Gerhard Roßbach

Freikorps (Germany, 1918–1923) Counter-revolutionary forces 1893–1967 ○ Natural causes

Leader of the Freikorps Roßbach in the 1919 Baltic campaign, the 1920 Kapp Putsch and the Upper Silesian fighting

In 1919 he led the Freikorps Roßbach to the Baltic against orders to rescue the Iron Division, then fought in the Kapp Putsch and Upper Silesia.

Born in Pomerania, he became a Prussian lieutenant in 1913 and fought on the Eastern Front. After the war he raised a volunteer unit that became the Sturmabteilung Roßbach of the Eastern Frontier Guard in 1919. That autumn he marched to the Baltic against orders to open a way out for the Iron Division surrounded by the Latvian army, and was expelled from the Reichswehr. He joined the 1920 Kapp Putsch, and his men survived in front organisations to fight in Upper Silesia in 1921; Bormann, Höss and Daluege came from its ranks. A Nazi member by 1922, he tried to found the party’s Berlin branch and fled to Austria after the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. The brown shirts he introduced became the SA uniform. He did not rejoin the refounded party and died in Hamburg in 1967.

Also known as: Gerhard Rossbach · Paul Wilhelm Gerhard Karl Roßbach