E officer

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E-Officer was the common abbreviation and designation used by the German Reichswehr and Wehrmacht for so-called supplementary officers . They were hired to meet the need for officers in the army, which was limited to 100,000 men by the Versailles Peace Treaty , initially in secret from the late 1920s and then (after the Nazi takeover ) from 1935 onwards, which was openly rearming .

background

Back in the early 1920s were from the national government provided funds to the organization of an illegal militia -like Border Guard on the eastern borders of the empire to promote. It was largely made up of the remnants of the resident services and self-protection formation that had recently been disbanded under pressure from the victorious powers . The army command under Wilhelm Heye began to develop this border protection secretly from 1926 into a nationwide state protection organization (LO), consisting of border protection and a defense replacement and mobilization organizationexisted in the interior of the Reich and was the central German secret armament undertaking until the early 1930s. The LO was subordinate to the Army Organization Department of the Troops Office (T 2) and served to prepare for mobilization and a planned expansion of the Reichsheer from seven to 21 infantry divisions .

The tasks of the Landesschutzoffiziere ( L officers ), who were civilian employees of the Reichswehr and long-serving officers of the Old Army who had retired from active service , included not only border guards, but also the training of voluntary border guards, the supervision and monitoring of secretly stored weapons and equipment as well as the Recording of the population fit for military service. As district officers, they took over the work areas of the former Landwehr inspections and district commandos . On October 1, 1933, they were combined in the still camouflaged State Protection Officer Corps .

Supplement officers

The state protection officer corps was subsequently expanded and renamed the supplementary officer corps with the decree of the Reichswehr Minister of March 5, 1935 . This designation was abolished by order of the OKH on September 7, 1936.

Years from 1882 onwards could be accepted into the E-Officer Corps, and thus former officers were also hired who no longer had the physical and / or other aptitude required for service in the active force. When they were accepted into the E-Officer Corps, as a rule after a probationary period of six months, candidates for electronic officers were often given a higher rank than their last active rank, if the calculation of seniority allowed this. E-officers were soldiers within the meaning of the Defense Act. They had the addition (E) after their rank. This addition was omitted with the decree of December 15, 1938; however, the term E-officer remained. Although their status as superiors was not subject to any restrictions, it was avoided as far as possible to place active officers under E-officers.

Since the demand for E-officers increased sharply with the rapid armament - their number rose from 3,073 in 1935 to 4,592 in autumn 1937; In 1939 it was 6,009 - the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Colonel General Werner von Fritsch , ordered the rapid integration of the E-officers into the active officer corps . From December 10, 1937, the E-officers in permanent active military service belonged to the active officer corps of the Army. They served mainly in supplementary units, staffs and in administration and replaced active officers in the majority of all positions outside of actual military service. In 1939, 37 troops and 107 E-officers served in the Wehrmacht High Command . Similar relations existed in most of the higher staffs down to the divisions; Troop officers only dominated the regimental headquarters .

Remarks

  1. ↑ Rüdiger Bergien, Ralf Pröve (ed.): Spießer, Patrioten, Revolutionär: Military Mobilization and Social Order in Modern Times. V&R unipress, Göttingen, 2010, ISBN 978-3-89971-723-5 , p. 136
  2. ^ Matuschka: Organization of the Reichsheeres , p. 216
  3. ^ Matuschka: Organization of the Reichsheeres , p. 341
  4. ↑ E-units recorded people without previous military training. Some of these were called up for courses lasting two to three months and then combined into e-units.

literature