Sicherheitspolizei (Weimar Republic)

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The Sicherheitspolizei, or security police, was a militarized German police group set up in most states of the Weimar Republic at the end of 1919 and largely financed by the central government. In its anti-riot role it can be seen as roughly analogous to the Bereitschaftspolizei in today's Federal Republic.

In view of the unstable internal political situation in the early Weimar Republic, especially in the Reich capital, Berlin, Hauptmann Waldemar Pabst of the Garde-Kavallerie-Schützen-Division considered a barracked and militarily armed and trained police group necessary to control political violence.^{[citation needed]} The Prussian Interior Ministry envisaged a militarily armed and trained police group to control political violence a more useful tool in the fight against insurrection than the existing police forces inherited from the monarchical era.^[1] In the course of the German Revolution of 1918–19, extensive general strikes and street violence in March 1919 led Pabst to propose a corresponding concept to the Reichswehr Minister Gustav Noske. Noske approved the plan and promoted its formation together with Wolfgang Heine.^[2] According to Noske's wishes, the police group thus constituted the nucleus of the new Reichswehr,^[3] officially founded on 6 March 1919. In September 1919, 2,500 local and municipal police officers protested against the formation of the new national-police service.^[4] In contrast to local police, who usually wore blue uniforms, the Sipo were called the "green police" after the color of their uniforms.