A Brief History of the Birth of the Nazis

by Nigel Jones

The birth pangs of Nazism grew out of the death agony of the Kaiser's Germany. Defeat in World War I and a narrow escape from Communist revolution brought not peace but five chaotic years (1918-1923) of civil war, assassination, plots, putsches and murderous mayhem to Germany. The savage world of the trenches came home with the men who refused to admit defeat and 'who could not get the war out of their system'. It was an atmosphere in which civilised values withered, and violent extremism flourished. In this chronicle of the paramilitary Freikorps - the freebooting armies that crushed the Red revolution, then themselves attempted to take over by armed force - historian and biographer Nigel Jones draws on little-known archives in Germany and Britain to paint a portrait of a state torn between revolution and counter revolution. Astonishingly, this is the first in-depth study of the Freikorps to appear in English for 50 years. Yet the figures who flit through its shadowy world - men like Röhm, Goering and Hitler himself - were to become frighteningly familiar just ten years after the turmoil that gave Nazism its fatal chance.

Genres: History

308 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 25, 2012

Reviews

[Cedric · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reissue of a 1987 brief and popularly written history of the Freikorps in Germany after WWI and the connections in terms of ideology, personnel and insignia (the Totenkopf badge and the Swastika) to the Nazis. Jones makes some rather sweeping comments about prehistoric German character and legacy (really a form of racist thinking) but by and large, his sympathies seem to lie with the Spartacists and the left generally. He is pretty harsh about the SPD's fostering of the Freikorps and unstinting in his reporting of Freikorps atrocities. The book provides a useful chronological summary of the Friekorps campaigns, a fairly decent summation of the recruitment base (partly returned soldiers, but lots of young middle and upper class boys who just missed the war and students) and is very clear on the class war nature of the movement. He is clearly taken with the literary output of Ernst Juenger and uses the latter's - and von Salomon's books - to delineate the Freikorps spirit of basically fighting and killing for the sake of it. There is a useful bibliography (updated in 1997) which also lists the various Freikorps histories issue in the 30s and 40s, as well as novels by ex Freikorps members and recent works of fiction based in the period. An appendix contains a handy table of the various formations and what happened to them. Interesting to note that a number were transferred directly into the Reichswehr.

[Jon Coutts · Rating 4 out of 5]

With a flurry of stories and names, this book fills in the gap between Great War and Hitler, the Freikorps and Ehrhardt's swastika. It also unearths forgotten alternatives like Rosa Luxemburg and Walter Rathenau. A wild read.