Reichswehr/Wehrmacht

The armed forces of the Wilhelmine Empire were replaced in 1919 with a ‘provisional Reichswehr’, which was officially established as the ‘Reichswehr’ on January 1, 1921. It was a professional army, with personnel, armaments and structure subject to the provisions set out in the Treaty of Versailles. The Reichswehr was divided into the 100,000-strong Reich Army and the Reich Navy. The Reich President was commander-in-chief of the Reichswehr. In peacetime, this command authority was delegated to theReich Defense Minister. The soldiers of the Reichswehr were sworn to uphold the Weimar Constitution, but the majority of the officer corps were narrowly conservative and anti-democratic in their outlook, while the enlisted men were mainly recruited from the rural population so as to prevent social democratic aspirations as far as possible.

In its early years in particular, the Reichswehr saw itself as a ‘state within the state’, i.e. it claimed internal autonomy for itself and refused to be subordinated to the political authorities of the republic. In the years following the First World War, the Reichswehr was occasionally deployed together with Free Corps formed from volunteers in order to suppress left-wing insurrectionary movements throughout the Reich. At the Kapp Putsch, Hans von Seeckt refused to deploy the Reichswehr against the putschists – von Seeckt was officially Director of the Troop Office but this position was in fact that of a General Staff Commander in disguise, the latter position having been banned under the Treaty of Versailles. Despite his actions, von Seeckt was promoted to Chief of the Army Command after the putsch.

When the commander of the Bavarian military district (VII), General Otto von Lossow, refused to enforce a ban order issued by the Reich against the Völkischer Beobachter in the course of the deep-rooted conflict between Bavaria and the Reich in the fall of 1923, he was deposed by von Seeckt. In return, the Bavarian government placed the Reichswehr forces stationed in the state under his control. Though privy to plans for the establishment of a dictatorship in Berlin, von Seeckt could not bring himself to take the step of deploying the Reichswehr to achieve this goal, nor did he want to have Reichswehr troops march into Bavaria – in contrast to the Reich interventions against the left-wing governments in Thuringia and Saxony.

After Seeckt’s dismissal in 1926, the Reichswehr leadership abandoned its policy of self-isolation and began to engage with the political authorities so as to ensure domestic policy backing for its secret rearmament program. Another key factor here was that cooperation with the right-wing militias was to be secured on a permanent basis: the Reichswehr wanted to be able to fall back on the latter in the event of mobilization, so it secretly supported the militias by providing training and handing out weapons. The leading political figure in the Reichswehr was Major General Kurt von Schleicher, who had been head of the ministerial office since 1929: he was vital in the transition to the right-wing cabinets supported by presidential decrees from 1930 onwards, strongly advocating the involvement of the SA in the rearmament of the Reichswehr. For this reason, he campaigned intensely for the lifting of the ban on the SA and SS issued by Chancellor Brüning in April 1932, thereby contributing significantly to the Chancellor’s downfall. Under Brüning’s successor, von Papen, von Schleicher became Reich Defense Minister and finally Chancellor in December 1932.

Hitler made it clear to the generals from the outset that he wanted to remove the Reichswehr from its role of ensuring domestic stability – which it had increasingly taken on under von Schleicher – and focus it purely on military tasks. Hitler presented his far-reaching plans for rearmament and conquest to the generals in a speech on February 3, 1933. When a conflict broke out between the Reichswehr and the SA over the future constitution of the armed forces in 1933, Hitler did not follow the militia concept of SA chief of staff Röhm but opted for the model of a conscript army with a professional core. This strategic decision was one of the main reasons for the disempowerment of the SA leadership in June 1934. In addition to numerous SA leaders, the two Reichswehr generals Kurt von Schleicher and Ferdinand von Bredow were shot in the course of the so-called ‘Röhm affair’, and this was accepted by the officer corps.

Immediately after the death of Reich President Paul von Hindenburg on August 2, 1934, Defense Minister Werner von Blomberg had the members of the Reichswehr swear a personal oath of allegiance to Hitler. The existence of a German air force, the Luftwaffe, was officially announced in March 1935 and general conscription was reintroduced the same month, with the armed forces being renamed ‘Wehrmacht’. Divided into the German army, the Luftwaffe and navy, the Wehrmacht was subordinate to the Reich Minister of War – a new title introduced in May 1935. In February 1938 Hitler dismissed both Minister of War von Blomberg and the Chief of the Army Command, Werner von Fritsch, and took over the minister’s duties himself. The former Wehrmacht Office became the Wehrmacht High Command (OKW).

The Wehrmacht pursued an unprecedented rearmament program from 1933 until the beginning of the war: in particular, the German army was increased from seven to 102 divisions (in preparation for war), and the new Luftwaffe achieved a tactical offense capability that was superior to that of the Western air forces in 1939. The Wehrmacht’s considerable military success in the initial years of the war can be accounted for above all by its ability to conduct modern mobile warfare based on armored formations and tactical air forces involving the rapid formation of focal points. The principles underlying the Wehrmacht were a pronounced, mission-oriented tactical approach and a very high level discipline and absolute obedience, enforced through a dedicated system of military justice system.

The Wehrmacht was the Nazi state’s most important instrument of power. The war of aggression it waged created the basis for the racist ‘reorganization’ of Europe as intended by the Nazi leadership. The institution, its leadership and the mass of soldiers were loyal to the system: even though the predominantly conservative officer corps maintained a certain distance from National Socialism itself, it can be assumed that the majority of officers fundamentally supported the idea of a war of conquest and the political objectives upon which this was based.

Given the way it organized and conducted its military operations, the Wehrmacht was guilty of numerous war crimes. These included the shooting of civilians on a large scale as so-called ‘reprisals’ and – in connection with anti-partisan operations – the treatment of Eastern European and especially Soviet POWs in a way that was in violation of international law, with the systematic neglect of the latter resulting in extraordinarily high mortality rates; meanwhile Jewish or ‘unacceptable’ POWs were handed over to the SS and murdered. In addition, Soviet political commissars were often shot immediately after capture based on the so-called ‘Commissar Order’. During its retreat in Eastern Europe, the Wehrmacht pursued a ‘scorched earth policy’ at the expense of the local population. The Wehrmacht was involved in the regime’s genocide of Jews, Sinti/Sintize and Roma/Romnja and other groups, not just through the direct and indirect support it provided for the SS and police, but also in the direct perpetration of these crimes by Wehrmacht soldiers themselves.

On the other hand, resistance to Hitler and his regime did begin to emerge within the officer corps from 1938 onwards. During the Sudeten crisis, Chief of the General Staff Ludwig Beck opposed Hitler’s plans to attack Czechoslovakia, as he feared that the Reich would not be able to withstand a resulting war with the Western powers. His successor Franz Halder shared these concerns and got in touch with a number of officers who were considering plans for a change of policy and the elimination of Hitler. This opposition group broke up after the Munich Agreement, however. The generals protested strongly against the atrocities committed by the SS in the war against Poland, but in view of the Wehrmacht’s ongoing success in the western European theater of war, no initiative to resist the regime emerged.

It was not until the war against the Soviet Union came to a standstill at the end of 1941 that resistance among military figures received a significant new impetus. A network of conspirators emerged who made several attempts to assassinate Hitler, even venturing to carry out a comprehensive coup d’état on July 20, 1944, though this was likewise failed. Nonetheless, despite the hopelessness of the military situation, the majority of Wehrmacht personnel continued to fight until the end of the war. Insurrections such as those carried out by ‘Freedom Action Bavaria’ (FAB) were an exception.

A total of some 17.3 million soldiers served in the Wehrmacht during the Second World War, though not all of them at the same time; the losses amounted to around 5.3 million