Rearmament of Germany

The German rearmament (Aufrüstung, German pronunciation: [ˈaʊ̯fˌʀʏstʊŋ]) was an era of in Germany during the interwar period (1918-1939), in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. It began as soon as the treaty was signed, on a small, secret, and informal basis, but it was massively expanded after the Nazi Party came to power in 1933.

Despite its scale, the Aufrüstung was for years a largely covert operation, carried out mostly in a cloak-and-dagger manner through organizations (some of which were racketeer-style fronts), until the reality of the German rearmament was exposed by Carl von Ossietzky in 1931. Although his disclosures won him the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize, Carl von Ossietzky was condemned by the Nazi authorities to 227 days in jail —plus further imprisonment and torture until his death on 4 May 1938. Von Ossietzky's disclosures also triggered the Re-armament policy in the United Kingdom, which escalated after Adolf Hitler withdrew Germany from the League of Nations and the Geneva Disarmament Conference in 1933.

The re-armament program quickly increased the size of the German officer corps, and organizing the growing army would be their primary task until the outbreak of World War II in September 1939. Count Johann von Kielmansegg (1906-2006) later said that the very involved process of outfitting 36 divisions kept him and his colleagues from reflecting on larger issues.

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