 | This article duplicates the scope of other articles, specifically List of paramilitary organizations.(February 2023) |
The following is a list of defunct paramilitary organizations.
| This article duplicates the scope of other articles, specifically List of paramilitary organizations.(February 2023) |
The following is a list of defunct paramilitary organizations.
| Name | Region | Active between | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barracked People's Police (KVP) |  East Germany | 1948–1956 | gendarmerie | Formed by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany as the precursor to the National People's Army |
| B-Gendarmerie |  Allied-occupied Austria | 1949–1954 | gendarmerie | Formed as the precursor to the Austrian Armed Forces |
| Bundesgrenzschutz |  Germany | 1951–2005 | border guard | Responsible for border patrol and transport security. Also precursor to the Bundeswehr |
| Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment | East Germany | 1954–1990 | light infantry | Paramilitary unit of the East German secret service Stasi. Responsible for the security of the government leaders and government facilities. Dissolved during German reunification. |
| Grenztruppen | East Germany | 1946–1990 | border guard | Responsible for border patrol and prevention of Republikflucht , including along the inner-German border and the Berlin Wall. Dissolved during German reunification. |
| Dignity Battalions |  Panama | 1988–1990 | light infantry | Created to oppose a foreign invasion. Dissolved after the U.S. invasion of Panama. |
| Fedayeen Saddam |  Iraq | 1995–2003 | irregular unit | Created as an irregular military force separate from the Iraqi Armed Forces reporting directly to President Saddam Hussein. Dissolved after the U.S.-lead invasion of Iraq. |
| Haganah |  Mandatory Palestine | 1920–1948 | Precursor of the Israeli army | Origins in guarding Jewish colonies |
| Kuva-yi Miliye |  Turkey | 1918–1921 | irregular unit | Created as irregular military forces serving the Grand National Assembly during the Turkish War of Independence. Integrated into the Turkish Army. |
| National Police Reserve |  Allied-occupied Japan | 1951–1954 | police reserve | Formed by the Japanese government and the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers as a precursor for the Japan Self-Defense Forces during the Korean War. |
| ORMO |  Poland | 1946–1989 | police reserve | Responsible for aiding the Milicja Obywatelska in suppressing demonstrations. Declined during the period of martial law in the 1980s and was officially dissolved by the Sejm in 1989. |
| Volkspolizei-Bereitschaft | East Germany | 1955–1990 | police reserve | Served as riot control and anti-insurgency regiment functioning alongside the Stasi. Dissolved during German unification. |
| Sarandoy |  Democratic Republic Of Afghanistan | 1978–1992 | gendarmerie | Nicknamed "Defenders of the Revolution", Sarandoy was founded after the Saur Revolution and specialized in counterinsurgency and internal security. At its peak Sarandoy had 115,000 men and women under their command. Sarandoy was run by the Khalq faction of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan and would occasionally clash with the Parchamite-dominated KHAD. |
| Sicherheitspolizei |  Germany | 1919–1935 | security police | Formed by Gustav Noske and the Reichswehr to control political violence from paramilitary parties after the German Revolution. Integrated into the Gestapo and the Reichswehr after the Nazi takeover. |
| Zelene Beretke | Bosnia and Herzegovina | 1991–1992 | Paramilitary | They were mostly active during the war in the early part of 1992 in northern and central Bosnia |
Czechoslovakia was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland became part of Nazi Germany, while the country lost further territories to Hungary and Poland. Between 1939 and 1945, the state ceased to exist, as Slovakia proclaimed its independence and Carpathian Ruthenia became part of Hungary, while the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was proclaimed in the remainder of the Czech Lands. In 1939, after the outbreak of World War II, former Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš formed a government-in-exile and sought recognition from the Allies.
Der Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten, commonly known as Der Stahlhelm, was a German First World War veteran's organisation existing from 1918 to 1935. In the late days of the Weimar Republic, it was closely affiliated to the monarchist German National People's Party (DNVP), placed at party gatherings in the position of armed security guards.
The military occupation of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany began with the German annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938, continued with the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and by the end of 1944 extended to all parts of Czechoslovakia.
The Third Czechoslovak Republic, officially the Czechoslovak Republic, was a sovereign state from April 1945 to February 1948 following the end of World War II.
The National Front, also known as the National Front of Czechs and Slovaks was a political coalition created in 1943 serving as united front of political parties for liberation of Czechoslovakia, after 1948 organized solely by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. It was the vehicle for control of all political and social activity by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ).
Although political control of Communist Czechoslovakia was largely monopolized by the authoritarian Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), the party technically shared political power with other parties of the National Front. The leader of the KSČ was de facto the most powerful person in the country during this period. Czechoslovakia's foreign policy was openly influenced by the foreign policy of the Soviet Union.
The mass media in Communist Czechoslovakia was controlled by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ). Private ownership of any publication or agency of the mass media was generally forbidden, although churches and other organizations published small periodicals and newspapers. Even with this informational monopoly in the hands of organizations under KSČ control, all publications were reviewed by the government's Office for Press and Information. Censorship was lifted for three months during the 1968 Prague Spring but afterward was reimposed under the terms of the 1966 Press Law. The law states that the Czechoslovak press is to provide complete information, but it must also advance the interests of socialist society and promote the people's socialist awareness of the policy of the communist party as the leading force in society and state.
With the collapse of the Austria-Hungary at the end of World War I, the independent country of Czechoslovakia was formed as a result of the critical intervention of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, among others.
Hlinka's Slovak People's Party, also known as the Slovak People's Party or the Hlinka Party, was a far-right clerico-fascist political party with a strong Catholic fundamentalist and authoritarian ideology. Its members were often called ľudáci.
Weimar paramilitary groups were militarily organized units that were formed outside of the regular German Army following the defeat of the German Empire in World War I. The most prominent of them, the Freikorps, were combat units that were supported by the German government and used to suppress uprisings from both the Left and the Right. There were also Citizens' Defense groups to maintain public order and paramilitary groups associated with specific political parties to protect and promote their interests.
The Sudeten German Party was created by Konrad Henlein under the name Sudetendeutsche Heimatfront on 1 October 1933, some months after the First Czechoslovak Republic had outlawed the German National Socialist Workers' Party. In April 1935, the party was renamed Sudetendeutsche Partei following a mandatory demand of the Czechoslovak government. The name was officially changed to Sudeten German and Carpathian German Party in November 1935.
The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, known from 1948 to 1960 as the Czechoslovak Republic, Fourth Czechoslovak Republic, or simply Czechoslovakia, was the Czechoslovak state from 1948 until 1989, when the country was under communist rule, and was regarded as a satellite state in the Soviet sphere of interest.
The First Czechoslovak Republic, often colloquially referred to as the First Republic, was the first Czechoslovak state that existed from 1918 to 1938, a union of ethnic Czechs and Slovaks. The country was commonly called Czechoslovakia, a compound of Czech and Slovak; which gradually became the most widely used name for its successor states. It was composed of former territories of Austria-Hungary, inheriting different systems of administration from the formerly Austrian and Hungarian territories.
The Iron Front was a German paramilitary organization in the Weimar Republic which consisted of social democrats, trade unionists, and democratic socialists. Its main goal was to defend social democracy against what was seen as anti-democratic, totalitarian ideologies on the far-right and far-left. The Iron Front chiefly opposed the Sturmabteilung (SA) wing of the Nazi Party and the Antifaschistische Aktion wing of the Communist Party of Germany. Formally independent, it was intimately associated with the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). The Three Arrows, originally designed for the Iron Front, became a well-known social democratic symbol representing resistance against monarchism, Nazism, and communism during the parliamentary elections in November 1932. The Three Arrows were later adopted by the SPD itself.
The Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold was an organization in Germany during the Weimar Republic with the goal to defend German parliamentary democracy against internal subversion and extremism from the left and right and to compel the population to respect and honour the new Republic's flag and constitution. It was formed by members of the left-wing Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the centre-right to right-wing German Centre Party, and the centrist German Democratic Party in February 1924.
Czechoslovak resistance to the German occupation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia during World War II began after the occupation of the rest of Czechoslovakia and the formation of the protectorate on 15 March 1939. German policy deterred acts of resistance and annihilated organizations of resistance. In the early days of the war, the Czech population participated in boycotts of public transport and large-scale demonstrations. Later on, armed communist partisan groups participated in sabotage and skirmishes with German police forces. The most well-known act of resistance was the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. Resistance culminated in the so-called Prague uprising of May 1945; with Allied armies approaching, about 30,000 Czechs seized weapons. Four days of bloody street fighting ensued before the Soviet Red Army entered the nearly liberated city.
The National Security Corps was the national police in Czechoslovakia from 1945 to 1991.
The Three Arrows is a social democratic political symbol associated with the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), used in the late history of the Weimar Republic. First conceived for the SPD-dominated Iron Front as a symbol of the social democratic resistance against Nazism in 1932, it became an official symbol of the Party during the November 1932 German federal election, representing their opposition towards monarchism, Nazism, and communism.
The Košice Program, or Košice Government Program was a 1945 agreement between Czechoslovak Communists who had spent the war in the Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak government-in-exile, which had been based in London. They met in the city of Košice, which had already been liberated by the Red Army. The program outlined the postwar political settlement, the National Front under which all political parties would operate, and promised the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia. The program was the basis of both the Third Czechoslovak Republic and, following the 1948 coup, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.