Gerhard Roßbach

Gerhard Roßbach (28 February 1893 – 30 August 1967), also spelled Rossbach, was a German Freikorps leader and nationalist political activist during the interwar period. Born in Kehrberg, Pomerania, he gained prominence for his involvement in various right-wing paramilitary groups following World War I and in particular for his close association with Ernst Röhm, who served as an important intermediary in the early 1920s between those right-wing paramilitary organizations and upper echelons of the Reichswehr. Rossbach is generally credited with inventing the brown uniforms of the Nazi Party after supplying surplus tropical khaki shirts to early troops of the Sturmabteilung (SA).

Waite, who produced the early historical standard study of the Freikorps movement, writes (ironically) of Roßbach that, "The true Landsknechte ['Freebooter'] type which the National Socialists were later to extol as the possessor of 'the moral strength of the race,' is personified in Gerhard Roßbach the notorious Free Corps leader who became the first adjutant of Hitler's S.A."

In his biography of Adolf Hitler, Heiden transcribed Roßbach's recollection of his early days as a Freikorps commander:

"It was the beautiful old Freebooter class of war and post-war times .. organizing masses and losing them just as quickly, tossed this way and that way just for the sake of our daily bread; gathering men about us and playing soldiers with them; brawling and drinking, roaring and smashing windows — destroying and shattering what needs to be destroyed. Ruthless and inexorably hard. The abscess on the sick body of the nation must be cut open and squeezed until the clear red blood flows. And it must be left to flow for a good long time till the body is purified."