Book Review: Vanguard of Nazism: The Free Corps Movement in Postwar Germany, 1918–1923
| Author | R. Flenley |
| Date | 01 March 1954 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070205400900113 |
| Published date | 01 March 1954 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
BOOK REVIEWS
61
VANGUARD
OF
NAZISM:
THE
FREE
CORPS
MOVEMENT
IN
POSTWAR
GERMANY,
1918-1923.
By
Robert
G.
L.
Waite.
1952.
(To-
ronto:
S.
J.
Reginald
Saunders
&
Co.
344pp. $7.50)
This
book,
in
origin
a
Harvard
doctoral
dissertation,
makes
a
valuable
contribution to
the
post-1918
history
of Germany.
It
presents
as
clear
a
picture
as
we
are
likely
to
get
of
the dark
and confused
story
of
the
Free
Corps Movement,
amply
sup-
ported
by
quotation
from
memoirs
of
the
Free
Corps
leaders
or
members, and
well-written.
No
less
important,
it
brings
out
the
relation
of
the
movement to
the later
Nazi
revolution.
Dr.
Waite
traces
the
rise
of
the
movement
as
a
product
of
the
war
and
the
defeat
of
1918,
with
elements derived
from
the
pre-war youth
movement.
Its
various
and largely
independent
units
rose
haphazardly, under
their
individual
leaders
such
as
Ehrhardt,
in
the
confusion
of
1918-19.
Its
outstanding
adven-
ture
was
probably
the
vain
attempt
to
regain
the
East
Baltic
lands,
but
it
found
opportunity
in
crushing
the
leftist
risings
of
1918-19
in
Berlin
and
Munich.
Herein
it
fought
ostensibly
for
the
new
republican
government
of
Ebert,
but
it
had
no
loyalty
to
that
government
as
was
shown
in
its
support
of
the
Kapp
Putsch
of
1920
and
elsewhere.
In
1923,
however,
after
a
period
of
underground
activity,
it
was
again,
or
so
its
historians
claimed,
the
defender
of
the
Reich against
separatism
in
the
Ruhr
and
in
Bavaria.
This
claim
Dr.
Waite
denies,
bringing out
the
irrespon-
sible,
almost
anarchic,
nature
of
the
Free
Corps'
activities, their
brutality
and
"savage nihilism,"
accompanied
by
hundreds
of
murders,
such
as
those
of
Erzberger
and
Rathenau.
The
Weimar
government, or
ministers
such as
Noske and
Gessler,
bore
some
responsibility
for
these activities,
at
times
by
positive
support,
in
part
by
condoning
or
failing
to
punish
their
crimes.
There
is
no
doubt
that
the
Free
Corps
made
a
substantial
contribution
to
the
rise
and
victory of
Nazism.
They
(or
some
of
them)
used
the
Swastika
badge
as
early
as
1919;
they
derided
democracy
and adopted
some of
the
mystique
of
the
Filehrer.
They
were
to
supply
leaders
and
followers,
even whole
units
such
as
the
Ehrhardt
Brigade,
to
the
Nazi
cause.
They
adopted
the
Labour
Corps
technique
for
training
recruits.
And
in
the
days
of
Nazi
triumph
they
were
acclaimed
as
the
"first
soldiers
of
the
Nazi
Reich."
Dr.
Waite
gives
good
reason
for
refusing
to
identify them
with
the
Nazi
Movement.
He
does
indeed
entitle
his
book
"Vanguard of
Nazism,"
and
might
more
strictly
have
called
it
Forerunners
of
Nazism,
since
a
Vanguard is
in
fact
an organic
part
of
a
larger
force.
"The
clearest impression
left
on
the
reader
of
their
memoirs,"
he
sums
up
(p.
276)
"is
that
the
men of
the Free
Corps did
not
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