Dominique Venner on Freikorps

“The men of the Freikorps were sons of the war, of the defeat and of the November revolution. They were direct relations of the ‘arditi’ of Fiume and of the ‘squadristi’ that emerged a little later in Italy, and embodied a very specific type of man, one that was never to be seen again. They were formed primarily by the trench warfare of WWI. The war had sifted out those men who were psychologically or morally broken by the ordeal, separating them from those who emerged from it stronger and harder than before. Jünger compared them to the old German mercenaries, whose only homeland was their flag. The war had abolished all social differences between them, equalising them according to standard that had nothing to do with civilian life. The rankings of class were replaced by one of daring and courage, and now they wanted to transfer this new hierarchy of values into the post-war civil society. In their own way, they were socialists. But their socialism was military and had nothing to do with the pursuit of security and material happiness. The only hierarchy they recognised was one of merit. They all shared the same faith in the power of the will and a frank taste for expeditious methods.
While they doubtless did not epitomise the entire essence of fascism and national socialism, they were a foundational element of those movements, in the sense that they embodied the most radical revolt of their time against the bourgeois world.” —

Dominique Venner, “Le Siècle de 1914”