3/16/2023 0 Comments Wwii battle groupHe eventually paid with his own life on the gallows on April 9, 1945. Canaris’s career is a paradox in that while he was charged with safeguarding the Third Reich against enemy espionage he was also a member of the domestic opposition to the Führer.Ĭanaris opposed Hitler’s policy of expansion, quietly intervened to save Jews and prisoners of war from execution, persuaded Spanish dictator Francisco Franco not to allow German troops to cross Spanish territory in an attempt to capture the British fortress at Gibraltar, conspired with high-ranking officers of Army Group C on the Eastern Front to assassinate Hitler, and was arrested following the July 20, 1944, attempt to kill the Führer. One such officer was Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, who led the Abwehr, the Intelligence branch of OKW, beginning in 1935. Despite the inherent risk, some officers were convinced that the most effective form of opposition to Hitler might actually come from within. The popularity of the Führer had reached such heights that open opposition was hazardous to an officer’s career and might even subject the dissident to harsh punishment. That mistrust was well founded.ĭuring the 1930s, those officers who had questioned Hitler’s judgment lost credibility as Germany reclaimed territory forfeited following World War I, reoccupied the Rhineland, annexed Austria and Sudetenland, and then occupied all of Czechoslovakia without firing a shot while Great Britain and France pursued a policy of appeasement. In turn, Hitler mistrusted the general staff virtually to a man. From the beginning of the Nazi era, senior officers of the general staff opposed the Führer. Many officers who remained associated with the general staff performed their duties with the understanding that opposition to Hitler had to be kept quiet. Hitler maintained control of both the OKW and the OKH, and there were dissident elements within the general staff-officers who grudgingly came to recognize that the general staff and OKH had been reduced from executive roles that shaped and influenced strategic German military operations to simply carrying out the orders of the Führer as they were handed down from Hitler to OKW. (Read all about the Wehrmacht and their use in the Second World War by subscribing to WWII History magazine.) Distrust Between Adolf Hitler and His German Army Generals He further created another senior military organization, Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW). At the top of a new command structure, Hitler installed himself as supreme military commander. Although the general staff had been recognized as the officer corps with the most effective grasp of strategy and tactics, Hitler diluted its command efficiency and power base, relegating OKH to a distinctly subordinate role. On the eve of World War II, Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH) served as the primary organization through which the Army general staff executed its plans. The command structure of the Heer embodied a long tradition of competence and efficiency. Through the upheaval of the interwar years, the German Army, known as the Heer, survived, and its leaders embarked on a clandestine effort to circumvent the terms of the Versailles Treaty that, among other things, had limited its fighting strength to 100,000 men. The bitter terms of the Versailles Treaty placed the vast majority of blame for the Great War on Germany, sowing the seeds of the Nazi rise to power and the coming of another even more terrible world war. When the proud German soldiers returned to their country from war-torn France and Belgium, they were welcomed as heroes. Surrender had come due to depleted resources and war weariness at home. With the end of World War I, the German Army had not been defeated in the field.
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