In the foreground and background: soldiers with Maxim MG 08/15 machine guns, in the middle MG 08 heavy machine gun. November 1918. via Bundesarchiv
Soviet delegation with Leon Trotsky greeted by German officers at Brest-Litovsk, press photo. 27 December 1917.
Hans von Seeckt und Otto Geßler
Johannes Friedrich Leopold von Seeckt (1866-1936) established a reputation for first-rate staff work prior to and during World War One and wasPaul von Hindenburg’ssuccessor as army Chief of Staff in the wake of Germany’s military defeat in November 1918.
Seeckt entered the German army in 1885 while aged 18. From an early stage Seeckt’s aptitude for staff work became apparent with the result he was seconded to the General Staff in 1899 while still only ranked a Lieutenant.
Until the outbreak of war in August 1914 Seeckt served primarily in staff appointments, rising to Colonel. With war underway he was assigned to III Corps as Chief of Staff, attached toAlexander von Kluck’s First Army. With von Kluck tasked with no less a matter than the invasion of France Seeckt’s career quickly burgeoned in his high-profile role.
Newly-promoted Major-General, Seeckt was subsequently appointed Chief of Staff to August von Mackensen and his Eleventh Army, this time on the Eastern Front. Despite Mackensen’s deserved reputation for military prowess Seeckt was nevertheless (correctly) credited with masterminding the breakthrough at Gorlice in May 1915, for which he received the Pour le Meriteaward.
Having also planned the invasion of Serbia of October 1915, Seeckt was assigned a quite different role following the Austro-Hungarian disaster during the opening stages of the spectacularly successful Russian Brusilov Offensive.
In short, he was assigned to a series of roving Chief of Staff positions within various Austro-Hungarian armies, tasked with re-shaping each and improving their battle worthiness; a sensitive task that did not always endear him to his Austro-Hungarian counterparts.
Having successfully acquitted himself in this role he was consequently assigned to the Ottoman army in December 1917 and expected to perform similar wonders; this however was a task even von Seeckt was unable to perform.
Seeckt was appointed Hindenburg’s successor as Chief of Staff in summer 1919 and set about the construction of an elite force of 100,000 men - the maximum allowed under the terms of theVersailles treaty. He nevertheless ensured that the army he fashioned was capable of being rapidly expanded as and when the need arose, and arranged to secretly train German forces in Russia.
Despite failing to support the government during the Kapp Putsch of 1920 he nevertheless remained head of the army until he was pressured to resign in 1926.
Subsequently serving in the Reichstag von Seeckt later aligned himself with Hitler’s Nazis. With the rise of the latter to power he was despatched to China in 1934 to assist with the modernisation of the Chinese army.
He died two years later in 1936.
An Account of the Opening of the Battle of Gorlice-Tarnow, 2 May 1915 by General August von Mackensen
To the complete surprise of the enemy, large movements of troops into West Galicia had been completed by the end of April.
These troops, subject to the orders of General von Mackensen, had been assigned the task in conjunction with the neighbouring armies of our Austrian ally of breaking through the Russian front between the crest of the Carpathians and the middle Dunajec.
It was a new problem and no easy undertaking. The heavens granted our troops wonderful sunshine and dry roads. Thus flyers and artillery could come into full activity and the difficulties of the terrain, which here has the character of the approaches of the German Alps, or the Horsal hills in Thuringia, could be overcome.
At several points ammunition had to be transported amid the greatest hardships on pack animals and the marching columns and batteries had to be moved forward over corduroy roads.
All the accumulation of information and preparations necessary for breaking through the enemy’s line had been quietly and secretly accomplished. On the first of May in the afternoon the artillery began its fire on the Russian positions. These in some five months had been perfected according to all the rules of the art of fortification.
In stories they lay one over the other along the steep heights, whose slopes had been furnished with obstacles. At some points of special importance to the Russians they consisted of as many as seven rows of trenches, one behind the other. The works were very skilfully placed, and were adopted to flank one another.
The infantry of the allied [Note: Teutonic] troops in the nights preceding the attack had pushed forward closer to the enemy and had assumed positions in readiness for the forward rush. In the night from May 1st to 2nd the artillery fired in slow rhythm at the enemy’s positions. Pauses in the fire served the pioneers for cutting the wire entanglements.
On the 2nd of May at 6 a.m. an overwhelming artillery fire, including field guns and running up to the heaviest calibres was begun on the front many miles in extent selected for the effort to break through. This was maintained unbroken for four hours.
At 10 o’clock in the morning these hundreds of fire-spouting tubes suddenly ceased and the same moment the swarming lines and attacking columns of the assailants threw themselves upon the hostile positions.
The enemy had been so shaken by the heavy artillery fire that his resistance at many points was very slight. In headlong flight he left his defences, when the infantry of the [Teutonic] allies appeared before his trenches, throwing away rifles and cooking utensils and leaving immense quantities of infantry ammunition and dead.
At one point the Russians themselves cut the wire entanglements to surrender themselves to the Germans. Frequently the enemy made no further resistance in his second and third positions. On the other hand, at certain other points of the front he defended himself stubbornly, making an embittered fight and holding the neighbourhood.
With the Austrian troops, the Bavarian regiments attacked Mount Zameczyka, lying 250 metres above their positions, a veritable fortress. A Bavarian infantry regiment here won incomparable laurels.
To the left of the Bavarians Silesian regiments stormed the heights of Sekowa and Sakol. Young regiments tore from the enemy the desperately defended cemetery height of Gorlice and the persistently held railway embankment at Kennenitza.
Among the Austrian troops Galician battalions had stormed the steep heights of the Pustki Hill, Hungarian troops having taken in fierce fighting the Wiatrowka heights. Prussian guard regiments threw the enemy out of his elevated positions east of Biala and at Staszkowka stormed seven successive Russian lines which were stubbornly held.
Either kindled by the Russians or hit by a shell, a naphtha well behind Gorlice burst into flames. Higher than the houses the flames struck up into the sky and pillars of smoke rose to hundreds of yards.
On the evening of the 2nd of May, when the warm Spring sun had begun to yield to the coolness of night the first main position in its whole depth and extent, a distance of some sixteen kilometres, had been broken through and a gain of ground of some four kilometres had been attained.
At least 20,000 prisoners dozens of cannon and fifty machine guns remained in the hands of the allied troops that in the battle had competed with one another for the paten of victory. In addition, an amount of booty to be readily estimated, in the shape of war materials of all sorts, including great masses of rifles and ammunition, had been secured.
Source: Source Records of the Great War, Vol. III, ed. Charles F. Horne, National Alumni 1923
(Source: firstworldwar.com, via radicalwhig-deactivated20130129)
Via drakegoodman on Flickr
“Von württembergischen Regierungssoldaten gefangener Eisendreher Johann Lehner vor seiner Ermordung am 3. Mai 1919.”
Munich, 3rd May 1919, metal-worker Johann Lehner is photographed with Württemberg troops of the Freikorps. Suspected of being Communist leader he was summarily executed shortly afterwards.
Background courtesy of Wiki:
The Munich Soviet Republic (Münchner Räterepublik) was, as part of the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the short-lived attempt to establish a socialist state in the form of a democratic workers’ council republic in the Free State of Bavaria. It sought independence from the also recently proclaimed Weimar Republic.
On the afternoon of 7 November 1918, the first anniversary of the Russian revolution, Kurt Eisner of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) addressed a crowd, estimated to have been about 60,000, on the Theresienwiese (current site of the Oktoberfest). He demanded an immediate peace, an 8 hour day, relief for the unemployed, abdication of the Bavarian king, King Ludwig III, and Emperor Wilhelm II, and proposed the formation of workers’ and soldiers’ councils. The crowd marched to the army barracks and won over most of the soldiers to the side of the revolution. That night, the King went into exile. The next day, Eisner declared Bavaria a “free state” – a declaration which overthrew the monarchy of the Wittelsbach dynasty which had ruled for over 700 years, and Eisner became Minister-President of Bavaria. Though he advocated a “socialist republic”, he distanced himself from the Russian Bolsheviks, declaring that his government would protect property rights. For a few days, the Munich economist Lujo Brentano served as People’s Commissar for Trade (Volkskommissar für Handel).
After Eisner’s USPD had lost the elections, he decided to resign from his office. On 21 February 1919, as he was on his way to parliament to announce his resignation, he was shot by the right-wing nationalist Anton Graf von Arco auf Valley, who was rejected from membership in the Thule Society because of Jewish ancestry on his mother’s side. This assassination caused unrest and lawlessness in Bavaria, and the news of a soviet revolution in Hungary encouraged communists and anarchists to seize power.
On 6 April 1919, a Soviet Republic was formally proclaimed. Initially, it was ruled by USPD members such as Ernst Toller, and anarchists like Gustav Landauer, Silvio Gesell and Erich Mühsam. Toller, a playwright, described the revolution as the “Bavarian Revolution of Love”, but he was not a very effective politician, and his government did little to restore order in Munich.
His government members were also not always well-chosen. For instance, the Foreign Affairs Deputy Dr. Franz Lipp (who had been admitted several times to psychiatric hospitals), declared war on Switzerland over the Swiss refusal to lend 60 locomotives to the Soviet Republic. He also claimed to be well acquainted with Pope Benedict XV. He informed Vladimir Lenin via cable that the ousted former Minister-President Hoffmann had fled to Bamberg and taken the key to the ministry toilet with him.
On Palm Sunday, April 12, 1919, the Communist Party seized power, with Eugen Leviné as their leader. Leviné began to enact communist reforms, which included forming a “Red Army”, seizing cash and food supplies, expropriating luxurious apartments and giving them to the homeless and placing factories under the ownership and control of their workers. Leviné also had plans to abolish paper money and reform the education system, but never had time to implement them.
At the suggestion of Vladimir Lenin, Leviné took hostages from among the elite. When his troops refused to execute the hostages, Russian soldiers were sent to do it. On 30 April 1919, eight men, including the well-connected Prince Gustav of Thurn and Taxis, were accused as right-wing spies and executed. The Thule Society’s secretary, Countess Hella von Westarp, was also murdered.
Soon after, on 3 May 1919, remaining loyal elements of the German army (called the “White Guards of Capitalism” by the communists), with a force of 9,000, and Freikorps (such as the Freikorps Epp and the Marinebrigade Ehrhardt) with a force of about 30,000 men, entered Munich and defeated the communists after bitter street fighting in which over 1,000 supporters of the government were killed. About 700 men and women were arrested and summarily executed by the victorious Freikorps troops. Leviné was condemned to death for treason, and was shot by a firing squad in Stadelheim Prison.
Berlin, Verfassungsfeier im Lustgarten (Constitution Party in the Lustgarten), June 1924
The Kapp Putsch, March 1920
“The turbulent postwar situation in the Baltic borderlands offered the Freikorps a further chance to operate. Latvia held a romantic allure for German expansionists since the times of the Teutonic knights. Its fragile government , threatened by the presence of Soviet forces, first turned to the Western Allies for assistance. Though reluctant to intervene directly themselves, the Allies believe a Freikorps advance to Riga provided a convenient compromise. Their capture of Riga prove to be a historic high-tide for the Freikorps, many of whose members fought under the misapprehension they’d been promised land in Latvia in return for their service. Their subsequent disillusionment enraged them, further cementing the notion of the “November criminals” having stabbed them in the back.
Embittered, the Freikorps embarked on the Kapp Putsch in March 1920, an ill-fated attempt at seizing Berlin and installing right wing civil servant Wolfgang Kapp in the chancellery. The Freikorps in in the capital created a dilemma for the national army: “Reichswehr does not fire on Reichswehr,” observed Hans von Seeckt. The coup had little popular support, however, and the paralysis brought about by a general strike forced Kapp to capitulate.” -Ian Maycock, Strategy & Tactics, p.13
Poster shows stylized profile of German soldier. Text: Protect your homeland! Enlist in the Freikorps Hülsen. c.1918
Fritz Haarmann, age forty-five, was convicted of raping and murdering twenty-seven young men in Hanover between 1918 and 1924. Haarmann, who was a police agent and private investigator, lured schoolboys or drifters from the Hanover railway station back to his apartment. There he attacked his victims and killed them by chewing through their throats. Afterward he sold their flesh to local butcher shops and restaurants, claiming it was pork, while dumping their bones into the river behind his apartment. It was the finding of numerous skulls in the river that hed to Haarmann’s eventual arrrest.
Haarman confessed to police:
“I never intended to kill those youths. Some of the boys had come before. I wanted to protect them from myself because I knew what would happen if I had my way with them. I cried out, “Submit to me but do not let me loose control.” When I would go out of control I would bite them and suck their necks. Some of the boys at the Cafe Kropcke liked to practice “terminal sex” and “breath play”. Sometimes we struggled for hours this way. It was sometimes difficult for me to get an erection. Lately it has happened more often. It used to worry me; “God oh God, where is it going to end?” I would throw myself with my full weight onto these youths. The were worn out by the excesses and the debauchery. I would bite through their Adam’s apple and probably strangle and throttle them with my hands. I would collapse on the corpse. I would then go and make myself some strong black coffee. I would put the body on the floor and cover the face with a cloth so that he would not gaze back at me. I would open the abdomen with two cuts and empty the intestines into a bucket. I would dip a towel into the abdominal cavity and keep doing it until it had soaked up all the blood. Then I would make three cuts from the ribs towards the shoulders, grip the ribs and force them open until the bones around the shoulders broke. Then I would cut into that area. I could then extract the heart, lungs, and kidneys and chop them up and put them in my bucket. I would then sever the legs and then the arms. I would clean the flesh off the bones and put it in my hole. It would take me five or six trips to take everything out and dump it down the toilet or into the river. I would cut off the penis after I had emptied and cleaned the chest and stomach cavities. I would chop it up into lots of little pieces. I always hated doing this, but I could not help myself - my obsession was much stronger than the horror of the cutting and chopping. I would take apart the heads last. I used a small kitchen knife to peel away the scalp and cut it up into little strips and squares. I would put the skull face down on a straw mat and wrap it in rags so that it would make less noise. I would then smash it with the blunt edge of an ace until the joins in the skull split apart. The brain went in the bucket and the bone chips into the river opposite the castle. I gave the clothes away or sold them.”
