rise-and-fall-of-the-third-reich-william-shirer-pdf

60 THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICHthe Emergency Act was placed in the hands of the Minister of Defense, OttoGessler, and of the Commander of the Army, General von Seeckt. In reality thismade the General and his Army virtual dictators of the Reich.Bavaria was in no mood to accept such a solution. The Bavarian cabinetof Eugen von Knilling proclaimed its own state of emergency on September 26and named the right-wing monarchist and former premier Gustav von Kahras State Commissioner with dictatorial powers. In Berlin it was feared thatBavaria might secede from the Reich, restore the Wittelsbach monarchy andperhaps form a South German union with Austria. A meeting of the cabinetwas hastily summoned by President Ebert, and General von Seeckt was invitedto attend. Ebert wanted to know where the Army stood. Seeckt bluntly toldhim. ”The Army, Mr. President, stands behind me.” 95The icy words pronounced by the monocled, poker-faced Prussian Commanderin Chief did not, as might have been expected, dismay the German Presidentor his Chancellor. They had already recognized the Army’s position as a statewithin the State and subject only to itself. Three years before, as we have seen,when the Kapp forces had occupied Berlin and a similar appeal had been madeto Seeckt, the Army had stood not behind the Republic but behind the General.The only question now, in 1923, was where Seeckt stood.Fortunately for the Republic he now chose to stand behind it, not becausehe believed in republican, democratic principles but because he saw that for themoment the support of the existing regime was necessary for the preservation ofthe Army, itself threatened by revolt in Bavaria and in the north, and for savingGermany from a disastrous civil war. Seeckt knew that some of the leading officersof the Army division in Munich were siding with the Bavarian separatists.He knew of a conspiracy of the ”Black Reichswehr” under Major Buchrucker, aformer General Staff officer, to occupy Berlin and turn the republican governmentout. He now moved with cool precision and absolute determination, to setthe Army right and end the threat of civil war.On the night of September 30, 1923, ”Black Reichswehr” troops under thecommand of Major Buchrucker seized three forts to the east of Berlin. Seecktordered regular forces to besiege them, and after two days Buchrucker surrendered.He was tried for high treason and actually sentenced to ten years offortress detention. The ”Black Reichswehr,” which had been set up by Seeckthimself under the cover name of Arbeitskommandos (Labor Commandos) toprovide secret reinforcements for the 100,000-man Reichswehr, was dissolved. ∗Seeckt next turned his attention to the threats of Communist uprisings inSaxony, Thuringia, Hamburg and the Ruhr. In suppressing the Left the loyaltyof the Army could be taken for granted. In Saxony the Socialist-Communistgovernment was arrested by the local Reichswehr commander and a Reich Commissionerappointed to rule. In Hamburg and in the other areas the Communistswere quickly and severely squelched. It now seemed to Berlin that the relatively∗ The ”Black Reichswehr” troops, numbering roughly twenty thousand, were stationedon the eastern frontier to help guard it against the Poles in the turbulent days of 1920-23. The illicit organization became notorious for its revival of the horrors of the medievalFemegerichte – secret courts – which dealt arbitrary death sentences against Germans whorevealed the activities of the ”Black Reichswehr” to the Allied Control Commission. Severalof these brutal murders reached the courts. At one trial the German Defense Minister, OttoGessler, who had succeeded Noske, denied any knowledge of the organization and insisted thatit did not exist. But when one of his questioners protested against such innocence Gesslercried, ”He who speaks of the ’Black Reichswehr’ commits an act of high treason!”