Bruno Ernst Buchrucker

In April 1909 he commanded the General Staff of the Prussian Army[1] On the 20th of March 1911 he was promoted to Hauptmann, he was also the chief of the 7th Company of the 2nd Upper Rhine Infantry Regiment No.99 in Saverne,[2] where in December 1913 he witnessed the Zabern Affair, where the military acted with disproportionate severity against the local population and officers of the 99th (2nd Upper Rheinish) Infantry Regiment seized civil power. To defuse tension during the conflict, Buchrucker's unit was withdrawn from Zabern and temporarily relocated to Bitsch and did not return to its regular location until April 1914.

At the beginning of the World War I, he was assigned to the position of 3rd General Staff Officer under Chief of Staff Bernhard Bonsart von Schellendorff to the General Command of the XIV Reserve Corps,[3] which initially operated in Alsace, but was moved to the Somme. During the course of the war he was used in various general staff positions and was promoted to Major on March 22, 1916 "after rigorous combat".[4] After the end of the war, Buchrucker led the 1st Battalion in the Freikorps in the Baltic States. Back in Germany, he was accepted into the provisional Reichswehr.

As garrison elder in Cottbus, Buchrucker supported the Kapp Putsch in March 1920.[5] On March 13th, mutinous troops occupied the Berlin government district; the Reich government had fled to Stuttgart via Dresden. Buchrucker banned demonstrations and rallies in Cottbus and took over the "executive power". He responded to the general strike called by the SPD and trade unions with posters promising "Protection for those willing to work!" As Reichwehr patrols encountered resistance, on March 15, initiated by Buchrucker,[6] Reichswehr troops fired machine guns at fleeing crowds at a fleeing crowd at the Spremberger Tower; four people died, five others were seriously injured. At the same time, the printing house for the USPD newspaper "Freier Volkswille" was broken into by Reichswehr troops and printing presses there were destroyed with hand grenades.

As of March 16, fights developed on the outskirts of Cottbus with workers from Niederlausitz, which claimed further victims. "Large gatherings... brought a tremendously enthusiastic crowd to appear, It was decided to set up a Red Guard, the ruler of Cottbus then forbade any gathering of people with the advice to let everything be blown up by fire" said the social democratic "Märkische Volksstimme" on the 21st of March.[7] On March 17, a Social Democratic delegation tried to negotiate with Buchrucker. According to later information from a member of parliament involved, Buchrucker uttered sentences such as "My comparison is the murder weapon. The more I bang down on the rabble, the better I feel. This red army consists of criminals and bushmen,"[8] "the shot is the radical agent. I'll let every picket be shot."[6] On the 18th and 19 March, the fighting was concentrated in the Sandow district. Given the resistance and the failed coup on March 17 in Berlin, Buchrucker publicly declared the lifting of his measures and the resignation of the "executive power" in Cottbus; his unit was temporarily relocated to Vetshau.[6]

Buchrucker was retired from the Reichswehr in September 1920. He was one of the few Reichswehr officers who left the Reichswehr as a result of their behavior during the Kapp Putsch.[9]

In May 1921, Buchrucker headed a supply center for the Freikorps in Cottbus during the Silesian Uprisings.[10] He was one of the leading functionaries of the Bradenburg Heimatbund, along with his long-time friend Wilhelm von Oppen.[11] The Heimatbund was a successor organization to the resident services that were dissolved on April 8, 1920 under pressure from the Entente. Buchrucker also maintained contacts with Gerhard Roßbach and his officially dissolved Freikops, whose members were camouflaged on agricultural estates in Bradenburg, Mecklenburg, and Pomerania.[12]

In the summer of 1921, Buchrucker was employed by the Wehrkreis III of the Reichswehr under a private service contract.[13] Subordinate to Fedor von Bock, Buchrucker was put under the control of so-called labor commandos, whose official role as the "cleaning up, sorting, and destruction of the numerous and hidden military equipment in the area of Berlin, Ostmark, and Silesia of the hidden war machine" as assigned by Defense Minister Otto Geßler in 1926.[14] In addition, according to Geßler "a kind of refuge that had become rootless through the dissolution of the Freikorps and the self-protection of Upper Silesia" should be created. By the summer of 1923 - contrary to the provision of the Treaty of Versailles - a Black Reichswehr was established with a permanent base of 2,000 men and a further 18,000 men in reserve units. The latter units predominantly came from nationalist associations and had received military training in four to six-week courses.[11]

Within the secret Black Reichswehr, Buchrucker was responsible for organization and management. Buchrucker's most important colleague was Paul Schulz. Schulz and Buchrucker had been in the same Freikorps in 1919, and they had also worked together in 1921 to support the Freikorps in Upper Silesia. Buchrucker dealt with political questions; Schulz was considered the "head of the whole thing"[15] Because of the Feme murders committed by the Black Reichswehr, Schulz was sentenced to death in 1927, and like almost all of the other femoral killers, was pardoned and released through an amnesty for political criminals.

In an atmosphere, which according to Buchrucker,[16] the responsible Reichswehr officers later agreed, the size of the work details were expanded beyond the intended extent and unnecessary military exercises were held for the original purpose of the work details. At the end of September 1923, higher-ranking offices of the Reichswehr noticed the large size of work details. Buchrucker was challenged and "admitted that he would have made adjustments to the budget of the troops on his own initiative out of the idea of providing the Reichswehr with help against a communist uprising that he was expecting immediately."[14] He promised to dismantle the reinforcements, but for Reichswehr Minister Geßler the "belief in the reliability of the major... was shaken", so he ordered the arrest of Buchrucker and Schulz.

According to his own account, Buchrucker learned of the arrest warrant issued against him on September 30 and ordered that the work details housed in the outer fort of the Küstrin Fortress should move into the fortress in the old town of Küstrin on the morning of October 1, 1923.[17]  The Küstrin Putsch began with a speech by Buchrucker in front of the work details which, according to later statements, was hardly understandable by several listeners:

“He started to speak, produced sounds, lined up the words senselessly, emphasized incorrectly and gestured. Nobody knew of the people what the accused [Buchrucker] wanted to say."[11]

Buchrucker then went to the fortress commander Colonel Gudowius, pointed out the superior strength of his units and asked the commandant, “He shouldn't stand in his way, the great national moment has now come. He also declared that he would not only strike here in Cüstrin, but everywhere at the same time.”[11] The commandant did not want to join Buchrucker, not even as several non-commissioned officers devoted to Buchrucker, including the later NSDAP member of the Reichstag, Hans Hayn, forcibly entered the headquarters. When asked to give instructions by his subordinates, Buchrucker was not in a position to give them. This was the reason for some of the NCOs to submit to the fortress commander again. Later, regular Reich defense units used weapons against a command of the Black Reichswehr in Küstrin , in which one person died and seven others were wounded.

Between October 22 and 27, 1923, the trial of 14 people arrested in Küstrin took place before an extraordinary court in Cottbus.[18]  Buchrucker was sentenced to ten years imprisonment and a fine of ten gold marks for completing high treason. Buchrucker had declared in court that he had only wanted to put pressure on the Reichswehr Minister to have the arrest warrant withdrawn. This was in the interests of the state, because there were "daredevils" in the ranks of the work details, who were to be feared of violence if he was arrested. The court did not follow this account: After the reasons for the judgment, there were sufficient indications that "The events in Küstrin in fact only meant part of a large-scale company."[11] The effort made by Buchrucker and Buchrucker's one-hour indecision would speak for this; an indication that he should have made more serious decisions. Buchrucker apparently assumed that the Reichswehr would join him or remain neutral. Buchrucker was given an amnesty in October 1927 on the occasion of Hindenburg's 80th birthday.[19]

An investigation into the actual goals of the Black Reichswehr was omitted in the Cottbus criminal proceedings.[11] Witness statements in the Feme trials and before parliamentary committees of inquiry contain numerous indications that a "March on Berlin" was planned and prepared in detail within the Black Reichswehr according to the March on Rome. The planned establishment of a right-wing military dictatorship failed when a state of emergency was declared in September 1923 and executive power was taken over by the Reichswehr. As far as we know today, the Küstrin Putsch represents a sequel to these plans, the actual purpose of which is not known for certain.[11] Buchrucker commented on the Black Reichswehr in 1928 in the publication Im Schatten Seeckt’s :

“The troops wanted to free Germany from pressure from abroad. She wanted to fight the enemy outside. As far as she thought about the political situation, she meant that the struggle could only be fought under a military dictatorship, and some thought that when the military dictatorship was established there could be a brief struggle inside the Reich. Most of the time, no one thought about whether the military dictatorship was constitutional or not. ”[11]

In May 1928, the Reichswehr Ministry filed a criminal complaint against Buchrucker for perjury.[11] Buchrucker had declared in a trial of the Feme murders the conscription to the Black Reichswehr in September 1923 had taken place in agreement with the regular Reichswehr. The process was accompanied by a high level of public interest and was carried out with great effort by both parties. In September 1929 the case against Buchrucker was discontinued. Buchrucker's statement was objectively incorrect, but it could not be proven that he was objectively aware of the incorrectness of his statement, according to the Berlin public prosecutor.[20]

In the course of the perjury proceedings, the chief of staff in Wehrkreiskommando III, Kurt von Hammerstein , requested an examination of Buchrucker's mental state. In the Cottbus proceedings, Buchrucker's defense lawyer had requested that his client be acquitted of partial insanity ; Buchrucker had refused this application. According to the defense attorney's files, Buchrucker had developed remarkably slowly as a child; In the spring of 1917 he was noticed during the First World War for "language confusion, senseless juxtaposition of words and sentences, incorrect emphasis, eccentricity in tone and expression".[11] One respondent described Buchrucker as a "Art Nietzsche-Zarathustra figure”; extraordinary abilities as a general staff officer faced moments of depression and immobility. In addition, reference was made to Buchrucker's speech during the Küstrin putsch and his arrest there, during which he gave the impression of deep depression and lack of will.

The magazine Weltbühne , which was instrumental in the uncovering of the femicide within the Black Reichswehr and therefore itself affected by criminal proceedings, expressed its respect to Buchrucker in 1930:

“We got to know her in our distance process as a straight, truth-loving person. We had expected a warrior in the man from Küstrin and found a fine, intelligent head - an opponent as one would wish. Dear Mr. Buchrucker... you have been involved in many activities and you have always been the one who was cheated, the one locked in, while the higher-ranking people shirked."[21]

Buchrucker occurred in 1926 of the NSDAP in and pushed the end of 1928 rather accidentally to the "left" wing of the Nazi Party imputed group led by Otto Strasser :[22] Strasser was unlike other publishers ready to book Ruckers Paper on Black Reichswehr to publish. The “Buchrucker who thinks along the lines of the Wilhelmine officer's authoritarian state”[23]  held a special position in the Strasser group, considered program issues to be insignificant and saw the monarchy as the most powerful form of government. He wrote regularly in newspapers published by Strasser on military-political issues:"The modern state would have to be led by men who understand the war",[24]  so Buchrucker in one of the texts.

In July 1930 Buchrucker left the NSDAP in the wake of Strasser. There had previously been disputes between Strasser and Hitler over Hitler's legality policy. Buchrucker - whom Strasser referred to as his "best friend"[25]  - was one of the 26 signatories of the appeal "The Socialists are leaving the NSDAP" on July 4 and then joined the Revolutionary National Socialists' Combat Group (KGRNS) around Otto Strasser. Until the prohibition of the KGRNS shortly after the National Socialist seizure of power , Buchrucker belonged to the group's management bodies, which existed under the names “political office”, “executive committee” and “executive council”.

At the time of his work in the KGRNS, Buchrucker is described as a nationalist and passionate militarist who continued to deal with contemporary strategic military considerations such as the use of the air force.  Contrary to the official line of the KGRNS he was collaborating with communist groups sharply opposed to and gave the alliance with conservative, reactionary paramilitary organizations such as the Stahlhelm. In view of his biography, Buchrucker's hostility to Prussia is surprising, which was probably caused by experiences of the First World War.

For the first Reich Congress of the KGRNS at the end of October 1930, Buchrucker formulated “Programmatic principles of the revolutionary National Socialists - the New Order”, which largely corresponded to earlier publications by Strasser.[26]  Buchrucker's ideas of “German socialism” included a nationalization program, the promotion of craft businesses and the return of the urban population to agriculture. Decision-making powers should be given to a small group of executives in order to overcome the imbalances of a state weakened by bureaucracy. An "organic leader state" that emerged in this way should then promote the völkisch transformation of society, the goal being - on the basis of the unity of Germanic nationality - a "Germany liberated from the imperialist chains of Versailles".[26]

The KGRNS remained a splinter group; in May 1931 it had around 6,000 members, which this month after the Stennes revolt were joined by around 2,000 SA members, mainly from Berlin and Pomerania.[26]  From regular assaults of SA also Buchrucker was affected: In July 1930 he was in Albersdorf in Dithmarschen by Gauleiter Hinrich Lohse injured led attack by SA units on an event.[26] In October 1932 the Third Reich Congress of the KGRNS decided to set up its own paramilitary formation, the "Black Guard". Buchrucker became one of the two group leaders of the Black Guard, which had a maximum of 200 to 300 members.

After the National Socialist seizure of power, the KGRNS and its subsidiary organizations were banned in February 1933, and Buchrucker was temporarily in custody.  The information on Buchrucker's further life is fragmentary: In connection with the Röhm murders , a political cleansing operation in the course of which Adolf Hitler and other National Socialist leaders had their actual or alleged rivals in their own ranks as well as other unpleasant people sometimes violently eliminated , Buchrucker was arrested, but later released at Hermann Göring's instigation and reactivated for the Wehrmacht.  Shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War Buchrucker is said to have been retired from the Wehrmacht with the rank of lieutenant colonel.  In his 1953 publication Die Ehre des Soldiers. German soldiers in the European armed forces? Buchrucker claims to have rejected Hitler as a criminal but, according to Emil Julius Gumbel, does not take a clear position on the officers' conflicts of conscience of July 20, 1944.[27]