Hacketau Free Corps
The Freikorps Hacketau was founded on March 19, 1919 in Recklinghausen on the initiative of Walther Stennes by men of Infantry Regiment No. 16 (3rd Westphalian) . There were about five hundred men in it. His battle cry was "Hacke Tau - Et geit for't Vaterland" and goes back to the Battle of Großbeeren in 1813 during the Wars of Liberation .
history
In December 1918 Walther Stennes was retired from the army as first lieutenant. At the suggestion of Ewald von Kleist , he set up the "Stennes Voluntary Company", a free corps made up of many former soldiers from Infantry Regiment No. 16. It was secretly trained at Varlar Castle near Coesfeld .
This resulted in the Hacketau Freikorps, comprising around five hundred men . With this Stennes proceeded against uprisings and strikes by workers in Coesfeld , Dülmen , Bocholt , Münster and Düsseldorf . In Hamm he was able to suppress a workers' strike entirely. During the civil war battles for the Ruhr area in March 1919, Stennes was deployed by the commanding General von Watter as military commander in Hamm town and country. His free corps occupied the Radbod , de Wendel , Saxony and Westphalia mines around Hamm . The Radbod colliery on strike was kept in operation by the troops, thus securing the gas supply for the city of Münster.
In July 1919, the Freikorps took action against further uprisings and strikes in Westphalia and Rhineland. In March 1920 it was driven out by the Red Ruhr Army under Freiherr von Falkenstein in the Bergisches Land .
The Freikorps formed the cadre of the Westphalian Reichswehr Rifle Regiment XIV in 1920.
Walter Model was one of the members of the Freikorps .
The battle cry "Hoe Tau!" is still common practice today with the Panzer Battalion 203 of the Bundeswehr, which is based in Augustdorf in East Westphalia.
Individual evidence
- ↑ see: Horst Conrad: Kommunalarchive des Kreises Siegen and the Hochsauerlandkreis, private archives in Rheda and Hamm - activity report, May 1979 - May 1980, in: Archivpflege in Westfalen und Lippe, No. 14, December 1980, pp. 13 ff.
- ↑ a b Konrad Leppa: Field Marshal General Walter Model. Prinz-Eugen-Verlag, 1962