Defeating Hitler

Whitehall's Secret Report on Why Hitler Lost the War

Paul Winter

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781472517005
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781441114310
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

Published for the very first time, the top secret report Some Weaknesses in German Strategy and Organisation 1933 - 1945 was prepared by Whitehall's highest intelligence body, the Joint Intelligence Committee, and presented to Britain's Chiefs of Staff in 1946 to 'set down certain aspects of the War whilst there are still sources available who were closely connected with the events described'. Paul Winter sets this unique and important document in its historical setting, providing biographies of key figures referenced in the report and a timeline of the crucial events of the Second World War.

THIS DOCUMENT IS THE PROPERTY OF HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY’S GOVERNMENT

CONFIDENTIAL. Copy No. 344

J.I.C. (46) 33 (Final).

20^th October, 1946.

CHIEFS OF STAFF COMMITTEE

JOINT INTELLIGENCE SUB-COMMITTEE

SOME WEAKNESSES IN GERMAN
STRATEGY AND ORGANISATION
1933-1945

Report by the
Joint Intelligence Sub-Committee

NOTE

In approving this report, the Chiefs of Staff emphasised that Appendices VIII-XIX, containing a chronological statement of events in the different theatres of war and in the fields of strategy, war production and military supply, should not be considered as authoritative histories, nor as a complete or balanced narrative of those events. It may well be that the official histories, when compiled, may show that there are errors and omissions in these Appendices. Consequently, as indicated in paragraphs 2 and 5 of the covering note by the Joint Intelligence Sub-Committee to the report, they should be considered purely as illustrations of the manner in which various German weaknesses played their part in Germany’s defeat, orientated from the German point of view.

Offices of the Cabinet and Minister of Defence, 20th October 1946

CONFIDENTIAL

CHIEFS OF STAFF COMMITTEE

Joint Intelligence Sub-Committee

SOME WEAKNESSES IN GERMAN STRATEGY AND ORGANISATION, 1933-1945

Report by the Joint Intelligence Sub-Committee

In March 1945 the flow of intelligence which we were obtaining from the interrogation of German prisoners-of-war and from captured German documents had reached such proportions that we thought it useful to begin the preparation of a report on German Strategy, so as to check from German sources the various appreciations which we had submitted to the Chiefs of Staff earlier in the war.

2. With the collapse of German in May 1945 the volume of material available to us was increased by the overrunning of the various German archives, such as those of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces (OKW) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This enabled us to expand this study to include a mass of technical information which we considered would be of use to future historians, and in particular, would give a broad review of the course of German high policy and strategy leading up to the defeat of Germany by the Allied Powers. The study would also draw attention to certain weaknesses from which our own organisation of defence might in turn benefit, and would present as much factual and technical information as could properly be brought into the compass of a Joint Intelligence Sub-Committee appreciation.

3. A preliminary draft of this report was completed in October 1945 by those Officers who, as members of the Joint Intelligence Staff, had themselves taken part in the preparation of Joint Intelligence Sub-Committee papers during the war. This draft was made the basis of a special interrogation by General Jodl, Chief of the Operational Staff of the OKW, who confirmed the accuracy of its broad conclusions, and an examination was also made of evidence collected for the Nuremberg trial. Subsequently, we included further information, which came to light some months after the end of the war in Europe and in the Far East.

4. We submit, therefore, in the attached Report a provisional study, in broad outline, of the weaknesses in German strategy and organisation during and immediately prior to the War. Our purpose is to bring to notice some of the principal causes of German collapse, inherent in Germany’s political and military organisation, in German personalities and in Germany’s war machine and methods of production. These have been brought to light by Intelligence scrutiny of captured documents and in interrogations by the Allied military authorities.

5. The report cannot be more than a purely provisional one. It does not attempt to make a final assessment of the German weaknesses. That must be left to the historians. The events which we describe are too recent and the mass of material, of which only a small portion has been examined, too voluminous for a historical survey to be made at the present time. We are well aware of the defects of the report, which are inevitable in an attempt to describe a complicated chain of events of such recent occurrence, at a time when the assistance of many of those with an intimate knowledge of those events is no longer available. We do, however, attempt to describe the basic German plan to set out the different factors which interfered with its fulfilment, and to identify a number of weaknesses in the German war machine which are thereby revealed.

6. We consider it desirable to set down certain aspects of the War whilst there are still sources available who were closely connected with the events described. We believe that when it is finally possible to make a balanced historical survey, some of the acutely critical moments which are vividly remembered now are likely to become confused with the passage of time, and that there will be a tendency to take for granted Allied superiority and to underestimate the great and evident strength of the German war machine.

7. Our study is orientated from the German point of view, and though we touch from time to time on several phases of Allied strategy, in so far as they served to dislocate the German design and to bring to light the basic German weaknesses, we do not otherwise attempt to study Allied strategy or to examine its developments in the course of the War. In Section I of the Report we describe what we believe to have been the main design of Hitler’s strategy and describe the manner in which it was pursued up to the outbreak of War. We then examine the impact of certain events which, though some of them may have been foreseen and discounted by Hitler, nevertheless affected his strategy from 1939 onwards and interfered with the execution of his design. And finally we describe very briefly from the German point of view the evolution of war strategy after 1942, when Germany had lost the strategical initiative. Since that initiative was then in Allied hands, our description can only be of the briefest, since an attempt to relate the evolution of the war itself in that period would amount to an historical review covering both Allied and German strategy. In Section II we describe certain weaknesses as they became apparent in the course of the war. Finally, in Section III, we describe in a series of chapters the chronological sequence of events from 1939 onwards in the different theatres of war, on land, on sea and in the air, and in the fields of war production and military supply, in order to illustrate the manner in which the various German weaknesses played their part in Germany’s defeat.

Traditional German Policy.

8. There is one further point which we wish to make at the outset in order to give historical perspective. The National Socialist Revolution in Germany and the rôle played by Hitler in directing German rearmament and strategy, make it inevitable that in examining Germany’s war effort we should concentrate largely upon his policy and design. It would, however, be a fundamental mistake to suggest in any way that the policy pursued by Hitler was different from the policy basically desired by the General Staff and by the German people. “A war to wipe out the desecration involved in the creation of the Polish Corridor and to lessen the threat to separated East Prussia was regarded as a sacred duty, though a sad necessity. This was one of chief reasons behind the partially secret rearmament which began about ten years before Hitler came to power and which was accentuated by Nazi rule.” *¹ It is true that Hitler forced the pace in German rearmament and in the development of German policy; it is also true that in many ways his personal influence caused deviation from the strategy which the General Staff would themselves have preferred to pursue; but it is nevertheless important to emphasise that the policy pursued by Hitler was a logical development of Germany’s nationalist revival, which began immediately after the defeat of Germany in 1918 and whose purpose it was to reverse the verdict of the last war. The enormous popularity obtained between 1933 and 1937 by the Nazi movement and the almost unanimous support for Hitler from the German people during those years showed to what extent the people were identified psychologically with Hitler’s general outlook and policy.

(Signed) E.G.N. RUSHBROOKE.

G.W.R. TEMPLAR.

R.E. VINTRAS.

(for A.C.A.S. (I)).

M.J. CRESWELL.

Offices of the Cabinet and

Minister of Defence, S.W.1.

30^th September, 1946

ANNEX.

SOME WEAKNESSES IN GERMAN STRATEGY AND
ORGANISATION, 1933-1945.

Report by the Joint Intelligence Sub-Committee.

CONTENTS

SECTION I

CHAPTER I – HITLER’S GRAND DESIGN

The Preparatory Phase

The Active Phase

The Domination of Europe

World Domination

Chapter II – EVENTS WHICH INTERFERED WITH THE EXECUTION OF THE DESIGN

Declaration of War by Great Britain

Inability to Attack in the West in Autumn of 1939

Unexpected Speed of Advance in the West 1940

Failure to Eliminate Britain

The Problem of Invasion

The Attempts to Obtain a Compromise Peace

Alternative Strategy

Relations with Spain and the Gibraltar Plan

Italy’s Entry into the War

Complications in South-East Europe

Hitler’s Inability to Wait before Attacking Russia

Failure of the Lightning Attack upon Russia

Entry of the United States into the War

CHAPTER III – DECLINE AND FINAL DEFEAT

The Turning of the Tide

The Final Failure

German Strategy after 1942

The Final Phase

Defeat

SECTION II – GERMAN WEAKNESSES

Introduction

CHAPTER I – HITLER –

Hitler’s Personality

His Obstinacy and Inability to Accept Sound Advice

His Failure to Appreciate the Opinions and Reactions of Foreign Countries

His Opportunism and the Ultimate Failure of his Plans

Over Centralisation and Obsession with Detail

CHAPTER II – MACHINERY OF JOINT COMMAND

Supreme Command of the Armed Forces and Supreme Command of the Army (OKW and OKH)

Supreme Command of the Air Force (OKL)

Supreme Command of the Navy (OKM)

Combined Italo-German Command

CHAPTER III – THE WEAKNESSES OF GERMAN INTELLIGENCE –

Introduction

Failure of German Intelligence

Causes of the Failure and its Effects

Conclusions

CHAPTER IV – ORGANISATION OF GERMAN WAR PRODUCTION –

German Rearmament before the Outbreak of War

Organisation of Production during the War

Failure of the Organisation and its Causes

APPENDIX

I. -The Forging of the German War Machine

II. -The German Political Scene

III. -Nazi Machinery of Government

IV. -The Machinery of Joint Command

V. -The German Secret Intelligence Service (GIS)

VI. -German War Production

VII. -The Organisation of German Military Supply

VIII. -Poland 1939

IX. -Norway

X. -The West (Up to December 1942)

XI. -The Balkans (Up to the Winter of 1941)

XII. -The East (Up to the fall of Stalingrad)

XIII. -The Balkans (From the Winter of 1941-42 to 1945)

XIV. -The West (1943-45)

XV. -The East (1943-45)

XVI. -The Mediterranean

XVII. -German Naval Strategy

XVIII. -The U-Boat War

XIX. -German Air Strategy

SOME WEAKNESSES IN

GERMAN STRATEGY AND

ORGANISATION 1933-1945.

SECTION I

Chapter I. –

Hitler’s Grand Design

HITLER in his direction of German policy between 1935 and 1945, carried into execution the main design foreshadowed in Mein Kampf (written between 1923 and 1930). Our study is much assisted by having, in Mein Kampf, the blueprint against which the finished product can be placed for purposes of comparison. Barely in history can there have been a case where the principal player in the game of war opened by so clearly showing his hand.

2. Hitler’s design, as expounded in Mein Kampf, was to re-establish Germany, both politically and as a military Power, by reversing the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles; to incorporate all Germans within one Reich, including those in the lands previously forming part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; and to provide more “living space” for the German people. In the west, he desired above all a settlement of accounts with France, so that the shame of Versailles should be redeemed and France should no longer impede German aspirations in other directions. The attainment of these objectives implied the German domination of Europe. Her only possible future challenge for this predominant position appeared to be the U.S.S.R., though it would probably take years for Russia to develop her military potential. In all Hitler’s speeches and pronouncements ran the constant theme of hostility to the Soviet Union.

3. In the field of strategy, however, the main theme of Mein Kampf and of Hitler’s theories expounded in speeches and staff conferences was the disastrous effect on Germany, as proved in 1914-18, of a simultaneous war on two fronts. To this, to the strategical errors of the General Staff and, above all, to the betrayal of the German front line soldier by the politicians and civilians, especially the Communists and pacifists, he attributed Germany’s failure in 1918.

4. Hitler openly discussed in Mein Kampf how to achieve German domination of the world. We believe that this was his underlying purpose, though Germany was so weak when he first came to power that he had to concentrate first upon reconstruction, defence and the attainment of a predominant position in Europe. He worked on a basis of expediency and probably had no clear idea at that early stage how he was going to achieve his ultimate objective. He may have thought at moments of achieving it through an Anglo-German alliance. Eventually, however, he realised that the British Commonwealth would not accept his terms. We describe in the following paragraphs the rough outline of events as, step by step, Hitler put Germany into a position to dominate Europe and to threaten the world.

THE PREPARATORY PHASE

5. Before beginning the active phase of his strategy, which opened in February 1938 with the substitution of men like Ribbentrop, Keitel and Brauchitsch, who subscribed to the policy he wanted for the more responsible Neurath, Blomberg and Fritsch, Hitler spent three years mobilising the defence of the Third Reich, on the training of whose aggressive spirit he had already by 1935 spent two years of intensive propaganda and mass-psychology. The foundations of German rearmament had already been laid by von Seeckt and the Reichswehr soon after the Treaty of Versailles. After several years’ constant training of the S.A. and later the S.S., after eliminating by the purge on the 30^th June 1934, the party radicals who sought to set up the party forces instead of the German army as the focus for national resurgence, Hitler introduced conscription in March 1935 and unveiled the Luftwaffe as a new air weapon (in open defiance of the Treaty of Versailles), in the same month. After a further year of intensive military preparations and training he marched into the Rhineland in March1936 at a time when Britain and France and the League of Nations were preoccupied with the Italo-Abyssinian crisis. He thus put himself in a position to fortify his western frontier and prepared to defy the Western Powers.

6. At the same time Hitler reorganised [the] German economy, developing greater self-sufficiency for war by inaugurating the Four Years’ Plan in the autumn of 1936, and obtained that “strong alliance” which he had stated in Mein Kampf was to be the basis of Germany’s foreign policy, by creating the Rome-Berlin Axis in 1936. As the first military expression of this alliance he at once joined with Mussolini in their...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Dedication
• Contents
• Chronology of Events
• Dramatis Personae
• Foreword by Peter Hennessy
• Introduction
• The Report – Some Weaknesses in German Strategy and  Organisation, 1933–1945
• Notes
• Copyright