Private Military Contractors: Difference between revisions

** [[wikipedia:Blackwater Worldwide|Academi]], formerly Xe Services LLC, Blackwater Worldwide, and Blackwater USA. Should be noted that it's their actions, command structure, and actions of their chairman and CEO, Erik Prince (a former Navy SEAL), that separates themselves from more mundane contractors. That, and the [[wikipedia:Blackwater Worldwide businesses|mind-boggling extent]] of both the access to equipment and the variety of businesses that they have. Ironically, though they were perhaps most notorious for their security work (and allegedly fighting alongside coalition military forces in Iraq in the 2004 Battle of Najaf), their chairman/CEO would eventually announce a scaling back of that work (due to the criticisms) in favor of the other services. Blackwater's also interesting in that they're one of the few mercenary companies to have been deployed in America. After Hurricane Katrina, they actually arrived ahead of the National Guard.

* Mercenary armies were used during the [[wikipedia:Congo Crisis|Congo Crisis]] and [[wikipedia:Biafra War|Biafra War]], with several mercenaries rising to fame such as Bob Denard, 'Mad Mike' Hoare and Rolf Steiner.

** It is important to note that the Nazi party were not the only ones to hire the ''Freikorps,'' and one of the more notable examples of an opposing political movement which took on ''Freikorps'' personnel was the ''Stahlhelm'' ("Steel Helmets").

*** The Freikorps don't fit this trope particularly well. They were more like an extremely, EXTREMELY dark take on [[Eagle Squadron]], and most of the units involved were held together by ideology rather than money.