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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".
Wehrmacht – German armed forces under the Third Reich consisting of three branches: the Heer (Army), the Luftwaffe (Air Force), and the Kriegsmarine (Navy). The Waffen-SS was a separate organization, although SS combat units were usually placed under the operational control of Army High Command (OKH) or Wehrmacht High Command (OKW).
These ranks and insignia were specific to the Heer and in special cases to senior Wehrmacht officers in the independent services; the uniforms and rank systems of the other branches of the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe (Air Force) and Kriegsmarine (Navy), were different, as were those of the SS which was a Party organization outside the Wehrmacht.
The Kriegsmarine (German pronunciation: [ˈkʁiːksmaˌʁiːnə], lit. ' War Navy ') was the navy of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It superseded the Imperial German Navy of the German Empire (1871–1918) and the inter-war Reichsmarine (1919–1935) of the Weimar Republic.
The Reichswehr and its successor, the Wehrmacht began systematically allocating numbers to its vehicles from around 1930, including horse-drawn vehicles, cars and trucks, combat vehicles, and trailers. [2] Sd.Kfz. numbers were assigned to armored, tracked, and half-tracked vehicles.
The German armed forces kept the name Reichswehr until Adolf Hitler's 1935 proclamation of the "restoration of military sovereignty", at which point it became part of the new Wehrmacht. Although ostensibly apolitical, the Reichswehr acted as a state within a state, and its leadership was an important political power factor in the Weimar Republic.
An Obergefreiter was considered an Enlisted Man in the German Wehrmacht, equivalent to the Schutzstaffel's Sturmmann. A somewhat large portion of the German Army in the Second World War consisted of enlisted men, especially during the later years of the war with conscription laws being increased to fight off the advancing Soviet Army.
During the Second World War, Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht soldiers wore this slogan on their belt buckles. [8] as opposed to members of the Waffen-SS, who wore the motto Meine Ehre heißt Treue ('My honour is loyalty'). [9] After the war, the Bundeswehr abandoned the motto Gott mit uns, but the West German police continued to use it until the 1970s.