Freikorps

Freikorps ("Free Corps") was a name applied to a number of nongovernment paramilitary groups that sprang into existence throughout Germany beginning in December 1918, immediately after the nation's defeat in World War I. The Freikorps consisted of recently discharged veterans, both enlisted men and officers, as well as an admixture of unemployed and discontented civilian youths. By the 1920s, more than 65 corps were scattered throughout the country. Freikorps members shared an intense nationalism and reactionary conservatism. They took it upon themselves, often with unofficial sanction from the Weimar government, to put down leftwing demonstrations and uprisings in Berlin, Bremen, Brunswick, Hamburg, Halle, Leipzig, Silesia, Thuringia, and the Ruhr. The Freikorps often operated as right-wing terrorist organizations, and they assassinated officials and politicians identified as leftist or communist. The highest-profile assassination ascribed to the Freikorps was that of Walther Rathenau, German foreign minister, in 1922. In the wake of the chaotic despair fueled by the Treaty of Versailles, the Freikorps nurtured the right-wing sentiments that found their most significant expression in the Nazi Party (NSDAP). The Weimar Republic made use of the Freikorps however it could, but the movement was suppressed as official police forces and the regular army grew strong enough to suppress leftist and other antigovernment activity. Many Freikorps members were absorbed into the rising Nazi Party, and a portion of the Freikorps survived virtually intact as the basis of the Nazi Party's strongarm Sturmabteilung (SA) ("Storm Troopers") organization, which was led by a former Freikorps commander, Ernst Röhm.