Wehrmacht

The German term "Wehrmacht" stems from the compound word of German: wehren, "to defend" and Macht, "power, force".[lower-alpha 3] It has been used to describe any nation's armed forces; for example, Britische Wehrmacht meaning "British Armed Forces". The Frankfurt Constitution of 1849 designated all German military forces as the "German Wehrmacht", consisting of the Seemacht (sea force) and the Landmacht (land force).[21] In 1919, the term Wehrmacht also appears in Article 47 of the Weimar Constitution, establishing that: "The Reich's President holds supreme command of all armed forces [i.e. the Wehrmacht] of the Reich". From 1919, Germany's national defense force was known as the Reichswehr, a name that was dropped in favor of Wehrmacht on 21 May 1935.[22]

While the term Wehrmacht has been associated, both in the German and English languages, with the German armed forces of 1935–45 since the Second World War, before 1945 the term was used in the German language in a more general sense for a national defense force. For instance, the German-aligned formations of Poles raised during the First World War were known as the Polnische Wehrmacht ('Polish Wehrmacht', 'Polish Defense Force') in German.

Reichswehr soldiers swearing the Hitler oath in August 1934

In January 1919, after World War I ended with the signing of the armistice of 11 November 1918, the armed forces were dubbed Friedensheer (peace army).[23] In March 1919, the national assembly passed a law founding a 420,000-strong preliminary army, the Vorläufige Reichswehr. The terms of the Treaty of Versailles were announced in May, and in June, Germany signed the treaty that, among other terms, 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. Submarines, 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.[24]

The Reichswehr was limited to 115,000 men, and thus the armed forces, under the leadership of Hans von Seeckt, retained only the most capable officers. The American historians Alan Millet and Williamson Murray wrote "In reducing the officers corps, Seeckt chose the new leadership from the best men of the general staff with ruthless disregard for other constituencies, such as war heroes and the nobility."[25] Seeckt's determination that the Reichswehr be an elite cadre force that would serve as the nucleus of an expanded military when the chance for restoring conscription came essentially led to the creation of a new army, based upon, but very different from, the army that existed in World War I.[25] In the 1920s, Seeckt and his officers developed new doctrines that emphasized speed, aggression, combined arms and initiative on the part of lower officers to take advantage of momentary opportunities.[25] Though Seeckt retired in 1926, his influence on the army was still apparent when it went to war in 1939.[26]

Germany was forbidden to have an air force by the Versailles treaty; nonetheless, Seeckt created a clandestine cadre of air force officers in the early 1920s. These officers saw the role of an air force as winning air superiority, strategic bombing, and close air support. That the Luftwaffe did not develop a strategic bombing force in the 1930s was not due to a lack of interest, but because of economic limitations.[27] The leadership of the Navy led by Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, a close protégé of Alfred von Tirpitz, was dedicated to the idea of reviving Tirpitz's High Seas Fleet. Officers who believed in submarine warfare led by Admiral Karl Dönitz were in a minority before 1939.[28]

By 1922, Germany had begun covertly circumventing the conditions of the Versailles treaty. A secret collaboration with the Soviet Union began after the Treaty of Rapallo.[29] Major-General Otto Hasse traveled to Moscow in 1923 to further negotiate the terms. Germany helped the Soviet Union with industrialization and Soviet officers were to be trained in Germany. German tank and air-force specialists could exercise in the Soviet Union and German chemical weapons research and manufacture would be carried out there along with other projects.[30] In 1924 a fighter-pilot school was established at Lipetsk, where several hundred German air force personnel received instruction in operational maintenance, navigation, and aerial combat training over the next decade until the Germans finally left in September 1933.[31] However, the arms buildup was done in secrecy, until Hitler came to power and it received broad political support.[32]

Wehrmachthelferinnen in occupied Paris, 1940

In the beginning, women in Nazi Germany were not involved in the Wehrmacht, as Hitler ideologically opposed conscription for women,[52] stating that Germany would "not form any section of women grenade throwers or any corps of women elite snipers."[53] However, with many men going to the front, women were placed in auxiliary positions within the Wehrmacht, called Wehrmachtshelferinnen (lit. 'Female Wehrmacht Helper'),[54] participating in tasks as:

• telephone, telegraph and transmission operators,
• administrative clerks, typists and messengers,
• operators of listening equipment, in anti-aircraft defense, operating projectors for anti-aircraft defense, employees within meteorology services, and auxiliary civil defense personnel
• volunteer nurses in military health service, as the German Red Cross or other voluntary organizations.

They were placed under the same authority as (Hiwis), auxiliary personnel of the army (German: Behelfspersonal) and they were assigned to duties within the Reich, and to a lesser extent, in the occupied territories, for example in the general government of occupied Poland, in France, and later in Yugoslavia, in Greece and in Romania.[55]

By 1945, 500,000 women were serving as Wehrmachtshelferinnen, half of whom were volunteers, while the other half performed obligatory services connected to the war effort (German: Kriegshilfsdienst).[54]

"Foot-mobile" infantry of the Wehrmacht, 1942

The German Army furthered concepts pioneered during World War I, combining ground (Heer) and air force (Luftwaffe) assets into combined arms teams.[65] Coupled with traditional war fighting methods such as encirclements and the "battle of annihilation", the Wehrmacht managed many lightning quick victories in the first year of World War II, prompting foreign journalists to create a new word for what they witnessed: Blitzkrieg. Germany's immediate military success on the field at the start of the Second World War coincides the favorable beginning they achieved during the First World War, a fact which some attribute to their superior officer corps.[66]

The Heer entered the war with a minority of its formations motorized; infantry remained approximately 90% foot-borne throughout the war, and artillery was primarily horse-drawn. The motorized formations received much attention in the world press in the opening years of the war, and were cited as the reason for the success of the invasions of Poland (September 1939), Denmark and Norway (April 1940), Belgium, France, and Netherlands (May 1940), Yugoslavia and Greece (April 1941) and the early stage of Operation Barbarossa in the Soviet Union (June 1941).[67]

After Hitler declared war on the United States in December 1941, the Axis powers found themselves engaged in campaigns against several major industrial powers while Germany was still in transition to a war economy. German units were then overextended, undersupplied, outmaneuvered, outnumbered and defeated by its enemies in decisive battles during 1941, 1942, and 1943 at the Battle of Moscow, the Siege of Leningrad, Stalingrad, Tunis in North Africa, and the Battle of Kursk.[68][69]

A tank destroyer battalion, part of the 21 Panzer Division of the Afrika Korps

The German Army was managed through mission-based tactics (rather than order-based tactics) which was intended to give commanders greater freedom to act on events and exploit opportunities. In public opinion, the German Army was, and sometimes still is, seen as a high-tech army. However, such modern equipment, while featured much in propaganda, was often only available in relatively small numbers.[70] Only 40% to 60% of all units in the Eastern Front were motorized, baggage trains often relied on horse-drawn trailers due to poor roads and weather conditions in the Soviet Union, and for the same reasons many soldiers marched on foot or used bicycles as bicycle infantry. As the fortunes of war turned against them, the Germans were in constant retreat from 1943 and onward.[71]^: 142[72][73]

The Panzer divisions were vital to the German army's early success. In the strategies of the Blitzkrieg, the Wehrmacht combined the mobility of light tanks with airborne assault to quickly progress through weak enemy lines, enabling the German army to quickly and brutally take over Poland and France.[74] These tanks were used to break through enemy lines, isolating regiments from the main force so that the infantry behind the tanks could quickly kill or capture the enemy troops.[75]

German paratroopers landing on Crete

Originally outlawed by the Treaty of Versailles, the Luftwaffe was officially established in 1935, under the leadership of Hermann Göring.[38] First gaining experience in the Spanish Civil War, it was a key element in the early Blitzkrieg campaigns (Poland, France 1940, USSR 1941). The Luftwaffe concentrated production on fighters and (small) tactical bombers, like the Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter and the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive bomber.[76] The planes cooperated closely with the ground forces. Overwhelming numbers of fighters assured air-supremacy, and the bombers would attack command- and supply-lines, depots, and other support targets close to the front. The Luftwaffe would also be used to transport paratroopers, as first used during Operation Weserübung.[77][78] Due to the Army's sway with Hitler, the Luftwaffe was often subordinated to the Army, resulting in it being used as a tactical support role and losing its strategic capabilities.[64]

The Western Allies' strategic bombing campaign against German industrial targets, particularly the round the clock Combined Bomber Offensive and Defence of the Reich, deliberately forced the Luftwaffe into a war of attrition.[79] With German fighter force destroyed the Western Allies had air supremacy over the battlefield, denying support to German forces on the ground and using its own fighter-bombers to attack and disrupt. Following the losses in Operation Bodenplatte in 1945, the Luftwaffe was no longer an effective force.[80]

Karl Dönitz inspecting the Saint-Nazaire submarine base in France, June 1941

The Treaty of Versailles disallowed submarines, while limiting the size of the Reichsmarine to six battleships, six cruisers, and twelve destroyers.[24] Following the creation of the Wehrmacht, the navy was renamed the Kriegsmarine.[81]

With the signing of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, Germany was allowed to increase its navy's size to be 35:100 tonnage of the Royal Navy, and allowed for the construction of U-boats.[82] This was partly done to appease Germany, and because Britain believed the Kriegsmarine would not be able to reach the 35% limit until 1942.[83] The navy was also prioritized last in the German rearmament scheme, making it the smallest of the branches.[84][85]

In the Battle of the Atlantic, the initially successful German U-boat fleet arm was eventually defeated due to Allied technological innovations like sonar, radar, and the breaking of the Enigma code.[86]

Large surface vessels were few in number due to construction limitations by international treaties prior to 1935. The "pocket battleships" Admiral Graf Spee and Admiral Scheer were important as commerce raiders only in the opening year of the war.[87] No aircraft carrier was operational, as German leadership lost interest in the Graf Zeppelin which had been launched in 1938.[88]

Following the loss of the German battleship Bismarck in 1941, with Allied air-superiority threatening the remaining battle-cruisers in French Atlantic harbors, the ships were ordered to make the Channel Dash back to German ports.[89][90][91] Operating from fjords along the coast of Norway, which had been occupied since 1940, convoys from North America to the Soviet port of Murmansk could be intercepted though the Tirpitz spent most of her career as fleet in being.[92] After the appointment of Karl Dönitz as Grand Admiral of the Kriegsmarine (in the aftermath of the Battle of the Barents Sea), Germany stopped constructing battleships and cruisers in favor of U-boats.[93] Though by 1941, the navy had already lost a number of its large surface ships, which could not be replenished during the war.[94]

The Kriegsmarine's most significant contribution to the German war effort was the deployment of its nearly 1,000 U-boats to strike at Allied convoys.[94] The German naval strategy was to attack the convoys in an attempt to prevent the United States from interfering in Europe and to starve out the British.[95] Karl Doenitz, the U-Boat Chief, began unrestricted submarine warfare which cost the Allies 22,898 men and 1,315 ships.[96] The U-boat war remained costly for the Allies until early spring of 1943 when the Allies began to use countermeasures against U-Boats such as the use of Hunter-Killer groups, airborne radar, torpedoes and mines like the FIDO.[97] The submarine war cost the Kriegsmarine 757 U-boats, with more than 30,000 U-boat crewmen killed.[98]

An army Oberleutnant with a SS-Hauptsturmführer from the Waffen-SS in 1944

In the beginning, there was friction between the SS and the army, as the army feared the SS would attempt to become a legitimate part of the armed forces of Nazi Germany, partly due to the fighting between the limited armaments, and the perceived fanaticism towards Nazism.[99] However, on 17 August 1938, Hitler codified the role of the SS and the army in order to end the feud between the two.[100] The arming of the SS was to be "procured from the Wehrmacht upon payment", however "in peacetime, no organizational connection with the Wehrmacht exists."[101] The army was however allowed to check the budget of the SS and inspect the combat readiness of the SS troops.[102] In the event of mobilization, the Waffen-SS field units could be placed under the operational control of the OKW or the OKH. All decisions regarding this would be at Hitler's personal discretion.[102]

Though there existed conflict between the SS and Wehrmacht, many SS officers were former army officers, which ensured continuity and understanding between the two.[103] Throughout the war, army and SS soldiers worked together in various combat situations, creating bonds between the two groups.[104] Guderian noted that every day the war continued the Army and the SS became closer together.[104] Towards the end of the war, army units would even be placed under the command of the SS, in Italy and the Netherlands.[104] The relationship between the Wehrmacht and the SS improved; however, the Waffen-SS was never considered "the fourth branch of the Wehrmacht." [103]

German troops in the Soviet Union, October 1941

Major campaigns and battles in Eastern and Central Europe included:

• Czechoslovakian campaign (1938–1945)
• Invasion of Poland (Fall Weiss)
• Operation Barbarossa (1941), conducted by Army Group North, Army Group Centre, and Army Group South
• Battle of Moscow (1941)
• Battles of Rzhev (1942–1943)
• Battle of Stalingrad (1942–1943)
• Battle of the Caucasus (1942–1943)
• Battle of Kursk (Operation Citadel) (1943)
• Battle of Kiev (1943)
• Operation Bagration (1944)
• Nazi security warfare – largely carried out by security divisions of the Wehrmacht, Order Police and Waffen-SS units in the occupied territories behind Axis frontlines.

German soldiers in occupied Paris

• Phoney War (Sitzkrieg, September 1939 to May 1940) between the invasion of Poland and the Battle of France
• Operation Weserübung
  • German invasion of Denmark – 9 April 1940
  • The Norwegian Campaign – 9 April to 10 June 1940
• Fall Gelb
  • Battle of Belgium 10 to 28 May 1940
  • German invasion of Luxembourg 10 May 1940
  • Battle of the Netherlands – 10 to 17 May 1940
  • Battle of France – 10 May to 25 June 1940
• Battle of Britain (1940)
• Battle of the Atlantic (1939–1945)
• Battle of Normandy (1944)
• Allied invasion of southern France (1944)
• Ardennes Offensive (1944–1945)
• Defense of the Reich air-campaign, 1939 to 1945

German tanks during a counter-attack in North Africa, 1942

For a time, the Axis Mediterranean Theatre and the North African Campaign were conducted as a joint campaign with the Italian Army, and may be considered a separate theatre.

• Invasion of the Balkans and Greece (Operation Marita) (1940–1941)
• Battle of Crete (1941)
• The North African Campaign in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt between the UK and Commonwealth (and later, U.S.) forces and the Axis forces
• The Italian Theatre was a continuation of the Axis defeat in North Africa, and was a campaign for defence of Italy

Prior to the outbreak of war, Hitler informed senior Wehrmacht officers that actions "which would not be in the taste of German generals", would take place in occupied areas and ordered them that they "should not interfere in such matters but restrict themselves to their military duties".[115] Some Wehrmacht officers initially showed a strong dislike for the SS and objected to the army committing war crimes with the SS, though these objections were not against the idea of the atrocities themselves.[116] Later during the war, relations between the SS and Wehrmacht improved significantly.[117] The common soldier had no qualms with the SS, and often assisted them in rounding up civilians for executions.[118][119]

The Army's Chief of Staff General Franz Halder in a directive declared that in the event of guerrilla attacks, German troops were to impose "collective measures of force" by massacring entire villages.[120] Cooperation between the SS Einsatzgruppen and the Wehrmacht involved supplying the death squads with weapons, ammunition, equipment, transport, and even housing.[117] Partisan fighters, Jews, and Communists became synonymous enemies of the Nazi regime and were hunted down and exterminated by the Einsatzgruppen and Wehrmacht alike, something revealed in numerous field journal entries from German soldiers.[121] With the implementation of the Hunger Plan, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Soviet civilians were deliberately starved to death, as the Germans seized food for their armies and fodder for their draft horses.[122] According to Thomas Kühne: "an estimated 300,000–500,000 people were killed during the Wehrmacht's Nazi security warfare in the Soviet Union."[123]

While secretly listening to conversations of captured German generals, British officials became aware that the German Army had taken part in the atrocities and mass-murder of Jews and were guilty of war crimes.[124] American officials learned of the Wehrmacht's atrocities in much the same way. Taped conversations of soldiers detained as POWs revealed how some of them voluntarily participated in mass executions.[125]

Civilians executed by German paratroopers in Kondomari

German troops marching civilians to execution

During the war, the Wehrmacht committed numerous war crimes against the civilian population in occupied countries. This includes massacres of civilians and running forced brothels in occupied areas.

Massacres would in many cases come as reprisals for acts of resistance. With these reprisals, the Wehrmacht's response would vary in severity and method, depending on the scale of resistance and whether it was in East or West Europe.[126] Often, the number of hostages to be shot was calculated based on a ratio of 100 hostages executed for every German soldier killed and 50 hostages executed for every German soldier wounded.[127] Other times civilians would be rounded up and shot with machine guns.[128]

To combat German officials' fear of venereal disease and masturbation,[129] the Wehrmacht established numerous brothels throughout Nazi Germany and its occupied territories.[130] Women would often be kidnapped off the streets and forced to work in the brothels,[131] with an estimated minimum of 34,140 women being forced to serve as prostitutes.[132]

Sixteen blindfolded Partisan youth awaiting execution by German forces in Serbia, 20 August 1941

While the Wehrmacht's prisoner-of-war camps for inmates from the west generally satisfied the humanitarian requirement prescribed by international law,[133] prisoners from Poland and the USSR were incarcerated under significantly worse conditions. Between the launching of Operation Barbarossa in the summer of 1941 and the following spring, 2.8 million of the 3.2 million Soviet prisoners taken died while in German hands.[134]

Among German historians, the view that the Wehrmacht had participated in wartime atrocities, particularly on the Eastern Front, grew in the late 1970s and the 1980s.[135] In the 1990s, public conception in Germany was influenced by controversial reactions and debates about the exhibition of war crime issues.[136]

The Israeli historian Omer Bartov, a leading expert on the Wehrmacht[137] wrote in 2003 that the Wehrmacht was a willing instrument of genocide, and that it is untrue that the Wehrmacht was an apolitical, professional fighting force that had only a few "bad apples".[138] Bartov argues that far from being the "untarnished shield", as successive German apologists stated after the war, the Wehrmacht was a criminal organization.[139] Likewise, the historian Richard J. Evans, a leading expert on modern German history, wrote that the Wehrmacht was a genocidal organization.[113] The historian Ben H. Shepherd writes that "There is now clear agreement amongst historians that the German Wehrmacht ... identified strongly with National Socialism and embroiled itself in the criminality of the Third Reich."[140] British historian Ian Kershaw concludes that the Wehrmacht's duty was to ensure that the people who met Hitler's requirements of being part of the Aryan Herrenvolk ("Aryan master race") had living space. He wrote that:

The Nazi revolution was broader than just the Holocaust. Its second goal was to eliminate Slavs from central and eastern Europe and to create a Lebensraum for Aryans. ... As Bartov (The Eastern Front; Hitler's Army) shows, it barbarised the German armies on the eastern front. Most of their three million men, from generals to ordinary soldiers, helped exterminate captured Slav soldiers and civilians. This was sometimes cold and deliberate murder of individuals (as with Jews), sometimes generalised brutality and neglect. ... German soldiers' letters and memoirs reveal their terrible reasoning: Slavs were 'the Asiatic-Bolshevik' horde, an inferior but threatening race.[20]

Several high-ranking Wehrmacht officers, including Hermann Hoth, Georg von Küchler, Georg-Hans Reinhardt, Karl von Roques, Walter Warlimont and others, were convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the High Command Trial given sentences ranging from time served to life.[141]

Immediately following the end of the war, many were quick to dismiss the Wehrmacht due to its failures and claim allied superiority.[158] However, historians have since reevaluated the Wehrmacht in terms of fighting power and tactics, giving it a more favorable assessment, with some calling it one of the best in the world, [159] partly due to its ability to regularly inflict higher losses than it received, while it fought outnumbered and outgunned.[160]

Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld, who attempted to examine the military force of the Wehrmacht in a purely military context, concluded: "The German army was a superb fighting organization. In point of morale, elan, troop cohesion and resilience, it probably had no equal among twentieth century armies."[161] German historian Rolf-Dieter Müller comes to the following conclusion: "In the purely military sense [...] you can indeed say that the impression of a superior fighting force rightly exists. The proverbial efficiency was even greater than previously thought, because the superiority of the opponent was much higher than at that time German officers suspected. The analysis of Russian archive files finally gives us a clear picture in this regard."[162] Strategic thinker and professor Colin S. Gray believed that the Wehrmacht possessed outstanding tactical and operational capabilities. However, following a number of successful campaigns, German policy began to have victory disease, asking the Wehrmacht to do the impossible. The continued use of the Blitzkrieg also led to Soviets learning the tactic and using it against the Wehrmacht.[163]

Soon after the war ended, former Wehrmacht officers, veterans' groups and various far-right authors began to state that the Wehrmacht was an apolitical organization which was largely innocent of Nazi Germany's war crimes and crimes against humanity.[164] Attempting to benefit from the clean Wehrmacht myth, veterans of the Waffen-SS declared that the organisation had virtually been a branch of the Wehrmacht and therefore had fought as "honourably" as it. Its veterans organisation, HIAG, attempted to cultivate a myth of their soldiers having been "Soldiers like any other".[165]

Former Wehrmacht generals Adolf Heusinger and Hans Speidel being sworn into the newly founded Bundeswehr on 12 November 1955

Following the division of Germany, many former Wehrmacht and SS officers in West Germany feared a Soviet invasion of the country. To combat this, several prominent officers created a secret army, unknown to the general public and without mandate from the Allied Control Authority or the West German government.[166][167]

By the mid-1950s, tensions of the Cold War led to the creation of separate military forces in the Federal Republic of Germany and the socialist German Democratic Republic. The West German military, officially created on 5 May 1955, took the name Bundeswehr (lit. 'Federal Defence'). Its East German counterpart—created on 1 March 1956—took the name National People's Army (German: Nationale Volksarmee). Both organizations employed many former Wehrmacht members, particularly in their formative years,[168] though neither organization considered themselves successors to the Wehrmacht.[169][170][171] However, according to historian Hannes Heer "Germans still have a hard time, when it comes to openly dealing with their Nazi past", as such of the 50 military bases named after Wehrmacht soldiers, only 16 bases have changed names.[172]

Wehrmacht veterans in West Germany have received pensions through the War Victims' Assistance Act (German: Bundesversorgungsgesetz) from the government.[173][174] According to The Times of Israel, "The benefits come through the Federal Pension Act, which was passed in 1950 to support war victims, whether civilians or veterans of the Wehrmacht or Waffen-SS."[175]

• "How the Red Army Defeated Germany: The Three Alibis": Video on YouTube—lecture by Jonathan M. House of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, via the official channel of Dole Institute of Politics.
• "Fighting a Lost War: The German Army in 1943": Video on YouTube—lecture by Robert Citino, via the official channel of the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center.
• "Mindset of WWII German Soldiers": Video on YouTube—interview with the historian Sönke Neitzel discussing his book Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing and Dying, via the official channel of The Agenda, a programme of TVOntario, a Canadian public television station.
• "A Blind Eye and Dirty Hands: The Wehrmacht's Crimes" – lecture by the historian Geoffrey P. Megargee, via the YouTube channel of the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide