Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten

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The Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten (English: Steel Helmet, League of Frontline Soldiers) was one of the many paramilitary organizations that arose after the defeat of World War I in the Weimar Republic.

The Stahlhelm was founded at the end of 1918 partly by Franz Seldte in the city of Magdeburg. Its journal, Stahlhelm, was edited by Count Hans-Jürgen von Blumenthal, later hanged for his part in the July Plot. The organization was a rallying point for nationalistic and anti-Weimar elements. With 500,000 members in 1930, the Stahlhelm was the largest paramilitary organization of Weimar Germany.

In 1929 the Stahlhelm joined the Volksentscheid gegen den Young-Plan to demonstrate against the Young Plan. The Stahlhelm joined the DNVP, NSDAP and Alldeutscher Verband to form the Harzburger Front, which was a united right-wing front against the Weimar Republic.

Members of the "Stahlhelm" 1934

In 1934 the Stahlhelm was renamed Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Frontkämpferbund (Federation of the National Socialist Frontline-Fighters) and integrated into the Sturmabteilung and, in 1935, it was dissolved by the Nazis, who feared its fundamentally monarchist character.

[edit] After 1945 and present time

In 1951 the Stahlhelm Bund der Frontsoldaten was recreated for the first time in Cologne. A year later, in 1952, even before his release from prison, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring was elected federal as leader of the neonazi^{[citation needed]} association, a post he kept till his death in 1960. In post-war West Germany, as well as after the reunification, old and neo-Nazis, and parts of the right-wing extremists scene have kept ties to the Stahlhelm's ideology until today.