Republic of Violence: The German Army and Politics, 1918-1923

Abstract

November 1918 did not bring peace to Germany. Although the First World War was over, Germany began a new and violent chapter as an outbreak of civil war threatened to tear the country apart. The birth of the Weimar Republic, Germany’s first democratic government, did not begin smoothly as republican institutions failed to re-establish centralized political and military authority in the wake of the collapse of the imperial regime. Coupled with painful aftershocks from defeat in the Great War, the immediate postwar era had only one consistent force shaping and guiding political and cultural life: violence. This dissertation is primarily an examination of the development of a broad atmosphere of violence created by the deliberate efforts of the Freikorps movement to influence political and cultural activity in Germany in the immediate aftermath of World War I. Principally, it explores the activities of Freikorps units and their allies to use tactics and methods to threaten and intimidate their enemies and the civilian populace, and engage in what Hans von Seeckt called a broader “spiritual battle” for the fate of Germany. It traces the development, proliferation and termination of a violent network of civilian and militant organizations that served as a mouthpiece for a dissident and disaffected segment of German society after the war. It is a history of civil-military relations in an era when the boundaries between the two had become blurred and all but disappeared. It highlights a moment when citizens sought to settle their disputes, not just through democratic elections and political compromises, but also with rifles, pistols and murder.