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Inside Hitler's High Command

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Within months of Germany's unconditional surrender in May 1945, his former military "advisors" tried to distance themselves from his over-reaching grand strategy. Beginning with Halder's self-exculpatory _Hitler as Warlord_ in 1949 and continuing through the highly popular memoirs of Guderian, Manstein, Warlimont, Mellenthin and Bock, the dead Hitler was put in the docket and found guilty of strategical naivite.

Post-war propaganda depicted a German High Command which "knew better" than Hitler but were intimidated and brutalized into submitting, or being replaced and disgraced.

This myth has been unravelling piecemeal of late with respect to certain "fatal decisions" (Invasion of Russia, Battle of Britain, Declaration of War on the US, the North African Campaign). However, until Megargee's well-written study, none have presented a dissection of how the High Command collectively shared responsibility with the Little Corporal for confusing phase lines on a planning map with logistical, mechanical and manpower realities.

This is most likely because "organizational history" tends to be boring. It's much more interesting to read about behind-the-scenes feuds among monocled martinets than the precise way in which orders and intelligence were processed and disseminated. Megargee manages to envigorate his descriptions of the "system", such as it was, with the constant reminder of the clash of egos that diffused what little "opposition" there was to Hitler's conceptions.

Throughout it all, Megargee shows how the once powerful vaunted "General Staff" became a mere cog in the awkward_Army High Command_(OKH)structure working alongside, but hardly in synch with Hitler's personal war cabinet, the _Armed Forces High Command_ (OKW).

The High Command at work is the heart of this illuminating expose. The most detailed case study is that of _Operation Barbarossa_, often described as Hitler's leap into the dark.

Megargee shows how, in spite of the reservations that many of the senior commanders expressed at the time, they were brought along by the seeming precision and foresight of detailed operational staff studies. Megargee illuminates the Wehrmacht's poor use of and regard for intelligence staffs and their work.

Paricularly illuminating is Chapter 8 "The System at Work: A Week in the Life of the High Command". The week for display was well chosen: December 15-22, 1941, when the first signs of Operation Barbarossa's failure SHOULD HAVE become apparent. The clear exposition of decision-making and breaking demonstrates exactly how and why Hitler's "professionals" came to share his delusions. Throughout, the illusion of controlling the situation hundreds of miles away by dint of modern instantaneous communications was reinforced by the misuse of raw information filtering back from the beleaguered field commands.

Megargee's clear exposition and lively prose should dump the final shovel of dirt on the grave of the lame lament:" If only Hitler had not interfered, his generals would have won the war".

The author's intention to analyse a complex subject, whilst at the same time entertaining the general reader, has succeeded in this excellent book. His view that the generals and OKW shared willingly in Hitler's military blunders - post war memoirs tend to be disingenious - is not in itself new. However, Megargee has assembled the primary evidence in a convincing and comprehensive form. As he argues, there is no significant evidence that the High Command seriously opposed the Fuhrer's declaration of war on Russia or America in 1941. Indeed, they took a most simplistic view of Russia's strength and America's likely impact over time. Detailed here too are Hitler's poor attention to strategic planning and military intelligence. In the Gotterdammerung phase of the war, the author has an excellent chapter on Hitler's insistence on promoting men wildly above their ability just because they were loyal. Himmler's dismal showing as a military commander is the best example of this. The book is a most readable insight into the mind set of those who led Germany to defeat in a flawed system.

Conventional wisdom regarding the fate of the Wehrmacht in World War Two has always been that it was Adolph Hitler's maniacal meddling in the day to day affairs of the armed forces that created the catastrophic defeats along the eastern front that lost the war. Indeed, many of the first hand post-war memoirs of those German generals and other staff officials supported this point of view, giving one the idea that if only the generals had had their way, Germany would have been victorious. There is much to commend such a view; certainly Hitler's decisions were often counter-intuitive and counter-productive, and he often seemed to change his mind and the tactics associated with a campaign in mid-stream. The results of these actions were indeed often disastrous. Yet, as the author of this scholarly investigation into the machinations of the General Staff and its decision making process brilliantly argues in this fascinating and informative book, the evidence supporting such a theory that Hitler single-handedly lost the war through his incompetence simply does not exist.

In fact, this book is quite well written; it is authoritative, informative, and extremely well documented. The author has managed to turn what could have been a historical curiosity for the amusement of other academic historians into a terrific reading experience for a more general audience. He approaches the subject with verve and a plethora of telling examples of how the general staff were involved and complicit in the day to day decisions that were so disastrous for the Wehrmacht; far from being helpless factotums who merely carried out Hitler's demands, they initiated debates and discussions in which Hitler often played the provocateur, attempting to gain a better idea of what each of the participants in the discussions really thought regarding a particular course of action. Also, in employing the kinds of primary evidence used here, he illustrates how involved and enthusiastic many of the generals were in making fateful decisions. As the author maintains, there is no credible evidence that they did in fact take any serious issue with Operation Barbarossa or with its conduct until things began to go awry.

The simple truth of the matter seems to be that they shared Hitler's myopic faith in the invincibility of the Wehrmacht, and seriously underestimated the capabilities, endurance, and determination of the Soviet forces. The fateful decision was the first one, the effort to invade the Soviet Union without recognizing the serious logistical and tactical problems that were ensue when prosecuting a fight over such a vast distance and with a front that was thousands of miles long. Likewise, the decision by Hitler and General Staff to declare war against the Americans seemed more the result of an arrogant disregard for facts in favor of self-serving ideology. Of course, to argue that the general staff itself was complicit is not to deny the degree of sloth and banality associated with Hitler's command and control of the armed forces. He brashly demoted men who had failed him and his wildly unrealistic expectations while promoting incompetent sycophants based solely on their loyalty. Such policies compounded the difficulties associated with attempting to execute a war that had turned into a much wider and more complex effort than Hitler or the General Staff had ever envisioned.

This is a wonderful book, one that gives fresh evidence of the dangers inherent in consensus management. Hitler's fateful problem was that by demanding the outrageous and the unrealistic, he increasingly gathered around him the worst liars, game-players, and toadies in the history of modern warfare. He consistently winnowed out anyone who told him the unvarnished truth, especially if it was negative. By doing so he guaranteed the desperate failure of his most audacious and precarious adventures into the realm of war, and brought the heavy weight of ruin and destruction upon himself, the General Staff, the Wehrmacht, and the German people. Of course, along the way, he managed to ruin most of Europe and kill tens of millions of people, as well. This is an excellent book, and is one I heartily recommend. Enjoy!

This book is one of the spate of recent works "proving" the guilt of the Germans in general instead of just Hitler and the Nazis, but is far better written than most and actually offers a point for discussion. I recommend a purchase and a close read.

There is little new information (if any) here, but the author's description of the functioning of the General Staff, the OKH and OKW from pages 17 to 101 is particularly easy to understand, and I say this as someone who first read Goerlitz's "History of The German General Staff" at the age of fifteen in 1954. It is this part that makes the book worth the price of admission.

Chapters 10, 11 and 12, offer nothing new except for one-sided cherry-picked references tending to support the author's far-reaching conclusions. Nonetheless, such support is weak at best. From time to time the author seems to understand this, but then he goes ahead and states his questionable conclusions anyway. For example, even though the author is quick to point out (& accurately) that memoirs are often self-aggrandizing, he uses a sole, questionable source (Lossberg) to describe Jodl's attitudes at the end of 1941 and his agreement that Manstein, at the time a newly-baked army commander, and someone who had never been responsible for more than one panzer division in his earlier corps and now 11th Army, was the leading general to assume overall command of the eastern front. Very doubtful, and something that cannot be verified!

The author correctly points out that many higher-ranking officers like Beck believed that Germany's only hope lay in winning a short, decisive military conflict rather than an economic or diplomatic course of action. Yep! Like a bridge player who carefully studies his cards and sees that there is only one course of action that might win the contract, he takes the sole option open to him. When it doesn't succeed, one should not criticism the player for not having used another strategy UNLESS IT CAN BE SHOWN THAT THE STRATEGY COULD (not would) HAVE BEEN SUCCESSFUL. Unfortunately, this is exactly what the author does without showing any realistic basis for alternatives. The player can be criticized for making the contract in the first place, but that was never the function of either the OKW or the OKH. I was also amused to see that the author took a similar position to the German defeat in World War I -- the high command again attempted to apply an operational solution to a strategic problem. Once more for the West Coast, what would the author have recommended they do? That he doesn't state.

Yes, intelligence concerning the Soviets was almost nil, but military intelligence world-wide has been notorious for being poor except in combat conditions. The US was and is no exception to this rule, and Ultra (not mentioned by the author) was indispensable to the Allies (most notably in North Africa.) In a limited time frame like that for Barbarossa, one does the best one can. As far as logistics are concerned, the German economy was not put on a total war footing until Speer did it in 1944 with the resulting improvements in production. Of course, by then it was too late, and at any rate, that was not within the purview of either the OKW or OKH. And the US also used the term "supply" just like the Germans. With regards to personnel, the Germans only had one chance against the Soviet Union and that was denied them by Hitler's racial policies. The Germans needed to fight a "War of Liberation" against the Communists, setting up puppet governments in the non-Russian states and utilizing their manpower. In spite of everything, the number of Hiwis was enormous and Russian units like Cossacks and the Vaslov Army still opted to fight alongside the Germans. But again, this was not an option open to the OKW or OKH. So given the situation, what was the high command to do? The author is silent on this point, but condemns the General Staff anyway. One feels compelled to point out that Beck paid the ultimate price, Fritsch sought death before Warsaw, and Halder narrowly escaped execution before the war's end.

Yes, there was a culture in the General Staff that viewed the Versailles Diktat (it was not a negotiated treaty) as unbearable and to be torn up as soon as possible. Yes, they wanted to regain lost territories. That is hardly new or difficult to understand in the light of history. To the extent that Hitler's aims coincided with theirs, the German senior commanders supported him. To their regret, they found themselves riding on the back of the tiger. Even at the end, von Bock's last words were to Manstein, "Manstein, save Germany!"

For a much fuller treatment on the German officer mindset that the author only alludes to, see Robert Citino, "The German Way of War."

Military personnel are normally conservative (as the author points out), and the General Staff operated much like they did in 1870. Insofar as their opponents were incompetent like the Polish, French, and British, they won easily through aggressiveness and vastly superior training. The US Army adopted much if not all of the German leadership doctrine and training methods after World War II, recognizing that US performance in Europe was spotty at best. War gamers traditionally equate three American soldiers to two Germans, and Marshall's contention that over 40% of American infantrymen refused to fire their rifles in combat brings "the greatest generation" into question. Live-fire training has never been possible to any degree in the American Army, mostly due to objections by civilians for the casualties it causes. Of course, another reason the Germans fought so well is that they executed over 30,000 of their own military personnel in the course of the war for a wide range of offenses.

That the Officer Corps was not prepared to conduct a modern war with the necessary personnel, logistics, intelligence, and economic basis is correct. But neither were the French, Polish, British, Japanese or Russians. The Axis were defeated through a combination of British and American code-breaking, Russian manpower, and American logistics and economic power. The US struggled to put 90 divisions on the ground in Europe, but changed the Red Army into a mechanized force while the Wehrmacht became increasingly dependent on horses. Yes, the German machines were good, but German engineers tinkered their way to oblivion and prevented mass production.

The author sums up with the following statement: "The myth persists of a supremely talented, if politically naive and ambitious, German officer corps being led unwillingly into war and defeat by a ruthless dictator, a megalomaniac with no understanding of the military art." If one removes the word "unwillingly" and tones down "supremely", that "myth" would seem to be true. Nor do I know any serious scholar that believes in the myth as stated. Maybe some portion of the readership does, but only if they are not well-read on the subject. The author then states an untruth: "They (the officer corps) made strategic decisions, independently and in support of Hitler's, that started a war...." I know of no strategic decisions made independently by the German officer corps or high command that started World War II. Maybe the author can enlighten me. They didn't even make strategic decisions in support of Hitler that started the war unless you count their support of Hitler himself during the crises of 1933 and 1934. For that focus on Hammerstein-Equord, Blomberg, and those that refused to back Fritsch.

The author also castigates the Officer Corps for continuing the war after its futility should have been obvious. Gee, that was why Halder resigned. One is also tempted to castigate Robert E. Lee and Confederate commanders for continuing the Civil War after the fall of Atlanta. But like German officers, (& the German opposition had already been told in no uncertain terms that the Allies would not help them), they could not rise in rebellion -- they could only play their cards as they were dealt and hope for the best. Maybe a miracle would take place -- it has before. Only in hindsight is everything so clear.

Like I said -- this book is an excellent starting point for discussion. But I deplore the current trend by the author, Wolfram Wette, and others -- they represent the pendulum swinging too far in the opposite direction from the memoir literature of the 50s and earlier studies.

And lastly, I must register my objection to the author's dissertation advisor writing the Foreword and even being referenced on the title page. It should have been enough for the author to acknowledge Murray in his Preface. Moreover, Murray clearly shills for the author, using adjectives like "outstanding" and "extraordinary." Obviously the standards of objectivity and propriety in the academic world (or Ohio State at least) have changed, and not for the better.

"Inside Hitler's High Command" looks as if it might be one of those books of interest only to professional historians and those creepy guys who seem a little too enthusiastic about the blitzkreig victories of the German army in 1941-42. Not so.

Geoffrey Megargee's well-argued history ought to be required reading for any American concerned about his own military in the 21st century. The reason is that the mistakes of the German General Staff and civilian high command match up with uncanny exactness to the incompetence that the American high command has demonstrated without letup since 1951.

This is not a comparison that Megargee makes. His interest is focused on the German army, in particular the General Staff; and in three areas: structure, culture and ideology.

His main interest is structure, especially the strange split that gave over part of Germany's many military frontiers to the High Command of the Armed Forces (OKW) and the rest to the High Command of the Army (OKH). OKH was responsible for Russia.

This was predictably unworkable, but even before the fighting started two ideological revolutions changed the army fundamentally.

One Megargee covers thoroughly. For two and a half centures, the Prussian, then German state had existed to serve the army. Hitler turned this arrangement around, a story already known but explained in richer detail using novel sources in "Inside Hitler's High Command."

The other change, implied but never explicitly mentioned, was even more profound. As an instrument of kings and emperors, the army had been used to grab provinces but never (unlike, say, the Austro-Hungarian army) to overthrow regimes. The General Staff, which prided itself on being unpolitical - a false pride, as Megargee shows - adopted without debate and apparently without even thinking about it, Hitler's policy of overthrowing the Bolshevik regime.

The experience of Napoleon ought to have made the generals wary, and the experience of the German army ought to have made Incurious George even warier, but, of course, there is no evidence that Bush II ever knew, or even wondered about, military affairs.

His advisers, in uniform and out, should have, and there is some evidence that the uniformed services were a bit nervous, based on their bad experiences in Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba. But they did not press the point.

Getting down to cases, Megargee correctly identifies the strategic conundrum facing Germany. There was no way Germany could force Russia to quit fighting, the way Moltke had done France at Sedan.

As in the First World War, the General Staff believed that operational success would solve strategic problems - namely, since the only way Germany could prevail was if Russia refused to fight, the way the Dutch, Italians and Danes had, then Russia would refuse to fight.

In one of the few interpretations in which I find Megargee unpersuasive, he proposes that the German army didn't bother to prepare for a winter campaign because the generals understood that Germany could not prevail except in a short campaign. I prefer to think that the generals did not think they would have to campaign at all.

Officers who had been anxious and uncertain about defeating Poland were, by 1941, almost giddy about the prospect of taking on the USSR.

Because the General Staff lived for operations, it paid little attention to intelligence, supply or personnel.

Thus, the Germans won many battles, at first without great difficulty, but they had lost the war by starting it.

The exact parallel to the American invasion of Iraq is obvious. Contrary to expectations in each case, the victims were not happy to be invaded, the numbers of men were far too few, the equipment was insufficient and unreliable, and the intelligence conclusions were entirely wrong.

The parallels are so exact that in each case, one officer and that the chief of staff, understood the impossibility of waging a successful campaign with the resources available, Ludwig Beck and Eric Shinseki, and each was fired. (Beck, strictly speaking, quit before he could be dismissed, and Megargee downplays somewhat his fortitude, but there is no doubt that both generals knew they could not win.)

Any reader with the remotest interest in WWII and Germany's staff/command practices is well advised to explore Mr. Megargee's interpretation. As he says in the conclusion, "The myth persists of a supremely talented, if politically naive and ambitious, German officer corps being led unwillingly into war and defeat by a ruthless dictation, a megalomaniac with no understanding of the military art. Clearly that myth has little basis in fact." Much of the surviving military leadership, he claims, distanced themselves after the war from Hitler, but plenty of evidence exists to prove their loyalty to Hitler and Nazi ideas was-bluntly put--unconditional.

As a retired Army officer, I admire the operational arts of people like Heinz Guderian. But when confronted with his total subordination to Nazi party principles, I find him a less attractive figure on a whole-man basis.

Loyalty is a soldiers' prerequisite, of course, but there are nuances to respect. Even in our military culture, we have examples where loyalty to flawed leaders has been misplaced to protect reputations at the expense of truth. Fortunately, we have been spared leaders whose disrespect for truth anywhere approaches Hitler's or those who made his rise to power possible.

This book is an attempt to re-write what has been the conventional view of the relation between Adolph Hilter and the German General Staff. After the war, Hitler was conveniently dead and that allowed the German Generals to put out a version of history that was accepted for some years but was at odds with the truth. The German Generals had towed the line that they were politically neutral prior to the 1930?s and that they had not been supporters of Nazi aims. Further that they opposed some aspects of Nazi war aims and acted in a professional way. Lastly they were highly competent and might have won the war if it had not had been for Hitler continually interfering with their operational plans.

Megargee argues convincingly that the German Generals had a political agenda similar to the Nazis. That is they supported the abrogation of the Treaty of Versailles, they wanted an end to democracy and they wanted Germany to rearm and to become a great power again. A large number of Generals such as Rommel, Guderian, Zeitzler and Reichenau were if not committed Nazis, enthusiastic barrackers yelling support from the sidelines.

One interesting point is Megaree?s estimation of the ability of the German Generals. After the war a large number wrote memoirs in which they modestly estimated themselves as pretty good. Megaree concedes that from an operational point of view the German army did well. However it was vulnerable in a number of respects. The key mistake made by Germany in the war was the attack on the Soviet Union. It would seem clear that the planning for operation Barbarossa was deeply flawed. For instance the Germans knew nothing of the actual strength of the forces against them. (The Soviets had 5 million men, 20,000 tanks and 20,000 aircraft to the German?s 3million 3,200 and 3000 respectively) In addition the Germans had no clear plan of defeating the Soviets. Barbarossa was based on the hope that the bulk of Soviet forces could be destroyed near the Polish border. It was then hoped that the Soviets might give in or the government would collapse. However if this did not eventuate the Germans had massive supply problems. They had limited fuel, and they could not use the Soviet railway system until they changed the gauge. In fact when the Soviets failed to collapse the Germans suffered massive supply problems, not being able to supply their troops with winter clothing and struggling to maintain ammunition levels and fuel and spares for their vehicles and planes.

Thus throughout the war the German Army acted as if intelligence was not really worth worrying about and that supply was a problem which could be overcome by an act of will. This deficiency was not a problem in initial war in the west, as the distances were so small and the French and British acted incompetently when faced by the German advance. However against the Soviets it was fatal.

Megargee summarises the weakness of the German generals as one of a strategic weakness. It was one that they shared with Hitler and in fact it is clear that they had little insight into the reason for their defeat even after the finish of the war.

Another issue dealt with by the book is the question of the role of Hitler?s leadership in bringing about the loss of the war for Germany. Megargee clearly shows that it was only in the later part of the war (1944) that tensions arose between Hitler and the Generals. By this time the war was lost. Over the big decisions there was not a lot of disagreement.

This book although expensive is short and easy to read. It is interesting not just for those interested in the war, but it illustrates how history can be distorted by over reliance on self serving material.

"Inside Hitler's High Command" is a brilliant look at how Hitler and his generals operated in World War II. Hitler's overriding desire not just to command, but to personally dominate his generals is evident as the German command function is amazingly recreated by author Geoffrey P. Megargee. Megargee offers us a typical week in the command life of Hitler and his generals (as much as any week in those days could be considered typical). These sections make for some of the book's most fascinating and readable pages. One goes back and forth between grudging admiration for German military technical abilities, and a sense that everything was just hanging by a thread and waiting to fall apart. Hitler's meddling, his generals sniveling subservience, the vastness and barbarity of the Russian operation, and the dogged determination and intelligence of the Allies all spelled the Third Reich's doom. Megargee's work is a fine piece of historical scholarship that expresses these wartime realities skillfully.

Dr. Megargee overturns decades of conventional wisdom about the responsibility for Germany's loss in the Second World War. Although unsparing in his criticism of Hitler, on any number of subjects, he goes further than any author that I am aware of in portraying the lack of strategic vision on major issues of national political and economic goals, the short-sighted and self-serving carving-out of personal empires in the byzantine structure of the German High Command, inter-office and inter-service rivalry, and the the emphasis on the spiritual over the material that manifested itself most dangerously in the long-standing institutional disregard for intelligence work and logistics that made Germany's loss nearly a foregone conclusion upon the launch of Operation Barbarossa in 1941.

Extensively researched and thoroughly documented, as well as clearly and engagingly written, this book is a significant addition to the scholarly literature on the German armed forces in WWII, as well as a refreshing antidote to the tiresome rehashing of the Führer's blunders and the self-exculpatory memoirs of numerous German officers that appeared in the wake of Germany's defeat. Strongly recommended for those interested in the subject, and another fine work of military history from the University Press of Kansas.

This is an excellent read that covers not just The commanders, but also the command structure. This is even more proof that Hitler wasn't in complete control until he completely took over in 1943 which was no doubt because of the Stalingrad Debacle but also because of the loss of North Africa & the taking of Sicily then the landing in Mainland Italy soon after. What I liked even more is how it was explained some 150-200 years earlier up to WWII in order to understand how it all came about. This is not a read for those only mildly interested in WWII, it is for both Scholars, Historians, & those generally interested in both the Command Structure & those men that were involved. What I enjoyed most is the fact that Walter Von Brautisch who most people have never heard of was the main force as Commander-in-Chief of the Army is very well explained & was the last man to really challenge anything Hitler said. It also shows just how out of whack Hitler was as so many people that were realitively low ranks were doing jobs that should have been for someone 3-5 ranks higher than them. It also shows how powerful Alfred Jodl was although technically & official Wilhelm Kietel was his boss. In fact they show how Hitler stopped listening to anyone but Jodl, who never disagreed or challenged Hitler at all. This is a must read for those interested in this time period, but again not for casual people.