On
this date, May 29, 1970, Freikorps Commander, Waldemar Pabst passed away. I
will post information about this former Paramilitary Commander from Wikipedia
and other links.
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Waldemar Pabst Book
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Waldemar
Pabst
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Born
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Waldemar Pabst
December 24, 1880 Berlin |
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Died
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May 29, 1970 (aged 89)
Düsseldorf |
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Nationality
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Other names
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Waldemar der Grosse
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Occupation
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Army Officer, Weapons Manufacturer
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Employer
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Rheinmetall Borsig
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Known for
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Freikorps leader
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Title
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Waldemar Pabst
(24 December 1880 in Berlin – 29 May 1970 in Düsseldorf)
was a German
soldier and political activist, involved in far right
and anti-communist activity in both his homeland and Austria. As a
serving officer Pabst gained notoriety for ordering the executions of Karl
Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in 1919 as well as for his leading
role in the coterie of ultra-nationalist conspirators around Wolfgang
Kapp. In Austria he played a central part in organising rightist militia
groups before being deported due to his activities. Pabst subsequently faded
from public life in Nazi Germany as he was never more than loosely
associated with the Nazis.
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Captain Waldemar Pabst, Austria, c. 1925
(Photo: Austrian Archives)
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Early
life
Born
in Berlin,
Pabst was the son of a museum director. He attended the Preußische
Hauptkadettenanstalt, the training academy for officers in the Prussian
Army, as a contemporary of Franz
von Papen at the institution and was commissioned as an officer in 1899.
Pabst
saw active service in the First
World War, mainly on the Western Front in Belgium and most
notably at the Battle of Verdun. In 1916 he was withdrawn from
the front and redeployed as a member of the German General Staff.
Anti-communism
Under
the order of General Erich Ludendorff, Pabst joined the
Garde-Kavallerie-Schützen-Division in March 1918, late in the war. As chief of
general staff, Pabst converted the regiment from cavalry to infantry. The
regiment would become noted as the fiercest counter-revolutionary force in Germany at the
time.
Pabst
first came to prominence during the Communist and left-wing uprisings that
immediately followed the war. As commander of the rifle guard, Captain Pabst
was instrumental in such actions as the recapture of the Vorwärts
building on 11–12 January 1919. His actions saw him promoted to the role of
Chief of Staff, and as such, effectively commander, of the Horse Guards
Division, an important Freikorps unit. Pabst's energetic commitment to the unit,
his strong anti-communist feelings, his general distrust of the commanding
officers of the army and the fact that de jure commander General Heinrich von Hofmann meant
that Pabst became the focus of the Division and effective leader. He saw Bolshevism
as a world danger and took part in anti-revolutionary activities across Germany.
He was also active with Russian
émigrés, founding the Russian National Political Committee under the
presidency of General Vladimir Biskupskii.
It
was Pabst who gave the order that the captured Communist leaders Rosa
Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht should be killed, and he would later
boast that "I had them executed". At the time however, his official
report claimed that he had taken them into protective custody, but that they
had been lost to an angry mob, a story which was quickly dismissed as
fabrication. However Pabst would later claim that his initial intention had
been for Liebknecht to be executed by firing squad as a German but for
Luxemburg to be beaten to death by an angry mob as he felt her status as a Jew meant she deserved
to die in a pogrom.
Ultimately however both victims were shot.
Some
of Pabst's lieutenants, including Horst von Pflugk-Harttung and Kurt Vogel,
faced court martial for the killings although Pabst managed to ensure that his
ally Wilhelm Canaris was in charge of proceedings and as a result the stiffest
penalty handed down was the dismissal from service and two years imprisonment
given to Vogel (whom witnesses had seen disposing of Luxemburg's body). Pabst
himself was not brought to court martial. Indeed, Pabst's Freikorps Mördenzentrale,
a centre for summary execution based in the Hotel Eden, saw many other Communist Party of Germany members
killed as well.
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Captain Waldemar Pabst, 1931, Austria
(Photo: Austrian Archives)
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Kapp
Putsch
Pabst
briefly left Germany to take on a role advising Major Alfred
Fletcher, the commander of the Baltische Landeswehr in Latvia. However he
was soon back in Germany, and became involved in the Nationale Vereinigung
(National Union), a right-wing think tank formed by Wolfgang
Kapp, Erich Ludendorff and others, and was central to
the group's conspiracy to establish a rightist dictatorship. He served this
group as secretary and supervisor of administrative affairs. In July 1919,
Pabst attempted to organise a coup, when he convinced his superior General von
Hofmann, the official commander of the Horse Guards Division, to march on Berlin in order to
crush an alleged Communist uprising. However, with the troops already in the
city's suburbs, General Georg Ludwig Rudolf Maercker got wind
of the plot and convinced General von Hofmann that it was a bad idea. With this
plan thwarted, Pabst and the conspirators shifted their attention away from the
Reichswehr
and on to the disillusioned veterans of the Freikorps.
Pabst
played a leading role in the failed Kapp
Putsch and, along with Wolfgang Kapp and the Marinebrigade Ehrhardt of Hermann
Ehrhardt, was named by Gustav Noske as having the main responsibility for the
action, even though it actually had support from higher up in the Reichswehr.
In the immediate aftermath of the putsch, Pabst took refuge in Miklós
Horthy's Hungary
where he was soon joined by co-conspirator Walther von Lüttwitz. Despite the failure of
the putsch, Pabst would often speak proudly of his involvement in the episode.
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Pabst (carrying bouquet) entering Austria
from Italy with Richard Steidle (bearded), c. 1930
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Austria
Pabst
eventually went to Austria, settling in the city of Innsbruck.
In Austria he linked up with the Heimwehr in Tyrol
and played a central role in ensuring that the sometimes shaky dual leadership
of Richard Steidle and Walter
Pfrimer remained united. In Austria Pabst proved vital in organising and
disciplining the followers of the Heimwehr. Such was his organisational skill
that Pabst, who declared himself a Major after fleeing to Austria, became known
as Waldemar der Grosse to his Heimwehr units. He was appointed Chief of Staff
of the Tyrolean Heimwehr on 1 May 1922. In this role Pabst was able to organise
several disparate right-wing militia groups under the single Heimwehr banner,
although he was ultimately unsuccessful in fully removing local differences
from what remained an eclectic movement. Nonetheless Pabst was able to make
contact with Benito Mussolini and was able to secure funding
for the Heimwehr from him.
Pabst
was initially close to Johann Schober, and won his support in 1929, when he
suggested repositioning the Heimwehr as a pro-government political party.
However Schober's attempts to convert the Heimwehr into a force for
pro-government moderation soon floundered, and he ordered the deportation
of Pabst, by then recognised as the main organisational force behind the
Heimwehr, to Germany the following year. With Pabst removed, Schober was able
to ensure the removal of Steidle and his replacement as leader by the more
compliant Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg. A last
desperate attempt by Pabst to induce Mussolini to withhold funding unless
Schober embraced Pabst's policies failed and he was duly deported.
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Waldemar Pabst versus Adolf Hitler
[PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.lachschon.de/item/163784-optischevwg/]
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Later
life
Returning
to Germany, Pabst became a member of the Society for the Study of Fascism along
with others such as Friedrich Minoux. In 1931 he wrote a pamphlet in
which he set out a manifesto for a "White International"; in this he
called for the replacement of the values of liberté, égalité, fraternité with
a new Europe-wide order based on "a new Trinity: authority, order,
justice". He was vaguely linked to the Nazi Party,
without ever joining or becoming particularly active on the party's behalf, but
he did seek to forge three-way links between the Heimwehr, the Wehrmacht
and his friend Walther Funk. Such efforts however, were somewhat
hamstrung, by the fact that the Heimwehr had gone into steep decline following
Pabst's deportation. Pabst had discussed the Austrian situation with Adolf
Hitler during the latter's rise to power and Hitler had ensured Pabst that
once he took control of Germany he would concentrate much of his efforts on
disseminating the Nazi message in Austria.
Settling
into civilian life, he became an industrialist and eventually Director of Rheinmetall
Borsig in Berlin.
Pabst's non-involvement in Nazism, given his history in the far right, raised some
suspicions and rumours circulated that he had been in contact with Wilhelm
Canaris and similar figures on the right of the German
resistance. Such rumours were never proven, but Pabst did leave Germany not
long before the 20 July plot and it has been suggested that he may have been aware
that the attempt on Adolf Hitler's life was about to take place.
Having
left Germany, Pabst settled in Switzerland,
where he took a post with the arms manufacturer Oerlikon. Following the Second
World War, Pabst took some involvement in the activities of the neo-Nazi Bruderschaften,
small groups that existed across Europe and which attempted to co-ordinate their political
activism. He returned to Germany in 1955, settling in Düsseldorf, and there
became involved with the far right Deutsche Gemeinschaft, a minor group
that was later absorbed into the Deutsche Reichspartei. He died in Düsseldorf
in 1970 at the age of 89.
In
popular culture
In
film the role of Pabst was played by Horst Drinda in the 1968 East
German film Der Mord, der nie verjährt and by Hans Michael Rehberg in
the 1986 film Rosa Luxemburg.
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