Hitler's Commanders (59 page)

17. Ellis,
Victory
, p. 111.

18. Speidel,
Invasion
, p. 46; Interrogation of Field Marshal Erhard Milch, Air University Archives. Also see Brett-Smith,
Hitler’s Generals
, p. 127.

19. David Irving,
The
Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe: The Life of Field Marshal Erhard Milch
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), p. 336.

20. Richard Suchenwirth,
Command and Leadership in the German Air Force
, United States Air Force Historical Studies Number 189, Maxwell Air Force Base (Montgomery, Ala.: The Air University, 1969) (hereafter cited as Suchenwirth,
Command
).

21. Ellis,
Victory
, p. 490.

22. Interrogation of field marshals Milch and Sperrle. Milch did almost all of the talking in this interview. Sperrle said virtually nothing.

23. Otto E. Moll,
Die deutschen Generalfeldmarschaelle, 1939–1945
(Rastatt/Baden: Erich Pabel Verlag, 1961), p. 245.

24. Wistrich,
Who’s Who
, p. 294.

25. Friedrich Dollmann Personnel File.

26. Matthew Cooper,
The German Army, 1933–1945
(Briarcliff Manor, N.Y.: Stein and Day, 1978; reprint ed., Chelsea, Mich.: Scarborough House, 1990), pp. 47–48; Richard J. O’Neill,
The German Army and the Nazi Party, 1933–1939
(New York: James H. Heinemann, 1966), p. 101.

27. Brett-Smith,
Hitler’s Generals
, pp. 102–3.

28. Brett-Smith,
Hitler’s Generals
, p. 102.

29. Oberbefehlshaber West does not have an exact English translation. It roughly translates as “Supreme Commander, West,” but the term
OB West
was used to refer to either the commander-in-chief or his headquarters.

30. Friedrich Ruge,
Rommel in Normandy
(San Rafael, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1979), p. 82.

31. Paul Carell,
Invasion: They’re Coming!
Ewald Osers, trans. (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1963; reprint ed., New York: Bantam Books, 1964), p. 112 (hereafter cited as Carell,
Invasion
).

32. Tony Foster,
Meeting of the Generals
(Agincourt, Canada: Methuen Publications, 1986), p. 331 (hereafter cited as Foster,
Meeting
).

33. A few sources have reported that Dollmann took poison, but this is unproven and seems unlikely.

34. Gordon A. Harrison,
Cross-Channel Attack
, United States Army in World War II, European Theater of Operations (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1951), p. 395.

35. Rudolf Bacherer (1895–1964) served in the 22nd (3rd Baden) Dragoons Regiment in World War I. He was discharged in 1919, but returned to active duty as a first lieutenant in the 18th Cavalry Regiment at Cannstadt in 1935. He was a captain in the 156th Reconnaissance Battalion during the Polish campaign. Later he fought in Belgium, in France, and in the drive on Moscow. As a battalion commander in the 234th Infantry Regiment, he was severely wounded on the Eastern Front on January 4, 1943. Returning to Germany in October, he briefly commanded the 1026th Grenadier Regiment (late 1943) before assuming command of the 1049th Grenadier on February 6, 1944. He was captured on August 15, 1944. He was never promoted to major general, probably because of his reserve status.

36. Otto Theodor von Manteuffel (1805–1882) was minister of the interior (1848–1850) and foreign minister and prime minister (December 19, 1850 to November 6, 1858) under King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia. General Baron Edwin von Manteuffel (1809–1885) commanded the I Corps and the Army of the South in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871). He was promoted to field marshal at the conclusion of that conflict. He was governor of Alsace-Lorraine at the time of his death.

37. Donald Grey Brownlow,
Panzer Baron: The Military Exploits of General Hasso von Manteuffel
(North Quincy, Mass.: The Christopher Publishing House, 1975), p. 30 (hereafter cited as Brownlow,
Panzer Baron
).

38. Mellenthin,
German Generals
, p. 240.

39. B. H. Liddell Hart,
The German Generals Talk
(New York: William Morrow, 1948), p. 70 (hereafter cited as Liddell Hart,
German Generals
).

40. Brownlow,
Panzer Baron
, p. 97.

41. Mueller’s interviews with Albert Speer and Hasso von Manteuffel, June 1972, and subsequent correspondence.

42. Interview with Hasso von Manteuffel.

43. Liddell Hart,
German Generals
, p. 274.

44. Mellenthin,
German Generals
, p. 245.

45. Liddell Hart,
German Generals
, p. 214.

46. Interview with General Burkhart Mueller-Hillebrand, June 1972. Mueller-Hillebrand (1904–1987) became a lieutenant general in the West German Army in 1965 (a three-star general under the new rank structure).

47. Mueller,
Keitel
, p. 287.

48. Brownlow,
Panzer Baron
, p. 158.

49. Much of the information on Baron Heinrich von Luettwitz has been extracted from the papers of the late Friedrich-Theodor von Stauffenberg, part of which are in the possession of Dr. Mitcham.

50. Keilig,
Die Generale
, p. 212. Smilo von Luettwitz was born in 1895 (one year before Heinrich). He was commander of the III Corps in the Bundeswehr in 1958.

51. John S. D. Eisenhower,
The Bitter Woods
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1969), p. 16ff.

52. Walter Duevert (1893–1972) was nevertheless promoted to lieutenant general effective January 1, 1943, and was given command of the 265th Infantry Division in occupied France on June 1, 1943. He held this post for more than a year but had to be relieved again in July 1944. Never reemployed, he was retired in November.

53. Vollrath Luebbe (1894–1969) was considered a better infantry and training officer than a panzer commander. After leading the 2nd Panzer, he briefly commanded the 81st Infantry Division (April–July 1944) on the northern sector of the Eastern Front and then the 462nd Replacement Division at Metz, where he did a fine job against Patton’s 3rd Army. He suffered a stroke in October, but returned to duty in late December, as commander of an infantry division on the Eastern Front. He surrendered to the Russians at the end of the war and was a Soviet prisoner until 1955.

54. Henning Schoenfeld (1894–1958) was a cavalry officer. After commanding a reconnaissance battalion in the Polish campaign, he held staff positions at OKH for most of the war. He owed his appointment as commander of the 2nd Panzer to his friends in the High Command, and there were dozens of officers more qualified to lead the division than he. After being relieved, Schoenfeld was unemployed for the rest of the war.

55. Robert E. Merriam,
The Battle of the Bulge
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1957), p. 138.

56. Stauffenberg Papers.

57. Stauffenberg Papers.

58. Stauffenberg Papers.

59. S. L. A. Marshall,
Bastogne: The First Eight Days
(Washington, D.C.: Infantry Journal Press, 1946; reprint ed., Washington, D.C.: Zenger Publishing Co., 1979), pp. 175–76.

Chapter 5: The Panzer Commanders

1. Oswald Lutz was the first ever general of panzer troops. Born in Oehringen, Baden-Wuerttemberg, in 1876, he joined the army as a Fahnenjunker in the Bavarian Railroad Battalion in 1894 and was commissioned in the 1st Bavarian Engineer Battalion in 1896. During World War I, he commanded the motorized troops of the 6th Army (1915–1917) and was in General Staff positions. During World War II, he was briefly recalled to active duty but only held one position: commander of a special transportation staff at Frankfurt/Oder (1941–1942). He died in Munich on February 26, 1944.

2. See Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr.,
The Rise of the Wehrmacht
(Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishing, 2008), volume 2, pp. 459–96.

3. Kluge later commanded OB West and Army Group B on the Western Front (1944). He was marginally involved in the anti-Hitler conspiracy and committed suicide near Metz on August 19, 1944, three days after Hitler relieved him of his command.

4. Guderian’s new assignment did not include assault guns, which remained with the artillery.

5. It seems likely that Zeitzler (1895–1963) did know that Stauffenberg was planning to blow up the Fuehrer on July 20. He was nowhere to be seen when the bomb detonated, and Zeitzler’s deputy, Lieutenant General Adolf Heusinger, never forgave Zeitzler for leaving him in the conference room when the bomb exploded. Zeitzler, who had already suffered a nervous breakdown from working with Hitler, never held another assignment and was expelled from the army in January 1945.

6. Georgi K. Zhukov (1896–1974), spent his life in the army. Born into the peasant class, Zhukov rose through the ranks to become a marshal. He commanded the defense of both Leningrad and Stalingrad and participated in the Russian offensive against Germany (1944–1945). He accepted German surrender on May 8, 1945. He was one of Russia’s greatest military heroes of World War II, and served as defense minister after World War II under Nikolai Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev (1955–1957).

7. Friedrich von Mellinthin (1904–1997) served as a staff officer during the German invasion of France. He remained on occupation duty after the German victory. His next combat assignment took him to the Balkans as a staff officer. He also served as a staff officer under Erwin Rommel in North Africa. Mellinthin then transferred to Russia, where he served as chief staff officer of the XXXXVIII Panzerkorps (1942–1944); then in August 1944, he served as chief of staff to General Balck. Mellinthin’s last assignment was as chief of staff of the 5th Panzer Army in 1945. He was captured by the British on May 3, 1945.

8. Axis Biographical Research,
www.geocities.com
/~orion47 (accessed 2011).

9. Johannes Blaskowitz (1883–1948) served as commander of the 8th Army from August 1939 thru October 1939. He also served as commander of the 1st Army, October 1940 to May 1944. Blaskowitz was then assigned command of Army Group G in France, May 1944 to September 1944. Following Balck’s dismissal as commander-in-chief of Army Group G in December 1944, Blaskowitz replaced him until January 28, 1945, when he took command of Army Group H. He held that post until March 21, 1945, when he took command of the German 25th Army. His last command was of Fortress Holland until his capture on May 5, 1945. Blaskowitz was accused of war crimes by the Allies. He committed suicide on February 5, 1948.

10. Walton Walker (1889–1950) was a major general in 1942 and commanded the 3rd Armored Division. Later, he commanded the XX Corps in Patton’s 3rd Army and remained its commander until the end of the war. The XX Corps liberated Buchenwald concentration camp and pushed into Austria in May 1945, the same month Walker was promoted to lieutenant general. After World War II, Walker commanded the 8th Army in Japan and then in Korea to turn back the invading North Koreans. Walker died in an automobile crash on December 23, 1950, just north of Seoul, Korea.

11. John Nelson Rickard,
Patton at Bay: The Lorraine Campaign, 1944
(Washington D.C.: Brassey, 2004), pp. 259–64.

12. KTB OKW, volume 4, p. 1455.

13. Heinz Guderian,
Panzer Leader
, Constantine Fitzgibbon, trans. (New York: Ballantine Books, 1957), p. 109.

14. Mellenthin,
German Generals
, pp. 259–61.

15. Craig,
Enemy
, p. 218.

16. Mellenthin,
German Generals
, p. 263; Craig,
Enemy
, p. 218.

17. Alan Clark,
Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict, 1941–1945
(New York: William Morrow, 1965), p. 436.

18. KTB OKW, volume 4, p. 1454.

19. Mueller,
Keitel
, p. 282.

20. Mueller,
Keitel
, p. 285.

21. Walter Duevert (1893–1972) briefly commanded the 20th Panzer Division (July 1–October 9, 1942), but again cracked under the strain. He was then furloughed for eight months and then was given command of the 265th Infantry Division in France (June 1, 1943 to July 27, 1944), but was retired before his unit became involved in combat against the Anglo-Americans. He was promoted to lieutenant general in 1943.

22. Ferdinand Schaal (1889–1962) was a cavalry officer but he had commanded the 10th Panzer Division since before the war began. He later directed the XXXIV Corps Command in France, the LVI Panzer Corps on the Eastern Front, and Wehrkreis Bohemia and Moravia. He was arrested for his cooperation in the July 20, 1944, plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler and spent the rest of the war in prison, but was liberated by the Allies on April 28, 1945. A general of panzer troops since October 1, 1941, he was released from prison in August 1945.

Chapter 6: The Lords of the Air

1. Bruno Loerzer remained a close friend of Hermann Goering until the latter’s death. Despite his lack of qualifications, Loerzer commanded the II Air Corps in the first half of World War II. Later he became chief of personnel (subsequently chief of personnel armaments) of the Luftwaffe. Promoted to colonel general on February 2, 1943, he retired on December 20, 1944. At his own request, he testified for Hermann Goering at Nuremberg in 1946. Goering allowed him to do so only reluctantly and almost certainly regretted it, because the Allied lawyers had no trouble tying him in knots. Loerzer died in Hamburg on August 22, 1960 (Absolon,
Rangliste
, p. 18).

2. According to Colonel Killinger of the Luftwaffe General Staff, to his British interrogators (CSDIC [U.K.] SRGG 1243 [C], dated 22 May 1945), on file at the Historical Research Center, Air University Archives, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama.

3. Ritter von Greim commanded the 6th Air Fleet on the Eastern Front in World War II. On April 25, 1945, he was promoted to field marshal and named commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe. He committed suicide on May 24, 1945.

In the early 1920s, Greim took Hitler (then a minor political agitator and community organizer) on his first flight. Hitler became airsick and swore he would never fly again. He later changed his mind.