"Fighting a Lost War: The German Army in 1943" by Dr. Robert Citino

I have a difficult topic to discuss tonight.

1943

is probably the most difficult year of the Second World War for an author to write about, or indeed try to understand, and let me explain a little. As to why these are such kind preliminary remarks, the Axis powers' attempt to win the war quickly, something they all knew they had to do if they wanted to win it before their enemies could muster superior resources, had failed in

1943

, huh, Those Allied resources were now beginning to tell and yet that sounds clear and yet A's forces had advanced far enough in their initial offensives to be sitting everywhere in strong defensive positions, far ahead of where The allies were there when 1943 dawned, it was a long time. road to Rome, Berlin or Tokyo, uh, the Allies, I think in 1943 they could see a final victory, they knew they were going to win the war, but they also knew it was going to be a long, hard and very bloody road and in that In the sense that 1943 is the most difficult year of the war for everyone involved, as the war is short for everyone.

The illusions had been shattered. You know, I thought about this for a long time and I can't imagine ever in the history of war that any military establishment has come to their civilian Masters and said: you know what it's going to be a very long war, it's always the opposite, it's always promises to be the opposite, yes we can do this, how long will it take? Well it won't be like that, it won't take until now the classic trope will end soon of course the war will end by what holiday the war will end by Christmas and then the war will end by next Christmas Bill Clinton once told us that the troops would be out of Bosnia by Christmas 2057, so now for the Germans, who and I will focus my comments on the Germans tonight because that's what I know best: the war began with an incredible streak of victories from 1939 to 1941, every student of war I suppose knows something about this chronology, but there is Poland in September 1939, Norway and Denmark, the Scandinavian campaign, France in 1940 and the Netherlands, Belgium and the Netherlands, the Balkan campaign in 1941 , almost before.

It began, the Germans invaded Yugoslavia, took around 800,000 prisoners and suffered 362 casualties, then there was an air drop on Cre, perhaps the most exciting moment of this initial phase of the world war in which the Germans carried out the occupation of a island, eh, only. By airborne means alone, which would not have put the British to sleep so well, then there is the start of Operation Barbarosa for the first 6 months at least from June to December 1941, in which the Germans inflicted no less than 4 million casualties to the forces of the Reds. Army in that period 3 million of them were prisoners in the largest encirclement battles that the Germans have the term Kastle schlock the largest encirclement battles that have ever been affected uh the battle in front of Kiev probably in September 1941 probably took place around 700 or 750,000 Red Army prisoners of war, so the Red Army had essentially been at least version 1.0 of the Red Army had essentially been destroyed sometime between June and December 1941 and we'll talk about what could have happened in December at one point.

Now the formula for each of these dramatic victories was essentially a long-running German operation. Tradition is now the b-word in my business and it's not Blitz, which is a term with a lot of sex appeal among the reading public in World War II, the German term. It's actually the C for bong, which is much less correct, but translates to motion war. bong in German is movement, so movement warfare and the Germans use that at the operational level, that is, the movement, the maneuver of large units uh uh maybe division but core in central armies and

army

groups also is Bong's C the war of movement at the operational level aggressive even reckless attacks on every target of opportunity concentric attacks looking again for what the Germans called The Castle schlock a castle is a cattle or a cauldron, so it is a cauldron battle, but actually an encirclement battle.

Now, essentially, I think I have a Britney Spears microphone so I can walk around, you can hear me, this is amazing, essentially, this is how this map was created. This is how the whole map of Europe turned blue according to the map you have here, so the German star with the invasion of Poland turned north into Scandinavia, westwards, France and the Netherlands towards the Balkans and then, of course, the great campaign in the Soviet Union in this June starting in June 1941, that's how this map turned blue. I think, by the way, tonight I have for you an incredible PowerPoint of precisely two slides and this is the second slide is called how all the blue was erased and this is essentially the process that begins in 1943.

You know, you can go to a editor and tell him that I have a book about dramatic military victories and the editor will take care of all that. You go to a publisher with the book and say: I want to write about disappointment. What are you going to call this book? Map One becomes map two and 1943 is the crucial year for that development in 1943, in other words, that streak of Victories ended and it was a dramatic streak and it is so dramatic that I think there are still lessons to be learned. For historians and operators alike, analysts of all stripes can still study the early years of World War II with, I think, some benefit.

I don't pretend to know when the turning point of World War II actually took place and I would ask them. everyone should be as humble as I am in this particular case and admit that you may not even know that it is a great war, that it was a global conflict from the Arctic Circle to the South Atlantic and the Pacific, and claim that a discrete event had converted it From German victory to German defeat is probably a bit much, was it in November 1942 with AL alamain's Stalingrad Nexus which is a major defeat for the Germans deep in the Soviet Union and a major defeat For the Germans in the Western Desert in North Africa, these events followed each other and that has often been a very good candidate for turning point.

I wrote a book about 1942 and I tried my best not to use the word Turning Point, uh, and I remember that. I got picked up I was very lucky to get picked up by the military book club and I remember saying, "Oh, I can send another daughter to college." These are always great moments and the little booklet comes from the military book club. Many of you have been. members of it, you already know the pamphlet that describes the books and there is my book, an outstanding selection, the death of Verock, Robert Satino, big headlines, turning point of the Second World War.

I have strayed from my path, but that is a term. people have a kind of instinctive longing for what the moment was, so it could have been 1942 and a lot of people would say it could have been December 1941 when the Germans were crushed in front of Moscow. I read about World War II in high school and always remember that the German

army

was stopped outside of Moscow. Pretty much what I learned, then I studied it some more and oh yeah, it was stopped in front of Moscow and then it was almost destroyed by a gigantic Soviet counteroffensive so stopped doesn't even do it justice.

Up to that point, the Germans had suffered minimal casualties in the first two years of the war after the airdrop on Cre and the Germans had dropped an airborne division on Creed and it had some casualties: four or 5,000 men out of a 12,000-man division, so no one should underestimate that there were a lot of casualties, but Hitler said: well, we can never do that again, that was too bloody, too expensive, the next month he invaded the Soviet Union. and each day brought casualties that were probably five times the number of casualties suffered on cre every day for the rest of the war and really that process comes to a head in front of Moscow in December 1941 with relatively bloody bloodshed.

I am exaggerating a war that had caused minimal casualties for the Germans and now suddenly generated 1 million German casualties, so if you are looking for a turning point in World War II, maybe December 1941 could be your choice, but we can go further back. perhaps Hitler's decision to launch Operation Barbarosa in the first place, which is to invade the Soviet Union, until now he had done things his way, he couldn't find a way to defeat Britain without a Navy, perhaps he would have wanted think about it before We launched the war but still Britain was not an existential threat to the Germans at that time, they also did not have an army to return to the continent and then Hitler decided to attack his ally the Soviet Union and that was in June 1941.

July 1940 and Germany's inability to act decisively against a reeling Britain immediately after the fall of France - hell, maybe it was 1939 and the decision to launch war in the first place, which was to assume powers naval without a Navy, is one way. to describe the German strategic problem in 1939 I don't know I don't know what the turning point of the Second World War was, but I do know that in 1943 whatever slim chances the Germans had of winning this war in the first Germany first did not managed to subjugate Britain and then saw its armies trapped in Russia and then declared war on the United States;

In short, she was now trapped in a war of attrition against superior enemies and it's hard to imagine a way out of that. problem, you see, this is depressing. I admit this is the thing about 1943, although the war may have changed, but it was the same old Vermont, the same old German army still trying to do the same thing it had done in the first three years of the war, perhaps the only one . what he knew how to do and that was fight maneuver warfare to fight Bong's C at the operational level was an army that emphasized

fighting

power comcraft is the German term for less glamorous aspects of war like administration or logistics or intelligence or counterintelligence , all of whom were among the worst in the field in World War II, Polish military intelligence completely penetrated Conor's German intelligence before the war began, in a way exposing the German cod-making machine , the famous Enigma machine, while the Germans have historically produced great philosophers of war. like Claus is supposed to applaud my seminar is here I know you're supposed to accept that applause Carl couldn't be here this afternoon to accept that applause there are great philosophers of war in the German tradition of course Claus ofit uh Hans van molde al General von Zed after World War I, but the Germans have also had an abiding respect for the Man of Action, the muddy boots, the General, the hard charger, you can choose your metaphor.

World War II field marshals like Eric Von manstein or eart Von mckinson or wter modal. They were not so much brilliant theorists of war as very aggressive practitioners of it, and the same is true as you go deeper down the chain of command, the division and central commanders of the German army in World War II deserve much more attention. I think so far there is a book waiting to be written. Let me give you an example: General Paul Conrat, who is not a well-known name even to readers of books about World War II, but he commanded the Herman Garing parachute.

The Panzer Division in camp, the Sicily campaign, the Allied landing in Sicily when I was a child, a Panzer Division by parachute was something I wanted to see in action. I have since discovered that they did not drop tanks from the back of a transport. and I've

lost

a little bit of my uh a little bit of My Romance was a ground division staffed by L Offa so I had to designate parachutes now this was the division that gave the US Army all it could handle during invasion of Sicily, Conrath once summarized his Art of War in what I would consider inartistic terms.

He was talking to his superior field marshal, Kessle Ring, who was the commander in chief of the Mediterranean theater, and Kastle Ring, Conrath said. Are you ready? The allies are going to land in Sicily. Are you ready? And Conrath beautifully answered what words should be immortal. You want an immediate reckless assault on the enemy. I'm your man now that phrase sums up the PRC's operations for 1943. It was a terrible year across the board in C, the Allies finally managed to control the uboat threat and the big month there, the black month of the uots

german

s, may 1943, new technology, new sonar, technologies, new convoy techniques and the uots, several dozen uots were sunk.

In that single month of only perhaps 120 in the water at the same time also in the air Despite a slow start to the combined bomber offensive, the Allies burned down their first major German city in the summer of 1943, it wasHamburg the first, but of course not the last to suffer that fate now, despite what increasingly looked like a strategic collapse, the army spent the year attacking almost everywhere in 1943 in early March 1943, the end of winter sequence 4243, Field Marshall Manstein launched a counter-strike at Harof that crushed a couple of Soviet armies in July there was the big offensive in Operation Kers Citadel there were a series of German offensives in Tunisia with the coup against the US Army at the Cassine Pass in February being the best known was the first At the time when the Americans faced the Germans in battle and the results were not exactly encouraging for the allies, there were some harsh words from our British ally after the relatively inept operational sequence of opening the Cerine Pass began.referring to us, we, the American soldier, the American men like Alice, calling the American army, our Italians, I am Italian, so that I can get away with it, but those are

fighting

words, of course, between allies, in July, the allies invaded Sicily, uh, operation husky, so what we're doing here is moving from victory to eventual victory allied in Tunisia to Sicily and from there to Italy, Operation Husky was a success, finally in a matter of weeks, the first day and a half was very, very incomplete, in fact, the American force that landed in south central Sicily , near the town of Jayla, ended up with a German panzer division in the face within hours of landing.

The nightmare for amphibious troops is that there is some unit formed within the beach day march that can hit the landed troops before they have really coalesced into a solid beachhead, that is precisely what happened to them. the Americans in Sicily and that is courtesy of Parachute Panzer Division Conro General Herman Garing. The enemy said I'm your man and that's what the Americans had to endure in Sicily in September, they, the allies, not just the Americans followed the invasion of Sicily by invading mainland Italy and this is Operation Avalanche, this time. The US Landing Force at Salo faced six German panzer or mechanized divisions in the early days of that campaign and came very close to being driven into the sea, probably the closest any amphibious force in the theater came.

European of World War II. actually being driven out to sea, I mean, his commander was at a disadvantage and he was seriously considering evacuating his headquarters and that would be the general, that would be General Mark Clark I I I teach in Texas now we, our family lives in Denton Texas, I am a Faculty Member at the University of North Texas and I once gave a talk there and said some things about Mark Clark that were relatively favorable in Texas. I will never make that mistake again. I'll be happy to get into the gory details if you want.

I wish I knew I survived the encounter, but as soon as it reappeared, the lone Americans came very close to being thrown back into the sea. uh, I said Clark was considering evacuating the Germans. German commanders at the site sent dispatches saying that the Americans would abandon it. It certainly seemed that an evacuation was in process, in other words, in 1943, in every sense, it was the same old vermin, always aggressive, whether the aggression was necessarily intelligent or not and with a strict focus on the immediate enemy, leaving broader strategic questions more or less. intact now, that's what the Germans did in 1943, but I think there's a bigger question and the question is what could they have been thinking and this my most recent book is a piece called The Vermont Retreats and it's about this year 1943 and you already know.

Tunisia is a fairly well-known operation. The movie pass has been an American obsession. The great Sicilian amphibious operation. People love reading about that nice standalone campaign that lasted several weeks. Then there is the drama in Italy. Mark Clark solo. Rick Ainson did this with style in his book The Day of Battle, if you've never had the chance to read Atkinson's The Day of Battle, I recommend you do so before you go to bed. Tonight was a task because it is a nice, big, thick book, people are quite familiar with those campaigns and operations. well, but I don't think it got enough attention, maybe it's just what the German officer corps leading these campaigns might have been thinking exactly what they thought they were doing if they thought, you know, in 1943 rationality told the officer corps that the war was

lost

, and, in fact, they admitted as much quite frequently in their postwar writings, commentaries, interviews, and memoirs.

That's rationality, but tradition, reinforced in a thousand different ways, urged them all to keep the faith and move on, as it might have been in 1943 and it might have been easier to just fight the war than to stop and think about how the war was going. war. It is a daily task. That might satisfy an officer's interest in operational art and that might add to the hours in a day. but to go back and say well, we're going to launch, we're going to launch a counteroffensive on Sero, to go back and say what will that benefit us eventually.

I don't think I ever got much attention about an old Prussian tradition and the German army. had come out of the Prussian tradition in large part it was the toen RIT the death journey was an order that you carried out Costa s vasava whatever is necessary at all costs something that you did not question uh in a certain sense yours is not to reason by what yours is about to die or die we have the tradition in The Charge of the Light Brigade maybe that's what the Germans were doing in 1943 no one can deny that they paid a price for this kind of thinking uh can you imagine this core of officers in War uh SS General Paul Hower with his only eye General Hans Huba fighting alone uh with his only arm General wter naring mounts a rickety defense against Tunisia while having to constantly change the dressing on a festering wound in General Hair arm in command in Division Commander Beach alone as he shook off the effects of a recent head injury that was actually only a couple of months old.

General Fiser, commander of the 10th Panzer Division in Tunisia, paid the ultimate price for driving into an unmarked minefield, they fought, suffered and died. in packs more than 100 German officers 100 German generals were killed in the course of World War II the numbers 150 I don't have the exact number in my mind, it's the order of magnitude in which they died in packs and of course they did too The men under his command together fought so hard that Germany literally had to be destroyed to end the war, which is a relatively unprecedented event. When I was a child, the destruction of Germany in World War II seemed like the most ordinary and common event in the world, but as I grew older and studied more military history and went back and looked at other wars, it is a very rare event, of course.

In fact, someone comes to their senses at some point and asks terms, that's how wars usually end. That's not how this one did it, of course, now this for me, fighting to destruction is the real problem of the war year 1943, the Germans have a great word, you know, they have a word for everything, the problematic thing, is the problematic, it is a series of interrelated problems and This is the first time that the war was lost and many smart minds in the officer corps recognized it and yet Hitler had no problem finding commanders who would continue to serve loyally and even enthusiastically for the rest of the war, for every officer who finally said, "I don't do it." I don't think this is going well and some came to their senses.

There was always a line outside the door waiting to replace them. Hitler had spent the war hiring and firing, much like Stalin or Churchill or any American CEO. The Army stopped firing before entering the war after the Louisiana Maneuvers, when a large part of the officer corps and a large part of the general ranks were purged of younger officers put in their place, but generally not did. He didn't kill people. Oh, he killed all kinds of people. He didn't kill his own officers. Stalin killed his own officers in large numbers, but Hitler generally fired people, so he spent the year, the war years so far, hiring and firing. but over the course of 1943 he finally assembled the team he wanted, he now believed and was on record saying this many, many times that the time for large-scale mobile warfare, the way the Germans had played ball since the beginning of operations in the classical style as he put it that era ended at the end of 1943 the generals who wanted to operate on the Germans have the verb op means operate to fight the mobile war we, in general, went to manstein, they fired us uh General Kuga and K on the army group level, General Herman Ho of the 4th Panzer Army, one of the most aggressive army commanders in the German officer corps, now in his place, these smart guys were gone, in his place They were tough guys with a firm jaw field, Marshal Ferdinand Scherer or Lothar. rendich or vter modal a little less known in the West the problem was not that they were bunglers that is how it is often written they got rid of the intelligent generals and put their bunglers in their places those who would obey them without question they were for and great competent professionals, they had been to the right schools and knew how to write an order, but what really recommended them to Hitler was that each one was a fighter (the German term the ladder or Stander), someone who would stand still and stand his ground. . where he was told that they were not operators, smart guys like Manstein, they were not staff officers who sat looking at maps all day, perhaps Hitler's least favorite colleagues in the high command, they were men of will who considered retreat as a personal insult and that they are willing to fight to the last German soldier in a hopeless Second War.

I don't for a moment want anyone to think I'm recommending this as a course of action. Sherner had hundreds and even thousands of his own soldiers shot to keep others in line and to prevent the collapse of discipline on his front, you may know this statistic: the Germans handed down approximately 25,000 death sentences against their own troops in the Second World War. How many of those dispatched kills actually took place? The records are questionable. completely biased towards the end of the war, but let's assume that the traditional efficiency of Nazi Germany was on display here and that most of those 22,000 death sentences were in fact carried out, the vast majority of them, by the way, in the First War World Cup the Germans had handed down 16 death sentences for desertion through cowardice and here, 22,000 in Italy, of course, Hitler had to find, to his delight, the purest Stander of all and that is Field Marshal Albert Von.

Kessle's ring beneath the Standers were the conrat and the hubbas and the buls and the Others I've already mentioned, may have been a defeated army, but it was still a highly lethal instrument and, in the last two years, the casualties that inflicted on the Allies were enormous casualties inflicted on the Soviet Army in recent years. four months of the war which is last January February March and April 1945 before Hitler's suicide is approaching a million now the writing was on the wall what the Germans call Nebuchadnezzar's menle in Daniel 5 see the writing on the wall and of course it means that they have weighed you in the scales and found you wanting, in a perfectly rational world, they would have stood up, overthrown Hitler, and sued for peace and, in fact, some of them tried to do just that, as I hope As far as we all know, in July 1944 there was an attempt to kill Hitler, not by the generals but by the colonels.

I've gotten to know a lot of colonels and they're independent-minded people and that happened in Hitler's Germany too, but you know, none of us are completely rational, uh, and this officer corps didn't care anymore, they marched to the tune of weapons as he had for centuries, his blood was boiling and all he had left was a one-sided call to action. I reflected on this and believe. I finally made sense of it in 1943. The magazine that had served as a forum of ideas within the officer corps since the Napoleonic period was called Military Vcan Blot. The military weekly had been published continuously since 1816 and closed in 1943.

The Germans stopped publishing it since there was no increase in debt so there was nothing left to talk about. It may have been a grim magazine in 1944 to fully commit to the journey of death. You had to replace faith with rationality. I guess maybe you had to stop thinking. All together, but I'd like to end the discussion of why I think it's risky to say: well, they probably weren't thinkinga lot. If they had thought more, they probably would have stopped the war. I think they were thinking about some things. and historians have analyzed this meticulously. We often argue that what kept German officers in the field was their fear of Red Army revenge.

If the Red Army broke into Germany, there would be hell to pay and that is quite true. and they had good reason to be worried, others argue that it was Hitler, either his fear of Hitler or his loyalty to Hitler, two sides of the same coin. I guess if I had a nickel for every time I read in a memoir, I went in with the intention. argue with Hitler, but there was something hypnotic about that piercing blue-eyed look and I just broke down. I left shaking. Personally I don't believe it for a minute, but it is widely written that there was something hypnotic or perhaps even demonic about Hitler. can.

I'm not a theologian, so I'll leave that to the theologians, but people write about it a lot and others say, of course, that I feared Hitler. I feared for my family and you would too and we have to be kind. Do you know if? If you are a family person, you have to be sensitive to that. I will say again that, in general, Hitler let people resign who were no longer Hitler and who no longer felt they could fulfill their duties. So some of those officers tried to kill Hitler and then he killed a bunch of them and we know that was after mid-1944, but overall, again, the officer corps that should have been most worried about being killed was the corps. of Red Army officers in the first two years of the Soviet war. against the Germans but yet the arguments focus on Hitler, whether it's your fear or your admiration or the fact that you were hypnotized by him and, again, I guess that's pretty true, no one wants to take to Hitler from the history of World War II, but I think we need to qualify this a little if there was an Experience A shared experience A searing experience that united the members of the German officer corps in World War II was the end of the worldFirst World War when they believed they had been on the verge of winning the war until they were stabbed in the back by a faltering home front and the groups on the home front doing the statistic could vary depending on the officer we're talking about but but The Usual Suspects Pacifist Socialists National Socialist Conception Jews Communists an unholy coalition that had somehow come together to stab the German army in the back now that may not have been true and in fact, as a historian of the First World War, I don't think it's true.

I do World War II, but to do World War II you have to look at the German army in World War I. The Germans were badly beaten at the end of World War I in the field, as the Allies always were. He maintained that we have the good Dr. Nberg back and that he can come here and share my fee for this talk, but that doesn't mean it's not true, it doesn't mean that many German officers didn't believe it. I think many of them did believe it. I think they had heard it said enough times, they paid attention to the tropes of the myths enough times that they finally began to internalize them, and if there's one thing that doesn't surprise me about World War II, it's that this officer corps promised to fight until midnight until midnight. 10 at night, if that was what it took this time there wasn't going to be a stab in the back, the Germans were going to fight this war to what turned out to be an extremely bitter end, you know?

They did just that and they could have done it even if someone else was in charge, maybe in Hitler, maybe Hitler didn't hypnotize them, maybe in Hitler they had finally found the life-or-death leader they had been yearning for since 1918 and 1919. Each one of these officers had fought in the previous war of course, particularly when we talk about general level officers, they had long careers and we only go back a couple of decades and maybe in Hitler they finally found the man they were looking for. Finally, I don't think it's unfair to point out that they were worried about themselves, we are all near the end of the war, many of them sat in British prisons not knowing that their captors were recording their conversations, uh, gentlemen, don't open. everyone's mail, an American diplomat said before World War II and talked about whether we should put some spies in the Axis camp, but the experience of World War II was the least of the horrible things that happened is that the people started to uh um In a sense, they were listening to each other to read each other's mail, but many of them were in British prisons and didn't know they were being recorded.

In a somber moment, one of them suddenly realized the gravity of it all. taken, we used to be colonels and generals, General Robert Zatler blurted out one night, but after this war we are going to be cleaning boys and bellhops, the most respected social category in German society was the core of officers and they knew that was over with your complaint. might be the best epitaph of all for 1943, the war was lost, but the officer corps remained loyal to the regime and the struggle, in doing so, they signed a death sentence not only for millions of soldiers and civilians, of course, but also for his own cast.

Well, the campaigns of 1943 were not only the beginning of the end of World War II, but of one of the longest acts on the European historical stage: the Prussian German Officer Corps, so those are my prepared remarks for tonight and I am prepared to respond as well. any questions or comments you want to ask me, yes, thank you, the students who have been in my class know that what I should have done now is leave Mike, so my boys, you can get the people you need here. You have a microphone "Let's come", please wait until the microphone arrives before moving on to questions.

I have to say I see a lot of my students from seminars 24 and 25 in the room and it's so good to see seminar 25 it really is no I can't you knew that you knew you knew that was coming so I think they're coming to look for you, so I have I have a question, where am I looking please? Corner, front corner, there you. Wow, thanks, what role did the oath that German officers took to Hitler personally, not to a constitution, play? Hitler personally has to do with his loyalty to the bitter end, especially considering the concept of honor in the officers' court, this is obviously a very good question and practically all the officers who wrote their Memoirs after the war said: "Well, "We were trapped, we had taken an oath to Hitler and you know you cut it in such a way that you said it was a personal oath." unlike an oath to an institution or a constitution and maybe that was what makes some kind of qualitative difference, but let's look at those other oaths that the German officer took oaths of loyalty to the bimar constitution in the 1920s and 1930s which is a constitution of the German Republic and that did not seem to stop them from violating that oath.

In the 1940s and 1950s they were purged repeatedly during their war crimes trials, which contradicted the written evidence and apparently that oath didn't mean much. There are oaths and there are oaths and there are some that we take so that they are fulfilled for a lifetime. I intend to keep that, perhaps others by the Constitution, swearing to tell the truth in court, swearing on the Bible, the concept of the official core of the oath could be quite elastic. I'll just say that, so I think what united them to Hitler was not so much the oath as the things that Hitler gave them and what they supported: he promised to overthrow the Democratic Constitution, something they wanted him to promise to rearm the country something they wanted to promise restore Germany's self-respect something they wanted they promised to start a war at least to destroy Poland maybe not this gigantic war maybe they didn't want that but of course the invasion of Poland led to this and that was extremely popular within the corps officers on the day that the French chief of staff, Halder Hitler, said that we will invade Poland in two weeks, whatever the date, Halder said that a stone has fallen from my heart, the happiest.

The day of his life apparently Poland had been separated from German and Russian territory and it was sort of at least the first step for German expansionism was to destroy Poland and the office of course supported that after the plot to kill Hitler, the officer Corp. many of the officers that Hines Garan sat on hastily uh prepared um Marshall tribunals that sentenced many of their fellow officers to death for violating the oath against Hitler, so there are oaths that they kept and there are oaths that they did not keep. I do not intend to be a moral arbiter again.

I am not a theologian and at some point you answer, I think to a higher power, for what you have done in your life. I believe it, but I don't claim to be the one. who condemns them because God knows that we are all human beings and we all do this we all do things that make us ashamed of which we had not made secrets that we keep we are all human beings as a corporation as a corporation body, the German officer had a lot to answer for in terms of the plasticity of his oath. I'll just say that, so I'm miked right now.

Oh, okay, sure, you speak, you speak quite correctly. I believe in the ultimate irrationality of the German army's decision to continue fighting from the beginning in 1943, even when any kind of rational calculation must have told them that they were defeated, and yet you mentioned nothing about the demand for unconditional surrender that the Germans puts you in a bit of a problem, I mean, a general politician with some foresight could have seen that one way or another Germany is going to be divided between the occupying powers with or without two more years of war, that's a good point , no and needs to be answered. and I think it's a good point that we could debate the rightness or wrongness of the unconditional surrender policy from now until doomsday and we will have different opinions in the room, certainly again I am an expert on the Memoirs and interviews conducted with German generals after the war virtually to a man mentioned this: what did they expect us to do after a declaration that the allies were fighting for unconditional surrender?

Germany would stop at nothing less now. It is interesting that at the time when opinions were declared within the German resistance that the German resistance was at that time dispersed groups, a fairly inchoate resistance to Hitler uh they were not unanimously against they said well at least this is saying this is telling the official what's up what are they going to get what they were worried about what the resistance was worried about is that they would show their hand and then there would be a negotiated peace that would leave some form of national socialism in power and of course then that's what just happened say.

I suppose he signed his own death warrant, but it comes to mind when I hear the unconditional surrender, although I can understand it as a political move to unite the alliance, it seems to me too rigid a strategic stance that at the end of the day the war It has to be a political act, war and politics have to be linked and there is always room for negotiation and room for maneuver in politics, which I think solidifies unconditional surrender as a viable policy and as the right thing to do at the time. was Hitler, this simply seemed to be a regime with which there could be no solid basis for negotiation.

Too much water had gone under the bridge. Too many treaties had been signed and violated. Too many promises had been made and then imposed. and so I think at least in this case unconditional surrender probably makes some sense. I think if there had been a policy of unconditional surrender, even if it hadn't existed, I think the war could have turned out very similar to how it did. keep going in the U in the last weeks of the war here thank you in the last weeks of the war any of the general officers tried to escape to Switzerland Sweden South America anywhere the most atrocious yes, the short answer is yes In general, practically no they were all captives, one or another, most of them tried to surrender, to whom the Western Allies and not the Soviets was probably sensible policy, but I suppose it is the most egregious example of an officer trying to escape.

It was General Sherner who commanded the Army, I guess, Army Group South until the end of the war and he was the disciplinarian General who had shot thousands of his own men to keep them in line, usually under false accusations of cowardice toward Al end of the war, he tried, got a payout, and got all the funds he could. Commander of a historic phasel aircraft, that small command plane that the Germans had abandoned army group South and tried to surrender. to the Americans blew up the American lines um was captured by the Americans and quickly handed over to the Soviets the greatMost of his army group went to Soviet captivity instead of American captivity The Soviets finally freed him in 1955 I think they sent him back to East Germany It was part of the debate at the time about German rearmament, the Soviets were trying to say we have some unpleasant characters, you want to rearm West Germany, here's an unpleasant character that you might have to deal with in the future and that became a big problem instead of the fact that he had tried what was apparently to save his own skin as he abandoned his troops in the final days of the war, but the vast majority wouldn't say they didn't harbor fantasies of escape and sailing. to Argentina or wherever the vast majority of them ended up as prisoners practically all of them then gave interviews to Western Allied allies that became the series of foreign military studies that are on the shelves of the ahac here and you Now, thanks to God for World War II, I have nothing to write about what I have been.

I have been waiting for those documents my entire academic career and continue to do so. Yes, sir, in Russia in particular, do you think the confusion caused? for Okw and OK plus the dismissal of Brutish had the dismissal of plus the dismissal of fil Marshall of Brutish are those three conditions. Do you think they had a big negative impact? Without a doubt. I think one of the myths maybe about the German. The high command in World War II was particularly efficient, but there have certainly been more efficient high commands in the annals of 20th century military history, so there is essentially a tripartite division, there is the army high command, and they run the En The war in the East, which is the war against the Soviet Union, is at the top because it is basically an army show, that is where 80% of the army is, then there is the OKW, the high command of the Armed Forces, the Navy and Air Force, and that's North Africa.

In the western sectors, then there is the General Staff responsible for Army planning, but also some joint planning, so it is very complex. Hitler created the high command of the Armed Forces, not as one would expect, because it makes sense to coordinate Land Air and maritime operations, he could support that he did so to exclude the army high command from decision making because it had been the dominant body in the German military planning together with the general staff until that time, now for Hitler the army officers were a particularly unpleasant group in Hitler's worldview they were from the Prussian high aristocracy the junkers of East Germany old names and old families Hitler had a type called manstein who sometimes gave him trouble Frederick the Great had someone called manstein who usually gave him trouble Hitler had zylet Who was the officer and commander inside the parking lot saying they had to be an immediateThe escape Frederick the Great had a commander scandalous so-called no side these families were the old Hitler, as you already know, he did not come from any social background of what we could consider a social background.

He had a father who was maybe lower middle class. The father was a customs official of the Hsur Empire. Adolf was orphaned at a relatively young age, we don't actually diagnose this clinically, his parents were both parents when he was a teenager, nothing unusual in late 19th century Europe, Hitler, at a relatively young age. he went to Vienna to become an artist who failed. He spent Christmas 1912 in a homeless shelter outside Vienna. I mean, that's what Hitler was. He had gotten up from the sidelines when he said he said it himself repeatedly, so he had to deal. with cultured, cultured, educated and privileged officers from the army headquarters in particular, it was very difficult for Hitler, the Navy and especially the Air Force were much more Nazifis, the Air Force had younger technical guys, people who like fly. family, his pedigree was not that important to the Air Force or even the Navy was a relatively young service, so Hitler had done that again created this high command of the Armed Forces so that the three services would look like they were equal and he could decide between them, but often it was the Navy and the Air Force joining two to one in the Army, you could have an infantry division in the Soviet Union was under the command of the OK under the administration of the OK and then it would have to be sent to France and now and he would leave OK the high command of the army and go to the high command of the Armed Forces, then he would be transferred back to the Soviet Union and it would happen again in reverse. generating enormous amounts of bureaucratic administrative friction and of course enormous amounts of paperwork, so the short answer was a long answer, the short answer to their short answer, I even turned off the microphone and answered, the short answer is yes, everyone those were problems. you said another factor besides Braach's firing, yes, uh, the high command of the high commander of the army, general alteron braic, a rather fanatical Nazi married to an even more fanatical Nazi, this brockage was an interesting character and fra brockage was fired After the Soviet campaign went wrong in December 1941, there now seemed to be a health problem, official um documents said it was a heart problem that was questioned about how serious the heart problem was, but the campaign had gone bad and Hitler was I'm not satisfied, okay, the Pittsburgh Penguins were eliminated, they're going to fire the coach, we all know how it works, but the problem is that when you don't hire a new coach, Hitler personally took over the top command of the army later.

Firing Brit told Chief of Staff France F France Halder I love this. I'm going to say this to the next class of students at the US Army War College. This little operational planning thing, uh uh, anyone can do it and you. I know that Hitler spent the rest of the war proving that claim false, not everyone can do it, it's very complicated and requires specialized training and certainly the kind of specialized training that Hitler didn't have, what he did have of course was faith. in his own star based on some early successes, perhaps some counterintuitive guesses in the French campaign, we might say, but there is no doubt that the Germans could have fought the war more efficiently if Hitler had stopped meddling so much. .

I don't believe it. that in the end the result would have been different Hitler all the big decisions were Hitler's especially invading the Soviet Union and then declaring war on the United States is a two part thing um you said a couple of There are times when he didn't really kill many of his officers or anything, except towards the beginning of his career there, before he became the F fur, and as if here he did not kill many of the generals of the First World War and the officers who were part of his brown shirts on that night of the knives, yes, and then he became Nai.

Germany I think took a turn with a younger enlisted people that were more in tune with the Nazi ideal and um, so that's the first part, yeah. let me answer it and then wait, let me answer that so I remember the question, then we'll give you the second part in a second. um, there was a pretty big purge in June 1930. Hitler came to power in January 1933. About a year and a half into what Hitler perceived as dangerous tendencies within the party, particularly among his street-fighting Stormtrooper organization, there was a decapitation blow against them. Ernst Rome, the head of the Storm Troopers, was killed along with some of the others. cronies a handful of regulars a handful of officers in the regular army were also killed in that KN of the Long Knives at all, but some perspective if you look at what Stalin had done to his own officer corps in the 1930s in terms of numbers.

Hitler was quite amateur. in comparison, now in 1938 there was another movement to coordinate the army: Defense Minister Blomberg and the head of the army command, General Frit, were dismissed from their positions for false moral accusations of all the things that General von Blomberg had It was said at the time that he had married a woman with a past, which is why Wikipedia exists, so look it up if you want other moral charges brought against General Frit based on false testimony from a person on the street that the SS had the gap. They stopped them and asked them for information, so they were removed from their positions and neither of the two CAs.

I mean, you know this is horrible, but it was a gangster regime that did horrible things on a regular basis, but neither of them were murdered at the time, so he would have to do it. but overall this was not a regime that killed its own generals until some officers tried to kill Hitler in July 1944 and then again several of them were killed horribly and if you want to look up the details again, why? today we have the Internet, um, but you know, murdered in a particularly gruesome way and often convicted by, you know, sort of kangaroo courts of their fellow officers, it's a pretty difficult situation from the start, so no one should ever know that Hitler Hitler did it.

He didn't really kill people, he killed all kinds of people, the largest mass murder of the 20th century, in general, the officer corps was not the target of his most murderous impulses and there was a second part, yes, with the end of the First World War. The German army was actually based on their own lands and was more on the lands of their conquered countries every time they surrendered oh yeah yeah right so if I remember something I read correctly, at one point people had said that they felt it was more of a draw and a reduction and not a big loss on their part and then signing that treaty and then not being able to participate in the subsequent talks for the League of Nations and the Treaty to get rid of them they were alienated and then their The country was divided into many pieces and they took them away, that's what that work is like.

I mean, I feel like that plays a huge role in 1943 with what you're talking about and how you could surrender not even a generation later in a war that you're in. fighting every time the last time you surrendered the Allies took everything you had anyway yeah so did you know you mean the kind of stab in this notion that the German army had been stabbed in the back in the First World War, but look, this then is the danger of Falling prey to a myth at the end of the First World War, the German armies had suffered massive defeats on all fronts, but particularly on the Western Front.

The Austrians were collapsing. Their Bulgarian ally was collapsing. Chief of the German General Staff at that time U is not his exact title, but it is pretty close. General Eric Ludendorf went to the civilian government and told him that he must sign and the armistice was immediately defeated. Now, 10 years later, he is one of those who write books and say that our brave fighting forces were stabbed in the back by socialists on the home front, I mean, we can understand why he wrote it, people always tried to exonerate themselves , very few people write Memoirs and say, and the book The Memoirs is called My Fault, by Robert M.

Satino, and that would be a bestseller. people write books to say that you know your fault that's what people say sometimes Memoirs this Memoir is particularly selfish all Memoirs are selfish that's why people write them to present the best possible case the only contrary example Saint Augustine called his Memoirs, confessions, he said all the horrible things he had done in his entire life, it's a very unusual piece of literature, so you're right in the sense that this myth that had taken hold that somehow we Germans say Let's say we are. We Germans here were not really defeated and I know what you like the way you started at the end of that war we were everywhere on foreign soil right, we are still occupied most of Belgium and parts of France and and a large part from what had been Zarus Russia to which the German army had to return to end the war, so they were everywhere on foreign soil, but the country's economy had collapsed and the blockade had practically ruined the economy , the flu epidemic was hitting Germany as hard as anywhere else due to lower calories in the diet and increasingly scarce diet as 1917 turned into 1918 16 and 17, Germans began eating turnips three times a day you can grind them, boil them, fry them and bake them, and that's great, I love rolls, but before the First World War they were used as livestock feed in Germany, they were beaten in the dog food aisle, like this, like this, like this, like this.

You understand what I mean, so you're right. I mean, if that was the myth in thethat we all believe, you know we didn't really lose that war, this time we are going to prove it by being destroyed from the beginning and who it was. But that's not it, oh, I'm sorry, what he did, I'm not sure what that's not, you say what do you mean, yeah, no, there's, oh, there's no doubt that national pride and pride in the nation were a large part of the Nazis. Appeal, many Germans felt that the Treaty of Versah treated them unfairly.

I think it's a huge exaggeration to say that it tore apart Germany, eliminated some border territories, about 12% of the total population, about the total area of ​​uh and about 12% of the total population was affected, you know, steel and coal or iron or coal reserves, there you took all of Germany's colonies, you disarmed Germany, it was a, you know, it certainly was a treaty with some harsh clauses, um, in no way was it a Carthaginian treaty where Germany was destroyed and all the men were killed and the women and children sold as slaves in the land was sold with salt and in the kind of exaggerated rhetoric of the time is how the Treaty of I was often described.

I give you a treatise of the First World War that was Carthaginian and is the treaty that the Germans imposed on defeated Russia and that cut off 50 million people and I cut off 10 million. I have no idea how many square miles, but you know, um yeah uh. If in the Treaty of Versailles the Germans lost a little bit here and a little bit there in the Treaty of Bre LS, Russia lost most of what is on this map, so for me, you know that again I understand the appeal of Hitler . able to take political advantage of a very unpopular treaty, there is no doubt about it and I could also speak to some authority to whom I could say that everything is very good for you, finally, educated politicians, to debate our problems today.

I mean, I didn't go. to his schools I couldn't go to university he had a university called the Western Front he fought on the front uh supposedly he fought quite bravely some people question whether his medals were earned and that's another can of worms but but he played it very, very skillfully . I think some of it was mythological and that's the point. I'm making ladies gentlemen off the microphone tonight. Carl, here, speak in my ear, if I may introduce you to Col. Matt Dawson. Qui. The presentation is great, please. stay here, I came tonight reluctantly because I knew it was Rob, thanks and now I know I wasted most of the night so thanks for that, yes in all seriousness what a great presentation.

I have heard many talks about the World War. I read quite a bit on my own and that's probably the best discussion I've ever heard and I hope you all agree with me and give it a round of applause. Thank you so much, I mean it, oh man, I appreciate it. Thank you.