Organisation Consul

Organisation Consul (O.C.) was a nationalist-oriented and anti-Semitic terrorist organization that operated in the Weimar Republic from 1920–1922. The paramilitary O.C., led by Hermann Ehrhardt, was a regionally structured secret society that carried out political assassinations with the aims of destabilizing the democratic system of the republic, establishing a military dictatorship, and revising the end results of World War I, especially the Versailles Peace Treaty.

Organisation Consul
LeaderHermann Ehrhardt
Dates of operation1920 (1920)–1922 (1922)
CountryGermany
HeadquartersMunich
IdeologyUltra-nationalist, anti-Semitic and anticommunist
Major actionsAssassinated at least 354 people
StatusBanned
Size5,000 personnel

Origins

The O.C. grew out of the Marine Brigade Ehrhardt, a Freikorps unit that was officially disbanded in 1920. Its namesake commander, Captain Hermann Ehrhardt, formed the O.C. from the ranks of the Brigade after the failure of the 1920 Kapp Putsch, an attempted coup against the German national government in Berlin. His fighters had formed the Association of Former Ehrhardt Officers which then became the O.C.[1] The O.C. was a militarily organized cadre group whose members were recruited largely from former (front-line) officers of the Imperial German Army, Imperial Navy and the Freikorps. It was initially tolerated by the Reich government and the Reichswehr leadership, which hoped to use it and similar associations to undermine the arms restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles.[2]

Hermann Ehrhardt

Organization

The O.C. had liaison officers throughout the Reich and could draw from a pool of an estimated 5,000 men. Eventually it came to have districts encompassing large areas of the nation.[3] They were particularly active in Berlin, where many of their crimes were committed. One of the best known members was the Freikorps fighter and post-war author Ernst von Salomon. The average age of the members was between 20 and 30. They were motivated by anti-bourgeois sentiments and extreme nationalism. Anti-Marxism and anti-Semitism also played a role. The O.C.'s statutes listed their goal as "the fight against everything anti-national and international, Judaism, social democracy and radical left-wing parties". Jews were excluded from participation, and every member had to affirm that he was of "German descent".[4]

Marine Brigade Erhardt during  the Kapp Putsch

The O.C. operated out of Munich, and its presence there was tacitly tolerated or covered up by the Munich police chief Ernst Pöhner. As a front, the organization created the Bavarian Wood Products Company headquartered in Munich.[5] About 30 full-time employees worked there under the de facto leadership of Ehrhardt's chief of staff, Alfred Hoffmann. The O.C. had seven main districts (Hamburg, Hanover, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Dresden, Breslau, Tübingen), each with up to three sub-districts. The establishment of planned additional districts was prevented by the organization's ban in 1922. It financed itself through illegal arms trafficking, including with the Irish Republican Army.[6] The eponymous "consul" was Ehrhardt himself, who ran the organization in a tautly militarily manner.[7] Through the O.C. he oversaw a network of other paramilitary organizations. Members of the O.C. took part in the 1920 referendum campaign in Upper Silesia and, as Sturmkompanie Koppe, in the suppression of the Third Polish Uprising which was attempting to have the territory ceded to Poland.

The strategic goal of the O.C. was to provoke the political left into an uprising, which they then wanted to put down together with the Reichswehr in order to use the position of power thus gained to crush the Weimar Republic and install a right-wing dictatorship.[8] The organization played a significant role in the formation of the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA) when in 1921 O.C. Lieutenant Hans Ulrich Klintzsch took over the military leadership of the former Gymnastic and Sports Division of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). Julius Schreck and Joseph Berchtold, later Adolf Hitler's bodyguards, also came from its membership.

In the Organisation Consul's mission statement, it defined its spiritual aims as "the cultivation and dissemination of nationalist thinking; warfare against all anti-nationalists and internationalists; warfare against Jewry, social democracy and leftist radicalism; fomentation of internal unrest in order to attain the overthrow of the anti-nationalist Weimar Constitution." Its material aims were "The organization of determined, nationalist-minded men . . . local shock troops for breaking up meetings of an anti-nationalist nature; maintenance of arms and the preservation of military ability; the education of youth in the use of arms… Only those men who have determination, who obey unconditionally and who are without scruples . . . will be accepted. . . . The organization is a secret organization. "[9]

The O.C. was financed by industrialists and enemies of the republic in the bourgeoisie, nobility and military, who, like Erhardt, wanted to force a violent change in the political situation.[10]

Notable murders
Matthias Erzberger

On August 26, 1921 Matthias Erzberger, a Centre Party politician hated by the right wing as one of the signers of the armistice between Germany and the Allied Powers, was murdered by Heinrich Schulz and Heinrich Tillessen near Bad Griesbach in the Black Forest. The police investigation quickly led to the perpetrators and finally to the Organisation Consul to which the two belonged. Following additional investigations, 34 members of the O.C. were arrested across Germany. Most of them had to be released soon after because the suspicion that the O.C. had planned and carried out Erzberger's murder as an organization could not be sufficiently supported by the evidence. Some of the members were nevertheless charged with membership in a secret society.[11]

Walther Rathenau

On June 24, 1922 members of the O.C. assassinated German Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau. One of those involved was Ernst von Salomon, who describes his membership in the O.C. in his popularly successful autobiographical work The Questionnaire, published in 1951. Members of the O.C. were also responsible for the attempted assassination of Philipp Scheidemann using Prussic acid on June 4, 1922, and probably also for the murder of Karl Gareis, a member of the Bavarian parliament, on June 9, 1921.[1]

Ban and successor organizations

During the investigation of the Erzberger murder, the headquarters of the O.C. was raided. On the basis of the Law for the Protection of the Republic enacted on July 21, 1922, the O.C. was banned. The Viking League was founded as a successor organization.

During the Nazi era, the members of the O.C. were assigned to the Schutzstaffel (SS).[2] They were celebrated as "heroes of the national resistance" even though the O.C. had been in competition with the NSDAP. Ehrhardt clashed several times with Adolf Hitler in Munich in the 1920s, accusing him among other things of breaking his word.

References
  1. Waite, Robert G.L. (1969). Vanguard of Nazism The Free Corps Movement In Post-War Germany 1918-1923. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. pp. 203, 213. ISBN 978-0-393-00181-5.
  2. Selig, Wolfram (2012). Organisation Consul. In: Wolfgang Benz (ed.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Judenfeindschaft in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Bd. 5: Organisationen, Institutionen, Bewegungen [Handbook of Anti-Semitism. Hostility to Jews in History and the Present. Vol. 5: Organizations, Institutions, Movements] (in German). Berlin: De Gruyter. p. 465. ISBN 978-3-11-027878-1.
  3. Waite, p. 215, quoting Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz, Sprengstoff, Berlin, 1930.
  4. Waite, Robert G.L. (1969). Vanguard of Nazism The Free Corps Movement In Post-War Germany 1918-1923. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. pp. 203, 213. ISBN 978-0-393-00181-5.
  5. Benz, Wolfgang (2010). Politik in Bayern 1919-1933: Berichte des württembergischen Gesandten Carl Moser von Filseck [Politics in Bavaria 1913 – 1833: Reports of the Württemberg envoy Carl Moser von Filseck]. Walter de Gruyter. p. 102. ISBN 978-3-486-70361-0.
  6. Sabrow, Martin. Organisation Consul (O.C.), 1920–1922 (in German). In: Historisches Lexikon Bayerns. Accessed on 10 March 2018.
  7. Wette, Wolfram (2002). Die Wehrmacht. Feindbilder, Vernichtungskrieg, Legenden [The Wehrmacht. Images of the Enemy, War of Extermination, Legends]. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag. p. 58. ISBN 3-7632-5267-3.
  8. Sabrow, Martin (1994). Der Rathenaumord. Rekonstruktion einer Verschwörung gegen die Republik von Weimar [The Rathenau Murder. Reconstruction of a Conspiracy against the Weimar Republic]. Munich: Oldenbourg. p. 41. ISBN 3-486-64569-2.
  9. Waite, Vanguard of Nazism, 1969, p. 214, quoting, among other sources, Fried, Guilt of the Germany Army, 197, who in turn is quoting the Münchener Post, Dec 27, 1922
  10. https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/walther-rathenau-mord-organisation-consul-weimarer-republik-martin-sabrow-1.5559921
  11. On the Erzberger murder and the involvement of the O.C. see Sabrow, Der Rathenaumord, pp. 22–27.

Bibliography
  • Selig, Wolfram (30 July 2012). "Organisation Consul". In Benz, Wolfgang (ed.). Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Judenfeindschaft in Geschichte und Gegenwart (in German). Berlin: De Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-027878-1.
  • Waite, Robert G. L. (1969). Vanguard of Nazism The Free Corps Movement In Post-War Germany 1918-1923. New York. W. W. Norton and Company.. 356 pages. ISBN 978-0-393-00181-5
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