Green Squad (Military)

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Green squad was a term used to describe groups of deserters in the Austro-Hungarian military at the time of the First World War .

Origin of name

The term “Green Squad” was derived from the fact that the deserters hid in forests. The first “green cadres” emerged around 1917 on the Eastern Front and from November 1918, after the capitulation, had a large influx of former soldiers from the Austro-Hungarian army . The name migrated through the languages ​​of the various nationalities of Austria-Hungary. The Polish writer Jerzy Kossowski published a novel in 1927 under the title Zielona kadra .

Organizational structure and areas of influence

The “green cadres” had a military organizational structure, were fully armed, terrorized the population and brought some areas of the former Austria-Hungary under their control. For the affected population, however, they were nothing more than gangs led by members of the former army. They can be compared with the Freikorps that emerged in Germany and the Baltic States in November 1918 and had a similar structure. But while the volunteer corps were used for political goals, the “Green cadres” had their own supply first. There were “green cadres” especially in the regions of Batschka , Slavonia , Baranya , German-West Hungary , in what was later to be the Sudetenland and in the forest areas of Bohemia and Moravia .

Use of the term "Green Squad" during the "Sudeten Crisis"

When the Czechoslovak Army mobilized during the Sudeten crisis in 1938 , some of the conscripted Sudeten Germans deserted across the border into the "Reich" and formed the Sudeten German Freikorps there , while others disappeared into the Bohemian forests and were also referred to by compatriots as the "Green Cadre" .

literature

  • Otto Zacke: From the green squad to the brown army. Kaiser Verlag, Böhmisch-Leipa 1939. (The social democrat Otto Zacke (1888–1943) was an SPD member of the Prussian Provincial Parliament and fled to Czechoslovakia after the seizure of power.)
  • Joachim Riedl : The downfall . In: Die Zeit , No. 46/2008

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jerzy Kossowski: Zielona kadra , nowele. Gebethner & Wolff, Warszawa 1927 (English translation: Warszawa, 1963).
  2. ^ History of Landskron
  3. ↑ Martin Zückert: From Activism to State Negation? The Sudeten Germans between state acceptance, regional nationalist movement and National Socialist Germany. In: Peter Haslinger, Joachim von Puttkamer (Ed.): State, Loyalty and Minorities in East Central and Southeastern Europe 1918-1941 . (Book series of the Commission for the History and Culture of Germans in Southeast Europe 39), Munich 2007, pp. 69–98, here p. 96