8 Welcome to the U.S. Army Garrison Grafenwoehr. 1919 June The Treaty of Versailles limits the German army to 100,000 men and officers. Because of drastic military cuts in spending the existence and future of the Grafenwoehr Training Area falls into speculation. The total Allied casualties by the end of the war top 22 million, or 52 percent of all soldiers mobilized. The Central Powers – Germany and Austria – fighting on two fronts east and west, sustained more than 37 million casualties, about 66 percent of all forces mobilized. Later, all combatant soldiers of the war would come to be known cumulatively thereafter and forever, as “The Lost Generation.” 1920 January Following the German defeat in World War I, and the harsh terms imposed by the Allies, the Grafenwoehr Training Area almost closes for good in 1919. In fact, so many soldiers left Grafenwoehr, the local city government used empty barracks to house 74 homeless families. In spring, a dynamic new officer takes command of the German National Army, General Hans von Seeckt. He introduces a new sense of camaraderie in the German ranks, and begins to train the army on the lessons-learned from World War I and promotes new thinking and new tactics. He sees Grafenwoehr as vital to rebuilding the German army. 1922 May Seeckt replaces the political GTA commandant who had been elected two years earlier, with the WWI veteran Oberst Fritz Krummel. 1923 August Due to inflation and currency devaluation a Soldier’s pay reaches 2 million Reichsmarks, as the currency loses its value daily. By October, Grafenwoehr citizens burn the worthless paper money in their stoves to warm their homes. November Less than 200 miles south of the GTA an attempted coup d’état, the Munich Beer Hall Putsch by the fledgling Nazi Party, led by General Erich Ludendorff and Adolf Hitler, is put-down, after days of brutal street fighting. 1924 An early advocate of armored mechanized warfare, and fast moving mobile armored units, Captain Heinz Guderian explores the use of tanks in an offensive role at the Grafenwoehr Training Area. Guderain becomes a familiar figure at the training area, during the next 20 years. His concept of tank warfare, is later published in 1936 under the title “Achtung! Panzer!", a seminal work in modern offensive tank warfare. May Training activities at the GTA accelerate. Seeckt appoints Oberst Hoffman as the new GTA commander. 1925 April Wooden Tanks! Following WWI, the German Army was prohibited from building or training with armored or tracked vehicles, but as early as 1923 the rebuilt German Army began experiments with “simulated” tanks made of bailing wire and pressboard! 1926 In the spring of 1926 General Hans von Seeckt observes an exercise with one tenth of the entire German Army, with more than 600 officers and 8,300 troops at the GTA. Seeckt retires shortly thereafter. His legacy, keeping the most elite soldiers in the ranks when the allied terms of the Versailles Treaty forced the Reichswehr to purge some 20,000 of its officers in the 1920s. In 1926, of the 100,000 men permitted to serve in the army 40,000 were NCOs, and each of these were regarded as potential officer material. The Artillery Observation tower at Schwartzenberg Hill, known today as the Bleidorn Tower is complete. History of the Grafenwoehr Training Area
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