Hans von Seeckt

Hans von Seeckt , 1866-1936, German general. He fought in Poland, Serbia, Romania, and Turkey during World War I. In 1920 he was made chief of the Reichswehr—the German army, which was limited to 100,000 men under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. He commanded the Reichswehr until 1926 and made it an efficient nucleus capable of serving as cadre for a larger army. After the Treaty of Rapallo, Seeckt concluded (1923) a secret agreement with the USSR to obtain weapons forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. He was (1930-32) a member of the Reichstag, representing the conservative People's party. In 1934-35 he was a military adviser to Chiang Kai-shek in China. Among his writings are The Future of the German Empire (tr. 1930) and Thoughts of a Soldier (1929, tr. 1930).

Seeckt, Hans von (b. 22 Apr. 1866, d. 27 Dec. 1936). German general A general staff officer during World War I, in 1920 he became the supreme commander of the German army which he developed into an elite force whose autonomy he refused to surrender to political control. The army maintained its power structures and its traditions from the days of the Empire, as a result of which even Hitler never managed to control it completely, as became clear in the July Plot of 1944. Seeckt remained hostile to the Weimar Republic. While he was ready to use the army against insurrectionists from the left, his defence of the Republic against insurrectionists from the right in the Kapp Putsch and the Hitler Putsch remained ambivalent. He was relieved of his post in 1926 owing to personal animosities with President Hindenburg, and became a right-wing Liberal MP (1930–2). In 1933 and 1934–5 he was military adviser to Chiang Kai-shek in his attempt to defeat Mao Zedong's Long March in China.