Reichswehr

• 1. Treaty Limitations And Structure

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  On the 1st of January 1921, the official formation of the Reichswehr took place after Germany met the severe limitations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. The rebuilt German Army was subject to strict caps on size and armament that would define its existence for fourteen years. Personnel strength was limited to a professional army of 100,000 men plus a navy of 15,000 men. The establishment of a general staff was strictly prohibited under Article 160 of the treaty. Heavy weapons above defined calibres were banned, as were armoured vehicles, submarines, large warships, and any type of air force. The regulations were overseen by the Military Inter-Allied Commission of Control until 1927. Conscription into the German Army had traditionally been for a period of one to three years, creating a large pool of trained reserves. The Versailles Treaty fixed the term of service for Reichswehr officers at twenty-five years and for all others at twelve in order to prevent such a buildup of reservists.

• 2. Founding And Early Crises

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  On the 9th of November 1918, at the beginning of the German Revolution, a republic was proclaimed from Berlin following the collapse of the German Empire. The next day, German Chancellor Friedrich Ebert and General Wilhelm Groener concluded the Ebert-Groener Pact. In this agreement, Groener assured Ebert of the loyalty of the armed forces while Ebert promised to retain the military's traditional status as 'state within a state'. As part of the Armistice of the 11th of November 1918, the new German government agreed to the speedy evacuation of occupied territories. By the 17th of January 1919, the areas on the west bank of the Rhine were free of German military forces. On the 6th of March 1919, the Weimar National Assembly passed a law on the formation of a provisional army to be made up of 43 brigades. From the 1st of October 1919 to the 1st of April 1920, the forces of the Provisional Reich Army were moved into the 400,000-strong Transitional Army consisting of 20 brigades. After falling to 150,000 men in October 1920, the brigades were replaced by regiments, and the final army strength of 100,000 was reached by the 1st of January 1921.

• 3. Social Composition Of The Officer Corps

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  In 1927, twenty percent of the officers were from the former nobility, down from thirty percent in 1913. Large parts of the officer corps held a conservative, monarchist worldview and rejected the Weimar Republic. In 1920, noble officers made up fifty percent of the officers in the cavalry but only five percent in the infantry and four percent in the sappers. Of the approximately one thousand non-commissioned officers promoted to officers in 1919, by 1928 only 117 remained, or three point five percent of the total officers in the Reichswehr. In 1926, ninety-six percent of the officer candidates came from the upper social classes and nearly fifty percent from officer families. The homogeneity of the Reichswehr officer corps was in fact greater than it had been during the Empire. In 1912/13 only 24% of officers had come from families of active or former officers. Democratically-minded officers were not accepted into the force while radical nationalist officers were with few exceptions removed after the Kapp Putsch.

• 4. Clandestine Soviet Cooperation

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  In February 1923, Major General Otto Hasse travelled to Moscow for secret negotiations regarding military cooperation between Germany and the Soviet Union. It was given the opportunity to obtain artillery from the Soviet Union, to train aviation and tank specialists on Soviet soil, and to have chemical warfare agents manufactured and tested. A secret Reichswehr aviation school and testing facility was established at Lipetsk where some 120 military pilots, 100 aerial observers, and numerous ground personnel were trained as the core of a future German Air Force. At Kazan, tank specialists were trained but not until 1930 and to a number of only about thirty. At the Tomka gas test site near Saratov, chemical warfare agents were jointly tested and developed. In December 1926, Social Democrat Philipp Scheidemann disclosed the collaboration with the Soviet Union to the Reichstag, toppling the government under Wilhelm Marx. In 1931 Carl von Ossietzky and Walter Kreiser were convicted of espionage in the Weltbühne Trial for a 1929 report on the collaboration.

• 5. Political Neutrality And Interventionism

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  On the 13th of September 1932, at the initiative of President Hindenburg, the Reich Board for Youth Training was founded for the military education of German youth. In the Prussian coup d'état of July 1932, violent unrest in Altona led Chancellor Papen to use an emergency decree issued by President Hindenburg under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution to temporarily transfer executive power in Prussia to the Reichswehr minister. When the Harzburg Front, an anti-democratic alliance that included the Nazi Party, was formed in 1931, fifteen men who were admirals or generals during the First World War including Hans von Seeckt were present. In 1932 Reichswehr Minister Groener outlawed the Nazi Sturmabteilung and Schutzstaffel but resigned as Reichswehr minister after his subordinate Kurt von Schleicher told him he had lost the trust of the Reichswehr. The decision to build the pocket battleship Deutschland in 1928 caused problems for Social Democrat Reich Chancellor Hermann Müller because his party had campaigned against the ship.

• 6. Transition To The Wehrmacht

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  During 1933 and 1934 the Reichswehr began a secret program of expansion to increase active strength to 300,000 men in 21 divisions. On the 1st of April 1934, between 50,000 and 60,000 new recruits entered the force and were assigned to special training battalions. The original seven infantry divisions of the Reichswehr were expanded to 21 with military district headquarters increased to the size of a corps headquarters on the 1st of October 1934. On the 2nd of August 1934, the day Hindenburg died, Reichswehr Minister Werner von Blomberg had the Reichswehr swear its oath personally to Hitler. Under the Weimar Republic the oath had been to the constitution. On the 1st of March 1935, the Luftwaffe was established and on the 16th of March universal conscription was reintroduced both of which violated the Treaty of Versailles. In the same act, the Reichswehr was renamed the Wehrmacht. On the 1st of June 1935, the army contingent of the Reichswehr was renamed Army and the Reichsmarine became the War Navy.