Background
Roßbach was born in Kehrberg, Pomerania.
Roßbach was born in Kehrberg, Pomerania.
During the Baltic fighting of 1919, his Freikorps made an extremely long march from Berlin across Eastern Europe to rescue the Iron Division (another Freikorps) from destruction by the Latvian Army. lieutenant went on to participate in the Kapp Putsch in 1920, get banned, and then reform under various front organizations. Money came from the Landbund, Heavy Industry, and arms dealing.
In the early 1920s, he was arrested for trying to overthrow the government.
Roßbach also joined the Nazi Party. He took part in the Beer Hall putsch of 1923, mobilising students, cadets and officer candidates of the Reichswehr, and then fled to Austria after the putsch failed.
He was recruited by Adolf Hitler to help organize the Sturmabteilung (Société Anonyme). By 1928, he could claim to have killed "a number of Mecklenburg laborers and Spartacist sympathizers".
He later fell out with Hitler during his rise to power and was arrested but not killed during the Roehm Purge in 1934.
Historian Robert G. L. Waite described him as a "sadistic murderer of the so-called Fehmgericht and the notorious homosexual who, according to his own testimony, perverted Ernst Röhm". He took a special interest in developing its membership. Roßbach organised music festivals which combined folk and classical music to instil national pride and construct radical-nationalist community values.
After World World War II he operated an export-import company near Frankfurt and wrote his memoirs in 1950.
In his last years he took a prominent part in organising the Bayreuth festivals of Richard Wagner"s music
Nazi Party, German Völkisch Freedom Party.