The savage actions and warped ideology of the men whom Hermann Goering called "the first soldiers of the Third Reich" are revealed in this book by contemporary newspaper accounts, government documents, and previously untranslated memoirs of the Free Corp fighters themselves. With this material, Mr. Waite substantiates the thesis that National Socialism began in the months and years immediately following World War I, and that the history of the Free Corps Movement--its ideas, attitudes, and organization--is an indispensable part of Germany's history in the inter-war period and the Second World War.