German Army Quartermaster and Finance Organization

ISBN: 1288721137

Author: Intelligence Division, W D G S

Condition: New

The title of this study affords only an approximate indication of its scope. It is a historical and critical description of a German organization, the Army Administration, which had no exact counterpart in any of the Allied armies. In addition to its quartermaster and finance functions, the Army Administration was the authority primarily responsible for the personnel administration of all the many types of civilian officials, employees, and laborers on the Army pay roll. It was itself composed, until within a year of the end of the war, almost entirely of civilians and semi-civilian officials. The peculiarities of its personnel composition have been treated here in much greater detail than the more orthodox machinery through which it discharged its supply and fiscal functions. Both the personnel composition and the quartermaster and finance functions of the Army Administration are considered here in their strictly organizational aspect. No statistics are presented, no actual scales of pay and allowances are quoted, and there is no specific discussion of the quantity or the quality of the rations, clothing, or other commodities which the Army Administration was responsible for procuring and supplying. References to quartermaster and financial techniques and procedures are confined to the minimum necessary for explaining characteristic organizational features. The study has been based chiefly on information derived from original German documents and from prisoner of war statements. Neither source is absolutely reliable but, wherever possible, the one has been checked against the other. Table of contents include: origins; World War I; standing army (1919-1934); conscript army (1935-1939); readiness for war (1939); World War II; and personnel of the Army Administration.