Page 87 - All About History - Issue 72-18

A WORLD WAR WITHOUT END?

FREIKORPS

HELMET

In Germany’s unstable
new Weimar Republic,
fear of a socialist takeover
drove demobilised
soldiers to join right
wing paramilitary “free
corps” and fight running
street battles with their
communist counterparts.
Freikorps units existed
outside of Germany’s
new borders too and
in the Baltic, they were
formed to thwart the
Red Army’s attempt
to reattach Latvia,
Lithuania and Estonia to
Russia. Ultimately, their
aim to restore German
domination made them
not just enemies of the
communists, but the local
population who no more
wanted to be ruled from
Berlin than from Moscow.
THE BANNER OF KING FAISAL

Faisal I bin Hussein bin Ali al-Hashemi flirted with both the
Ottomans and the Allies during the First World War with a
view to creating an independent Arab state in the Middle
East. After the war Faisal was proclaimed King of Syria in
March 1920 which spooked France who were increasing their
influence in the region – especially as Faisal’s ‘Greater Syria’
included what is now Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon.
A brief Franco-Syrian War ended in July 1920 with Faisal’s
ejection from the country (where he was offered the throne
of British-held Iraq instead) and the capture of his standard.

UNIFORM OF

THE RED TERROR

Seizing power in the chaos of
the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s
dissolution, Béla Kun’s Hungarian
Soviet Republic immediately
followed in Lenin’s bloodied
footprints by forming Red Terror
groups – such as the ‘Lenin Boys’
– to purge the countryside of
“counter-revolutionaries”. After
one month of repression and
590 executions, the Romanian
army entered Budapest to restore
order and in their wake Hungarian
nationalists began a White Terror of
their own in order to rid the whole
nation of communists.

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