The Central European Counter-Revolution: Paramilitary Violence in Germany, Austria and Hungary after the Great War

This article offers a new perspective on paramilitary violence that differs from previous investigations in two ways. First, it conceptualizes post-war Central Europe as a transnational theatre of paramilitary ultra-violence in which a new type of warrior, born out of Central Europe's 'culture of defeat' and unrestrained by conventional military discipline and moral reservations, staged bloody rituals of retribution against real and imagined enemies. Secondly, this essay engages closely with the cultural, social and psychological preconditions and group dynamics that shaped the activists' response to defeat and revolution. Apart from investigating the social origins and composition of ultra-violent paramilitary movements in Central Europe, it therefore places particular emphasis on the human agency of individuals. In order to contribute to a better under standing of a transnational masculine subculture of militant radicals that staged a privatized mercenary warfare unseen in Central Europe since the days of the Thirty Years War, it addresses the activists' perceptions of the post-war situation and the con structed 'rationality' that made killing an entirely plausible form of political communication. In sum, this article should be seen as a contribution both to the current debate about transnational approaches to the history of Central Europe, and to the growing interest in cultural and social-psychological approaches to political violence [Author]