Truppenamt

The Truppenamt or 'Troop Office' was the cover organisation for the German General Staff from 1919 through until 1935 when the General Staff of the German Army (Heer) was re-created. This subterfuge was deemed necessary in order for Germany to be seen to meet the requirements of the Versailles Treaty. It completely revised German tactical and strategic doctrine and thereby conserved, re-energised and unified the military thinking and capability of the Reichswehr, later to become the Wehrmacht.

After World War I, the Versailles Treaty specified that the post-war German army could have a maximum strength of 100,000, of this number only 4000 could be officers. Article 160 determined:

The Great German General Staff and all similar organisations shall be dissolved and may not be reconstituted in any form.

In late 1919, soon after the treaty was signed, Major General Hans von Seeckt, head of the military expert group adjunct to the German delegation, initiated a programme to rethink and rewrite German doctrine as well as reorganise the Army to comply with the Versailles rules. On 1 October he became chief of the newly established Truppenamt agency within the Ministry of the Reichswehr. In 1920, when von Seeckt succeeded Walther Reinhardt as Head of the Army Command (Chef der Heeresleitung), this expanded to rebuilding a new army from scratch.

When the General Staff was dissolved in 1919, its Operations Section became the Truppenamt whilst other sections of the Staff were transferred to government departments: the history section to the Interior Ministry Reich Archives, the Survey and Maps section to the Interior Ministry Survey Office and the Transportation section to the Transportation Ministry. The Economic and Political sections were placed directly under the control of the chief of the Army Command. Thus the core of the General Staff became the four new sections of the Truppenamt:

As von Seeckt said at the time "the form changes, the spirit remains the same".

Alongside the Truppenamt in the new army high command were the Weapons Office and branch inspectorates. The relationship between these three entities was very close since between them they determined materiel, doctrine and training. In the early 1920s, the Truppenamt contained a transportation section, T7 (there never was a T5 or T6). Altogether these three bodies contained two hundred officers, almost all ex-General Staff, who formed an efficient and practical organisation for guiding the rebuilding of the Reichswehr.

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