Battle of Dachau (1919)
The Battle of Dachau was part of the civil war-like fighting in and around Munich in the spring of 1919. When the Munich Soviet Republic was formed in April 1919 on the Russian and Hungarian models, the "Red Army" ( Red Guards ) was supposed to defend the Soviet Republic and its achievements. The counterpart were the government-loyal "white" troops (White Guards), formed from the Reichswehr and Freikorps units . The Dachau market was a central location for the armed conflict. Mostly disaffected World War II soldiers fought on both sides.
prehistory
Proclamation of the Republic, the murder of Kurt Eisner and the Munich Soviet Republic
On November 25, 1918, two weeks after Kurt Eisner proclaimed the “Free State of Bavaria” in Munich, a “workers ', peasants and citizens' council” was formed in Dachau. This was initiated by the conservative Christian farmers' association. The background was the high proportion of workers, caused by the royal powder and ammunition factory in Dachau (then still Markt Dachau), which had to cease operations due to the armistice in 1918. Over 1000 of the unemployed workers from the Dachau powder and ammunition factory (called "Pumpf") were already present at the rally before the proclamation of the republic on Munich's Theresienwiese . In the troubled times immediately after the war, this was exacerbated by the assassination of the Bavarian Prime Minister Kurt Eisner on February 21, 1919. The SPD government Hoffmann then fled to Bamberg and called the Reich government (represented by Gustav Noske (SPD)) under the Reich Defense Minister the "Reich Minister President" Philipp Scheidemann (SPD)) to intervene. On February 25, 1919, a 30-man group from the Dachau Soldiers' Council went to Altomünster . In Maierbräu , a new farmers 'and workers' council should be elected by the population. On April 7, 1919, the "Red Army" moved from Dachau to Altomünster and appointed the bricklayer and social democrat Georg Strobl as the new mayor of Altomünster. At the same time, on April 7, 1919, soldiers proclaimed the Communist Soviet Republic in the Dachau market. On the evening of the same day, a staff meeting of the Dachau paper mill workers in the Hörhammer inn decided to convert their business into a collective form of society. The author Eugen Mondt noted that from that point on the paper mill started printing money for the communist revolutionaries.
Reaction of the Reich Government
The appeal of the Hoffmann government was heard by the Reich government. In Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm the II. And III. Army corps stationed in close proximity to Munich. On April 15, 1919, a unit of 500 soldiers set out on the train for Dachau. The soldiers occupied the Dachau market, declared a state of siege and interrupted the train connection to Munich.
Battle of Dachau
The Munich Soviet Republic and the “Red Army” as the executive military unit saw Dachau as a strategically important place, if only because the government troops had occupied Dachau. Perhaps also because of the strategic importance of the “money press” in the paper mill. On April 15, 1919, smaller revolutionary groups flocked to the north-western outskirts of Munich to form rifle chains. In a short time the troop grew to a good 1,000 fighters. South of the Allach - Ludwigsfeld road, the Reds encountered the enemy, whose strength was estimated at around 800 men. They succeeded in pushing the government troops back to Karlsfeld, completely surprised by the resistance. Since the attackers - despite their good equipment - neither have the necessary courage to fight nor want to shoot their Bavarian comrades, many white men run over to the enemy or flee back to Dachau. This is how the Red Army won its first victory.
The troops took Allach and Karlsfeld . The shop stewards gathered in the Gasthaus zu Karlsfeld and demanded that Ernst Toller , who was an artillery sergeant in World War I , should be the leader. One remembered the saying: " Oana has to serve his kohlrabi, otherwise there is a pigsty, and if you do not have anything, it will learn, the main thing is that we know you ."
The armed men around Section Commander Ernst Toller were primarily recruited from demobilized soldiers and newly established workers' groups. In violation of international law , there were also Russian and Italian prisoners of war as volunteers. The strength of 800 men was distributed among five assault battalions, infantry equipped with rifles and machine guns. There were also 60 artillerymen with six guns. The troops were supplemented by an intelligence group with 40 soldiers, 40 pioneers, a division of 20 cyclists and finally 15 cavalrymen on horseback. The whole force was organized by younger officers from the World War and a “general staff” was formed. There were now agreements with the War Ministry in Munich, maps of Dachau were obtained for reconnaissance. A unit of 500 workers from the Maffei locomotive factory in Munich-Allach meanwhile reached Karlsfeld.
On April 16, 1919, Toller received an order from Munich at his Karlsfeld headquarters to bombard Dachau with guns. Toller strictly refused because of the expected civilian casualties, after all, as an artilleryman in World War II, he had seen how devastating the gunfire could be and in 1917 suffered a nervous breakdown due to the destruction. In addition, Toller knew that the peasant population was on the side of the revolutionaries, so the use of guns was all the more prohibited. Toller agreed with the enemy, about 500 soldiers, a ceasefire from twelve noon to six in the evening. To this end, he issued an ultimatum calling for the white troops to withdraw beyond the Danube line, the release of the members of the Central Council kidnapped on April 13, and the immediate lifting of the hunger blockade imposed on Munich. In particular, the hunger blockade of the Reich government united the rebels, workers and peasants. Given the food shortage since the beginning of the war, a hunger blockade was seen as a government war against the people.
At four o'clock in the afternoon, the Reds' guns thundered, contrary to Toller's instructions. Toller was horrified. Following the situation, the infantrymen marched towards Dachau. On April 16, 1919 the troops under Toller succeeded in driving 5 storm batalions, the "white" government troops that had advanced there, from Dachau. However, there was help from the population: Workers at the Dachau munitions factory stabbed the White Guards in the back and insulted the gunners. Other workers rushed to their aid. They disarmed the troops, drove and beat them out of the city. The commandant of the whites, a major, saved himself on a locomotive back towards Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm. After clearing a machine gun stand at the Dachau train station, the opposing troops finally withdrew with the remaining forces to Pfaffenhofen ad Ilm, 30 kilometers further north. On Maundy Thursday evening the market was filled with brass music. The new headquarters of Toller was the Dachau District Court. The government troops later claimed that the "Red Army" attacked the Dachau population. Court investigations later revealed that the allegations were incorrect, but there was extensive poaching and various break-ins. There were also arrests of nobles in the region, such as the Baron von Schätzler from Sulzemoos , the Vequel- Westnach family in Kammerberg or Count von Spretti in Unterweilbach, because they were accused of spying for the “whites”. Count von Spretti actually made his property available as headquarters for the later attacking Reich soldiers.
Results of the battle for Dachau
In fact, the Battle of Dachau was more of a skirmish : Four officers fell on the Freikorps side, almost 50 men were taken prisoner (five officers and 36 soldiers). The Red Army lost eight men. Several million rounds of infantry ammunition, 4 artillery pieces, 3 machine guns, ambulance vehicles and other material fell into the hands of the Reds. Nevertheless, the withdrawal of government troops was celebrated as a triumph by the communist side, although it was little more than an interim victory. Toller received an order from Munich to bring the officers to court. Toller noted in 1933: "I'm tearing up the order, generosity towards the defeated enemy is the virtue of the revolution ..."
The Red Army's coup was probably caused by the fact that the government troops had advanced too quickly and too far, while at the same time significantly overestimating the Red Army's real strength. Contemporary estimates came to up to 60,000 members. More recent studies, on the other hand, assume only 9,000 to 10,000 members. Leadership was a handicap as it was poorly prepared for the task and was hardly recognized as an authority. The commanders were the commander in chief Rudolf Egelhofer , the chief of the general staff Erich Wollenberg , Hermann Taubenberger , the commander of the Dachau troops Ernst Toller, a then 25-year-old poet with a pacifist attitude, and his deputy Gustav Klingelhöfer . The Red Army also had to struggle with considerable fluctuation, as simple troop members participated in the operations or stayed away from them practically at their own discretion. In fact, there were no orders, but democratic votes on the upcoming actions. Soldier behavior was considered "Ludendorfferei" . Ranks were replaced by a confidential "you" of the often very young soldiers.
Defense of Dachau after the conquest
Hardly half of the 2,000 fighters remained in Dachau itself. Advancing into the Holledau towards the "whites" was impossible. Toller's troops were probably not driven excessively by idealism either, because many had joined the revolutionaries because they received 10 marks a day, plus free food and clothing. The "Red Army" dug trenches and moved into machine gun nests. The villages of Etzenhausen, Breitenau and Günding formed points on a line of defense. There were 2 guns on the Dachau Schlossberg , 6 guns on the southern Schlossberg, 4 guns in Karlsfeld and one on Augsburger Strasse. At the airfield in Schleissheim, the "Reds" had two aircraft that were sabotaged. Around April 24, 1919, the Red Army in the Dachau area consisted of around 1,200 soldiers.
On April 20-24 there was heavy fighting near Augsburg, which ended with the defeat of the Red Army. Stubborn fighting developed at Fürstenfeldbruck as well and it was only a matter of time when Dachau would be attacked.
Expulsion of the Red Army from Dachau and capture of Munich
When the Reichswehr and Freikorps advanced again from Röhrmoos to Munich on April 30, 1919 , most of the Red Army outposts had to be evacuated quickly. At around 1.30 p.m. there was a one-hour battle near Etzenhausen. The Dachau market was given up on April 30, 1919 and the Red Army was driven out there by the Free Corps armored train “Görlitz”, plus Bavarian and Württemberg regiments on behalf of the Berlin government. At around 4 p.m. Dachau was taken almost without a fight and the Red Army withdrew to Munich. The leader of the right-wing Freikorps soldiers was Franz Ritter von Epp . Captured "Red" were immediately shot against the martial law enforcement of ruling them were taken off their boots. Kolbermoor capitulated on May 3, 1919. In the house-to-house war that marked the armed conflict that began in Munich on May 1, 1919, the Red Army no longer appeared as a closed combat unit. In May 1919 Munich was taken by the “white” troops with a total strength of around 35,000 soldiers. A week of homicide followed, with hundreds of victims. This phase was also called the “white” terror of the counter-revolution, which was also fueled by activists from the Thule Society , from whose ranks the assassination attempt against Kurt Eisner was carried out. There were even executions of women and girls, whose genitals and abdomen were shot. According to official information, the suppression of the Soviet Republic claimed 625 lives, 82 of whom were “white”. At the end of the street fighting in Munich, more than 1,000 people lost their lives. The revolution came to a bloody end.
See also
literature
- Franz J. Bauer / Eduard Schmidt: The Bavarian People's Courts 1918–1924. The problem of their compatibility with the Weimar constitution , in: Zeitschrift für Bayerische Landesgeschichte 48 (1985), 449-478.
- Rudolf Herz / Dirk Halfbrodt: Revolution and Photography. Munich 1918/19 , Berlin 1988.
- Paul Hoser: Dachau in the Munich Revolution and Soviet Republic of 1918/1919 , in: Amperland 41 (2005), Heft 4, 147–171.
- Walter Roos: The Red Army of the Bavarian Soviet Republic in Munich 1919 , Heidelberg 1998.
- Michael Seligmann: uprising of the councils. The first Bavarian Soviet Republic of April 7, 1919 , Grafenau 1989.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Bernhard Grau: Red Army, 1919 - Historisches Lexikon Bayerns. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, August 16, 2006, accessed on February 14, 2020 (German (Sie-Salutation)).
- ^ A b c Wilhelm Liebhart, editor: Revolution in the Dachauer Land. Süddeutsche Zeitung, January 30, 2019, accessed on February 14, 2020 .
- ↑ a b c d Norbert Göttler, Klaus Eberlein: Artists, Generals, Revolutionaries - The Battle of Dachau 1919 . In: Dachau impressions . Verlagsanstalt Bayerland, Dachau 2003, ISBN 3-89251-331-7 , p. 77 .
- ↑ Eugen Mondt: artists and owls . In: Records from Dachau in the 1920s . Dachau 1979.
- ↑ a b c d e f Norbert Göttler, Klaus Eberlein: Artists, Generals, Revolutionaries - The Battle of Dachau 1919 . In: Dachau impressions . Verlagsanstalt Bayerland, Dachau 2003, ISBN 3-89251-331-7 , p. 78 .
- ↑ a b c d e f Karsten Krampitz: Contemporary History - 1919: Winner against his will. Friday, 2019, accessed on February 14, 2020 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Norbert Göttler, Klaus Eberlein: Artists, Generals, Revolutionaries - The Battle of Dachau 1919 . In: Dachau impressions . Verlagsanstalt Bayerland, Dachau 2003, ISBN 3-89251-331-7 , p. 82 .
- ↑ a b c d Norbert Göttler, Klaus Eberlein: Artists, Generals, Revolutionaries - The Battle of Dachau 1919 . In: Dachau impressions . Verlagsanstalt Bayerland, Dachau 2003, ISBN 3-89251-331-7 , p. 84 .
- ↑ a b c Bayerischer Rundfunk: End of the Soviet Republic: The "white" terror of the counter-revolution . November 24, 2008 ( br.de [accessed February 14, 2020]).
- ↑ a b c Norbert Göttler, Klaus Eberlein: Artists, Generals, Revolutionaries - The Battle of Dachau 1919 . In: Dachau impressions . Verlagsanstalt Bayerland, Dachau 2003, ISBN 3-89251-331-7 , p. 85 .