1 OCTOBER 1942: ADOLF HITLER, WEHRMACHT OFFICER
The Historical Journal, , ( ), pp. – # Cambridge University PressPrinted in the United Kingdom1 O C T O B E R 1 9 4 2 : A D O L F H I T L E R,W E H R M A C H T O F F I C E R P O L I C Y, A N DSOCIAL REVOLUTIONMACGREGOR KNOXThe London School of Economics and Political Science .The origins of the process that transmuted Prussia–Germany’s most hallowed socialinstitution and professional group, the officer corps, into a functional elite of ‘ National SocialistFuW hrer-personalities ’ remain obscure. Recent studies have argued that the ‘ structural pressures ofmodern war ’ – the immense losses of summer – compelled the abolition of time-honourededucational and social qualifications for officer candidacy and the basing of promotions almost solelyon battlefield prowess, and that ‘ National Socialist elite manipulation ’ was at best a secondary factor.Yet archival evidence makes clear that the pressures of war took second place in the army’s official mindto the need to preserve order and tradition, and that it was above all Adolf Hitler who dictated thetiming, shape, and extent of changes that the bureaucrats were largely incapable of imagining.‘ FuW hrer-selection through battle ’ was simultaneously the most far-reaching and lasting element in thesocial revolution that Hitler sought, and a decisive step in steeling the German armed forces for theirfight to the bitter end. In this as in other areas, it was National Socialism’s very modernity thatendowed it with demonic force.‘ With effect from . . , the Fu hrer has named his Wehrmacht ChiefAdjutant, Generalmajor Schmundt, as Chief of the Army [officer] PersonnelOffice, with the retention of his previous position. ’ The faithful RudolfSchmundt summarized in these words the outcome of a prolonged strugglebetween Adolf Hitler and what the dictator scornfully described as ‘ thecalcified Wehrmacht old gang ’." The nature and meaning of that strugglespeak to the central issue of historical interpretation once naively known as ‘ therole of the individual in history ’ and now modishly styled the ‘ structure andagency problem ’. They offer a salient example through which to understand aconspicuous special case, the role of Adolf Hitler, the interpretation ofwhich – despite frequent pronouncements of its alleged irrelevance in thepurported age of post-modernist theory – still divides historians of NationalSocialist Germany involuntarily into ‘ intentionalists ’ and ‘ functionalists ’.#The terms of the conflict fought out in are likewise vital to understanding" Dermot Bradley and Richard Schulze-Kossens, eds., TaW tigkeitsbericht des Chefs des Heerespersonalamtes General der Infanterie Rudolf Schmundt (Osnabru ck, ), p. ; Joseph Goebbels, DieTagebuW cher von Joseph Goebbels, ed. Elke Fro hlich et al. ( vols., Munich, – ), Teil , Diktate, , p. ( May ) ; similarly , pp. – ( Oct. ).# For the terms of debate, see above all Tim Mason, ‘ Intention and explanation ’ ( ), inidem, Nazism, Fascism and the working class (Cambridge, ), pp. – . Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Loyola Notre Dame, on 26 Feb 2022 at 09:26:26, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at rg/10.1017/S0018246X99001284
the further course of the war, and especially the dogged fight of the Germanpeople and Wehrmacht until their Fu hrer abandoned them by suicide on April . And they may also help clarify the much-discussed relationshipbetween Hitler’s Germany and the nebulous condition known as modernity. In autumn no one in the German hierarchy seems to have doubted thatHitler dictated not only Schmundt’s appointment but also the ensuing‘ fundamental change ’ – as Schmundt described it – in officer recruitment andpromotion policy throughout the army and armed forces. A German scholar,in a monograph of the early s on the ‘ Wehrmacht elite ’, described the newpolicies as ‘ elite manipulation ’ in the service of National Socialist ideologicaland social objectives.% The transformation between and of PrussiaGermany’s central inherited institution, its army officer corps, from a narrowlyrecruited Stand or ‘ estate ’ into a functional elite based almost exclusively uponLeistung – combat effectiveness of a direct, measurable, tactical kind – was thusby implication primarily a Nazi achievement. In this, as in other respects,modernity apparently came to Germany through the agency of Adolf Hitler.That seemingly ‘ intentionalist ’ reading of the dictator’s deeds and theirconsequences did not remain unchallenged for long. The foremost student ofGerman wartime manpower policy, Bernhard R. Kroener, argued from thelate s onward that structural pressures were the dominant cause of change.Kroener concluded that as losses of company and battalion commandersmounted in , the personnel office (Heerespersonalamt, or HPA) ‘ wascompelled in its quest for officer replacements to adopt the socially undifferentiated principle of selection on the basis of leadership capacity(FuW hrerauslese) ’. It was the ‘ structural pressures of modern war ’, the ‘ implacable demands of modern technological mass warfare ’ that had compelledaction. The regime had merely ‘ exploit[ed] skilfully ’ a situation that it had notforeseen ‘ in order to make inroads into the value structure of its militaryinstrument that it had not succeeded in accomplishing in peacetime ’.& Especially in Germany, approaches to National Socialism that consider this last issue tend torest upon a normative-teleological ‘ modernization theory ’ that presumes an underlyingcongruence between the historical process and democratic values (would that it were so !). See forinstance, and despite some qualification, Norbert Frei, ‘ Wie modern war der Nationalsozialismus ? ’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, ( ), p. ; for a more persuasive if insufficientlydrastic view, Detlev Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany (London, ), ch. and Conclusion.% Schmundt, TaW tigkeitsbericht, p. ; Reinhard Stumpf, Die Wehrmacht-Elite (Boppard, ), pp. – ; see also Manfred Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat (Hamburg, ),pp. – .& Kroener, in Milita rgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg( vols. to date, Stuttgart, – )(henceforth DRZW), \ , pp. , – , ; ‘ Auf dem Wegzu einer ‘‘ nationalsozialistischen Volksarmee ’’ ’, in Martin Broszat et al., Von Stalingrad zurWaW hrungsreform (Munich, ), pp. , , – ; ‘ Strukturelle Vera nderungen in dermilita rischen Gesellschaft des Dritten Reiches ’, in Michael Prinz and Rainer Zitelmann, eds.,Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung (Darmstadt, ), p. ; and, despite qualification, DRZW \ , p. ; see also Ju rgen Fo rster, ‘ Vom Fu hrerheer der Republik zur nationalsozialistischenVolksarmee ’, in Jost Du lffer, Bernd Martin, and Gu nter Wollstein, eds., Deutschland in Europa :KontinuitaW t und Bruch, Gedenkschrift fuW r Andreas Hillgruber (Frankfurt a. M., ), pp. – .Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Loyola Notre Dame, on 26 Feb 2022 at 09:26:26, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at rg/10.1017/S0018246X99001284
Kroener’s interpretation is superficially persuasive not only because of theseeming modernity of its emphasis on impersonal processes but also because,unlike the participants, we know what was coming : catastrophe at Stalingrad,disaster at Tunis and Kursk, and, at the limit, the intolerable losses – . officer casualties per day – reported in September .' Clearly at some pointthe German armed forces must have faced squarely the ‘ implacable demands ofmodern technological mass warfare ’. For the Wehrmacht in the end did notfalter for lack of expert and fanatical unit commanders : it had to be blasted flat.Yet doubts persist. Surviving evidence on the making of officer policy withinthe HPA in – reveals a bureaucracy intent on preserving its autonomyand only sporadically moved by the ‘ structural pressures (SachzwaW nge) ’ of warin the East.( And as in other areas, from foreign policy (where the indisputableevidence of Hitler’s agency has resisted all challenges) to the ‘ Jewish question ’(where recent research appears to reaffirm his centrality), the functionalistshave failed to analyse – or to propose persuasive systems for analysing – theinteraction at many levels of agency and structure at the root of any givenoutcome.)That omission is no accident. For the concession of even a small opening toindividual agency appears to relegate structure to the indeterminate realmindicated by Friedrich Engels in his famously unhelpful dictum that basedetermines superstructure ‘ in the final analysis ’. Yet the best counsel is not tolose heart. The traditional tools of historical investigation, close reading,chronology, and logic, exercised upon the traditional documentary materials,can still yield results on a case-by-case basis. Evidence can clarify better thandogma the relative impacts of structure and will, of external circumstances andideology, of impersonal forces and the charismatic individual.Any such investigation presupposes selection of a pivotal chronologicalpoint, analysis of the decision-making processes leading to that point, andpinpointing of the precise nature and causes of the changes that occurred orfailed to occur. In the case of Wehrmacht officer policy, Schmundt inevitablyidentified the decisive moment with his own appointment as head of the HPA' Schmundt, TaW tigkeitsbericht, p. (‘ the most deadly month of the war ’) ; the month-bymonth totals in the pioneering work of Ru diger Overmans, Deutsche militaW rische Verluste im ZweitenWeltkrieg (Munich, ), pp. – , suggest that the majority of these officers were actually killedor wounded in August.( Quotation : Kroener, DRZW \ , p. . For the HPA’s role and organization from mid-war,see particularly US War Department, Handbook on German military forces, March (BatonRouge, ), pp. – . The works of Klaus-Ju rgen Mu ller, beginning with his essential Das Heerund Hitler : Armee und nationalsozialistisches Regime – (Stuttgart, ), are fundamental tounderstanding the army’s increasingly futile efforts to defend its sphere.) The best-known functionalist analysis of foreign policy is Tim Mason’s brilliant butunpersuasive ‘ Innere Krise und Angriffskrieg \ ’, in F. Forstmaier and H. E. Volkmann,eds., Wirtschaft und RuW stung am Vorabend des Zweiten Weltkrieges (Du sseldorf, ), pp. – ; forrecent developments in the ‘ Jewish question ’, see especially Christian Gerlach, ‘ The WannseeConference, the fate of German Jews, and Hitler’s decision in principle to exterminate allEuropean Jews ’, Journal of Modern History, ( ), pp. – .Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Loyola Notre Dame, on 26 Feb 2022 at 09:26:26, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at rg/10.1017/S0018246X99001284
and the ejection with little ceremony of the incumbent since , GeneralBodewin Keitel (younger brother of Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Hitler’smilitary factotum and chief of the Wehrmacht High Command (OKW)).Investigation may or may not confirm Schmundt’s view. Historicalfigures – as historians are too fond of reminding one another – are oftenremarkably ill-informed. But the flood of novel directives that poured from theHPA after Schmundt’s appointment nevertheless make October aplausible working date around which to organize inquiry. The sources andnature of the changes of autumn are in turn best understood if dividedinto three categories : the traditions, officer personnel structures, and ‘ officialmind ’ of the Prusso-German army ; the impact of war in the East through mid both in reality and in the perceptions of HPA decision-makers ; and theextent, consequences, and significance of Adolf Hitler’s intervention.IThe officer corps that Hitler inherited ultimately derived its peculiar excellencein the organization of violence from Prussia’s reaction to defeat by Napoleon in . The reforms of – that brought victory once more gave the state anofficer corps refounded upon a peculiarly Prussian version of revolutionaryFrance’s career open to talent. Officer recruitment and advancement after ostensibly rested on the twin pillars of Bildung, education and intellectualcultivation, and Leistung, combat effectiveness and military achievement. Thereformers ’ seminal institution, the general staff, embodied both ideals in theirmost rigorous form, and the great victories of and – imposed themfor good upon the army. Yet the reformers’ work was inevitably a compromise.They and Napoleon together destroyed the old officer corps – a closedcorporation of noble social equals enjoying ‘ well-earned rights ’ to promotionby seniority. But the reformers also instituted a corporative entrance test thatdeveloped by the s into a discriminating social as well as military filter :officer candidates, however intellectually cultivated or combat-experienced,must survive election by their future peers, the officers of their regiment. From a similar test applied to reserve officers as well. A private income becameever more necessary to a military career. And the army’s marriage regulationsrequired that officers’ brides pass muster with both regimental commander andking, and that young officers intending to marry prove that they or theirprospective brides possessed the funds needed to support households ‘ commensurate with their Stand ’.*Prussia’s evolution in the century that followed thus scarcely redeemed thereformers ’ promises. The logic of conquest after and of the maintenanceof the new German Empire’s power position thereafter gradually forced open* For more thorough analysis of the – period than is feasible here, see MacGregorKnox, ‘ The ‘‘ Prussian idea of freedom ’’ and the career open to talent : battlefield initiative andsocial ascent from Prussian Reform to Nazi Revolution, – ’, in idem, Common destiny :dictatorship, foreign policy, and war in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (Cambridge, ).Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Loyola Notre Dame, on 26 Feb 2022 at 09:26:26, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at rg/10.1017/S0018246X99001284
the officer corps to the educated and wealthy upper middle classes. Yet even theworld conflagration that Prussia–Germany ignited in did not alterthe essential character of its ‘ first Stand ’. The lineal ancestor of the HPA, theKaiser’s Military Cabinet, jealously guarded wartime entry into the regularofficer corps and enforced implacably the rule of seniority and the slowpromotion it entailed. The war’s immense losses, the decapitation of the statein November , and the Versailles Treaty limits of , enlisted menand , officers likewise failed to change the corps’s underlying nature.Officer candidacy in the post- Reichswehr was a four-year ordeal to whichthe army annually admitted fewer than candidates. It began with theAbitur, the elite secondary school-leaving certificate, and culminated as before in election – or consignment to the outer darkness – by the officers of thecandidate’s regiment. Despite the increasing intrusion of professional andtechnological criteria, the officer corps remained a Stand both in self-conceptionand in social reality. And seniority, although much tempered by the cult ofLeistung and innovation of the Reichswehr’s theorists of a total war of revenge,still provided the organizing framework for the glacially slow promotions of the s.The army’s expansion after was almost geometric : from divisions in – to in to in to the almost divisions or divisionequivalents deployed in September – led by , regular and reserveofficers. The almost twenty-eight-fold multiplication of the army officer corpsbetween – and ended for good its social and professionalhomogeneity."! Regular officer candidates throughout the mid- and late sstill as a rule possessed the Abitur, but serving privates and short-service NCOsof the post- universal service army could gain admission without it if theyshowed marked leadership ability. Long-service NCOs became eligible forofficer candidate status or direct commissions. Reactivated officers who hadserved until or had retired from the Reichswehr, militarized policeofficers, and Austrian junior officers after March further swelled theranks, although in the HPA’s considered judgement the last three categories‘ achieved at best a certain mediocrity ’.""These concessions to the demands of swift rearmament scarcely dented thehigher officer corps’s self-image as a social elite and its insistence on preservinga degree of internal autonomy. As late as November the armycommander-in-chief, General Walther von Brauchitsch, reiterated that long"! Divisions and officers ( , less ceded to the Luftwaffe) : Milita rgeschichtlichesForschungsamt, Handbuch zur deutschen MilitaW rgeschichte – ( vols., Frankfurt a. M., Munich, – ), , pp. , , ; Burkhart Mu ller-Hillebrand, Das Heer – ( vols.,Frankfurt a. M., – ), , p. ; officers : Schmundt, TaW tigkeitsbericht, p. ."" For the heterogeneity achieved by December , see Kroener’s vivid chart, DRZW \ ,p. . Quotation : General Bodewin Keitel (Chef HPA – ), ‘ Vorla ufige Wertung derAuswirkungen der fu r die Verju ngung und Fu hrerauslese gegebenen Weisungen ’, Chef HPA Nr. \ pers., Apr. , p. , Bundesarchiv-Milita rarchiv, Freiburg im Breisgau (henceforthBAMA), RH \ .Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Loyola Notre Dame, on 26 Feb 2022 at 09:26:26, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at rg/10.1017/S0018246X99001284
service NCOs could enter the regular officer corps only if capable of‘ unreservedly embracing the high professional standards and sense of honourof the officer corps ’, and if unmarried or possessing ‘ a marriage contracted andconducted according to principles that correspond to the values of the officercorps ’."# And while promotions accelerated swiftly as the army and Luftwaffeexpanded, seniority still determined the date of promotion for officers judgeddeserving. Not until early did the army institute a system by whichexceptionally promising middle-ranking line officers might receive back-dateddates of rank that ensured early promotion – a privilege hitherto normallyconfined to general staff officers. Yet between September and spring the HPA applied the new measure only in exceptional cases, and thereafteronly to captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels. By early only . percent of the roughly , line officers eligible had benefited." The army’s wartime expansion by per cent, from . to . million menand from -odd to divisions by June , nevertheless opened notableopportunities for officer entry and promotion and led to a gradual reduction ofthe time spent at each rank before promotion to the next. Before the war,recently promoted majors had served as captains for an average of five yearsand four months. By April – after losses in Russia had occasioned furtherdownward adjustments – their time-in-grade before promotion had shrunk tothree years two months."%Yet the theoretical character of the officer corps as a Stand neverthelessremained unchallenged. With the coming of war, the army restricted admissionto the regular officer corps : wartime officer candidates could initially expect nomore than temporary status as ‘ war-officers ’, and only in cases of exceptionalmerit would the army consider transferring reserve officers in key commandand staff positions to the regular officer corps for the duration of the war.Career NCOs who successfully passed through officer candidate courses orreceived direct commissions in recognition of their experience and leadershipskill likewise enjoyed only temporary status."& And the reinstatement inJanuary of regular officer candidacy leading to a permanent commissionon the pre-war pattern gave preference as before to candidates with the Abitur.Those restrictions persisted with minor modifications through , anddemonstrate the extent to which the army leadership and HPA had their eye"# HPA circular, OKH Nr. \ P (A), Nov. , BAMA RH \ ." Rudolf Absolon, Die Wehrmacht im Dritten Reich ( vols., Boppard, – ), , p. ;Heeres-Verordnungsblatt (henceforth HVBl) Teil C, Nr. ( Jan. ), p. ; H.Dv. ,Bestimmungen fuW r die Erhaltung des Heeres im Kriegszustand (Berlin, ), p. paragraph ;Allgemeine Heeresmitteilungen (henceforth HM) , Nr. , p. ( Mar. ) ; Anlage toKeitel ‘ Vortragsnotiz ’, May , US National Archives Microcopy T- , roll , frames – (henceforth USNA microcopy\roll\frame) ; HPA draft, ‘ Zusammensetzung desaktiven Offizierkorps ’, May , USNA T- \ \ ."% ‘ Zusammensetzung ’, USNA T- \ \ – , and unsigned memorandum, ‘ Bevorzugte Befo rderungen ’, undated but April–May , – ; army size : DRZW \ , pp. , ."& H.Dv. , pp. – , , and Beiheft , p. ; HVBl , Teil C, Nr. , p. ( Jan. ).Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Loyola Notre Dame, on 26 Feb 2022 at 09:26:26, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at rg/10.1017/S0018246X99001284
fixed upon the shape and composition of the postwar regular officer corps."'The ‘ official mind ’ was resolved above all else to maintain the symmetry of the‘ promotion pyramid ’ and to prevent war from distorting further whatremained of the officer corps’s traditional character. From June that taskbecame immeasurably and unexpectedly more difficult.II‘ The German Wehrmacht must be prepared to destroy Soviet Russia in a swiftcampaign even before the end of the war with England ’ : Hitler’s Barbarossadirective of December and its execution from June onward wasthe quintessential expression of the dictator’s power as historical agent. Thealignment of external forces left Germany a single option if it hoped to retainthe strategic initiative : the destruction of Soviet Russia in ."( But Hitler’swillingness to risk all on a final roll of the ‘ iron dice ’ and the war of racialideological annihilation that he decreed were peculiarly his own : neitherproduced by nor explicable through impersonal structures and forces.Yet the Soviet leadership and peoples failed to conform to Hitler’s will. Theirdogged resistance on Russia’s frontiers made the months of July and August Germany’s bloodiest of the war before the great catastrophe at Stalingrad.And between June and the end of March the Russians atenormous price to themselves exacted . million German casualties for whichthe Wehrmacht lacked replacements for , .") The effect on the army’sofficer situation was immediate. Prussia–Germany’s failed attempt to conquerEurope in – had cost , army regular officers – or . per cent ofthe wartime total of serving regulars – and a grand total of , officer dead.From September to the capture of Crete in May , Hitler’s army bycontrast lost by its own accounting a mere , officer dead of whom , were regulars, against a total officer corps (April ) of , of whom , were regulars."*Losses from June onward were of a wholly different magnitude (seeFigure ). They peaked three times before Stalingrad : in July–August , in"' ‘ Merkblatt fu r den Offiziernachwuchs des Heeres ’, Jan. , Bundesarchiv-Zentralnachweisstelle, Aachen (henceforth BAZNS), W.Allg. ; H.Dv. \ b, ErgaW nzungsbestimmungen fuW rdie Offizierlaufbahnen im Heere waW hrend des Krieges, Teil A (Berlin, ), pp. , – ; HM ,Nr. , p. ( May )."( Andreas Hillgruber, Hitlers Strategie (Frankfurt a. M., ), especially pp. – , – ;for the illusory nature of the major alternative, Klaus Schmider, ‘ The Mediterranean in – ’, War and Society (Australia), ( ), pp. – .") Including illness and frostbite : DRZW \ , p. ."* Constantin von Altrock, Vom Sterben des deutschen Offizierkorps (Berlin, ), p. ; ‘ Ausfa llean Offiziere ’, OKW\AWA\WVW(V), \ , Aug. , Imperial War Museum, London(henceforth IWM), MI \ . For thorough analysis of Wehrmacht casualty reporting systems,and the conclusion that the armed forces significantly underestimated casualties throughout theconflict, see Overmans, Verluste, pp. – , – (p. and note for the HPA figures used here), – , and, in general, ch. . Overmans unfortunately does not attempt to estimate officercasualties.Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Loyola Notre Dame, on 26 Feb 2022 at 09:26:26, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at rg/10.1017/S0018246X99001284
3,500summer offensivewinter crisis2,000Kursk2,500frontier battles1,5001,0005000394.1ov 3N 94.1ct 43O 19.pt 43Se 19.ug 3A 194ly 3Ju 194ne 3Ju 194ayM 943.1pr 3A 194.ar 3M 194b. 3Fe 194n. 2Ja 194.ec 2D 194.ov 2N 94.1 2ctO 194.pt 2Se 94.1ug 2A 941ly 2Ju 194ne 2Ju 194ay 2M 194.pr 2A 94.1ar 2M 941b.Fe 9421n. 1Ja 194.ec 1D 194.ov 1N 194.ct 41O . 19pt 1Se 194.ugA 9411ly 1Ju 941neJuFig. . German army officer losses, June –November . 3,000Dead, (all causes), missing, POWs, by month 4,500Monthly data (smoothed): ‘Ausfälle an Offiziere (Heer)(ohne Waffen-SS)an Toten, Vermissten und Kriegsgefangenen nach H.P.A.’, OKW/AWA/WVW(V),241/44 22 Aug. 1944, Imperial War Museum, London, MI 14/217.4,000Regular officersAll officersStalingradDownloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Loyola Notre Dame, on 26 Feb 2022 at 09:26:26, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at rg/10.1017/S0018246X990012845,000
January–February , and again in August . In July , by thearmy’s retrospective figures, over per cent of then-serving regularofficers died, and in August about . per cent. The toll of August was about . per cent. As Kroener points out, in consequence the army’scombat units reported , unfilled officer positions as of August – thehighest such monthly figure before .#! Yet this shortage was not especiallymenacing either in reality or to the official mind. Quarterly officer strengthtotals prepared by the OKW statistical branch in early show a sustainedincrease in officer numbers, with only brief pauses in late and mid- (Figure ). Schmundt likewise recorded with apparent satisfaction in hisretrospective diary notes for October that the officer corps had doubled insize since September .#" The major source of concern by spring-summer was the shrinkage of the stock of regular infantry lieutenants (see Figure ) as losses in the East discouraged potential career officer candidates, and asyoung officers who had entered service in – died or gained promotion ; byJanuary almost all regular Oberleutnante and captains in the East hadbecome battalion commanders.## But the deficit in junior leaders, as willemerge below, appeared remediable to the HPA without drastic policychanges. No immediate personnel crisis prompted Schmundt’s appointmentand the measures that followed.The German army elite had approached the campaign against Soviet Russiawith supreme self-confidence. The losses of summer–autumn , dismayingas they were, correspondingly produced no fundamental rethinking of officerpolicy. The winter crisis likewise failed to inspire major steps that weredemonstrably responses by the army bureaucracy to the ‘ structural pressuresof modern war ’. Officer policy directives indeed emerged from late Decemberthrough February following Hitler’s abrupt dismissal of Brauchitsch andassumption in person of the position of commander-in-chief of the army on December . But Hitler indisputably prompted those initiatives, which willtherefore figure below ; the HPA’s own contribution was merely – as described – to lower further the seniority required for promotion to the nexthighest rank.Not until March did the HPA describe the officer selection process inlanguage that suggested some degree of urgency : ‘ The high demand for officerreplacements requires incisive (durchgreifende) measures for total and completeidentification (restlose Erfassung) and uniform training and care of all soldiers ofthe field and home armies suitable for the career path of war-officer or regularofficer. ’# But the bureaucrats nevertheless remained remarkably smug duringthe bloody run-up to Germany’s second great offensive in the East. In April the HPA chief, Bodewin Keitel, offered the army chief of staff, GeneraloberstFranz Halder, a preliminary analysis of the current structure of the officer#! Kroener, DRZW \ , p. .#" Schmundt, TaW tigkeitsbericht, pp. – .## Franz Halder, Kriegstagebuch ( vols., Stuttgart, – ), , p. .# HVBl , Teil B, Nr. ( Mar. ), pp. – .Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Loyola Notre Dame, on 26 Feb 2022 at 09:26:26, subject to the
The Historical Journal, 43, 3 (2000), pp. 801–825 Printed in the United Kingdom # 2000 Cambridge University Press 1 OCTOBER 1942: ADOLF HITLER, WEHRMACHT OFFICER POLICY,AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION MACGREGOR KNOX
18 Adolf Hitler 77 4 because clause 19 Adolf Hitler 81 4 #6 opener VSS 20 Adolf Hitler 85 7 21 The White Witch & Adolf Hitler 87 8 22 The White Witch & Adolf Hitler 93 8 #5 opener, transitional opener 23 The White Witch & Adolf Hitler 99 8 Table of Contents / Scope and Sequence The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe 57 These are Sample Pages for .
April 20th 1889 Adolf Hitler was born in Austria Hungary 1919 The Nazi Party is joined by Adolf Hitler. 1936- 1938 Czechoslovakia and Austria is seized by Adolf Hitler. Germany is also Rearmed by Hitler. December 1941 The U.S. enters the war (World War 2) in Europe April 30th 1945 Adolf Hitler kills himself in his bunker with Soviet Troops in
2 Verfügung de s Führer und Reichskanzler — Adolf-Hitler-Schulen, in: Junge Deutsch land, 31 (1937), S. 49; und Beauftragter für die Adolf-Hitler-Schulen an Gauschulungsleiter von Baden, 26. Jan. 1942, in: National Archives Microcopy No. T-81 (künftig zit.: T-81), Rolle 64, frame 72 446. 3 Hauptschulungsamt an alle Gauschulungsleiter .
Dictator Adolf Hitler was born in Branau am Inn, Austria, on April 20, 1889, and was the fourth of six children born to Alois Hitler and Klara Polzl. When Hitler was 3 years old, the family moved from Austria to Germany. As a child, Hitler clashed frequently with his father. Following the death of his younger brother, Edmund, in 1900, he became detached and introverted. His father did not .
Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 at the Gasthof zum Pommer, an inn located at Salzburger Vorstadt 15, Braunau am Inn , Austria -Hungary , a town on the border with Bavaria , Germany. [10 ] He was the fourth of six children to Alois Hitler and .ODUD3 O]O (1860 1907). Hitler's older siblings ² Gustav, Ida, and Otto ² died in infancy. [11 ] When Hitler was three, the family moved to .
The Rise of Adolf Hitler 1. Setting the Stage: World War I a. Although an Austrian, Hitler joined the German army in WWI b. Hitler was never an officer and was wounded in leg c. Temporarily blinded by mustard gas; while in hospital he became convinced that his purpose in life was to "Save Germany" d. On Nov 11, 1918, Germany agreed to an armistice--- angered Hitler
CHRONOLOGIE ADOLF HITLER 1888 - 1939 Fortsetzung im zweiten Band 1888 Dreikaiserjahr in Deutschland: Tod Wilhelm I, 99-Tage-Regent-schaft Friedrichs III, Wilhelm II besteigt den Thron 1889 20. April Adolf Hitler wird als Sohn Alois Hitlers und seiner Frau Klara, geborene Pölzl geboren 1890 Entlassung Bismarcks, „Der Lotse
A Comprehensive Thermal Management System Model for Hybrid Electric Vehicles by Sungjin Park A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Mechanical Engineering) in The University of Michigan 2011 Doctoral Committee: Professor Dionissios N. Assanis, Co-Chair Assistant Professor Dohoy Jung, Co-Chair Professor Huei Peng Professor .
