Oberkommando des Heeres Geheime Feldpolizei aged Identity disc

Oberkommando des Heeres Geheime Feldpolizei identity disc.

The Geheime Feldpolizei (“Secret Field Police”), shortened to GFP, was the secret military police of the German Wehrmacht until the end of the Second World War (1945). Its units carried out plainclothes for undercover operation security work in the field such as clandestine operation, counterpropaganda, counterinsurgency, counterintelligence, create an counterinsurgency intelligence network, detection of treasonable activities, infiltrate resistance movements to gathering intelligence and destroy targets, protecting military installations and the provision of assistance to the Heer in courts-martial investigations, tracking and raiding targets to capture or kill, and set up security checkpoints in high-risk areas. GFP personnel, who were also classed as Abwehrpolizei, operated as an executive branch of German military intelligence, detecting resistance activity in Germany and in occupied France. They were also known to carry out torture and executions of prisoners.

Formation
The need for a secret military police developed after the German annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938 and the occupation of Bohemia in 1939. Although SS Einsatzgruppen units originally under the command of the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police; SiPo) had been used during these operations, the German High Command felt that it needed a specialist intelligence agency with police functions – one that could operate with the military, but act like a security service to arrest potential opponents and eliminate any resistance. After studying data collected in Spain, Austria and Czechoslovakia, Generaloberst Wilhelm Keitel, commander in chief of the OKW, issued the “Dienstvorschrift für die Geheime Feldpolizei” (Regulations for the secret field police), and the GFP formed on 21 July 1939.