[lbo-talk] Some Comforting Words from Rosa L.

[Somebody Somebody]

On Feb 7, 2012, at 4:56 PM, Wojtek S wrote: 
> One of those less salient factors was the 
> mobilization of the demobilized WW1 military for the political cause. 
On the contrary, the Freikorps was the original form and heart and soul of Hitler's Nazism *whose figurehead was von Ludendorff*. 
> The Bolsheviks did it and won the revolution. 
The Russian soldiers were never demobilized: they made the revolution during the war by going home and taking the land. 
> The Italian fascists did it and successfully grabbed power. 
correct for once 
> Ditto for Spanish fascists. 
Spain was neutral in the war so nobody was demobilized. The dual cores of Spanish fascism (phalangism) were the Church and the colonial army in Morocco that had been beaten by Abd-el-Krim (until the French saved their bacon) but never demobilized.

...

This is interesting, but is there a substantive disagreement with Wojtek or a pedantic one?

For me, what's apparent is that the Freikorps were a response to working class socialist movements. We can't write an immediate post World War I history of Germany without the radical wing of the social democracy and KPD contending for power. The "heart and soul" of National Socialism emerged in a nation in the throes of a pre-revolutionary struggle.

German reactionary conservatism as expressed by figures like Ludendorff would have remained anti-democratic, militaristic, traditionalist, romantic, anti-Enlightenment etc. but not *Nazi* in the absence of a successful Bolshevik Revolution.