B-gendarmerie

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Austrian gendarmes undergoing adjustment in the 1950s
Alpine bowel around 1955
Historic helmets and caps of the Austrian Gendarmerie

As B-Gendarmerie was in occupied postwar Austria , the predecessor organization of the Armed Forces called.

Word origin

Since the B-Gendarmerie, which was set up from 1949, was initially a secret troop, the origin and exact meaning of the word B-Gendarmerie or the word part B- is not clearly clarified. Some sources speak of standby gendarmerie , others of B-gendarmerie as an additional unit to the "normal" (so to speak, an A-) gendarmerie. It is also sometimes assumed that the B stands for federal status, although the expression “ Bundesgendarmerie” as a name for the gendarmerie organized at the federal level has already existed. It is also assumed that the B could stand for special . However, since the Allies did not officially grant Austria its own military organization at the time the B-Gendarmerie was established, the name B-Gendarmerie is to be understood as a camouflage designation.

history

The Austrian government already harbored shortly after the collapse of the Third Reich the wish that the liberated Austria in the future to defend itself out to the outside and for its internal security can ensure itself. After initial skepticism, the Allied Western Powers also showed interest in this project. The communist takeover of power in Budapest in 1947 and in Prague in the following year caused this rethink in particular . The Western Allies therefore made the freedom of the country sought by Austria dependent, among other things, on its own defense. Since all four occupying powers had jointly decided in 1945 to forbid Austria from any military activity, the reaction of the Soviets to the creation of its own Austrian army could not be foreseen in advance. Therefore, when setting up a defense organization, the already existing federal gendarmerie was used as a camouflage . The formation of the B-Gendarmerie was promoted primarily by the then Interior Minister Oskar Helmer ( SPÖ ) and the then State Secretary and later Defense Minister Ferdinand Graf ( ÖVP ).

Within the gendarmerie, from 1949 onwards, the gendarmerie already sporadically existing alarm trains were combined into so-called alarm departments , which were internally referred to as B-gendarmerie. They were intended as a special unit of the gendarmerie and were supposed to have the task of dealing with extraordinary events such as illegal border crossings, civil unrest or actions by subversive forces. The alarm units were primarily equipped with American weapons and equipment. The gendarmes intended for this, who were not militarily trained, were now also trained in this regard in the gendarmerie schools, which, due to the secret nature of the entire company, also caused problems such as recruitment.

The Western occupying powers , which provided significant support for the entire project, were also in possession of secret recruiting lists and plans by the Austrians: The company, also known as the special gendarmerie program , provided for the admission of former officers, and a list of battle-hardened soldiers without their knowledge was created created in order to be able to quickly dispose of appropriate personnel in an emergency. By 1954, around 90,000 men were recorded. There were also plans according to which the members of the B-Gendarmerie should be taken out of the country, especially to Italy or North Africa , in the event of a communist coup , and there should form the core of an Austrian army in exile. As it turned out officially in November 1954, this entire line-up was very well known to the Soviets. However, this remained of no consequence, as on the one hand the B-Gendarmerie in the western occupied zones faced the armed security of the USIA companies in the Soviet zone and on the other hand the Soviet Union was meanwhile - due to the geopolitical situation - interested in a united neutral Austria.

The first standing units were built in 1950. A battalion was set up for each of the three western occupation zones, all of which ran under the cover designation of gendarmerie schools , as well as a reconnaissance company disguised as a driving unit . The beginning of the existence of the B-Gendarmerie can be fixed with August 1st, 1952, when the leadership was taken over by former Wehrmacht officers . The new formation was subordinate to the Federal Ministry of the Interior . The respective state gendarmerie commands were responsible for the administration. On October 28, 1953, a separate department was created for the B-Gendarmerie in the Interior Ministry, which completely separated it from the civilian Federal Gendarmerie. At the end of 1953, the B gendarmerie consisted of around 100 officers and 4,000 men. As a result, were until 1955 a total of 10 police schools, two more drive units, a department D and a - - a jointly run with the Americans supply depot Division K (K classes ) that should take over the training of future officers, as well as so-called two. Telegraph schools established .

In 1954, the tasks of the B-Gendarmerie were officially named not only border protection and the fight against civil unrest, but also deployment in natural disasters (the Austrian Armed Forces still see them as one of its central areas of responsibility) and so-called tactical operations in the event of an alarm , which means that the actual war effort was meant. The fear of the outbreak of a new world war was not unfounded: the East-West conflict had meanwhile developed into the Cold War and the war in Korea (1950–1953), which, like Austria and Germany after the Second World War, turned into a western and western one an eastern zone of occupation had been divided was seen as a proxy war between the great powers, just as it could arise in other conflict zones.

After the conclusion of the State Treaty on May 15, 1955, the existence of this organization made it possible relatively quickly to build a new army from it. The last parade of the B-Gendarmerie as such took place on the day after the contract was signed in the form of a “liberation parade ” in the Ebelsberg district of Linz . On July 8, 1955, the allied ban on military activity fell and the end of the B-Gendarmerie can be set on July 27, 1955, when it was renamed the Provisional Border Guard Department . In 1956, 6,000 former B-gendarmes formed the cadre for the newly formed armed forces , which in the course of the Hungarian uprising should have to pass its first test in the same year by securing the Austrian state border . The army soldiers who had already been members of the B-Gendarmerie wore the emblem of their previous organization on their uniforms - a red triangle with a burning grenade - on their right sleeve.

literature

  • Walter Blasi, Erwin A. Schmidl, Felix Schneider (Eds.): B-Gendarmerie, weapons store and intelligence services. The military way to the State Treaty . Böhlau, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-205-77267-9 .
  • Martin Prieschl: The nucleus of the armed forces . B-Gendarmerie 1952–1955 . In: Austria Edition 21 [loose-leaf collection]. Archiv-Verlag, Braunschweig 2010.
  • Christian Stifter: The rearmament of Austria. The secret remilitarization of the western zones of occupation 1945–1955 . Studien-Verlag, Innsbruck et al. 1997, ISBN 3-7065-1176-2 ( Vienna Contemporary History Studies 1).

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