Organisation Consul

Organisation Consul (O.C.) was an ultra-nationalist and anti-Semitic terrorist organization that operated in the Weimar Republic from 1920 to 1922. It was formed by members of the disbanded Freikorps group Marine Brigade Ehrhardt and was responsible for political assassinations that had the ultimate goal of destroying the Republic and replacing it with a right-wing dictatorship. The group was banned by the German government in 1922. Origins The Organisation Consul (O.C.) grew out of the Marine Brigade Ehrhardt, a Freikorps unit that had been officially disbanded in 1920. Its namesake commander, Hermann Ehrhardt, formed the O.C. from the ranks of the Brigade after the failure of the 1920 Kapp Putsch, an attempted coup against the German national government in Berlin. His fighters formed the Association of Former Ehrhardt Officers which then became the Organisation Consul. The O.C. was a militarily organized cadre group whose members were recruited largely from former mostly front-line officers of the Imperial German Army, Imperial Navy and the Freikorps. The Reich government initially tolerated it and Reichswehr leadership, which hoped to use it and similar associations to undermine the arms restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles. Organization With liaison officers throughout the Reich, the Organisation Consul could draw from a pool of an estimated 5,000 men. Eventually it came to have districts encompassing large areas of the nation. They were particularly active in Berlin, where many of their crimes were committed. One of the best known members was the Freikorps fighter and post-war author Ernst von Salomon. The average age of the members was between 20 and 30. They were motivated by anti-bourgeois sentiments, extreme nationalism, anti-Semitism and opposition to Marxism. Jews were excluded from participation, and every member had to affirm that he was of "German descent". The O.C.'s statutes listed their goal as "the fight against everything anti-national and international, Judaism, social democracy and radical left-wing parties". They also took part in the so-called "Feme murders" against anyone, even members of their own group, who they believed to have betrayed their cause. Their statues stated that "traitors fall to the Feme".