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The German Military in Two World Wars
Prussian-German excellence in military matters was an accepted fact of
life, but in the twentieth century the excessive accent on militarism
led to two disastrous world wars. Germany's insistence on building a fleet
that could challenge Britain's naval domination underscored German bellicosity
and pushed Britain toward alignment with France and Russia.
When World
War I broke out in 1914, Germany attempted to conquer France quickly with
a sudden thrust through Belgium. The Germans nearly reached Paris, but
the desperate French managed to stiffen their defenses along the Marne
River. The front was stabilized in northern France and shifted little
during the course of the war in spite of the sacrifice of whole armies
in the effort to break through opposing defenses. Although Germany was
able to force Russia out of the war in March 1918, the arrival of fresh
United States troops, strikes and protests among German workers, and the
exhaustion of material resources brought about Germany's collapse in November
1918. General Erich Ludendorff and Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg formed
what was in effect a military dictatorship in 1917 but sidestepped responsibility
for the military catastrophe by restoring civilian control in the chaos
of 1918. They then falsely claimed that the military, undefeated in the
field, had been "stabbed in the back" by domestic enemies, a charge that
Adolf Hitler employed later to great effect.
Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the German General Staff
was abolished. The army was limited to 100,000 personnel and the navy
to a force of 15,000. Aircraft, tanks, submarines, and other offensive
weapons were prohibited. The left bank of the Rhine was demilitarized.
The Allies intended that the civilian government of the postwar Weimar
Republic (1918-33) completely control the military and that the destruction
of the General Staff epitomize the end of Prussianism. Nevertheless, a
general staff continued to function under the sobriquet "Troop Office,"
and its leaders took advantage of the weak civilian government to reassert
their privileged positions. When Hindenburg was elected president of the
republic in 1925, the general staff officers regained their influence
in the government.
During the 1920s, a clandestine alliance was formed between the armies
of the Weimar Republic and the Soviet Union to circumvent the terms of
the Treaty of Versailles. The German high command under General Hans von
Seeckt made secret arrangements with the Soviet high command enabling
German officers and specialists to study and train with modern weapons
in the Soviet Union in return for German technical assistance in the establishment
of Soviet defense industries. This collaboration helped keep alive the
military know-how used later as the basis of Hitler's war machine.
By September 1939, when Hitler's invasion of Poland triggered World War
II, Germany had a formidable army, a potent navy, and the best equipped
air force in the world. The blitzkrieg (lightning war), in which highly
mobile, tank-heavy land armies were deployed in conjunction with large
numbers of close-support aircraft, included tactics never before seen
in warfare. In the spring of 1940, the German army, the Wehrmacht, defeated
Denmark and Norway, outflanked French defenses along the Maginot Line,
destroyed the armies of France and Belgium, and forced the evacuation
of the British Expeditionary Forces at Dunkirk--all in a little over a
month.
The rapid victories of the early war period did not lead to peace, however.
France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, and Poland were occupied,
but the staunch resistance of Britain's Royal Air Force deterred Hitler's
planned invasion of Britain. The war took on a global character in 1941,
with the Wehrmacht's invasion of its erstwhile ally, the Soviet Union,
in June and Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor the following December, which
drew the United States into the conflict. Even though the redoubtable
Nazi war machine fought on for almost four more years, the resources and
manpower that the Allies could invest eventually sealed the fate of Hitler's
vaunted "Thousand-Year Reich."
Once the Soviet forces were able to turn the tide in their favor on the
Eastern Front and the Western Allies established themselves in France,
there could no longer be any doubt about the outcome of the war. Nevertheless,
Hitler refused to seek peace. The inevitable result was the destruction
not only of the country's armed forces but also of its towns and cities,
its industrial capacity, and its transportation system. Despite this second
catastrophic defeat in fewer than thirty years, the German reputation
for military excellence survived. The defeats could be attributed to strategic
blunders, two-front wars, and madness and depravity among the Nazi leadership.
The Allies demanded and received Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender
in May 1945. Two months later, at a summit conference held at Potsdam,
near Berlin, the leaders of the United States, Britain, and the Soviet
Union decreed, inter alia, the demilitarization of Germany. Although the
Allies disagreed on many issues discussed at Potsdam, they were in accord
on the need to prevent a resurgence of German militarism; toward that
end, they ordered total disarmament. In the immediate postwar years, however,
the Allies could not agree on the terms of a peace treaty, and before
long they were aligning on opposite sides of the Cold War. By 1949 the
British, French, and United States zones of occupation had become West
Germany, and the Soviet zone had become East Germany. The border between
the two republics became the front line of the Cold War, or, in the term
popularized by Winston Churchill, the Iron Curtain. Soon, uniformed Germans
carrying weapons were appearing on both sides of the border.
- National
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History
- Prussia's
Emergence as a Military Power
- Germany in Two
World Wars
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Insignia
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