Metamorphoses of superiority: German military missions in the interwar period as a (post)traumatic experience of expansion

Abstract

Germany’s defeat in the Great War deformed the development of its armed forces, yet did not force it to abandon the idea of revising the Versailles Peace. The sharp reduction of the Reichswehr and the Reichsmarine, as well as political crises, exacerbated the problem of maintaining human resources. One of the tools for its preservation was the resumption of military missions in different forms and on different continents. Both official and unofficial missions, initiated earlier, formed future alliances and made it possible to circumvent many restrictions. Many of the sites of these activities – in the USSR, China, Japan, some Latin American countries – are well known, some remain virtually unknown and their significance is greatly underestimated, e.g. in Finland, Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. The circumstances of this activity were shaped by multiple factors and depended on the conjuncture of international relations, as well as on the traditions of co-operation established prior to 1914 and greatly affected by the Great War. The historiography of the problem continues to grow, but concentrates on bilateral relations and lacks comparative approaches. A holistic examination of these German military missions, which is necessary for a proper assessment of this phenomenon in the history of the interwar period, has not yet been undertaken. Despite a number of source-related and historiography-specific problems, the study of German military missions will allow for the development of a number of research directions, including a discussion of continuity in German foreign policy, further development of transnational history, and analysis of the transformation of ideas of superiority and self-identification of European elites.