simply rejecting the news: ‘‘After all, what has that got to do with us?’’ 49 If their sense of the realities of the world had been weak before, ties with the outside were now broken o V entirely. Germany became ‘‘a land without reality’’ to them. 50 Freikorps men saw themselves as a ‘‘people without a homeland on campaign.’’ 51 Germany had to be replaced, somehow. Some suggested that it was really here with the W ghters, in their midst, while others began to equate the nation with its borderlands, a Y rming, ‘‘Germany was at the frontier.’’ 52 They hatched grandiose schemes to give some reality to ideas of a new martial Germany. These fantastic plans were important and attractive for the Freikorps and much of their atten- tion was devoted to them, from generals down to volunteeers. 53 They talked of ‘‘reinforcement of military Germany from the East.’’ 54 A new German state would rise up east of its earlier borders and again take up the war against the Allies (Ober Ost’s political o Y cial von Gayl in Prussia hatched similar abortive plans for a nationalist uprising, forming a new German ‘‘East-state’’). 55 Fighting to conquer the Baltikum, Freikorps men could already see themselves as ‘‘governors of this province for the as yet unborn nation.’’ 56 As the Allies continued to press for their removal, these castles in the air were not so much scaled down as moved to another cloud, for once in the White Russian army, new dreams appeared before them. They would restore the Russian empire, to be reconstructed and administered by a ruling class of German nobility. When these plans crumbled, Freikorps W ghters returning to Germany wondered where they had made their mistake. Their unrealistic and crazed regret was, ‘‘if only we had attacked Poland instead!’’ 57