embodied in the Wehrmacht as conscripts among hundreds of thousands of others who had never worn the brown uniform. The armed forces had also benefited more generously than any other body from the programme of state investment. Tanks and aeroplanes – enough to equip a Panzer force of six divisions (soon to be raised to ten) and a Luftwaffe of 2000 combat aircraft – were now coming out of the new armaments factories in a steady stream. The design work which underlay their development had been done in Russia during the brief period of Russo-German friendship in the 1920s. In an ill-calculated act of appeasement in 1935 the British Admiralty had agreed that the German navy should also be partially liberated from the provisions of the Versailles Treaty, and it had begun to acquire capital ships and even U-boats, in numbers equivalent to 33 and 60 per cent respectively of the Royal Navy’s fleets. This material largesse enormously enhanced the institutional
amour propre
of the Wehrmacht which, after fifteen years in which it had starved for both men and equipment, suddenly found itself advanced to the front rank of the armed forces of Europe, almost as strong as the largest and better armed than any. Professionally, moreover, Hitler’s rearmament programme transformed the career prospects of individual officers: in 1933 the average age of a colonel was fifty-six; by 1937 it had been reduced to thirty-nine, while many in the
Reichswehr
who had reconciled themselves to retirement found themselves by 1937 commanding regiments, brigades, even divisions.
Hitler’s seduction of his professional officers was as calculated as any other part of his programme, though he rightly attached more importance to it than the rest. His attitude to the SA had always been duplicitous; though he had needed and been glad to use the political fighting force it had given him in the ‘time of struggle’ before 1933, he was himself too much the true veteran, the seasoned ‘front fighter’, to reckon its street bullies proper military material. Hitler was, in many respects, a military snob – and with reason: he had fought in the First World War from beginning to end, suffered wounds and won a high decoration for bravery. The army he wished to re-create would be a model of the one in which he had served, not a disorderly political militia reclothed in field-grey. The Blood Purge of June 1934, when Hitler organised the murder of Röhm and the rest of the paramilitary radicals who had thought to leap to general’s rank by political hopscotch, had ensured that he had his way. One consequence of the purge of the SA was the rise of the rival military arm of the Nazi Party – the blackshirted
Schutzstaffel
(SS), a highly disciplined elite corps led by Heinrich Himmler.
Although the generals had been careful to know nothing of the 1934 murders, the results had none the less put Hitler high in their favour; but the reverse was not the case. There was a strict limit to Hitler’s military snobbery. He was a combat snob, not a worshipper of rank or title. As he well knew, many of the Wehrmacht’s elite, the Great General Staff officers who were now senior commanders, had not fought at the front in the First World War, their brains being thought too valuable to be risked beyond headquarters. Their military as well as their social
hauteur
therefore grated with him. One of the innumerable rancours that he nursed dated back to the Munich trial, when General von Lossow, his fainthearted ally, had testified that he regarded him as no more than ‘a political drummer boy’; the wound had been salted by the state prosecutor’s statement that the drummer boy had ‘allowed himself to be carried beyond the position assigned to him’. It was Hitler who now assigned positions everywhere – except within the army, which retained control of its own promotion structure. However, since the generals continued to choose officers as timorous as they themselves had
amour propre
of the Wehrmacht which, after fifteen years in which it had starved for both men and equipment, suddenly found itself advanced to the front rank of the armed forces of Europe, almost as strong as the largest and better armed than any. Professionally, moreover, Hitler’s rearmament programme transformed the career prospects of individual officers: in 1933 the average age of a colonel was fifty-six; by 1937 it had been reduced to thirty-nine, while many in the
Reichswehr
who had reconciled themselves to retirement found themselves by 1937 commanding regiments, brigades, even divisions.
Hitler’s seduction of his professional officers was as calculated as any other part of his programme, though he rightly attached more importance to it than the rest. His attitude to the SA had always been duplicitous; though he had needed and been glad to use the political fighting force it had given him in the ‘time of struggle’ before 1933, he was himself too much the true veteran, the seasoned ‘front fighter’, to reckon its street bullies proper military material. Hitler was, in many respects, a military snob – and with reason: he had fought in the First World War from beginning to end, suffered wounds and won a high decoration for bravery. The army he wished to re-create would be a model of the one in which he had served, not a disorderly political militia reclothed in field-grey. The Blood Purge of June 1934, when Hitler organised the murder of Röhm and the rest of the paramilitary radicals who had thought to leap to general’s rank by political hopscotch, had ensured that he had his way. One consequence of the purge of the SA was the rise of the rival military arm of the Nazi Party – the blackshirted
Schutzstaffel
(SS), a highly disciplined elite corps led by Heinrich Himmler.
Although the generals had been careful to know nothing of the 1934 murders, the results had none the less put Hitler high in their favour; but the reverse was not the case. There was a strict limit to Hitler’s military snobbery. He was a combat snob, not a worshipper of rank or title. As he well knew, many of the Wehrmacht’s elite, the Great General Staff officers who were now senior commanders, had not fought at the front in the First World War, their brains being thought too valuable to be risked beyond headquarters. Their military as well as their social
hauteur
therefore grated with him. One of the innumerable rancours that he nursed dated back to the Munich trial, when General von Lossow, his fainthearted ally, had testified that he regarded him as no more than ‘a political drummer boy’; the wound had been salted by the state prosecutor’s statement that the drummer boy had ‘allowed himself to be carried beyond the position assigned to him’. It was Hitler who now assigned positions everywhere – except within the army, which retained control of its own promotion structure. However, since the generals continued to choose officers as timorous as they themselves had
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