United States Constabulary - Reason

Reason

The concept of a police-type occupation of Germany arose from the consideration of plans for the most efficient employment of the relatively small forces available.

The speed of redeployment in the fall of 1945, and the certainty that the occupational troop basis would have to be reduced speedily, dictated the utmost economy in the use of manpower. The basic principle of the police-type occupation—that the lack of strength in the forces of occupation must be made up for by careful selection, rigid training, and high mobility—cannot be attributed to any single individual, or indeed to any single agency. Before any plans were worked out for the organization of the United States Constabulary, units of the United States Army assigned to occupational duties in Germany had experimented with the organization of parts of their forces into motorized patrols for guarding the borders and maintaining order in the large areas for which they were responsible. In September 1945, the G-2 Division of European Theater Headquarters put forward a plan, which was carried into effect towards the end of the years for the organization of a special security force known as the District Constabulary. In October 1945, the War Department asked European Theater Headquarters to consider the feasibility of organizing the major portion of the occupational forces into an efficient military police force on the model of state police or constabulary in the United States.

Ideas crystallized rapidly. At the end of October 1945, General Eisenhower, then Theater Commander, announced to the proper authorities that the population of the United States Zone of Germany would ultimately be controlled by a super-police force or constabulary. In early November, the strength of the proposed constabulary was announced as 38,000. Planning was well advanced by the end of 1945, when the European Theater Headquarters notified the War Department that the constabulary would be organized as an elite force, composed of the highest caliber personnel obtainable under the voluntary re-enlistment program, and that it would be equipped with an efficient communications network, sufficient vehicles and liaison airplanes to make it highly mobile, and the most modern weapons. During the paper stage, the organization was known by a series of names. "State Police" was discarded for "State Constabulary." Then it was thought that "State" would be confusing, as the main United States Zone of Germany had been divided, for purposes of civil administration, into three states, or Länder. Then the organization emerged from the planning stage, it as known as the "Zone Constabulary," but before it became operational it was named "United States Constabulary."