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The Freikorps was the name adopted by some right wing nationalists in Weimar Germany after World War One had ended.

The Freikorps was effectively a collection of groups as opposed to a cohesive whole but they all shared the same beliefs and objectives. Members of the Freikorps could be described as conservative, nationalistic, anti-Socialism/Communism and once it had been signed, anti-the Treaty of Versailles.

They did not believe that Germany had suffered a military defeat in World War One and members of the Freikorps were very vocal supporters of the ‘stab-in-the-back’ legend that was eventually taken up by the Nazi Party.

Freikorps, English Free Corps, any of several private paramilitary groups that first appeared in December 1918 in the wake of Germany’s defeat in World War I.

Composed of ex-soldiers, unemployed youth, and other discontents and led by ex-officers and other former military personnel, they proliferated all over Germany in the spring and summer of 1919 and eventually numbered more than 65 corps of various names, sizes, and descriptions.

Their members were involved in several political assassinations, of which the most dramatic was the 1922 murder of Walther Rathenau, the country’s foreign minister