[4] The founding document for The Hammer had been Willibald Hentschel's 1901 book Varuna, which preached racial purity and antisemitism.
[5] A sister organisation, the Germanenorden, also appeared in 1912 under Fritsch, although it was a clandestine group for leading members of society who wished to work in secret rather than the Bund which was open.
[8] They welcomed the outbreak of the First World War as an opportunity to banish softness from Germany and return the country to its harsh, militaristic roots.
[9] From 1914 the group took a leading role in gathering anecdotal evidence relating to the involvement of the Jews in the German war effort, much of which later formed the basis of the stab-in-the-back legend.
[10] In 1919 the group, at the instigation of Fritsch's friend Alfred Roth, merged into the Deutschvölkischer Schutz und Trutzbund as part of its continuing policy of forming an umbrella anti-Semitic movement.