Theodor Duesterberg
Theodor Duesterberg (German pronunciation: [ˈdyːstɐbɛʁk]; October 19, 1875 – November 4, 1950) was a leader of the Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten, in Germany prior to the Nazi seizure of power.
Born the son of an army surgeon in Darmstadt, Duesterberg entered the Prussian Army in 1893 after training in the cadet corps. In 1900, Duesterberg was part of the East Asian Expedition Corps that saw action in China during the Boxer Rebellion. Two years later, Duesterberg became an officer and held a variety of army commands prior to World War I. During the war, Duesterberg served in the Prussian War Ministry and eventually attained the rank of lieutenant colonel. Following the war, Duesterberg resigned from the army in protest over the Versailles Treaty, which Duesterberg viewed as being extremely unfair to Germany. Duesterberg subsequently decided to enter politics and joined the German National People's Party (DNVP) in 1919.
After various disagreements with the party leadership, however, Duesterberg left the DNVP in 1923 and joined the nationalistic and pro-monarchy Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten, which largely consisted of ex-servicemen disgruntled with the Weimar Republic. Duesterberg quickly moved through the party hierarchy and by 1924 was one of two of its federal leaders (the other being Franz Seldte). Together with General Georg Ludwig Rudolf Maercker, Duesterberg was one of the leaders of the extreme anti-Semitic fraction within the Stahlhelm who wanted to ban Jews from joining, and expel all of the current Jewish members. In March 1924, Maercker and Duesterberg forced Seldte to adopt the "Aryan clause" and expel all Jews from the Stahlhelm. The "Aryan clause" of 1924 was later to serve as the inspiration for similar "Aryan clauses" under the Third Reich, and in particular influenced the War Minister, General Werner von Blomberg in his attempts to keep the Wehrmacht "racially clean". Under Duesterberg’s leadership, the Stahlhelm became Germany’s largest para-military groups.
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