Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich

247 Pages·1992·11.48 MB·English

by  Omer Bartov

HITLER'S ARMY
HITLER'S
ARMY
Soldiers, Nazis, and War
in the Third Reich
Omer Bartov
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Copyright © 1992 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
First published in 1991 byO xford University Press, Inc.,
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First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1992
Oxford is a ragistered trademark of Oxford University Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bartov, Omer.
Hider's army : soldiers, Nazis, and war in the Third Reich /
Omer Bartov.
p. cm. Inchudes bibliographical references and index
ISBN-13 978-0-19-507903-6(PBK.)
ISBN 0-19-507903-5 (PBK.)
1. Germany—Armed Forces—History—20th century.
2. Germany—Armed Forces Political activity. 3. National socialism.
4. World War, 1939-1945-Atrocities. I. Title.
D757.B27 1991 940.54'0943-dc20 90-48960
20 19 18 17 16 15 14
Princed in the Uniced States of America
For Raz
Preface
This book is not a comprehensive history of the German army and
its relationship with regime and society in the Third Reich. It is an
essay, arguing four distinct but related theses which, taken together,
may enhance our insight into the Nazification of Germany's sol-
diers. This process began long before the war, and some of its roots
predate the Nazi regime. Yet it was during the war, and most im-
portantly on the Eastern Front, that the Wehrmacht finally became
Hitler's army. Moreover, as the vast majority of German troops
fought for most of the war against the Red Army, one can say that
for the average soldier the fighting in Russia constituted the crucial
component of his war experience. Consequently, though I refer to
the impact of the prewar years on the soldiers' perception of reality,
and take note of the rather different experience on other fronts, I
intentionally concentrate on that vast confrontation between Ger-
many and the Soviet Union, where the Wehrmacht both won its
greatest victories and was finally destroyed, and where the pro-
gressive ideological penetration of the army reached its peak, mo-
tivating the troops to fight with extraordinary resilience, on the one
hand, and to commit unprecedented crimes, on the other. I am
mainly concerned here with the land forces, or Heer. The involve-
ment of the SS in Nazi policies has already been widely discussed,
whereas the experience of the Navy and Luftwaffe, which had con-
scripted a much smaller share of Germany's manpower, was in many
viii PREFACE
ways different, though particularly the pilots flying over Russia were
just as exposed to the Nazi view of that war as the soldiers were
fighting on the ground. As the basis for my arguments I have used
some documents first published in my previous book, The Eastern
Front, 1941-45, German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare,
adding to them other unpublished documentary material and uti-
lizing the important secondary works that have appeared in the
intervening years. It should also be noted that while my earlier
monograph provided a close analysis of three combat divisions on
the Eastern Front, this work substantially widens the scope of my
argument by asserting that the experience of that front was crucial
to the German army as a whole, indeed to German society both
during and after the war.
While writing this book I have profited a great deal from lengthy
periods of research; I also owe more than can be acknowledged to
endless discussions with specialists, students, and friends. The recent
Historikerstreit has forced me to rethink and reformulate most of
my ideas; and the momentous political developments in Germany,
Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union have brought into much
sharper relief the contemporary relevance of what many of us had
come to see as "mere" history. I must also admit that my personal
experiences as an Israeli soldier and citizen have had a substantial,
if indirect impact on my views as an historian. If in Israeli political
debates I tend to cite the German example, when writing about the
Wehrmacht I find myself drawing on my own experiences. None-
theless, though I have tried to understand the mentality of Hitler's
soldiers, I have not felt the need to identify with them. What I have
written is intended to contribute to our understanding of how or-
dinary men can be made into both highly professional and deter-
mined soldiers, brutalized instruments of a barbarous policy, and
devoted believers in a murderous ideology; how they can be taught
to live in an inverted world of fictitous images, and why their dis-
torted view of reality is perpetuated long after the objective con-
ditions which had prompted it have disappeared in a surge of
horrendous destruction.
I owe thanks to a large number of individuals and institutions
for guidance, ideas, and support. At Stanford University I was
launched on my first postgraduate attempts to understand history
by Gordon Craig, Peter Paret, Gordon Wright, and Chimen
Preface ix
Abramsky. During my years at Oxford and in subsequent visits I
received valuable advice from Tony Nicholls, Tim Mason, and Mi-
chael Howard. I would also like to thank Pogge von Strandmann,
Richard Bessel, and Volker Berghahn. Other colleagues in Britain
who kindly invited me to read papers at various universities in that
country and provided me with much constructive criticism are Jer-
emy Noakes, Eve Rosenhaft, Jill Stephenson, and Dick Geary.
I owe a special debt to Ian Kershaw for years of friendship and
inestimable assistance. In Germany I am grateful to the staff of the
Militargeschichtliches Forschungsamt in Freiburg, and especially to
Wilhelm Deist, Bernd Kroener, Hans Umbreit, Jurgen Forster,
Wolfram Wette, and Manfred Messerschmidt. Bernd Wegner, his
wife Anneli, and their three children have given me a home in
Germany to which I will always hope to return. The staff of the
Bundesarchiv-Militararchiv guided me with great expertise through
the maze of documents. Thanks is also due to Reinhard Rurup for
inviting me to spend a constructive summer as a guest of the Techn-
ische Hochschule in Berlin, and to the Friedrich Meinecke Library
for its rich collection of secondary works. Cornelia Essner's friend-
ship and hospitality made my stay in Berlin much more enjoyable
than it would have otherwise been. Hans Ulrich-Wehler's interest
in my work has greatly encouraged me. At Tel-Aviv University I
wish to thank all my colleagues at the Department of History. I am
particularly indebted to Zvi Yavetz, Shulamit Volkov, Saul Fried-
lander, and Dan Diner. At the Wiener Library Seminar I was for-
tunate to make the acquaintance of colleagues from abroad, among
whom I would especially like to mention Lutz Niethammer, Andy
Markowitz, Ulrich Herbert, Peter Fritsche, and Gordon Horwitz.
Guli Arad and Frank Stern extended their friendship and council,
while my students allowed me to try on them my more outrageous
ideas and often subjected them to well-deserved criticism. As a
Visiting Fellow at Princeton University I learned a great deal from
Lawrence Stone, Arno Mayer, Natalie Davis, David Abraham, Mar-
tha Petrusewicz, and Sheldon Garon. Mark Mazower has kindly
shared with me some of his own recent and fascinating work on the
subject. I would like to thank them all. Since coming to Harvard,
I have had the opportunity to exchange opinions with many more
collleagues. I am grateful to Charles Maier, Stanley Hoffmann,
David Landes, Jurgen Kocka, and Allan Silver, as well as to Jeffrey
x PREFACE
Herf and Daniel Goldhagen, for having given me of their time.
Paula Fredriksen and Richard Landes have shown me the extent to
which rigorous scholarship, intellectual pursuits, and long-standing
friendships can complement each other. I would also like to thank
the readers of this manuscript for numerous helpful suggestions and
comments, even if I have not always accepted their criticism. Need-
less to say, I alone am responsible for the final version of this work.
My research in Germany was financed by the German Historical
Institute in London, the German Academic Exchange Service, and
the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. I must particularly praise
the latter for its generosity and promotion of international schol-
arship. The Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton Uni-
versity enabled me not only to complete my previous book, but
also to sketch out the first outlines of the present work. The final
version of this book, however, was written at the Society of Fellows
of Harvard University. I cannot sufficiently laud this institution
both for enabling me to end a project which had been haunting me
for years, and for providing the perfect balance between solitude
and intellectual intercourse which is so hard to come by these days.
It is with pleasure that I express my gratitude to the Secretary of
the Society, Diana Morse, who had done more than anyone to help
me achieve this peace of mind, and to all other Senior and Junior
Fellows, especially Seth Schwartz, Leslie Kurke, Juliet Fleming,
Robin Fleming, Chris Wood, and Moshe Halbertal. Rogers Bru-
baker has been a particularly demanding colleague, for while his
incisive critique of my work has made me write everything twice,
competing with his tremendous industry has prevented me from
giving up before the finish. I can only conclude by expressing the
hope that all those who have helped me along the way will not be
too disappointed with the results of my efforts.
Cambridge, Mass. O. B.
October 1990
Contents
Abbreviations xiii
Introduction 3
1. The Demodernization of the Front 12
2. The Destruction of the Primary Group 29
3. The Perversion of Discipline 59
4. The Distortion of Reality 106
Conclusion 179
Notes 187
Works Cited 219
Index 233