Barbarossa (4 page)

The two men had made their agreement in the secrecy of a wardroom
on the
Deutschland
steaming between Kiel and Königsberg
at the start of the spring manoeuvres of 1934. When these passed and
spring turned to early summer with no move by Hitler to fulfil his
part of the bargain, it was felt by many in the Army that the
impertinent little Chancellor (he had been in office less than a
year) was "unreliable." In June a political crisis, deeper
in shadow than substance, blew up, and "the unity of the Reich"
seemed to the military—or they professed it to seem—in
jeopardy.

Hitler's experience on this occasion can have done nothing to
temper his private resolve to subordinate the Army as soon and as
ruthlessly as was feasible. The nominal head of the executive, he was
sent for by Blomberg, who met him on the steps of the castle at
Neudeck. The War Minister was in full uniform, and immediately (while
remaining standing at a superior level to the Chancellor) delivered a
cold and formal speech ". . . If the Government of the Reich
could not of itself bring about a relaxation of the present state of
tension, the President would declare martial law and hand over the
control of affairs to the Army." Hitler was allowed exactly four
minutes with Hindenburg, who woodenly recited a summary of Blomberg's
caution while Blomberg remained standing at his side. Hitler was then
dismissed.

This was the last occasion on which the Army exercised real power
in the politics of the Third Reich. Within ten days the Nazis had
shown that they were its equal in merciless application of the rules,
and moreover, that they changed these rules to suit themselves as
their grip on the national policy tightened. After warning the High
Command that "civil action" was going to be taken against
"certain disruptive elements" and arranging that the
Reichswehr be placed in a state of general alert and confined to
barracks, Hitler struck out—placing his own catholic
interpretation upon the term "disruptive." To do the
killing Hitler used his personal bodyguard, the black-uniformed SS.
In 1934 there were only a few thousand of them, but surprise and the
passivity of the Army more than made up for their lack of numbers. It
was not from their own comrades in arms that the SA were expecting
trouble.

By the time the Army came to its senses "order" was
restored and the blood was being swabbed out of the execution
cellars. The SA had gone, but so had nearly every figure of
distinction, be he right, liberal, or even as Schleicher and Bredow
of the
Generalstab
, who had opposed the rise of the Nazi
Party.

[Colonel General Kurt von Schleicher, a "political"
soldier who held office as Minister of Defence in the twenties and as
Chancellor in 1932. Advised Hindenburg against dealing with Hitler.

Major General Kurt von Bredow; succeeded Schleicher as War
Minister 1932; of similar political views.]

From that day on it was plain that whosoever opposed Hitler risked
not simply his career but his life; and the instrument of execution,
the SS, had emerged, by the very terms of its confinement to "police"
duties, as the true arbiter of internal security.

For a few weeks, as the scope of the purge and the threat to its
own position became apparent, the Army hesitated over what action it
should take. Its discontent, diverted by the death of the aged
Marshal Hindenburg, rumbled on into the following year, and then
Hitler had opened the toy cupboard.

The declaration of general rearmament and military conscription
gave every professional soldier so much work and such glittering
prospects as to effectively smother any desire he may have felt to
dabble in politics. In any case, to what purpose would such dabbling
be directed? The Army seemed to have achieved its every goal. Its
"hegemony in military affairs" had been bloodily asserted,
and all limits on its own development had been torn down. Blomberg
spoke for all in his speech at the German Heroes Remembrance Day
celebrations on 17th March, 1935:

"It was the Army, removed from political conflict, which laid
the foundations on which a God-sent architect could build. Then this
man came, the man who with his strength of will and spiritual power
prepared for our discussions the end that they deserved, and made all
good where a whole generation had failed."

But if Blomberg had forgotten the interview at Neudeck, Hitler had
not. Nor had the Führer (as he now was) accepted the
supercilious posturing of the then Commander in Chief, Fritsch, and
his obstructive attitude to the SS; or the flagrant manner in which
Fritsch harboured political suspects within the ranks of the Army.
Both these men were marked for removal, and while their files at
Gestapo headquarters accumulated detail and Himmler's web was spun,
Hitler employed a number of psychological—indeed,
totemic—devices to bind the Army to him more closely. It is in
the history of this second period of Hitler's subjugation of the Army
that the seeds of those unseemly and at times catastrophic disputes
which were to plague the conduct of the Eastern campaign were sown.

One of the "concessions" Hitler had extracted from
Blomberg at the time of the Deutschland Compact was the introduction
of the Nazi emblem into the make-up of every soldier's uniform. From
that time on the traditional German eagle held within its claws a
tiny swastika, and soon the sign began to appear in larger scale—on
regimental colours, in flags, over the entry arches to barracks,
stencilled on the turrets of armoured vehicles. Regardless of the
political detachment of the senior officers, this measure served to
identify the ordinary soldier with the Nazi Party in the minds of the
people and in their own consciences. This identity was reinforced by
the terms of the fealty oath—sworn by every member of the armed
forces in August 1934, which superseded the old form of oath sworn to
the constitution under the Republic.

I swear before God to give my unconditional obedience to Adolf
Hitler, Führer of the Reich and of the German people, Supreme
Commander of the Wehrmacht, and I pledge my word as a brave soldier
to observe this oath always, even at peril of my life.

In 1937, Fortune gave Hitler the opportunity to rid himself of
Blomberg, at the very moment Himmler's "frame" around
Fritsch was complete. In one headlong rush of brilliant exploitation
Hitler brought the Army, stunned and breathless, to heel.

The War Minister had proposed the luxury of taking to himself
en
deuxième noce
a notorious prostitute. This indiscretion,
though committed in all innocence, could not be tolerated by the
doctrinaire standards of the officer corps. Hitler thus found himself
in the impregnable position of being able to dismiss the Army's
nominee while claiming that he was prompted solely by a consideration
of its interest. Into this atmosphere of sexual scandal the Gestapo
hastily flung its file on the Commander in Chief, accusing him of
unnatural vice with a notorious Bavarian convict.

Poor Fritsch! He had no idea how to combat these charges, of which
he was completely innocent, save the conventional resort of his
caste: he challenged Himmler to a duel. In the subterranean jungle of
Nazi politics such a gesture had as little effect as a peacock
spreading his tail feathers at a python. Hitler pressed his advantage
ruthlessly. Sixteen senior generals were dismissed (among them
Rundstedt, who had been injudicious enough as to suggest Fritsch as
Blomberg's successor during the brief interval between the
resignation of one and the charge against the other) and another
forty-four were transferred from their commands.

[Field Marshal Karl Rudolf Gerd von Rundstedt, "the Field
Marshal who never lost a battle (until Normandy 1944)."
Commanded Army Group South in Russia 1941. Dismissed after ordering
the evacuation of Rostov.]

But harassing and humiliating as these moves were, they were
slight beside the formal administrative changes which were
promulgated at the same time. By decree of 4th February, 1938, the
three service ministries—of which that of the Army was
naturally the senior—were unified and subordinated to a single
commander, Hitler himself.

From henceforth I exercise personally the immediate command
over the whole armed forces. The former Wehrmacht office in the War
Ministry becomes the High Command of the Armed Forces [OKW] and comes
immediately under my command as my military staff. At the head of the
staff of the High Command stands the former chief of the Wehrmacht
office [Keitel]. He is accorded the rank equivalent of Reich
Minister. The High Command of the Armed Forces also takes over the
functions of the War Ministry, and the Chief of the High Command
exercises, as my deputy, the powers hitherto held by the Reich War
Minister.

The creation of OKW and the consequent subordination of the Army
to a small executive that came, as has been seen, increasingly under
the Fuhrer's technical control as well as subject to his personal
influence was a political device, and as is so often the case with
measures that are expedient from the aspect of domestic politics, it
ran counter to the strict requirements of military efficiency.

It was the final blow in the struggle between the civil power (if
the Nazi Party may be so described) and the Army. It meant that the
Generalstab
, which had already lost the broader power of
judgment over the "best interests of the Reich" and of
intervention in its domestic politics, was now deprived of its
historic and fundamental prerogative—the decision as to when,
and how, to make war. OKH was reduced in status to a department,
specialising in army affairs and subordinate to a staff composed of
men who were themselves the nominees of, and directly responsible to,
the Führer. The result was that the orthodox procedure whereby
strategic doctrine was evolved no longer functioned. In the place of
study and consultation between experts there were the Führer
conferences—little better than audiences at which Hitler, after
listening with more or less good grace to "reports,"
hectored the assembled company with his mind already made up—and
the Führer directives, documentary orders concerning which no
dispute, query, or emendation was permitted.

[The clearest description of the way the directives originated has
been given by Professor Trevor-Roper in his introduction to their
English translation (London 1964); although this, of course, refers
to procedure in wartime:

"Every day, at noon, Hitler held his
Lagevortrag
or
'situation conference,' at which Jodl [the Chief of Staff] submitted
a report which had been prepared for him by Warlimont [Deputy Chief
of Staff at OKW]. Hitler would listen, discuss the situation, and
then, after it had been fully debated, issue his orders. These
orders, together with a full account of the discussion, were then
passed by Jodl to Warlimont to be converted into formal documents and
issued to the appropriate authorities."

It is true that the Commander in Chief, Brauchitsch, did have
access to Hitler. He and, on occasion, individual army commanders,
were summoned to Führer headquarters. But as Professor
Trevor-Roper points out, ". . . their visits were not regular,
and they could not compete with the constant presence of the regular
courtiers. Besides, Hitler preferred to deal with them through Keitel
and Jodl. He disliked new faces. He liked Keitel and Jodl, who
gradually sank into the position of mere orderlies . . . and Keitel
and Jodl liked the monopoly of power which their industry and
subservience ensured to them. Consequently both Keitel and Jodl,
while they became increasingly indispensable to Hitler, became
increasingly odious to the generals in the OKH and in the field."

After the dismissal of Halder, in September 1942, the proceedings
of these conferences were recorded verbatim by a body of
stenographers, and the surviving fragments of their records are
exceedingly valuable source material. (See, in particular, Chs. 15
and 18.)]

In this way the immense fund of technical expertise of which the
Generalstab
was the repository was canalised into tactical and
substrategic planning. The broad outlines of war policy, the
coordination of theatres, even the evolution of new weapons and the
assessment of priorities in supply were settled without reference to
its opinion. There was no permanent consultative body of experts
preparing appreciations and alternatives, no equivalent to the Chiefs
of Staff Committee or the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the West.

And, indeed, once the war began, policy in the military sense can
hardly be said to have existed outside Goering's comment,
"Wenn
wir diesen Krieg verlieren, dann möge uns der Himmel gnädig
sein"
(If we lose this war, then God help us).

[When the English ultimatum of 3rd September, 1939, was delivered
(Schmidt, Paul,
Statist auf diplomatischer Buehne, 1923-1945.
Bonn 1945).]

War aims, together with the detail and timing of their
achievement, were decided by Hitler. Such discussion as took place
was usually confined to the Führer's immediate entourage of
Party cronies, Himmler and Bormann, Hess and Goering; men who could
keep the same nocturnal hours and talk the same language of racialism
and "destiny." Of these it was Goering to whom Hitler
listened most often. But even Goering attained no more than a
negative influence—preferential treatment for the Luftwaffe,
and in later stages of the war his influence declined and he saw
Hitler less and less often.

There is no evidence that Hitler ever changed his mind on
questions of strategy either at the persuasion of his intimates in
the Party or the senior officers of the Army. He carried on his own
back the responsibility for every decision of importance and
formulated in his own mind the development of his strategic ambition
in its entirety.