Early Career
He was born in Dresden, Saxony in 1887, the son of an Alsatian pastor of the French Protestant Church. He entered the artillery in 1907. In World War I, he served on the Western Front until 1916, when he was appointed as Captain to the German General Staff.
After the war, he was thought of well enough to be kept in the reduced Reichswehr, whose officer corps was limited to 4,000 by Treaty of Versailles. However, he had to resign from the army in 1932, when he got into trouble because of an indiscretion during the Carnival in the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland, where Reichswehr officers were prohibited.
He soon found a job in a new organization which Hermann Göring set up under the Prussian police. He transferred to the Abwehr in October 1933. It was in this connection that he met future conspirators Hans Bernd Gisevius and Arthur Nebe, who were then working in the Gestapo. Oster also became a close confidant of Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the Abwehr.
Read more about this topic: Hans Oster
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