THE BLACK REICHSWEHR AND THE COURTS

The Treaty of Versailles that was concluded after World War One limited the size of the German army or Reichswehr.  When the officer corps was reduced, General Hans von Seeckt was able to use this to the advantage of the political Right to ensure the remaining officers were those of that political tendency.  (By the way, if anyone ever tries to feed you that age old rubbish about how the German army was politically neutral and only supported Hitler out of necessity, you can tell them to stop listening to self-serving Nazi generals and their post WWII memoirs.)

Von Seeckt not only lead the Reichswehr, but the "Black Reichswehr," a secret army of some 20,000 men actually paid and supplied by the regular Reichswehr.  The Black Reichswehr fought an undeclared war against Polish forces in Upper Silesia, and conducted secret trials (and executions) against so-called traitors to Germany.

Unlike the Black Reichswehr, the Freikorps (their political compadres) could operate openly.  They were funded by wealthy capitalists and landowners, and had no official status as an army of the state.  They were frequently used by the bourgeois establishment to thwart proletarian and democratic action through the use of extreme violence.  The accompanying picture here shows a contemporary satire of the judiciary and the police, showing the very heavy bias in the courts towards extremist Right-wingers whenever they were tried for their crimes.  (At some later point I will discuss E.J. Gumbel and his analysis of the appalling stats on this score, and how frequently the Right was not even tried for its crimes during the Weimar Republic.)