German-Soviet military cooperation after Versailles

German military contacts with the Soviet state began in 1919-20, when General Hans von Seeckt used intermediaries and kept knowledge inside Germany compartmented. The immediate project was to shift factories, engineering experience, and treaty-prohibited know-how east so German expertise could survive and the ventures might earn money. Commercial reality was less cooperative: the Junkers operation near Moscow failed to meet Soviet expectations, lost money, and fed a 1926 political scandal when participants sought an exit. The talks also reached beyond rearmament, with early discussion of whether Poland would serve as a bridge or barrier and of dividing its territory. That wider agenda shows that German-Soviet cooperation was geopolitical as well as technical well before Nazi rule.