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    Hitler's Wartime Orders: The Complete Führer Directives, 1939–1945
    Hitler's Wartime Orders: The Complete Führer Directives, 1939–1945
    Hitler's Wartime Orders: The Complete Führer Directives, 1939–1945
    Ebook388 pages3 hours

    Hitler's Wartime Orders: The Complete Führer Directives, 1939–1945

    By Bob Carruthers

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    About this ebook

    An Emmy Award–winning author presents the history of WWII through the military strategies, tactics, and decisions of the infamous Nazi dictator.
     
    Edited by Bob Carruthers, Hitler’s Wartime Orders is an important historical record of Adolf Hitler’s war directives for the armies of Nazi Germany. From preparations for the invasion of Poland to his last desperate order to his troops on the Eastern Front, this volume provides fascinating insight into the proceedings of the Second World War and the mind of the man who launched the world into chaos.
     
    As readers will observe in this fascinating volume, the initial optimism of 1939 devolved into the disarray of later orders. How those orders were received, processed, and carried out by the upper echelons of the Third Reich would come to shape the future of military policy. This unvarnished publication reveals the true nature of Adolf Hitler as a military commander and sheds light on the events of one of the world’s greatest tragedies.
     
    All the wartime orders have been typeset in a clear format and presented chronologically.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateJul 30, 2018
    ISBN9781473868748
    Hitler's Wartime Orders: The Complete Führer Directives, 1939–1945

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      Hitler's Wartime Orders - Bob Carruthers

      Introduction

      H

      ITLER’S

      orders and directives form a powerful primary source record of the conduct of the Second World War at the strategic level. They provide a compelling insight, from the German perspective, into how Hitler’s war was planned and fought by the all-powerful Supreme Commander.

      However, it is vital to understand that the man issuing the strategic decrees and orders in the Second World War was a complete novice who had never risen above the rank of private. It is sobering to consider the fact that, during the Second World War, Hitler was learning the role of Supreme Commander. In order to overcome his lack of practical experience he relied upon his political skills and his gambler’s instinct to exercise an iron grip on the German military machine. In order to comprehend Hitler as Supreme Commander we must first take account of his service as a soldier in the Great War.

      In July 1914, the news of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand reached Munich. There followed a few days of high tension, then, on Saturday 1 August 1914, in response to the news of Russian mobilisation, came the order for the mobilisation of the German war machine. The Great War had begun. For Adolf Hitler, what he described as ‘the most memorable period’ of his life had now commenced. Faced with the prospect of that titanic conflict, it seemed to him that all of his past fell away. With a wistful pride, Hitler, in the pages of Mein Kampf, looked back on the days of war with a warm enthusiasm and a delight that fortune had permitted him the honour of taking his place in that ‘heroic struggle’.

      In 1914, the state of Bavaria still maintained its own standing army, however, in the event of war, the Bavarian army formed a component part of the Imperial German Army. As such the Bavarian army took its marching orders from Prussia and, although it still maintained its own recruiting and logistical systems based in Munich, it came firmly under the direct control of Berlin. It is no surprise therefore that Hitler was part of the cheering crowd on Munich’s Odeonsplatz, where he was famously photographed by Heinrich Hoffmann on Sunday 2 August 1914. In the infamous photograph Hitler can be clearly seen waving his hat enthusiastically and welcoming the news that war had been declared on Russia the day before. Shortly following the dispersal of the Munich crowd Hitler volunteered for service in the Bavarian army. He dashed off an application for permission to enlist in a Bavarian regiment and was directed to report himself immediately at the nearest barracks. Despite having been declared unfit for Austro-Hungarian service only the year before, Hitler, despite not being a German national, had somehow succeeded in obtaining permission to join the List Regiment.

      On the surface Hitler’s decision to enlist as a soldier in the ranks of the Bavarian army was a typically perverse action. After all, he had apparently gone to great lengths only six months previously to avoid military service in the Austro-Hungarian army. Hitler had now joined up as Kriegsfreiwilliger (wartime volunteer), and found himself properly enrolled as Infanterist Number 148 in the 1st Company of the List Regiment.

      The explanation to this apparent conundrum however lies in Hitler’s life-long political support for the pan-German nationalist Großdeutsche Lösung (greater German solution). Hitler’s own attitude towards the conflict was simple and clear. He believed that it was no longer a case of Austria fighting to get satisfaction from Serbia, but rather a case of the wider German peoples fighting for their own future existence. He pictured the Germanic lands hemmed in by enemies on all sides and deprived of the opportunity to expand horizons by overseas colonization. Hitler was certainly anxious to play his part in a struggle with which he could empathise, but wanted to serve in the Imperial German Army not the hated Austro-Hungarian Army with its ‘Slav influences’.

      The fresh-faced warriors of the List Regiment soon boarded a troop train bound for the Western Front. On 29 October 1914, the List Regiment was temporarily attached to the 54th Reserve Division, and it was with this division that the untried men of the regiment experienced their first action. With British shells falling all around, the battle continued for three days, with fierce causalities on both sides. Hitler and the 1st Company advanced and retreated into a storm of fire four times until eventually the village of Gheluvelt fell into German hands. Hitler and the List Regiment acquitted themselves well during the fight around Gheluvelt, but casualties, amounting to two thirds of the strength of the regiment, were very high – even by Great War standards.

      From all of the evidence available to us it would appear that the fighting for the village of Gheluvelt was the only occasion on which Hitler fought with rifle in hand. By 9 November 1914, the day of a brief action against the London Scottish near Wijtschaete, we know he was already serving as a regimental messenger. He was to achieve the distinction of serving in that capacity and in that regiment for the next four years.

      The fact that Hitler had distinguished himself in the fighting was also recognised by him being awarded Gefreiter status. The holder of the title Gefreiter was literally freed from sentry duty. It is important to realise that Gefreiter was not a rank which brought with it the right to issue orders to other men, it was little more than a signifier which indicated that this man was considered to be a trustworthy private soldier. A better term might be Private First Class, but the revised status also brought with it a tiny rise in pay, an infanterist received 70 pfennigs per day while a Gefreiter received 75 pfennigs. Hitler was elevated to Gefreiter status in November 1914, but in contrast to the popular conception he was certainly not promoted to the equivalent rank of a corporal.

      After the brief flurry of excitement that surrounded their arrival in Flanders, the men of the List Regiment soon had to settle down to the routine of life in the waterlogged and muddy trenches, which were to become infamous during the Battle of Passchendaele. Despite all the privations, Hitler certainly demonstrated a keen appetite for soldiering.

      By early 1915 Hitler had thrown himself fully into the world of soldiering. The List Regiment was his new family and he proved himself a dedicated and genuinely courageous soldier. All the main witnesses to Hitler’s deeds in the trenches are united in testifying to the fact that he was dedicated to his duty and did not shirk from even the most dangerous assignments. However, that is not to say that Hitler was popular as he certainly was not an easy companion. Some of his colleagues recall that he was a tiresome individual who did not integrate easily with others.

      Hitler certainly commanded the admiration of some around him, but it was frequently a qualified admiration. Hitler it seemed was always too ready to launch into political tirades. He frowned on coarse soldiers’ talk concerning women, objected to smoking, cursing and was curiously reluctant to leave the front. Hitler gave ready voice to his strong support for the war and these opinions certainly did not endear him to those who hated the war and wanted it over, win or lose.

      As the Great War dragged on, Hitler seems to have discovered a sense of belonging within the highly structured context of a military regime. The position of runner gave Hitler a measure of freedom, as it was up to the runner to find the best route to get the message through to its recipient and Hitler seems to have relished this semi-autonomous life. He is described as having an innate sense for choosing the safe route through even the heaviest shelling, and this power of survival soon earned him the nickname ‘Lucky Linzer’.

      Hitler’s success in the field had already brought him his first medal, the Iron Cross Second Class, and with it came the recognition he craved. Hitler had saved the life of his commanding officer and in the act he had conspicuously risked his own life in the face of intense enemy fire. There is no doubt that the award of the Iron Cross Second Class was deserved, the attainment of which he described in a letter to his Munich landlord, Herr Popp, as ‘the happiest day of my life’. Winning the Iron Cross Second Class in December 1914 was the beginning of an impressive list of awards and commendations. On 17 September 1917, Hitler was awarded the Military Service Cross with swords; on 9 May 1918, he was awarded the regimental diploma ‘for signal bravery in attack’ and on 4 August 1918, he received the Iron Cross, First Class, a decoration that was normally reserved for the officer corps.

      It was in the trenches, and in the ranks of the List Regiment in particular, that Hitler was destined to meet many of the colleagues who would form the clique at the heart of the National Socialist movement. However, from his lowly position in the trenches, Hitler had no way of knowing that German army of the Great War was outmatched and outnumbered. By 1914, foreign military technology had advanced so far that the attacking force was placed at a complete disadvantage. The German army was able to survive into 1918, mainly by sitting on the defensive and attempting to grind down the allies.

      These experiences shaped Hitler’s military doctrine, as it was here that Hitler learned that well planned and constructed defences, albeit at great cost, could thwart even the most dedicated attacker. This insight came from involvement in a long series of defensive actions from Aubers Ridge in 1915, through the great Somme battles and the fighting around Arras. It was only in the spring of 1918 that Hitler was to practise again the brief exhilaration of a major German advance.

      Despite not having any command experience, Hitler formed the opinion that dogged determination to hold on at all costs could be a war-winning strategy, this was undoubtedly due to having experienced so many defensive actions and was a view that would have grave consequences for the German armies under his command in the Second World War.

      During the First World War the regimental runners, of which Hitler was one, were mainly engaged in running messages from Regimental HQ, which could be five kilometres behind the lines, to the Battalion HQs which might be two kilometres behind the lines. Unlike the company runners who served in the front line trenches, the regimental messengers were not routinely exposed to the dangers of life in the front line. There were certainly fewer privations behind the lines and a far higher prospect of survival. Compared to the terrible hardship of serving in the front line trenches and the correspondingly high mortality, a posting to a position behind the lines was a small improvement that came complete with some comfort. However, on 13 October 1918, Hitler’s store of good fortune finally ran out and, less than a month before the Armistice, Hitler was seriously wounded for the second time. He was temporarily blinded by a British mustard gas attack and in the hospital at Pasewalk. Hitler, to his intense relief, was soon beginning to experience the encouraging signs that he might recover his sight.

      Despite this heartening development Hitler’s spirit was soon being crushed by the spectre of revolution that now loomed over Germany. Germany’s strategic situation was becoming untenable, and finally, in November 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated and fled to the Netherlands.

      Hitler now had to face the unpalatable truth the war efforts had been in vain. In his anger and despair he instantly formed the view that, what he described as ‘a gang of despicable criminals’ had somehow deceived the Fatherland. This was to become known as the Dolchstoßlegende, the belief that the Imperial German Army had been betrayed and had suffered a stab in the back that delivered Germany into the hands of her enemies.

      In this climate of mistrust Hitler came to lay the blame at the door of the Jews and in a chillingly prophetic passage from Mein Kampf he outlined what his own solution would have been; it involved the massacre of fifteen thousand Jews by poison gas. It is sobering to realize that within sixteen years from the date on which this passage was written, under the direction of Heinrich Himmler, the actions that Hitler advocated so fervently were being turned into reality on an unimaginable scale.

      A maelstrom of political strife and turmoil now marked the immediate aftermath of the Great War in Germany as an assortment of parties and competing ideas contested for power. Matters were further confused by the federal structure of the new order, which produced a confused pattern of regional political allegiances making any form of national cohesion extremely difficult. In Bavaria the political foment had succeeded in producing a revolutionary government by workers’ council: the Räterrepublic (The Council’s Republic). It was this development that was to provide the first fatal steps towards the National Socialist era. Seizing the opportunity to benefit from the chaos that surrounded him, Hitler demonstrated a genius for political organisation, and by 1933 he had made the transition from Gefreiter to Chancellor.

      Despite his political success in the twenties and thirties, Hitler did not anticipate the outbreak of war over the re-occupation of the Rhineland in 1936, although there is little doubt that he harboured an appetite for such conflict. In 1937, he again did not anticipate going to war over the annexation of the Sudetenland or the neutralisation of Czechoslovakia in 1938–39, nor did he anticipate war over the annexation of Austria in 1938. Despite this Hitler was able to correctly forecast that Britain and France had already written off Czechoslovakia, and he used this in order to realise his ultimate political aim, the restoration and extension of the lost German Reich in the East. Hitler had long ago recognised that diplomacy alone would never be enough to achieve such a goal and he relished the prospect of orchestrating his own personal version of the Great War.

      Hitler knew that if he was to succeed then ultimately there must be war against Russia. For Hitler, as a veteran of the Western Front, a war with Russia was a war that would be fought on an easily conquered Eastern Front. In 1917, he had witnessed the aftermath of the defeat of the Russian army, humbled by an ignominious peace treaty and the resulting flood of German reinforcements for the hard-pressed Western Front. Understandably Hitler and many other Western Front veterans viewed service on the Eastern Front as a soft option and the route to an easy victory.

      The inauguration of the Four Year Plan, which prepared the German economy for a war, began in 1936. At the same time Hitler established his control over the Armed Forces. By 1938, the diplomatic preparation had begun. After the appeasement at Munich, in September 1938, it looked as if Hitler had achieved the first part of his programme without the need for war in the west. However, the British guarantee to Poland and Romania told Hitler that, if he was to win his objectives in the East, he had first to defuse any prospect of resistance in the West. He therefore formed a strategic plan to discourage any form of resistance in the West by flexing his military muscles and destroying the Polish army in a quick campaign, designed to demoralise and intimidate his opponents in the West. Nevertheless, as history records the Western powers did not back down and when Hitler launched his lightning war against Poland the stage was immediately set for the most titanic conflagration in history.

      Despite the fact that he had never commanded a single man in the field, Hitler was determined that he should control every aspect of the war. He achieved his aim by establishing himself in the position of War Minister and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. This was followed by the imposition on all soldiers of the Reich a new oath of personal loyalty to Hitler himself. He also oversaw the formation of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW – High Command of the Armed Forces) – which was created on 4 February 1938, to replace the old Reichskriegsministerium (War Ministry). The OKW was staffed by Hitler’s most trusted supporters and through this he had created a new chain of command and made it possible for his own orders, both military and political, to be transmitted through the whole war machine of the Reich.

      Hitler’s strategic orders emerged from the OKW via the Wehrmachtführungsstab, they were usually signed, by or for Hitler by the Oberster Befehlshaber der Wehrmacht, (Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces), or Keitel as Chef der OKW, (Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces).

      The most intriguing of these orders are those designated Führerweisungen, (Führer Directives). Hitler intended these orders to be broad and long term in character. A Weisung (a directive) is distinguished from a Befehl (an order), by the fact that although both convey binding commands, a Weisung leaves the exact method of execution of those commands to the discretion of the subordinate authorities.

      The original texts of Hitler’s directives are now scattered among various archives. In general, all directives were sent to the High Commands of the three branches of OKW and, of course, to the OKW Wehrmachtführungsstab. They were often the subject of subsequent supplementary orders containing clarifications and corrections to each directive, however these auxiliary documents have been largely omitted from this volume.

      On 11 April 1939, Hitler turned the focus of his attention to Poland and issued a new directive for the Armed Forces. The first of the wartime directives was not numbered, but the series that followed Weisung has been rendered as self-contained and as intelligible as possible. These eventually ran for four years and reached Directive Number 51. The most interesting and important of the surviving documents are printed here along with the two decrees and the orders which were issued in place of the Weisungen during the closing phases of the war.

      The arc of the changing fortunes of the Second World War can most easily be traced through the directives and orders issued by Hitler during the last eighteen months of the war. Hitler continued to issue commands through the same channels but the previous air of unchallenged authority disappears. As the war situation deteriorates we witness Hitler turning desperately from one theatre to another, uncertain where his over-stretched front will next crack. As the end approaches, and as all the advancing enemy forces converge from all sides, the war becomes a frantic battle for survival.

      B

      OB

      C

      ARRUTHERS

      Part I

      Hitler On the Offensive

      Directive No. 1

      For the Conduct of the War

      T

      HE

      S

      UPREME

      C

      OMMANDER OF THE

      A

      RMED

      F

      ORCES

      .

      OKW/WFA Nr. 170/39

      G

      . K. C

      HEFS

      . LI.

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