The association was founded and led by the Magdeburg factory owner, Franz Seldte. From 1924 to 1933 he shared the national leadership with Theodor Duesterberg. Originally conceived in 1918 as a relief organization for returning war veterans, the Steel Helmet quickly grew into an influential anti-republican force. By 1930 it had over half a million members. It was mainly financed by the military, industrialists and large landowners from east of the Elbe. Large-scale annual ‘Front-line Soldiers’ Days‘ played an important role in the militarization of the Weimar Republic.
In Bavaria Seldte subordinated himself to Georg Escherich’s citizens’ militias. The Steel Helmet local groups founded in Munich and Bavaria from 1920 consequently remained insignificant and had fewer than 1,000 members. The Bavarian Stahlhelm leader, Carl Wäninger, who was a protegé of Oswald Spengler, was mostly involved in Escherich’s projects, such as the “Emergency Alliance of Bavarian Business Classes”. Even Wäninger’s agreement with the Münchner-Augsburger-Abendzeitung (Munich-Augsburg evening newspaper), which was designed to increase subscribers in return for unabridged, well-placed Steel Helmet articles, was unable to increase the number of Bavarian Steel Helmet members. It was only when the League of Bavaria and the Reich lost importance and in 1929 the annual Front-line Soldiers’ Day selected Munich to stage a huge march, that the Bavarian Steel Helmet was created as an amalgamation of the ‘League of Bavaria and the Reich’, the ‘Reich Flag’ and the ‘Patriotic District Associations of Munich’.
Despite the sometime bitter rivalry between the Storm Battalion (SA) and the Steel Helmet, their similarities outweighed their differences. They appeared side by side at the ‘German Days’ and at ‘patriotic festivities’, took part in the campaign against the Young Plan and carried out ‘anti-Bolshevist operations’, which consequently led to the enforced conformity of the Steel Helmet in 1933/34 and the transfer of its members to the SA.
