Marinebrigade Ehrhardt

The Marinebrigade Ehrhardt, also known as the Ehrhardt Brigade, was a Freikorps unit of the early Weimar Republic. It was formed on 17 February 1919 as the Second Marine Brigade from members of the former Imperial German Navy under the leadership of Hermann Ehrhardt. The Brigade was used primarily in the suppression of the Bavarian Soviet Republic and the First Silesian Uprising, both in the first half of 1919. In March 1920, faced with its imminent disbanding by orders of the government in Berlin, the Marine Brigade was one of the main supporters of the Kapp Putsch that tried to overthrow the Weimar Republic. After the putsch failed and the Brigade was disbanded in May, many of the former members formed the secret Organisation Consul under Ehrhardt's leadership. Before it was banned in 1922, it carried out numerous assassinations and murders in a continuation of the attempts to overthrow the Republic. Formation and structure On 27 January 1919, during the Revolution of 1918–1919 that broke out following Germany's defeat in World War I, communist putschists from Bremen and Wilhelmshaven captured important buildings in Wilhelmshaven and declared it a socialist council republic. When the putschists encountered isolated resistance, they entrenched themselves in the city's 1,000-man barracks. About 300 officers and professional soldiers of the former Imperial Navy, including Corvette Captain Hermann Ehrhardt, then armed themselves and stormed the barracks using rifles and machine guns. In the morning of 28 January, the 400 putschists surrendered. The fighting had left a total of eight dead on both sides. The "storming of the 1,000-man barracks" was later considered the Marine Brigade's birth. The Reich government then decided to raise volunteer troops in Wilhelmshaven to fight other soviet republics such as the one in Bremen that lasted until 4 February 1919. Wilhelmshaven was chosen because it was a former port of the Imperial Navy and full of soldiers, many of whom were opposed to radical leftist efforts to set up communist governments in Germany.