Franz Ritter von Epp
Franz Ritter von Epp (1868-1946) was a Bavarian and German military officer, with a distinguished combat record, who formed a Freikorps after the First World War. He was a mentor of Ernst Roehm, and provided considerable support to the early Nazis, with his influence dissipating as he both aged and the Nazis took control. Von Epp died in an American internment camp, without specific charges against him.
In 1901-1902, as a junior officer, was in China with a German colonial detachment and then, in a colonial war against Hereros in German Southwest Africa. In the First World War, he was heavily decorated for valor, including the Pour le Merite.
Freikorps Epp was formed on 8 February 1919, and brutally suppressed socialists and anarchists, including Gustav Landauer, "the anarchist revolutionary, and for the massacre of its socialists at Greising, a Munich suburb. For a brief period, von Epp was the the military dictator of Bavaria, which became a center of oppositional and Nazi activity against the government in Berlin and the communists."[1]
Ernst Roehm, while still part of the Reichswehr, joined Freikorps von Epp, and was his key planner. [2] During this time, he served in the military government of Munich, and became increasingly politicized, resenting civilian control of the military]].[3]
References
- ↑ Franz Ritter von Epp, Militaryphotos.net
- ↑ Joachim C. Fest (1973), Hitler, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich p. 134
- ↑ Eleanor Hancock (2008), Ernst Röhm: Hitler's SA chief of staff, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 32-35