The Versailles Treaty restricted the numbers of the German army to seven divisions of infantry and three of cavalry, for a total of 100,000 men, and no more than 4,000 officers. Conscription was prohibited, and civilian employees engaged in forest protection, customs inspection, and other official duties could not receive military training. The military was to be exclusively devoted to the maintenance of order within German territory and control of the frontiers.[2] The Treaty further prohibited the construction of aircraft, heavy artillery, submarines, capital ships, and tanks, and the production of materials for chemical warfare.
Naval forces were limited to 15,000 men. The Treaty also specified the navy could number no more than 6 battleships of no more than 10,000 tons displacement, 6 cruisers (6,000 tons displacement), 6 destroyers (800 tons displacement), and twelve torpedo boats (200 tons displacement), and these ships could only be replaced after twenty years for the first 2 classes of ships, and after fifteen years, for the remaining classes of ships. Article 191 specifically prohibited the production or acquisition of submarines. The Treaty further prohibited the manufacture, import, and export of weapons and poison gas.[3]
To maintain these restrictions, the Treaty created an Allied military commission, whose job was to monitor German military activity, known as the Governments of the Principal Allied and Associated Powers.
Circumventing the Versailles Treaty military restrictions
The Reichswehr military organisation, as it was reorganised under General Hans von Seeckt and Defence Minister Otto Gessler, evaded these prohibitions through a variety of measures. Safeguarding its secrecy, Gessler and Reichswehr officials denied the organisation's existence to the Reichstag and other institutions.[4] After the Third Silesian Uprising, the military, with von Seeckt's knowledge, provided arms to Freikorps members and other paramilitary groups, who, after the end of the hostilities, stashed their weapons away and reorganised as labour battalions[5] under the command of Major Fedor von Bock, comprising about 2,000 service members and further 18,000 reservists, concentrated around the garrison town of Küstrin in Brandenburg. Black Reichswehr paramilitary forces comprised the SA troops of the Nazi Party, Der Stahlhelm organisation, and numerous Freikorps like the Marinebrigade Ehrhardt, its Organisation Consul successor or Bund Oberland.
Though constantly denied by the Reichswehr supreme command and the Ministry of Defence, Black Reichswehr forces served in sabotage acts and assaults during the French Occupation of the Ruhr and were responsible for several Feme murders.[6]
Groups from the Black Reichswehr called labour commandos (German: Arbeitskommando) led by Bruno Ernst Buchrucker wanted to bring down the Reich government of Chancellor Gustav Stresemann and replace the parliamentary democratic republic with a national dictatorship. The putsch was prompted when on 26 September 1923 the government ended passive resistance to the occupation of the Ruhr[7] by French and Belgian troops that had been imposed in January 1923 after Germany defaulted on the war reparations payments required by the Treaty of Versailles.
When the commandos were getting out of their truck, the Reichswehr opened fire on them with a machine gun, killing one and wounding seven. They were the putsch's only casualties. 381 Black Reichswehr labour commandos were arrested but released a short time later. All of the officers involved remained under arrest.[8]
In popular culture
The Black Reichswehr is featured in Babylon Berlin, the German neo-noir television series based on the 2008 novel Der nasse Fisch (The Wet Fish) by Volker Kutscher. In the first two seasons, the organisation is depicted as plotting a coup of the Weimar Republic to restore the German Empire, returning Wilhelm II to the throne and installing Erich Ludendorff as Chancellor. The character of Generalmajor Seegers, the fictional ringleader of the plot, is an amalgamation of several historical Reichswehr officers, including Hans von Seeckt and Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord.
Gallery
Members of the "Black Reichswehr" in Döberitz, date unknown.
Black Reichswehr fighting against Polish and German forces during the Poland Uprising, 1919.
Members of the "Black Reichswehr" in Döberitz, date unknown.
Sauer, Bernhard (2008). "Die Schwarze Reichswehr und der geplante Marsch auf Berlin" [The Black Reichswehr and the Planned March on Berlin]. Geschichte und Gegenwart. Jahrbuch des Landesarchivs Berlin 2008 [History and Present. Yearbook of the State Archive Berlin 2008] (PDF) (in German). Berlin: Gebruder Mann Verlag. ISBN9783786125952.
Weimar Republic
