Wehrmacht

Wehrmacht troops marching at a military parade in honour of the 50th birthday of Adolf Hitler, on April 20th, 1939.

Wehrmacht ("Defence force") was the name of the armed forces of Nazi-Germany from 1935 to 1945. During World War II, the Wehrmacht consisted of the army (Heer), the navy (Kriegsmarine) the air force (Luftwaffe) and the Waffen-SS ("Armed-SS"), with Sturmabteilung (SA) units occasionally added.

Origin and use of the term

Before the rise of the Nazi Party, the term Wehrmacht was used in a generic sense to describe armed forces of any nation. For example, the term Englische Wehrmacht would identify the British army, while Article 47 of the Weimar Constitution of 1919 declared the Reichspräsident commander-in-chief of "all Wehrmacht of the Reich". To make a distinction, the term Reichswehr was commonly used to identify the German armed forces.

In 1935, the Reichswehr was renamed Wehrmacht. After World War II under the Allied occupation and later during the subsequent remilitarization of Germany in 1955, West Germany's newly-created armed forces became known as the Bundeswehr.

Hence the term Wehrmacht is customarily used to identify Germany's armed forces during the Third Reich and World War II, both in German and English.

History

After World War I ended with the capitulation of the German empire, the treaty of Versailles imposed severe constraints on the size of Germany's armed forces. The army was limited to one hundred thousand men with an additional fifteen thousand in the navy. The fleet was to consist of at most six battleships, six cruisers, and twelve destroyers. Tanks and heavy artillery were forbidden and the air force was dissolved. A new post-war military (the Reichswehr) was established on 23 March 1921. General conscription was abolished under another mandate of the Versailles treaty.

Germany immediately began covertly circumventing these conditions. A secret collaboration with the Soviet Union began after the treaty of Rapallo. Major General Otto Hasse traveled to Moscow in 1923 to further negotiate the terms. Germany helped Soviet Russia with industrialisation and Russian officers were to be trained in Germany. German tank and air force specialists would be trained in Russia and German chemical weapons research and manufacture would be carried out there along with other projects. Around three hundred German pilots received training at Lipetsk, some tank training took place near Kazan and toxic gas was developed at Saratov.

After the death of President Paul von Hindenburg on 2 August 1934, all officers and soldiers of the German armed forces swore a personal oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler. By 1935, Germany was openly flouting the military restrictions set forth in the Versailles Treaty, and conscription was reintroduced on 16 March 1935. While the size of the standing army was to remain at about the 100,000-man mark decreed by the treaty, a new group of conscripts this size would receive training each year. The conscription law introduced the name Wehrmacht, so not only can this be regarded as its founding date, but the organisation and authority of the Wehrmacht can be viewed as Nazi creations regardless of the political affiliations of its high command (who nevertheless all swore the same personal oath of loyalty to Hitler). The insignia was a stylised version of the Iron Cross (the so-called Balkenkreuz, or beamed cross) that had first appeared as an aircraft and tank marking in late World War I. The existence of the Wehrmacht was officially announced on October 15 1935.

The number of soldiers who served in the Wehrmacht during its existence from 1935 until 1945 is believed to approach 18.2 million. This figure was put forward by historian Rüdiger Overmans and represents the total number of people who ever served in the Wehrmacht, and not the force strength of the Wehrmacht at any point in time. About 5.3 million Wehrmacht soldiers died on battlefields and approximately 11 million were captured by enemy forces. It is not known how many Wehrmacht soldiers died in captivity.

Command structure

Legally, the Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht was Adolf Hitler in his capacity as Germany's head of state, a position he gained after the death of President Paul von Hindenburg in August 1934. In the reshuffle in 1938, Hitler became the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces until his suicide on 30 April 1945. Administration and military authority initially lay with the war ministry under Generalfeldmarschall Werner von Blomberg. After von Blomberg resigned in the course of the Blomberg-Fritsch Affair (1938) the ministry was dissolved and the Armed Forces High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht or OKW) under Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel was put in its place.

The OKW coordinated all military activities but Keitel's sway over the three branches of service (army, air force, and navy) was rather limited. Each had its own High Command, known as Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH, army), Oberkommando der Marine (OKM, navy), and Oberkommando der Luftwaffe (OKL, air force). Each of these high commands had its own general staff.

Wehrmacht flag

* OKW — Armed Forces High Command::Commander-In-Chief of the German Armed Forces (old title) - General Werner von Blomberg (1935-1938)::Chief of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces - Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel (1938 to 1945):: Chief of the Operations Staff - Colonel General Alfred Jodl
* OKH — Army High Command:Army Commanders-in-Chief::Colonel General Werner von Fritsch (1935 to 1938) ::Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch (1938 to 1941) ::Führer and Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler (1941 to 1945)::Field Marshal Ferdinand Schörner (1945):: Chief of Staff of the German Army - General Ludwig Beck (1935-1938); General Franz Halder (1938-1942); General Kurt Zeitzler (1942-1944); General Oberst Heinz Guderian (1944-1945)
* OKM — Navy High Command:Navy Commanders-in-Chief::Grand Admiral Erich Raeder (1928-1943)::Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz (1943-1945) ::General Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg (1945)
* OKL — Airforce High Command:Air Force Commanders-in-Chief::Reich Marshal Hermann Göring (to 1945)::General Field Marshal Robert Ritter von Greim (1945)

War years

Wehrmacht soldiers during combat with artillery.

German cavalry and motorized units entering Poland from East Prussia during the Polish September Campaign of 1939

Powerful tank and air forces enabled quick successes (Blitzkrieg) during early stages of the war when nation after nation was overrun and occupied within weeks. This convinced military leaders that a new concept of broad armament made sense, rather than the conventional deep armament which provided supplies over a long period of time. However, when powerful adversaries (the United Kingdom, Soviet Union and United States) began offering tenacious resistance, the Blitzkrieg tactics could not be applied and the relatively low state of armament, shortage of fuel supply etc. became a problem for the Wehrmacht.

The Wehrmacht's military strength was managed through mission-based tactics (rather than order-based tactics) and an almost proverbial discipline. In public opinion, the Wehrmacht was and is sometimes seen as a high-tech army, since new technologies were introduced during World War II, including the reprisal weapons, the Me 262 jet fighter and the submarine force. These technologies were featured by progapanda, but were often only available in small numbers or late in the war, as overall armament levels were low. For example only forty percent of all units were motorised, baggage trains often relied on horses and many soldiers went by foot or (sometimes) used bicycles.

Among the foreign volunteers who served in the Wehrmacht during World War II were ethnic Germans, Dutch and Scandinavians along with people from the Baltic states and the Balkans. Russians fought in the Russian Liberation Army and non-Russians from the Soviet Union formed the Ostlegionen. These units were all commanded by General Ernst August Köstring and represented about five percent of the Wehrmacht.

Theaters and Campaigns

* Blitzkrieg
** Battle of Poland (Operation Fall Weiss)
** Phony War
** Invasion of Denmark and Norway (Operation Weserübung)
** Battle of France (Fall Gelb)
** Balkans and Greece (Operation Marita)
* Eastern Front (initially Operation Barbarossa)
* Western Front (1944-1945)
** Battle of Normandy (ETO: Normandy Campaign)
** Northern France Campaign
** Southern France Campaign (Operation Dragoon)
** Battle of the Siegfried Line (ETO: Rhineland Campaign, Ardennes-Alsace Campaign)
** Central Europe Campaign

War crimes

The Wehrmacht committed numerous war crimes during World War II — terror bombing of open cities, massacres of civilians, summary executions of Soviet political officers as sanctioned by the Commissar Order, and executions of prisoners of war and civilian hostages as punishment for partisan activities in occupied territories. Though the massive exterminations associated with the Holocaust were primarily committed by the SS and the Einsatzgruppen), the Wehrmacht was also involved, as Wehrmacht officers and soldiers cooperated with the Einsatzgruppen in many locations rounding up Jews and others for internment or execution. Not seldom members of the Wehrmacht participated in massacres themselves.

As the extent of the Holocaust became widely known by the end of the war, many former members of the Wehrmacht promoted the view that it was "unblemished" by the crimes allegedly committed exclusively by the SS and the political police forces, even though the Waffen-SS was always a part of and was contolled by the Wehrmacht. Though it convicted OKW chief Wilhelm Keitel and chief of operations Alfred Jodl for war crimes, the Nuremberg tribunal did not declare the Wehrmacht a criminal organization, as it did with party organizations like the SS. This was seen by many in the German public as an exoneration of the Wehrmacht. Among German historians, the deep involvement of the Wehrmacht in war crimes, particularly on the Eastern Front, became widely accepted in the late 1970s and the 1980s. However, public awareness in Germany has been lagging behind - as exemplified by controversial and often emotionally charged reactions to an exhibition on these issues in the mid-1990s [1] Polish historians also want the German public to become more aware of the Wehrmacht's atrocities regarding the Polish September Campaign[2].

Politics of the Wehrmacht

The military evaded political meddling during most of the Third Reich's history. Most of its leadership was politically conservative, nationalistic and hoped to reconquer territories that had broken away from Imperial Germany. Hitler had promised to rebuild Germany's military strength and officers were mostly sympathetic towards the National Socialist movement. Political influence in the military command began to increase later in the war when Hitler's flawed strategic decisions began showing up as serious defeats for the German army and tensions mounted between the military and the government. Not only did Hitler appoint unqualified personnel to lead his armies, but also gave to his commanders impossible orders, such as to shoot all officers and enlisted men who retreated from a front line.

Conspiracy to kill Hitler

Officers such as Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and Wilhelm Canaris were unhappy with actions of the Hitler regime which they saw as immoral. Combined with Hitler's problematic military leadership, this culminated in the July 20 plot (1944), when a group of Wehrmacht officers led by Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg tried to assassinate Hitler and overthrow his regime. Following the attempt, Hitler distrusted the Wehrmacht and many officers and soldiers were executed. Thereafter, every man and woman who approached Hitler was searched from head to toe by his SS guards.

Prominent members

Prominent German officers from the Wehrmacht era include:

* Ludwig Beck
* Fedor von Bock
* Walther von Brauchitsch
* Heinz Guderian
* Franz Halder
* Otto von Colinburg-Bodigheim
* Hermann Hoth
* Ewald von Kleist
* Albert Kesselring
* Hans Günther von Kluge
* Erich von Manstein
* Friedrich Olbricht
* Friedrich Paulus
* Erwin Rommel
* Gerd von Rundstedt
* Claus von Stauffenberg
* Erwin von Witzleben

After World War II

Following the unconditional German surrender on 7 May 1945 (which went into effect on 8 May 1945) Germany was forbidden to have an army. It was over ten years before the tensions of the Cold War led to the creation of separate military forces in the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic. The West German military, officially created on 5 May 1955, took the name Bundeswehr, meaning Federal Defence Forces, which pointed back to the old Reichswehr. Its East German counterpart, created on 1 March 1956, took the name National People's Army (Nationale Volksarmee). Neither side could do without experienced soldiers so each army initially had substantial numbers of officers who were former Wehrmacht members.

External links

*Feldgrau.com (extensive history and information about WWII German armed forces from 1919-1945)
*The Wehrmacht, the Holocaust, and War Crimes
*The Wehrmacht: A Criminal Organization? A review of Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann work on the subject
*kamouflage.net > global search: Europe > Germany (German Reich) > index – examples of, and information about, camouflage uniforms used by the Wehrmacht Heer, Wehrmacht Luftwaffe and Waffen-SS during the Second World War
* Archives of the German military manuals — also for secret manuals of Enigma and Cryptography
* Deutsche Welle article about Wehrmacht veterans
* Georgische legion - Units and photos

Wehrmacht: Encyclopedia BETA

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