Hammer of the Gods: The Thule Society and the Birth of Nazism by Luhrssen David

Author:Luhrssen, David [Luhrssen, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Potomac Books
Published: 2017-01-27T16:00:00+00:00

The Fall of Munich

Backed by aircraft and an armored train bristling with artillery, Hoffmann’s forces marched on Munich from all sides. The Guards Cavalry and Erhardt’s Marine Brigade advanced through Freising and Dachau. Wurttemberger and Bavarian Freikorps drove to Munich from the west while Freikorps Epp circled around to cut off the city from the south. A smaller force swung in from the east through Mühldorf. Moving by trucks whose radiator grills were painted with white skull and crossbones and moving by rail, marching on foot, and riding on horseback, the Whites met little resistance in most places, helping themselves to guns and munitions abandoned by the Reds. Heavy fighting commenced only when the Whites reached the outer suburbs of Munich. “We watched the approach of the northern German groups and were much impressed by their military conduct and discipline. Within our ranks we adhered to a more free conduct,” recalled a Bavarian veteran of Freikorps Regensburg.87

Rumors of the murders spread like fire through a dry woods on the evening of April 30. Gruesome details compounded as the tale circulated, including reports that the victims’ genitals had been hacked off and tossed into dustbins.88 Sebottendorff’s assessment of the Luitpold executions was sober. “The bodies were not mutilated and the soldiers did not rob them,” he later wrote.89

In the immediate aftermath of the executions, however, Thulists inside the city were incensed and emboldened. The municipal police, disbanded by the Soviets, as well as an association of former noncommissioned officers, had continued to meet as social “clubs” under the leadership of Thule Combat League commanders.90 The old police and the former subalterns of Bavaria’s royal army resurfaced with the approach of the White troops and sprang into action. The Combat League opened a second front behind the lines.91 “Right wing vigilantes,” presumably Combat Leaguers, as no other organized resistance group is known to have operated inside Soviet Munich, seized the royal Residenz, the War Ministry, and the Prussian legation by the afternoon of May 1. Red flags fell to the ground in the city center before the arrival of troops; Bavaria’s blue and white colors greeted White Guards from several key buildings.92

As Lenin addressed a huge May Day crowd in Moscow with the words, “Today the liberated working class is celebrating its anniversary freely and openly—not only in Soviet Russia, but also in Soviet Hungary and Soviet Bavaria,” the end of Communist rule in southern Germany was already in sight. Even before the final assault on Munich began, many Red Guards had begun to shed their red armbands and toss their arms into the River Isar.93

Max Levien snuck out of Munich and crossed the border into Austria. Red positions inside the city were shelled from the Freikorps’ armored train. Spartacists inside the Palace of Justice waved a white flag from a window after a few rounds from the Freikorps Regensburg field artillery.94 Red Guards made a stand at the railroad station and the Malthäser Brauhaus, where Eisner’s rousing speeches had led to the formation of the Bavarian Socialist Republic only five months earlier.

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