Army Equipment Office
The armory or Zeugamt was originally a building for the storage of weapons and other war material ( Arsenal ), for example, the Berlin Armory back to 1796. In the Weimar Republic there was in accordance with the provisions of the Versailles Treaty seven military districts , each with one army Zeugamt. The National Socialist Germany increased this to 1937 to 13 in 1940, there were 18 military districts and military stuff offices and two more in the " Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia ".
organization
From 1935 to 1945, the military departments of the German Reich were subordinate to the individual commands of their respective military district and had auxiliary military departments in their area. The Heereszeugamt Unna, for example, was responsible for the Münster military district and had ancillary military weapons offices in Dortmund, Mülheim, Osnabrück, Münster, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Bielefeld and Aachen.
tasks
Heereszeugämter were departments of the army that accepted the products produced in their military district from the industry, that is, they compared the armaments with the orders, checked the tolerances and carried out functional tests. If the product was produced properly, it was accepted and given an acceptance stamp. The Army Department checked everything from buttons to tanks. In addition, the military equipment offices stored and also dispatched the accepted products.
Equipment for field serviceability
The Army Ordnance Department fully equipped the weapons or equipment, if necessary, and made them ready for use in the field, that is, in the case of tanks , they were equipped with ammunition , on-board weapons (= loose hand weapons), radio equipment , tools and accessories.
After acceptance by a commission, the Army Equipment Office reported the daily inventory of weapons and equipment that could be used in the field to the OKH / General Army Office. This provided a precise overview of the stocks of weapons and equipment in the Army Equipment Offices at all times.
distribution
Based on the proposal of the General Inspector of the respective weapon type to the OKH, the distribution of tanks, guns , vehicles, weapons and equipment was carried out accordingly. They were sent to the front formations in the railroad transport by the army equipment offices with the accompanying personnel provided by the replacement army . After handing over to the troops, the escort staff returned to the replacement army.
Second World War
With the increasing shortage of labor, prisoners of war, forced laborers from Eastern Europe and concentration camp prisoners were also used in the Army Ordnance Office during the Second World War . Due to the paramount importance for the German front-line supplies, Anglo-American bomber units attacked Army Equipment Offices and train stations in the respective cities in autumn 1944 and spring 1945, for example the Mainz Army Equipment Office in September 1944, on which over 1,123 explosive bombs were dropped. Nevertheless, it was remarkable that the arms deliveries by the Army Equipment Offices to the fronts for almost all types of weapons reached their absolute peak in December 1944. In Unna on March 23, 1945, a daytime air raid on the train station and the nearby brass works resulted in 113 deaths within 15 minutes, including 39 Russian prisoners of war. A freight train from the Army Equipment Office in Unna, loaded with tanks, was also destroyed. The Heereszeugamt in Ingolstadt, one of the largest army magazines in southern Germany, was attacked in the air raid on Ingolstadt on April 5, 1945 by 211 Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers, which dropped over 600 tons of high explosive bombs and destroyed more than 70% of the target object . Almost all other military equipment offices were attacked shortly before the end of the war in 1945 in order to accelerate the German collapse.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dieter Busch: The aerial warfare in the Mainz area during the Second World War, 1939–1945. From Hase & Köhler Verlag, Mainz 1988, p. 119.
- ↑ Ian Kershaw: The End. Fight to the end. Nazi Germany 1944/45. DVA, Munich 2011, p. 203. Also in January 1945 the index of armaments production was higher than in all previous war years with the exception of January 1944. Ders .: p. 585, note 30.
- ↑ Hellweger Anzeiger , March 23, 2010. (Report by Werner Niederasroth).