Germany's defeat in the First World War led to a new type of political mass movement, which General Erich Ludendorff described as follows: “If we no longer have an army, we must form a fighting community of all the people, consolidated in the traditions of the old army. [...] In my opinion, the citizens’ militias, the Stahlhelm, the so-called black Reichswehr serve this purpose” (StAM, Stan. 14359). It was on this basis that the armed “militias” characteristic of the Weimar period developed.
From 1918 to 1921, various paramilitary vigilante groups, Free Corps and citizens’ militias gradually emerged, which, despite all their differences, were dedicated to “military activity”. The common enemy, Communism, was, to varying degrees, mixed with anti-republican, anti-socialist and antisemitic attitudes. The peculiarity of this paramilitary complex was the privatization of violence in the “semi-obscurity of licensed illegality” (Jasper, p. 119).
Bavaria, with its citizens’ militias and the Escherich organization, was at the forefront of this system from 1920 onwards. The successors and beneficiaries of the dismissal of most of the Free Corps soldiers from the military in that year and the dissolution of the citizens’ militias, which also took place due to the Versailles Treaty provisions, were the diverse, albeit consistently anti-democratic, sometimes also so-called “patriotic” militias. Thousands of discharged soldiers and “militiamen” flocked to the new paramilitary formations.
In Bavaria, the Storm Battalion (SA) was founded in 1921 and played a dual role: Nazi PartyIt was the first armed “private army” of a political party, the Nazi Party, and at the same time an armed militia in the service of all enemies of the republic. Large stocks of weapons from the downsized German army were secretly made available to violent nationalist right-wing groups, including the SA. Extra-judicial killings, referred to as ‘Feme’ murders, were covered up by the police and courts.
After the attempt by the extreme right to bring about a coup d'état with the help of the SA and other militias in November 1923 had failed and the Weimar Republic was increasingly stabilized, most right-wing associations – in addition to their continuing function as illegal reserve formations for the Reichswehr – attempted to take on a new, independent role in domestic politics: The focus was now no longer on preparing a putsch, but on intimidating left-wing and democratic forces by adopting a decidedly militant stance. Beyond this, however, the militias were hardly in a position to exert any significant influence on the policies of the right-wing parties.
In contrast, the SA, as a political fighting organization integrated into the Nazi Party and with a high degree of militancy, appeared comparatively attractive to many, especially younger men. From the end of 1931, it recorded the highest number of new members. In August 1932, the SA had 445,000 members, and in Bavaria it grew from around 9,000 to 20,000 during this period. Here it formed alliances with the “Bavarian Home Front Protection (Bayerischer Heimatschutz)”, founded by Georg Escherich at the end of 1928, which had around 40,000 predominantly monarchist members. Nevertheless, the SA developed into the most powerful organization, partly in competition and partly in alliance with the other paramilitary associations. In contrast, its main competitor, the 'Stahlhelm' League of Frontline Soldiers, founded in 1919 primarily as a veterans' organization and the largest militia in the Weimar Republic with over half a million members (1930), did not succeed in playing a decisive role in the transformation of the Weimar Republic into an authoritarian state between 1930 and 1933.
The Social Democrat-led ‘Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold’ (Black, Red, and Gold Banner of the Reich) and the Red Front Fighters' League, which was founded by the KPD (Communist Party) and mostly acted as a regional self-defense organization, emerged as left-wing, republican militias in 1924. While the Reichsbanner was able to organize 160,000 members in the Reich as a protective formation (Schufo) against attacks on the Republic at the beginning of 1931, it was only able to gain a foothold in Bavaria in a few northern industrial cities. The Red Front Fighters' League was banned in Bavaria as early as 1925, four years earlier than in the Reich; it was also mainly active in the Nuremberg area. These organizations were no match for the superior strength of the right-wing extremist militias supported by the Reichswehr and other state institutions.
In 1933, all non-right-wing extremist organizations, i.e. both the bourgeois-moderate and the left-wing militias, came to an end: The “Stahlhelm”, whose federal leader Seldte became Minister of Labor in the Hitler/Papen cabinet in 1933, was successively incorporated into the SA, which was given special status under the Nazi regime. The “Bavarian Home Front Protection” dissolved itself, with the majority of its members also joining the SA, the SS or the Stahlhelm. The remnants of the republican and communist associations were persecuted and crushed by the new state power in the wake of the Reichstag Fire Decree of February 28, 1933.
