L officer

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L-officers or also state protection officers were civilian employees of the Reichswehr . They were recruited from long-serving officers of the Old Army who had retired from active service .

background

Due to the provisions of the Versailles Peace Treaty , the strength of the Reichswehr was limited to 100,000 men. It was also prohibited to take measures that were suitable for initiating mobilization preparations.

However, already in the early 1920s by the national government funds made available to the organization of an illegal militia-like border management on the eastern borders to promote the kingdom, which in large part from the remains of the recently under pressure from the Allies resolved to Home Guards and Composed self-protection formations. The army command under Wilhelm Heye began secretly expanding this border protection from 1926 into a nationwide state protection organization (LO), which consisted of border protection and a defense replacement and mobilization organization in the interior of the Reich and was the central German secret armament endeavor 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 L-officers included, in addition to the work on the border guard, including training, supervision and monitoring of secretly stored weapons and equipment, as well as measures such as the registration of the population capable of military service. As district officers, they took over the work areas of the former Landwehr inspections and district commandos .

With the reintroduction of compulsory military service in March 1935, the military replacement inspections and military district commands of the Wehrmacht emerged from this system ; the state protection officer corps was converted into the supplementary officer corps at the same time .

literature

  • Jun Nakata: Border and State Protection in the Weimar Republic 1918–1933. The secret armament and the German society . Rombach, Freiburg im Breisgau 2002, ISBN 3-7930-9331-X ( individual publications on military history 41), (also: Hamburg, Univ., Diss., 1999).
  • Edgar Graf von Matuschka: Organization of the Reichsheeres in Handbook on German Military History 1648–1939 , Ed. Military History Research Office , Freiburg (Breisgau), Part VI: Reichswehr and Republic (1918–1933) , Bernard & Graefe Verlag für Wehrwesen, Frankfurt am Main 1970 , P. 212ff.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rüdiger Bergien: With "Kreiskommissaren" to the "Volkswehr". The Prussian Resident Guard as an organ of a republican security policy, 1918–1920 . In: Rüdiger Bergien, Ralf Pröve (Hrsg.): Spießer, Patrioten, Revolutionär: Military Mobilization and Social Order in Modern Times. V&R unipress, Göttingen, 2010, ISBN 978-3-89971-723-5 , pp. 117-138 (136)
  2. ^ Matuschka: Organization of the Reichsheeres , p. 216
  3. ^ Matuschka: Organization of the Reichsheeres , p. 341