Wehrmacht

The **Wehrmacht** were the armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945, briefly serving as the armed forces of Allied-occupied Germany until 1946. The army was supposed to be a maximum of 100,000 soldiers according to the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, but the German dictator Adolf Hitler ignored this embarrassment to Germany and increased the military to 20,700,000 soldiers throughout its existence. After Walther von Brauchitsch performed poorly in Operation Barbarossa in December 1941, Hitler assumed the title of commander-in-chief, and his strategy led to the defeat of Germany in World War II. 11,300,000 German troops were lost in the war, with 7,000,000 being killed.

The German military had been seen as "a state within a state" during the Interwar period due to its immense power, and Hitler set about bringing the military under his control during the 1930s, resulting in the Night of the Long Knives and the Blomberg-Fritsch Affair. The regular military was led mostly by World War I veterans and *Freikorps* officers, while its political Waffen-SS counterpart was led by Nazi Party members; until the last few years of the war, Hitler enforced the depoliticization of the regular army and banned generals from having party affiliations. However, Nazism was popular among the Wehrmacht's rank-and-file soldiers due to the nationalist idea of *volksgemeinschaft* (national unity), Nazism's promises of transforming the German *volk* into a group of comrades, the Nazi regime's tendency to promote officers based on merit, and the gradual indoctrination of the average German through mandatory membership in the Hitler Youth and then the German Labor Front. The Nazi stress on comradeship, achievement, and action attracted Germans from all classes, as well as former leftists, as the "socialist" aspect of national socialism - the promise of a classless and integrative German society - attracted former communists and other working-class Germans. Many Nazi prisoners of war from working-class backgrounds claimed that the Nazi regime had achieved a number of key socialist goals, and large numbers of average soldiers highlighted Nazi accomplishments such as the provision of economic security and social welfare, the elimination of class distinctions, the creation of communal feelings, and expanded educational opportunities fofr poor children. Until 1945, around 60% of German prisoners-of-war voiced favorable opinions of Adolf Hitler.

The Wehrmacht did not always cooperate with Hitler's orders and plans, with generals such as Johannes Blaskowitz, Ludwig Beck, and Franz Halder being fired for their opposition to Hitler and his crimes against humanity; other generals, such as Walther von Reichenau, collaborated with the SS to carry out war crimes during the Holocaust. Nevertheless, most regular German soldiers and generals were simply fighting for their country, unlike their radical SS brothers-in-arms. The Wehrmacht was also open to non-German *freiwillige* volunteers and conscripts from 1940 onwards, recruiting prisoners-of-war and anti-communists into its ranks. Upwards of 1,000,000 foreigners served in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front against the USSR.

The Wehrmacht's uniforms during the war were usually the *feldgrau* (field gray) pattern, but some wore green, tan, or white uniforms depending on the terrain on which they fought. They used German firearms such as the MP40, Karabiner 98k, and StG-44, among other weapons, and used tanks such as the Panzer IV and Tiger I. The German Wehrmacht was well-equipped due to Albert Speer's excellent management of the armaments industry, but it began to suffer supply difficulties as the result of Allied strategic bombing after 1942 and overstretched supply lines. By the end of the war, the Nazis were handing out *Panzerfaust* rocket launchers to their *Volkssturm* militiamen, as they had few weapons to spare.

The Wehrmacht inherited the Reichswehr's legacy as a "state within a state", and Defense Minister Werner von Blomberg attempted to "Nazify" the military during the 1930s to retain its unique status in German society; in February 1934, Blomberg had all Jews serving in the Reichswehr automatically and immediately dishonorably discharged, and, in May 1934, Nazi symbols were adopted on Wehrmacht uniforms. The Wehrmacht and the Nazi Party came to be seen as the "twin pillars" of Nazi Germany, and, by the time of World War II, many Wehrmacht soldiers had previously been in the Hitler Youth and Reich Labor Service, thus being intensively indoctrinated in national socialism. Many newly-commissioned officers were committed Nazis, but the Luftwaffe had a much stronger Nazi influence than the Wehrmacht. The Blomberg-Fritsch Affair of 1938 ended the Wehrmacht's "state within a state" status and subjected it to the OKW, and, on 8 December 1938, the OKW ordered for all officers in all three German military services to be thoroughly versed in Nazism and apply its values in all situations, including the eradication of the Jewish people, culture, and "influence". A third of junior Wehrmacht officers had joined the Nazi Party by 1941, while 29.2% of higher-ranking officers were Nazi Party members by that same year. From 1943 onwards, the influx of Nazi-indoctrinated officers and conscripts into the military further increased the influence of Nazism in the army. Omer Bartov opined that, by 1944, with Germany clearly losing the war, "group cohesion alone" could not explain why the German soldiers carried on fighting, instead opining, "The explanation seems to be that at every level German officers inculcated their troops with the values and assumptions of Nazi ideology and the mortal menace of the racial-Communist threat...unit commanders from the division level on down consistently picked highly decorated combat officers to serve as 'leadership' officers in charge of troop indoctrination." The military remained loyal to the Nazi Party after the 20 July plot, proving that it had been "Nazified". However, the ranks of the Wehrmacht were not limited to dogmatic Nazis; communists and socialists also served in the Wehrmacht as the result of conscription. According to Quora commentator Jan Meyer, "*ALL* of them were drafted. The instructor of my father served in a 'social democratic' company, as in, every last one of the soldiers had been, by accident not design, a member of the SPD before the war and quite a few had been trade unionist (*sic*) as well. A few of the more hardcore cases ended up in the *Strafbatallions* (penal labor battalions), like the 999th in Africa." However, Mayer also opined, "Those communist (*sic*) that were drafted were badly outnumbered. Maybe one in a hundred conscripts was a communist ideologically. The share that was properly ‘*agitprop*’ was even smaller. And that means that every communist had a hundred to a thousand non-communists *watching* them. Maybe 10 were sympathetic. Maybe 50 were."