Hitler's Commanders (57 page)

Notes

Chapter 1: The Generals of the High Command

1. Although the terms are frequently used interchangeably, the
Reichsheer
(army) differs from the
Reichswehr
, as the armed forces of the Weimar Republic were called. The Reichswehr consisted of both the Reichsheer (army) and
Reichsmarine
(navy), which only had 15,000 men. Because of its much greater size and importance, the army dominated the Reichswehr establishment.

2. Walter Goerlitz,
Keitel, Verbrecher Oder Offizier, Erinnerungen, Briefe und Dokumente des Chef OKW
(Goettingen: Muster-Schmidt Verlag, 1961), p. 71.

3.
Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal
(Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1946–1948), volume 10, p. 502 (hereafter cited as
IMT
).

4. Count von Helldorf was born in Merseburg, East Prussia, in 1896. He served as a lieutenant in the artillery during World War I and joined the Nazi Party in the 1920s. By 1931, he was the chief of the Berlin SA (Brownshirts) and, in 1933, became a member of the Reichstag and Police President of Potsdam. He became Police President of Berlin in 1935. He was famous for arresting wealthy Jews and then accepting bribes from them to release them and get them out of Germany. He often used the proceeds to help support his mistresses and to pay his gambling debts. He nevertheless played a prominent role in the anti-Hitler conspiracy and was executed at Ploetzensee Prison on August 15, 1944.

5. Walter Warlimont,
Inside Hitler’s Headquarters, 1939–45
, R. H. Barry, trans. (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1966), p. 13 (hereafter cited as Warlimont,
Inside Hitler’s Headquarters
).

6. Bodewin Keitel (1888–1953) was chief of the Army Personnel Office from February 4, 1938, to September 1942, when his older brother fell into temporary disfavor with Hitler, and Bodewin was replaced by Hitler’s adjutant, Major General Rudolf Schmundt. He later commanded Wehrkreis XX (March 1, 1943, to November 30, 1944). He was promoted to major general effective March 1, 1938, to lieutenant general two years later, and to general of infantry in 1941.

7. Kurt von Schuschnigg (1897–1977) was chancellor of Austria from 1934 until 1938, when his country was absorbed by the Third Reich. He spent the next seven years in concentration camps. Freed by the U.S. Army in 1945, he emigrated to the United States, where he became a professor of political science at St. Louis University.

8. See Gene Mueller,
The Forgotten Field Marshal: Wilhelm Keitel
(Durham, N.C.: Moore Publishing Co., 1979) (hereafter cited as Mueller,
Keitel
).

9. Louis L. Snyder,
Encyclopedia of the Third Reich
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976), p. 242 (hereafter cited as Snyder,
Encyclopedia
).

10. Interview with General Warlimont, June 1972.

11. Albert Speer,
Inside the Third Reich
, Richard and Clara Winston, trans. (New York: Macmillan, 1970), p. 389 (hereafter cited as Speer,
Inside the Third Reich
).

12. Field Marshal von Witzleben was hanged on August 8, 1944, and Erich Fritz Fellgiebel was hanged on September 4, 1944. Rommel was forced to commit suicide on October 14, 1944, and Colonel General Friedrich Fromm was shot for cowardice in March 1945.

13. Mueller,
Keitel
, pp. 256–58.

14. Ferdinand Jodl (1896–1956) was chief of staff of the XXXIX Mountain Corps (1940–1941) in Yugoslavia and Russia, chief of staff of the 20th Mountain Corps (1942–1944) on the far north sector of the Eastern Front, and commander of the XIX Mountain Corps in Lapland (1944). He was commander of Army Detachment Narvik at the end of the war.

15. Eugene Davidson,
The Trial of the Germans
(New York: Macmillan, 1966), p. 346 (hereafter cited as Davidson,
Trial
).

16. Jodl was promoted to lieutenant colonel on October 1, 1933, and to colonel on August 1, 1935.

17. Viebahn (1888–1980) barracked himself in his office, threw ink bottles at the door, and threatened to shoot anyone who tried to enter. He eventually recovered and commanded the 257th Infantry Division in the French campaign and the LX Corps in occupied France. He retired as a general of infantry in 1942.

18.
IMT
, volume 25, p. 300.

19. Walter Goerlitz, “Keitel, Jodl and Warlimont,” in Correlli Barrett, ed.,
Hitler’s Generals
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989), p. 157 (hereafter cited as Goerlitz, “Keitel, Jodl and Warlimont”).

20. Group XXI was the reinforced XXI Armee Korps (XXI Corps) (see chapter 4). Hereafter, all corps are understood to be infantry (
Armee
), unless otherwise specified.

21. Interview with Alfred Speer, June 1972.

22. Warlimont,
Inside Hitler’s Headquarters
, p. 232.

23.
IMT
, volume 19, p. 300.

24. List (1880–1971) was relieved of his command on September 10, 1942 and was never reemployed. He was a talented leader.

25. Goerlitz, “Keitel, Jodl and Warlimont,” p. 161.

26. Davidson,
Trial
, p. 363. Louise Jodl succeeded in officially rehabilitating General Jodl’s reputation and annulling the German penalties against his property at the proceedings carried on by the West German government regarding the properties of those tried by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.

27. Hugh Trevor-Roper,
The Last Days of Hitler
(New York: Macmillan, 1947), pp. 120–27.

28. Speer,
Inside the Third Reich
, p. 515.

29. Percy Schramm,
Hitler: The Man and the Myth
, Donald Detwiler, trans. (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1971), p. 204.

30. David Irving,
Hitler’s War
(New York: Viking Press, 1977), volume 1, p. 112 (hereafter cited as Irving,
Hitler’s War
).

31. Fritz von Lossberg (April 30, 1868–May 4, 1942) was chief of staff of the 2nd, 3rd, 6th, and 4th armies on the Western Front during World War I. A troubleshooter, he was normally sent wherever there was a crisis. He was the first officer to put the concept of the “elastic defense” or “defense in depth” into practice during the Battle of Arras in April 1917. Awarded the Pour le Merite with Oak Leaves, he was the commander of Group Command I (one of the Reichsheer’s two army-level commands) when he retired in 1926.

32. The German
Wehrkreis
, or military district, had no exact American equivalent. Prior to the outbreak of the war, it had two components: a tactical component and a secondary or deputy component. When the army was mobilized, the tactical component became a corps headquarters and directed combat units in the field. The deputy component (which consisted mainly of older officers and soldiers) became the Wehrkreis. Its missions were extremely important and included recruiting, drafting, inducting and training soldiers, training officers and administering Army schools, as well as mobilizing divisions and providing them with replacements. The number of Wehrkreise increased from seven in 1932 to 18 in 1943.

33. Irving,
Hitler’s War
, volume 1, p. 110.

34. Lossberg married Ella Schmidt in Berlin in 1934. They had two children (both sons), of which Fritz was the oldest.

35. Irving,
Hitler’s War
, volume 1, p. 177.

36. Wilhelm Deist,
The Wehrmacht and the German Rearmament
(Buffalo, N.Y.: University of Toronto Press, 1981), p. 94 (hereafter cited as Deist,
Wehrmacht
).

37. Deist,
Wehrmacht
, pp. 94–95.

38. John W. Wheeler-Bennett,
The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics, 1918–1945
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1967), p. 432 (hereafter cited as Wheeler-Bennett,
Nemesis
).

39. Peter Hoffmann,
The History of the German Resistance, 1933–1945
, Richard Barry, trans. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1977), p. 111 (hereafter cited as Hoffmann,
German Resistance
).

40. Ulrich von Hassell,
The Von Hassell Diaries, 1938–1944
, Hugh Gibson, ed. (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1948), p. 195.

41. Richard Brett-Smith,
Hitler’s Generals
(Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1977), p. 211; Wheeler-Bennett,
Nemesis
, p. 560n.

42. Warlimont,
Inside Hitler’s Headquarters
, p. 232.

43. Warlimont,
Inside Hitler’s Headquarters
, p. 404.

44. Joachim Kramarz,
Stauffenberg: The Life and Death of an Officer, 15th November 1907–20th July 1944
(London: Deutsch, 1967), p. 76.

45. Speer,
Inside the Third Reich
, p. 420.

46. Joseph Goebbels,
Final Entries, 1945: The Diaries of Joseph Goebbels
, Hugh Trevor-Roper, ed., Richard Barry, trans. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1978), p. 128 (hereafter cited as Goebbels,
Final Entries
).

47. Wheeler-Bennett,
Nemesis
, p. 680.

48. Gerhard Boldt,
Hitler’s Last Days
, Sandra Bance, trans. (London: Arthur Barker, 1973; reprint ed., London: Sphere Books, Ltd., 1973), p. 161.

49. Gerald Reitlinger,
The SS: Alibi of a Nation, 1922–1945
(New York: Viking Press, 1968), p. 178 (hereafter cited as Reitlinger,
SS
).

50. Reitlinger,
SS
, p. 179.

51. Robert Lee Quinnett, “Hitler’s Political Officers: The National Socialist Leadership Officers” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1973), p. 180. Ernst Maisel (1896–1978) had commanded a battalion in 1939 and the 42nd Infantry Regiment on the Eastern Front (1941–1942), where he fought at Brest-Litovsk, Bialystok, Gomel, Moscow, and Juchnov, among other battles. Later, as deputy chief of the Army Personnel Office, he played an unsavory role in forcing Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, to commit suicide.

52. Hoffmann,
German Resistance
, pp. 487, 528. Hase was hanged in the Ploetzensee prison on the afternoon of August 8, 1944, along with Field Marshal von Witzleben and several others.

53. Quinnett, “Hitler’s Political Officers,” p. 235.

54. For Reinecke’s sentence, as well as his opening and final statements and extracts from the prosecution’s case and his defense, see
Trials of the War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals
(Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1950), volumes 10 and 11.

55. Gene Mueller, “Generaloberst Friedrich Fromm,” in Gerd R. Ueberschaer, ed.,
Hitlers militaerische Elite
, vol. 1 (Darmstadt: Primus Verlag, 1998), p. 76.

Chapter 2: The Warlords of the Eastern Front

1. W. E. Hart,
Hitler’s Generals
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1944), p. 154 (hereafter cited as W. E. Hart,
Hitler’s Generals
).

2. Axis Biographical Research, “Fedor von Bock,”
www.geocities.com/~orion47
(accessed 2011).

3. W. E. Hart,
Hitler’s Generals
, p. 160.

4. W. E. Hart,
Hitler’s Generals
, p. 160.

5. Fabian von Schlabrendorff,
Revolt against Hitler
, Gero von S. Gaevernitz, ed. (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1948), p. 58.

6. United States Army, Intelligence Section of the General Staff, American Expeditionary Force,
Histories of Two Hundred and Fifty-One Divisions of the German Army Which Participated in the Great War (1914–1918)
(Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1920), p. 647 (hereafter cited as AEF,
Divisions of the German Army
).

7. W. E. Hart,
Hitler’s Generals
, p. 177.

8. James Lucas,
War on the Eastern Front, 1941–1945
(Briarcliff Manor, N.Y.: Stein and Day, 1979), p. 176 (hereafter cited as Lucas,
Eastern Front
).

9. See Lucas,
Eastern Front
, p. 176. Paul Carell,
Hitler Moves East, 1941–43
, Ewald Osers, trans. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1965; reprint ed., New York: Bantam Books, 1966), pp. 84–85 (hereafter cited as Carell,
Hitler Moves East
); Albert Seaton,
The Russo-German War, 1941–1945
(New York: Praeger, 1970), p. 130 (hereafter cited as Seaton,
Russo-German War
); and Albert Seaton,
The Battle for Moscow
(Briarcliff Manor, N.Y.: Stein and Day, 1980; reprint ed., New York: Playboy Press Paperbacks, 1981), pp. 43–45.

10. Carell,
Hitler Moves East
, p. 134. From north to south, Bock’s forces included the 3rd Panzer Army (Hoth), 9th Army (Strauss), 4th Army (von Kluge), 4th Panzer Army (Hoepner), 2nd Army (von Weichs) and 2nd Panzer Army (Guderian).

11. Carell,
Hitler Moves East
, pp. 134–42.

12. John Shaw and the editors of Time-Life Books,
Red Army Resurgent
(Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1979), p. 35 (hereafter cited as Shaw et al.,
Red Army
); Seaton,
Russo-German War
, pp. 260–61; and Earl F. Ziemke,
Stalingrad to Berlin: The German Defeat in the East
, Office of the Chief of Military History (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1966), p. 33 (hereafter cited as Ziemke,
Stalingrad to Berlin
).

13. Lieutenant General Hermann Plocher (MS 1944) says that Bock’s death occurred on May 5, while Brett-Smith (
Hitler’s Generals
, pp. 84–85) gives it as May 2 and Keilig (Wolf Keilig,
Die Generale des Heeres
[Friedberg: Podzun-Pallas Verlag, 1983], p. 38 [hereafter cited as Keilig,
Die Generale
]) states that he was killed on May 3. Most other sources give the date as May 4. In the confusion of the German collapse, it is unlikely that anyone is certain. See the bibliography for details on the Plocher manuscripts.