You are not logged in.

Dear visitor, welcome to WesWorld. If this is your first visit here, please read the Help. It explains in detail how this page works. To use all features of this page, you should consider registering. Please use the registration form, to register here or read more information about the registration process. If you are already registered, please login here.

1

Sunday, April 13th 2014, 1:32am

Note on the German Army

Since this seems to be the best place for this information...

------------

The present active strength of the German Army (Heer) comprises – thirteen infantry and four mountain divisions, sixteen Panzer and eight Panzergrenadier divisions, two Fallschirmjaeger divisions and one specialist intervention division – a total of forty-four divisions.

In terms of actual numbers the totals are:

Officers: 28,900, or 3.84% of the total
NCOs: 115,550 or 15.35% of the total
Permanent Enlisted Cadre: 114,750 or 15.24% of the total
Three-year Conscripts: 493,800 or 65.58% of the total

For a total strength of 753,000

This represents the troops forming the Heer's forty-four active divisions as well as 25% for staff, training, corps and army support troops and odds-and-ends detachments/special units. It represents 0.98% of the population. The annual contingent of conscripts numbers about 160,000 - or a little more than 2 per thousand population being called up every year.

The high percentage of NCOs and permanent cadre represents the fact that the need for highly-skilled soldiers for tanks, signals, artillery etc., requires more time for training and once imparted the Heer wants to hold on to its investment - this is reflected in the higher pay scales announced a couple of years ago. Retention of trained personnel is one of the Heer’s objectives.

In a perfect world, the Heer would like to increase the percentage of permanent enlisted personnel and reduce the number of conscripts. If further troop reductions occurred, it is likely that the number of active infantry divisions would be further reduced, and they have the greater proportion of conscripts.