ISBN 0-7006-1015-4
327 pages

Foreword; Preface; List of Abbreviations; photos; maps; tables; diagrams; Notes; Bibliography; Index

Appendix: A Note on the Documents and Translations

   Geoffrey Megargee's outstanding new book opens with a review of the establishment and evolution of what was originally the Prussian General Staff, and wastes no time providing quotable material:

   In the last quarter of the nineteenth century...the saying went, Europe contained five perfect institutions: the Roman Curia, the British Parliament, the Russian ballet, the French opera, and the Prussian General Staff.

   Similarly, Megargee wastes no time making it clear that, whatever the level of perfection of the other four institutions, the Prussian General Staff was over-rated. Another passage from the opening pages makes a point which will prove very important later in the book.

   As was true for the Germans' strengths, their officer training and education system mirrored and promoted their weaknesses, especially the narrowness of their vision. As the General Staff evolved, the debate over intellect and character existed in parallel with another debate over the nature of the education that officers should receive. Originally that education was broad in scope.... By the end of the century, however, the Germans had opted for a narrower selection of practical, technical studies: tactics, staff duties, and military history dominated the curriculum. Even the course terminology reflected the change in the school's mission: the term "art of war" (Kriegskunst) disappeared and "science of war" (Kriegswissenschaft) took its place. By the end of the nineteenth century the school's goal was to turn out technical specialists.

   Although the path to war and the actual campaigns form a background from which the account cannot be separated, Megargee creates not an operational history but rather an examination of the structure, culture, and ideas of the German High Command—the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW; Armed Forces High Command or Armed Forces Command Staff), and the Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH; Army High Command or General Staff of the Army). In doing so, he demonstrates again and again—in an iconoclastic but restrained, scholarly fashion—that the high command was infinitely fallible, especially as it disintegrated under the pressure of a total war of global dimensions for which its officers had never been trained.
   Megargee begins the main thread of his book with Adolf Hitler's ascension as Chancellor, and the relationship between the Fuehrer and his generals. He discusses how Werner von Blomberg, as Defense Minister, "shared many of the same broad goals" as Hitler and worked to draw the Army and the Nazis closer together. Megargee likewise sketches other senior generals of this period, notably Werner von Fritsch, Wolfram Reichenau, and Ludwig Beck. In these early years almost without exception Hitler was able to gain the cooperation of his generals, all of whom seem mostly preoccupied with rebuilding German military strength and increasing their own standing in the military hierarchy. Megargee charts the internal politics and personality clashes as the strong-willed generals jockeyed with each other and with Hitler for greater power. At this stage, any opposition to German expansionism was strictly on tactical—rather than moral—grounds.

   On May 2, 1935, Blomberg ordered Fritsch to start planning for an invasion of Czechoslovakia (code name Schulung or Training). Beck responded with a memo to Fritsch the next day, in which he condemned the higher military leadership for even proposing such a plan; he maintained that an invasion of Czechoslovakia would be folly, given the present state of Germany's army and the certainty that an attack would bring in other European powers. Such an act of desperation, he wrote, would lead to a situation in which the military leadership would lose the trust of the country and the soldiers, and both contemporaries and history would damn the men who led it. In a cover letter to Fritsch, he added that he would submit his resignation if Blomberg intended to go ahead with practical war preparations.
   Beck's memo is absolutely clear on one point: Beck was not protesting against the foreign policy goals inherent in Schulung. Neither he nor Fritsch had any objections to Hitler's long-term plans. Beck's argument was not that an attack on Czechoslovakia would be wrong, just that Germany's army was not yet ready....

   Megargee also assesses the struggle by old-line Army leaders to preserve the predominance of their service and undercut the power of inter-service organizations in general and the embryonic Armed Forces Office (soon to become the OKW) in particular despite the "disloyal" Army officers such as Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, Kurt Zeitzler, and Walter Warlimont who worked diligently for a true joint command structure.
   The organizational debate continued while Hitler's control over all the services grew steadily stronger. "The services were competing for scarce resources, and in this area as in so many others, Hitler had become the sole arbiter."
   Similar debate continued about German military action in support of foreign policy goals. Again, those generals who disagreed with Hitler's plans to expand Germany's boundaries did so almost entirely on military grounds—how soon the Wehrmacht would be ready to pursue Hitler's objectives—and expressed little or no concern about invading their neighbors. Whatever their reasons or scruples or lack thereof, not all the senior commanders were in favor of immediate aggression.
   Given such lukewarm support at the highest levels of command, Hitler resorted to using personal scandals to oust Blomberg and Fritsch, then naming as their successors Keitel (nothing more than an "office manager" of utmost loyalty) and Walther von Brauchitsch (a malleable officer indebted to the Fuehrer for personal favors). In this same shake-up, at Hitler's insistence and with Brauchitsch's reluctant concurrence, fourteen senior generals were forced into retirement and forty-six were reassigned to less important posts. This put into positions of power in the Armed Forces Office men who were in favor of "unity of command" and shortly thereafter, on 4 February 1938, Hitler issued a directive formally transforming that office into the OKW with Keitel at its head and Jodl as chief of staff, with ominous portent: "From now on," Hitler instructed, "I will directly exercise command authority over the entire Wehrmacht personally."
   In 1938, Beck, one of the last real obstacles to Hitler's total domination of the Army, resigned. "Beck was neither a saint nor a genius. He sympathized with Hitler's goals and exhibited many of the General Staff's intellectual weaknesses." He left one final official statement in the OKH records before he departed: "In order to make our position clear to historians in the future and to keep the reputation of the high command clean, I wish, as Chief of the General Staff, to make it a matter of record that I have refused to approve any kind of National Socialist adventure. A final German victory is impossible."
   Franz Halder replaced Beck. Halder, for all his narrowness, also opposed Hitler on many matters and went so far as to take part in planning for a coup, plans which collapsed when Britain and France signed the Munich Agreement. At the same time, it became evident Hitler had moved beyond merely controlling strategy.

   The Munich Agreement was not the only unpleasant surprise that the crisis forced Halder to confront. He also discovered, in the course of preparing the plan for the invasion, that Hitler would not restrict himself to issuing political and strategic guidance. After Hitler first heard the plan that Halder and his staff had prepared, he decided that the operational concept was flawed. His wish to have Brauchitsch and Halder change the plans, which he made known to them through Keitel, met with a flat rejection at first. Finally Hitler ordered them to report to him. He tried to explain the error of their ways, but when they still refused to abandon their point of view he abruptly ordered them to change the dispositions; then he dismissed them. Halder was badly shaken. The OKH, which had long since lost any say in strategy, could no longer pretend even to have sole control of operations.

   Although the OKW was designed to be Hitler's own strategic planning headquarters, the Fuehrer assigned to OKH the task of initial planning for the invasion of Poland. Most German officers, including Halder, were pleased at the prospect.
   With the advent of war in 1939 Megargee begins to look at the High Command's performance. To begin with, the General Staff receives high marks and Megargee provides some examples:

   The first [example] occurred after the 3d and 4th Armies met in the corridor between Pomerania and East Prussia on September 3. At this point General Fedor von Bock, commander of Army Group North, wanted to transfer the bulk of his 4th Army to the east for a wide drive around Warsaw. He argued that this move would prevent the Poles from retreating and regrouping in that area. The OKH refused; it wanted to keep forces in Poland as far west as possible, in case the British and French attacked. This decision shows that the system was functioning properly: the OKH considered the views of a subordinate commander but kept the broader situation in mind and acted within its proper sphere of authority.

   Unlike the invasion of Poland, Hitler assigned responsibility for the invasion of Norway to OKW. This can be denoted as the beginning of the road toward serious inter-departmental problems.

   At no time, however, had the OKW's intended mission included operational planning. The Luftwaffe and the navy had no intention of turning over that power to the OKW, and Goering and Raeder had the political clout to keep the OKW out of their spheres. The army had no such influential figure, and so the OKW was able to take over a General Staff function. This fact introduced the possibility that the OKW-OKH rivalry would take on a whole new aspect, as the two became parallel operational headquarters. For the time being, that problem would retreat into the background, only to reappear later.

   Megargee is relatively brief as he discusses these early victories, the planning for the invasion of France (including the decision to alter the strategic vision and attack with panzers through the Ardennes), and the triumph in the west in 1940. On the other hand, he explores the nitty-gritty of the OKH and OKW organizational structure, their working procedures, and even key revisions to "The Handbook for General Staff Duty in War" publication. He goes deeply into the inner workings not only of the formal structure of the high command, but also the informal mechanisms by which certain key officers could be excluded from decision-making, treated simply as glorified secretaries, and learn about critical developments only secondhand. These kinds of short circuits could be exacerbated by Hitler's working style.

   Hitler often made decisions on the spot, either during his briefings or in separate meetings on special military problems. He would express these decisions through verbal orders that, during this early phase of the war, were often vague. Different listeners interpreted them in different ways—and usually to their own advantage. Moreover, Hitler did not always care to whom he directed his orders. Rather than work with the person or agency that normally handled a specific function, the Fuehrer would simply give a task to whomever was handy. The results were often chaotic, as individuals and organizations, sometimes with competing interests, attempted to sort out what Hitler really wanted. The only mitigating circumstance at this stage was that Hitler's intrusions into the military sphere were still not as common or as serious as they would become.

   It's important to note, however, that—although he certainly plays a major role—this book is not about Hitler. When Hitler is on stage, Megargee strives to present a balanced portrait. For example, regarding Hitler's fear about his left flank during the 1940 thrust through the Ardennes and the resultant row with Halder and Brauchitsch, it is shown that Hitler was far from alone in these concerns and that in fact there was a considerable gap between the "progressives" and the "old school" about how the tactical situation should be handled.
   Following the fall of France, Inside Hitler's High Command moves into what might be the most interesting period of the war, during which time "...the organization and functioning of the high command would continue to deteriorate in subtle but significant ways." Although the campaign in the west had been successful beyond anyone's imaginings, the army of Germany's only remaining enemy had been soundly defeated and driven back across the Channel, and Hitler was master of the continent, one fundamental problem was still unsolved, a problem Megargee explains simply: "...the fact remains that the German leadership did not know how to bring the war to a successful conclusion."
   After thousands upon thousands of books about World War II, that's probably the first time Germany's predicament in 1940 has been explained in such a succinct, insightful manner.
   Megargee goes on to review all the planning and superfluous staff work caused by Hitler's failure to decide upon a war-winning strategy. By the time the Fuehrer settled on Barbarossa, the workload on the military staffs to put together detailed plans for such a selection of schemes—some implemented, some not—was enormous. The friction of joint planning for all these stratagems also gave rise to increased inter-service rivalry and mounting inefficiencies. During planning for a true joint operation like Sea Lion, OKW was unwilling or unable to lead or coordinate the rival services, in particular the strongly independent Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine. Also during this period the split between OKH-controlled theaters and OKW-controlled theaters—making the HQs essentially parallel organizations—grew increasingly pronounced. This schism allowed, for example, Erwin Rommel to play one headquarters against another, "...sometimes ignoring orders with which he disagreed, or appealing to whatever headquarters he believed would support him." Even so, Megargee is careful to acknowledge that some of these new difficulties could only be identified in hindsight.

   One remarkable point about the gradual shift in command responsibilities is that, at this stage, no one seemed to care or even to notice. Many officers criticized these developments later on, but at the time they apparently said nothing. The OKW and OKH records contain no comments at all on the command changes; nor does Halder's journal. Given the chagrin that the chief of the General Staff felt at the creation of the OKW theater in Norway, one would expect him to react strongly to these additional changes, had he thought them of any consequence. The vague and apparently temporary nature of the new command relationships may explain the lack of concern on everyone's part. The army still had an intact chain of command in the occupied west as well as strong links with the other theaters. With Barbarossa gearing up, perhaps the OKH saw some logic in letting OKW handle the "quiet" areas. After all, nearly everyone thought the campaign in the east would end quickly, after which the OKH expected to pick up the reins in the west again for the final confrontation with Great Britain. Warlimont later stated that the OKW theaters were considered "exceptions to the rule" until 1942. In fact this is a case in which hindsight can lead to false conclusions; at this early stage of the war, the problems engendered by the split in the command system were more potential than real.

   Nevertheless, the organization of the high command was leading to situations where the OKH and OKW squabbled about transfers of divisions, transport, and other resources between their private theaters.
   Megargee devotes two chapters to exploring how the high command functioned during preparations for Operation Barbarossa, then provides a very interesting chapter entitled "The System at Work: A Week in the Life of the High Command." This chapter investigates every aspect of the organization from its physical surroundings to the personal lives (such as they were) of the officers there, as well as the process by which information was gathered and disseminated and decisions were made and transmitted during the first critical days of the Soviet counter-offensive against Army Group Center at the end of 1941. Although the author does not bring it up explicitly, comparing the conditions at the German high command to the top-level political-military machinery of the Americans and British is a study in contrasts. And by this time—December 1941—the impact of Hitler's personal style was felt more and more heavily at headquarters.

   To begin at the top: Hitler's style of command, and especially the so-called Fuehrerprinzip, or leader principle, was beginning to have insidious effects on the command system. According to the Fuehrerprinzip, every commander held sole responsibility for decisions within his command, and he was also duty-bound to obey every order he received from his superior commander. The Fuehrer himself stood, of course, at the top of this hierarchy; his will was quite literally law. Every senior commander (and more junior commanders, too, as the war went on) knew that Hitler had the power to issue or change any order. More and more often they began to appeal to him directly, as Guderian did on December 20, and his personal style was such that he allowed such behavior, even though it clearly violated the chain of command.

   From this period, although it was not apparent to everyone at the time, Germany's prospects declined rapidly and Megargee's book moves at a similarly accelerated pace. In September 1942 Hitler replaced Halder with Zeitzler. The new Chief of Staff of the OKH promptly set out to infuse the General Staff with National Socialist zeal. At the same time Hitler shuffled other leaders, ordered some reorganization at the high command, and for a time simultaneously held four levels of command: head of state, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, commander-in-chief of the Army, and commander of Army Group B, the latter at a distance of some 800 miles. With these changes, and Zietzler's narrow focus on the Russian Front to the exclusion of all else, came the final split. Henceforth, OKH paid almost no heed to any other front, while OKW assumed full control over every front except the Russian.

   From that point forward two factors would dominate the Germans' war effort: an inexorable strategic squeeze as their enemies gained strength, and conflict within their own command apparatus. The relative importance of these two factors to the overall situation is something that must remain in the foreground. Barring some absolute miracle, the Germans could not longer win the war. From that standpoint, then, the command apparatus was completely irrelevant. No matter how well or poorly organized it was, it could not change the situation in any fundamental sense. Its organization, evolution and performance during the remainder of the war remains of interest, however, for two reasons. First, they provide a window into the National Socialist state; an examination of the high command will reveal the growing power of the Nazi Party. And second, the performance of the high command, although it could not affect the basic outcome of the war, is an essential element in explaining the war's nature and length after 1942.

   As Allied material superiority increasingly made itself felt, the lack of German resources caused greater and greater competition between OKH and OKW for their own purposes. Some of these disputes, despite their deadly seriousness, were laughable.

   In late February, for instance, the commander in chief west, Rundstedt, complained to the OKW that the General Staff had ordered a division to move out for the east on April 3; he said that the unit was not yet ready for combat in Russia. The Armed Forces Command Staff then reminded the General Staff that, in accordance with the Fuehrer's policy, only the Command Staff could determine departure dates for units in the OKW theaters. Finally the problem went to Hitler, after which the OKW notified the General Staff that the division would be available on April 4—one day later than the General Staff's original target date. Such were the quarrels that were taking up an increasing amount of the staffs' time.

   After the bomb plot of July 1944, Zeitzler was replaced by Heinz Guderian. Megargee has stern words for him.

   Guderian presented himself after the war as a military genius and a staunch opponent of Hitler; he was perhaps the most successful of the Wehrmacht's former leaders at creating an anti-Nazi image for himself. His memoirs (recent editions of which are readily available in German bookstores) and other postwar writings are full of righteous indignation at the role that Hitler and the OKW played in the last months of the war. He wrote that he accepted this latest assignment because "I was ordered to," and because he would have thought himself a coward if he had not tried to save all the innocent civilians and brave soldiers in eastern Germany from the Russians. There is barely a hint in any of his writings that Guderian might ever have been attracted to Nazism, while he implies again and again that he could have saved Germany if only Hitler and the OKW had listened to him. In fact the new chief of the General Staff was one of the Fuehrer's most ardent admirers, even if the two did not always agree on military matters. Furthermore, Guderian shared the same strategic myopia, the same callous determination to fight to the last, as the other members of the high command.

   Megargee goes on to quote Guderian's own words, and to chart his actions, which paint a radically different picture than the general's own popular memoirs.
   As German fortunes ebbed farther and farther, Hitler pinned his hopes for victory on a major offensive in the west. Megargee contrasts the centralized, secretive, inflexible approach to planning the 1944 thrust through the Ardennes with the process of planning the 1940 attack in that region. In the same period, command arrangements grew ever more nightmarish. Eventually, an OKW-controlled army group, E, was part of the front line facing the Soviets, but the Armed Forces High Command obstinately refused to transfer control of the force to OKH. Tactical units on the ground, side by side at the theater boundary, had to appeal all the way up to the very top of the chain of command to coordinate with each other. Similarly, as German ground units were pushed into Germany, front-line necessities began to conflict with the prerogatives of local political leaders who could often veto military decisions.
   In March Guderian was relieved in favor of Hans Krebs and another round of musical chairs ensued at OKH.

   The next 1a was Lieutenant Colonel Ulrich de Maiziere, whose story sums up the status of the General Staff in the last weeks of the war. He was not quite thirty-three years old when he took up his post, and yet for the last two weeks of his tenure (April 10-24, 1945), he was the de facto chief of the Operations Branch. In an interview in 1996 he emphasized that he would not have been qualified for that post as it had existed earlier; he was not experienced enough to plan major operations. De Maiziere was extremely busy, but his role was almost clerical. The Operations Branch collated the situation reports and updated the maps as always. Hitler reviewed the reports in his briefings and made his decisions, which de Maiziere would record and issue as orders. Beyond a very narrow technical realm, then, his qualifications, like those of the men above him, were largely irrelevant.

   All this amounted to what Megargee calls "...planning impossible movements of nonexistent troops into imaginary positions." De Maiziere went so far as to place a quote from a film in his office: "It is not my place to think about the senselessness of the tasks that are assigned to me."
   In April 1945 Hitler finally rationalized his command apparatus by officially subordinating OKH to OKW. He was a day late and a dollar short. "When Hitler issued that last order regarding the command structure, Russian artillery shells were already bursting in the Chancellery courtyard above his head."
   Megargee wraps up his book in a strong concluding paragraph:

   The Second World War is now sixty years behind us. The ranks of those who remember it thin daily; few indeed survive who experienced it at the policy-making level. Already the literature is the only reliable guide to its history, and here the record is spotty. The myth persists of a supremely talented, if politically naive and ambitious, German officer corps being led unwittingly into war and defeat by a ruthless dictator, a megalomaniac with no understanding of the military art. Clearly that myth has little basis in fact. Germany's senior military leaders supported the rise of an authoritarian government whose policies they expected would lead to a war of aggression. Weaknesses in their professional culture and ideas contributed to serious flaws in their strategy and operations. They made strategic decisions, independently and in support of Hitler's, that started a war that Germany had little chance of winning, and they continued it long past the point when the futility of the effort should have been obvious. They willingly gave up their authority over all but the most mechanistic tasks. Their intelligence, personnel, and logistical systems were too weak to support their broader operational goals, which fact they never recognized. The strengths of their staff systems and tactics, combined with a shared ideology and their enemies' greater initial weakness, were all that allowed them to get as far as they did. As those advantages weakened or disappeared, the Germans' advances turned inevitably into retreats. Thus, although Hitler does remain central to the story of the German high command, we can now place him in the proper context, at the center of a flawed system that supported him almost unconditionally.

   This is a first-class study of the German high command, packed with fresh nuances, new perspectives, and invigorating insights. At the end of the book, the Roman Curia, the British Parliament, the Russian ballet, and the French opera might remain standing, but the German General Staff has been demolished as much by Megargee's methodical investigation as by the Allied assaults.
   Don't throw out your Cooper (The German Army) or your Seaton (also titled The German Army) or your Warlimont (Inside Hitler's Headquarters) or your Goerlitz (History of the German General Staff) or your Halder (The War Diary), but make room beside them on your shelves for Megargee. Highly recommended.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from University Press of Kansas.
   Thanks to UPK for providing this review copy.