1. Hermann Ehrhardt was born in 1881 into a family that had long provided pastors for Diersburg in the Grand Duchy of Baden.
18 Facts About Hermann Ehrhardt
1. 2.
At the beginning of World War I, Hermann Ehrhardt was captain lieutenant in charge of a torpedo boat half-flotilla.
3.
Hermann Ehrhardt's half-flotilla was transferred to Flanders in October 1916 for anti-submarine duties in the English Channel.
4.
Hermann Ehrhardt gathered about 300 men, mostly professional soldiers from the Imperial German Navy, and with them stormed the 1,000-man barracks where the revolutionaries had entrenched themselves.
5.
The 37-year-old Hermann Ehrhardt was not prepared to acknowledge Germany's defeat in the war, the revolution that had broken out in November 1918, or the new socialist-led government in Berlin.
6.
Hermann Ehrhardt found in Wolfgang Kapp and General Walther von Luttwitz, at the time commander-in-chief of the Berlin Reichswehr Group Command I, two men who were determined to reverse the results of the revolution.
7.
Hermann Ehrhardt was dismissed and on 13 March 1920 instigated the Kapp-Luttwitz Putsch.
8.
Hermann Ehrhardt hoped in that way to gain enough influence to be able to change the constitution to make Germany a dictatorship.
9.
Otto Pittinger, the leader of the moderate-right Bund Bayern und Reich seized the opportunity and tried to win over and de-radicalize the Hermann Ehrhardt group, giving rise to the, which tried to unite the former fighters of the Hermann Ehrhardt Brigade.
10.
From prison in 1923, Hermann Ehrhardt instructed Captain Lieutenant Eberhard Kautter to reorganize the New German League.
11.
Hermann Ehrhardt had had early contact with Hitler and his National Socialist movement.
12.
Hans Ulrich Klintzsch, a lieutenant in the Organisation Consul, became head of the SA, and Alfred Hoffmann, an Hermann Ehrhardt man, became chief of staff.
13.
Hermann Ehrhardt was considered a traitor because he had opposed Hitler.
14.
Hermann Ehrhardt returned in October 1926 after an amnesty by the new Reich president, Paul von Hindenburg.
15.
Hermann Ehrhardt later contested for dominance over the revolutionary right against Hitler, but he was unsuccessful, with many of Hermann Ehrhardt's men joining the Nazi Party.
16.
Hermann Ehrhardt became involved in attempts to destabilize the Nazis and worked behind the scenes to forge an alliance between dissident SA leader Walter Stennes and Black Front leader Otto Strasser.
17.
Strasser abandoned Stennes when he learned that Hermann Ehrhardt was behind the plan to link the two leaders.
18.
Hermann Ehrhardt fled in time, first from the SS to a forest near his estate, then to Switzerland.