Feldgendarmerie
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The Feldgendarmerie (a German[1] term roughly translating to "Field Police") were the military police units of the armies of the German Empire (including the Wehrmacht) from post-Napoleonic times through its dissolution at the conclusion of World War II.
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[edit] History
Early incarnations of the Feldgendarmerie came into being on an ad-hoc basis through mobilizations of the Germany army as a whole, most notably in the wars of 1866 and 1870. At the outset of hostilities in 1914 the Feldgendarmerie comprised 33 units; this number was expanded to 100 by war's end.
[edit] World War II
The Feldgendarmerie (pejoratively Kettenhunde, or "chained dogs", for the gorget they wore) had an especially significant role towards the end of World War II as they became responsible for the fate of tens of thousands of deserters (known as Fahnenflüchtiger, literally "runners from the flag"). According to Hitler's way of thinking, "the soldier may die, but the deserter must die" and many were summarily executed. Towards the end of the war (as public support for anything but non-defensive actions by the Wehrmacht was rapidly evaporating), they also became known as the Heldenklau (or "hero-snatchers") because they were assigned the unpopular task of searching streams of returning refugees for possible deserters and sending rear-echelon personnel to the front.
Additionally, some Feldgendarmerie units were given occupation duties in the territories controlled by the Wehrmacht. Their missions ranged from straightforward traffic control and civilian policing to suppression and execution of partisans and enemy stragglers.
As combat units moved out of a region, control was transferred to the SS and Police Leaders occupation authority under the Nazi Party and Heinrich Himmler, and the Feldgendarmerie's role would formally end. The SS and Police Leaders are known to have committed numerous war crimes including mass arrests and deportation to concentration camps and even mass murder of entire villages, especially of Jews and other distrusted populations. The extent to which the Feldgendarmerie participated in such activities is not well documented. Overall, the history of the Feldgendarmerie is one of the least explored chapters of Wehrmacht history during the Second World War.
[edit] Postwar reorganization
With the creation of the Bundeswehr in 1955, many of its branches of service were given names that would at least nominally distinguish them from their logical Wehrmacht equivalents. Thus, military police in the modern Bundeswehr were not called Feldgendarmerie. In fact, the original intent was to call the MPs Militärpolizei, literally military police. However, state officials protested as the law enforcement function in the brand new German constitution had been given primarily to the states, not the federation. The word Polizei (Police) was jealously guarded by the states, so the Federal Defence Ministry searched for a new designation and adopted Feldjäger which was a traditional Prussian regiment with some military police type functions.
