Freedom Action Bavaria (FAB): program and goals

Structure and development
The Freedom Action Bavaria (FAB) consisted at its core of five groups with a total of twelve people, including Alois Braun, Rupprecht Gerngross, Leo Heuwing, and Ottheinrich Leiling. They came primarily from the military interpreter service and banded together in Munich, Freising, and Moosburg for an action against the NS state. Since March 1945, some of the leading figures had made contact with military and civil NS opponents before they became active in the context of the FAB. Contacts were even made with the US secret service in Switzerland.

Goals
The goals of the Freedom Action Bavaria are connected to the 1943 plans developed by the Munich Sperr-Kreis, a smaller Christian-monarchistic group close to the former Bavarian envoy to Berlin: Under the leadership of a high-ranking military, this group wanted to seize government power in order to transfer Bavaria to the Allies without a fight. The organization was supposed to start as soon as the Allied units had reached the Rhine. In the course of arrests after the failed assassination on July 20, 1944, however, many members of the Sperr-Kreis were apprehended, and some were executed.

Name and program
The name Freedom Action Bavaria was intended to express the group’s central goal, namely freedom, as well as the regional focus on Bavaria. The essential source for the political goals of the FAB and its intended practical actions after a successful uprising is its ten-point program. It was probably written in advance of the uprising by Ottheinrich Leiling, who within the interpreter company in military district VII, organized most of the uprising. The program formulates remarkably pragmatic key demands:
1. Eradication of the blood rule of National Socialism
2. Elimination of militarism
3. Restoration of peace
4. Fight against anarchy
5. Securing of food
6. Restoration of orderly economic conditions
7. Rebuilding of the state of law
8. Establishment of a social order. The state assumes responsibility for this.
9. Restoration of basic rights
10. Restoration of human dignity
The following points were the focus of the planned renewal: complete renunciation of militarism and National Socialism, guarantee of basic rights based on Christian values, and the inviolability of the individual.
For their part, the leading FAB activists planned to form a ten-person government committee that would officiate until a constitution ratified by free and secret votes went into force. The activists wanted to inform the population about their goals with flyers, a newspaper, and radio, and call on them to help.

Implementation
After delays, there was an uprising in the night of April 27-28, 1945, in which about 440 soldiers participated. The activities in and around Munich aimed to depose the leading military and the Regional Leader (Gauleiter) of Munich and Upper Bavaria, Paul Giesler. The Reich Representative in Bavaria, Franz Xaver Ritter von Epp, was supposed to be recruited to negotiate an armistice with the Allied troops who had already crossed parts of the Danube and the Lech Rivers. In the morning hours of April 28, part of the FAB occupied the radio stations in Freimann and Ismaning. Via the large radio station in Ismaning, the appeals, which started at six in the morning, reached listeners in a radius of more than 100 kilometers. In addition to the ten-point program, which was read out several times, the FAB activists appealed to listeners to participate and proceed against NS functionaries. The speakers also announced that the FAB had won the “power to govern” (Deutschlandspiegel, April 29, 1945). However, this did not correspond to the facts, since, contrary to the plans, it had not been possible to oust senior military officers and the Regional Leader (Gauleiter).

Follow-up actions
However, there were 78 actions with which a total of nearly 1000 people reacted to these appeals, especially in southern Bavaria. Some of these were groups that had already convened in advance, but there were also groups that formed ad hoc. In spontaneous reactions to the radio appeals, they tried through various activities, which ranged from the detention of NS functionaries to eliminating tank traps to prevent a military defense of their respective communities: Avoiding such battles and threatened destruction was the primary motivation for these follow-up actions. In these direct confrontations with representatives of the Nazi regime, the participants accepted great personal risk. 57 people died in these days: In three cases, NS supporters were shot by FAB activists, but 54 people who had reacted to the FAB appeals were killed by supporters of the Nazi regime. Even during the radio appeals, the Regional Leadership (Gauleitung), with the help of ‘People’s Storm’ (Volkssturm) units, had already rounded up alleged FAB supporters and sympathizers. A total of 22 people were brought to the bunker of the Central Ministry (today the Ministry of Agriculture) on the Ludwigstraße; of these, seven were killed in the courtyard of the building or in the Perlach Forest.

On April 28, 1945, the so-called 'Night of Penzberg Murders' alone, former Social Democratic Party mayor Hans Rummer, who freed forced laborers and prisoners and ousted the National Socialist mayor, and 17 other people were shot or hanged by members of the 'Werewolf’ with the approval of Regional Leader (Gauleiter) Paul Giesler.

The Freedom Action Bavaria and those who reacted to their radio appeals were unable to achieve their goals. But in some places, there was a peaceful transfer to the rapidly advancing Allied troops, who occupied southern Bavaria until the capitulation on May 9, 1945. The erstwhile Feilitzschplatz in the center of Munich’s Schwabing district was renamed Münchner Freiheit (Munich Freedom) in 1946 after the Freedom Action Bavaria.