WW2 German Nazi Third Reich official transport train DEUTSCHE REICHSBAHN metal wall sign
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The Deutsche Reichsbahn, also known as the German National Railway, the German State Railway, German Reich Railway, and the German Imperial Railway, was the German national railway system created after the end of World War I from the regional railways of the individual states of the German Empire. The Deutsche Reichsbahn has been described as "the largest enterprise in the capitalist world in the years between 1920 and 1932"; nevertheless its importance "arises primarily from the fact that the Reichsbahn was at the center of events in a period of great turmoil in German history".
The Reichsbahn had an important logistic role in supporting the rapid movement of the troops of the Wehrmacht, for example:
- March 1938: the annexation of Austria (Anschluss) and
- October 1938: the annexation of the Sudetenland after the Munich Agreement
- March 1939: the German occupation of Czechoslovakia
- September/October 1939: the invasion of Poland
- April 1940: Operation Weserübung (the invasions of Denmark and Norway)
- May/June 1940: the Battle of France
- 1941: Operation Barbarossa and the Balkan Campaign.
In all the occupied lands the Reichsbahn endeavoured to incorporate the captured railways (rolling stock and infrastructure) into their system. Even towards the end of the war the Reichsbahn continued to move military formations. For example, in the last great offensive, the Battle of the Bulge (from 16 December 1944), tank formations were transported from Hungary to the Ardennes.
The railways managed by the "Eastern Railway Division" (Generaldirektion der Ostbahn) were initially run from that part of the Polish State Railways within the so-called General Government-assigned part of the Polnischen Staatsbahnen (PKP), but from November 1939 by the Ostbahn (Generalgouvernement).
