Wehrmacht

“ In this struggle, the German Wehrmacht yet faces enormous tasks. Still, there can be no doubt that this struggle will end in victory for us, not only, because our weapons are the best, our organization is the best, and we can call the best soldiers and the best leadership our own, but also because behind these soldiers today stands truly the best Volk. ”

“ Why do you always talk of fighting? You have conquered the State, and if something does not please you, then just make a law and regulate it differently? Why must you always talk of fighting? For you have every power! Over what do you fight? Outer-politically? You have the Wehrmacht—it will wage the fight if it is required. ”

“ Today many of them rest in the same graves in which their fathers have rested since the Great War. They bear evidence to silent heroism. They stand as a symbol for all those hundreds of thousands of musketeers, anti-tank gunners and tank gunners, pioneers and artillerymen, soldiers of the Navy and the Luftwaffe, men of the Waffen SS, and all those other fighters who stood for the German Wehrmacht in the struggle for the freedom and future of our Volk and for the eternal greatness of the National Socialist Greater German Reich. ”

“ And behind such a revolution there would have had to be the mass of the workers and the majority of the Wehrmacht as a whole, and not simply the commander of the Potsdam garrison of whom the witness spoke.
But how one could wage a war for life or death with other countries and at the same time carry on a revolution and expect to gain anything positive for the German people, I do not know. Only geniuses who lived in Switzerland can judge that. The German Wehrmacht and the German officers were not trained for revolution. ”

“ MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: And if you were to combat successfully the Nazi regime, you had to have manpower which only the Army had; is that right?
GISEVIUS: Yes, only people who could be found in the Army; but at the same time we also attempted to influence certain people in the Police, and we needed all the decent officials in the ministries, and the broad masses of the people altogether.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: But the Wehrmacht was the source of power capable of dealing with the SS and the Gestapo if the generals had been willing? ”

“ Behind this Wehrmacht, there is an army of millions of working Germans. They work with dedication each day; the substratum of their discipline is not based on a vacuum, but supported by the realization of this discipline by the entire Volkskorper. The Wehrmacht no longer stands alone in its belief in authority, but is supported by a shared belief in the political sphere. It is a Wehrmacht, whose principle of authority top to bottom no longer stands in opposition to the democratic idea of the state, but which sees that this principle has become common knowledge. ”

“ Hence I took the German Wehrmacht into my confidence, informing it of the possibility of such a development and entrusting it with the appropriate, detailed directives. In numerous conferences at the High Command of the Wehrmacht with the Commanders in Chief of the three branches of the Wehrmacht, the leaders of the Army groups and of the armies, down to the leaders of important, individual undertakings, the tasks facing us were enumerated and thoroughly discussed. Among the troops these were taken up with great understanding, as the basis for a special type of training. ”

“ After the Versailles Treaty Germany had an army of only 100,000 men, and a navy of 15,000 men, with officers. In relation to the size of the Reich, the Wehrmacht was thus extremely small.
Was Germany in the twenties in a position to defend herself with this small Wehrmacht against possible attacks by neighboring states, and with what dangers did Germany have to reckon in the twenties?
RAEDER: In my opinion, Germany was not at all in a position to defend herself effectively against attacks, even of the smallest states, since she had no modern weapons ”

“ JODL: In this position I had to work out the operational strategic directives according to the instructions of my chiefs, Keitel and Blomberg. I had to study and to clarify the problem of the leadership of the Wehrmacht; to prepare studies and exercises for the big Wehrmacht maneuvers in 1937. I had to supervise the Wehrmacht Academy; I had to work out drafts for laws in connection with the general conscription order and with the unified preparation for mobilization in the civilian sector, that is, of state and people. The so-called Secretariat of the Reich Defense Committee came under me. ”

“ To put at the disposal of the Reich, within the given time, skilled labor to replace German key workers being drafted into the Wehrmacht. May I add that Field Marshal Keitel and General Von Unruh received a communication from me yesterday to the effect that half of these replacements for key men, that is 125,000 French qualified skilled men, have already arrived in the Reich on 1 January 1943 and that a corresponding number of soldiers can be called to the colors. ”

“ I can only say, when I left the troops in 1935, none of these 24 divisions which were to be established existed. I did not view all this from the standpoint of political aims, but with the sober consideration: Can we accomplish anything by attack and the conduct of war if we have no military means at our disposal? Consequently for me everything in this connection revolved around the programs of rearmament, which were to be completed in 1943-1945, and for the Navy in 1945. Therefore, we had 10 years in which to build up a concentrated Wehrmacht. ”

“ Germany’s food situation in the third year of war demands it imperatively that the Wehrmacht, in all its provisioning, must not live off Greater German territory or that of incorporated or friendly areas from which this territory receives imports. This minimum aim, the provisioning of the Wehrmacht from enemy territory in the third year, and if necessary in later years, must be attained at any price. This means that one-third of the Wehrmacht must be fully provisioned by French deliveries to the army of occupation. ”

“ The months of July and August had produced eighteen new divisions, ten panzer brigades and nearly a hundred separate infantry battalions. Now twenty-five new divisions, about a thousand artillery pieces, and a score of general headquarters brigades of various types were demanded for delivery in October and November. How had Germany solved the manpower problem? From a population of some eighty million, in the Greater Reich, the Wehrmacht carried a total of 10,165,303 officers and men on its rosters at the beginning of September 1944. ”

“ Yes, that can be concluded from the order.
COL. PHILLIMORE: And what do you mean by saying that it only referred to those not captured by the Wehrmacht? Would you look at Paragraph 3.
“From now on all enemies on so-called Commando missions in Europe or Africa, challenged by German troops, even if they are to all appearances soldiers in uniform or demolition troops, whether armed or unarmed, in battle or in flight, are to be slaughtered to the last man. It does not make any difference whether they landed from ships or airplanes for their actions of whether they were dropped by parachutes. ”

“ He emphasized that such problems could be solved only with a strong Wehrmacht, not by using it, but through its mere existence, because a country which was not strongly armed could practice no foreign policy whatsoever, but rather such a country operated, so to speak, in a vacuum as we had experienced during the past years. ”

“ That is a speech, if the Court please, by Adolf Hitler, on 1 September 1939, the date of the attack on Poland, identified by our number 2322-PS, and I read from the bottom of Page 3, the last paragraph starting on the page:
“For more than 6 years now, I have been engaged in building up the German Armed Forces. During this period more than 90 billion Reichsmark were spent building up the Wehrmacht. Today, ours are the best-equipped armed forces in the world, and they are superior to those of 1914. My confidence in them can never be shaken.” ”

“ Now, he believed, this malignant growth could be cut away; exposure showed that it had no deep roots and had not contaminated either the fighting troops or the rank and file of the German people. Despite the heavy losses suffered by the Wehrmacht in the past five years, Hitler was certain that replacements could be found and new divisions created. His intuition told him that too many officers and men had gravitated into headquarters staffs, administrative and security services. ”

“ We are prepared in terms of material, and we are prepared in terms of personnel. And that the Wehrmacht makes the most of every day, this anyone who himself served as a soldier knows well. Not a day is lost. ”

“ First, that the ship construction program was to be continued in the same way as in the past—so Hitler himself said—and in the second place, he said that the armament programs were to be geared for the year 1943-1944. That was the positive thing which I could conclude for myself.
At that time, moreover, I was strongly impressed by the speech which Hitler himself made at the launching of the battleship Bismarck in Hamburg. There he said that the Wehrmacht, as the keenest instrument of war, had to protect and help to preserve the peace founded on true justice. ”

“ We endeavored in the Hitler Youth, and it was also the endeavor of the leading men in the Wehrmacht, to take nothing into our training which belonged to the later military training. However, in the course of time, the objection was raised on the part of the military, that youth should not learn anything in its training which later would have to be corrected in the Wehrmacht. ”

“ KEITEL: In occupied territories with civilian administration, the Wehrmacht was excluded from any executive powers in the administration, so that in these territories the Wehrmacht and its services had certainly nothing to do with it. Only in those territories which were still operational areas for the Army were executive powers given to military troops, high commanders, army commanders, et cetera. ”

“ Neither is true; neither in regard to internal German ministerial functions nor in regard to matters connected with foreign policy. There were naturally a great many things to be settled with the ministries, the technical ministries. The Wehrmacht had to participate and had a voice in almost all the decrees which were issued by the civilian ministries. This work was naturally done in Berlin. The fact that I had to remain with the Führer at his headquarters kept me away ”

“ Troops which are in action against partisans will, in addition, be used for recruiting labor in the zones held by partisan bands. Any person who cannot give a satisfactory reason for his staying in that region will be compulsorily recruited.
“ (b) If large towns are totally or partially evacuated owing to food difficulties, all the population capable of work will be recruited for labor with the aid of the Wehrmacht.
“ (c) A special effort for recruiting labor among refugees from areas close to the front must be made with the aid of the Wehrmacht. ”

“ Over 1 million tons straw and 11⁄2 million tons oats. We can’t manage that. (?) ’
“Reich Marshal Göring: ‘Now, gentlemen, there is only one thing more regarding Wehrmacht supplies. I want to hear nothing more about you until further notice. No more requests. The country—with its sour cream, apples, and white bread—will feed us abundantly. The Don valley will take care of the rest.’ ”
Passing to the next quotation—Göring is speaking:
“ ‘The Wehrmacht in France will, of course, be supplied with food by France. ”

“ Many men are able to take leaves of absence. Weaponry and equipment are being either repaired or replaced by new material. All in all, the Wehrmacht today is stronger than ever before.
2. Weaponry. The loss of weaponry in Norway, especially in the campaigns against Holland, Belgium, and France, is void of any significance. It stands in no relation to production. Army and Luftwaffe possess at this moment-as I am speaking to you-equipment more complete and stronger than before we intervened in the West. ”

“ Leaders and leader aspirants who have successfully finished the non-commissioned officer school in service that is incorporated into the Wehrmacht, will be given a rank which corresponds to their rank, in the armed parts of the SS, or in the police. ”

“ I understand that basically what was built up in Germany in the way of an armament industry, a domestic economy that was sound, and a Wehrmacht, the efforts that you put in from 1934 to the spring of 1938, when mefo financing stopped, were responsible in large part for the success of the whole program. ”

“ And so the German Wehrmacht is being more and more transformed into a fighting nation. National Socialism which long ago defeated its enemies at home in a bitter struggle-without ever even considering compromise-will today and in the future deal with the enemies of the Reich abroad, as its leading force. The Reich is being supported in this by the allied nations, which from Europe to East Asia are also determined to defend the substance of their blood and the values of their cultures. ”

“ After four months, in Summer, the German Wehrmacht, after the successful finish of the Balkan war of 1941, has started the march into the vastness of the Russian space. Battles were fought and victories won which in the far future will be valued as the greatest deeds of glory. Together with their brave allies they had attacked everywhere new Russian armies, had beaten them, eliminated them, in order to ... new masses of men. ”