Lucas - Reich

REICH:

World War II Through German Eyes

Osprey Publishing

REICH

WORLD WAR II THROUGH GERMAN EYES

JAMES LUCAS

Contents

Authors Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction

PART ONE: POLITICAL AND SOCIAL PERSPECTIVES

The Genesis of the Nazi Party

The German Fhrer: Adolf Hitler

The Development of the Party 193339

The Partys Perspective of the Masses

The Partys View of Women

Concentration Camps

The Partys View of Germanys Enemies

The Partys Perspective of Europe

Party Control in the Last Year of the War

The Political Military Forces

PART TWO: ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES

The Partys Struggle with the Industrialists

Industry under Speer

The Fhrers Military Toy Projects

PART THREE: MILITARY PERSPECTIVES

The Plan to Invade Great Britain

German Concern about the Balkans

The Attack upon the Soviet Union

Bastogne Must Surrender!

Delusion: Belief in the EastWest Clash

Bibliography

Appendix 1: Principal Dates of the Third Reich

Appendix 2: Glossary

Appendix 3: Extracts from Sixteenth Army Operational Orders

Appendix 4: Sealion : 1940

Authors Acknowledgements

One summer evening in 1943, I sat around the campfire of a German field hospital near Sousse. The campaign in Africa had ended, and men of this medical unit were waiting to be shipped off to a prison camp in America.

We soldiers talked easily, and the discussion ranged across a great number of topics, passing eventually from warfare and weapons to politics. I was astounded at the navety of the points my companions advanced. Their arguments I thought to be simplistic and hopelessly biased it was obvious they had been brainwashed. They, for their part, considered me to be the brainwashed victim of a fettered press, which would not allow me to see the positive aspects of the dynamic new Germany they represented.

During the years of the war and since the end of hostilities I have met and have corresponded with a great many Germans. These were usually former soldiers, but my contacts have also included a great many civilians men and women; laymen and priests; many who had been politically active; those who despised politicians; a few who had been fanatical Nazis; and also implacable opponents of that regime. To all of them I am grateful for the answers they gave to the questions I asked. To those institutions in this country, in Germany and in Austria whose resources were so freely given and whose officers were invariably helpful and obliging I am also indebted. To those who supported me in the initial writing and in the subsequent rewriting of a difficult text that sets out to show the viewpoint of a former enemy country, go my especial thanks.

To my dear wife Traude, our daughter Barbara who typed the text, to Terry Charman who read the typescript and offered so many useful suggestions I am particularly grateful. In conclusion my thanks go to David and Beryl Gibbons and to Tony Evans, who produced this book from my typescript as well as to Sheila, Mandy and Fiona, my agents.

James Lucas, 1987

Preface

The Third Reich was proclaimed in 1933 and those who created it forecast that it would live for a thousand years. Only 12 years later, the Thousand Year Reich perished and passed into history.

Those 12 years were a period of high drama. When Hitler, the chief architect of the Reich, came to power Germany was a weak nation crippled by inflation and burdened with millions of unemployed. By 1939 Germany was once again a major military power in Europe. By 1940, after a series of short but successful campaigns, she dominated that continent. In the autumn of that year Hitler, unable to invade Great Britain, directed his attention eastwards. During June 1941 he produced the conditions for Germanys eventual military defeat by invading The Soviet Union and in December compounded his blunder by declaring war against the USA. The Third Reich was thus faced by an alliance of the three most powerful nations on earth.

Against such a coalition it was doomed to fail. No firm, well thought out, long-term strategy had been formulated at any level military, political or social. No effort had been made by the Nazi leaders to prepare the nation for the war to come, nor to conduct the war with the ruthlessness required. Despite a chronic labour shortage there was no immediate conscription of German women into either the armed services or the armaments industry. There was no central control of industry and there was a complete misjudgement of how the war would develop and of the weapons required to fight a global conflict.

The perspective which the leaders of the Third Reich had of countries and peoples outside Germany was as faulty as our own perspective of Hitlers Germany. Our perspective had been influenced by media sources that were hostile to the National Socialist regime even before it came to power, which by and large retained that hostility throughout the years of the Reich and which have maintained the same attitude since the wars end.

It is my intention to show in this book only the German perspective: the view of the German people vis--vis their leaders; the way those leaders saw the masses and, in particular, their attitudes towards German women; the perspective the Germans had of enemy nations as well as of those allied to the Fatherland. Of importance, too, are the viewpoints of the service leaders faced with professional problems they were either unwilling or unable to resolve.

The rationale for this book is the need, as I see it, to dispel the ignorance regarding the National Socialist regime. I came to the idea of seeing the world through German eyes from an awareness that there is a bias in our knowledge of modern European history. A very literate graduate friend of mine saw a showing of Leni Riefenstahls film, Triumph des Willens , and declared it to be a brilliant piece of Nazi propaganda because from the film it appeared that Hitler had been popular with the German people. My friend could not accept that Hitler had been supported by the German masses almost to the point of adulation. Another friend had believed that the extermination camp at Auschwitz had been operating since 1933. The fact that Auschwitz was not in pre-war Germany was dismissed as nonsense.

Much has been written about the destructive features of the National Socialist state, but very little has been published about those aspects of it that the German people felt to be beneficial. The dimensions and content of the picture are unfamiliar because it is the German perspective of people and events which is depicted in the pages of this book.

Introduction

In Flanders, in Artois, in Picardy, in the Vosges and along the whole length of the battle-line on the Western Front, at Vittorio Veneto and in the high Alps of Italy as well as in the deserts of the Middle East, the guns fell silent obedient to the order that a ceasefire would take effect from 11am on 11 November 1918. An armistice had been signed between Germany and the Allies. By definition an armistice is only a truce, a suspension of, not the end of, hostilities, but the Allied nations believed firmly and as it transpired, correctly, that the Great War was over.

The horror and the bloodletting had ended. The Allies cause, the Good, had triumphed over that of the Central Powers, the Evil. Now the task that faced the victorious nations was to convert the uniformed hosts of their armies back to factory workforces, to resume trade and to return, politically, to the pre-war system of balances of power. In Europe that political intention would not be easy, for a revolution had been raging in Russia since 1917. The Bolshevik government was anti-capitalist and, therefore, an enemy of the Allies. It proved necessary to send expeditionary forces to destroy the Communist forces in Russia before it could infect other nations. The Allies did not succeed in that interdiction. Trouble in Russia apart, a happy future for the victors seemed assured. Their defeated enemies, the nations of the Central Powers Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey would have a more difficult future, but that was their fault. Everybody knew that they had started the war. The Central Powers had brought upon themselves the hardships which they were now enduring and which they would have to suffer until things returned to normal.