Axel August Gustav Johann Freiherr[a] von Freytagh-Loringhoven (1 December 1878 – 28 October 1942) was a Baltic German who became a professor of constitutional and international law and emigrated from Russia to Germany in 1917.

A founding member of the German National People's Party and an opponent of the Weimar Republic, he supported Adolf Hitler becoming Chancellor of Germany in 1933.

Because of his knowledge of Russia and the Russian language, in 1917 he became a legal advisor to the Oberbefehlshaber Ost, the Supreme Commander of German Forces in the East.

He blamed the Social Democrats (SPD), the Communists and the Jews for Germany's defeat in the First World War that he believed resulted from the revolution, the so-called stab-in-the-back myth.

[3] Freytagh-Loringhoven was a bitter enemy of the Weimar Republic and expressed anti-republican views in his books and newspaper articles, including the legal opinion that its constitution was illegitimate because of its revolutionary origins, and that Prince Max von Baden, Friedrich Ebert and Philipp Scheidemann were traitors.

[1] He fought against Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann's policy of rapprochement with the wartime Allies, and opposed both the acceptance of Germany into the League of Nations and the Locarno Treaties.

[5] Along with DNVP Chairman Alfred Hugenberg, Freytagh-Loringhoven supported the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Reich Chancellor in January 1933 as the head of a Nazi–DNVP coalition government, and was himself even considered as a candidate for a ministerial post.

However, as the Nazis moved quickly to consolide their power and eliminate all rival parties, Freytagh-Loringhoven entered into negotiations with them over terms of the dissolution of the DNVP, which took place at the end of June 1933.

After the end of the Second World War, writings by Freytagh-Loringhoven were placed on the list of proscribed literature in the Soviet Occupation Zone and, later, in the German Democratic Republic.