[Music] welcome to the center point of the 32nd year for the dr. harrell süddeutsche World War two history roundtable thanks so much for coming this evening this evenings program is normally the January we dedicate to a either a German or a Russian topic this evening we're very lucky to have one of the great historians on his book that Axl mentioned this is thank goodness that these guys have given me a little bit of reprieve tonight dr. Kris Siemer is going to moderate the program I'm gonna get a chance to sit down and Chris was a student of Harold deutsches at the University of Minnesota he teaches at River Falls and I'm so thrilled to have you here this evening dr. Chris rhymer we're privileged tonight to have dr. Jeffrey McGarvey who received his doctorate in military history from Ohio State University in 1998 he is the recipient of a Fulbright grant for research in Germany from which he wrote inside Hitler's High Command which won the Society for military histories 2001 distinguished Book Award he is also the author of war of annihilation combat and genocide on the Eastern Front 1941 dr. McCarthy is senior applied research scholar at the United States Holocaust Memorial museums Jack Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies where he is the project leader and editor-in-chief for the museum's seven-volume encyclopedia of camps and ghettos 1933 to 1945 the first three volumes of which have been completed and are out the first volume won a National Jewish Book Award and the association of Jewish libraries Judaica reference Award among other distinctions dr. McCarthy is a member of the Department of the Army historic Advisory subcommittee and has been a presidential counselor at the National World War two Museum and a trustee for the Society of military history he lectures frequently on the Nazi camp system of the German military and the Second World War we are privileged to have him speak here tonight and here he is dr. McCarthy Chris thank you very much for that kind introduction I always think it's it's wonderful getting it to get an introduction that your father will appreciate and your mother will believe my purpose tonight is to and well I want to start by thanking you all this is a wonderful turnout really really pleased to see that this many people are interested in this topic I hope you still are in another 40 minutes or so I'm going to give you an overview of some of the ways in which the German High Command the German General Staff were not all that they're cracked up to be I know that the official title of this talk is what made the Nazi military work this is gonna be a lot about how it didn't work but it'll give you a good chunk I think of of understanding what happened at that time I've got about 40 or 45 minutes worth of material here then we're gonna dr. Connie Harris come up and she's going to make a presentation and at some point we're gonna have a panel here to answer your questions all right let's see if we can get this all right there's our intro slide so we're gonna start by talking about the image of the German General Staff I know a lot of you have heard the phrase and heard of the organization what is it that we think about when we think of the German General Staff well we tend to think of it as an independent organization that is one that is trained to use initiative and speak their minds to power you know especially when the when the pressures on we think of it as organized and centralized a functional bureaucracy with clearly defined spheres of authority and lines of command we think of it as expert it's certainly thought of itself as expert tactically operationally and strategically gifted we think of it as anti-nazi fever just following orders yeah we didn't really like that little Austrian corporal anyway now in the past I've considered skipping that last point but the fact is that too many military historians have done just that Hitler's politics and the military course of the war were very tightly linked and we need to pay attention to that the main point of the myth that grew up around the General Staff after the war with the active participation of many former German officers was that Germany entered and then lost the war and committed horrible crimes along the way because of Hitler and a small clique of yes men around him and despite the best efforts of the General Staff so what was the reality well the General Staff did demonstrate some strengths some great strengths in some spheres but it also suffered from structural cultural and intellectual weaknesses that severely inhibited its performance and contributed to the onset the nature and the ultimate loss of the war I'll just make a couple of the sides here first this breakdown into structural cultural and intellectual elements is somewhat artificial I admit each of these overlapped with the others they affected the others but I've broken them down this way because I think it helps to clarify some of the things that went on it helps with the analysis second you've already heard me use the terms high command and General Staff almost interchangeably the former is the broader term the High Command encompassed the General Staff the General Staff actually was two things it was an organizational element within the army High Command the okh and it also an elite subgroup within the German officer corps the Army officer corps that held most of the key command and staff positions so in that sense as an elite part of the officer corps the General Staff dominated the high command alright so let's look at the high command strengths and weaknesses more closely starting with starting with starting with structural issues there we go you gotta leave the remote alone much to my surprise when I started studying this organization it turns out that the organization of the high command was not nearly so clear or rational as most people assume at the lower levels that is within the organizational element that was the general staff and then the lower headquarters the organization was not bad I mean the Germans had practically invented the general staff model in the 19th century anyway and the staffs were logically organized according to function their structure would be familiar to anyone here who has worked with in a military staff there they were small which allowed for ease of tactical and operational coordination and control but we'll talk a bit later about them being too small in fact in the intelligence and logistics areas where size is needed in order to process a lot of information and carry out complex tasks and there was a long-standing problem above those levels at the top of the command organization where you had competing agencies personal rivalries and overlapping spheres of authority I'll illustrate this by talking a bit about the organizational debate that took place between 1933 and 1938 there was basic agreement among German army officers that in World War one the High Command had not been centralized enough and so there was agreement that in the next war or the war that they knew was coming and I'll talk about that a bit too there needed to be more centralized control that was pretty much where agreement ended because beyond that everybody wanted to be in charge now I'll just I'll point out a few things here you had oh wait next next slide hang on everybody wanted to be in charge and they wanted to be in charge of operations that is planning the great campaigns I wanted to be the great commander out in the field directing the armies you know if you think of it in American World War two terms they wanted to be Patton not Eisenhower certainly not Marshall you know those kinds of functions really weren't a great interest high-level defense policy logistics all that kind of thing that was all boring also this was largely an internal army debate the people who occupied the different positions were all army officers and they were arguing among themselves so now you'll get to see what what I'm talking about in organizational terms here we have the head of state of course which is a tall Hitler we have the Minister of War Fon Bloomberg who's a serving Army General and he is officially the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces he's assisted by his staff in the war ministry then you have the you know I'm leaving out the other services but you have the army commander-in-chief front which and he's assisted by the General Staff and he commands the different district commands within Germany this is the peacetime set up so what you have in this debate is you have Bloomberg and the more ministry saying we need a centralized command and we need to be in charge we will issue orders to the army the Air Force and the Navy and you have the army commander in chief on Fritch assisted by the chief of the General Staff saying we have the expertise we know what we're doing we need to issue orders to the Navy and the Air Force and we'll take care of the army ourselves and you can go bother yourself with you know accounting and things like that so they went back and forth and back and forth and back and forth about this throughout these years really in one sense though it was an exercise in futility because there was far too much opposition outside of the army to any centralized powerful army command the air force under Goering the Navy under Rader the SA under whom while he was around the SS under Himmler a growing power and Hitler himself none of these people wanted the army to take an especially powerful position and be able to run things on its own so there was really too much opposition to any of the Army's plans for them to come to fruition so what you have is in February of 1938 after five years of mostly futile debate and bureaucratic struggle among the top elements in the army Hitler imposes a solution now I haven't got time to go into it but there was a huge scandal at this time in February 38 blomberg and Fritz are kicked out of their positions and the first thing Hitler does is he decides to take personal command of the Armed Forces himself so he's eliminated the defense minister job he now has he sets up the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht the high command of the Armed Forces to assist him as the commander in chief and he now exercises direct command over the three services the commander chief of the army now von Brauchitsch is assisted by the General Staff and this is now that the wartime organization they're there commanding the army groups so this is the way it was set up at the beginning it's the way it pretty much worked for Poland but one important factor here is that the okw was never set up to really be a headquarters over the three services the three services maintained far too much independent power and the okw was too small and Hitler never will really let it exercise any independence anyway so this was not something like the Joint Chiefs that that we developed there was no system such as the British and the Americans developed for the comprehensive and careful consideration of strategic alternatives by both civilian and military authorities if the Germans had taken this system and developed it further they could have had something that might have worked rationally but instead the system degenerated further and I'm going to take you through a series of organizational charts here about four or five of them to show you what happened I mean you wind up with a different kind of structure for several different phases of the war and this is what happens in the winter in the spring of 1940 you have the army which is planning for the invasion of France and the Low Countries oops I got out of place anyway and it's it's focusing on that and then very much at the last minute Hitler decides that he wants to invade Norway and Denmark as well and he gives that task to the okw which isn't supposed to be involved in that kind of planning at all the okw actually had to pull a headquarters staff in to do the planning for the operation and the army was busy raising its eyebrows the chief of the General Staff Halldor is saying you know what what on earth is going on here we're supposed to be doing that kind of stuff but that's the way it worked for that operation and then we have operation sea lion here you have almost no involvement from the okw at all you have the Army and the Navy forming their own separate plans that were completely irreconcilable it's probably just as well that they never had to try and put this in operation because there was no way you were gonna make two plans agree and as I say the okw is playing no role whatsoever as a as a coordinating Headquarters operation mark or the invasion of Crete in 1941 Hitler gives the mission to Goering to the Air Force and the Air Force now controls Air Force units which includes the paratroopers who carried out the main assault but also Army and Navy units which helps to explain why the Navy's part of this was a complete fiasco because the Air Force didn't know what it was doing again the okw plays no role whatsoever and then if you want to see a real mess North Africa Rommels in command in this theater technically the theater belongs to the Italians and the commando supremo is supposed to be exercising control there's a German general with the Italian High Command a liaison officer but Rommel whenever he can he ignores them he ignores orders from the okw he ignores orders from the okh from the from the General Staff if he gets into any kind of serious conflict he goes directly to Hitler that's what this dotted line is for he has Hitler's ear so he's able to maneuver through this system and pretty much do whatever he wants but as a as a rational kind of command structure this doesn't really work very well what you have developed by the time you get to the spring of 1941 is a fundamental split in the command organization that solidifies by 42 and I'll go into this as Operation Barbarossa got underway in the summer of 1941 as actually as the planning for it got underway in the spring the okw took direct control of all the theaters except a narrow operational zone in the east where the army High Command the okh was in charge now this didn't seem like a problem at first it seemed like a good idea Operation Barbarossa was a huge endeavor the Army had a lot on its plate let them focus on that the other theaters were quiet the okw can watch over those both the Army and the okw kept track of what was going on in all the theaters so they were informed um it seemed like a good temporary fix but the system solidified and so from October at the latest October of 42 on Hitler is commanding in the east through the okh through the General Staff and through the okw everywhere else North Africa the Western theater the southern theater southeast Norway Finland all of those are under the okw as in effect a parallel operational headquarters with the okh and there are problems with this the okw is much too small to do this as a matter of fact that's what these you see this dotted line going between the General Staff and the okw those are all the parts of the general staff that deal with logistics and intelligence and personnel and other matters that the okw doesn't even have staff elements for so there are parts of the general staff that have to sort of wear two hats and work for two bosses furthermore as the war becomes more complicated as things start to heat up in the West and in North Africa you start to see tremendous battles between the okw in the okay H over resources Hitler even complains at one point he says no sooner is there a pause in the east than the West is seen oh the okw is coming to me for more divisions and no sooner is there a break in the West then the okh is coming to me for train loads of me there was no one except for Hitler who could resolve all of these conflicts and there was no centralized approach to the strategic situation to logistics to intelligence except in the person of Adil Hitler now the Germans did finally correct this they finally created a centralized command structure that was in April of 1945 a bit late a bit late I do want to emphasize these problems didn't lose the war for the Germans okay they contributed they made things more difficult but this was not really the main problem we're gonna get to the main problems so next we're gonna talk about cultural issues now what I mean here is patterns of behavior collective needs and ambitions and fundamental attitudes about war Authority and staff work and there are some key elements of that culture first there was a long-standing dispute through most of the 19th and into the 20th centuries about what you wanted in an officer did you want intellect did you want someone who was really smart and educated or did you want character things like courage and strength of will and diligence and those kinds of things now by the time you get to World War 2 really the Germans had worked out that they wanted all of that and and their selection and training system really tried to find people who had the maximum in both of those areas education and will if you will then there were some command principles that were unique to the German army and very important for the way they operated the first was command by directive which sometimes some of you may have heard of as alpha throgs tactic the idea being that you push initiative as far down as you can the commander says here is my objective here are your resources here are your limits you design a plan that's going to achieve my objective with what you have and the next commander down would do the same thing and this would go all the way down the chain of command by pushing initiative down increased reaction speed and increased initiative so it made for a much more flexible military force then there was full mocked loosely translated to full authority this meant that a staff officer especially a chief of staff could speak for his commander could issue orders for his commander so if a division commander calls up to the Corps headquarters and the corps commander is off somewhere the corps chief of staff could issue an order to the division commander this is not something you see in our military trust me the principle of joint responsibility and the generals table Steen's to Vega I'll treat these together principle joint responsibility meant that the chief of staff in headquarters was equally responsible with the commander for every order that went out of that headquarters and the general stops Dienstag which you could call the the General Staff chain of command if you will or chain of communication this was another interesting element best described with Anik with an example if if a division commander is about to issue an order that his chief of staff thinks is really stupid that division chief of staff can call up the Corps chief of staff and say hey my commanders about to do something really stupid if he can convince him then the Corps chief of staff goes to the Corps commander and if he can convince him the Corps commander calls up the division commanders is hey listen to your chief of staff you know he's got the better idea this this kind of chain of communications again is not something that existed in other armies now I'll point out that those last two elements that the principle of joint responsibility and this General Staff communications chain were fading out by World War two they were created in the nineteenth century because a lot of senior commanders in those days or noblemen who were appointed to command simply because they were noblemen and they didn't have the the precise military education that the General Staff had so you needed some way for the General Staff officers to influence them by World War two most of the senior commanders as well as the staff officers were general staff officers so you didn't have this kind of conflict there was supposed to be when we they paired up commanders and Chiefs of Staff that was supposed to be like a marriage presumably a good marriage they weren't supposed to have a lot of fundamental disagreements okay other elements naturally as you would expect in any modern military organization there was obedience to immediate superiors and also to the head of state there was a lot of reverence for the head of state hence the loyalty part of the reason for the loyalty to Hitler in their approach to warfare there was a great deal of emphasis on tactics and operational maneuver that is the maneuver of large forces in the field on campaign and their engagement in combat there was emphasis on aggressiveness and initiative taking initiative was actually something that they trained their officers to do they would in their training they would put them into an unfamiliar difficult situation and those officers were expected to come up with a solution on their own that was innovative and not necessarily a textbook solution but one that they thought would work I highly recommend the works of Rob Satine Oh on this especially his book the German Way of war in terms of how the Germans thought in that regard they believed in war finally as an instrument of policy and as a natural state of affairs you didn't find a lot of German officers who were gonna say oh well war is a last resort or you know we're just here to deter the enemy or something like that no they expected to go to war they expected to be used to achieve aims for the German state now these elements of culture gave the General Staff certain strengths first of all they constituted officers in the General Staff constituted an integrated whole they actually were trained to think in the same way they were trying to achieve what was called a Gedanken Gong a way of thinking so that they would approach problems in the same way and officers who weren't even necessarily communicating would know on a sort of fundamental level what the other was going to do because that was the way that they all approach the they were less concerned with rank than their counterparts in other armies which meant that they were willing to speak up to a senior officer they were encouraged to speak up even it was insisted upon it was expected of them that they would speak up with their opinions they were able to react and improvise quickly in part because the staffs were small in part because they were taught in this common way of thinking they were expect to be expected to be tireless workers the great fun Malka had a saying gentlemen there are 24 hours in the day and if that's not enough there's the night and they were what does any World War 2 veteran will tell you they were quite adept at tactics and operational maneuver until the very end now there were also of course weaknesses Germans tended to overestimate the importance of willpower and this is highly ironic because after the war they all complained about Hitler and how unrealistic he was and he never saw the limits that the armies were subject to this was in part an outgrowth again of the First World War there were they were determined that there was not going to be a stab on the back stab in the back on the part of the army they wanted the army to fight on to the bitter end I was also an outgrowth of the intellect versus character debate this is where character comes in you're supposed to carry on against all odds they tended to go over their peers heads when they disagreed with the decision and Hitler played on this you know if you think again of the American example if you think of Bradley going over Eisenhower over Marshall direct to FDR to complain about something and FDR accepting that I mean it's just we can't see that happening in the American system but Guderian could go over his army group commander and over the commander in chief of the German army and straight to Hitler and Hitler would sit down with him and hear him out and maybe decide on something that was contrary to what the commander-in-chief wanted to do so it was it was an outgrowth in a sense of the General Staff chain of communication but it had been twisted it had been corrupted if you will there was also if we've talked about this push for initiative and independence of action but this was losing out over time to something called the Fiat or Princip that is the the leader principle this was a a Nazi Party principle according to which the subordinates only duty was to obey immediately and without question now in reality it was more complicated than that but that was sort of the fundamental principle and this conflict between initiative and obedience worked its way down through the the levels of command as the war went on more and more officers became willing to micromanage the but the battle below them to interfere in their subordinates spheres and to report their subordinates if their subordinates failed to obey unquestioningly German officers were also often too willing to follow an order so long as they could tell themselves that they weren't they weren't responsible now this was especially important in what the officers would have called the political realm you know you need to support these SS troops who are coming along behind you and shooting civilians because and this is a a political order from the Fuhrer and the officer would say well it's not my concern I wash my hands of this not my responsibility so I'll go along with that that's a complicated topic and we might want to get into it in Q&A and finally there was too much emphasis on tactics and operations at the expense of subjects like global strategy logistics and intelligence German officers had no real understanding of strategy as we think of it today in their minds if you won the campaign's if you won the battles the war would take care of itself there was it was sort of nothing in between there no understanding of how to balance ends and means at the strategic level you know okay we're at war with the United States the Soviet Union and the British Empire at the same time no problem one one I mean the commander in chief of the Army actually said this was before the war began but he said the more enemies the more honor yeah okay and in logistics and intelligence now this is this is something that anybody who's worked on the staff will pick up on right away the way the Germans plan their operations was the commander and the chief of staff would decide on the scheme of maneuver you know this is where the columns are going to go this is where we're going to attack these are our objectives they would turn to the supply officer they didn't even use the word logistics until after the war they used the word supply which had a much narrower connotation they turn to the supply officer and they'd say here's what we're going to do make sure the supplies get there they would turn to the intelligence officer and they would say here's what we're going to do what's the worst thing the enemy can do to stop this and we'll prepare to to deal with that okay not the most likely thing mind you but the worst thing but you know the key here is that they decided what they were going to do and then they went to their support element and the American army having served on a staff myself I can tell you it's very different the commander and the chief the chief of staff will prepare three options for the commander based on the commander's general intent he'll go to the other staff elements and he'll say which one of these options can you best support and they will all brief the commander and the commander will put this all together and decide on a course of action so you can see the difference in emphasis here now a lot of times it worked out just fine for the Germans but in other cases not so much and that's what we're going to get into now how did these weaknesses affect the direction of the war it's an important point since it bears so heavily on the myth that Hitler lost the war single-handedly and here the case of Operation Barbarossa the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 is the appropriate example most senior officers shared Hitler's belief that this was going to be a quick campaign after all the very macht had just defeated France which supposedly had the most powerful army on the continent the Red Army looked very weak Germany had beaten Russia in the First World War so you know it looked as though this would be an easy affair but the Germans lacked any firm knowledge of the Soviets resource base they misread the Red Army's abilities and deployment the army leaders the German army leaders also knew that they had virtually no reserves of men equipment supplies or transport available and shortages were going to start to hit them as early as late summer there was no preparation for a winter campaign because there's not going to be a winter campaign we will have won by then the entire campaign was based upon the idea that the ver macht would destroy the Red Army in the Western Soviet Union that is about two-thirds of the way to Moscow and to the north and south and at that point the Soviet political system would collapse and there would be basically no resistance from then on that the German army could advance as far as it wanted to in the Soviet Union you know basically with no resistance at all now when that failed to happen especially the failure of the the political collapse the Germans had no alternate plan and that was you know that was going to become a big problem in fact during the planning for this operation the generals reacted to the warnings and obstacles that they ran into with systematic denial there were more junior officers who said you know what if the Soviets don't give up you know what if they keep fighting and these officers were told basically hush get with the program it's going to be a cakewalk there was a part of the General Staff that prepared a study that said look you know out to the east into Siberia the Soviets have developed these regions they have industrial resources out there they have you know resources they can draw upon if they don't give up we can't advance that far again this this was ignored I mean it that study came out after the decision had been made to invade the Soviet Union so it really didn't have any effect and here's an amazing part the Germans knew that they were going to face tremendous logistical difficulties their initial estimate for this campaign was that they would do it in 13 weeks plus a two-week pause in the middle to rest and refit run around Smolensk or so in December of 1940 they ran a logistical exercise that established that they could not support a campaign of 15 weeks so they said hmm what are we gonna do we'll do it in 13 weeks we'll do it in 11 weeks we'll do it in nine weeks in March of 1941 the commander-in-chief of the German army general fund brokerage says it'll be a six-week campaign with a railroad advance after that that was going to be tricky because the Russians didn't even have the same gauge of railway but anyway this was what how they reacted to the obstacles we'll just you know they just brush them aside okay now it is necessary more than fair to say but necessary to say that Hitler was still calling the shots strategically he was the one who decided that they were going to attack the Soviet Union but his generals did not oppose him and through their planning we can see how weaknesses crept into this plan all right now we'll wind up with intellectual and ideological issues that the 1920s and 1930s were the years in which the most significant ideas took shape within the German military and here the Germans experienced in World War one and it's aftermath and perhaps more important their perceptions of those experiences were decisive some fundamental ideas emerged about the reasons for Germany's defeat in the first world war that were tremendously significant now these are not the only reasons that came up but they are the main ones the most important and central idea and I know most of you have heard this one already was that the German army didn't lose in the field it was stabbed in the back by Jews and leftists on the homefront who signed a treasonous peace and there were some subsidiary beliefs that went along with this they believed that there had been a failure of will on the homefront that the Allied blockade had produced privations there had been political unrest all of which was true but that this had left the population vulnerable to these Jews and leftist and you know led to this bad end to the war the generals believe further that the nation had not been sufficiently militarized I mean this all ties in and that military justice had been insufficiently strict thus allowing for incidents of desertion avoidance of duty and outright rebellion this is why they executed tens of thousands of their own soldiers in World War two and then there were some corresponding beliefs about the next war first that it was inevitable that it represented the only way for Germany to regain its freedom its national independence and its economic and cultural rejuvenation along with a position of world power second that that war would be a total war that would call upon all of Germany's material and human resources and would target all sources of enemy strength there would be no distinction between civilian and military targets all means were justified in this fight for Germany's survival and third Germany would need an authoritarian government that would militarize an organized society in order to sustain schemee sustain this war effort while the military controlled operations now these ideas together with the culture of the officer corps made the German military the willing to love National Socialism and thus the officers were willing to help the National Socialists take power launched a war of conquest and assist in the regime's war crimes and crimes against humanity whole nother lecture there in the pre-war years and then increasingly as the war went on Hitler his party leaders and various rabidly Nazi generals in short through personnel policies that Nazism became an ever stronger force within the officer corps and the high command but even early on there was never any there was never enough anti-nazi feeling to prevent the Nazis from taking control so now we can look back at that image that we talked about it first was the General Staff independent well they like to think of themselves that way but in the end they obeyed often out of enthusiasm sometimes from a sense of duty but they obeyed was it expert within certain realms certainly especially in tactics and operational maneuver but in other areas it did no better than Hitler and sometimes it did worse even in areas that it was supposed to be expert in was it organized at the lower levels yes but the top was a shambles in part due to Hitler's meddling but in part due to organisational squabbles that had a long institutional history was it anti-nazi certainly not the General Staff as a body supported the Nazi Party early on and many officers maintained their loyalty right through to the bitter end even to the point of genocide and I'll wind this up with one statistic the Germans lost about 5.7 million combat fatalities in the Second World War of those they lost about well more than 1.4 million that is over 25 percent of their total between January and May of 1945 that is the ultimate testimony to the bankruptcy of their command system and their strategy I thank you very much for your attention at this point we're gonna have Connie Harris come up I think yes and she's going to make a presentation and then we will take your questions thank you you I often speak on Harold H and his experiences before and during the war and tonight is no difference going I will probably fill in some of the things that Jeff has already talked about dr. Harold C Deutsch as most of you know was not only a popular professor at the University of Minnesota but during the war he was a member of the research and analysis division of the OSS and at the end of the war he was loaned out to the State Department to interrogate German leaders at Nuremberg Deutsch was uniquely qualified for this since he was fluent in German and had conducted interviews of German leaders on during his sabbatical research trips in Germany during 1936 and 1938 some of the people he interviewed at Nuremberg are well known and some of them have already been mentioned this evening Field Marshal vilhelm title he was the chief of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht the okw from February 1938 to the war's end Colonel general Alfred Jodl the chief of the okws operation offices and operation staff from 1939 to 1945 in addition George interviewed staff officers general of artillery Walther war Lamont who served as yodels deputy chief on the operation staff from August 1935 to September 1944 and gayer general georg thomas former chief of war economy office until january 1943 and also general Heinz Guderian the interrogations deutsch conducted took place in various locations over ersal the nuremberg courthouse and Falkenstein hospital the special interrogations team had set up rules for the conduct of its members interrogators were not allowed to call the prisoners by their title such as Field Marshal or general and a tear Gator was prohibited from shaking a prisoner's hand and no favors were to be done for prisoners such as giving providing them with cigarettes chocolate or delivery letters to relatives these rules were not strictly enforced and Deutsch proceeded to break every one of them according to Deutsche these rules set the prisoners up for the perfect interview most American interrogators were gruff and Condon sent condescending they had no understanding of the German mindset with its attention to titles and formalities do I approach these men with this in mind he would not browbeat them as a lawyer would do he was just a historian just interested in their wartime experiences his manner made them more willing to speak to him his focus during his interviews was on German foreign policy he did not present himself as a member of the prosecution but just as a historian interested in getting the facts straight which made them less hesitant to speak with him and again his fluency in German did not hurt matters either these interrogations or what Deutsch actually would call later on interviews were lost here so the first person he spoke to was people he spoke to was these two gentlemen Alfred yodel and Ville hunt keidel he met with yodel and keidel together in October 1945 so they could corroborate each other's story when the prisoners were brought in at deutsche dress yodel in perfect german as deutsch related to me in an interview he began the meeting that day good morning care field marshal I am delighted to meet you I'm sorry we haven't met before I'm especially interested in some of the information you know on general so-and-so and he said as I he had told me he had interviewed a lot of people during his sabbatical year in 1938 I've been terribly worried about him and was at his place in 1938 and where I spent a lovely weekend compared to the average American interrogator George said his manner really disarmed yodel and to have someone so cordial and yodel was more accommodating from the first word and as he states yodel was a man of great dignity but Vilhelm keidel maintained his title of bootlicker supreme and there seems to be a consensus of title being a bootlicker well dortch's interview of the two men was going on Joe yodel set ramrod straight in a chair well title laid casually on his stomach on a nearby bunk when the interview concluded keidel fond overdosing always at your service always at your service Deutsch question yodel about several matters having to do with Hitler's foreign policy especially regarding relations between the Foreign Office and the okw yodel maintained that there was no real obvious points of friction since Hitler believed in the strict separation between these offices in addition Hitler insisted on any major problems would go through him so there could be little difficulty most questions that developed were in the form of prestige questions because foreign minister Ribbentrop asserted that army commanders were part of the foreign office in occupied areas and Hitler had to rein in Ribbentrop on this matter while a question about military manners matters they also brought out the explanation of what happened in 1938 and Jeff mentioned this earlier the Bloomberg fritsch cases keidel had intimate knowledge of both of the cases of why Bloomberg and Frisch were thrown out of office because von Bloomberg's son married titles daughter and von Frisch was a longtime friend keidel was reluctant to discuss the matter however Deutsch informed him that he knew the basic facts of the cases because of his 1938 travels now Field Marshal Verna from Bloomberg as we've already seen was the Minister of War and this is a picture of Bloomberg and fridge with Hitler but he made a mistake that cost him his high position he fell in love from Bloomberg wished to marry a young woman and asked Idol for an opinion keidel asserted that the army would not object this is from Bloomberg second marriage of course after the marriage which keidel did not attend it was discovered that fom Bloomberg's young bride had something of a past meaning that she was a suspected prostitute which was never proven but she was a pornographic model when this was reported to Hitler von Bloomberg was forced to resign in the case of burner baron verner von Frisch the commander in chief of the army he was accused of an offense under paragraph 175 of the Reich peanut Penal Code being a homosexual he was never married and so that helped Hitler asked keidel who we placed on Bloomberg what should be done in this case and there is a whole there's a whole lot more to this story than I'm going into right now and in his later work Hitler's generals Deutsch found conclusive evidence that Fitch was not guilty of the offense the case against which actually involved the devious machinations for power penetrated and perpetrated by the cabal of Hermann Goering Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Himmler who believed that their forces would gain power at the expense of the German army although fun fridge denied the accusation and later was found not guilty in a court martial he was removed from his position and reduced in rank the removal of von Bloomberg and Fon Frisch gave Hitler the opportunity consolidate his hold over the armed forces replacing these men with title and Walter fund brunt route ich who did not have the courage to confront Hitler and indeed after seeing what happened to their comrades many of the generals feared the same fate many including Deutsch believe yodel should not have been executed for his part in the war although yodeled knew and saw too much to be completely innocent his role has been had been greatly exaggerated and if the trial had been held six months later he would not have been executed although a choice his assessment of yodel remained unchanged even with his post-war correspondence with Louise yodel yodels young wife who was tireless in her attempts to redeem her husband's reputation and deutsche said no he knew too much according to Deutsche one of the most fascinating generals he ever worked interrogated was this gentleman to the left Walter were Lamont he was even more fascinating than Heinz Guderian were Lamont spoke perfect English and was married to a member of the anheuser-busch family the folks make Budweiser Forks deutsche held 12 meetings with Worrell mantener Berg more than any of his other interrogations and he covered the Warford Deutsch providing information that would provide help with his other interrogations like yodel and keidel although considered a Nazi general or LeMond did try to forestall the 1940 Western offensive his efforts brought him into contact with the opposition leaders like Admiral Wilhelm Canaris of the OP fair and general GERD Comus until Hitler's Western offensive many military leaders believe that the phoney war would be brought to a peaceful inclusion that's the time period between the invasion of Poland and when they go into France however Hitler expressed doubts about Belgian neutrality the threat to Belgium particularly upset war Lamont because it was his birthplace and he had many friends and relatives there he decided on two measures to might help prevent the offensive first he attempted to compile economic data and the arguments against the campaigns through the information from the war economic office and the right economic Ministry having been a member of the wari County economy office from 1926 to 1936 he went to general georg thomas for statistical data which he promptly received however the right economic ministry would not provide him with information that he needed therefore it was impossible to prove his case having failed at this measure were Lamont attempted to appeal to the Belgian King to mediate between the warring powers war Lamont was close friend a close friend of the German military attache in Brussels a colonel found poppin Haim who made visits to Berlin before the offensive and spoke with war Lamont each time war Lamont informed him of the plans for the violation of Belgium's neutrality so Papen Hein could make provisions for the safety of his family the two men were convinced of King Leopold sincerity in remaining neutral pappan Heim approached the adjutant to the King a Lieutenant General / Stratton and suggested the idea of mediation shortly after this war Lamont heard King Leopold's proposal for mediation but Great Britain refused to negotiate his attempt at stopping the Western offensive in 1940 was the nearest to the opposition war Lamont came yodel keidel and war Lamont were the offers and the offices under them were never approached about being part of an earlier early conspiracy convicted at Nuremberg and sentenced to life in prison were Lamont sentence was reduced to 18 years and he was granted amnesty and released in 19 57 he spent his remaining years writing his memoirs and died in October of 1976 and he did speak to George after the war also we also have he also talked to Georg Thomas he was not considered a fighting general he carried on this invisible fight in the Nazi regime in his official capacity he advised rush leaders on the military capabilities to make war he was an economist his studies his duties were to study observe and evaluate the economic war potential of other countries and to state the requirements of the armed forces for raw materials means of productions and labor to the Ministry of Labour and as you've already seen the German General Staff the okw and everyone had a little bit of a problem with this unofficially he opposed Hitler's regime from the start he never wavered in his convictions to purge the Nazi government from power George interviewed Thomas at the Falcon Stein hospital because the general wasn't very bad health and he ultimately does pass in the early 1915 1916 discussed his economic offered observations and his involvement in the opposition efforts in the spring of 1933 Thomas had been part of us a delegation to inspect Soviet industrial installations the report stated in spite of noting some obvious weaknesses bad communication lack of skilled workers lack of industrial experiences there had been very much impressed with the Soviet economy they emphasized the size of the Russian food production and the quantity of raw materials and the significance of the development developing armament industry the report concluded that in about a decade Russians economic war potential would be so great and so in calcul that in the event of war it would have looked upon as a upon as a great power in economic capabilities the delegations report recommended that Germany should adopt a policy that would not bring her into conflict with the Soviet Union Hilla rejected their conclusions expressed the opinion that the mission had been deceived by a set of Potemkin villages and remain determined to combat the Soviets to the utmost Hitler continued to reject Thomas's warnings about Russia's economic war potential there we have that little denial piece that Jeff was talking about Hiller described Thomas's estimates shown to him by keidel as the silly talk of Jewish and pacifistic agents during the interview Thomas described to Deutsche how from 1936 onward Hitler expresses warlike views more openly Thomas attempted to show the error of the new war through lectures and by publishing contributions to newspapers and military periodicals increasingly unpopular in Hitler's inner circle Thomas gained the reputation as a pessimist and pacifist by not falling in line with the party line Thomas should have been removed from his post but no suitable replacement was presented and he was not a threat to Hitler's power not only did Thomas publish his views but he also tried to gauge opposition support in 1938 when Hitler wanted to sever the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia Thomas queried various German business leaders to gain support Great Britain in France's appeasement at Munich undermined Thomas's efforts and the same leaders who agreed with men him became ardent supporters of Hitler's policy Thomas believed that war isn't at war at the war's end that Germany's chief soldiers as well as its business leaders should be held responsible for the moral cowardice they showed by not supporting his efforts following the HSU Dayton crisis in the summer of nineteen then in the summer of 1939 Hitler as he prepared to attack Poland Thomas wrote a memorandum which set forth his view that a Polish war would in generate a new world conflict and this would be a war of material for which the German economy was not prepared when Thomas presented the memorandum to keidel he would not allow Thomas to finish and stated the Fuhrer would never enter another world war on Sun on the Sunday before the outbreak of war Thomas tried again through statistical estimates of economic potential between Germany and probable enemies to convince keidel to confront Hitler about the danger of another war Hitler reacted title reacted negatively and again denied the war's possibility for the next four years Thomas looked for opportunities to throw overthrow Hitler's government and end the war he approached the leading field commanders such as general Gunther von Kluge Major General Erich von Manstein and Field Marshal Erwin Rommel asking them to assume the leadership for such an endeavor they agreed with Thomas but gave one excuse or another for postponing the issue only after Stalingrad did he stop approaching other army leaders not wanting Hitler to be a martyr during these years title became increasingly irritated with Thomas and eventually forbade him from submitting comparative economic reports of Germany and its enemies Thomas incurred the wrath of his superiors through his as Hitler phrased it overly objective economic surveys and was ejected from the okw in January 1943 while opposition elements abdun flowed with the success of Hitler's plans Thomas stood by his deeply rooted Christian convictions believing the government was immoral to the core Thomas played no role in the July 20th 1944 attempt to assassinate Hitler because of his Christian beliefs he disapproved of assassination which caused his separation from this conspiracy after the war Thomas was not tried at Nuremberg and again like I mentioned he died in 1940 six finally we have a gentleman a lot of people know about and as Heinz Guderian unlike this Heinz Guderian of course as most of you know was a fighting general in every sense of the term he was considered one of the innovators of tank warfare and he was familiar with life in the field this knowledge and his concern for his men caused several clashes which Hitler with Hitler which led to Guderian's dismissal for a time George interrogated Guderian and his first impressions proved interesting as he state as he stated I got to the prison at oberursel at 8:00 a.m. as I usually did at the interrogation room he was brought in and sat down the other Cantera gaiters would just say good morning sir as the rule said but I ignored them heard general he was never a field marshal how are things for you in prison he broke down in tears he told me he was having a disgraceful time and they were not mistreating him physically but next to that they were not continuing his special hard diet that he was supposed to have also they had worked on his teeth with fillings and such and had stopped right in the middle and this caused him pain the guards were American paratroopers who had been in Berlin they had been informed that they were not going home but sent here to this godforsaken place where they were interrogating German prisoners who they assumed would be war criminals so when he Guderian was taken to the washroom the guard would make him run running up behind saying hurry up you goddamn Nazi or something like that you know that in other ways they would verbally abuse abuse him I told him I was finally ashamed as an American to see this go on and I would make sure it was finished right then and there well Deutsch asked a Darian to describe his role in the latter part of the war the general felt the need to clarify his lack of open action against Hitler as well as review his activities throughout the period much in the not much in the nos series regime Guderian regarded as undignified and indecent but it did a it did a lot to improve conditions in Germany in the early 30s Guderian believed that the army would be a moderating influence over the Nazi extremes but the opposite happened as the army became weaker over time this became particularly clear at the time of the removal of Bloomberg in fridge which was a disgraceful episode from every standpoint on that occasion Guderian felt the army chief should have threatened a mass resignation if Hitler persisted when war came the Army's position was seriously weakened Deutsch was particularly interested in Guderian experience on the Eastern Front Guderian believed Hitler had been briefed on Soviet resources and before the war Guderian himself prepared a book on tank warfare in that work Guderian had spoken with considerable respect of the russian tank position and had made an estimate estimate of an establishment of a 10th out of 10,000 modern tanks actually Guderian said that the russians had had 17,000 tanks but some of these were naturally were outdated models Hillier believe this to be a ridiculously high estimate it became obvious to Guderian that Hitler would not accept unpleasant facts about the war potential of those with whom he was or might subsequently be at war and Jef sort of backed that up again to earlier also Guderian told deutsche that he had met with the head of the Army Group B Field Marshal von Bach and agreed that continuing the 1941 offensive on ma on Moscow was insane they decided to call up von Brauchitsch at the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia and both of them gave him everything they could by way of an argument on the phone hardly able to get a word in von Brauchitsch agreed with them but said the Fuhrer is determined to do this there is nothing we can do to stop it we should just try as best we can to follow through with it later on when the autumn offensive was to start on the 4th of December 1941 the temperature was a minus 44 degrees Fahrenheit the gas situation was dire and nothing started tanks were rolled over holes dynamited in the ground which were filled with gasoline then lit so the tanks could be warmed up the tanks ran on diesel which doesn't do well in minus 44 degrees Fahrenheit two days into the offensive things just froze Guderian sent orders to stop and informed headquarters of his decision the men were so cold they stood there and just said just shoot us we can't do anymore six days later Guderian was called into the headquarters at the Wolf's Lair Hitler ranted at him that he should have had enough drive and will to manage it Guderian brought up the matters of the weather and the transport but Hitler shoved them aside at one point when the general described the suffering heaviest troops Hitler yelled at him as he happens to feel mid light they are tripping Guderian you have too much mercy for the troops a couple days after this Guderian fought with the man who succeeded from Bach in army group be fine Klug who then recommended Guderian removal to hitler hitler already upset with Guderian accepted it and the general took no part in the war for fourteen months in the meantime Guderian believed that the whole German tank corps had gone to hell when they called him back to be the inspector of general tanks he had to put it back into shape among the favors and Deutsch did several favors for Guderian did forgive - it was one on a lovely day in August 1945 they spent the day driving around countess an area 15 miles north-east of frankfurt and he was in seventh heaven that is one of those times I'd wish I'd asked dr. Deutsch what did you two talk about but I never followed up that question it's been one of my deep regrets over the path whenever I studied Dortch in addition doe H delivered Guderian's first letter to his wife and that they driving around was the first time Guderian had been out of prison although interrogated Guderian never stood trial as a war criminal and after the war he wrote his memoirs and died in 1954 when looking back at this extraordinary historical time deutsche deposited several judgments and missed opportunities because of a family emergency his wife was quite ill Deutsch missed the last weekend of his sick a jewelled interrogations these four interviews included Field Marshal Hermann Goering Major General Erich von Manstein Colonel GERAN moon stead and Franz Halder during a post-war research trip deutsch interviewed Halldor twice in addition deutsche wish he could have spoken with Ural more than once however of those he did not talk to Goering was the most one he most wanted to interview Goering had many angles to his career which had implications on foreign policy of course by the time I was to interview him I had picked up an awful lot of information about his role in many aspects of the war leadership and I will have especially liked to have talked to him about the Battle of Britain after the war do I choose these interviews and by the way this is a cartoon that was done of Deutsch interrogating the German one of the German generals use these interviews and many others and provided part of the narrative of his major works the conspiracy against Hitler in the Twilight war which we have a couple of copies for sale and the bookstore back there and Hitler and his generals in addition these his experiences became part of his classroom lectures at the University of Minnesota and the Army War College and also much later part of the World War Two Roundtable thank you and now we will open it up for questions here [Applause] would would you be able to comment on the famous debate in Normandy water line did or wait till the Allies are ashore and then hit him with the Panzers and and why it was such a unresolved issue that that by that late in the war okay is this working yeah the question okay the the question has to do with the German defensive concept for Normandy Rommel I believe wanted to wanted to meet the Allies right on the water line and defeat them right there roon stet wanted to maintain a central reserve that he would apply wherever the Allies came ashore or hit them after they came ashore and there's been a great deal duel of debate there was at the time between Rommel and which Tet a lot of argument back and forth and debate ever since over which was the the better course I don't really see a whole lot of difference honestly I I mean Normandy was it was not a sure thing but I don't know that I mean if they if they had dedicated all their resources along the coast they would have been more spread out on the other hand by holding some units back they were more subject to aerial attack as they came forward I don't see that there was a defensive concept that was guaranteed winner either I think it's a toss-up but Jeff one of the points on this there was also the controversy of would they be landing at Normandy or would they be landing at Kuwait right right exactly now one of my fellow graduate students from long ago wrote a very good article about the fact that the Germans logistically could not have put more forces into Normandy anyway they couldn't have supported them there the the railroads were being bombed out the roads were being you know interdicted what about the role of anti-semitism in the strategic doctrine because in 1941 after the invasion of Crete the British were able to take the entire Middle East with less than 10,000 troops they overwhelmed Vichy in Syria they overwhelmed a coup in Iraq they took Ethiopia and at most they had 10,000 troops meanwhile the Germans were massing 3 million troops on the Soviet border and it most people believed that it was because the Germans believed in the in what they would call the the Jewish Bolshevik communist conspiracy and the word and in the words of Hitler all you had to do was kick in the door I believe all of the strategic decisions that the Germans made were based a on anti-semitism and - on the ability of the German elite to loot Jewish assets all over Europe when we talk about German strategic leadership that means Hitler okay and so I mean one of the interesting things that I've learned from reading Jeffrey's book and hearing him speak is the absence of higher level strategic organization or thought at in the general staff so when we talk about German designs we're talking about Hitler's designs and Hitler's designs are unequivocal and consistent from the time he wrote Mein Kampf which is quite correct as you observe a war against the Colossus of Jewish Soviet Bolshevism and the need to expand for Laban throme in the East so yes I mean obviously this this informed Hitler's absurd decision to go to war in the first place and certainly take up Operation Barbarossa and the entire conduct of the war in the East was informed by this as Hitler called it a belt on xiang's Creek a war of of the Nazi worldview against what in the Nazi mindset was the greatest enemy the Soviet Union so essentially yes your analysis is quite correct that anti-semitism was the be-all end-all of hitler's worldview to such a degree that even when Russian 152 millimeter shells are landing on the Fuehrer bunker he takes time out to write his political Testament and he asserts that the enemy of the world is Judy jewelry and it must be fought so from beginning to end this informed his worldview so yes I'll just expand on that a little bit I mean Chris is absolutely right that Hitler was the one making the strategic decisions but here again as in military matters the generals were right on board with him the generals and I don't know what percentage of Germans but a large percentage of Germans believe that this was a war against a worldwide Jewish conspiracy and it was a total war as I mentioned before so all means were justified the generals believed as did many Germans that the Jews were behind the whole Bolshevik the whole communist state they were the force behind this and that they were controlling events in the Soviet Union in Great Britain in the United States and this was what Germany was fighting against Jeff Don here would you also talk about the extent of your your research at the Holocaust Museum the number I mean a lot of us have visited maybe three or four of the saturation camps but tell about your research and how that's expanded in number ok briefly I'm in charge of this seven-volume encyclopedia of camps and ghettos I've been working on it for a little over 19 years now and when we started I was told to expect to cover somewhere between 5,000 and 7,000 individual sites now this is all kinds of camps concentration camps forced labor camps POWs camps ghettos and another 15 or 20 categories that most people have never heard of as we started to dig we discovered that in some areas no research had been done and other areas research had been done by individual scholars but they had never talked to each other nobody had ever added up the numbers so the numbers began to rise at this point we are trying to cover in the encyclopedia approximately 45,000 individual camps and ghettos and I will tell you that is a conservative figure there are many tens of thousands that for one reason or another we can't cover I think you could double that number and still not be at the absolute maximum so we're learning a great deal about how the camp system worked within Nazi Germany how important it was for for the Nazis to try to achieve their fundamental goals for Germany the camps were were tools in this effort and so those are sort of the broad lessons that we're learning we have three of the volumes out at this point forth one should be out in about a year and then we have three more to go after that I teach high school I try to do everything I can to counter this tendency but why so many Millennials where are so many people under perhaps the age of 40 so appalling ly ignorant about about the Holocaust and the the camps I mean it there was reset it was a Jewish organization I forget the name the published data recently did a did a questionnaire or a poll and it was it was made for frightening reading it really did and it made you think about all these platitudes about a woman ever again and all this sort of stuff when you're when you're coupling that with with with this the the these vast areas of ignorance it just strikes me that what are we doing wrong in education what are our schools doing wrong what are we doing right please tell me I'd love to do I mean I can I actually have a hard time answering this because simply because I'm sort of on the other side of the perspective I see a lot of youth groups school classes and and very engaged young people coming to the museum and learning about this I'm aware of educational initiatives across the country to teach about the Holocaust I have a hard time judging how many kids were reaching I mean how many kids are really interested in history anyway it's it's sort of a hard thing to judge but I agree we need to do more you know and and we need to we need to explore the ways in which the Holocaust is truly relevant you know you could almost argue that the Holocaust is so extreme that it it makes a bad example but I think we need to understand what there is about the Holocaust that links it to Cambodia and Rwanda and Bosnia and Darfur and the Rangga to all of the genocides that have taken place since then and that are threatening to take place today thoughts on the theory that the British and the Americans fed the Germans misinformation on the strength and intentions of the Soviet Union which gave them the idea that they could just kick in the door I have to admit I never heard of such efforts I've never heard those those stories I know that the British and the Americans were busy trying to warn Stalin that the Germans were going to attack and Stalin studiously ignored them but I haven't heard about the the stories of misinformation going it wouldn't surprise me but I think I mean from the evidence I've seen put it this way the Germans thought they had plenty of information on their own I don't I didn't see evidence when I was doing my research that they were taking information from questionable sources I think the biggest miss read on military matters was the German observation of the Soviet performance and the Finnish war although the Russian I mean I think they really paid attention to the opening months of the fugly war with Finland where the Soviets performed abysmally and I think that they kind of drew exaggerated conclusions of the weakness of the Soviet Union from that but before we move on here could I see a show of hands of students of Harald Deutsch in the audience I thought there would be more I'm sorry Minnesota from 1929 until 1972 and then he spent 14 years at the Army War College in the National War College and then he returned in the mid 80s when dr. v in 85 when Chris and I were just starting our graduate program and we met him there and he taught a seminar and we were able to take a some couple of seminars with him first of all thank you for your work as historians is the last question just suggested we need a lot more attention to history I have two questions the first of the second one is really simple the first one is what can any of you tell us about the success of the resistance within the German General Staff and I'm especially interested in the work of Hans von Dohnanyi and the second question he was married to dietrich von offers sister and worked it was in a fair and you probably know his work and the second question is has the volume that deals with saxon hasn't come out yet thank you let me just suggest one thing back in november we had a speaker in from israel spoke on the plots against hitler and actually has that book out on the counter yeah question go ahead i mean i think we can in a sense we can judge the success of the conspirators within the general staff by the results they achieved you know there were a number of plots and I'll confess up front I I have not made a thorough study of the resistance in Germany the impression that I have gotten is that a lot of these men and you some of these men were motivated by a fundamental disagreement with Nazism by a fundamental objection to what Nazism stood for others among these men were motivated by the fact that they saw the war being lost some of them had even been perpetrators on the Eastern Front and they didn't really have a problem with that but when they saw the war going downhill then they decided well we need to get rid of Hitler because that's the only way we're gonna win this war and then you have other folks who never really were all that interested in resistance at all but pretended to be so after the fact we can talk about Guderian sometime I'm sorry your second oviya the vol having to do with socks and housing yeah the volumes are organized according to type of camp and the first volume has to do with the so called early camps and the SS concentration camps and their sub camps so sockson housing is in there and I'll point out that the first two volumes of the Encyclopedia are available on the museum website free of charge you can download them as PDFs we've worked out an agreement with the publisher we're three years after the hardcopy comes out we can release the the text as a PDF to ask you about the participation of the German but the participation of the German armed forces in the Holocaust you know irrespective of the Einsatzgruppen or the waffen-ss how dirty were the hands of the german army and other military forces in the extermination of Jews and also killing other unarmed civilians they were in it up to their eyebrows there was an agreement formed in the spring of 1941 between the army and the SS for the use of the Einsatzgruppen the army knew exactly the Army's representative was general vogner he was the head of the army logistics organization they knew exactly what these Einsatzgruppen were for Einsatzgruppen had been used in poland already and there had been some army objections to that not really on moral grounds but on disciplinary grounds so the generals who were involved knew what the unit's group and were for the agreement had the army providing transportation ammunition supplies housing and movement orders for those groups in addition army units often cordoned off the execution sites helped to round up the Jews formed ghettos where ghettos were formed in the Soviet Union and there were army units that took took part in shootings directly army units also benefited from Jewish ghetto and camp labor they organized if they were instrumental in the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Soviet POWs many of them for the fact that they were Jewish so they were and there were there were orders that went out as a matter of fact I'll just notice note this one last point in October in November of 1941 one of the generals on the Eastern Front Reinhardt I think issued an order that covered a lot of different points about German occupation policy and relations with Soviet civilians and one of the points that he said was you have to show understanding for the harsh but just retribution against the Jewish subhumans this order went to all of his he was the he was an army commander he went to his he was an Army Group commander I went to his subordinate Army's it also went up the chain Hitler liked it it went out to the rest of the Army Group commanders and on down through the rest of the army so this was an indication of the extent to which the high command and going down through the officer ranks was on board with this and other policies that resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people millions of Jews and millions more non-jewish Soviet and polish and and other civilians he thought was the best of the German generals and in why was the one who didn't fight I'm sorry I think the question was what what do I think was the best of the German generals and I'll open this up to you too I mean I would I would preface this by saying that none of them was very good above the operational level of war that is campaigns figuring out where to send the tanks you know attacking and surrounding the enemy that sort of thing and many of them were very good at that maaan stein Guderian you know many of them had had those kinds of skills none of them was very good above that back who of course was you know he he left the army he was the chief of the General Staff until 38 October essaouira 38 at which point he left the army he had perhaps the most realistic understanding of where this war was going to lead he was all for it once the ver macht was ready but he didn't think the ver much was ready yet so I guess you could argue that perhaps he was the best of the generals but yeah I'm I don't have a very high opinion of any of them frankly did the 45,000 camps did they tax the war effort did they hinder it second part was did the Soviets have any qualms did they want to damage or hurt the Germans before 36 or 38 when Soviets were attacked okay on the question of whether or not the camp's may have hindered or helped the German war effort they certainly helped it from the standpoint of providing labor Germany had a huge labor shortage because most of the young men were off fighting the war and by 1944 about 20 or 25% of the German labor force was forced laborers from other places so there was definitely some economic benefit now I have heard the question raised why did the Germans waste so many resources killing the Jews when they had a war to fight you know taking them by train everywhere and setting up these camps and that sort of thing and there are sort of two answers to that the the less important answer is that it didn't really take that much in the way of resources to carry out the final solution not nearly so much as most people would assume there were many many times more trains crossing Germany carrying coal every day than there were carrying Jews but the more important question here the more important point here is that it's it's that particular question misses the point eliminating the Jews was a war aim for Germany as I mentioned earlier this was not a distraction for them it was not something that took away from their war effort this was one of the main reasons they were fighting the war and I'm sorry you're a second repeat your second question oh did the Soviets have problems with Germany before the before the war on an ideological level yes I don't know Soviet history as well as I know German you know ultimately the Soviet goal was to overcome the rest of the world you know capitalism was going to fall and communism was going to take its place but Stalin if I recall correctly was concentrating on socialism in the home country in the motherland he wanted to consolidate the power of the Soviet Union before he started messing about too much in other states he was also aware as the war got closer of Soviet weaknesses he knew that the Red Army was not strong enough to fight against Germany especially after the 1940 campaign he was actually he bent over backwards to try to maintain peace with Hitler you know starting with the non-aggression pact in in August of 1939 and was by all accounts extremely surprised when the Germans turned on him in 41 so you've debunked several of the assumptions about the German High Command over the course of the war and their perceived strengths that many people have believed over the years and I was just wondering if like sort of on the other side of the coin are there perceived weaknesses of the other access high commands which the Italians the Finns the Romanians that are actually better than our remembered in the public knowledge they're I have to plead ignorance I I haven't studied the other high command's I know a little bit about the Italian armed forces but just enough to be dangerous I wouldn't really be able to give you a reliable answer decided to declare war on the United States even though you know Japan would have been the focus of the United States they every come to a conclusion of why he did it with them as High Command he might try to talk him out of it or into it and what do you think the results were because there was no way they had bombers or the Navy even to get to New York or to Washington yeah there's an excellent book on this called tomorrow the world the author's name escapes me at the moment but I mean basically what happened was that Hitler believed that sooner or later he was going to have to fight the United States because he believed the United States was dominated by Jews and he just figured that that conflict was inevitable and in 1940 and increasingly through 1941 as the United States is is becoming obvious more and more obviously not neutral supporting the Allies you know Hitler is thinking about conflict with the United States he's thinking about trying to take the azores for example as bases from which to launch further actions and when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor he figures well yes my my alliance with Japan is defensive I'm not obligated to go into this fight but I'm gonna have to fight the United States sooner or later anyway the only thing I really lack is a navy Japan's got that Japan is gonna keep the United States tied up so this is a good time to jump in with both feet I don't think anybody knows his thinking any better than that he didn't really he didn't write it down he didn't explained it anywhere but one other interesting element of this is that for the German generals this barely elicited any attention at all first of all they all had to gather around a map to try and figure out where Pearl Harbor was but then the the consensus and and this is one of those weird departures from reality that is difficult to explain most of the German generals didn't think that the United States had done very much in World War one and they didn't think that the United States would be able to do very much in World War two the Navy the German Navy was was champing at the bit saying just you know let our submarines go at those convoys and we'll you know no American soldier will ever set foot in Europe so they figured I mean general Halldor the the chief of the General Staff now granted he's he's quite busy with the Eastern Front at that point but he's keeping a war diary he barely mentions the entry of the United States into the war it's just not a big factor I'm 25 years old and just one thing to help teachers and you know other people who are interested in helping young people know him more is one thing that's really brought Holocaust home to me is reading about Sonderkommando the Jews who are in the camps who are forced to do a lot of the dirty work for the Nazis and there's some good books there's also paintings by David Oler who was a Jewish man and he painted his experience and so that can really bring that experience home for young people and my question is where do you think the route of German anti-semitism came from you know I've looked at Karl Marx wrote this essay on the Jewish Question did that come in to the Nazi Party through Otto and Gregor Strasser was it because of you know Nietzsche talked about Judaism as slave morality and Hitler kind of bastardize that was it because of you know American eugenics where was it from where do you go to school how many hours do we have to answer that yeah yeah books have been written maybe that's another program well well in a nutshell you know this is a highly controversial topic and an important topic but what you start to see in European thought in the late 19th century is the development of what was called social Darwinism and this is a kind of distortion of Darwin and various other mega theories that were popular at the time but you begin to have the belief that there were hierarchies you know one of the things that was turning everybody on in biology was categorizing every species and subspecies and things like this well you start having racialist thinkers that start categorizing human beings according to a hierarchy and this gets conflated with the idea of a hierarchy of value and there one of the I've made a study of these racialist thinkers and pine odd coincidence they all seem to find that English Rachel lists consider the anglo-saxons to be the summit of humanity French race was consider of course the Garlic race to be superior and German thinkers somehow came up with the Germans as the Acme of of human development etc etc but these ideas then got conflated also with a belief that and this was you know taking a page from Marx as you mentioned Marx saw all history as class warfare and resolved through violent means racialist theorists saw all history as racial struggle resolved through violent means and it was this kind of murky type of thinking that we know Hitler was exposed to when he was a derelict on the streets of Vienna and but he was by no means the only person involved what was called the völkisch area no sophist beliefs that this was this was the route this was the secret of history just as Marx Marx's followers believed that historical dialectics ISM and the inevitable clash of the classes was the key to unlocking human history so you know and then everybody begins to pile on these beliefs you mentioned the eugenicist s-- and other types of racialist thinkers and so there isn't one source of this but kind of a witch's brew of these late 19th century ideas that then come in to fruition I was just reading one of the Nazis top racial theorist hfk Gunter and his scientific approach to racism I just thought I'd throw this out he felt that American laws in the Souths were too severe because one drop put you over the top and the South and so I find it interesting that the top Nazi racial theorist considered us racial attitudes as too extravagant but the point is this is where you get this and and for Hitler he states in mind Kampf that at a certain pivotal point in his life his political worldview became set in stone and he never deviated from these beliefs so if we take what he wrote he was always consistent and his recurring message was that the Jews were the enemy of all peoples of the world and the Germans in particular and that this this animated his entire worldview I'll just if I can add one one quick point I'm so glad that you answered that question because you did it so better than much better than I could this this got the the racial anti-semitism got layered on top of course of the long-standing religious anti-semitism but it existed since the Middle Ages or longer where Christians believe that the Jews had killed Christ and that they you know deserve to suffer for their yeah they started the plague yeah all that sort of thing and they sacrificed you know Christian children so anyway these all of these different ideas and they're all referenced by knotch Nazi quote thinkers and quote like Elia Stryker and the SS on a nearby and other groups they they'll use anything to propagate this hatred of the Jews and so depending on where you look in Nazi literature if you choose to spend your time that way you'll find numerous references both to biological racialism and of course the traditional anti-semitism even though it must be said the SS certainly were as anti cat-like as they were well one area that seems to be overlooked and a lot of literature out there is how was the whole buildup and the effort of the war when you consider starting in 1932 or whatever what condition Germany was in there was a tremendous amount of financing and economics that had to go into this ever but we hear very little about how they actually pulled that off and here I'm going to simply recommend a very good book Adam twos taeo oze the wages of destruction it's an economic history of the Third Reich now I know for my part when I see the words economic history my eyes tend to roll back into my head and you know because I don't understand this stuff twos makes it clear and he also really understands the other elements involved he understands Nazi ideology he understands military strategy he puts it all together into a very coherent package and it really taught me a lot about German strategy anybody who wants to know about how the Germans built up for the war and how they ran the war economically I recommend that book support for this program provided by viewers like you thank you additional support provided through the Katherine B Anderson fund of the st. Paul foundation upcoming roundtable topics can be found at wwm - ww2 table dot o-r-g production services provided by barrows productions [Music] you [Music] [Applause]
