Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, on January 1, 1921 the Reichswehr of the German Reich was reduced to a Reichsheer (army) of 100,000 men and a Reichsmarine (navy) of 15,000 men; the retention of the air force was prohibited. As early as 1923, the Reich government began efforts to circumvent the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and to secretly re-arm, initially through secret military cooperation with the Soviet Union. In 1925, the leadership of the Reichswehr temporarily developed a comprehensive rearmament plan for a staffing level of 2.8 million men. Preparations for rearmament began as early as the Weimar Republic under the governments of Brüning, Papen and Schleicher, after the first armaments program of 1927, which also envisaged an air force, and after the second armaments program of 1930, which was to apply to the period from 1933 onwards.
The seizure of power by the Nazi Party created completely new political conditions. As early as the beginning of 1933, Hitler had already informed the leadership of the Reichswehr that was planning a war, and that the new government wanted to re-arm as quickly as possible. At the same time, it left the ongoing disarmament negotiations taking place in Geneva. However, the previous armament plans were pursued further, and by spring 1934, a manpower strength of 180,000 had been achieved. By the end of 1933, the talk was still of a German army of 300,000 men, however, after the Reichswehr was renamed by the ‘Law on the Reorganization of the Wehrmacht and Restoration of Military Sovereignty’ of March 16, 1935, that had soon become a target for a peacetime strength of 700,000 by 1939, and after a revision in 1936, the target was 800,000 men with a new focus on armored weapons. At the same time, over 5,000 fighter aircraft and 10,000 training aircraft were to be assembled for the Luftwaffe. The war strength was set at 3.6 million men.
In 1936 the Four-Year Plan was drawn up for the industrial rearmament, which was intended to control and expand the armaments industry. In the years leading up to the war, the German economy experienced an increasingly overheated armaments boom, which also ensured that the labor market was swept clean. The personnel base of the Wehrmacht was further expanded in 1938 by the annexations of the Sudetenland and Austria, because now Sudeten German men and the Austrian Federal Army could be included. The occupation of the Czech territories in March 1939, led to the takeover of the armaments industry in Bohemia.
Actually by the start of the war in 1939, no less than 4.5 million men could be mobilized; 2,600 tanks and 3,600 fighter aircraft were available. During the entire war, and including Austrians and Germans living abroad, almost 18 million men were recruited into the German army, Luftwaffe, navy and Waffen-SS.
Also in Munich, rearmament changed the life of the city through the conscription of men for the Wehrmacht, the expansion of military infrastructure and the development of the armaments industry. In the course of rearmament, in Munich, which was where the commandant’s office for Military District VII responsible for South Bavaria was located, numerous new functional buildings for the Wehrmacht were erected. Examples of these included: the School of Military Administration on Winzererstraße, the Bavaria Barracks in Heidemannstraße, the Prinz Eugen barracks in Oberföhring and the barracks in Neufreimann. Existing military sites, like that on Schwere-Reiter-Straße were enlarged. In the war, Munich was ultimately the location of more than ten barracks and two airfields (Riem and Oberwiesenfeld).
In the whole of Bavaria, only comparatively few men were conscripted in September 1939. Recruitment was then significantly broadened, particularly after July 1941, with the massive increase in losses in the war against the Soviet Union. Exact numbers for Munich are not available, but it can be estimated that about 150,000 to 180,000 men from Munich were conscripted into the Wehrmacht. Most of them underwent training in the 157th, 147th or 407th Divisions, which were stationed in Garmisch, Augsburg and Munich, and were then sent to the front. Of the soldiers from Bavaria east of the Rhine, a total of 255,000 fell in the war, two-thirds of them in the East, 212,000 were taken prisoner. A total of 22,000 Munich residents fell, 11,000 were considered missing.
By 1942/43 at the latest, Munich had developed into the center of the armaments industry in southern Germany. Already by the end of 1940, 137 companies with over 56,000 employees were working in armaments production. The BMW Aircraft Engine Construction GmbH expanded dramatically from 1934 onwards, particularly in Milbertshofen and at the factory in Allach, founded in 1936. More than 20,000 aircraft engines were built there, especially in the second half of the war due to the massive use of forced laborers. Until 1941 motorcycle combinations and cars for the Wehrmacht were also built there. But other companies were considerably expanded for armaments production, for example, locomotive and tank construction at Krauss-Maffei, the Dornier aircraft factory and the IG-Farben (Agfa) works. Rearmament and war mobilization fundamentally changed Munich: Not only was a large portion of the men in urban society missing and increasing numbers of the rural population were finding work in the metropolis, armaments production also meant a massive boost in industrialization for the Bavarian state capital.
