Baltic people

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As Baltikumer the German soldiers and volunteer corps called -Angehörigen, 1919 after the end of World War I as a volunteer in Latvia and Lithuania fought.

history

The Free Corps in the Baltic States were recruited from December 1918 to prevent the Bolsheviks from advancing from Soviet Russia into East Prussia . Above all, nationalistic and monarchistic former World War soldiers reported. There were no soldiers' councils at the front in the Baltic States and fighting continued under the black-white-red flag. The members of the Freikorps were only sworn in to their respective leaders and were notorious for pushing and looting. Later, parts of the Baltic troops openly ignored the orders of the government of the Weimar Republic . In the winter of 1919 they had to return to Germany defeated.

The soldiers' councils in Germany and the left-wing socialist parties feared the emergence of a White Guard in the Baltic States. The press in revolutionary Germany coined the derogatory term "Baltikumer". The Baltic troops adopted the term for themselves. In the Weimar Republic and the Nazi era , a myth was developed around the Baltic states: As the last fighters at the front in the World War, they were also the first pioneers of a “renewal” of Germany under Hitler .

See also

literature

  • Bernhard Sauer : The Baltics . Institute for International Politics and Regional Studies, Berlin 1995.
  • Bernhard Sauer: On the "Myth of Eternal Soldierhood". The German Freikorps campaign in the Baltic States in 1919 . In: Journal of History , Volume 43 (1995) Issue 10, pp. 869-902.
  • Charles L. Sullivan: German Freecorps in the Baltic, 1918-1919. In: Journal of Baltic Studies 7, No. 2, pp. 124-133 (1976)
  • Warren E. Williams: The Allied Policy towards the Free Corps in the Baltic States 1918-1919 . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 12 (1964), issue 2, pp. 147–169 ( online ).