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The German term "Wehrmacht" stems from the compound word of German: wehren, "to defend" and Macht, "power, force". [c] It has been used to describe any nation's armed forces; for example, Britische Wehrmacht meaning "British Armed Forces".
The German Army (German: Heer, German: ⓘ; lit. ' army ') was the land forces component of the Wehrmacht, [b] the regular armed forces of Nazi Germany, from 1935 until it effectively ceased to exist in 1945 and then was formally dissolved in August 1946. [4]
The Heer as the German army and part of the Wehrmacht inherited its uniforms and rank structure from the Reichsheer of the Weimar Republic (1921–1935). There were few alterations and adjustments made as the army grew from a limited peacetime defense force of 100,000 men to a war-fighting force of several million men.
The 1st Army was activated on 26 August 1939, in Wehrkreis XII with General Erwin von Witzleben in command. Its primary mission was to take defensive positions and guard the western defences of Germany against Allied forces along the Maginot Line during the attack on Poland, [1] making it the principal German combatant during the short-lived French Saar Offensive.
This page contains a list of equipment used the German military of World War II.Germany used a number of type designations for their weapons. In some cases, the type designation and series number (i.e. FlaK 30) are sufficient to identify a system, but occasionally multiple systems of the same type are developed at the same time and share a partial designation.
The Wehrmacht soon adopted the ZB-26 after the occupation of Czechoslovakia, renaming it the MG 26(t), it was used in the same role as the MG 34, as a light machine gun. In the opening phases of World War II, the ZB-26 in 7.92 mm Mauser caliber was used in large numbers by elements of the German Waffen-SS, who at first did not have full access ...
The German historians' Manfred Messerschmidt and Fritz Wüllner in a 1987 study of Wehrmacht justice have argued that the figure of 15,000 executed is too low, as it only records verdicts handed down by military courts and that in the last months of the war, the Wehrmacht abandoned even the pretence of holding trials, and simply executed ...
A number of military awards were established pre-war, including Wehrmacht long service decorations, followed by awards for participation in the Spanish Civil War and for the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland, with the greatest number established after the start of World War II in 1939.