In this way, the problem of my profession was suddenly solved and I became a soldier once more. I found a home again and a sense of security in the comradeship of my fellows. Oddly enough it was I, the lone wolf, always keeping my thoughts and my feelings to myself, who felt continually drawn toward that comradeship which enables a man to rely on others in time of need and of danger.
The fighting in the Baltic States was more savage and more bitter than any I had experienced either in the World War or later with the Freikorps. There was no real front, for the enemy was everywhere. When it came to a clash, it was a fight to the death, and no quarter was given or expected. The Letts excelled in this kind of fighting. It was there that I saw for the first time the horrors endured by a civilian population. The Letts exacted a terrible revenge on those of their own people who sheltered or cared for the German or Russian soldiers of the White Army. They set their houses on fire and burned the occupants to death. On innumerable occasions I came across this terrible spectacle of burned-out cottages containing the charred corpses of women and children.
When I saw it the first time, I was dumfounded. I believed then that I was witnessing the height of man’s destructive madness.
Although later on I had to be the continual witness of far more terrible scenes, yet the picture of those half-burned-out huts at the edge of the forest beside the Dvina, with whole families dead within them, remains indelibly engraved on my mind. At that time I was still able to pray, and I did.
The Freikorps of the years 1918 to 1921 were peculiar phenomena of the times. The government of the day needed them whenever trouble started either on the frontiers or within the country, and when the police force, or later the army, was too weak to deal with the situation or for political reasons dared not put in an appearance. Once the danger had passed, or when France made pointed inquiries, the government promptly disowned them. They were then dissolved and the new organizations which succeeded them, and were awaiting employment, were prosecuted.
The members of this particular Freikorps consisted of officers and men who had returned from the war and who found themselves misfits in civilian life, of adventurers who wanted to try their hand at this game, of unemployed men anxious to escape from idleness and public charity, and of young enthusiastic volunteers who hastened to take up arms for love of their country. All of them, without exception, were bound by a personal oath of loyalty to their Corps leader. The Corps stood or fell with him. As a result there developed a feeling of solidarity and an esprit de corps which nothing could destroy. In fact the more we were pushed around by the government in office, the more firmly did we stick together. Woe to anyone who attempted to divide us—or betray us!
Since the government was forced to deny the existence of these volunteer corps, the authorities were unable to inquire into or punish offenses committed by their members in the cause of their duties, offenses such as the theft of weapons, the betrayal of military secrets, high treason, and so on. The Freikorps and their successor organizations therefore administered justice themselves, after the ancient Germanic pattern of the Vehmgericht of olden times.[15]
Treachery was punished with death, and there were many traitors so executed.
Only a few of these incidents became known, however, and even then it was only very rarely the “executioners” were caught and brought to trial before the State Court for the Defense of the Republic, a court especially created for this purpose.[16]
But that was what happened in my case. There was a Vehmgericht murder trial in which I was involved and as a result of which I, as the alleged ringleader and the person most concerned, was sentenced to ten years’ hard labor. We had killed the man who had betrayed Schlageter to the French. One of us who was present when we carried out the execution gave an account of it to Vorwärts, the leading social-democratic newspaper, ostensibly out of feelings of remorse but actually, as was afterward established, in order to make money. What really happened was never made clear. The witnesses for the prosecution were not sufficiently sober at the time of the incident to be able to remember the exact details. Those who really knew what had taken place remained silent.
I was certainly there myself, but I was neither the ringleader nor the person chiefly concerned. When I saw, during interrogation, that the comrade who actually did the deed could only be incriminated by my testimony, I took the blame on myself, and he was released while the investigation was still going on. I need not emphasize that, for the reasons given above, I was in complete agreement with the sentence of death being carried out on the traitor. In addition, Schlageter was an old comrade of mine. I had fought beside him in many a bitter scrap in the Baltic and in the Ruhr, and had worked with him behind the enemy lines in Upper Silesia. We had also done a lot of illicit gunrunning together.
I was at the time, and remain to this day, completely convinced that this traitor deserved to be put to death. In all probability no German court would have convicted him, so it was left to us to pass sentence in accordance with an unwritten law which we ourselves, owing to the exigencies of the times, had laid down.[17]
This can, perhaps, only be fully understood by those who lived, or can imagine themselves living, in the chaotic conditions existing at that time.
During the nine months that I spent awaiting trial, and also during the trial itself, I was far from appreciating the seriousness of my position. I firmly believed that my trial would probably never take place and that even if it did I would certainly be acquitted. The political crisis in the Reich during 1923 was so acute that the overthrow of the government by one side or the other seemed inevitable. I confidently anticipated that in due course we would be set free by our comrades. Hitler’s abortive Putsch on November 9, 1923, should have made me think again. I still pinned my hopes, however, on a favorable turn of events.[18]
My two defense lawyers took great pains to point out the gravity of my position and were of the opinion that I must expect at least a lengthy term of imprisonment, if not the death sentence itself, as a result of the new political composition of the tribunal and the more stringent measures that were being inforced against all nationalist organizations. I could not bring myself to believe this. While in prison awaiting trial, we received every possible consideration, for the great majority of us were, politically speaking, from the left, mostly Communists; comparatively few belonged, like myself, to the right. Even Zeigner, the Minister of Justice for Saxony,-sat in his own prison accused of profiteering and of perverting the course of justice.[19]
We could write a lot and were allowed to receive both letters and parcels. We could get the newspapers and so were at all times aware of what was happening outside. We were, however, kept strictly isolated from one another, and we were always blindfolded when we were taken from our cells. Contact with our friends was confined to a few, occasional words shouted through the windows.
16
The State Court for the Defense of the Republic was established in connection with the Law for the Defense of the Republic, enacted June 26, 1922. It is incorrect to say that it was “specially” created to deal with Vehm murders. Paragraph 7 of the law in question shows that this court was competent to judge cases in which the accused were tried for crimes directed against the Republic (as a state form) and against members of the government. This law was passed, and the court in question established, consequent on the murder of the Foreign Minister, Rathenau, on June 24, 1922. (For an interesting though not always reliable description of this murder by one of the murderers, see
17
Hoess’s description of the Parchim murder is colored in his favor and contains inaccuracies. Evidence given before the court which sat in Leipzig from the 12th to the 15th of March 1924, shows this to have been a particularly brutal murder. It had been decided that a former elementary schoolteacher by the name of Kadow was a Communist spy who had infiltrated the Rossbach organization. Hoess and others—Martin Bormann was indirectly implicated— spent the night of May 31-June 1, 1922, drinking, and then abducted Kadow into the woods, where he was beaten almost to death with clubs and branches, after which his throat was cut and he was finally finished off with two revolver bullets. There is not the slightest scrap of evidence to show that Kadow was in any way connected with the Schlageter affair. However, since Schlage-ter had been condemned to death by the French authorities in the Ruhr only a few days before the Kadow murder, it is possible that Hoess had been confused by remarks that Kadow was a traitor “like the man who betrayed Schlageter to the French.” Nor is there any reason to believe that the man who gave evidence against Hoess and the others sold his story to
18
Hoess was arrested on June 28, 1923. On March 15, 1924, he was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment, six months of this sentence to count as already served.
19
Dr. Erich Zeigner had attempted to set up a Communist government in Saxony, and was deprived of his functions as Prime Minister and Minister of Justice for Saxony by a decree of the President of the Reich dated October 29, 1923. He was later tried on a charge of abuse of public office, specifically for destroying public documents and subverting public funds for political party ends. On March 29, 1924, he was sentenced to three years in prison.