Hans von Seeckt
Hans von Seeckt (22 April 1866 - 27 December 1936) was a German military officer.
Born in Schleswig, he entered the army in 1885 and was seconded to the General Staff in 1899. During World War I von Seeckt served in various high-level staff positions on the Eastern Front, including Chief of Staff to August von Mackensen while the latter commanded the Eleventh Army. After the end of the war and the dissolution of the old imperial army it fell to von Seeckt to organize the new Reichswehr within the strong restrictions imposed by the Versailles Treaty. He successfully laid the basis for a strong Reichswehr and disguised the new leadership, the forbidden General Staff, under the name the Truppenamt - Troop Office. He is also known for his hostile attitude towards the newly recreated Polish state, and for seeking an alliance with the then Bolshevik Russia against Poland. After hearing encouraging signs from the newly established War Commissar's Office of Leon Trotsky, von Seeckt sent out a secret staff to conduct a military alliance with the Soviets, unbeknown to the Weimar Government. Many of the weapons that the German Army used later in World War II, such as the Stuka dive bomber, were developed from this arrangement, also known as part of the Black Reichswehr.
Von Seeckt's role during the Kapp Putsch of 1920 remains uncertain; he refused to either actively put down the rebellion or co-operate with it. His remark to the leaders of the republic, that "Reichswehr do not fire on Reichswehr", was and is controversial.
From 1920 to 1926 von Seeckt held the position of Chef der Heeresleitung - in fact if not in name commander of the army of the new Weimar Republic - the Reichswehr. In working to build a non-political professional army within and without the confines of the Treaty of Versailles von Seeckt perpetuated the concept of the army as a state-within-a-state. He was an admirer of the British concept of a small, highly trained regular army within which political activity was forbidden. This matched the conditions of the Versailles Treaty which were aimed at creating a long-term professional army with a ceiling of 100,000 volunteers and without significant reserves - a force which would not be able to challenge the much larger French Army. Von Seeckt was a monarchist by personal inclination who encouraged the retention of traditional links with the old Imperial Army. With this purpose he designated individual companies and squadrons of the new Reichswehr as the direct successors of particular regiments of the Kaiser's army.
Von Seeckt was eventually forced to resign in 1926 after permitting the grandson of the former Kaiser to attend army maneuvers in the uniform of the old imperial First Foot Guards without first seeking government approval.
From 1930 to 1932 he sat in the Reichstag as a member of the DVP; from 1934 to 1935 he served as an adviser to Chiang Kai-shek.
See also
Further reading
- Craig, Gordon. The Politics of the Prussian Army 1640-1945. Oxford University Press, 1964.
- Corum, James. The Roots of Blitzkrieg. University Press of Kansas, 1992.
- Wheeler-Bennett, Sir John The Nemesis of Power: German Army in Politics, 1918-1945. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Publishing Company, 2005.
- The American Heritage Picture History of World War II Volume One. New York: American Heritage Publishing Company, 1966
- Albert Seaton. The German Army 1933-45. ISBN 0 297 78032 9
Link