Democrats, Freikorps and Red Terror

["Bertil Häggman" <bertil.haggman@helsingborg.se>]

>> Nevertheless the murders of Liebknecht and Luxemburg can be seen as
>> prefiguring the excessive extra-judicial use of lethal force first by 
>> the Freikorps and then by the SS, etc. But that again is a long way 
>> from making saints of them.


It is in my opinion not correct to link the assassinations
of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg to the violence
used by the National Socialists. The assassinations in
Berlin were random, although admittedly there were
a couple of other assassinations linked to the
Freikorps (although I have not seen any evidence 
that the assassinations were ordered by the Freikorps leadership.
Rather it was Freikorps members acting on their own).

I have in earlier postings mentioned a number of Freikorps
leaders who were executed by SS. Instead the Freikorps was
the opposite of Hitler's collective assassins. Of course the
Freikorps members were not "saints" but they significantly
contributed to put down communist uprisings. Especially the
Bavarian "Raeterepublik" was a terrible leftist failure with
plundering and looting in Munich. Police records were burned
and one happy person, the new Red Police President Koeberl, was
overjoyed. He had served a sentence of moral turpitude and in 
1903-1907 had been arrested every year for burglary, forgery,
assault etc. No he oversaw the burning of the damning 
evidence against him.

It did not take long of Red Terror before the Freikorps was 
called upon to rout the Red Army in Bavaria. General Noske 
suggested calling in the Von Epp Freikorps stationed
in Thuringia. When the Freikorps approached Munich
the Red Army started executing hostages. Twenty were
killed and the horribly mutilated bodies of the prominent
Munich citizens were displayed at the Luitpold Gymnasium.
Now things got out of hand and 30 April to 2 May 1919 the
Red Terror reigned in Munich.

So it was communist action, revolution and terror against
reaction from democrats, who used the Freikorps as
instrument for liberating Bavaria, to mention one example.

Best wishes

Bertil Haggman