Word: seeckt
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...words did not mean that German militarism is stirring again: the new General Staff college is rising in Hamburg, historically one of the least martial-minded of German cities. And the college's chief is no monocled martinet such as the late great General Hans von Seeckt, who built the Reichswehr after Versailles, but an infantryman who rose to major general's rank fighting on the Eastern Front. Yet there are signs that the postwar German attitude toward the military is changing...
...Career: At 19 served as enlisted man with the czar's dashing Novgorod Dragoons, then joined the revolution's Red irregulars, became a party member in 1919. Educated at Moscow's Frunze military academy, got final professional polish in Germany under famed monocle-wearing General von Seeckt, who taught him the tactics and strategy of the "breakthrough." One of a dozen or so professionals to survive Stalin's pre-World War II army purges (in which 374 generals were killed), rose rapidly in battle command. When Stalin panicked at the German advance on Moscow...
...irregulars objected to being educated. Georgy Zhukov was an exception. When the chance came for a military course at Moscow's Frunze Academy, he grabbed it. Chief of Staff Boris Shaposhnikov thought him "somewhat slow," but sent him off to Germany to study under General von Seeckt. The black-haired young Russian was a strange figure among the shaven-headed, monocled Prussians, but Swordsman Zhukov could outfence any of them, as he later could outfence any Russian officer who served with him. From Von Seeckt, chief theorist of the new German army that was already forming, Zhukov learned...
Among the first to strut by is the brilliant, bemonocled chief who led the army through the early post-World War I years. Steel blue of eye, trap-tight of lip, Hans von Seeckt was called "the Sphinx." The Sphinx's two rules for the Reichswehr as a political power: it must be 1) "above party," and 2) "a state within a state." In the early '20s, Seeckt kept the telephone pact with the Socialists, at the same time busied himself with building up the cadres of a new German army and a new armament industry-both...
...Plot That Failed. Out of favor with President Hindenburg, Hans von Seeckt finally gave way, in 1926, to another general, sly Kurt von Schleicher. Under Schleicher, the army was not above, but in, politics. Vain, unscrupulous, he schemed incessantly behind the republic's back. Worst of all, he let Hitler's private army of brown shirts grow to a scrap-happy, unmanageable...