as the Transportbrigade Speer; it primarily provided support to Organization Todt air base construction and was organized under military considerations, divided into regiments, divisions, companies and platoons. On 27 January 1939, Hitler made the NSKK the sole authority for motor-vehicle related military training. Shortly thereafter, the it was divided into five main groups and 23 subordinate motor groups. NSKK manpower reached nearly half a million men, its leadership operating primarily out of Munich and Berlin. With the outbreak of World War II on 1 September 1939, the National Socialist Motor Corps became a target for army recruitment, since NSKK member knowledge of motorized transport was a coveted skill at a time when the bulk of German ground forces relied on horses. The NSKK was used to transport German army troops, supplies and ammunition. By the outbreak of the war, the NSKK had already trained approximately 200,000 men at its 21 training facilities. During field operations on the Eastern Front, NSKK members of the Speer Transport Brigade followed Army Group South, providing infrastructure support and replenishment. Brigade members wore either the Luftwaffe gray-blue uniform or the brown uniform of Speer's staff. NSKK personnel working for Organization Todt became members of Transportbrigade Todt, which was further divided into individual motor groups in the occupied territories. Major units of the NSKK were formed by 1944, operating throughout Germany. There were two full brigades of the NSKK supporting the Luftwaffe; a Motorobergruppe Alpenland in the Austrian Alps; Motorobergruppe Mitte (middle) which operated in Berlin, Franconia, and the Lower Rhine; Motorobergruppe Nord (north) that covered Hamburg, Lower Saxony, the Baltic Sea and Schleswig-Holstein; Motorobergruppe Nordost (northeast) in Danzig, East Prussia, and Wartheland; Motorobergruppe Ost (east) for Leipzig, Lower and Upper Silesia; Motorobergruppe Süd (south) which served Bavaria and Hochland; Motorobergruppe Südwest (southwest) for the Rhine-Moselle, and Swabian regions; Motorobergruppe Südost (southeast) covering the Upper and Lower Danube, Sudetenland; and Motorobergruppe West (west), which was responsible for Hessen, Thuringia, and Westphalia. Moreover, there were also NSKK units assigned to Organization Todt, operating in France, Italy and Russia. Historian Peter Longerich suggests that NSKK members, along with paramilitary police, the Waffen-SS, and the German Army were all culpable in varying degrees for large-scale arrests, torture, and mass executions during the war. French NSKK The French section of the NSKK began shortly after the German occupation of France in 1940, though the section was not officially recognized until