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Ernst Julius Waldemar Pabst (24 December 1880 – 29 May 1970) was a German soldier and political activist who was involved in extreme nationalist and anti-communist paramilitary activity in both the Weimar Republic and in Austria. As a Freikorps officer, Captain Pabst gained notoriety for ordering the summary executions of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in 1919 as well as for his leading role in the Kapp Putsch by Wolfgang Kapp. In Austria, he played a central part in organising rightist militia groups before being deported for his activities. Pabst subsequently faded from public life in Nazi Germany, as he was never more than loosely associated with the Nazis.
Pabst saw active service in the First World War, mainly on the Western Front in Belgium and most notably at the Battle of Verdun. In 1916 he was withdrawn from the front and redeployed as a member of the German General Staff.
Pabst first came to prominence during the Communist and left-wing uprisings that immediately followed the war. As commander of the rifle guard, Captain Pabst was instrumental in such actions as the recapture of the Vorwärts building on 11–12 January 1919.Hans Mommsen, Elborg Forster & Larry Eugene Jones, The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy, 1998, pp. 36-7 His actions saw him promoted to the role of Chief of Staff, and as such, effectively commander, of the Horse Guards Division, an important Freikorps unit.Nigel Jones, The Birth of the Nazis: How the Freikorps Blazed a Trail for Hitler, Constable & Robinson, 2004, p. 73 Pabst permitted the summary execution of all individuals caught with a firearm, which resulted in the killing of many civilians and war veterans who were uninvolved in the strike. Among those killed was Communist Party leader Leo Jogiches, the former personal partner of murdered revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg. Pabst's energetic commitment to the unit, his strong anti-communist feelings, his general distrust of the commanding officers of the army and the fact that de jure commander General had grown exhausted because of a heart condition meant that Pabst became the focus of the Division and effective leader.Donald S. Stephenson, Frontschweine and Revolution: The Role of Front-line Soldiers in the German Revolution of 1918, ProQuest, 2007, p. 276 He saw Bolshevism as a world danger and took part in anti-revolutionary activities across Germany.Michael Kellogg, The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 2005, p. 93 He was also active with Russian émigrés, founding the Russian National Political Committee under the presidency of General Vasily Biskupsky.Kellogg, The Russian Roots of Nazism, p. 96
It was Pabst who gave the order that the captured communist leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht should be killed, and he would later boast, "I had them executed".Wolfram Wette, , 2006, p. 44 At the time however, his official report claimed that he had taken them into protective custody but that they had been lost to an angry mob, a story that was quickly dismissed as fabrication.Jones, The Birth of the Nazis, pp. 77-8 However Pabst would later claim that his initial intention had been for Liebknecht to be executed by firing squad as a German but for Luxemburg to be beaten to death by an angry mob as he felt her status as a Jew meant she deserved to die in a pogrom. Ultimately however both victims were shot, after being tortured and beaten.Robert S. Wistrich, From Ambivalence to Betrayal: The Left, the Jews, and Israel, University of Nebraska Press, 2012, p. 371
The leader of the Anti-Bolshevist League, Eduard Stadtler, claimed political responsibility for the extrajudicial murder of the revolutionary leaders. According to Stadtler, he contracted and gave the order to Waldemar Pabst. According to Pabst himself, the command was received from Gustav Noske in agreement with Friedrich Ebert.
Some of Pabst's lieutenants, including Horst von Pflugk-Harttung and Kurt Vogel, faced court martial for the killings although Pabst managed to ensure that his ally, Wilhelm Canaris, was in charge of proceedings and as a result the stiffest sentence handed down was the dismissal from service and two years imprisonment given to Vogel (whom witnesses had seen disposing of Luxemburg's body). Research by on the trial of Luxemburg's murder has used the previously restricted papers of Pabst, held by the Federal Military Archives, and concluded he had been central to the plotting and cover-up of this execution. Pabst himself was not brought to court martial.Jones, The Birth of the Nazis, pp. 79-81
In 1969, Pabst wrote in a private letter:
"The fact is: the execution of my orders unfortunately did not take place as it should have. But it did take place, and for that these German idiots should thank Noske and me on their knees, erect monuments to us, and have streets and squares named after us! Noske was exemplary at the time, and the party SPD (except for its semi-communist left wing) behaved impeccably in the affair. That I could not carry out the action without Noske's approval (with Friedrich Ebert in the background) and also that I had to protect my officers is clear. But very few people understood why I was never questioned or brought up on charges, and why the court-martial went the way it did, Vogel was freed from prison, and so on. As a man of honor, I responded to the behavior of the SPD of the time by keeping my mouth shut for 50 years about our cooperation. ... If it is not possible to avoid the truth and I get so angry I'm ready to explode, I will tell the truth, which I would like to avoid in the interest of the SPD."
Pabst played a leading role in the failed Kapp Putsch and, along with Wolfgang Kapp and the Marinebrigade Ehrhardt of Hermann Ehrhardt, was named by Gustav Noske as having the main responsibility for the action, even though it actually had support from higher up in the Reichswehr.Heinrich August Winkler & Alexander Sager, Germany: The Long Road West, Volume 1, 2006, p. 366 In the immediate aftermath of the putsch, Pabst took refuge in Miklós Horthy's Hungary where he was soon joined by co-conspirator Walther von Lüttwitz.Jones, The Birth of the Nazis, p. 189 Despite the failure of the putsch, Pabst would often speak proudly of his involvement in the episode.Charles Adams Gulick, Austria from Habsburg to Hitler, University of California Press, 1980, p. 781
Pabst was initially close to Johann Schober, and won his support in 1929, when he suggested repositioning the Heimwehr as a pro-government political party.Lauridsen, Nazism and the Radical Right in Austria, p. 196 However Schober's attempts to convert the Heimwehr into a force for pro-government moderation soon floundered, and he ordered the deportation of Pabst, by then recognised as the main organisational force behind the Heimwehr, to Germany the following year. With Pabst removed, Schober was able to ensure the removal of Steidle and his replacement as leader by the more compliant Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg.Lauridsen, Nazism and the Radical Right in Austria, p. 206 A last desperate attempt by Pabst to induce Mussolini to withhold funding unless Schober embraced Pabst's policies failed and he was duly deported.Gulick, Austria from Habsburg to Hitler, p. 893
Settling into civilian life, he became an industrialist and eventually Director of Rheinmetall in Berlin. Transactions, American Philosophical Society (vol. 70, Part 2, 1980), p. 48 Pabst's non-involvement in Nazism, given his history in the far right, raised some suspicions and rumours circulated that he had been in contact with Canaris and similar figures on the right of the German resistance. Such rumours were never proven, but Pabst did leave Germany not long before the 20 July plot, and it has been suggested that he may have been aware that the attempt on Adolf Hitler's life was about to take place.
Having left Germany, Pabst settled in Switzerland, where he took a post with the arms manufacturer Oerlikon. After the Second World War, Pabst was involved to some extent in the activities of the neo-Nazi Bruderschaften, small groups that existed across Europe and which attempted to co-ordinate their political activism. He returned to Germany in 1955, settling in Düsseldorf, and there became involved with the far right Deutsche Gemeinschaft, a minor group that was later absorbed into the Deutsche Reichspartei. He died in Düsseldorf in 1970 at the age of 89.
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