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"The Myth of the High Command" Book Essay on:
by Christopher Young for Prof. Marcuse's lecture course |
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& Abstract |
and Links |
at amazon |
About Christopher Young I am a third year History student with an interest in military history and the mechanisms of the state. I had read a good deal regarding World War II, and had always been fascinated by the claims that the German Army was not responsible for the horrors that occurred during the war; that they had always conducted their operations in a highly professional manor and had resented the regime that they served. Abstract (back to top) Inside Hitler’s High Command examines the role of the Wehrmacht’s leadership in regards to the Nazi state. The book attempts to dispel two popular views, the first being that the German High Command frequently and rightly opposed Hitler but that their protests fell on deaf ears. The second view that the book argues against is that the High Command was a highly efficient and mechanical organization that planned out superb campaigns and operations to defeat their enemies with the utmost precision. The book examines the early opposition against Hitler and notes that following the resignation of General Beck in 1938 the army became highly cooperative with the Führer. It also examines the deficiencies of the High Command to accurately and realistically prepare for war, with particular attention being paid to the Russian Front. Through examining the logistical, intelligence, and overall strategic shortcomings, Inside Hitler’s High Command makes the case that the Army leadership was both complacent and had glaring shortcomings that would betray the popular view of the High Command’s legendary professionalism. |
Essay (back to top) The Myth of the High Command The popular view that arose at the end of the Second World War held that “Adolf Hitler and a few men in his immediate circle led Germany to ruin, despite the superiority of its army and against consistent opposition from the General Staff.” (Megargee pg xiii). According to this view the General Staff was a highly professional organization that systematically and efficiently planned campaigns all the while resenting the Nazi regime it served. Additionally, in this view the German High Command frequently and rightly opposed Hitler, and the war might have gone far more in Germany’s favor had they been in charge. Upon closer examination there are two major errors in this assumption, which renders the aforementioned argument as more fiction than fact. The first was the German High Command’s tendency to strive towards working with the Führer rather than opposing him, as the postwar accounts ran. The second flaw lies in the High Command’s woefully inadequate ability to provide realistic strategic plans, military intelligence, and logistical support for its armed forces. (Megargee pg 230-233) During the Second World War the Nazi juggernaut destroyed the armies of the democratic European states, and subjected their peoples and resources to exploitation for the Greater Reich. From 1939 to 1940 the Wehrmacht blitzed across Europe culminating in the defeat of France in less than seven weeks, a task which Germany had not been able to achieve after four years of brutal fighting in the First World War. In 1941 the German army had removed all threats in the Balkans and had carved out vast expanses of the eastern Lebensraum land that Hitler had dreamed of acquiring. In two years the German military had conquered most of northern, western, and eastern Europe, and would continue to fend off its enemies for another three years until succumbing to a hostile coalition with vastly superior manpower, resources, and industrial capabilities. Opposition within the Army However, the argument that the High Command opposed Hitler was seriously weakened following the resignation in August of 1938 of Ludwig Beck, chief of the General Staff, and Franz Halder’s acceptance of his position. Beck was a strong proponent of the army’s independence from the National Socialist Party and the primacy of the General Staff in all military policy decisions. He additionally had a broad understanding of European politics, Germany’s position in Europe, and related strategic needs. When plans for an invasion of Czechoslovakia was ordered in 1935, Beck stated that such an invasion would be foolish, as the army was not ready, and condemned the military for proposing it. In December of the same year a study was made for a war with France and Czechoslovakia in which Beck argued that the commander and chief of the army ought to have a say in all matters regarding land warfare, including political aspects. In 1938 Hitler again moved toward war with Czechoslovakia, at which Beck warned that this would spark a general European war that Germany would be unlikely to win. (Megargee pg 22-52) In his attempts to stand against Hitler’s foreign policy decisions, Beck received little support from the officer corps. After Beck left his position, the German generals never seriously challenged Hitler’s strategic judgments. Following the astonishing victories in 1939 and 1940 any disagreements with the Führer were largely limited to operational measures as the High Command resisted, and ultimately failed, to maintain authority over military operations. (Megargee pg 230-233) Problems in the East The most apparent errors of the German High Command in both failing to resist Hitler and in support functions occurred in the eastern theater against the Soviet Union, beginning with the planning for Operation Barbarossa. The surviving German generals’ postwar accounts indicated that they had opposed Hitler’s decision to attack the Soviet Union. Yet these protests are at best a half-truth. While a great number of the upper officers had reservations regarding the strategic wisdom of attacking the USSR, especially under the assumption that invading Russia would force Britain to surrender, the post-war accounts omit the enthusiasm that the High Command had towards the invasion on operational grounds. (Megargee 102-104) The overwhelming majority of the senior German officers believed, like Hitler, that a showdown with the Soviet Union was both necessary and inevitable. Furthermore they were of the opinion that Germany could easily and speedily defeat the Red Army, and looked towards their prospects with great enthusiasm. General Franz Halder, head of the Army General Staff, had Brigadier General Erich Marcks prepare a plan of operations for the “Russian problem.” In Marcks’ “Operational Draft East” he planned that the Wehrmacht would need between eight to eleven weeks of combat operations and three weeks of rest and re-supply in order to capture Leningrad, Moscow, and Kharkov. Following this Marcks deemed that there would be no further organized Soviet resistance. On an operational level, this plan assumed that the German army would need to destroy the Russian forces as far west as possible to prevent them from withdrawing to the interior of the Soviet Union, and that unlike in 1812 the Russians would be forced to fight in the western parts of the country to defend vital industrial assets. The German plans showed no doubts regarding the achievability of these goals, nor did they indicate any assumptions that the Russians had the skill to conduct a fighting withdrawal or that the Soviets possessed the reserves to halt the German invasion once in the interior of the nation. The self-confidence of the German military in its ability to undertake and successfully conclude such a massive undertaking must be examined. The officers that put together these estimations had many years of experience and believed that they had come to valid and correct conclusions. In assessing the information available to them these officers reveal a fundamental flaw in the High Command’s ability to evaluate and utilize information. (Megargee pg 104-105) A Shortage of Intelligence The problem with German intelligence was due to the attitude with which the command viewed the intelligence function. The basic German officer manual Truppenführung, or Troop Command, stressed that an officer must take into consideration which enemy action would be the most disruptive to their mission. The enemy’s most disruptive act is however far different from the enemy’s most likely action, which takes a greater amount of skill to discern. By emphasizing the importance of the most disruptive action, Truppenführung devalued the role of the intelligence officer. Additionally, unlike the French or Americans, the Germans saw the assessment of the enemy’s situation as a matter for the commander of the operation, not the intelligence officer. (Megargee 108-109) This is not to say that the commanders belittled their comrades in the intelligence department. The greater problem was that the operations and intelligence officers shared the same bias and attitudes, and thus generally came to the same conclusions. When the leaders of the Army High Command were faced with a lack of accurate information on the Soviet Union they simply filled in the missing pieces with their own preconceptions. Like Hitler, and like many Germans, they held a certain view of Russia as being ineffectively ruled, militarily weak, and politically unstable. In their eyes Russia had a rotten structure that would collapse when the door was kicked in. (Megargee 110-111) Intelligence was not the only support function in which the High Command proved itself to be inadequate. In logistics, getting the frontline troops their needed food, fuel, munitions, and other essential supplies, the Army General Staff displayed major problems in attitude. General Halder indicated the low position of logistics in the High Command’s priorities in a statement after the war “According to our opinion the material has to serve the spiritual. Accordingly, our quartermaster service may never hamper the operational concept.” In an operation the on the scale of the invasion of Russia, this would prove to be disastrous. (Megargee pg 122-123) Supply and Demand In an army briefing on November 12, 1940 the Germans estimated their attack force would contain two million men, three hundred thousand horses, and five hundred thousand vehicles of over two thousand different types. Their objectives would be over six hundred miles away, and because the railroad gauge in Russia was different than in western Europe, it would be impossible to supply them by train initially. To further complicate matters, the roads in Russia were scarce, and often unpaved. The military planners assumed they would be able to establish, at best, half the standard number of supply routes to the various army groups. Additionally the army groups would not be able to slow down to allow the supply units to stay with them, or else the Red Army would escape into the interior of the Russia. Finally compounding the matter, the slower infantry divisions would fall behind the armored tank divisions and block the roads that the armored supply units needed. Despite these hardships the High Command continually decreased their time estimations for the campaign. On July 31, 1940 the invasion would be completed in five months, the next month Marcks estimated completion in eight to eleven weeks plus three weeks for re-supply, by December this figure was reduced to eight to ten weeks including the supply time. Finally in April of 1941, the Commander in Chief of the Wehrmacht Field Marshall Walther von Brauchitsch saw organized resistance ending after four weeks of tough fighting. (Megargee pg 122-124) Conflicting Views This is not to say that an argument cannot be made in support of the popular view of the High Command. An especially notable and important event in favor of High Command resistance to Hitler came in the bomb plot of July 20, 1944. Indeed members of the General Staff had made up the bulk of the principal conspirators. Furthermore, these members of the High Command were attempting to assassinate Hitler, not merely arguing against him during a military briefing. However, a number of factors weaken this particular event as a representation of action against Hitler. For one, though the officers who participated in the plot were exceptionally brave, they were also exceptionally few. Moreover, the plan to remove Hitler only reached this phase following the catastrophic defeat at Stalingrad, when it became obvious that Germany was losing the war. Another argument in favor of the High Command’s resistance to Hitler was the post war accounts of various German generals that portray them as opponents of National Socialism, although they were bound by oath, professionalism, and duty to their assignments. Perhaps the most notable of these anti-Nazi generals was Heinz Guderian whose memoirs insist that he could have saved Germany if only Hitler had listened to him. Yet this is largely a portrait that was painted after the war, when having been a supporter of Hitler would have been hardly favorable. Following the assassination attempt, Guderian gave an order to all General Staff officers that stated among other things that “The 20 th of July [was] the darkest day in the history of the German General Staff,” implored them to “not let anyone surpass you in your loyalty to the Führer,” and stated that “There is no future for the Reich without National Socialism.” This order was omitted from Guderian’s post-war memoirs. (Megargee pg 213-214) Similarly a case can be made in favor of the abilities of the German High Command. Despite failures at the end of 1941 and beyond, the fact remains that within the first ten months of the European War; the German military had conquered Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Luxemburg, and France with Britain seemingly on the ropes. While a portion deal of these initial successes must be attributed to Hitler’s personal intervention, and the General Staff would prove largely inadequate in the more demanding campaign in the east, the fact remains that Germany had vanquished France, a task it had not done in 1914-1918, and conquered or subjugated the vast majority of Europe. A Final Note From 1939 throughout 1941 the Wehrmacht smashed through the armies of Germany’s various enemies. Indeed, until the closing days of 1941 their advance had not been checked. Yet the Wehrmacht would fail in its objectives in 1941 and continue to do so for the rest of the war. The German High Command suffered from an imbalance in the services it provided. The High Command stressed above all else battle maneuvers and operations at the expense of the equally vital but less flashy fields of strategic planning, gathering and assessing information, and providing of logistical support. In neglecting these fields it is no wonder that the Nazi juggernaut ran out of steam and ultimately collapsed. In this the post-war conception of the German High Command as an efficient omnipotent planning organization that was led to ruin by Hitler’s foolish decisions is largely debased. Furthermore the claims that the High Command resisted Hitler but lost in their battle within the German administration has largely been a product of post-war revisionism on the part of the surviving German generals. Unlike the campaigns in the years following 1941, the wartime High Command was not defeated in their battle with Hitler, rather it failed to fight at all. |
Bibliography and Links (back to top)(links last checked 3/x/07) Books
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By Christopher Young:
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Any student tempted to use this paper for an assignment in another course or school should be aware of the serious consequences for plagiarism. Here is what I write in my syllabi:
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