At the end of World War One, Germany was forced into a series of reparations to the Allied nations and was also deprived of much of its wartime industry. It was not allowed to have an air force, and the size of the army was held to only 100,000 men. The Weimar Republic of Germany in the 1920s cleverly used the restrictions of the Versailles Treaty to build the best trained army in Europe. Learning from their defeat, and far more willing than the victorious Allies to adopt new ways of waging war, the Reichsheer (army) pioneered new ways of motorising military units, using cars (disguised as tanks and armoured cars) for training. All of these early vehicles were standard commercial civilian automobiles. The 1920s economic calamity in the Weimar Republic, with unbelievable levels of inflation and near-total debasement of the currency, inhibited the full development of these new military tactics, but planning went ahead. The Great Depression of the early 1930s extended the poor economic conditions, but the accession of the Nazi party to national power under Adolf Hitler led to a renunciation of the Versailles Treaty and the open intention to rearm Germany. The Nazi government started conscription with a major expansion of the military, development of new tanks and military vehicles and in 1935 established the new Luftwaffe (air force).
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