The army is a huge organization, where everyone has their own position, each performing his or her duties, and doing his or her best. Different branches of the armed forces and branches of the armed forces will certainly have to deal with each other. In order to be able to effectively distinguish them, the army designed its own collar badges, epaulettes, and hat emblems in different historical periods as a logo exclusive to a special service or branch of the army.
In the German ranks during World War II, there was such a special logo——— it was a crescent-shaped metal plate engraved with the German word: feldgendarmerie, which was hung on the chest by a chain connecting left and right. The wearer was very conspicuous in the crowd, and ordinary soldiers could only take a detour with their eyebrows down.
So why do some Germans wear crescent cards? What does it represent? What privileges do the wearer have? What crimes have been committed on the battlefield?
The German word "Feld" on the crescent plate actually means war gendarme. The gendarmerie system originated in France, the gendarmerie is the police in the army, is used to supervise the implementation of military orders and rectify the discipline of the army.
Between 1810 and 1812, under the influence of Napoleon. The yet-to-be-unified German states of Saxony, Württemberg, Prussia and Bavaria successively established their own gendarmerie units.
The gendarmerie were selected from among well-trained infantry and cavalry, veterans of some contingent-owned units. Gendarmes remain military personnel, equipped and paid by the Ministry of War, but in peacetime they are subordinate to the Ministry of the Interior, the equivalent of ordinary mounted police.
The crescent plaque is the logo of the gendarmerie. The workmanship of this sign is exquisite, the inscription is printed with the German eagle logo, and the iron chain is composed of 42 chain links, which are firmly tied. It symbolizes majestic and solemn execution and loyal service to the ruler.
Gendarmes wear that crescent badge only when they are on duty, and are usually identified by the orange and red soldier color and the police eagle on their left arm. The field gendarmes had a lot of power, and once the crescent card was worn, the German soldiers of equal or lower rank had to listen to him. No one dared to provoke them, and german soldiers who had seen the strength of the gendarmes would affectionately call them "chain dogs" behind their backs.
At the beginning of the First World War, the Gendarmerie consisted of 33 companies. Each company had 60 gendarmes and two commanders. By the end of World War I in 1918, the size of the gendarmerie had been expanded to 115 companies.
During the First World War, in the lands occupied by Germany, there was everywhere opposition and resentment against imperialist rule, the rise of national restoration movements, and the organization of guerrilla warfare delayed the progress of the German army.
The German authorities urgently need a force to track down and put an end to these acts in order to maintain long-term peace and stability in the occupied territories. But instead of creating new institutions for this purpose, they entrusted the suppression of civilians to the Feld Gendarmerie. Since then, the gendarmerie has continued its functions of policing and counter-guerrilla warfare.
After the end of the First World War, subject to the Treaty of Versailles, Germany disbanded all gendarmerie units. Germany had no gendarmes during the post-war Weimar Republic and was carried out by ordinary patrolling soldiers.
In 1933, Adolf Hitler came to power and the Feld Gendarmerie was reintroduced into the Wehrmacht. A military police school was established in Potsdam, near Berlin, to train Feld gendarmerie personnel.
Training subjects include criminal law, civil law, passport and identity card law, weapons drills, self-defence techniques, criminal investigation and general administration.
After the first semester of examinations, all cadets are required to enter the army trial and spend a year of probation there. Elimination rates are high: In 1935, for example, only 90 out of 220 people were eligible to wear honorable "dog tags."
Officially enlisted as gendarmes in Feld, they were sent to serve in various divisions of the Army and were given weapons. The pistols for gendarmerie officers are Wald pp and Wald ppk; the guns for gendarmerie soldiers are Ruger p08 and Wald p38.
Mp40s are not widely popular, so their main weapon is still 98k. They would also use the MG34/42 as an on-board machine gun and a fixed-point machine gun to protect checkpoints and block roads.
The gendarmerie is also a war inspector and can directly capture or execute deserters. Senior gendarmes run the Straff battalion, the criminal battalion. This is a IDF punishment unit established for soldiers convicted by military tribunals and sentenced to deferred executions.
The Field Gendarmerie was directly subordinate to the High Command of the Nazi Wehrmacht and was self-contained in order to be free from interference from other units when on duty. They often maintained close contact with the Gestapo, theater commanders, and SS leaders.
On the surface, the main duty of the gendarmerie was to maintain law and order in the rear areas of the front line – from straightforward traffic control, population control, to the execution of guerrillas everywhere and the pursuit of enemy scattered soldiers, all under the control of the gendarmerie.
They wore uniforms, and their arbitrary and brutal management of soldiers earned them the nickname "Halden Kroll", which means "chain dog". They often break into refugee camps and hospitals to screen potential deserters and kill suspicious pretenders. The passes of the rear echelon are reviewed at road checkpoints to decide whether to allow them to leave the front line.
In real history, the gendarmerie has assisted the SS in committing many war crimes.
The gendarmes were dispatched with the large troops. When the fighting forces leave an area, the work of the gendarmerie on the ground is officially over and the authority is transferred to the SS. That is to say, before the arrival of the SS to take over, all the dirty work in the occupied areas was done by the gendarmes.
The gendarmerie was actively involved in hunting operations against Jews. Eastern Europe was once home to many Jews. After the outbreak of the Soviet-German War in 1941, Hitler issued an order to shoot the commissars and Jewish personnel among Soviet prisoners of war.
General Guderian refused to carry out the order, and he himself often advised his subordinates not to kill prisoners of war indiscriminately. But the gendarmerie can't handle that. During the Battle of brest Fortress, Major Fomming, the regimental political commissar who led 8,000 remnants of soldiers to hold the fortress for 32 days, was executed by the German gendarmes.
In the 2014 version of the Brest Fortress movie, there is such a bridge: the Germans paid a terrible price to take the fortress. Escorted by the Germans, the prisoners of war came out of the rubble one after another. A gendarmerie officer asked the Jews and commissars in the POW corps to be present.
Major Fomin, who was seriously wounded, calmly stood up and said, "I am a Jew, a Bolshevik, and a commissar of the Soviet army." ”
As soon as the words fell, Fu Ming was taken by the gendarmerie to a wall and shot.
The Field Gendarmerie also had interrogation functions——— forcing prisoners to confess and accepting treasonous cooperation. For those who remain stubborn, the gendarmes had a variety of methods of extorting confessions by torture: in a dim interrogation environment, they shone a glare into the prisoner's eyes to prevent him from falling asleep, pinned screws into his thumb, shocked him, and tortured him thoroughly with sticks.
The Feld Gendarmerie, wherever they are, has a higher status than the local police, and the police are always at the mercy of the gendarmes. The French cities were garrisoned by field gendarmes, but they were not well disciplined, often mingled with prostitutes, and were particularly vulnerable to bribery. Although the Field gendarmes were particularly cruel to the prisoners, they could release them as long as they gave money. This is because their authority in the occupied areas is too large, and they can arrest people at will or release them at will.
The French industrial town of Lille is a hotbed of strong anti-German sentiment. The French there hated German rule and often engaged in subversive activities. On the streets, the "Hitler Chain Dogs" wore green rubber raincoats and led Alsatian dogs around, often running to the door of suspicious people at night and knocking on the door of suspicious people, whom the locals called "Green Devils".
Jacques Dorio was the leader of the anti-German forces in Lille, and the Feld gendarmerie in France had poor military discipline and records, and it took almost four years to catch him.
After the fall of Nazi Germany, the Feld Gendarmerie was permanently disbanded. During the german partition in the 1950s, the gendarmerie of the Wehrmacht was renamed feldjager, no longer wearing a crescent, and the armband was changed to american mp (short for "military police" in English). The Germans carefully gave the gendarmerie a new name in order to distinguish the two, emphasizing that there was no inheritance between them and the historically sinful Field gendarmes.
Text/Winds of Peace
Resources: 1. "German Field Gendarmes in 1945", Song Ke 2. "World War II German Zundapu Ks750 Motorcycle and Gendarme", Song Ran