Hitler's Commanders (5 page)

georg thomas
, the son of a factory owner, was born into an upper-middle-class family in Forst, Brandenburg, on February 20, 1890. He entered the Imperial Army as a Fahnenjunker in 1908 and received his commission as a second lieutenant in the 63rd Infantry Regiment in 1910. By 1914 he was adjutant of the III Battalion of the 63rd Infantry, which fought in France and Russia. Thomas ultimately served on various regimental staffs, as well as the General Staff. He was promoted to captain on April 18, 1917, and ultimately served on the staff of the 6th Infantry Division in France. Thomas earned the respect of the men with whom he worked and proved to be daring in combat. He received several decorations, including the House Order of Hohenzollern; the Iron Cross, First Class; the Wounded Badge; the Cross of Honor for War Service, Saxe-Meiningen; and the Austro-Hungarian Military Service Award, Third Class.

After the war, Thomas joined the Reichsheer, served on the staff of the 4th Infantry Division at Dresden, and in 1928 was assigned to the staff of the Army Weapons Office. He received his promotion to major on February 1, 1929, and became chief of staff of the Ordnance Department in 1930. During his years (1928–1938) with army ordnance, the highly gifted Thomas thoroughly studied the economic aspects of preparing for war (as well as prosecuting the war) and, in applying the lessons learned from World War I to his studies, concluded that economic warfare was equally as significant as armed warfare.
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A nation’s economic resources, Thomas argued, must be constantly inventoried for their most effective wartime use, and this must also be a major factor in preparing for war. Hence, through several written memoranda to his superiors, Thomas pushed forward the concept of a centralized agency supervising a “defense economy” to enable Germany to make the most effective use of its economic resources, especially in the production of armaments.

Although Thomas’s proposal was an ambitious one, given the complexities of an industrial society, it was the stubbornness of the three services that doomed his ideas. The army, navy, and air force insisted on supervising their own armaments programs. Consequently, the armed forces looked upon Thomas as only an adviser. “Thomas’ staff never managed to exert any decisive influence on essential decisions regarding armaments,” Wilhelm Deist wrote later.
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Undaunted, Thomas continued with the economic preparations for war. His accomplishments and abilities were rewarded when he was promoted to major general on January 1, 1938, and was again promoted on January 1, 1940, to lieutenant general.

Already skeptical about the Nazi government, Thomas became more disillusioned after the Fritsch affair in 1938, during which Hitler removed Colonel General Baron Werner von Fritsch as commander-in-chief of the army on trumped-up charges of participating in homosexual activity. Even though he was subsequently cleared of the false charges, Baron von Fritsch was not reemployed. After this incident, Thomas could no longer accept National Socialism and later described his decision as “my complete inner breach with this system.”
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As a result, he began discussions with two conspirators—General Ludwig Beck (who resigned as chief of the General Staff in August 1938) and Carl Goerdeler (the mayor of Leipzig)—primarily to explore ways of preventing a conflagration that Germany could not survive.

In late summer 1939, a concerned Thomas submitted a memorandum to the chief of OKW, Colonel General Wilhelm Keitel, warning that an attack on Poland would lead to a world war for which the Reich was economically unprepared. Keitel scoffed at the notion and refused to act on Thomas’s memorandum. An obsessed Thomas responded with a more detailed report containing tables and graphs “illustrating the economic warfare capacity of Germany and other great powers, from which Germany’s inferiority clearly emerged.”
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This time Keitel looked with astonishment at the analysis and forwarded the report to Hitler. The Fuehrer responded nonchalantly, telling Keitel that the general should not worry, as the Soviet Union (one of the great powers cited by Thomas) would cooperate with Germany. To Keitel the matter was ended; for Thomas it had just begun.

Thomas still believed that the conflict Hitler initiated when he invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, ultimately would lead to Germany’s destruction. He therefore became intimately involved with the conspirators (Beck, Goerdeler, and associates) who were trying to devise a plan to remove Hitler and other top Nazis from their positions of power. During November 1939, Thomas attempted to convince General Franz Halder, the chief of the General Staff, and General Walter von Brauchitsch, the commander-in-chief of the army, to arrest Hitler. Both men adamantly refused, with Halder citing the soldier’s duty to obey his supreme commander (Hitler). Brauchitsch was even more upset and suggested to Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the chief of the Abwehr, that Thomas be arrested. The enigmatic Canaris—himself a peripheral member of the anti-Hitler conspiracy—hushed up the whole affair. Concerned with the possibility of German armies invading neutral countries, Thomas again tried to convince Halder to take some action; Thomas showed Halder a message from Dr. Josef Mueller, a Bavarian lawyer friendly with Pope Pius XI, which stated that if both Hitler and Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop were eliminated, the Vatican would intercede to bring about peace. Halder again rejected Thomas’s pleas.

Failure to convince others to act against Hitler subdued Thomas’s conspiratorial activities for a while. Following the successful German invasion of Denmark and Norway in the spring of 1940, a discouraged Thomas decided to let fate run its course. By then he had been promoted to general of infantry (on August 1, 1940) and had become head of the Economic Department and Armament Office of the army (in addition to his duties at OKW). Although he conscientiously carried out his duties, his efforts were still plagued by the interservice rivalry mentioned earlier.

Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, once again stirred the despondent Thomas. During late August and early September, he journeyed to the Russian Front, visiting several army groups to gauge possible support for a coup against Hitler. Although he received no direct assent to such a plan, General Thomas was “moderately satisfied,” according to fellow conspirator Ulrich von Hassell, the former ambassador to Italy.
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It was during this trip to the Eastern Front that Thomas witnessed the murder of Jews by the
Einsatzgruppen
—the mobile killing units of the SS and SD. An infuriated Thomas shared his experience with Baron Friedrich von Falkenhausen, another active conspirator, and the two of them visited Field Marshal von Brauchitsch. They wanted to ascertain how Brauchitsch now felt about the Hitler regime. Brauchitsch responded by pointing out to his visitors that it was his duty to obey his Fuehrer. Thomas then blurted out that Brauchitsch was partly responsible for the murder of the Jews. The field marshal walked away without replying.

A rebuffed Thomas returned to his duties and on May 6, 1942, was appointed to the Armaments Council. Although he still disdained the Nazi regime, he carried out his duties and participated in the planning, for example, of the economic exploitation of occupied Russia. Later that month, in fact, he was appointed chief of the new Armaments Office of the Reich Ministry for Armaments and Munitions. Although he had an impressive title, economic authority was still divided, with Albert Speer (Hitler’s designated munitions expert) assuming more and more control. Consequently, Thomas resigned his post in the armaments and munitions ministry on November 20, 1942. He continued his duties at OKW, however.

Thomas took no further part in the anti-Hitler conspiracy after the Casablanca Conference of January 1943. At the conclusion of these meetings, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced that the Allies would accept nothing less than the unconditional surrender of Germany, Italy, and Japan. Since Thomas saw that the war was clearly lost and that no alternative German government could expect any softening of the Allied terms, the general felt that the assassination of Hitler would serve no purpose except to make Hitler a martyr in the eyes of the German people.
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After the July 20, 1944, assassination attempt, papers were discovered that implicated Thomas as a possible conspirator. Although the Nazi tribunal failed to uncover any direct evidence linking Thomas with the attempt on Hitler’s life, he was nevertheless arrested and sent to the prison camp at Flossenburg. He also spent time at Dachau Concentration Camp and was finally imprisoned in a concentration camp in South Tyrol, Italy. As the war came to an end, Thomas was rescued by American troops and quickly freed. He moved to Frankfurt-am-Main, but his health had been broken during his imprisonment, and he died there on December 29, 1946.

walter buhle
was born in Heilbronn, Wuerttemberg, on October 26, 1894. He joined the Imperial Army as a Fahnenjunker on July 10, 1913, received his commission in August 1914 (just as World War I broke out), and served mainly with the Wuerttemberger 124th Infantry Regiment (27th Infantry Division) in Lorraine and the 122nd Fusilier Regiment (26th Infantry Division) on the Eastern Front. Severely wounded in June 1915, he recovered, underwent mortar training, and served with a mortar battalion for the rest of the war. After serving as a signals officer with the Reichsheer’s 13th Infantry Regiment at Ludwigsburg, Wuerttemberg (1921), he transferred to the Wuerttemberger 18th Cavalry Regiment, where he began his General Staff training. After attending the College for Politics in Berlin (1925–1926), Buhle worked in the Defense Ministry and Group Command 1 in Berlin (1926–1930). Promoted to captain in 1926, he commanded a company in the 13th Infantry Regiment from 1930 to late 1932, when he returned to the Defense Ministry and was assigned to the Organizations Department (T-2). Promoted to major in 1933 and lieutenant colonel in 1936, he commanded II/87th Infantry Regiment, a former provincial police unit in Aschaffenburg, northwest Bavaria, from October 1936 to October 1937. He was Ia of Wehrkreis V at Stuttgart from October 1937 to November 1938, when he was posted to the army General Staff. He was promoted to full colonel in early 1939 and, in recognition of his knowledge and technical expertise in the field of armaments, he was named head of the Organizations Section of OKH five days before World War II began. A convinced Nazi, Buhle was rewarded for his loyalty and hard work by promotion to major general in 1940 and to lieutenant general in 1942.

Buhle was given greater responsibility when he was assigned to the post of chief of the army staff at OKW in January 1942. He was disliked by other generals, for he meddled in everything and was a trusted informant for Hitler. General Warlimont noticed his personality flaws and wrote that Buhle bypassed Keitel (the chief of OKW and his direct superior) and established a direct, personal relationship with Hitler.
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Buhle’s isolation at Fuehrer Headquarters, along with his propensity for offering a view on all matters (his “meddling”) was apparent at a Fuehrer conference on July 25, 1943. The conference centered on the Italian situation, which had deteriorated, as Mussolini had been removed from power the previous day, and the German situation in the Mediterranean was potentially desperate. Hitler was discussing the situation with Jodl and Keitel when Buhle interjected that Italy must be given top priority for all transport vehicles. He even insisted that everything on the assembly line or on the way to the East should be sent to the German troops in the Rome area. He made this recommendation at a time when army groups Center and South were fighting the largest armored battle in history at Kursk and needed all the vehicles they could possibly get to supply and reinforce their regiments.

Buhle, in charge of army transport, fumed at the generals who always demanded more and, Buhle believed, interfered with his allocation plans. In December 1943, for example, Buhle complained during a Fuehrer briefing that he could assure that there would be adequate tank battalions in the West, provided no one took them away. “No sooner have I got something together,” he went on, “than it’s gone.”
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Hitler angrily asked if Buhle was referring to him, which of course he was not. His remark was aimed at Colonel General Kurt Zeitzler, who had replaced Halder as the chief of OKH in September 1942.

This type of criticism of OKH by Buhle and others contributed to Hitler’s declining confidence in General Zeitzler. On the other hand, Hitler demonstrated his faith in Buhle by promoting him to general of infantry on April 1, 1944. The Fuehrer wanted to make him chief of the General Staff in place of Zeitzler later that year; however, Buhle was severely wounded by the July 20 explosion at Hitler’s headquarters and was in the hospital for some time. He did not fully recover for weeks after that. Ironically enough, the would-be assassin was Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg, a talented General Staff officer who had been one of Buhle’s principal assistants in the Organizations Branch from 1940 to 1942. After some initial friction the two had worked well together, although the aristocratic Stauffenberg commented at the time that Buhle was “not altogether” a gentleman.
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In January 1945, Hitler chose Buhle to replace Emil von Leeb as head of the Army Weapons Office (i.e., chief of armaments for the army).
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Buhle did his best to supply the German field forces, but the combination of Allied bombing and lack of labor made his task nearly impossible. Nonetheless, he gave it his best effort. It is interesting to note that it was Buhle who by chance found Admiral Wilhelm Canaris’s diaries, which clearly indicated that the former chief of the Abwehr had been in contact with the anti-Hitler conspirators of July 20. Ever the pro-Hitler informer, Buhle handed the evidence over to the Gestapo. As a result the admiral was stripped naked, taken out, and hanged by the SS on April 9, 1945.

General Buhle survived the war and the subsequent trials. Released from Allied captivity in 1947, he retired to Stuttgart, where he died on December 28, 1959.