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The relationship between the Wehrmacht, as the armed forces of the Third Reich were known, and the regime it served has been the subject of a voluminous historiographical debate. Broadly speaking, there have been two camps. One insists that the Wehrmacht was the "untarnished shield", an apolitical force that had little to do with Nazism, kept its distance from the regime, had nothing to do with the criminal policies of the regime, and was even a bastion of resistance. The second camp argues that the Wehrmacht started out as a loyal part of the regime, became increasingly integrated into the regime as time went by, and argues the Wehrmacht was a genocidal organization. == Politics of the ''Wehrmacht'' == The German military had traditionally functioned as a "state within the state" with a very large margin of institutional autonomy. Thus Chancellor Bismarck had been forbidden to attend meetings of the Supreme Council of War because as it was insultingly phrased "Lest this civilian might betray the secrets of the State". In the First World War, the military began to complain more and more that both the Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg and the Emperor Wilhelm were grossly incompetent, and needed to step aside in order to allow the military to win the war. In March–April 1915, Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz stated that the only thing that was keeping Germany from winning the war was the poor leadership of the Chancellor and the Emperor, and his solution was a plan in which Bethmann-Hollweg be sacked and the office of Chancellor abolished, the Kaiser would "temporarily" abdicate, and Field Marshal Hindenburg be given the new office of "Dictator of the ''Reich''", concentrating all political and military power into his hands in order to win the war. Through the Tirpitz plan was not implemented, the very fact it was mooted showed the extent of military dissatisfaction with the existing leadership, and the strength of the "state within the state" in that Tirpitz was not punished despite having essentially called for deposing the Emperor. In August 1916, Germany become a ''de facto'' military dictatorship under the duumvirate of Field Marshal Hindenburg and General Ludendorff, who ruled Germany until 1918. During the rule of the "silent dictatorship" of Hindenburg and Ludendorff, the German government advocated a set of frankly imperialist war aims calling for the annexation of most Europe and Africa that in many ways were a prototype for the war aims of the Second World War.〔Hillgruber, Andreas ''Germany and the Two World Wars'', Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981 pages 41–45.〕 In October 1918, in order to avoid responsibility for losing the First World War, the military returned power to the civilians and transformed Germany into a democracy, largely because the Allies made it clear that they would never sign an armistice with the Hindenburg-Ludendorff duumvirate. After the November Revolution of 1918, there were demands for the dissolution of the military that had led to such a defeat, but on December 23, 1918, the Provisional government under Friedrich Ebert came under attack from the radical left-wing "People's Marine Division". Ebert called General Wilhelm Gröner for help, and what resulted was the so-called Ebert–Groener pact, where in return for saving the government, the military would be allowed to retain its traditional and informal "state within the state" status. What immediately followed Ebert's phone call was a fiasco as the government had already saved itself from being overthrown by capitulating to the demands of the rebels for the payment of back pay by the time that the troops Gröner sent arrived, and the attempt by the military to storm the former Imperial stables, which was the base of the Red sailors ended in failure the next day. Despite this, Gröner assured Ebert that he could still count on the military to fulfill their side of the pact as he was busy creating a new force of volunteers to be known as the ''Freikorps'', which Gröner promised would not let the government down the next time. In return for crushing the Communist Spartacus League in early January 1919 with its new ''Freikorps'' units, the government ended all efforts to democratize the military later that month. Under the constitution of the Weimar Republic, no soldier of the ''Reichswehr'' was allowed to be a member of a political party nor to vote in an election. This was because in theory there was a strict separation between politics and the armed forces. The same theory applied later to the ''Wehrmacht''. In the 1920s, the military did not accept the democratic Weimar Republic as legitimate, and so the ''Reichswehr'' under the leadership of Hans von Seeckt became, even more so than under the monarchy, a "state within the state" that operated largely outside the control of politicians. During the Kapp Putsch of March 1920, Seeckt disobeyed orders from the Defence Minister Gustav Noske, the Chancellor Gustav Bauer and the ''Reich'' President Friedrich Ebert to suppress the ''putsch'', claiming "There can be no question of sending the ''Reichwehr'' to fight these people". Seeckt's actions were entirely illegal as under the Weimar constitution the President was the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, and moreover Seeckt had violated the ''Reichswehreid'', which committed the military to defending the republic.〔Nicholls, A.J. ''Weimar and the Rise of Hitler'', London: Macmillan, 2000, pages 69–70.〕 Seeckt ordered the military to disregard Ebert's orders to defend the republic, and instead assumed a stance of apparent neutrality, which in effect meant siding with the Kapp ''putsch'' by depriving the government of the means of defending itself. The position of the military as "state within the state" led to only those few officers and soldiers who had attempted to defend the republic being dismissed, and the officers led by Seeckt who had done nothing to defend the republic were allowed to continue with their jobs.〔Nicholls, A.J. ''Weimar and the Rise of Hitler'', London: Macmillan, 2000, page 71.〕 The same officers who violated the ''Reichswehreid'' during the Kapp ''putsch'' by disobeying Ebert's orders to suppress the putsch were later to claim that the Hitler oath made it impossible for them to resist the Nazi regime. Right from the onset, Seeckt made it clear that he wanted to see another world war. Seeckt's famous "Memo on the Russian Question" of September 11, 1922, ended with the words: The German nation, with its Socialist majority, would be averse from a policy of action, which has to reckon with the possibility of war. It must be admitted that the spirit surrounding the Peace Delegation at Versailles has not yet disappeared, and that stupid cry of "No more war!" is widely echoed. It is echoed by many bourgeois-pacifist elements, but among the workers and also among the members of the official Social Democratic Party there are many who are not prepared to eat out of the hands of France and Poland. It is true that there is a widespread and understandable need for peace among the German people. The clearest heads, when considering the pros and cons of war, will be those of the military, but to pursue a policy means to take a lead. In spite of everything, the German people will follow the leader in the struggle for their existence. Our task to prepare for this struggle, for we shall not be spared it. In this regard, it is significant that after meeting Adolf Hitler on March 11, 1923, that Seeckt wrote: "We were one in our aim; only our paths were different". In 1927, the Phoebus film studio went bankrupt. Subsequently, bankruptcy proceedings established that the studio was a front company created by the ''Reichsmarine'' to obtain nitrate and that the navy had poured millions of Reichmarks to subsidize the financially struggling studio over the last few years. These disclosures of his knowledge of this matter forced the Defence Minister Otto Gessler to resign in disgrace in January 1928. The military took advantage of the opening created by Gessler's resignation to convince President Paul von Hindenburg to impose General Wilhelm Gröner as the new Defence minister. Gessler was the last civilian Defence minister of the Weimar republic, and until the abolition of the War ministry by Hitler in 1938, every Defence/War minister was a serving general. The practice of having active duty generals run the Bendlerstrasse (the street in Berlin where the Defence/War ministry was located) in turn further weakened the already weak civilian control of the military, and also led to a further politicization of the military since through their representative in the Cabinet the military become involved in issues that had nothing to do with military matters (though that the fact that Cabinet virtually stopped meeting after 1934 did weaken this venue of exercising power). Reflecting this position as a "state within the state", the ''Reichswehr'' created the ''Ministeramt'' or Office of the Ministerial Affairs in 1928 under General Kurt von Schleicher to lobby politicians ostensibly for improved military budgets, but in fact the ''Ministeramt'' was the vehicle for military interference with politics. German historian Eberhard Kolb wrote that: "...from the mid-1920s onwards the Army leaders had developed and propagated new social conceptions of a militarist kind, tending towards a fusion of the military and civilian sectors and ultimately a totalitarian military state (''Wehrstaat'')".In 1926, Seeckt was ousted by the so-called "modern" fraction within the ''Reichswehr'' as a group of more technocratic officers were known, which saw Seeckt as too conservative as he was less willing to see the sort of radical reorganization of German society that the "modern" fraction wanted. What the German military wanted to see above all was the ''Wiederwehrhaftmachung'' of Germany, namely the total militarization of German society in order to fight a total war and thus ensure that Germany did not lose the next war. As such, what both the Nazis and the German Army wanted to see was Germany remade into a totally militarized ''Volksgemeinschaft'' that would be ruthlessly purged of those considered to be internal enemies, such as the Jews who were believed to have "stabbed" Germany in "the back" in 1918. Many officers too in the early 1930s started to express admiration for National Socialism, which they saw as the best way of creating the much desired ''Wehrstaat'' (military state).〔 An important sign of the sympathy for National Socialism within the military came in September–October 1930, with the trial in Leipzig of three junior officers, Lieutenant , Hans Friedrich Wendt and Hans Ludin. The three men were charged with membership in the Nazi Party; at that time membership in political parties was forbidden for members of the ''Reichswehr''. The three officers openly admitted to Nazi Party membership, and used as their defence the claim that the Nazi Party membership should not be forbidden to ''Reichswehr'' personnel. When the three officers were caught red-handed distributing Nazi literature at their base, their commanding officer, General Ludwig Beck (of the 5th Artillery Regiment based in Ulm), was furious at their arrest, and argued that since the Nazi Party was a force for good, ''Reichswehr'' personnel should be allowed to join the Party. At the Leipzig trial of Ludin and Scheringer, Beck and other officers testified about the good character of the accused, described the Nazi Party as a positive force in German life, and proclaimed his belief that the ''Reichswehr'' ban on Nazi Party membership should be rescinded. The trial in Leipzig caused a media sensation and Hitler himself testified at the trial about how much Nazi and ''Reichswehr'' values were one and the same. After the trial, many ''Reichswehr'' officers started to favour the NSDAP. By 1931, Germany's reserves of experienced reservists were coming to an end, because Part V of the Treaty of Versailles forbade conscription and existing reservists were aging.〔Nicholls, A.J. ''Weimar and the Rise of Hitler'', New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000, page 163.〕 General Kurt von Schleicher worried that unless conscription was restored soon, German military power would be destroyed forever.〔 So, Schleicher and the rest of the ''Reichswehr'' leadership were determined that Germany must end Versailles, and in the meantime saw the SA and the other right-wing paramilitary groups as the best substitute for conscription. Schleicher and other ''Reichswehr'' generals made secret contracts with the SA leadership starting in 1931.〔 Like the rest of the ''Reichswehr'' leadership, Schleicher viewed democracy as a great impediment to military power, and firmly believed that only a dictatorship could make Germany a great military power again.〔Nicholls, A.J. ''Weimar and the Rise of Hitler'', New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000, pages 163–164.〕 Thus Schleicher worked to replace the democracy with a dictatorship headed by himself. In this way, Schleicher played a key role in the downfall of the Weimar Republic and unintentionally helped to bring about Nazi Germany. The military played a major role in January 1933 in persuading President Paul von Hindenburg to dismiss Schleicher and appoint Hitler as Chancellor. The reasons for this was by January 1933 that it was clear that the Schleicher government could only stay in power by proclaiming martial law, and by sending the ''Reichswehr'' to crush popular opposition. In doing so, the military would have to kill hundreds, if not thousands of German civilians; any regime established in this way could never expect to build the national consensus necessary to create the ''Wehrstaat''. The military had decided that Hitler alone was capable of peacefully creating the national consensus that would allow the creation of the ''Wehrstaat'', and thus the military successfully brought pressure on Hindenburg to appoint Hitler Chancellor. Despite their sympathy and approval of the Nazi regime, the military leadership was in the early years of the ''Third Reich'' determined to defend their position as a "state within the state" against all rivals. In January 1934, when the Army commander Kurt von Hammerstein resigned, Hitler's choice for Hammerstein's successor General Walter von Reichenau was vetoed by the Army officer corps with the support of President von Hindenburg under the grounds that Reichenau was too much a military radical, and so Werner von Fritsch was chosen as a compromise. A more serious trial of strength concerned the military and the SA. By 1934, the generals were fearful of Ernst Röhm's desire to have the SA, a force of over 3 million men, absorb the much smaller German Army into its ranks under his leadership. Further, reports of a huge cache of weapons in the hands of SA members gave the army commanders great concern.〔Kershaw, ''Hitler'', p 306.〕 Matters came to a head in June 1934 when President von Hindenburg, who had the complete loyalty of the ''Reichswehr'', informed Hitler that if he did not move to curb the SA then Hindenburg would dissolve the Government and declare martial law. The ''Reichswehr'' leadership also pressured Hitler to act against the SA by threatening to block his plans for merging the offices of the Chancellorship and the Presidency after the soon to be expected death of the gravely ill President von Hindenburg. The result was the Night of the Long Knives which began on June 30, 1934, and led to the execution of the majority of the SA leadership, much to the barely veiled glee of the military. British historian A.J. Nicholls wrote that the popular stereotype of the German military in the 1920s–1930s as old-fashioned reactionary ''Junkers'' is incorrect, and a disproportionate number of officers had a technocratic bent, and instead of looking back to the Second Reich looked with confidence towards a new dynamic, high-tech and revolutionary future dominated by men like themselves.〔 The more technocratic the officer, the more likely he was to be a National Socialist.〔 Israeli historian Omer Bartov wrote that most officers were National Socialists "because they believed had it not been for () they would never have been able to realize their dreams of a highly modern, total war of expansion". As part of an effort to preserve the "state within the state", starting in the mid-1930s, the military began to more and more Nazify itself in a paradoxical effort to persuade Hitler that it was not necessary to end the traditional "state within the state", to prevent ''Gleichschaltung'' being imposed by engaging in what can be called a process of "self-Gleichschaltung". As part and parcel of the process of "self-Gleichschaltung", the Defence Minister Werner von Blomberg in February 1934, acting on his own initiative, had all of the Jews serving in the ''Reichswehr'' given an automatic and immediate dishonorable discharge. In this way, 74 Jewish soldiers lost their jobs for no other reason than there were Jewish. Again, on his own initiative Blomberg had the ''Reichswehr'' in May 1934 adopt Nazi symbols into their uniforms. In August 1934, again on Blomberg's initiative and that of the ''Ministeramt'' chief General Walther von Reichenau, the entire military took an oath of personal loyalty to Hitler, who was most surprised at the offer; the popular view that Hitler imposed the oath on the military is false.〔Kershaw, Ian ''Hitler Hubris'', New York: W.W. Norton, 1998 page 525.〕 The intention of Blomberg and Reichenau in having the military swear an oath to Hitler was to create a personal special bond between Hitler and the military, which was intended to tie Hitler more tightly towards the military and away from the NSDAP.〔 The American historian Gerhard Weinberg wrote about the oath to Hitler: "The assertion that most felt bound by their oath of loyalty to Hitler should be seen in the context of prior oaths and subsequent oaths taken and broken by the same individuals, especially in the highest ranks. They had sworn to uphold the Weimar constitution, and many had sworn to uphold its laws-which included the Versailles Treaty. It was considered desirable, even honorable, to break this oath as often as possible, and anyone who wanted to keep it was despised. After World War II, a substantial number of the military leaders were called on to testify under oath. Anyone who has studied their sworn testimony carefully will have noticed that many took this oath very lightly indeed. If of all the oaths generals and field marshals took, only the one to Hitler is so often cited, that may reveal more about their attitude toward Hitler than towards oaths"The unintentional effect of these measures to defend the "state within the state" by "self-Gleichschaltung" was to ultimately in the long run to weaken the "state within the state" status. At the same time, a new generation of technocratic officers were coming to the fore who were less concerned about maintaining the "state within the state", and more comfortable about being integrated into the National Socialist ''Wehrstaat''. Bartov wrote about the new sort of technocratic officers and their views about the Nazi regime: "The combined gratification of personal ambitions, technological obsessions and nationalist aspirations greatly enhanced their identification with Hitler's regime as individuals, professionals, representatives of a caste and leaders of a vast conscript army. Men such as Beck and Guderian, Manstein and Rommel, Doenitz and Kesselring, Milch and Udet cannot be described as mere soldiers strictly devoted to their profession, rearmament and the autonomy of the military establishment while remaining indifferent to and detached from Nazi rule and ideology. The many points of contact between Hitler and his young generals were thus important elements in the integration of the Wehrmacht into the Third Reich, in stark contradication of its image as a "haven" from Nazism". Because of these conceptions of Germany remade into a totalitarian ''Wehrstaat'', the leadership of the military welcomed and embraced the National Socialist regime. The German historian Jürgen Förster wrote that it was wrong as many historians have to dismiss the Wehrmacht's self-proclaimed role as one of the "twin pillars" of Nazi Germany (the other pillar being the NSDAP). General Ludwig Beck welcomed the coming of the Nazi regime in 1933, writing "I have wished for years for the political revolution, and now my wishes have come true. It is the first ray of hope since 1918.". (Ironically, Beck was later executed for opposing National Socialism.) In addition, many soldiers had previously been in the Hitler Youth and ''Reichsarbeitsdienst'' and had thus been subjected to intensive Nazi indoctrination; as a result, many newly commissioned officers were committed Nazis. In general, the ''Luftwaffe'' (airforce) was heavily Nazi-influenced, as was the navy and army to a lesser degree, through that was only relative. The Blomberg–Fritsch Affair of January–February 1938 that ended with the dismissals of Werner von Fritsch as Army commander and Werner von Blomberg as War Minister was the first Nazi attempt to undermine the position of the military as a "state within the state".〔Kallis, Aristotle ''Fascist Ideology'', London: Routledge 2000 page 89.〕 At the same time, Hitler abolished the War Ministry and replaced it with the OKW.〔 The Blomberg-Fritsch Affair marked the moment when the leadership of the military began to change from the leaders of a more or less autonomous "state within the state" to that of a mere functional, technocratic elite that existed only to execute the Führer's plans.〔 In one of the last demonstrations of the power of the "state within the state", the Army again vetoed Hitler's plans to appoint Walter von Reichenau as Army commander, and following tense negotiations between Hitler and Gerd von Rundstedt, who was acting as the Army's spokesman in this matter and who wanted Ludwig Beck as Fritsch's successor, agreed to Walter von Brauchitsch as a compromise. On December 8, 1938, the OKW had instructed all officers in all three services to be thoroughly versed in National Socialism and to apply its values in all situations. Starting in February 1939, pamphlets were issued that were made required reading in the military. The content can be gauged by the titles: "The Officer and Politics", "Hitler's World Historical Mission", "The Army in the Third Reich", "The Battle for German Living Space", "Hands off Danzig!", and "The Final Solution of the Jewish Question in the Third Reich". In the last essay, the author, C.A. Holberg wrote: On August 22, 1939, in a conference between Hitler and all of the ''Reichs senior military leaders, Hitler stated quite explicitly that the coming war against Poland was to be a "war of extermination" in which Hitler expressed his intention to "...to kill without pity or mercy all men, women and children of the Polish race or language". The British historian Sir John Wheeler-Bennett wrote that whatever doubts the Wehrmacht might still have had about the sort of regime that they were about to go to war for and the kind of people that they would be fighting for in this war, should have been clearly dispelled by Hitler's genocidal comments during the conference of August 22, 1939, and that the claims made after the war that the Wehrmacht simply did not understand the nature of the regime that they fought for, are not believable. Anti-Semitic and anti-Polish attitudes like the views expressed above coloured all the instructions that came to ''Wehrmacht'' during the summer of 1939 as part of the preparations for the invasion of Poland. The war against the Soviet Union was presented as a war of extermination right from the start. On March 3, 1941, Hitler summoned the entire military leadership to hear a secret speech about the upcoming Operation Barbarossa in which Hitler stressed that Barbarossa was to be a "war of extermination", that the German military was to disregard all the laws of war, and that he both expected and wanted to see the deaths of millions of people. With the exception of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, who protested that this was both morally and legally wrong, none of the officers who heard Hitler's speech voiced any objections. Since some of the officers, such as General Franz Halder, had previously been vocal in arguing with Hitler about military matters were silent after hearing this speech, John Wheeler-Bennett presumes that they had no objections to the sort of war that Hitler intended to wage . In 1989, the British historian Richard J. Evans wrote that right from the beginning of the war against the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the Wehrmacht waged a genocidal war of "extreme brutality and barbarism". Evans wrote that Wehrmacht officers regarded the Russians as "sub-human", were from the time of the invasion of Poland in 1939 telling their troops the war was caused by "Jewish vermin", and explained to the troops that the war against the Soviet Union was a war to wipe out what were variously called "Jewish Bolshevik subhumans", the "Mongol hordes", the "Asiatic flood" and the "red beast", language clearly intended to produce war crimes by reducing the enemy to something less than human. Such views helped to explain why 3,300,000 of the 5,700,000 Soviet POWs taken by the Germans died in captivity. On May 19, 1941, the OKW issued the "Guidelines for the Conduct of the Troops in Russia", which began by declaring that "Judeo-Bolshevism" to be the most deadly enemy of the German nation and that "It is against this destructive ideology and its adherents that Germany is waging war". The "Guidelines" urged "ruthless and vigorous measures against Bolshevik inciters, guerrillas, saboteurs, Jews and the complete elimination of all active and passive resistance". Reflecting the influence of the guidelines, in a directive sent out to the troops under his command, General Erich Hoepner of the Panzer Group 4 proclaimed: "The war against Russia is an important chapter in the German nation's struggle for existence. It is the old battle of the Germanic against the Slavic people, of the defense of European culture against Muscovite-Asiatic inundation and of the repluse of Jewish Bolshevism. The objective of this battle must be the demolition of present-day Russia and must therefore be conducted with unprecedented severity. Every military action must be guided in planning and execution by an iron resolution to exterminate the enemy remorselessy and totally. In particular no adherents of the contemporary Russian Bolshevik system are to be spared".Very typical of the German Army propaganda as part of the preparations for Barbarossa was the following passage from a pamphlet issued in June 1941: As a result of the very intense anti-Semitic and anti-Slavic propaganda before and during Barbarossa, most Army officers and soldiers tended to regard the war against the Soviet Union in Nazi terms, seeing their Soviet opponents as so much sub-human trash deserving to be destroyed without mercy. One German soldier wrote home to his father on August 4, 1941, that: The vast majority of the Wehrmacht officers fully co-operated with the SS in murdering Jews in the Soviet Union. The American historians Williamson Murray and Alan Millet wrote about Wehrmacht-SS relations: "A slogan about partisan war linked the treatment of both Russians and Jews in the great atrocities of 1941: "Where the partisan is, the Jew is, and where the Jew is, is the partisan". Across the breadth of European Russia, the invading Germans took matters into their own hands, as Hitler intended. Einsatzgruppen were responsible for the great bulk of the killing, but they received full cooperation from the Army. At Babi Yar outside of Kiev, SS-Sonderkommando 4a murdered 33, 771 Jews and other Soviet citizens in a two-day orgy of violence in revenge for Soviet destruction of Kiev. The local army commander, Major General Kurt Eberhard, cooperated enthusiastically, even providing the SS with an army propaganda company to persuade Kiev's Jews that they were moving for resettlement. On numerous occasions troop commanders ordered their men to participate in "special actions" against Jews and Communists. The repetitive nature of such orders suggests the level of cooperation between SS and Army that occurred throughout the German advance. Everywhere the Germans advanced, the tide of murder, violence and destruction followed, on Jews above all, but on the Soviet population in general"The British historian Richard J. Evans wrote that junior officers in the Army were inclined to be especially zealous National Socialists with a third of them having joined the Nazi Party by 1941. Reinforcing the work of the junior leaders were the National Socialist Leadership Guidance Officers, which were created with the purpose of indoctrinating the troops for the "war of extermination" against Soviet Russia. Among higher-ranking officers, 29.2% were NSDAP members by 1941. The ''Wehrmacht'' obeyed Hitler's criminal orders for Barbarossa not because of obedience to orders, but because they, like Hitler, believed that the Soviet Union was run by Jews, and that Germany must completely destroy "Judeo-Bolshevism". German historian Jürgen Förster wrote that most ''Wehrmacht'' officers genuinely believed that most Red Army commissars were Jews who in turn were what kept the Red Army going, and that the best way to bring about victory against the Soviet Union was to exterminate the commissars via enforcing the Commissar Order so as to deprive the Russian soldiers of their Jewish leaders. The Israeli historian Omer Bartov wrote that on the Eastern Front, it was belief in National Socialism that allowed the Wehrmacht to continue to fight, despite enormous losses. Bartov argued that the claim that it was "primary group loyalty", by which men are motivated to fight by loyalty towards their comrades in their unit with little thought to the cause that one is fighting for, cannot possibly have been what motivated the Wehrmacht to fight on the Eastern Front. Bartov wrote that on the Eastern Front, the Wehrmacht was taking such heavy losses that there were no "primary groups" for men to give their loyalty to, and that only a belief in National Socialism could explain why the Wehrmacht continued to be so aggressive and determined on the offensive, and so dogged and tenacious on the defense, despite often very high numbers of dead and wounded. The Bartov thesis was endorsed by the American historians Alan Millet and Williamson Murray, who wrote that by early 1944: "So desperate was the manpower situation that reinforcing divisions from the west were committed to the fight without time to acclimatize to theater conditions and in some cases before all their equipment and weapons had arrived. The appalling attrition of combat infantry raises the question why German soldiers persevered. It certainly could not have been group cohesion alone, given the losses suffered.In 1944, the 20 July plot involving a minority of officers received overwhelming disapproval from the Wehrmacht, who rallied for the Nazi regime. The American historian Gerhard Weinberg wrote about the July 20 ''putsch'' and the military: "When the explosion failed to kill Hitler, the overwhelming majority of Germany's military leaders sided with him rather than his opponents. As both sides sent their orders over the teleprinters in Germany's last "election" as a united country until 1990, most generals chose to support the Hitler regime and to reinforce rather than arrest the police."The July 20 ''putsch'' attempt was crushed by Army troops commanded by Major Otto Ernst Remer with no involvement from the SS at all. From 1943 onwards, the influx of officers and conscripts who had been mainly educated under the Nazis, began to further increase the National Socialism in the army.〔Beevor, Antony (1998). ''"Stalingrad" or "Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942–1943"'' (In the US). New York: Viking, 1998 (hardcover, ISBN 0-670-87095-1); London: Penguin Books, 1999 (paperback, ISBN 0-14-028458-3).〕 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 Hermann Göring to lead his Air Force, failure ensued. A sign of the close ties between Hitler and his armed forces was his choice from 1943 onwards of the ardent Nazi Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz to be the next Führer, a man whose "...dedication to National Socialist ideas and his close identification with Hitler's strategy in the last stages of the war made him a logical, not surprising, choice by Hitler as his successor". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Nazism and the Wehrmacht」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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