What happened to the See Battalion?

[Doc Twilight]

This may seem an odd question, but it's something I haven't gotten a definitive answer for.

I'm fairly familiar with the Kriegsmarine of the Interwar and WW2 periods. But what seems a curious absence is the total lack of Marines/See Battalion during the period. They were certainly an elite and important formation, even during the First World War, but there is no reference to them whatsoever in Raeder's memoirs, nor in any WW2 source I'm aware of.

Now, I know that the Kriegsmarine formed Field Divisions in the late part of the War (there were even some armored formations, from what I understand), and I know that sailors were used as naval infantry. But what happened to the See Battalion? Did they disappear after Versailles? Did Hitler get rid of the unit? The Kriegsmarine was the only branch of the military not to have its own equivalent in the SS - was the "political unreliability" of the surface fleet a reason for their demise/disappearance?

Forgive me if this seems an amateurish question, but I'm genuinely curious. Does anybody know?

-Doc

[Plynkes]

It would seem the term Seebataillon was dropped from usage at the end of 1914. The units were expanded and renamed Marine Infantry regiments, and they fought on the Western Front in the Marinekorps Flandern (which they formed together with the Matrosen Regiments).  The various Marine Infantry regiments were heavily involved in the Freikorps movement after the war.

Freikorps Schwarze Jäger was one formed from marine infantry, and appears to have been eventually absorbed into the army:
http://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=6145

Marine-Brigade Ehrhardt was another, which after getting mixed up in the Kapp Putsch, was not so lucky, and was disbanded:
http://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=6256

Doesn't seem that there was any room in the post-Versailles Vorläufige Reichsmarine for the politically suspect and unreliable naval infantry, even had they wanted them.


I'm not an expert or anything, this is just info on this very interesting subject gleaned from an evening spent Googling which I had intended to spend painting and making terrain! I may have totally grasped the wrong end of the stick, but this is how it seems to have gone.  

[Doomhippie]

It seems that with he loss of colonies the need for genuine marines wasn't there anymore. As far as I know there wasn't any naval infantry in WW II. Only at the end of the war, when the use of surface ships was over for various reasons were soldiers of those ships  formed into ad hoc fighting units or used as replacements for army units. They weren't of the same caliber as maybe the paradivisons or the Herman Göring armoured division.

The invasion in Norway 1940 would have called for marine infantry but all the infantry involved was either army or a few paratroopers.

[Johnnytodd]

The Navy (in the form of Coastal Artillery) was in charge of defending the vast shoreline of occupied territory.  Certainly they were stretched thin.

[former user]

that's what I know too
the navy operated coastal batteries and had land personnel at the bases
this might be the reason why mountain troops were used for amphibious operations in Norway and Crete
as far as I know, the army was trained in France for Seelöwe, the supposed invasion of Britain, the Navy only operating the landing craft

as I read, all three arms were very jelous for competences, this going so far that initially the army did not have AA units above battery level, the AA divisional batallions being under Luftwaffe competence
The later Navy field units were indeed from surplus Navy personnel
I am not even sure if the Navy even operated the boatplanes as would be natural for coordination

just read that the CO and NCO cadres of the seebataillon were from the army, so maybe they were not regarded as navy
most of the service was on land anyway, they were not integral with sea units
soldiers aboard were "Marinestabswache" up to 1884
here you can see mounted seebataillon in china
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_134-B2401,_Tsingtau,_Die_%22alten%22_Ostasiaten.jpg