Blitzkrieg

From the Rise of Hitler to the Fall of Dunkirk

Len Deighton

• Publisher: William Collins
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780007549511
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Zweiter Weltkrieg

PART ONE

Hitler and His Army

‘[Hitler] said it probably wouldn’t harm the young fellows any if they had to enlist again, for that hadn’t harmed anybody, for nobody knows anymore that the young ought to keep their mouths shut in the presence of elders, for everywhere the young lack discipline … Then he went through all the points in the programme, at which he received a lot of applause. The hall was very full. A man who called Herr Hitler an idiot was calmly kicked out.’

– REPORT OF NAZI MEETING, Hofbräuhaus, Munich, 28 August 1920 – from Hitler, by J. C. Fest

In modern times, war has usually brought accelerated social change. The Americans who survived the Civil War were different men from the ‘colonials’ who had started fighting it. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 changed Europeans from farmers into factory workers. But between 1914 and 1918 war changed the world at a pace that made previous history seem leisurely. The growth of literacy, governmental supervision of industry, conscription of men and women, and successful revolution, were each part of the legacy of the First World War. The weapons of that war were also a measure of changing technology, and the effects of this change were as far-reaching as the social changes.

In 1914 Europe went to war with armies designed for colonial ‘policing’. The cavalry was armed with lances; uniforms were bright and buttons shiny. The infantry was more suited to eighteenth-century battles than to those of the twentieth. So were the generals.

Yet by 1918 a frightening array of modern weapons was in use: flamethrowers, four-engined bombers, machine pistols, gas shells, and tanks. New methods of waging war were tried. The European nations had become dependent upon overseas trade. German submarines sank Allied merchant ships on sight, and almost brought Britain to surrender. The British navy stopped ships bound for German ports and Germany came to the brink of mass starvation. After the war the Associated Medical Services of Germany estimated that 763,000 Germans had died of starvation as a direct result of the Royal Navy’s blockade. Most Germans regarded it as a barbaric way of waging war on women and children, and resentment lingered in the German mind, and indeed still remains.

Germany in Defeat

There were many reasons for the final collapse of Germany in 1918. With loved ones starving at home and no foreseeable victory, German fighting men became demoralized. Even the German advances of that spring played a part in this, for when the Germans overran Allied rear areas they found abundant food and drink, fine leather boots, sheepskin jerkins, and a great deal of military equipment. It was a cruel contradiction of the stories told about a Britain on the point of starvation and surrender.

For General Erich Ludendorff, First Quartermaster General of the German Army and the most powerful man in Germany, the spring advances brought a more personal blow. He found the body of his stepson, shot down on the first day of the offensive.

By the summer of 1918 there were a million American soldiers in France and more were arriving at the rate of a quarter million each month. The Germans were now fighting the whole world.

To compound Ludendorff’s problems, an epidemic of Spanish influenza caused his armies to report that they were too weak to repulse Allied attacks. The epidemic was affecting the Allied troops too, but the malnutrition of the Germans and the way in which the Allied armies were being constantly reinforced by soldiers from the United States meant that the Germans suffered most. Soon the Spanish influenza epidemic was to kill more people than did the war itself.

In 1918 Allied armies were using the newly invented tank in ever more skilful ways. On 8 August their resources were enough to put about 600 British and French tanks into the battle of Amiens. Light tanks and armoured cars penetrated the German rear and attacked artillery positions, a divisional headquarters, and even a corps staff far behind the lines.

The German front did not collapse completely because the Allies had nothing with which to exploit the breakthrough. The Germans put their front line together again and even managed some vigorous counter-attacks, but no one could doubt that it was the beginning of the end. Ludendorff himself wrote that as German reinforcements arrived they were jeered at as ‘black-legs’ and asked why they had come to prolong the war.

‘August 8th was the black day of the German Army in this war,’ wrote Ludendorff, and on 11 August Kaiser Wilhelm II, the German Emperor, said that the war must be ended and told his Secretary of State to begin peace talks.

The British official history says, ‘It pleased the Germans to attribute their defeat in the field to the tank. The excuse will not bear examination.’ Major General J. F. C. Fuller, tank pioneer and military historian, disagrees strongly with the official history, stressing that the morale effect of the tank gave it its importance. He selects – to support this argument – these telling words spoken by a German prisoner: ‘The officers and men in many cases come to consider the approach of tanks a sufficient explanation for not fighting. Their sense of duty is sufficient to make them fight against infantry, but if tanks appear, many feel they are justified in surrendering.’ As we shall see, these words echoed through France in May 1940.

Kaiser Wilhelm thought better of his decision to open peace talks, and his two senior officers, Ludendorff and Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, comforted each other with false hopes of a last-minute miracle. But it did not materialize. Instead, Ludendorff endured the agonies of failure and watched his army in its death throes. This, the death of his stepson – and his wife’s inconsolable reaction to it – and the strain of overwork turned Ludendorff’s mind. By the time of the surrender he was mentally deranged.

These three – the Kaiser, Field Marshal von Hindenburg, and General Ludendorff – were, respectively, the most senior in rank, the most exalted, and the most powerful men in Germany. They had inflicted a military dictatorship on the country but displayed no skill in statesmanship. Their final error of judgement was to wait too long before opening up peace talks. By now the army was at the end of its strength and the Germans had little choice but to accept any terms that their powerful enemies offered. Rather than suffer the humiliation at first hand, the army sent a civilian to ask for a cease-fire.

The American President, Woodrow Wilson, had already told the Germans that, unless they got rid of ‘the military authorities and monarchical autocrats’, the Allies would demand complete surrender. In October 1918 Prince Maximilian, heir to the small provincial Grand Duchy of Baden, was chosen to assume the duties of Chancellor and Prime Minister of Prussia, as part of the transfer of power back to civil government.

At this final hour, Ludendorff suddenly had second thoughts about asking for peace and supported his plans to fight to the death with nonsensical statistics. It was enough to make the Kaiser regain his optimism. But Prince Max rejected their demands, saying, ‘The desire to perish with honour may well occur to the individual but the responsible statesman must accept that the broad mass of the people has the right soberly to demand to live rather than to die in glory.’ Prince Max repeatedly advised the Kaiser to abdicate, and, when he did not do so, simply announced the abdication anyway, adding that the Crown Prince, Wilhelm’s heir, had also renounced the throne.

Then, in one of the most casual transfers of power in modern history, Prince Max walked up to Friedrich Ebert, leader of the Social Democratic Party, and said, ‘Herr Ebert, I commit the German Empire to your keeping.’

The Kaiser, who had so proudly led his country into this terrible war, now packed his many bags and ordered the imperial train to the Dutch frontier. In Holland he went to the chateau of Count Godard Bentinck and asked for a cup of tea – ‘strong English tea’ – and shelter. It was a tradition of the Knights of the Order of St John that one gave sanctuary to a brother. But finding space for Kaiser Wilhelm’s retinue was more difficult; most of them returned to Germany.

The Spartacus Revolt

On 9 November 1918, the day on which Prince Max handed over the German Empire to Ebert, Karl Liebknecht, a forty-seven-year-old lawyer, onetime member of the Reichstag, and now Communist revolutionary, stood on the steps of the imperial palace and proclaimed a soviet of workers and soldiers. A red flag was hoisted overhead. With Rosa Luxemburg – an intellectual theorist, as compared with Liebknecht the agitator – he formed the Spartakusbund. This name, with its historical reference to the revolt of slaves in the ancient world, provides a clue to the nature of this Communist group. Idealistic, intellectual, and inflexible, its admiration of the Soviet Union matched only its hatred of the German generals and the rich. But it had no real policy that was not the subject of endless bickering. On 10 November, while the Spartakusbund was meeting in Berlin to adopt formally the new name Spartakus Gruppe, Ebert – already denounced by Liebknecht as an enemy of the revolution – was worrying about the more practical problems of food distribution, keeping the railways going, and upholding law and order.

While Ebert’s Socialists were declaring an amnesty for political prisoners and granting complete freedom of the press, speech, and assembly, the Spartakus Gruppe were distributing leaflets declaiming ‘All power to the workers and soldiers’ and ‘Down with the Ebert government’. Liebknecht’s news sheet, The Red Flag, was eagerly read everywhere and the demonstrations were well attended. Uncompromising as always, the Spartakus Gruppe was determined to see the sort of revolution that had transformed Tsarist Russia.

Friedrich Ebert, the new Chancellor (later to become President of the so-called Weimar Republic) was a moderate who had lost two sons in the war. He had no desire for violent revolution and no immediate desire to establish a republic, though he was determined to be rid of Kaiser Wilhelm and the Crown Prince. Ebert would probably have accepted Prince Max as Regent, and such a move would no doubt have been welcomed by a large part of the German electorate. Yet Kaiser Wilhelm’s refusal to abdicate gave strength to the republican movements and was the main cause of the end of the monarchy. A monarchy would have provided an unending obstacle to the tyrant and a stability that Germany badly needed.

Ebert was attacked by men of the Right, who believed that only a return to military rule could provide the discipline and planning needed to make Germany prosper. More bitter were the attacks from the Leftists, who called him a traitor to Socialist ideals. Liebknecht was a vociferous enemy, whose middle-class background and privileged education persuaded him that extremist measures would bring simple solutions. Ebert, on the other hand, had a working-class background. He was a cautious pragmatist who knew that German workers were more concerned with hunger and unemployment than with polemics.

Germans knew well the feeling of hunger. Fearful lest they change their minds about the peace treaty, the Allies continued to apply the blockade of German ports long after the fighting ended. More than a million noncombatants had died in Germany and Austria in the last two years of the war. When the Armistice came, things got worse. There was no more food coming from the territories the Germans had occupied and now the Baltic ports were also closed. On 13 December, a month after the cease-fire, the Germans asked for essential goods to be allowed through the blockade. These included wheat, fats, condensed milk, and medical supplies. Permission was refused. In Bohemia in February 1919, 20 per cent of the babies were born dead and another 40 per cent died within one month. In March 1919, the general commanding the British Army of the Rhine reported to London that his soldiers found the sight of starving children unendurable.

On Ebert’s doorstep that Christmas was an even more pressing problem. About 3,000 mutinous sailors from Kiel, the base of the High Seas Fleet, were demanding 125,000 marks from the government. Trouble had started in the German Navy’s High Seas Fleet on 27 October 1918, when its commanders ordered it to sea for one last glorious battle. All the battleships and small cruisers were suddenly afflicted with mechanical trouble that prevented them from leaving. Marines moved in and 1,000 sailors were arrested. Some ships were deployed to fire upon the mutineers, but it made no difference. On the battleships Thüringen and Helgoland red flags were hoisted.

The next Sunday, 3 November, in Kiel, there was a public demonstration on behalf of the arrested sailors. A military patrol fired on the marchers, and by the following day systematic disobedience had become a revolution, complete with sailors’ councils and red flags. This was not a result of exhortation by Liebknecht and Luxemburg; they were as surprised as the admirals. By 6 November the mutineers were in control of the whole coastal region, including the cities Lübuck, Hamburg, Bremen and Wilhelmshaven, as well as some garrison towns inland. And yet the war was still going on, the cease-fire several days away. Troops arriving in Kiel to suppress the mutineers joined them instead. In Berlin the Spartakus Gruppe was gathering strength and preparing a congress to take place immediately after Christmas.

The law-and-order issue was crucial to Ebert’s political survival. So far, his power had been unchallenged. Even Rosa Luxemburg admitted that the far Left had failed to win the masses away from Ebert. But a failure of law and order would certainly provoke a swift reaction from the middle classes.

Ebert’s Berlin police were now under the command of Emil Eichhorn, who had simply gone to the police headquarters in Alexanderplatz and, without opposition, declared himself police president, releasing 650 prisoners who had been arrested during recent demonstrations. Eichhorn gave no help to Ebert in the matter of the mutinous sailors, and said that his policemen were neutral in that conflict.

The sailors had by now thoroughly plundered and vandalized the royal palace. They had received 125,000 marks in return for a promise to reduce their numbers and move into the Marstall, or royal stables, but they had failed to do so. Now they were demanding another 80,000 marks as a Christmas bonus. Ebert said he would pay, but this time they had to evacuate the palace before they got the money. On hearing this, the sailors broke into Ebert’s Chancellery and would let no one in or out. They manned the telephone switchboard and took three officials hostage.

It was then that the besieged Ebert took the decision that was to sever him from the Left for ever. He used the secret telephone link that connected his office to the army HQ in Kassel and asked the army for help.

Even after the soldiers had set up their artillery and machine guns, the sailors refused to move out, having heard that more sailors were on their way to help them. The battle was a short one and soon white flags came out. Thirty sailors were dead and about a hundred injured.

During the shooting, Karl Liebknecht’s Spartakus Gruppe – which had given birth to the German Communist Party – was spreading the word that the army had started a counter-revolution. It was enough to bring crowds of men, women, and children to the royal palace and soon the soldiers withdrew in confusion.

Ebert dismissed the police president. Liebknecht had a response for this too. Having told the population not to cooperate with Ebert, Liebknecht then staged a demonstration to protest the dismissal, describing it as an act of provocation directed at the workers.

The demonstration was enormous – some said three quarters of a million people gathered – but as in all such demonstrations, it is difficult to guess how many were merely sightseers. However, it triggered the extreme Left into making a bid for power. Liebknecht and his followers proclaimed a general strike and distributed guns. It was the beginning of ‘Spartacus Week’.

Irresolute and uncoordinated, Liebknecht’s followers were successful in seizing some government buildings, most important newspapers, and the railway. A group attempting to occupy the Ministry of War were politely told that they must get some sort of written authority from their revolutionary leaders. They never came back. The soldiers and sailors in Berlin for the most part ignored the whole business. Soon the Socialist Minister for the Army gathered together enough loyal soldiers and some of the newly formed militia to turn the revolutionaries out of the buildings they had taken. There had been no real support for the Communists and they submitted meekly. Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were arrested, quietly murdered by soldiers, and thrown into a canal.

Both sides withdrew and began to count the cost. Perhaps, at the time, no one concerned realized that the most important outcome was a permanent split between the Communists and Socialists. This division continued even when the Nazis became powerful, and it prevented any unified opposition to them.

The Spartacus Revolt had had little hope of success...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Cover Designer’s Note
• Illustrations
• Preface to the 2014 Edition
• Author’s Note
• Foreword by General Walther K. Nehring, aD
• PART ONE Hitler and His Army
• PART TWO Hitler at War
• PART THREE Blitzkrieg: Weapons and Methods
• PART FOUR The Battle for the River Meuse
• PART FIVE The Flawed Victory
• Plate Section
• Sources and Bibliography
• Index
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Also By Len Deighton
• Copyright
• About the Publisher