German Army: Why No Collapse

the wehrmacht during the second world war sustained two times the deaths of the imperial german army in the first world war yet it did not collapse quite on the contrary it fought until the bitter end in 1918 in the face of a lost war the german sailors did not want to leave again in 1918 for the honor of arms of the navy and the naval idea the german soldiers of 1944 were to take the offensive several more times most recently on a large scale foreign the advanced offensive and where they no longer attacked they defended until the end additionally the western allies two times assumed that the wehrmacht would collapse yet it did not the question is why did the wehrmacht not collapse before we look at the various factors we need to get a better understanding of the severity of the losses sustained in summer 1944 by the german forces on both the eastern and western front in a short amount of time from june to august 1944 the germans suffered two major defeats the better known is the battle of normandy in the west the lesser known but more important was operation bagraton on the eastern front which led to the destruction of jerez group emitter on the eastern front the germans had about 589 000 deaths in that period whereas on all other fronts combined including the normandy german losses were around 157 000 deaths according to over months so a total of 740 000 deaths in just three months for some of you those numbers likely make a severe impression yet for some they might be less relatable probably the best known german defeat in the second verbal was the battle of stalingrad in november 1943 the sixth army and parts of the fourth panzer army were encircled and ultimately surrendered in early february 1943. if we take the three months with the highest losses in this period namely december 1942 to february 1943 for the eastern front we get deaths of about 327 thousand men be aware that those losses also include non-stalingrad casualties yet the importance here is the overall scale this means that the germans suffered in summer 1944 each month on average 76 of the deaths they had sustained during the months of winter 1942 1943 on the eastern front or in other birds the germans in summer 1944 suffered almost 2.3 stalingrads in terms of deaths yet even after these major losses the germans kept on fighting at the end of november 1944 general eisenhower called upon the combined chiefs of staff to examine new methods of deception and propaganda in order to overcome the immense resistance and unbroken moral of the wehrmacht else faced with prolonged and bitter fighting so how did the wehrmacht maintain its cohesion to survive such major blows especially considering that since winter 1942 1943 germany and the vermont sustained a large amount of defeats and setbacks like stalingrad the loss of the africa corps sometimes called tunisgrad the phallofensive at the cursed salient the following sword offensive and the surrender of italy among various others for this we look a bit at cohesion and related aspects there are various definitions of cohesion i will take the definition from this u.s marine corps paper as a foundation there are four types of cohesion horizontal cohesion among peers vertical cohesion from subordinate to leader organizational cohesion within an army and so a social cohesion between an army and its society cohesive units fight better suffer fewer casualties train better do not disintegrate require less support and provide members with a higher quality of life cohesion central requirement is personal stability in other words horizontal creation is created by shared experiences both negative and positive it results in trust among the men vertical cohesion is built by leaders understanding caring and leading domain as such subordinates trust their leaders organizational cohesion is a bit more abstract it is about soldiers relating to the military organization hence stories symbols ceremonies traditions and other overall culture of a military organization are key if a soldier can identify himself with his force there is organizational cohesion suicidal cohesion is similar to organizational cohesion yet on the national level this is achieved that the soldiers feel that the contribution are valued by society and that the force supports national policy if you think this is overly complicated well here's the simple version four brave men who do not know each other wrote adam to pick in his combat studies will hesitate to attack a lion for a less brave man but knowing and trusting each other will do resolutely speaking of four brave men let us start with the primary groups these are usually considered to be the squad platoon and up to company so in terms of manpower we are speaking about 10 to 200 men unlike the u.s army in the second world where the german army followed a regional organization as such men in one division or even up to an army were usually from the same region the intention of the vermont was to keep their their core groups together and they knew that it is was positive um if if the core groups would contain out of people from the same region that they have a regional background the same regional background a regional identity spoke the same the same dialect etc and they tried to keep that together and they recruited only from soldiers to specific units from a regional from the same regional background and they try to to send wounded soldiers from a given unit back to that very unit to keep the core groups together of course this did not turn out in every case but more or less and this has was shown by by christopher russ in his phd although the democrat had um and suffered very high casualties until autumn 44 they until autumn 44 the vemma was able to keep the primary groups of core groups more or less intact until autumn 44. after autumn 44 um this structure on the horizontal level this cohesion on on the primary group level um collapsed but until autumn 44 the primary groups were more or less intact and so why are they so important i mean this is this is um recognized i think by all sociologists and also working on other armed forces um so the core groups or primary groups as we would say in german are somehow a social retreat a compensation for the family a place where there is sociability and very close interaction of people of say possibly a dozen from a dozen to to a company level this is then referred as a core group very very important comradeship is you know it is life for camera chip the place for camera chip and the interesting thing is how important in these core groups primary groups was politics or ideology nazi audiology and sometimes we think this was the the argument from omobatov of of the wehrmacht driven by ns and nazi ideology and i think it's very clear that the currency of these core groups was not ideology or politics and this is possibly true not only for the vermont but for i don't know all armies in the 20th century the currency of the core groups and this was shown by bhakt conversations of german prisoners in the second world war um secretly backed conversations was sympathy the role of a given person in this core group and military competence it's very much military competence if somebody was a brave soldier a competent soldier who won medals etc he had he was you know renowned in a very positive way and this was the military competence sympathy of course personal sympathy the role in social group this was you know very important for the cohesion of the core groups and on the other hand this is it's then clear if people doesn't like each other or if members of the core groups were incompetent in the military sense the core groups would become dysfunctional generally the primary groups are considered essential by many for the durability of the wehrmacht in the second world war this goes in line with the arab military intelligence observation during the war as well allah military intelligence had already concluded before the end of the war that it was not the higher segments of the german officer corps but the german enlisted ranks and group leaders who shoot higher morale in this war the readiness to fight was still high among the simple soldiers of the wehrmacht at the time when the certainty of defeat had long since entered the military elite which brings us to the next level vertical cohesion the trust of the soldiers in their superiors for the vermont the system worked from the data we know some of it is based on german soldiers in usbow camps that were questioned 75 percent of the soldiers were satisfied how they were treated by their superiors more than 60 percent of the officers received the good rating for the ncos this rating was even above 75 the general guideline was that the superior had to use both care and discipline for his man although during the war the discipline was mostly focused on combat discipline other elements like taking care of the uniform and military greetings were given a bit more slack one new officer noted that one company commander used this dagger during a meeting to clean his fingernails he was not amused by this performance of personal hygiene in a formal setting in overall pragmatism seems to have dominated over discipline as professor neitzel explains sometimes we we think that we're maginot was an armed forces where bullying was widespread and we sometimes see this in films etc and i think the vemma developed itself very much in the same way as a lot of other armed forces western armies in particular that at the front line formal discipline became less important and it's not comparable to what happened on a barrack yard so i think this was formal discipline very important in training but not at the front line and i think in the case of the verma that the normal the average soldier they trusted their officers because these officers were not bullying them more or less of course there were cases of bullying but overall and there was the same rules for all soldiers in the trenches and at the front line there was no exceptions in terms of food and going on leave et cetera it was the same rules for everyone and we know that in the first world war there was hate on german officers being in the rear areas in the headquarters etc and having having a nice life and not sharing the dangers of the front line with the soldiers this did not happen in the vermont the weber was very successful in constructing a yeah a social cohesion saying we all share the same destiny more or less and there's no difference between or no big difference between the officers and men so there was really a very strong yeah i mean you could say a band of brothers to a degree in the best way in the wehrmacht this is one of the reasons why this vertical cohesion was was in the vermont so strong something that is often mentioned about german commanders is that they led from the front as such the verb with the man in combat but i was in depth as the statistics suggest neither points out that from the 3191 wehrmacht generals 849 were killed in action died as prisoners or committed suicide this meant that the chance to die as a german channel was 27 percent whereas for all other german soldiers this was 34 percent krefer looked at the casualty rates of german officers and noted the following early in the war therefore an officer's chance of getting himself killed was twice as good as that of all military personnel by 1944 since the proportion of offices in the army as a whole had fallen to just under 2.5 percent it still stood at over 150 percent this relative predominance of offices among the dead holds true for every single campaign that could be examined and also for individual units in short this suggests that the german commander's general did not ask for something they would not do themselves at least when it came to dying there seems to be little doubt about it a key element for organizational cohesion which is soldiers relating to the military organization were the different waffengartengen the different arms of service the wehrmacht was able to create a strong identity among its different arms quickly and successfully they distinguished themselves by different uniforms like the panzertropes songs and rituals in contrast to the imperial german army in the first world war the wehrmacht focused more on creating various elite formations like the motorized divisions yellows the panzer divisions frasier mieger and quebec siege the mountain units according to knights these various arms are a fundamental element in stabilizing the system another aspect is of course propaganda and indoctrination yet these factors are quite tricky some authors consider them more important than others additionally it is not so straightforward although the wehrmacht and especially its higher leadership was highly complicit with the national socialist regime it was also not some monolithic block as pointed out by professor neitzel so one of the secrets of the wehrmacht was that it in this you know social unit it was possible to integrate 17 million men and these 17 million men came from a huge variety of social and political backgrounds you have former communists social democrats are nazis totally unpolitical people all acting and doing their job in the wehrmacht and so for the vermont it was a an advantage that they did not become a second waffen assist that in the normal social life politics did not play a major role and they were able to integrate almost everyone into this this armed forces and even it's interesting because we even have in the wehrmacht people from a non-german background we have poles we have french people dutch people et cetera et cetera and all these people were integrated into an armed forces and just more or less try to do their job in a military way so the most important important currency of the vermont was military competence and if you are competent um people recognize you in a very positive way and it was not far and foremost politics and by this you know so to say unpolitical currency it was able to integrate even the former communists they were not gone they were still there but and sometimes even they of course they disliked the nazi regime but oddly enough they perceived the verma and the nazi regime as something different two sides of the metal but two different sides of the metal and they could be loyal to the wehrmacht as a military institution but of course disloyal to the nazi regime and this is one of the secret weapons i would call it after them that would really be able to to being perceived as a competent organization to whom one is loyal in a military sense furthermore soldiers that believed in propaganda might have done this in some cases out of necessity of 50 wehrmacht's soldiers questions who had been captured by theirs in the battles near naples in september 1943 a good half believed in an imminent counter-strike the absence of the luftwaffe the lack of ammunition and the transport problems experienced recently were all indications that an immense german reserve had been formed which once thrown into battle would force the allies out of europe german propaganda achieved over time that the allied leaflets and other meshes were more distrusted and was able to paint the picture of a postwar situation that made versailles look like a sweet deal additionally the situation that there was not really an alternative might have increased the effectiveness of propaganda itself especially since most soldiers were aware of the various atrocities committed by germany in one way or another as noted the key element in both horizontal and vertical region was trust trust can be built in various ways one among them is to have a system that is or at least seems fair one key aspect here is that recognition had to be earned it was not handed out for free political background method little what counted was military competence this was expressed by a complex system of awards cuff bands and decorations and unlike the previous wars there were no preferences for offices this is reflected by the number of awarded knights crosses in world war ii in contrast to the prussian pool and maritz involved of one the majority of knight's cross recipients were troop officers not staff officers and generals although there was a strong focus on sacrifice and to this literally meaning contempt for death in both nationalist socialist ideology military orders and military publications for instance the company command is the beer of the fighting spirit of his man he pulls his company forward in the attack he trains advocates for duty and inspires daring and contempt for death awards like the knights cross were generally not awarded for blind fanatism this becomes apparent if one looks at the numbers in the official language of the nazi regime of course the sacrifice was very important and you might and of course there were numbers of speeches from hitler saying you you have to sacrifice yourself you have to fight to the last bullet and you have to die on the battlefield blah blah blah more or less interestingly if you look at at um the night cross and the night cross holders it's interesting that only seven percent of the night crosses were awarded post whom so 93 of those soldiers who won the night cross did survive at least the awards they did survive the award so there were not these people of fanatic soldiers who tried to blow themselves up with an enemy tank or so sometimes you see this on paintings for example in volgograd and in the second world war museum there there is on paintings where soviet soldiers blow up a german tank and of course will be killed this is not the view the german view of what a soldier should do so and you could see this with with the with the knight crosses so the night cross was a currency of success of tactical success they should be successful on the battlefield and just blowing yourself up with a tank is on a larger scale not a success so and therefore again it's interesting that the night cross was not awarded primarily by ideological or political criterias but after genuine military criterias and therefore you must survive you must fight on and you must have success on the battlefield and that's the major currency so that's interesting and so in comparison to to other awards like the victoria cross for example the the amount of of awards possum is much lower in the case of the of the night cross it should be added here that generally seems to be the misconception that the highest military awards are often awarded posthumously at least for the knights cross and the u.s medal of honor this seems to be very wrong to quote from the home bridge of the congressional medal of honor foundation overall only 18.5 percent of medals of honor have been awarded posthumously note this number is an overall and not limited to the second world war but back to the wehrmacht it is crucial to note that the influence of these factors would diminish over time since fall 1943 there was a clear downward trend about the same time the nationalist socialist leadership officer was introduced although the summer of 1944 did not lead to the collapse of the wehrmacht and eisenhower mentioned the resistance of the wehrmacht even winter 1944 knights notes a downward trend no later than august 1944 particularly for 1945 there were various examples when german soldiers still defended yet the willingness to attack was severely diminished as a reaction in 1945 the number of death sentences and kangaroo chords increased dramatically as with some previous points we make a comparison to the imperial german army of the first world war yet unlike the previous examples this time the wehrmacht had a far worse track record in verbal one only 150 death sentences were issued and only 48 of those were executed in contrast from 1939 until the end of 1944 the wehrmacht executed 9732 death sentences alone it is assumed that in total around 15 to 20 000 were executed until may 1945 which also clearly shows that the majority of these happened in the last months of the war to conclude the wehrmacht albeit numerous major defeats throughout the war did not collapse it was able to maintain its cohesion for the most part this was due the ability to maintain a stability in its smaller units which served as primary groups and the home of the soldiers another aspect was that the generous offices and especially ncos were perceived as competent similarly the casualty rates of officers were hard and those of regular soldiers whereas even channels had a significant death ratio namely a chance of being killed of 27 compared to 34 percent of the overall soldier the different arms in the wehrmacht with a complicated system of uniform and batches allowed in combination with rituals and other measures to create an identity that bound the man to their respective arms but on a larger level owes it to the wehrmacht propaganda and indoctrination also played a part although its importance might be overstated at times probably more important was the rather rigorous military justice system whereas in vulva one less than 50 men were executed the wehrmacht under december 1944 alone executed more than 9 000 men in total it is estimated that between 15 and 20 000 were executed until the surrender in may 1945. big thank you here to professor neitzel for the interview and providing me with early access to his book thank you to flo and tony for providing close support from the forward operating base in berlin special thanks to my patreon subscribers to support us as always source the list in the description thank you for watching and see you next time

Channel: Military History Visualized

Views: 1,102,722

Keywords: German Army WW2, German Army, German Army: Why no collapse, German Army why it fought until the end, Why the German Army fought on

Id: _J1iq4oelUU

Length: 24min 14sec (1454 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 10 2020