Nazism and the Wehrmacht
[5] In October 1918, in order to avoid responsibility for losing the First World War, the military returned power to the civilians and transformed Germany into a democracy, largely because the Allies made it clear that they would never sign an armistice with the Hindenburg-Ludendorff duumvirate.
[6] After the November Revolution of 1918, there were demands for the dissolution of the military that had led to such a defeat, but on December 23, 1918, the Provisional government under Friedrich Ebert came under attack from the radical left-wing "People's Marine Division".
Right from the onset, Seeckt made it clear that he expected to see another world war based on the French political atmosphere concerning German failure to meet the Treaty of Versailles restitution payments.
[19] The military took advantage of the opening created by Gessler's resignation to convince President Paul von Hindenburg to impose General Wilhelm Gröner as the new Defence minister.
[33] The Reichswehr leadership also pressured Hitler to act against the SA by threatening to block his plans for merging the offices of the Chancellorship and the Presidency after the soon to be expected death of the gravely ill Hindenburg.
[37] As part and parcel of the process of "self-Gleichschaltung", the Defence Minister Werner von Blomberg in February 1934, acting on his own initiative, had all of the Jews serving in the Reichswehr given an automatic and immediate dishonorable discharge.
Men such as Beck and Guderian, Manstein and Rommel, Doenitz and Kesselring, Milch and Udet cannot be described as mere soldiers strictly devoted to their profession, rearmament and the autonomy of the military establishment while remaining indifferent to and detached from Nazi rule and ideology.
However, as the successor to a conventionally oriented imperial army of the German Empire, the Wehrmacht tended to fight more effectively than the Waffen-SS, as, within the SS, adherence to Nazism mattered more for advancement.
On May 19, 1941, the OKW issued the "Guidelines for the Conduct of the Troops in Russia", which began by declaring that "Judeo-Bolshevism" to be the most deadly enemy of the German nation and that "It is against this destructive ideology and its adherents that Germany is waging war".
[53] Reflecting the influence of the guidelines, in a directive sent out to the troops under his command, General Erich Hoepner of the Panzer Group 4 proclaimed: The war against Russia is an important chapter in the German nation's struggle for existence.
[54] Very typical of the German Army propaganda as part of the preparations for Barbarossa was the following passage from a pamphlet issued in June 1941: Anyone who has ever looked into the face of a Red commissar knows what the Bolsheviks are.
[57] Reinforcing the work of the junior leaders were the National Socialist Leadership Guidance Officers, which were created with the purpose of indoctrinating the troops for the "war of extermination" against Soviet Russia.
According to Fritz, it was not simply rhetoric – the officer corp began to become the least snobbish in German history, opening up positions based on talent and had a general sympathy to the volksgemeinschaft; Hitler spoke proudly of this process.
The Nazi "pursuit of happiness" thus immunised both the military and German society at large from a repeat of 1918 and while incapable of delaying the defeat of the regime, ensured many soldiers held out far longer than they may otherwise have.
[71] The American historian Gerhard Weinberg wrote about the July 20 putsch and the military: "As both sides sent their orders over the teleprinters in Germany's last 'election' as a united country until 1990, most generals chose to support the Hitler regime and to reinforce rather than arrest the police.
[citation needed] Stephen Fritz explains that the putsch was seen by soldiers at the front as the treacherous actions of an unrepresentative aristocratic clique and that by that point in the war, the Wehrmacht had become essentially "Nazified.
In August 1917, there had been a mutiny in the High Seas Fleet, which after it was crushed, saw the execution of its leaders' Max Reichpietsch and Albin Köbis with the rest of the mutineers given long prison sentences.
[78] The exception towards the otherwise ferocious application of military justice was the widespread tolerance of war crimes against civilians and POWs, especially in Eastern Europe, provided that such actions took place in a "disciplined" and "orderly" way.
A major latter-day debate about German military justice has been the demand by families of Wehrmacht men executed for desertion that they should be recognized as part of the resistance to Hitler under the grounds that by refusing to fight for the Nazi regime, they were also opposing it.
"[78]In order to ensure the absolute loyalty of the Wehrmacht officers, Hitler had created what the American historian Gerhard Weinberg called a "...a vast secret program of bribery involving practically all at the highest levels of command".
[87] Hitler routinely presented his leading commanders with "gifts" of free estates, cars, cheques made out for large sums of cash and lifetime exemptions from paying taxes.
[90] The basis of the corruption system were regular monthly tax-free payments of 4,000 Reichsmark for field marshals and grand admirals and 2,000 RM for all other senior officers, which came from a special fund called Konto 5 run by the chief of the Reich Chancellery Hans Lammers.
[96] Every officer who started to receive the money always had a meeting first with Lammers, who informed them that the future payments would depend on how much loyalty they were willing to show Hitler, and what the Führer gave with one hand, could just as easily be taken away with the other.
[98] In the same way, after the failure of the July 20 putsch of 1944, the families of Erwin Rommel, Franz Halder, Friedrich Fromm and Günther von Kluge were punished by being cut off from the monthly payments from Konto 5.
[101] Goda used Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb as an all-too-typical example of a Wehrmacht officer whose greed overwhelmed any moral revulsion that they might have felt about the "Final Solution".
[106] At his trial in 1948, General Franz Halder perjured himself when he denied that he had taken bribes, and then had to maintain a stern silence when the American prosecutor James M. McHaney produced bank records showing otherwise.
[112] Both Heinrich Lonicier, the Lutheran bishop of Breslau (modern Wrocław, Poland) who was also a senior Army chaplain, a leading German Christian and NSDAP member and the equally ardent German Christian and NSDAP member Friedrich Ronneberger, the Navy's chief Protestant chaplain had ambitions to become the Reich bishop of the Lutheran church, and saw the military as a basis for achieving their ambitions.
[113] Lonicier, in particular, enjoyed the open backing of his close friends Joseph Goebbels and Walter von Brauchitsch in his attempts to depose the Lutheran Reich bishop Ludwig Müller.
In August 1941, when the commander of the 6th Army, General Walter von Reichenau ordered his men to assist the Einsatzgruppen and its Ukrainian auxiliaries with shooting the Jewish children at an orphanage in Belaya Tserkov who had been rendered orphans after their parents had been shot in the preceding days, the Protestant and Catholic chaplains, namely Pastor Wilczek and Father Ernst Tewes attached to 295th Infantry Division made strenuous efforts first to save the children, and when that failed, to protest the massacre.
[123] Betrayed when one of the soldiers they had recruited to the "Wednesday Circle" denounced them, Fathers Herbert Simoleit [de] and Friedrich Lorenz were convicted by a court-martial for high treason and executed in November 1944.
