The Birth of the Nazis: How the Freikorps Blazed a Trail for Hitler

357 Pages·2004·10.612 MB·English

by  Nigel H. Jones

Nigel Jones is a historian, biographer and broadcaster, and
former Assistant Editor of History Today and BBC History
magazines. He has written lives of the writer Patrick Hamilton,
Rupert Brooke, and Oswald Mosley, and his study of the Great
War, The War Walk, is being reissued in 2004. His latest book is
a re-examination of the Edwardian era for BBC Books.
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A B R I E F H I S T O R Y OF
THE BIRTH
OF THE NAZIS
Nigel Jones
Foreword by Michael Burleigh
ROBINSON
London
Constable 6c Robinson Ltd
3 The Lanchesters
162 Fulham Palace Road
London W6 9ER
www.constablerobinson.com
First published in 1987 by John Murray (Publishers) Ltd
50 Albemarle Street, London W1X 4BD
This revised and updated edition published by Robinson,
an imprint of Constable 6c Robinson Ltd, 2004
Copyright © Nigel Jones 1987, 2004
Foreword copyright © Michael Burleigh 2004
The right of Nigel Jones to be identified as the author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition
that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold,
hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover
other than that in which it is published and without a similar
condition including this condition being imposed on the
subsequent purchaser.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in
Publication data is available from the British Library
ISBN 1-84119-925-7
ISBN 978-1-84119-925-2
Printed and bound in the EU
2468 10 9753
To Ernst Jünger (1895-1998)
Fighter & Writer
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my thanks to the following
institutions and individuals for help in the writing of this
book: Herr Ernst Jünger, Professor Horst Muhleisen, the
staff of the Staatsbibliothek für Zeitgeschichte Stuttgart, the
London Library, the Wiener Library, and the Imperial War
Museum; also my editors Antony Wood and Roger
Hudson, my colleague Colin Parkes for suggesting the title,
Ms. Elaine Koster for typing the manuscript, and the staff of
the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper.
NIGEL JONES
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations and Maps ix
Foreword by Michael Burleigh xi
Introduction xvii
1 Birth of the Stormtrooper 1
2 Collapse of an Empire 14
3 ‘Revolution or Republic?* 32
4 The First Freikorps 47
5 ‘Spartacus Week* 60
6 The Twin Murders: Liebknecht and Luxemburg 70
7 Maercker’s March 84
8 Strikes and Street Fights 95
9 The Freebooting Spirit 107
10 The Baltic Campaign 123
11 The Munich Soviet 139
12 Versailles: Resistance or Submission? 159
13 The Kapp Putsch * 170
viii CONTENTS
14 The Red Army of the Ruhr 192
15 The Politics of Murder 203
16 Enter Hitler: The Beerhall Putsch 230
Epilogue: The Fate of the Freikorps 261
Afterword 271
Appendix A The Main Freikorps, leaders, dates,
fate, size, and insignia 281
Appendix B Freikorps members later prominent
in Nazi Germany 297
Selective Bibliography 311
Index 317
ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS
Plates
A Freikorps recruiting poster
General Ritter von Epp, Freikorps leader
Friedrich Ebert, first President of the Weimar Republic
Revolutionary Spartacists, Berlin, January 1919
Spartacist leader Karl Liebknecht, 4 January 1919
Defence Minister Gustav Noske
A Freikorps unit moves in to crush the chaotic Soviet Republic,
May 1919
Insurrection in Kiel during the Kapp Putsch, March 1920
Members of the ‘Red Army of the Ruhr* on parade, Spring 1920
Hitler at the time of the Beerhall Putsch in Munich, November
1923
Great War hero General Erich von Ludendorff
Nazi demonstration in central Munich during the Beerhall Putsch,
November 1923
♦All images are courtesy of akg-images
X ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS
Maps
Germany xvi
Berlin 46