The Freikorps/
Ehrhard Brigade Connection

Some other authors [1] believe that the adoption of the swastika by Hitler is linked to its use by the Freikorps and the Ehrhardt Brigade.

The German Freikorps (Free Corps) was the quasi-military force that replaced the banned German Army after World War I. It was a sort of “murderers army;” much like the one which later the German army was to consist. It was an heterogeneous troop, composed by remnants of disbanded regiments, unemployed soldiers, and youngsters eager for adventure.

The pretext for the forming of the Freikorps was the eruption of communistic revolts in several parts of Germany. It is believed that among the Freikorps fighters there was a small secret cell of members of the Thule Society.

The first of this rebellions occurred in Berlin in 1919, where German Communists tried to follow the Russian example.

The Freikorps arrives in Berlin in improvised troop transports, like this truck marked with a swastika. See that, contrary to the one adopted by Hitler as a Nazi symbol, the one depicted is a destroverse swastika standing flat on one of its sides.

(See, Frederic V. Grunfeld. The Hitler File. New York: Random House, 1974, 32-33).

The Freikorps fought the rebels in Berlin, and after that in Lithuania and Latvia against the Bolsheviks.

Many decades before it was used by the Nazis, German nationalistic organizations in Austria bore the swastika as their symbol. The swastika had been an official emblem in Finland and Estonia. It is probable that the German Freikorps, who in 1918-19 fought the Bolsheviks in the Baltic countries, saw it and brought it back to Germany as a symbol of Aryan nationalism.

A brigade of the Freikorps, called the Ehrhardt Brigade, was led by former captain Ehrhardt. It was him who in 1920 chased the Reich government out of Berlin, until a general strike put down the military putsch. When the Ehrhardt Brigade marched into Berlin, its soldiers sported on their steel helmets a symbol they had brought from the battles in the Baltic. As they swung along, the Ehrhardt soldiers sang their marching song:

Swastika on helmets,

Colors red-white-black,

The Ehrhardt Brigade,

Is marching to attack!

After their defeat in Berlin, however, the Brigade was broken up. Many of its officers fled to Munich, and enrolled in Hitler’s S. A., of which they formed the central nucleus. Some author affirm that it was they who brought the swastika to the Nazis.

The swastika used by the Ehrhardt Brigade was originally a spider-like design, with thin lines; but the printer who made up the Nazi leaflets and posters used heavy bars for better visibility. This new design, some authors claim, eventually became the official emblem of the Nazis. This version of how the swastika became a Nazi symbol, however, has been denied by Hitler himself in the account he gave in Mein Kampf.

Even more, it is interesting to notice that he Ehrhardt Brigade sported the swastika both in its destroverse and sinistroverse forms, while the Nazi one, following Hitler’s specific instructions, appeared only in the sinistroverse form.