Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht (German pronunciation: [ˈveːɐ̯maxt] ⓘ, lit. 'defence force') were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer (army), the Kriegsmarine (navy) and the Luftwaffe (air force). The designation "Wehrmacht" replaced the previously used term Reichswehr and was the manifestation of the Nazi regime's efforts to rearm Germany to a greater extent than the Treaty of Versailles permitted.[11]
Not to be confused with Waffen-SS.Wehrmacht
16 March 1935
20 September 1945[a]
- Adolf Hitler (first)
- Karl Dönitz (last)
- Adolf Hitler (first)
- Werner von Blomberg (last)
Werner von Blomberg
18–45
1–2 years; compulsory service
700,000 (1935)[4]
18,000,000 (total served)[5]
After the Nazi rise to power in 1933, one of Adolf Hitler's most overt and bellicose moves was to establish the Wehrmacht, a modern offensively-capable armed force, fulfilling the Nazi regime's long-term goals of regaining lost territory as well as gaining new territory and dominating its neighbours. This required the reinstatement of conscription and massive investment and defence spending on the arms industry.[12]
The Wehrmacht formed the heart of Germany's politico-military power. In the early part of the Second World War, the Wehrmacht employed combined arms tactics (close-cover air-support, tanks and infantry) to devastating effect in what became known as Blitzkrieg (lightning war). Its campaigns in France (1940), the Soviet Union (1941) and North Africa (1941/42) are regarded by historians as acts of boldness.[13] At the same time, the extent of advances strained the Wehrmacht's capacity to the breaking point, culminating in its first major defeat in the Battle of Moscow (1941); by late 1942, Germany was losing the initiative in all theatres. The German operational art proved no match to that of the Allied coalition, making the Wehrmacht's weaknesses in strategy, doctrine, and logistics apparent.[14]
Closely cooperating with the SS and their Einsatzgruppen death squads, the German armed forces committed numerous war crimes (despite later denials and promotion of the myth of the clean Wehrmacht).[15] The majority of the war crimes took place in the Soviet Union, Poland, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Italy, as part of the war of annihilation against the Soviet Union, the Holocaust and Nazi security warfare.
During World War II about 18 million men served in the Wehrmacht.[16] By the time the war ended in Europe in May 1945, German forces (consisting of the Heer, the Kriegsmarine, the Luftwaffe, the Waffen-SS, the Volkssturm, and foreign collaborator units) had lost approximately 11,300,000 men, about 5,318,000 of whom were missing, killed or died in captivity.[17] Only a few of the Wehrmacht's upper leadership went on trial for war crimes, despite evidence suggesting that more were involved in illegal actions.[18][19] According to Ian Kershaw, most of the three million Wehrmacht soldiers who invaded the USSR participated in war crimes.[20]
Origin
Etymology
The German term "Wehrmacht" stems from the compound word of German: wehren, "to defend" and Macht, "power, force".[c] It has been used to describe any nation's armed forces; for example, Britische Wehrmacht meaning "British Armed Forces". The Frankfurt Constitution of 1849 designated all German military forces as the "German Wehrmacht", consisting of the Seemacht (sea force) and the Landmacht (land force).[21] In 1919, the term Wehrmacht also appears in Article 47 of the Weimar Constitution, establishing that: "The Reich's President holds supreme command of all armed forces [i.e. the Wehrmacht] of the Reich". From 1919, Germany's national defense force was known as the Reichswehr, a name that was dropped in favor of Wehrmacht on 21 May 1935.[22]
While the term Wehrmacht has been associated, both in the German and English languages, with the German armed forces of 1935–45 since the Second World War, before 1945 the term was used in the German language in a more general sense for a national defense force. For instance, the German-aligned formations of Poles raised during the First World War were known as the Polnische Wehrmacht ('Polish Wehrmacht', 'Polish Defense Force') in German.