Inventory description: Due to the Weimar Imperial Constitution, the previous contingent armies of the individual states (Prussia with North German federal states, Bavaria, Saxony, Württemberg, Baden) of the German Empire were replaced by a uniform Imperial Army. Due to the Versailles Peace Treaty, it was subject to several restrictions and limitations in its scope and in its military and technical equipment. Thus the Great General Staff also had to be dissolved; its function was assumed by the troop office in the army leadership. Only two general or group commandos (in Kassel and Berlin) were allowed to be set up to lead the ten divisions granted (seven infantry and three cavalry divisions). From 1919 on, the army was headed by the Chief of Staff, whose name was changed to Commander-in-Chief of the Army from 16 March 1935 on, with the reintroduction of the general compulsory military service and the establishment of the Wehrmacht. From 1933 onwards, the National Socialist government increasingly broke away from the restrictions imposed by the Versailles Peace Treaty, and was able to fall back on internal preparations for army propagation, which had been under way since 1930. Content characterisation: The RH 69 holdings essentially contain the preserved documents of the units and units stationed in Saxony. A few archival records of Reichswehr formations were taken over by the Bavarian Main State Archives in 1957; they came from the Potsdam Army Archives and were sent to Munich at the time to process another volume of the post-war fights of German troops, where they finally survived the end of the war. The archives of the Reichswehr formations stationed in Saxony originate from the then branch of the Reichsarchiv in Dresden; this branch was given the name Heeresarchiv Dresden in 1937. After the war, Soviet troops confiscated the remaining parts of the archival material and transferred it to the Soviet Union, where it was kept in the Peter Paul Fortress in Leningrad. In 1955 the archives were finally returned to the GDR. Together with other holdings, the "Reichswehrbestand Sachsen" (Reich Army Stock Saxony) was transferred to the military archive of the National People's Army of the former GDR in Potsdam. Here, a basic inventory processing was carried out, especially as the inventory was difficult to use due to file losses and frequent relocations. When the two German military archives were brought together in the mid-1990s in Freiburg im Breisgau, the tradition was passed down from Potsdam to the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv. The classification of the files of the individual provenance sites corresponds to the structure of military command and control centres: The archives are largely assigned to the departments (Ia, Ib, Ic, IIa, IIb, IVb and IVc) of the brigade staffs (Reichswehrbrigade 12, 19, 28 with infantry commanders 19 and 29) or have been separated from each other by content. Individual documents of Reichwehr infantry regiments ( 20, 23, 37, 38, 55, 56) and of the artillery regiment 19 with several departments (news department, listening department, force department) and battalions are also available. If larger quantities of archival material were available from a department, a further subdivision was made. The number of files of the departments is different; occasionally no documents are handed down from certain departments. In addition to the organisational, service-related, personnel and material information on the individual stages and on the course of the reduction of the Reich Army in Saxony, the collection contains rich facts on the deployments of the troops stationed in Saxony in 1919 and 1920, not only the suppression of the workers uprisings in West Saxony, but also the deployments in other uprisings areas of Germany, for example in Hamburg, the Ruhr area and Upper Silesia. Troops from Saxony even took part in the fighting against Soviet troops in Latvia and Lithuania. The archives of the units and units of the provisional Reichswehr and the transitional army stationed in Saxony are of some interest for research because comparable records are not available, or at most still available, in the General State Archives in Karlsruhe (for formations stationed in the former Grand Duchy of Baden), in the Hauptstaatsarchiv/Kriegsarchiv Stuttgart (for formations stationed in the former Kingdom of Württemberg) and in the Hauptstaatsarchiv/Kriegsarchiv München (for formations stationed in the former Kingdom of Bavaria). However, the stocks available are no longer complete. On 23 February 1945, large parts of the documents and archives of the Army Archives in Dresden's Marienallee were burned after an Allied air raid. A further reduction in the number of files occurred through cassation (historically insignificant contents, e.g. incoming and outgoing mail books), which can partly be traced by means of the old finding aids. State of development: Various parts as finding aid, find index (also partly as Word file and with Basys-S program) Scope, Explanation: 3000 AE Citation method: BArch, RH 69/...
