Freikorps in the Baltic
Their aim was to prevent the advance of the Soviet Red Army into the Baltic states and preserve a German presence there.
After initially defeating the Red Army with the help of Latvian and Estonian forces, the Allied Powers ordered the withdrawal of German soldiers from the Baltics.
[citation needed] On March 8 1918 the local Baltic German-dominated Land Council of Courland proclaimed the Duchy of Courland an independent state; on April 12, 1918, the United Land Council of Livonia, Estonia, Riga and Ösel followed suit, establishing the Baltic State (German: Baltischer Staat).
Under the terms of the November 11, 1918 Armistice the German Army was required to withdraw its troops from all other countries on a timetable established by the Allied Control Commission.
Anyone who wants to own his own estate in the beautiful Baltic, report to one of the following recruitment offices.... As many of the demoralized German soldiers were being withdrawn from Latvia, Major Josef Bischoff, an experienced German officer, formed a Freikorps unit called the Eiserne Brigade (translated: "Iron Brigade").
Meanwhile, volunteers were recruited from Germany, with promises of land, a chance to fight Bolshevism, and other enticements of dubious veracity.
[3] Initially, the Iron Division was commanded by Bischoff, and the Baltische Landeswehr by Major Alfred Fletcher, a German of Scottish ancestry.
The main blow in the campaign was delivered by the Baltische Landeswehr, which first occupied the port of Ventspils and then drove south to Riga.
On April 16, they organised a coup d'état in Liepāja, the provisional national government of Latvia took refuge aboard steamship Saratow.
The Estonian commander General Johan Laidoner insisted the Germans withdraw to a line south of the Gauja river.
On June 21, the Estonians received reinforcements and immediately attacked the Landeswehr under Fletcher, who was forced to withdraw from an area to the northeast of Cēsis.
Many of the German Freikorps members who served in the Baltics left Latvia with the belief that they had been "stabbed in the back" by the Weimar Republic, under President Friedrich Ebert.
Hundreds of Baltic Freikorps soldiers had planned to settle in Latvia, and for those who had fought there, the land made a lasting impression, and many of them longed for the day that they could return there.
According to historian Robert GL Waite, the retreat from the Baltic caused discipline in the Freikorps to break down, and many fighters "ran wild through the country side marauding in complete disorder".
