HITLER'S COMMANDERS

Officers of the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe, the Kriegsmarine, and the Waffen-SSBy SAMUEL W. MITCHAM, JR. GENE MUELLER

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.

Copyright © 2012 Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4422-1153-7

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments.............................................................viiIntroduction............................................................................ix1 The Generals of the High Command......................................................12 The Warlords of the Eastern Front.....................................................333 The Generals of Stalingrad............................................................714 The Commanders in the West............................................................1055 The Panzer Commanders.................................................................1596 The Lords of the Air..................................................................1777 The Naval Officers....................................................................2078 The Waffen-SS.........................................................................261Appendix I: Equivalent Officer Ranks....................................................299Appendix II: General Staff Positions and Abbreviations..................................301Appendix III: Characteristics of Selected Opposing Tanks................................303Appendix IV: Luftwaffe Aviation Unit Strengths and Chain of Command.....................305Appendix V: Luftwaffe Tactical Abbreviations............................................307Appendix VI: Acronyms...................................................................309Notes...................................................................................311Bibliography............................................................................335Index...................................................................................343

Chapter One

THE GENERALS OF THE HIGH COMMAND

Wilhelm Keitel. Alfred Jodl. Bernhard Lossberg. Georg Thomas. Walter Buhle. Wilhelm Burgdorf. Hermann Reinecke. Friedrich "Fritz" Fromm.

Wilhelm Keitel was born on the family estate of Helmscherode in western Brunswick on September 22, 1882. Although he longed to be a farmer, as his ancestors were, the modest 650-acre estate was too small to support two families. Consequently, Keitel joined the 46th Field Artillery Regiment in Wolfenbuettler as a Fahnenjunker (officer-cadet) in 1901. The desire to return to Helmscherode, however, remained with him throughout his life.

Keitel was commissioned second lieutenant on August 18, 1902, entered an instructor's course in the Field Artillery School at Juterbog in 1905, and in 1908 became regimental adjutant. He was promoted to first lieutenant in 1910 and to captain in 1914. (See appendix I for a table of equivalent ranks.)

In 1909, Wilhelm Keitel married Lisa Fontaine, an attractive, intelligent young woman from Wuelfel. Her father, a wealthy estate owner and brewer, initially disliked Wilhelm due to his "Prussian" background but eventually became reconciled to the marriage. Lisa bore Wilhelm three sons and three daughters. Like their father, all three sons became officers in the German Army. Definitely the stronger partner in the marriage, Lisa wanted her husband to advance as high as possible in the ranks of the military. Incidentally, Herr Fontaine was wrong about Keitel's background: he was not Prussian at all, but Hanoverian. This same mistake was made by Adolf Hitler and the Allied prosecutors at Nuremberg later on.

In early summer 1914, Keitel took a well-earned holiday in Switzerland, where he heard the news of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the archduke of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Keitel was hurriedly recalled to his regiment at Wolfenbuettler and was with the 46th Artillery when it was sent to Belgium in August 1914. He saw considerable action and in September was seriously wounded in the right forearm by a shell splinter. After recovering he returned to the 46th, where he became a battery commander. In March 1915, he was appointed to the General Staff and transferred to the XV Reserve Corps. In late 1915 Keitel came to know a Major Werner von Blomberg, and the two men began a friendship that continued throughout both their careers. Keitel finished his service in the Great War as a General Staff officer with the XIX Reserve Corps (1916–1917), the 199th Infantry Division (1917) (both on the Western Front), and the General Staff of the army in Berlin (1917–1918), and as a staff officer with the Marine Corps, fighting in Flanders (1918).

The Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I, was a very harsh one. Among other things, it abolished the General Staff and limited the German Army (now dubbed the Reichsheer) to 100,000 men, of whom only 4,000 could be officers. Keitel was accepted into this officer corps of the Weimar Republic and spent three years as an instructor at the Cavalry School at Hanover before joining the staff of the 6th Artillery Regiment at Minden in Westphalia. He was promoted to major in 1923 and from 1925 to 1927 was assigned to the organizational branch of the Truppenamt (Troop Office), as the clandestine General Staff was called. In 1927 he moved to Muenster as commander of the II Battalion, 6th Artillery Regiment. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1929—a significant accomplishment in the Reichsheer, which, like most small armies, was characterized by slow promotions. That same year he returned to the General Staff as chief of the Organizations Department.

An interesting event took place in Keitel's career in late summer 1931, when he took part in a military exchange trip to the Soviet Union. He admired the Russia he saw, noting the vast spaces, abundance of raw materials, the Five Year (economic) Plan, and the disciplined Red Army. Following this trip he continued to work at his arduous task of increasing the size of the German Army in contravention of the Treaty of Versailles.

Although Keitel did his job very well, as even his personal enemy Field Marshal Erich von Manstein later admitted, his abilities were taxed to the limits. The demanding (and illegal) work took its toll both physically and mentally. The nervous Keitel smoked too much and, by 1932, was suffering from arterial embolism and thrombosis and had severe phlebitis in his right leg. He was recovering under the care of Dr. Guhr in the Tara Mountains of Czechoslovakia when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. Keitel's close friend Werner von Blomberg became minister of defense the same day.

In October 1933, Keitel began a year of troop duty. He served first Infantry Commander III (and one of the two deputy commanders of the 3rd Infantry Division) at Potsdam, Frederick the Great's old garrison town near Berlin. In May 1934, he heard Adolf Hitler speak at the Sportplatz in Berlin and was moved by the Fuehrer's words. That same month Keitel's father died, and Wilhelm inherited Helmscherode. He seriously considered leaving the army to manage the family estate, even though he had just been promoted to major general the month before; however, as he wrote later, "My wife was unable to keep house with my stepmother and sister, and I could not solve the problem." No doubt Lisa wanted him to remain in the army, and he did so.

In July 1934, Keitel was transferred to the 12th Infantry Division in Leibnitz, more than 300 miles from Helmscherode. Because of this...