BUCHRUCKER, BRUNO ERNST

BUCHRUCKER, BRUNO ERNST, officer; commanded the illegal Black Reichswehr.*A veteran of the 1919 Baltic campaigns who had been discharged for complicity in the Kapp* Putsch, he was inexplicably given command of the Black Reichswehr in 1923 by Lieutenant-Colonel Fedor von Bock, chief-of-staff of Berlin's* Third Reichswehr Division. A diehard monarchist, he hoped that passive resistance to France's Ruhr occupation* would escalate into a war that might force a change in government. When Gustav Stresemann* ended passive resistance in September 1923, he was outraged. Under his command the Black Reichswehr units stationed at Berlin's Ku¨strin barracks planned a putsch for late September aimed at forming a military cabinet and renewing resistance against France. But when events in Bavaria* induced a state of emergency, thus enhancing the authority of General Hans von Seeckt,* he correctly perceived that the army would not support the effort. When he attempted to cancel the putsch, however, his troops declared their resolve to proceed, with or without his leadership. Buchrucker thereupon led an ineffectual march on the Ku¨strin barracks. Arrested and tried for treason, he was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment. In reference to the putsch, he exclaimed that a ‘‘people that always wants to go the safe way will go safely into enslavement.'' Buchrucker had served only a fraction of his term when President Hindenburg* pardoned him. He later joined Otto Strasser's* Schwarze Front (Black Front), an organization of disillusioned Nazis opposed to Hitler.* Arrested in June 1933, he was released before Christmas of the same year.