The Nationale Volksarmee (NVA) and the various internal securty forces like the Grenztruppen manned by German nationals. Although there were Soviet liaison officers within the NVA, the overwhelming majority of the personnel in the GDR's armed forces were German.

This is not to say that the ruling SED party or their Soviet allies approached the question of East German rearmament without reservations. The GDR went through much a similiar process of covert process of preparation for rearmament and then a public announcement of a large defense establishment. The NVA grew out of the various paramilitary police and border patrol formations that the Soviets had created at the end of the 1940s. Like their Western counterparts, the Volkspolizei and later the NVA set up a screening process for vetting officers to ensure that no NSDAP ideologues made their way into the new military. The Eastern screening process departed from the FRG's in two very important ways though. Firstly, it operated through existing structures for Soviet reeducation and indoctrination of German POWs. The Soviets placed great stock in the conversion of POWs to communism, both to prevent unreformed fascists from reentering the German body politic and to present such conversions as a public propaganda coup both to their fellow Germans and abroad. A large number of the NVA's initial cohorts drew from former POWs captured by the Soviets. Soldiers never captured or those captured by the Western powers were too unreliable. Many of the Volkspolizei and NVA's flag officers were brought directly back from Soviet captivity to once again wear the uniform. Secondly, while the Bundeswehr prided itself in the creation of an apolitical German soldier, the NVA's ranks were to be composed of explicitly SED party loyalists. Many Wehrmacht veterans found it very difficult for the SED state to accept their claims of loyalty. This meant that after the initial establishment of the NVA, the SED quickly replaced these wartime veterans with its own cadres in the early 1960s, whereas in the FRG, Wehrmacht veterans in the Bundeswehr became part of the FRG political establishment.