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The Heinkel He 111, one of the technologically advanced aircraft that were designed and produced illegally in the 1930s as part of the clandestine German rearmament. German rearmament (Aufrüstung, German pronunciation: [ˈaʊ̯fˌʀʏstʊŋ]) was a policy and practice of rearmament carried out by Germany from 1918 to 1939 in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, which required German ...
West German rearmament (German: Wiederbewaffnung) began in the decades after World War II. Fears of another rise of German militarism caused the new military to operate within an alliance framework, under NATO command. [1] The events led to the establishment of the Bundeswehr, the West German military, in 1955.
The Treaty of Versailles placed several restrictions on German ownership of munitions and other arms and limited the army to just 100,000 men. Under the terms of the treaty, poison gas, tanks, submarines, and heavy artillery were prohibited to German forces, and Germany could not import or export "war material" (a vague term that was not clearly defined). [1]
The fear of a resurgence of German militarism was increasingly proven unfounded. German rearmament in the West led to a protest movement emerging in the 1960s as a result of the intensification of the Cold War. This protest movement evolved into a movement for peace in general by the 1980s, a period in which large-scale armament in both West ...
After the Nazi regime took power in January 1933, Germany began working towards rearmament and the remilitarisation of the Rhineland. On 7 March 1936, using the Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance as a pretext, Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to march 20,000 German troops into the Rhineland, which caused joyous celebrations across Germany.
The German government needed to spend a large amount of money to fund the Depression-era reconstruction of its heavy industry based economy and, ultimately, its re-armament industry. However, it faced two problems. First, rearmament was illegal under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, and secondly there was a legal interest-rate limit of 4.5%.
The first effort at international arms limitation was made at the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907, which had failed in their primary objective. Although many contemporary commentators and Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles blamed the outbreak of the war on the war guilt of Germany, historians writing in the 1930s emphasised the quick arms race before 1914.
The Nazis introduced a massive rearmament program to build up the Wehrmacht beyond the limits imposed by the Versailles Treaty. On 16 March 1935, Hitler ignored the Versailles Treaty and ordered Germany to re-arm, reintroducing military conscription. The treaty had limited the German Reichswehr to 100,000 men with few arms.