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Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht (listen) ▶ (help·info) was the name of the armed forces of Germany from 1935 to 1945. The Wehrmacht of World War II was comprised of the army (das Heer), the navy (die Kriegsmarine), the air force (die Luftwaffe). Waffen-SS ("SS in arms") units were occasionally subordinated to the Wehrmacht.
Wehrmacht - Background
The German word Wehrmacht (literally "defence force") was previously used in German in a generic sense, as a term describing the armed forces of Germany or of another nation. For instance, Article 47 of the Weimar Constitution of 1919 declared the Reichspräsident commander-in-chief of "all Wehrmacht of the Reich", and a reference to the Englische Wehrmacht encompassed all English forces.
However, German armed forces were formally known as the Reichswehr until 1935, when they became known as the Wehrmacht. Following the defeat of Germany at the end of World War II, the Allied occupation, and the subsequent re-militarization of the German Federal Republic in 1955, West Germany's newly-created armed forces became known as the Bundeswehr.
The term Wehrmacht is thus customarily used today (both in German and English) to refer specifically to Germany's armed forces during the Third Reich and World War II.
Military of Germany, Waffen-SS, History of Germany, Third Reich, World War II, German Soldier's House
Wehrmacht - History
After World War I ended with the capitulation of the German empire the treaty of Versailles imposed severe restrictions on Germany's military strength. 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 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 soldiers were ordered to take a personal oath to Adolf Hitler. This process went smoothly for the most part, since National Socialist ideology was popular among German citizens and the military. Germany began openly ignoring the Versailles provisions. Conscription was reintroduced on 16 March 1935 and while the size of the standing army was to remain at about one hundred thousand, another one hundred thousand 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 signed personal loyalty oaths 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 number of soldiers who served in the Wehrmacht during its existence from 1934 until 1945 is believed to approach 18.2 million (a number put forward by historian Rüdiger Overmans), but these were not simultaneous enlistments. About 5.3 million died on battlefields and approximately 11 million were captured by enemy forces (it is not known how many died in captivity).
Wehrmacht - 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 and held until his suicide in late April 1945. Administration and military authority initially lay with the war ministry under 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 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.
- OKW — Armed Forces High Command
Chief of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces - Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel
Chief of the Operations Staff - Colonel General Alfred Jodl
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)
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)
Field Marshal Robert Ritter von Greim (1945)
Wehrmacht - War years
Image:Rommel Africa color 210.jpg
Powerful tank and air forces enabled quick successes during early stages of the war when nation after nation was overrun and occupied within weeks (Blitzkrieg). This convinced military leaders that a new concept of broad armament (rather than deep armament) made sense. However, when their 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 became a problem for the Wehrmacht.
The Wehrmacht's military strength was managed through assignment-based tactics (rather than order-based tactics) and an almost proverbial discipline. Today the Wehrmacht 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, but 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.
Wehrmacht - Rebellion
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. These 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 government. Following the attempt, Hitler distrusted the Wehrmacht and many officers were killed.
Wehrmacht - War crimes
While the predominant number of war crimes were attributed to Nazi organizations like the Schutzstaffel (SS), a number of Wehrmacht officers were charged with war crimes at the end of the war. In particular, OKW commander-in-chief Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel and chief of operations staff Alfred Jodl were indicted and tried for war crimes by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremburg in 1946. Both were convicted of all charges, sentenced to death and executed by hanging. The International Military Tribunal's judgement, however, was that the neither the Wehrmacht General Staff nor High Command itself were criminal organisations in the same sense as other state or party organizations like the Gestapo and SS.
Other lesser Wehrmacht commanders were tried for war crimes by U.S. military courts in the High Command Trial.
The war crimes of which Wehrmacht officers were accused include:
September Campaign in Poland
Wehrmacht units killed at least 16,376 (confirmed Polish civilian losses) Poles during the September Campaign through executions, field incidents, terror bombing of open cities or murder. After the end of hostilities, during the Wehrmacht's administration of Poland, which went on until October 25 1939, 531 towns and villages were burned, the Wehrmacht carried out 714 mass executions and a number of other crimes. Altogether, it is estimated that 50,000 civilians had perished including 7000 Jews[1].
Destruction of Warsaw
Up to 250,000 civilians were killed. Human shields were used by German forces during the fighting. During the Wola Massacre 50,000 civilians were murdered to intimidate the Poles into surrender.
Commissar Order (Kommissarbefehl)
The order cast the war against Russia as one of ideologies and racial differences, and provided for the immediate liquidation of political commissars of the Red Army. The order stated that German soldiers guilty of violating international laws would be "excused". The order was formulated on Hitler's behalf by the Wehrmacht command and distributed to field commanders.
Barbarossa Decree (Barbarossa-Erlass)
The decree, issued by Keitel a few weeks before Operation Barbarossa, exempted punishable offences committed by enemy civilians (in Russia) from the jurisdiction of military justice. Suspects were to be brought before an officer who would decide if they were to be shot. Prosecution of offenses against civilians by members of the Wehrmacht was decreed to be "not required" unless necessary for maintenance of discipline.
Wehrmacht POW camps
Beginning in September 1939, prisoners from Poland and later the USSR suffered in imprisonment due to lack of food, clean water, medicine and brutality by Wehrmacht guards. As the war dragged on, the prisoners in the East were seen as a source of labor. As a result, over 750,000 men (including officers) were re-deployed starting in 1943 in mining, farms, and armament factories. Although these POWs labored under harsh conditions and although the use of such prisoners in armaments industries was a violation of international law, the need for labor saved many Russian prisoners from being marked for the concentration camps and almost-certain death.
Massacres of prisoners-of-war
Even in the West, a number of Allied war prisoners were killed by their captors, such as in the Malmédy massacre in Belgium. Some 50 British officers who had escaped from Stalag Luft III were shot after recapture, and 15 uniformed U. S. Army officers and men were shot without trial in Italy. Hitler's Commando Order, issued in 1942, provided "justification" for the shooting of enemy commandoes whether uniformed or not.
Night and Fog Decree (Nacht und Nebel Erlass)
This decree, issued by Hitler in 1941 and disseminated along with a directive from Keitel, was operative within the conquered territories in the west (Belgium, France, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands). The decree allowed those "endangering German security" to be seized and to make them disappear without a trace. Keitel's directive stated that "efficient intimidation can only be achieved either by capital punishment or by measures by which the relatives of the criminal and the population do not know his fate."
Other actions
In Italy, Italian soldiers not supporting the German cause were massacred by German forces on the Greek island of Cephalonia. Italian villages ware razed and their inhabitants murdered during anti-partisan operations. In a number of occupied countries, the Wehrmacht's response to partisan attacks was to take and shoot hostages, up to 100 hostages for every German killed. In issuing orders for hostage-taking, Keitel stated that "it is important that these should include well-known personalities or members of their families." A Wehrmacht commander in France stated that "the better known the hostages to be shot, the greater will be the deterrent effect on the perpetrators." Author William Shirer stated that, in all, over 30,000 hostages are believed to have been executed in the West alone, and the Wehrmacht's hostage policy was pursued in Greece, Scandinavia, and Poland as well.
It should be noted that some members of the Allied armed forces were also accused of war crimes (such as the Dachau Massacre) during World War II. However, these acts were not following official policy endorsed by Allied commanders, and were relatively isolated in nature.
Wehrmacht - Prominent members
Prominent German officers from the Wehrmacht era include:
- Ludwig Beck
- Fedor von Bock
- Walther von Brauchitsch
- Wilhelm Flicke
- Heinz Guderian
- Franz Halder
- Erich Hoepner
- 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
Wehrmacht - After World War II
Following the unconditional German surrender on 8 May 1945 Germany was forbidden an independent modern 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.
Wehrmacht - Reference
- Wheeler-Bennett, Sir John The Nemesis of Power: German Army in Politics, 1918-1945 New York: Palgrave Macmillan Publishing Company, 2005.
See also
- Military of Germany
- Waffen-SS
- History of Germany
- Third Reich
- World War II
- German Soldier's House
Other related archives1 March, 16 March, 1919, 1921, 1928, 1934, 1935, 1938, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1955, 1956, 2 August, 23 March, 5 May, 8 May, Adolf Hitler, Albert Kesselring, Alfred Jodl, Blitzkrieg, Blomberg-Fritsch Affair, Bundeswehr, Cephalonia, Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, Claus von Stauffenberg, Cold War, Colonel General, Commander-in-Chief, Commando Order, Commissar Order, Conscription, Dachau Massacre, Erich Hoepner, Erich Raeder, Erich von Manstein, Erwin Rommel, Erwin von Witzleben, Ewald von Kleist, Federal Republic of Germany, Fedor von Bock, Ferdinand Schörner, Field Marshal, Franz Halder, Friedrich Olbricht, Friedrich Paulus, Führer, General Admiral, General conscription, Gerd von Rundstedt, German Democratic Republic, German Federal Republic, German Soldier's House, German empire, German word, Germany, Gestapo, Grand Admiral, Hans Günther von Kluge, Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, Heer, Heinz Guderian, Hermann Göring, Hermann Hoth, High Command Trial, History of Germany, Image:Rommel Africa color 210.jpg, International Military Tribunal, Iron Cross, July 20 plot, Karl Dönitz, Kazan, Kriegsmarine, Lipetsk, Ludwig Beck, Luftwaffe, Malmédy massacre, Me 262 jet fighter, Military of Germany, Moscow, National People's Army, National Socialist ideology, Nazi, Nuremburg, OKH, OKL, OKM, OKW, Oberkommando der Luftwaffe, Oberkommando der Marine, Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, Oberkommando des Heeres, October 25, Operation Barbarossa, Ostlegionen, POW, Paul von Hindenburg, President, Reich, Reich Chancellor, Reich Marshal, Reichspräsident, Reichswehr, Robert Ritter von Greim, Russian Liberation Army, SS, Saratov, Schutzstaffel, September Campaign in Poland, Soviet Union, Stalag Luft III, Third Reich, United Kingdom, United States, Waffen-SS, Walther von Brauchitsch, Weimar Constitution, Werner von Blomberg, Werner von Fritsch, Wheeler-Bennett, Sir John, Wilhelm Keitel, William Shirer, Wola, World War I, World War II, air force, armed forces, army, battleships, capitulation, cruisers, destroyers, head of state, help, info, military justice, navy, reprisal weapons, submarine force, terror bombing, treaty of Rapallo, treaty of Versailles
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