Abwehr
German armed forces intelligence service (1920–1944)
The Abwehr was the German military-intelligence service for the Reichswehr and the Wehrmacht from 1920 to 1944. Although the 1919 Treaty of Versailles prohibited the Weimar Republic from establishing an intelligence organization of their own, they formed an espionage group in 1920 within the Ministry of Defence, calling it the Abwehr. The initial purpose of the Abwehr was defense against foreign espionage: an organizational role that later evolved considerably. Under General Kurt von Schleicher the individual military services' intelligence units were combined and, in 1929, centralized under Schleicher's Ministeramt within the Ministry of Defence, forming the foundation for the more commonly understood manifestation of the Abwehr.
The public source identifies “Abwehr” as german armed forces intelligence service (1920–1944). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Abwehr, German and armed.
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This entry incorporates text from “Abwehr” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.