BUCHRUCKER, BRUNO ERNST

   officer; commanded the illegal Black Reichswehr.*A veteran of the 1919 Baltic campaigns who had been discharged for complicity in the Kapp* Putsch, he was inexplicably given command of the Black Reichswehr in 1923 by Lieutenant-Colonel Fedor von Bock, chief-of-staff of Berlin's* Third Reichswehr Division. A diehard monarchist, he hoped that passive resistance to France's Ruhr occupation* would escalate into a war that might force a change in government. When Gustav Stresemann* ended passive resistance in September 1923, he was outraged. Under his command the Black Reichswehr units stationed at Berlin's Küstrin barracks planned a putsch for late September aimed at forming a military cabinet and renewing resistance against France. But when events in Bavaria* induced a state of emergency, thus en-hancing the authority of General Hans von Seeckt,* he correctly perceived that the army would not support the effort. When he attempted to cancel the putsch, however, his troops declared their resolve to proceed, with or without his lead-ership. Buchrucker thereupon led an ineffectual march on the Küstrin barracks. Arrested and tried for treason, he was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment. In reference to the putsch, he exclaimed that a "people that always wants to go the safe way will go safely into enslavement."

   Buchrucker had served only a fraction of his term when President Hinden-burg* pardoned him. He later joined Otto Strasser's* Schwarze Front (Black Front), an organization of disillusioned Nazis opposed to Hitler.* Arrested in June 1933, he was released before Christmas of the same year.

   REFERENCES:Craig, Politics of the Prussian Army; Diehl, Paramilitary Politics; Scheck, "Politics of Illusion"; Waite, Vanguard of Nazism.