intelligence units were combined and, in 1929, centralized under Schleicher's Ministeramt within the Ministry of Defence, forming the foundation for the more commonly understood manifestation of the Abwehr.

Each Abwehr station throughout Germany was based on the local army district (Wehrkreis); more offices opened in amenable neutral countries and (as the greater Reich expanded) in the occupied territories. On 4 February 1938, the Ministry of Defence--renamed