So the problem of my profession was solved; I became a soldier again. I found a home again and a feeling of being sheltered in the comradery of my fellow soldiers. And it was strange that I, the loner, who had to struggle with all the inner problems and doubts which occur in one’s mind, had to solve it by myself. I always felt myself drawn to the fellowship in which one could always depend upon the other without question in times of need or danger.
The battles in the Baltic States were more brutal and vicious than anything I had experienced before, during World War I, or afterwards in* all of the battles of the Free Corps. There was hardly a front line; the enemy was everywhere. Wherever the opposing forces collided, there was a slaughter until no one was left. The Latvians were the best at this. For the first time I saw the horrors conunitted against civilians. The Latvians took horrible revenge against their own countrymen who quartered and supplied German or White Russian soldiers. They set fire to their houses and let the people living in them bum alive. Countless times I saw the horrible pictures of the bumed-out cottages, the scorched and partially burned bodies of women and children. When I saw this, I could not believe that the mad desire of humans to destroy could be intensified, even though later I repeatedly was to see more horrible pictures. I can still picture these horrors today: the half-burned cottages there on the edge of the forest of the Duna River, whole families murdered. At that time I could still pray, and I did.
The Free Corps [private armies] in the years 1918-21 were a strange historical phenomenon. Whatever government was in power needed them when there was trouble on the border or inside the country. They were used if the police forces, or later the army, were not enough, or they were used if the government could not openly be involved because of political reasons. When the danger was over, or when France made pointed inquiries, the government disavowed their connection. They were disbanded and the government then persecuted those organizations which formed from the leftover veterans who were waiting for a new mission. The members of these Free Corps were officers and soldiers who had come back from World War I and couldn’t fit into civilian life anymore: adventurers who wanted to try their luck in this lifestyle, the unemployed who wanted to escape idleness and public welfare, and young, enthusiastic volunteers who rushed to the soldier’s life out of patriotism. Without exception all pledged their allegiance to the particular leader of their Free Corps. With him the unit stood or fell. In this way a feeling of togetherness, an esprit de corps, developed which could not be broken by anything. The more intensely we were hunted by the current government, the stronger we stuck together. Woe to him who broke the ties of this brotherhood or betrayed it.
Since the government had to deny the existence of the Free Corps, it could not prosecute or investigate crimes such as theft of arms, espionage or treason committed by the members of these organizations. A kind of self-justice system based on historical German patterns came into existence within the Free Corps and their offspring organizations. These were the so-called Vehmic courts. • Any kind of betrayal was punished by death. And so many traitors were executed. However, only a few cases became known, and only in a few individual cases were the guilty caught and sentenced by a special federal court called the Protection of the Republic, which was created specifically for this purpose.
I. Vigilante courts wherein the accused was secretly tried by his Free Corps and if found guilty was executed.
World History
