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Book Summary
The Wehrmacht of the Third Reich continues to challenge historians and postwar Germans. Did the Wehrmacht share and uphold Hitler’s ideals, or were soldiers simply part of a professional force that was separate from the snare of ideology? In his work, Hitler’s Army, Omer Bartov challenges the notion that Nazi ideology did not play a major role in the Wehrmacht.
In chapter one, Bartov examines the contradiction found between the Wehrmacht’s image as a modern army and the massive demodernization that characterized the Eastern Front. Bartov, using primary sources from soldiers and officers, details daily life on the front. The army suffered greatly there, facing an enormous loss of life and resources, coupled with an inhospitable environment and the Red Army’s continued resistance and material power (Bartov, p.20). Wehrmacht soldiers experienced the mental and physical toll of such circumstances (Bartov, 22). Such destruction led to the loss of “primary groups,” Bartov argues, as well as the increased brutalization of troops from soldiers, who with these kinds of experiences were more receptive to ideological indoctrination.
Chapter two tackles the question of “primary groups” in the army. The opposing argument to Bartov’s is that the cohesion of the German army was not due to ideology, but to the social system of “primary groups” – keeping soldiers together from a specific unit that were recruited from the same conscription zone, thus developing strong ties with their officers and fellow soldiers (Bartov, 30-31). However, throughout the chapter, Bartov deconstructs this theory, showing that with such an intense loss of life on the front, these “primary groups” were wiped out, and it was for another reason that the army continued fighting even against great odds.
For chapter three, Bartov deals with what he deems the perversion of discipline. He shows that as the Nazi regime legalized crime, the army reflected its ideology. What held the Ostheer together, thus, was the harsh discipline of the army coupled with the license of brutality toward the enemy (Bartov, 72). The chapter details the atrocities, both “official and organized” as well as “wild” (Bartov, 61), committed by German soldiers against civilians, POWs, and property.
Chapter four highlights the distortion of reality that soldiers of the Wehrmacht experienced. In this thesis, Bartov uses many personal letters from soldiers to show the extent to which Nazi ideology was a part of their mindset. Bartov discusses the pseudo-religious nature of the “Führer cult”, as well as the power of Nazi propaganda regarding the dehumanization of their enemies. Bartov shows how soldiers’ perceptions of reality on the front – from their opinions on Russians, Jews, Hitler, and the course and purpose of the war – were entirely distorted, and in many cases, remains so.
By examining the sources that connect to his theses, Bartov concludes that Nazi ideology was indeed crucial for the Wehrmacht. Bartov draws his discussion to a close by contemplating the idea of memory in the German population, describing what he calls the “collective amnesia” of Germany - “the facts are there for everyone to behold, but they are kept well apart from one’s own experience and memory” (Bartov, 185).
Essay
Hitler’s Army examines the extent to which Nazi ideology and propaganda permeated the ranks of the Wehrmacht. Omer Bartov addresses to what extent the Wehrmacht was simply a professional army carrying out orders, as opposed to a politicized unit driven by National Socialist ideology. Bartov’s work concerns itself with several issues: Why was the Wehrmacht such an incredible fighting force – what drove and inspired the soldiers to fight so effectively? To what degree were the soldiers driven by Nazi ideology, and how did it shape their wartime activities?
Bartov aims to challenge the notion that the Wehrmacht was an apolitical entity and haven from the ideas of the Nazi regime, and instead uses his research to prove that the army was truly Hitler’s army, in both its actions and beliefs. It was not just the SS that carried out the heinous crimes on the front – the Wehrmacht also took part, becoming an integral part of the Nazi regime. To develop his argument, Bartov uses many primary source documents, such as Wehrmacht documents, Hitler’s speeches, and most effectively, letters from men serving on the Eastern Front. Additionally, some post-war interviews are utilized and Bartov also intersperses his argument with other historians’ views on the role and makeup of the army.
Bartov’s four main theses convincingly demonstrate that the Wehrmacht was indeed Hitler’s army in ideology and practice. Soldiers, who Bartov contends had experienced the demodernization of the eastern front and the destruction of their previously core “primary groups,” were very much involved in and dependent on Nazi ideology and propaganda to maintain their cohesion and provide the drive for the continuation of fighting. With the combined effects of the legalization of crimes, the deification of Hitler, and the intense propaganda propagated by the Nazis concerning the East – as well as the impact of pre-military and prewar indoctrination – soldiers carried out atrocities on Soviet soil. Indeed, Bartov argues, such indoctrination with Nazi ideology led to soldiers’ distortion of reality, inspiring in them blind faith to brutally conduct the campaign throughout the war. Ultimately, Bartov rejects previous scholarship and instead posits that on the eastern front, the Wehrmacht truly became Hitler’s army.
The Demodernization of the Front: Detailing Soldiers’ Wartime Experiences
The wartime experiences of the Wehrmacht prove that the stage was set for the influence of Nazi ideology and indoctrination. On the Eastern Front, Bartov shows there existed a contradiction between the Wehrmacht’s image as a modern army and the massive demodernization of the Eastern Front. This came about because “throughout the front lack of fighting machines combined with the climatic and geographical peculiarities of Russia to deprive this former Blitzkrieg army of all semblance of modernity” (Bartov, 18). As a soldier detailed in a letter, “I didn’t know what trench warfare was like, but now I have learned” (Bartov, 25). The front was extremely harsh and many tanks and other technologies failed, replaced with Russian horse-drawn wagons (Bartov, 20). Indeed, in one example, Army Group South’s 1 Panzer Army “lost so many tanks and trucks that it declared itself ‘incapable of conducting mobile warfare” (Bartov, 20). As the number of tanks lessened, the soldiers had to trench in, leading to a life in very primitive conditions.
Bartov, using primary sources from soldiers and officers, details daily life on the front. The army suffered greatly there, facing an enormous loss of life and resources, coupled with an inhospitable environment and the Red Army’s continued resistance and material power (Bartov, p.20). As one division’s records notes, “the physical and mental condition of the soldiers and of some of the commanders calls for issuing very detailed orders and carefully examining them, in order to avoid breakdowns” (Bartov, 22). Every day, soldiers experienced a very harsh type of warfare, facing a dangerous enemy. Soldiers were clad in poor clothing, fed badly, and confronted with disease, and these traumas brought about a new image of war “which not only was war hell, one also had to be a beast if one wished to survive it” (Bartov, 26). Bartov states that soldiers acquired a “new concept of heroism, a new self-perception of the combat soldier… There was an anarchic element in this celebration of death and return to savagery among the front-line troops” (Bartov, 26). Clearly, as Bartov demonstrates, life on the front changed, which in turn led to the development of the Wehrmacht into Hitler’s army, an army that “saw no other way of coping with its reality than by idealizing it” (Bartov, 27).
With the demodernization of the front, the Wehrmacht suffered incredibly heavy losses among its combat units, leading to the loss of “primary groups”.
Deconstructing the Theory of Cohesion: The Destruction of the “Primary Group”
Bartov attacks the commonly held belief that “primary groups” in the Wehrmacht were responsible for the amazing organization and fighting of the army. The opposing argument to Bartov’s, popularized by Shils and Janowitz in Cohesion and Disintegration, is that the cohesion of the German army was not due to ideology, but to the social system of “primary groups” – keeping soldiers from a specific unit together who were recruited from the same conscription zone, thus developing strong ties with their officers and fellow soldiers (Bartov, 30-31). This theory “maintains that social organization made ideology unnecessary” (Bartov, 33-34). However, Bartov deconstructs the “primary groups” argument, showing that with such an intense loss of life on the front, these “primary groups” were wiped out, and it was indeed due to ideology, as well as a perversion of discipline, that inspired the continued fighting even against great odds.
In breaking down the “primary groups” theory, Bartov details the great losses sustained by the Ostheer. How could such groups be maintained if “after just over a month of fighting, the Ostheer already lost more men than in the whole Western campaign… [and] in September the now 142 divisions fighting in the East reported an average decline of close to 50 percent of their initial battle strength” (Bartov, 36)? While the replacement system for troops initially aimed to follow the “primary groups” structure, this quickly changed as a result of the Wehrmacht’s manpower crisis, with the army “breaking up existing formations and establishing new and highly heterogeneous units” (Bartov, 37). As a divisional pastor wrote in his diary, “this is no longer the old division. All around us are new faces” (Bartov, 41). Bartov thus destroys the theory that “primary groups” are the reason for the Wehrmacht’s unity by using information concerning losses and changes of the army’s divisions.
With the dissolution of “primary groups” in the Ostheer due to casualties and rapid manpower turnover, what could account for the army’s cohesion and ceaseless fighting? Bartov argues that with this change, ideology became the most important factor for the Wehrmacht.
Dealing with Destruction: The Perversion of Discipline
In order to further build up his ultimate thesis, Bartov deals with what he deems the perversion of discipline. He shows that as the Nazi regime legalized crime, the army reflected its ideology. In fact, the army ordered its soldiers to do the regime’s criminal actions. Crime was legalized, and with such an overturning of morality, Bartov contends that it drove the soldiers further to do not only “official and organized.” but also “wild” unofficial crimes against civilians, POWs, and property (Bartov, 61). And in such cases of unauthorized terror, “in the Soviet Union… we no longer hear of soldiers being tried, let alone executed, for actions of violence and plunder against Soviet citizens” (Bartov, 70). With the propaganda that they were fighting against Untermenschen, the troops committed terrible crimes against the Russians and were not punished – some were even praised (Bartov, 93). In both its ideology and actions, the Wehrmacht clearly reflected the Nazi regime.
With such legalization, the army conducted brutal actions. The Army Group North declared that “partisans [which Bartov defines as “a term used to describe all civilians deemed unworthy of life by the army” (Bartov,89)] should be destroyed wherever they appear, as should their hiding places [i.e. villages]” (Bartov, 91). Thus, clearly, the Ostheer legalized such crimes, giving orders to its troops to murder and destroy.
Coupled with that, Bartov highlights the harsh discipline of the Wehrmacht. During the war, between “13,000 and 15,000 [German] men were put to death by their own army” (Bartov, 96). Bartov says the incredible number of executions was due to the “politicization of martial law, whereby such offenses as desertion and self-inflicted wounds came under the heading of treason and subversion” (Bartov, 96). Furthermore, Bartov writes that “between January 1940 and March 1942 some four-fifths of the death sentences were based on ideological-political groups” (Bartov, 96). Thus, the Eastern Front’s discipline was characterized by what became standard policy – threatening troops with execution if they neglected their duties (Bartov, 98). Fear created discipline, and as Hitler declared in one of his orders, “the harder the times, all the tougher should be the measures by which the commander enforces his will” (Bartov, 100).
Bartov does not focus on those who opted out of participating in the atrocities and deserted, but the large number of executions for such reasons brings to light the counterargument that many soldiers were indeed opposed to Nazi ideology. However, with the lack of prosecution for soldiers’ actions against the enemy coupled with the brutal punishments of those who were charged with breaches of duty, Bartov is able to support his argument that there indeed existed a perversion of discipline within the Wehrmacht.
Thus what held the Ostheer together was the harsh discipline of the army coupled with the license of brutality toward the enemy. These two factors of war were readily accepted by the troops, Bartov declares, because “they had been taught to believe in the ideological arguments on which it was based” (Bartov, 104). The Wehrmacht was indeed Hitler’s army as shown by the terrible actions done against the people that Hitler had declared Untermenschen.
Nazi Ideology and the Distortion of Reality
With the three components detailed above, Bartov concludes his argument with a discussion of the distortion of reality that soldiers of the Wehrmacht experienced. In this thesis, Bartov uses many personal letters from soldiers to show the extent to which Nazi ideology was a part of their mindset. Bartov highlights the importance of prewar and pre-military experiences of the soldiers, as most soldiers had spent their formative years under Nazism (Bartov, 108-109).
It is clear that Nazi propaganda infiltrated the army, as seen by a letter from Colonel-General Hoepner at the front,
The war against the Soviet Union is an essential component of the German people’s struggle for existence. It is the old struggle of the Germans against the Slavs, the defense of European culture against the Muscovite-Asiatic flood, the warding off of Jewish Bolshevism. (Bartov, 129)
The army, and the letters written by soldiers, show that the pseudo-religious nature of the “Führer cult” was a powerful element in the Wehrmacht. As soldier Karl Fuchs wrote to his mother, he believed “one day… the world will thank the Germans and our beloved Führer for our victories here in Russia,” thus encapsulating both the propaganda of the deification of Hitler, as well as the idea that Russia was a threat to western civilization (Bartov, 157-58). The racist propaganda was expounded by others, Bartov shows through their letters, thus making them indifferent to what they did to their victims. One NCO described the Russians as “no longer human beings, but wild hordes and beasts, who have been bred by Bolshevism during the last 20 years” (Bartov, 158). From Bartov’s examination of soldiers’ letters from the beginning of the campaign on the Eastern Front, he claims antisemitism also increased due to the combination of deteriorating conditions and the fact that “soldiers were no longer merely exposed to racist propaganda but also observed and in some cases participated in mass murders of Jews” (Bartov, 159). One soldier wrote that “the great task given us in the struggle against Bolshevism lies in the destruction of eternal Jewry” (Bartov, 162).
The worldview of soldiers mirrored the Weltanschauung of the regime, with the pseudo-religious Hitler cult and the dehumanization of various groups of people. What maintained the cohesion of the army were these ideas, this essential distortion of reality promulgated by the Nazi regime. Weekly political sessions were held at company level, and official “educational officers” were employed with the express purpose of indoctrination (Bartov, 132).
Bartov deals with the opposing view that Nazi indoctrination was not a part of the Wehrmacht. He draws on the impact of the Cold War, which “created the basis for the resurrection of German military institutions… [that] made it politically necessary to repress the notion of Nazi penetration into the army of the Third Reich” (Bartov, 137). However, ideology was in fact a major part of the army. The propaganda sheets issued by a division declares that “behind the flood of the red mobs sneers the distorted face of the Jew,” thus clearly showing how acceptable and important propaganda was to the army (Bartov, 135). As one NCO expressed, many soldiers held a blind and even religious faith in Hitler, as he and others believed that “for us the Führer’s words are gospel” (Bartov, 166). Time and time again, Bartov gives readers letters from soldiers espousing their love of Hitler and their prejudices against their enemy, thereby proving his argument.
Of course, as The Journal of Modern History brought up in its review, “Bartov’s approach inevitably leads him to seek out evidence of complicity and enthusiasm” (Overy, 879). Indeed, this is a major point of contention, but Bartov is able to assert his argument by discussing the extent to which the soldiers in the postwar era maintained certain prejudices and beliefs.
Bartov shows how soldiers’ perceptions of reality on the front were entirely distorted. Indeed, Bartov effectively proves his overall thesis by demonstrating that, as a whole “the troops’ view of reality was composed of… a progressive dehumanization of the enemy and a parallel deification of the Führer” (Bartov, 178). Nazi ideology permeated and maintained the army throughout the Second World War, instilling in it the worldview of Hitler.
The Wehrmacht – Hitler’s Army
Bartov concludes that Nazi ideology was crucial for the Wehrmacht. Bartov draws his discussion to a close by contemplating the idea of memory in the German population, describing what he calls the “collective amnesia” of Germany - “the facts are there for everyone to behold, but they are kept well apart from one’s own experience and memory” (Bartov, 185). Some former soldiers, Bartov relates, only recall the crimes committed against them, rather than the ones they did – in this sense, Bartov claims that “defeat converted them [the Germans] all into victims” (Bartov, 183).
What, therefore, does the fact that the Wehrmacht was indeed Hitler’s army in its action and worldview – as Bartov proves effectively – do to historians’ scholarship, as well as the memories of generations of Germans? With this book, the debate regarding the Wehrmacht’s role and ideology rages on. Even just a few years after this book’s publication, Germans are still struggling with the topic, as shown by the controversy and protests surrounding the 1995 touring exhibit, War of Extermination: Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941-44, which supported Bartov’s thesis that the Wehrmacht was responsible for many atrocities throughout the war.
Yet, despite differing historical opinions and memories, Bartov proves his thesis that through the demodernization of the front, the destruction of “primary groups,” the perversion of discipline, and the distortion of reality, the Wehrmacht truly became Hitler’s army. With such evidence, the Wehrmacht cannot be viewed as separate from the crimes of the Third Reich, but instead must be understood as an integral part of the regime’s atrocities.
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