Wehrmacht
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- German:
- “defense power”
- Date:
- March 16, 1935 - August 20, 1946
- Areas Of Involvement:
- army
Wehrmacht, the armed forces of the Third Reich. The three primary branches of the Wehrmacht were the Heer (army), Luftwaffe (air force), and Kriegsmarine (navy).
Creation and structure of the Wehrmacht
After World War I, the Treaty of Versailles abolished conscription in Germany, reduced the size of the German army to 100,000 volunteer troops, sharply limited Germany’s surface fleet, outlawed its submarine fleet, and forbade the creation of a German air force. When Adolf Hitler rose to power as chancellor of Germany in 1933, he moved quickly to roll back these restrictions. He began developing German military aviation under the cloak of civilian production, and he worked with manufacturers to expand German military capacity. Krupp, for example, masked its tank program under the guise of tractor construction. After the death of Pres. Paul von Hindenburg on August 2, 1934, the offices of president and chancellor were merged, and Hitler became supreme commander of German armed forces. German Minister of War Werner von Blomberg, an ardent Hitler supporter, changed the oath of service for German troops; rather than pledging to defend the German constitution or the fatherland, they now swore unconditional obedience to Hitler.
On March 16, 1935, Hitler reintroduced conscription, effectively making public his previously clandestine rearmament program. The German army would be increased in size to 550,000 troops, and the Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic would be renamed the Wehrmacht. While the term Wehrmacht would most often be used to describe German land forces, it actually applied to the entire regular German military. The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW; Wehrmacht High Command) was designed to exercise command and control of the three branches of the Wehrmacht—the Heer (army), the Luftwaffe (air force), and the Kriegsmarine (navy)—each of which had its own high command.
Also technically subordinate to the OKW was the Waffen-SS, which comprised the “political soldiers” of the Nazi Party. In addition to serving as Hitler’s personal bodyguard, administering concentration camps, and carrying out some of the most horrific atrocities of the Holocaust, men of the Waffen-SS fought as combat troops alongside the regular army. In practice the Waffen-SS ultimately answered to SS chief Heinrich Himmler, and its ranks swelled from several hundred men in 1933 to 39 divisions late in World War II. Although they were derisively dismissed as Himmler’s “asphalt soldiers” by the OKW high command, the troops of the Waffen-SS were superbly equipped and tended to have high morale. In early 1944 the Waffen-SS made up less than 5 percent of the Wehrmacht, but it accounted for nearly one-fourth of Germany’s panzer divisions and roughly one-third of the Wehrmacht’s panzer grenadier (mechanized infantry) divisions.
The Wehrmacht in World War II
Operation of the Wehrmacht
The Heer was by far the largest branch of the Wehrmacht, and, upon the outbreak of war, Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine units were theoretically subordinated to army command at a tactical level. This did not yield a seamless combined arms approach, however, as the OKW never functioned as a true joint staff. When cross-branch cooperation did occur, it was often the result of local commanders creating ad hoc task forces of limited duration.
The clash of commands
Coordination was also complicated by the heads of the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe, who had no desire to see their branches diminished in importance. Hitler himself had little interest in sea power, and the naval commander in chief, Grand Adm. Erich Raeder, frequently clashed with the Führer over strategic matters. Other than the invasions of Denmark and Norway, which were planned and overseen by Raeder, German naval operations during the war consisted primarily of submarine attacks on Allied shipping. The ships of the German surface fleet—from converted frigates to battle cruisers such as the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau to the “pocket battleship” Graf Spee—were largely relegated to commerce raiding in support of the U-boat campaign. Just two modern battleships were deployed by Germany during World War II: the Bismarck was sunk within days of putting to sea in May 1941, and the Tirpitz was confined to Norwegian waters until it was finally sunk by British Lancaster bombers on November 12, 1944.
Whereas Hitler had a strained relationship with Raeder (who was forced to resign in January 1943), Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring had been one of Hitler’s most ardent supporters since the earliest days of the Nazi Party. For this reason, Göring would hold a place of almost unequaled influence within the Third Reich, and he would wield near-total control of German air power. Because Göring openly disliked Raeder, the Kriegsmarine would not be allowed to develop a serious naval aviation capability. The Graf Zeppelin, the Reich’s only aircraft carrier, never entered service despite being almost completed, and its only significant contribution to the war effort was as a floating timber warehouse.
In 1940 Hitler bestowed upon Göring the title of Reichsmarschall des Grossdeutschen Reiches (“Marshal of the Empire”), further complicating the Wehrmacht chain of command. While the Luftwaffe technically answered to the OKW, Göring now outranked OKW chief Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel. Göring did suffer some diminished prestige as a result of the Luftwaffe’s failure to knock Britain out of the war during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, but his authority remained unchallenged by anyone but Hitler until the end of the war.