Resident Defense

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Ceremony of the Resident Guard in 1920 on Königsplatz

Resident groups formed after the end of the First World War, especially in monarchist-conservative Bavaria .

Resident guard at the national level

After vigilante groups had already successfully contributed to the stabilization of the situation in response to the Spartacus uprising in Berlin in January 1919, on March 22, 1919 the Reichswehr Ministry instructed all general commandos to turn local vigilante groups into centrally controlled resident groups at state level according to a uniform model. The newly created resident guard should then be placed directly under the command of the Reichswehr via a Reich headquarters . A local security service in cooperation with the local police was defined as the area of ​​responsibility. In an emergency, however, the resident services should serve as a silent army reserve. As a result of the Allied disarmament laws, the resident services at the Reich level were released from their military subordination and subordinated to the individual state ministries. The Allies continued to see the resident brigades as a substitute defense formation that had to be dissolved in accordance with the provisions of the Versailles Treaty . After the failed Kapp Putsch , the Prussian interior minister ordered the dissolution of the resident police. The other countries of the empire and the empire joined this decree in the summer of 1920. Only Bavaria refused to dissolve its resident defense and kept the apparatus alive for another year.

Resident Guard in Prussia

By a decree of the Council of People's Representatives of January 13, 1919, the resident services were combined to form the Republican Protection Force and organized in Prussia by a decree of the Social Democratic Interior Minister Heine of March 18, 1919.

Contrary to the conception of the SPD ( into the Resident Guard! ), Nationalist objectives emerged in the Resident Guard, which were predominantly supported by bourgeois circles.

The Bavarian Resident Services

Munich 1920, rifle medal for the first and only state shooting by the Bavarian Resident Services, obverse
The Madonna Patrona Bavariae on the back of this medal of the Bavarian Resident Defense Forces for the meeting from September 25th to 30th, 1920 in Munich

Emergence

In the Eisner cabinet , Erhard Auer tried to build up a vigilante group around Rudolf Buttmann , Christian Roth and Julius Friedrich Lehmann on November 18, 1918 . On November 26, 1918, Albert Roßhaupter received members of the Thule Society very benevolently. On December 27, 1918, Erhard Auer and Johannes Timm called for the establishment of a “vigilante group with a voluntary character”.

After the Bavarian state government had to flee to Bamberg in the course of the proclamation of the Munich Soviet Republic due to the revolutionary events, the Bavarian Prime Minister Hoffmann was persuaded by Reich Defense Minister Noske to set up a vigilante group based on the Prussian model and called in workers on April 14, 1919 , Farmers and citizens to rush to arms and form a voluntary people's armed forces. As a result, Rudolf Kanzler also came into possession of a general power of attorney "to restore law and order", which was combined with a financing commitment of 500,000 marks. Chancellor used this and other powers to build up a free corps that took part in the conquest of the Spartakist stronghold of Kolbermoor . In the period that followed, Chancellor used the armed volunteer corps he had built up to organize resident defense across the board. Starting from Rosenheim, Chancellor began to found branches of his resident defense organization in the surrounding communities. Step by step his area of ​​influence increased, proceeding in a star shape. In Isen, too, the forest adviser Georg Escherich , who had numerous contacts with politics and the military, began to set up a resident defense. In mid-April 1919, he had already set up the local guard in his Isen district. From there, like the Chancellor, he founded other resident guardians in the surrounding communities, which he merged in "Isengau" and was elected as their district captain at a meeting in Haag on May 14, 1919. Another primordial cell was formed in Wasserburg am Inn, where on May 6th, the Free Corps Leader Heinrich Schneider announced the organization of the resident guard to all municipalities of the district office. On June 21, 1919, the District President of Upper Bavaria, Gustav Ritter von Kahr , summoned all of Upper Bavaria's district councils to a discussion of the resident defense issue. This meeting, which had the aim of winning over all district boards for the merger and further expansion of the resident guard for the whole of Upper Bavaria, was crowned with success. As a result, however, there were disputes between Escherich and Chancellor regarding the structure of the military apparatus to be built up and the dependence on the Bavarian state government. Escherich's concept, which was purely bourgeois and anti-social democratic and thus found a lot more attention among the clique of officials around von Kahr, was ultimately able to prevail. In order to resolve the differences, however, the Chancellor was offered the position of deputy chairman of the Bavarian Resident Services. After Escherich was able to successfully advertise the resident armed forces in Franconia at the end of August 1919, so that Würzburg, Bayreuth, Nuremberg and Bamberg became districts of the Bavarian Resident Rescue Services, the regional association of Resident Resident Rescue Services in Bavaria was founded on September 27, 1919 . Georg Escherich was elected Governor on December 16 and Rudolf Chancellor as his deputy. In order to at least formally avoid the conflict with the Versailles Treaty, it was regrouped on March 4, 1920 as a private association.

Strength

For the beginning of 1919, the Bavarian Minister of the Interior, Fritz Endres, estimated the strength of the Bavarian Resident Guard to be around 200,000 soldiers. For January 1920, Rudolf Kanzler gave the membership as around 260,000 and for May 1920 with more than 300,000 soldiers.

Armament

In principle, every military man should be equipped with a 98 and 50 round rifle and every local army with a machine gun and 2000 rounds. Most of the weapons were procured via the Reichswehr Brigade 21 (Brigade Epp) whose weapons officer Ernst Röhm supplied a large number of weapons to the resident armed forces. The aim was to use the weapons transfers to prevent the victorious powers from accessing the Reichswehr weapons and lay the foundation for rearmament. By October 1919, all southern Bavarian districts could be supplied with sufficient weapons, ammunition and military material. Escherich stated in his unpublished manuscript that up to this point in time over “2.5 million infantry rifles, 130,000 light machine guns, 3,000 heavy machine guns, 100 light field artillery batteries, a whole series of 15 cm howitzers and 13 cm long barrel cannons and 30 aircraft of the latest design to Bavaria ”were delivered. At this point in time, the arming of northern Bavaria was not yet complete. However, since the transferable weapons stocks were running low in all of Bavaria, an attempt was made to request the missing stocks from the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. As a result, in February 1920, 200,000 rifles, 10 million cartridges, 3 armored vehicles and other military equipment set in motion by train, in the direction of the two large resident armed forces camps in Wasserburg and Erlangen. Thus it was possible to equip all of Bavaria with weapons.

The most important weapon was the Gewehr 98 as a long weapon and the Pistol 08 as a short weapon. The Gewehr 88 were rather rare (Ortmeier and Klein show a photo with military men equipped with the G88), carbine 98a , Mauser pistol C96 or Mauser pistol M14.

mark

It was not until March 10, 1920 that marking instructions were issued. The weapons used were mainly designated with brand stamps (shafts) with the abbreviation EWB. Fabric parts were marked with color stamps, metal parts with stamps.

resolution

In mid-1921, the Reich government was no longer able to withstand Allied pressure; disarmament was ordered as early as April. On June 27, 1921, the Orgesch and the Bavarian Resident Guard dissolved . Of the at least 350,000 rifles, only 169,800 were returned.

See also

literature

  • Wolfgang Finze: Troubled times. A brand stamp tells the short story of an armed citizenry and the German longing for peace and order after 1918. In: Visier , Heft 4, 2013, pp. 92–98.
  • Gerhard Ortmeier, Andreas Klein: Successful vigilante groups. The weapons of the EWB. In: Deutsches Waffen-Journal , Issue 5, 2011, pp. 76–81.
  • Richard Bauer (Ed.): Munich - "Capital of Movement". Bavaria's metropolis and National Socialism. Klinkhardt and Biermann, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-7814-0362-9 (catalog for an exhibition project by the Münchner Stadtmuseum), p. 98.
  • Hans Bernhard Eden: The residents of East Frisia from 1919 to 1921. In: Yearbook of the Society for Fine Arts and Patriotic Antiquities to Emden , Volume 65, 1985, ISSN  0341-969X , pp. 81-134.
  • Kurt Frotscher: November 9, 1923 - the march into a national catastrophe begins. In: ders .: November 9th. A German historical date. GNN, Schkeuditz 2003, ISBN 3-89819-142-7 , pp. 29-53, esp.p. 41.
  • Harold J. Gordon : Hitler putsch 1923. Power struggle in Bavaria 1923–1924. Bernard & Graefe, Frankfurt am Main 1971, ISBN 3-7637-5108-4 , p. 198 f.
  • Jürgen Jensen: Resident Services and Self-Protection Organizations in Schleswig-Holstein 1918–1921. Kiel 1991 (term paper on the scientific examination for teaching at high schools, University of Kiel, 1991).
  • Rudolf Chancellor : Bavaria's fight against Bolshevism. History of the Bavarian Resident Guard . Parcus & Co., Munich 1931.
  • Erwin Könnemann: Resident Services and Temporary Volunteer Associations. Your role in building a new imperialist military system. (November 1918 to 1920). German Military Publishing House, Berlin (GDR) 1971.
  • Hannsjörg Zimmermann: The Resident Services. Self-protection organizations or counter-revolutionary fighting organs? In: Journal of the Society for Schleswig-Holstein History, Volume 128, 2003, ISSN  0072-4254 , pp. 185–212.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bruno Thoss : Resident Services , 1919–1921 . In: Historical Lexicon of Bavaria
  2. ↑ Michael Behnen. In: Lexicon of German History . 2nd Edition. Stuttgart 1983
  3. ↑ Erich Mühsam: We're not giving up! . BUCH & media, 2003, ISBN 978-3-8330-8007-4 , p. 43–.
  4. ^ Appeal of the Bavarian government for the protection of the country, printed in: Martin Weichmann: Peace and order at any price. Weißenburger and Weißenburg between the Soviet Republic and the Hitler coup . In: Villa Nostra , 1/2008, p. 7.
  5. ↑ Rudolf Chancellor: Bavaria's fight against Bolshevism , pp. 21-23.
  6. ↑ Horst Nusser: Conservative Defense Associations in Bavaria, Prussia and Austria, 1918-1933 . P. 88.
  7. ^ A b Heinrich Schneider: History of the Resident Guard in the Inngau . Wasserburg am Inn 1928, pp. 57–58.
  8. ↑ Heinrich Schneider: History of the resident defense of the Inngau . Wasserburg am Inn 1928, p. 57.
  9. ↑ Horst Nusser: Conservative Defense Associations in Bavaria, Prussia and Austria, 1918-1933 . P. 90
  10. ↑ Horst Nusser: Conservative Defense Associations in Bavaria, Prussia and Austria, 1918-1933 . Pp. 100-101.
  11. ↑ Christoph Huebner: Regional Association of Resident Services in Bavaria, 1920/21 . In: Historical Lexicon of Bavaria
  12. ^ Fenske: Conservatism and right-wing radicalism in Bavaria after 1918 . P. 86. as well as Chancellor: Bavaria's fight against Bolshevism . P. 161.
  13. ^ Chancellor: Bavaria's fight against Bolshevism, p. 176.
  14. ↑ Katja-Maria Wächter: The power of impotence. Life and politics of Franz Xaver Ritter von Epp (1868–1946) . Frankfurt am Main 1999, p. 81.
  15. ↑ Quotation from Nusser: Conservative Defense Associations . P. 131.
  16. ↑ Ortmeier and Klein, p. 78