Feldgendarmerie Officer, 1941

The totalitarian nature of the Third Reich required a complex apparatus of domestic security that joined up a lot of organizations. The military police or Feldgendarmerie was the main force in charge of the security tasks inside the Armed Forces and counted with a way higher number of troops than its equivalent on the rest of the armies involved in the conflict, excepting maybe the Soviet army.

When the war started, the Wehrmacht mobilized numerous civilian policemen that were assigned to the military police due to their experience. Among their many duties, they were in charge of patrolling, traffic control, maintaining troops’ discipline, escorting war prisoners, preventing looting, supervising local population on occupied areas, checking the IDs of civilian and transit troops, removing propaganda leaflet dropped by enemy planes, looking for shot down enemy airmen, preventing sabotages and taking part on anti-partisan actions.

When needed, army soldiers and officers that were recovering from some wound served at the Feldgendarmerie as temporary reinforcement. The presence of these veterans added some “moral authority” to a force that wasn’t especially popular in the army.

For our miniature, we have decided to portray an officer with early to mid war equipment and attire. In order to get more personalization choices, we have included a completely different second head.