Most unsuccessful Wehrmacht General?

now let's talk about one of the most unsuccessful german generals of the second world war namely georg thomas and you probably go who well he was in charge of the war economics of the via where shaft to a certain degree and he was also in the military resistance although some claim he was basically just an opportunist now when it comes to war economics in germany i think justin would call it the dumpster fire but i personally think calling the vr virtual in germany in the second world war dumpster fire is a is an insult to any respectable dumpster fire it was just a mess so first off there's this primacy of military conduct of war which i already talked about in one video which the germans were focused on and there was there was always this discrepancy between the operational guys versus the logistic guys and on top of that there was also the military economic professionals versus the civil industrial elite so like spare and taut so you always had like these these fights going on for the military the military professionals on the economic side and the civilians and additionally on top of that there was also the inter-service rivalry so when they usually try to do something centralized then the luftwaffe said oh we want our own thing and the critics want to say oh you don't we don't want to have to do anything with the army because the army was the most important part of the wehrmacht but usually yeah everyone was like no we don't want to have this and there was also a limited amount of influence on the industry and administration from the military economic side so a lot of problems everywhere now let's go back to gerek thomas so he served in the first world war and he worked his way up to it to be a general staff officer then he after the first world war he got into the right sphere and remember the riser was very limited only one hundred thousand men were allowed to beat india so they usually took only the best of the best as such he was rather well suited likely because yeah they could pick from the best of the best although some people know that his appearance was more like a professor and less of an officer and he was one of the few that saw the importance of war economics in the first world war and he looked at the us as a role model for mobilization during war and one of the many things he wanted to do was to create some kind of economic general staff so one that is more focused on the economics the logistics and everything and not just on the conduct of war on the military side and in 1927 he actually got a good position for this he got a position basically at the center of economic mobilization and from 1920 to 1933 he also was involved in planning the realm and writing a production program and everything else within which involved around 350 million reichsmark then in 1933 the national socialist came into power and this is very interesting he traveled to the soviet union at this point because as you know as shown in one of my videos before the soviet union and the ice were were working together to circumvent the wassai tree and he visited there because he wanted to keep the corporation going whereas the national socialists were against it and he came back and he was really impressed by the soviet union and called it a role model for for mobilization for war economics and everything and i think he talked with it like this at one point and and hitler was basically ah it's just bolshevik propaganda or something along those lines so additionally his career took off so in 1933 1934 there were several layoffs and he was basically below a certain level that he wasn't affected by the layoffs of the higher ranking members and so he could move up with not a lot of other people now when the military buildup started there was basically two factions you could say there was the one for the thief gusto the military buildup in death and the others from the breitbart doing the military buildup in the broad sense and in-depth meant for longevity like building stuff for having more resources all the food for the for the civilians and everything so that you can sustain a long war whereas brighton wisdom was basically built as much material as possible tanks planes and everything else to reach a parody with the enemy as you can assume this was more suited for the operations guys because they want to have their toys they won't have the tanks they want to have their planes to engage the enemy as soon as possible if necessary but he was more on the okay let's keep the rearment in a way limit limited and look at the economic situation and also on the international requirements so in many aspects he was actually against the rearm and how it was done under the national socialist which i covered those in our video so he was more for a slower build up more building up resources and and the general infrastructure and not like building tanks and planes as fast as possible and in 1934 he had actually a proposal for chef davia martin chief of the wehrmacht military buildup now and if you look at this proposal the powers and the capabilities were basically that that albert spare in 1943 achieved when he was minister for war production and armament and why didn't it happen in 1934 because there was a lot of resistance from the loft buffer and also from the clicks marina as such only a weaker version was implemented and there was no strengthening of the economic professionals in the in the military now as mentioned before thomas was against the fast military buildup that happened under the nazis and in 1935 you know the memorandum to hitler noting germany was running out of resources and foreign currency and he was not the only one that won about this there was also one minister and also one high official of the wehrmacht that warned about this now in 1936 the fear jaredes plan happened under guri the theatre's plan is basically the four year plan which was focusing on realmen but also making the german industry and economy self-sufficient to provide resources and everything else here was another problem it was breaking already with existing organizations so more everything got more convoluted at this point and this will continue on so one main problem for thomas was that he had no connection to ohio vermont positions there was one blomberg which was in a huge position but he was removed in early 1938 and in general his position was rather weak so this is why he couldn't get stuff done for the most part in 1939 he was against the war not that he posed war in general but he said okay we don't have enough resources it's way too early and you wrote again a memorandum it's quite interesting he wrote as a requirement in a way well we could do it if we have all the resources from poland and south east europe which was kinda seen then in some ways okay then let's get these resources now as you can probably guess he didn't prevent the war but then he was focusing okay we need to centralize the resource allocation and he got wake acknowledgements from various points but then he pressed the issue and it was basically declined or some weaker version again was implemented and he was also for the product for the concentration of production he wanted a few main core companies to build all the stuff yet the minister for economics funk was more like okay no we want to have a lot of small companies involved as well and this was and they actually know that this is bad from the economic standpoint but we do this for social and political reasons because else you would have more unemployed people and more problems with various smaller companies that shut down so instead of going full rationalization here and say okay we switched to full war production and optimized as a concentrate was like now we want to keep the people in check and make the unemployment doesn't go up and you can actually see this in the in the unemployment statistics there's not much changing in the beginning of the war well usually something happens in this regard now in 1939 1940 he was also trying to get into the four year plans office and yeah he was declined and hitler noted yeah you're a pessimistic logistical and he wasn't particularly fond of him as you can imagine and in 1940 then the rights minister for armament ammunition came in which was a civilian taught and this was another competition and there was already the hares logistics the army logistic against everything so more and more competition and resources and everything yeah again it gets comp convoluted convoluted again and as i mentioned before he was rather fond of the soviet union in terms of okay this is a powerful enemy and then he had to do basically an assessment of the soviet union on their capabilities of fighting and and he wrote an assessment which the historians call it ge felix gudaten a courtesy assessment where i think the initial one was not so positive but then he added something if we win the war fast then there's no problem there and another major point here is he was completely complacent here in the exploitation of the occupied territories also in the food and all the other stuff with the humber plan with the phantom famine plan so basically he agreed or he was aware of that millions of people will die when they pull out all the grain and other stuff from the soviet union from the occupied territories this is where he came complicit with the war crimes of the nazis and basically 1942 was his final year because then spear was coming in and he was a he was basically focusing on the civilian industrial elites and the military the military control of the industry which was basically represented by thomas was gone and to make it clear so you have thomas he's a military professional who wants control over the industry whereas thought and spare were civilians who wanted to keep the military out of the of the production and focus on the self-management of the economy and also that the ceos and everything have more to say and you can see this if you look at the organograms and the ideas that the militaries had for controlling the economics the ceos never never showed up or something and so in the end it was a triumph by by the by the industrial elite to a certain degree and by the civilians and not by the military economic arm in 1943 he was finally dismissed and this was basically the end of the military economic professionals in germany yet then in 1944 he was incarcerated and he was put in a concentration camp why because he was widely active from 1939 onwards in 1942 in the military resistance now if you look at the resistance and the military resistance against hitler in the second volvo there were many different reasons why people joined for thomas it was likely not ethnic reasons because we know he was accomplice in various crimes for instance with the hunger plan with getting food out of the occupied territories and well knowing and noting that likely a lot of people will die to this pulling out of the resources he was mainly against the regime due to professional reasons because he saw how they were conducting war or how they were getting ready for war that would likely lead to defeat of germany so he wanted to the war to be conducted in another way or not started at this early stage or at all so this was his main motivation for being in the resistance and he stopped around in 1942 because i think after stalingrad it was like okay the boys lost for him and andy just basically resonated and and pulled out of there and this is very interesting because some historians call him just an opportunist that he was like making carrier or something and i i consider an opportunist to be more personal motivated whereas i from what i read for me it seems why he was more interested in winning the war which i wouldn't necessarily call opportunistic but well different opinions here so so let me know in the comments what you think about this and he died rather shortly one year after the war in 1946 now the final question is of course was he one of the most unsuccessful german channels in the second world war and the answer to this yeah very likely i mean one main aspect was creating an economic general staff and again and again it was declined getting control over the industry from the military side to get a better to concentrate the efforts resource allocation everything again the same for the military buildup along economic and foreign affairs limitations like in a big grand strategy aspect and in the end well it basically the war broke out way earlier the rearmament was done hastingly and in the farmland the civilian got the control of the ahmed production so you could say basically everything went the other way that he was proposing it so in many ways he he didn't achieve any of his goals i mean he was rather successful career-wise with achieving a general position rather soon but besides all of that the main goals which he had from a professional standpoint were all basically failed and amy was dismissed in 1943 so he's likely one of the most unsuccessful vermont channels of the second world war my big thank you here to check who sent me one of the books that i used in this video and was a big thank you to all my patrons for supporting me thank you for watching and see you next time

Channel: Military History not Visualized

Views: 136,870

Rating: 4.910727 out of 5

Keywords: Military History not Visualized, Military History, mhv, Most unsuccessful Wehrmacht General?, Most unsuccessful German General, Second World War, WW2, General der Infanterie, General Georg Thomas, Wehrwirtschaft, War Economics, Wehrwirtschaft und Rüstungsamt, Economics, Economics Professionals, Paul Fröhlich, Logistics, Factories, Industry, Alfred Speer, Fritz Todt, Military Resistance, Industrial Elite, Economic General Staff, Economic Mobilization, Breitenrüstung, Tiefenrüstung

Id: W9YB47bfYz0

Length: 15min 10sec (910 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 14 2018