‘Organisation Consul’ (April 1920 – May 1923)

The wanted putschist Hermann Ehrhardt went into hiding in Munich in 1920 with the help of the Bavarian police and government and founded the “Organization Consul” (O.C.). The O.C. was a secret organization in two respects: As a paramilitary Free Corps, it was financed by the Reichswehr and partly by the Foreign Office in order to undermine the disarmament provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. As a rallying point for “determined national-minded men” to “combat everything anti- and international, Judaism, social democracy and radical left-wing parties” (O.C. statutes), it also formed a reservoir of political murderers to eliminate leading figures of the Weimar Republic.
In the summer of 1921, Ehrhardt and Adolf Hitler agreed on the military training of a ‘Saalschutz’ (Hall Guard) for the Nazi Party, which was also to be available for Ehrhardt's actions. This was the foundation on which the “Gymnastics and Sports Department of the Nazi Party”, soon to be called the Storm Battalion (SA), was founded on August 3, 1921 under the leadership of O.C. officer Hans-Ulrich Klintzsch and which was expanded up to May 1923.

Two weeks after the SA was founded, O.C. members murdered the former Reich Finance Minister Matthias Erzberger. The perpetrators were able to flee to Hungary. Investigators in Baden uncovered the organizational structure of the O.C. – including the Munich cover address “Bavarian Wood Processing Company”, located at Trautenwolfstraße 8. Despite support for the O.C. from the Bavarian police and politicians such as Georg Heim, members of the Munich leadership were arrested. Public prosecutors from Offenburg brought charges of murder and forming a secret society.
The O.C. quickly reorganized itself. It founded the legal “New German League”.

Further assassination attempts by the O.C. on Philipp Scheidemann and Walther Rathenau led to the Republic Protection Act in July 1922 and the banning of the O.C. One day after the SA's failed attack on the May Day rally in Munich in 1923, Ehrhardt founded the “Viking League” as a replacement for the O.C., with its editorial office in the Ringhotel at Sendlinger Torplatz 1. Arms suppliers' offices were still operating at this location as successors to the citizens’ militias in Bavaria.