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'Wehrmacht' ("armed forces", literally "defence power") was the name of the unified armed forces of Germany from 1935 to 1945. The ''Wehrmacht'' consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The ''Waffen-SS'', an initially small paramilitary section of Heinrich Himmler's Allgemeine SS that grew to nearly a million strong during World War II, was not part of the Wehrmacht, but subject to its Supreme Command.

Contents

Origin and use of the terms

History

Numbers

Command structure

War years

Army

Air Force

Navy

Theaters and campaigns

War crimes

Politics of the Wehrmacht

Resistance to the Nazi regime

Prominent members

After World War II

See also

References

External links

Origin and use of the terms

Before the rise of the NSDAP, the term ''Wehrmacht'' was used in a generic sense to describe armed forces of any nation, being utilized as the "home defense" version of the more general ''Streitmacht''. For example, the term ''Britische Wehrmacht'' would identify the British armed forces. Article 47 of the Weimar Constitution of 1919 declared "Der Reichspräsident hat den Oberbefehl über die gesamte Wehrmacht des Reiches" (meaning: "The ''Reichspräsident'' holds supreme command of all armed forces of the ''Reich''"). To make a distinction, the term ''Reichswehr'' was commonly used to identify the German armed forces.
In 1935, the ''Reichswehr'' was renamed ''Wehrmacht''. After World War II and under the Allied occupation of Germany, the ''Wehrmacht'' was abolished. When West Germany remilitarized in 1955, its newly-created armed forces became known as the ''Bundeswehr'' ("Federal Defence Force"). East Germany's armed forces, formally established in 1956, were known as the National People's Army (''Nationale Volksarmee''). When East Germany (the German Democratic Republic) was incorporated into "West Germany" (the Federal Republic of Germany) in 1990, much of the ''Volksarmee'' property and some of the staff were also incorporated into the ''Bundeswehr''.
Hence the term ''Wehrmacht'' customarily refers to Germany's armed forces during the Nazi Germany era and World War II, both in German and English. Note: It is incorrect to equate ''Wehrmacht'' with only the army (Wehrmacht Heer). Wehrmacht vehicles used by Heer, Luftwaffe or Kriegsmarine had license plates with WH, WL or WM.

History

After World War I ended with the armistice of 11 November 1918, the armed forces were dubbed ''Friedensheer'' (peace army) in January 1919. In March 1919, the national assemby passed a law founding a 420,000 strong preliminary army as ''Vorläufige Reichswehr''. The terms of the Treaty of Versailles were announced in May, and in June Germany was forced to sign the contract which, 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.
Germany immediately began covertly 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 the Soviet Union with industrialisation 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. Around three hundred German pilots received training at Lipetsk, some tank training took place near Kazan and toxic gas was developed at Saratov for the German army.
After the death of President Paul von Hindenburg on 2 August 1934, Hitler assumed the office of Reichspräsident, and thus became commander in chief. All officers and soldiers of the German armed forces had to swear a personal oath of loyalty to the ''Führer'', as Adolf Hitler now was called. By 1935, Germany was openly flouting the military restrictions set forth in the Versailles Treaty, and conscription was reintroduced on 16 March 1935. While the size of the standing army was to remain at about the 100,000-man mark decreed by the treaty, a new group of conscripts equal to this size 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 swore the same personal oath of loyalty to Hitler). The insignia was a simpler version of the Iron Cross (the straight-armed so-called ''Balkenkreuz'' or beamed cross) that had been used as an aircraft and tank marking in late World War I. The existence of the Wehrmacht was officially announced on October 15 1935.

Numbers

The total number of soldiers who served in the Wehrmacht during its existence from 1935 until 1945 is believed to approach 18.2 million. This figure was put forward by historian Rüdiger Overmans and represents the total number of people who ever served in the Wehrmacht, and ''not'' the force strength of the Wehrmacht at any point. About 2.3 million Wehrmacht soldiers were killed in action; 550,000 died from non-combat causes; missing in action and unaccounted for after the war 2.0 million; and 459,000 POW deaths, of whom 77,000 were in the custody of the U.S., UK, and France; POW dead includes 266,000 in the post war period after June 1945, primarily in Soviet captivity.

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. In the reshuffle in 1938, Hitler became the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces and retained that position until his suicide on 30 April 1945. Administration and military authority initially lay with the war ministry under ''Generalfeldmarschall'' 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 ''Generalfeldmarschall'' Wilhelm Keitel was put in its place. It was headquartered in Wünsdorf near Zossen, and a field echelon (''Feldstaffel'') was stationed wherever the Führer's headquarters were situated at a given time. Army work was also coordinated by the German General Staff, an institution that been developing for more than a century and which had sought to institutionalize military excellence.
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' — the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces
::Chief of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces - Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel (1938 to 1945)
:: Chief of the Operations Staff (''Wehrmachtführungsstab'') - Colonel-General Alfred Jodl

★ 'OKH' — the Supreme Command of the Army
: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)
:: Chief of Staff of the German Army - General Ludwig Beck (1935 to 1938); General Franz Halder (1938 to 1942); General Kurt Zeitzler (1942 to 1944); General Oberst Heinz Guderian (1944 to 1945) General Hans Krebs (1945, committed suicide in the Führer Bunker)

★ 'OKM' — the Supreme Command of the Navy
:Navy Commanders-in-Chief
::Grand Admiral Erich Raeder (1928 to 1943)
::Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz (1943 to 1945)
::General Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg (1945)

★ 'OKL' - the Supreme Command of the Air Force
:Air Force Commanders-in-Chief
::Reich Marshal Hermann Göring (until 1945)
::General Field Marshal Robert Ritter von Greim (1945)
The OKW was also tasked with central economic planning and procurement, but the authority and influence of the OKW's war economy office (''Wehrwirtschaftsamt'') was challenged by the procurement offices (''Waffenämter'') of the single branches of service as well as by the Ministry for Armament and Munitions (''Reichsministerium für Bewaffnung und Munition''), into which it was merged after the ministry was taken over by Albert Speer in early 1942.

War years

Army

Main articles: Wehrmacht Heer

The German Army furthered concepts pioneered during the First World War, combining ground (Heer) and Air Force (Luftwaffe) assets into combined arms teams. Coupled with traditional war fighting methods such as encirclements and the "battle of annihilation", the German military managed many lightning quick victories in the first year of the Second World War, prompting foreign journalists to create a new word for what they witnessed: Blitzkrieg.
The Wehrmacht entered the war with a minority of its formations motorized; infantry remained approximately 90% foot-borne throughout the war, and artillery 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 German invasions of Poland (September 1939), Norway (April 1940), Denmark, Belgium, France and Netherlands (May 1940), Yugoslavia (April 1941) and the early campaigns in the Soviet Union (June 1941).
With the entry of the United States in December 1941, the Wehrmacht found itself engaged in ground campaigns against two major industrial powers. At this critical juncture, Hitler assumed personal control of the Wehrmacht high command, and his personal failings as a military commander arguably contributed to major defeats in early 1943, at Stalingrad and Tunis in North Africa.

The Wehrmacht's military strength was managed through mission-based tactics (rather than order-based tactics) and an almost proverbial discipline. In public opinion, the Wehrmacht was and is sometimes seen as a high-tech army, since new technologies were introduced during World War II, including the reprisal weapons, the Messerschmitt Me 163 rocket interceptor, the Me 262 jet fighter, and midget submarines. These technologies were featured by propaganda, but were often only available in small numbers or late in the war, as overall supplies of raw materials and armaments became low. For example only forty percent of all units were motorised, baggage trains often relied on horses and many soldiers went by foot or used bicycles ().
Max Hastings, respected British author, historian and ex-newspaper editor, said in a radio interview on WGN Chicago "...there's no doubt that man for man, the German army was the greatest fighting force of the second world war". This view was also explained in his book "Overlord: D-Day and the battle for Normandy". In the book ''World War II : An Illustrated Miscellany'', Anthony Evans writes: 'The German soldier was very professional and well trained, aggressive in attack and stubborn in defence. He was always adaptable, particularly in the later years when shortages of equipment were being felt'. These views of the Wehrmacht are an attempt to evaluate their fighting abilities and not trying to excuse or justify some of the aims or actions of the Nazi regime.
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 or as Hilfswilliger. 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.

Air Force

Main articles: History of the Luftwaffe during World War II

The German Air Force, led by Hermann Göring, contributed many units of ground forces to the war in Russia as well as the Normandy front. In 1940, the Fallschirmjäger paratroops conquered the Belgian Fort Eben-Emael and took part in the airborne invasion of Norway, but after suffering heavy losses in the Battle of Crete, large scale airdrops were discontinued. Operating as ordinary infantry, the 1st Fallschirmjäger Division took part in the Battle of Monte Cassino.
The Luftwaffe Field Divisions were eventually considered by historians to be a drain on manpower and resources that would have been better used in Army formations, and are used as an example of how poorly co-ordinated the three branches of the Wehrmacht were. This was partly due to the rivalry between the branches in general, but mainly due to Göring's ambitions. The Luftwaffe, being in charge of Germany's Anti-aircraft warfare, also used thousands of teenage Luftwaffenhelfer to support the FlaK units.

Navy

Main articles: Kriegsmarine

The German Navy (Kriegsmarine) played a major role in the Second World War as control over the commerce routes in the Atlantic was crucial for Germany, Britain and later the Soviet Union. In the Battle of the Atlantic, the initially successful German U-boat fleet arm was eventually defeated due to Allied technological advances like sonar, radar, and the breaking of the Enigma code. 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. No aircraft carrier was operational as German leadership lost interest in the Graf Zeppelin which had been launched in 1938. Following the loss of Bismarck in 1941, with Allied air superiority threatening the remaining battlecruisers in French Atlantic harbours, the ships were ordered to make the Channel Dash back to German ports. Operating from fjords of Norway, which had been occupied in 1940, convoys from the USA to the Soviet port of Murmansk could be intercepted even though the Tirpitz spend most of her career as Fleet in being.

Theaters and campaigns

Most land battles that the Wehrmacht fought were in the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front.
But the Wehrmacht had to fight on simultaneously at all fronts, sometimes surpassing three at once, that stretched its fighting power thin and had an effect, to varying degrees, on Wehrmacht's ability to successfully accomplish the campaigns of conquest that were entrusted to them.
The only strategic air battles that the Luftwaffe proved capable of winning were in 1939 and 1940; the air force was unable to defeat the Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain and Allied air forces enjoyed aerial superiority on all fronts by the summer of 1944. Although, in respect to the Battle of Britain, had the Luftwaffe continued toward its early goal of bombing RAF airfields and fighting a war of attrition against Britain's air force, it is likely they would have been victorious. However, in response to a string of events beginning with a small scale air raid on Berlin by British bombers, Hitler ordered the German bomber formations to attack English cities. These reprisal attacks allowed the weight of the Luftwaffe to be shifted away from the RAF and onto British civilians, and, thusly, allowed the RAF to rebuild and, within a few short months, turn the tide against Germany in the skies above England.
The Battle of the Atlantic saw greater German successes early on, and Winston Churchill confided after the war that the only real threat he felt to Britain's survival was the "U-Boat peril."


★ Battle of Poland (''Fall Weiss'') -The joint invasion and division of Poland between the U.S.S.R and Germany. Western Poland going to the latter, and eastern Poland to the former.

★ Phony War (''Sitzkrieg'')

★ Scandinavian Campaigns

★
★ The invasions of Denmark and Norway (''Operation Weserübung''), followed by the Norwegian campaign

★ Battle of France (''Fall Gelb'') The defeat of the French and British forces on Continental Europe.

★ The Battle for the Lowlands (Belgium, the Netherlands, etc)

★ Balkans and Greece (''Operation Marita'')

★ North African Campaign (Libya, Morocco and Egypt. Desert fighting between mainly the U.K. and the German/Italian forces in North Africa).

★ Eastern Front (''initially Operation Barbarossa'') The vast majority of land based fighting and casualties occurred here.

★ The Italian Theatre (1943-45)

★ Western Front (WWII) In 1940 against French and British forces as well as the low countries, and then again in 1944 – 1945 against the Western Allied forces led by the U.S.A. and the U.K.

★ Anti-Partisan operations against guerrilla units on the Eastern Front and then a switch, during last few months of WWII, to Guerrilla Operations by German Units behind Allied lines. This even lasted years after the war ended.

War crimes

Main articles: War crimes of the Wehrmacht

The Wehrmacht was widely employed as a tool of state policy in the Second World War, being used for both military and political objectives. The Wehrmacht was found to be complicit in the Holocaust, most notably the Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht Heer.
The Wehrmacht ordered and participated in numerous war crimes during World War II — massacres of civilians, executions of POWs, summary executions of Soviet political officers as sanctioned by the Commissar Order, and executions of prisoners of war and civilian hostages as punishment for partisan activities in occupied territories. Though the massive exterminations associated with the Holocaust were primarily committed by the SS and the ''Einsatzgruppen'', the Wehrmacht was also involved, as Wehrmacht officers and soldiers freely cooperated with the ''Einsatzgruppen'' in many locations rounding up Jews and others for internment or execution.
As the extent of the Holocaust became widely known by the end of the war, many former members of the Wehrmacht promoted the view that it was "unblemished" by the crimes allegedly committed exclusively by the SS and the political police forces, which both were not part of the Wehrmacht. Though it convicted OKW chief Wilhelm Keitel and chief of operations Alfred Jodl for war crimes, the Nuremberg tribunal did not declare the Wehrmacht to be a criminal organization, as it did with party organizations such as the SS. This was seen by many Germans as an exoneration of the Wehrmacht. Among German historians, the deep involvement of the Wehrmacht in war crimes, particularly on the Eastern Front, became widely accepted in the late 1970s and the 1980s. Public awareness in Germany has been lagging behind - as exemplified by controversial and often emotionally charged reactions to an exhibition on these issues in the mid-1990s [1] Polish historians also want the German public to become more aware of the Wehrmacht's atrocities regarding the Polish September Campaign[2]. In 2007 a book has been published which contains
research regarding secretly recorded conversations of captured German generals and other senior officers, all without their knowledge or even suspicion. The 64,427 conversations have been recorded by British secret service in POW camps. Most of the officers, up to High Command knew about Holocaust and atrocities against Russians, Poles, Gypsies and others targeted by Nazi Germany[3], in the opinon of reviewers, the research finally dispels the myth of lack of knowledge among Wehrmacht regarding genocide made by Germany in WW2.

Politics of the Wehrmacht

Due to the constitution of Weimar Republic any soldier of the Reichswehr was neither allowed to become a member of a political party nor to vote in an election because there was a strict separation between politics and the armed forces. The same applied later to the Wehrmacht. Most of its leadership was politically conservative and therefore not in favour of a Nazi revolution conducted by “uneducated proletarians". But after Adolf Hitler gained power he had promised to rebuild Germany's military strength and thus some officers became 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. When Hitler appointed unqualified personnel such as Heinrich Himmler to lead his armies failure ensued. He also gave to his commanders impossible orders, such as to shoot all officers and enlisted men who retreated from a front line.

Resistance to the Nazi regime

Main articles: German Resistance

From all groups of German Resistance those within the Wehrmacht were the most feared by the Nazis. There were several attempts by members of the Wehrmacht like Henning von Tresckow or Erich Hoepner to assassinate Hitler as an ignition of a coup d'état. Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff and Axel Freiherr von dem Bussche-Streithorst even tried to do so by suicide bombing. Those and many other officers in the Wehrmacht such as Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and Wilhelm Canaris strictly declined the atrocities of the Hitler regime ^{[citation needed]}. Combined with Hitler's problematic if not senseless military leadership, this also culminated in the famous July 20 plot (1944), when a group of Wehrmacht officers led by von Stauffenberg tried again to kill Hitler and overthrow his regime. Following this attempt every officer of the Wehrmacht who approached Hitler was searched from head to foot by his SS guards. As a special degradation all German military personel were ordered to replace the standard military salute with the Hitler salute from this date on. To which extent the German military forces were in opposition to the Hitler regime or supported it is nevertheless highly disputed amongst historians up to our days.

Prominent members

Prominent German officers from the Wehrmacht era include:

★ Ludwig Beck

★ Fedor von Bock

★ Walther von Brauchitsch

★ Heinz Guderian

★ Franz Halder

★ Hermann Hoth

★ Ewald von Kleist

★ Albert Kesselring

★ Hans Günther von Kluge

★ Erich von Manstein

★ Friedrich Olbricht

★ Friedrich Paulus

★ Erwin Rommel

★ Hans-Jürgen von Arnim

★ Gerd von Rundstedt

★ Claus von Stauffenberg

★ Erwin von Witzleben

After World War II

Following the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht which went into effect on 8 May 1945, some Wehrmacht units remained active, either independently (e.g. in Norway), or under Allied command as police forces.^[1] By the end of August 1945, these units had been dissolved, and a year later on 20 August 1946, the Allied Control Council declared the Wehrmacht as officially abolished (Kontrollratsgesetz No. 34). While Germany was forbidden to have an army, Allied forces took advantage of the knowledge of Wehrmacht members like Reinhard Gehlen.
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 socialist 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''). Both organizations employed many former Wehrmacht members, particularly in their formative years.

See also

★ Bundeswehr

★ Reichswehr

★ Armenian Legion

★ Military of Germany

★ German General Staff (Großer Generalstab), literally Great General Staff which was an institution whose rise and development gave the German military a decided advantage over its adversaries. The Staff amounted to its best "weapon" for nearly two centuries.

★ Waffen-SS

★ History of Germany during World War II

★ Third Reich

★ German Resistance

★ World War II

★ Afrika Korps

★ Panzer Army Africa

References

★ Max Hastings, ''Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy 1944'', 1985, reissued 1999, Pan, ISBN 0-330-39012-0

★ Max Hastings, ''Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1945'', 2004, Macmillan, ISBN 0-333-90836-8

★ Anthony A Evans, ''World War II: An Illustrated Miscellany'', 2005, Worth Press, ISBN 1-84567-681-5

★ Geoffrey P. Megargee, "War of Annihilation. Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941", 2006, Rowman & Littelefield, ISBN 0-7425-4481

★ W.J.K. Davies, ''German Army Handbook'', 1973, Ian Allen Ltd., Shepperton, Surrey, ISBN 0-7110-0290-8

★ Fest, Joachim; Plotting Hitler's Death -- The Story of the German Resistance, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1996. ISBN 0-8050-4213-X

External links

★ Extensive history and information about German armed forces from 1919 to 1945

★ The Wehrmacht, the Holocaust, and War Crimes

★ The Wehrmacht: A Criminal Organization? A review of Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann work on the subject

★ Examples of, and information about, camouflage uniforms used by the Wehrmacht Heer, Wehrmacht Luftwaffe and Waffen-SS during the Second World War

★ Archives of the German military manuals including secret manuals of Enigma and Cryptography

★ ''Deutsche Welle'' article about Wehrmacht veterans

★ Georgische legion - Units and photos

★ Over 2,000 original German WWII soldier photographs from the Eastern Front

★ 'Extension 720 with Milt Rosenberg', WGN Radio Chicago - including a link to the interview with Max Hastings (29/11/04)