar Republic and leftist groups such as the Spartacists, Bavarian Soviet Republic, and even the Soviet Union during the November Revolution and the Russian Civil War. The Freikorps roamed the countryside and killed with impunity, fighting against republican loyalists and triggering notorious assassinations, serving as a precursor to the Nazi Party. The Freikorps put down communist insurrections both back home in Bavaria and Berlin as well as in East Prussia, Silesia, Poland, and the Baltics, and they were racist against Slavs and Jews, and they were officially disbanded in 1920.
History[]
Early history[]
The first Freikorps was founded in 1759 by King Frederick the Great of Prussia as volunteer forces for the Hussars at the the time of the Seven Years' War. The Freikorps soldiers were not regarded highly and were usually sent to do menial tasks such as a sentry, but in the War of the Bavarian Succession in 1778, Germans, Hungarians, Lithuanians, Poles, Turks, Tatars, Cossacks, Croats, Serbs, Albanians, and Bosnians formed the units at the time, with Slavs being called "Hungarians" or "Croats" and the Muslim soldiers being called "Turks". Austria even began to form Freikorps units, with 37,000 people serving as volunteers in their army during the Napoleonic Wars. The Prussians formed Freikorps at the same time, with the King's German Legion, Black Brunswickers, and Lutzow Free Corps fighting against France. This time, however, it was motivated by nationalism and not by money, and the Freikorps' bravery in war would lead to it becoming a symbol of German nationalism.
Weimar era[]
Freikorps soldiers with a tank in the 1920s
The Freikorps was re-created in the aftermath of World War I, consisting of Imperial German Army troops that were returning home but felt unable to have a civilian life. They were paramilitary groups, and they were inspired by German nationalism and pan-Germanism, fighting in the Baltics as well as in Germany itself. The Freikorps crushed communist revolts in Germany during the 1918-1919 November Revolution, fought against the Bolsheviks in Eastern Europe during the Russian Civil War, Estonian War of Independence, Latvian War of Independence, and other nearby conflicts with the newly-formed Soviet Union, and crushing Polish rebellions in Silesia; in some instances, they also fought against the independent countries and massacred civilians that they believed were Bolsheviks. They were accused of massacring Slavic people in the countries and of ethnic cleansing, and it became obvious that they were far-right. The Freikorps was officially disbanded in 1920, but they launched the failed Kapp Putsch against the Weimar Republic government, and they were eventually put down by popular action against them. Adolf Hitler would later purge the former Freikorps leaders in the 1934 Night of the Long Knives, and former Freikorps commanders such as Ernst Rohm were killed, while others would be forced to turn in their battle flags to pledge their allegiance to Nazi Germany.