Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

INTERLUDE 243At this moment, a young officer in Hindenburg's headquarters had adecisive idea; a sudden inspiration of historical significance. The armyhad fallen to pieces, but great groups of unemployed soldiers had beenleft behind. Although the majority of them were opposed to war, stillthere was a minority ready for anything. If only a small army ofvolunteers could be organized, this force, for lack of armed resistance,would soon become master of the country. This was the idea of CaptainKurt von Schleicher, aide of Hinden-burg and Groener. Hindenburg atfirst would have nothing to do with such a troop of mercenaries andbandits, but Schleicher, who was in private conversation a man ofwinning eloquence, was able to persuade him. This was the origin of theGerman 'Free Corps,' the 'murderers' army,' of which later the newGerman army was to consist. The outward pretext for the forming ofthis army was the communistic revolts in several different parts of theReich. The first one was in January, 1919, when there was a rebellion inBerlin that for a time looked dangerous. Even the Allies for a short timetacitly agreed with this revival of the German army. For with them, too,there was fear of Communism. The German Free Corps fought withAllied approval in the first months of 1919 in the former Russian-Balticprovinces, Lithuania and Latvia, against the Bolsheviks. During thistime the English fleet was fighting the Bolsheviks in near-by Estonia;Allied troops, the British and American, had occupied large parts ofSiberia; they had landed in Murmansk and Archangelsk in the North.Groener asserted April 24, 1919, in the Reich cabinet that Germanycould put an end to the Soviet regime if an Allied army, in conjunctionwith the German troops from the west, would march into Soviet Russia.Some of the soldiers of this German Free Corps were soldiers of fortuneof a very peculiar sort. They expected to receive from the newgovernments of Latvia and Estonia a reward of land on which theycould settle as farmers. When they were not supported in this by theGerman government, they tore the German cockades from their capsand sewed on the eagle of the tsar.Those were the early germs of development which later proved to befateful. But in the broad German masses at this time — in the last daysof 1918 and the early days of 1919 — a new and glowing