Working group for defense research

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The Working Group of Defense Research ( AfW ) was founded in 1954 on the initiative of former generals of the armed forces from the existing to 1961 German section of the military history department of the United States Army , the official name Operational History (German) Section established wore. It was registered as an association from October 1956 . The working group with an office initially in Frankfurt am Main and from 1959 in Stuttgart was financed by the Federal Ministry of Defense and served until the beginning of the 1990s to research questions of military history , in particular the Second World War , and to publish relevant publications. He published the magazines Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau and Marine Rundschau . In addition, he organized workshops on current defense technology and armaments-related topics. From the beginning of the 1960s, civil historians working for the AfW increasingly distanced themselves from the ideas and guidelines of the former Wehrmacht generals as part of their involvement in publications. In 1961, the former Army Chief of Staff, Franz Halder , who had been influential up until then , was unable to enforce his preferred candidate for the chairman of the AfW for the first time. Vice-admiral a. D. Friedrich Ruge was elected chairman and remained so until 1971. Historian Jürgen Rohwer played an important role at AfW , initially as managing director from 1954, later as chairman from 1971 until the end of the working group in 1991.

In the 1960s and 1970s, some historians praised work published within the AfW in their reviews. More recent historical studies problematize the proximity and personal connection of the working group to the Operational History (German) Section. You criticize the temporary adoption of a pseudo-objective, purely surgical history-oriented perspective that fades out superordinate connections. In this way, the generals' own involvement in the history of the war and the crimes committed in it were excluded. Instead, efforts were made to present the German officer corps as unencumbered and acting purely professionally, as an allegedly clean Wehrmacht .

Organizational development, goal setting, actors

Foundation and program

Franz Halder , from 1954 to 1961 with significant influence at the AfW, as a witness for the indictment in the Nuremberg trial against the Wehrmacht High Command in 1948
Georg von Sodenstern, the first chairman of the AfW, (here half-hidden directly behind Adolf Hitler ) at a briefing at the headquarters of Army Group South in Poltava , June 1942

Military history research moved back into the focus of the state in the course of the negotiations for the accession of the Federal Republic of Germany to the European Defense Community (EVG). The founding of the Working Group for Defense Research (AfW) in 1954 went back to an initiative of the former General of the Infantry Georg von Sodenstern , who became the first chairman, and, according to the working group, was an organizational measure around the group of authors of the publishing house ES Mittler & Sohn to merge appearing Wehrwissenschaftlichen Rundschau . The aim was to create a “common discussion platform for old and young officers ” with the aim of “building a bridge between defense ideas and science”. Former officers as well as civil scientists should take part in the deliberations and publication projects. A specialist lecture in the Blank Office , which had already been founded in 1952, maintained relationships with the AfW. After the endeavor to obtain private funding from industry failed and no scientific funding could be generated, the agency made sure that the Federal Press Office supported the working group with monthly grants, which at the end of 1955 amounted to 7,500 DM. With this financing, the AfW set up an office in Frankfurt am Main in April 1954 with the historian Jürgen Rohwer as managing director. In addition, the costs for the presidium meetings and the respective meetings led by Rohwer were covered. From 1961 the Federal Ministry of Defense (BMVg) provided direct funding for the working group.

The foundation of the AfW can be explained against the background of military historiography in the context of the Operational History (German) Section of the Historical Division and meant its expansion into the civilian research and publication area. Through the work in this war history section, Halder's circle of authors was influenced by his instructions as head of a leading control group of the section not to “burden” German soldiers, but to let their activities appear in a good light. Furthermore, on the one hand, the exclusion of “one's own involvement in the history to be researched”, according to historian Bernd Wegner , led to an interest-based history policy.

On the other hand, according to the historian Jost Dülffer , the hiding of the war crime history and the narrowing down to the history of operations from the perspective of the general staff implied "an implicit cover letter against war crimes trials in the western zones". The connection of the working group to the supposedly historically unencumbered traditions of the Military Society of Gerhard von Scharnhorst on the one hand, but also of the German Society for Defense Policy and Defense Sciences , which was active during the Nazi era, on the other, to their journal Wissen und Wehr der AfW in, was ambivalent conceptually connected with the Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau published by him .

Behind General von Sodenstern, who took over the chairmanship of the AfW, stood the former Chief of Staff of the Army, Franz Halder, who, according to Jürgen Rohwer, was asked for support by the Blank office in founding the working group and, in turn, won over from Sodenstern To take over chairmanship of the AfW. Since the chairman headed a presidium, which consisted of one representative each from the three armed forces, the army, the navy and the air force, he was also referred to as the president within the AfW . Halder's circle of authors, won as part of his leading work in the German section of the war history department of the US Army , now joined the AfW. In addition to Halder himself, these included the following former high Wehrmacht officers , some of whom were taken over into the new armed forces after the Bundeswehr was founded: Günther Blumentritt , Waldemar Erfurth , Alfred Gause , Adolf Heusinger , Rudolf Hofmann , Burkhart Müller-Hillebrand , Alfred Philippi , Hellmuth Reinhardt , Ludwig Rüdt von Collenberg , Alfred Toppe , Walter Warlimont and Wilhelm Willemer . After the death of Sodenstern in 1955, Jürgen Rohwer became the new chairman of the AfW, initially until 1956, before the former general of the infantry Kurt von Tippelskirch was elected chairman at the general meeting in October 1956 . Tippelskirch was also chairman of the Association of German Soldiers (VdS). The former army generals ultimately did not stay in office for long due to reasons of age.

Development after the formation of the association in 1956

Friedrich Ruge, chairman of the AfW from 1961 to 1971, on a tour of a minesweeping flotilla in France (1941)

In 1956 the AfW was registered as an association . The founding members of this formal association in 1956 were the aforementioned Generals Kurt von Tippelskirch (Chairman) and Alfred Toppe and the historian Jürgen Rohwer, Lieutenant General ret. D. Erich Schneider , Prof. Dr. Ing. Friedrich Seewald, General der Flieger ret. D. Wilhelm Speidel , captain at sea a. D. Winfried B. Hagen, Admiral a. D. Erich Förste and Rear Admiral ret. D. Rolf Johannesson . Halder was “not an official member”, but still had “a certain weight”. This was also because the working group wanted to use the "attractive pool of military studies [from the Historical Division] for its publications". The working group for defense technology founded in 1956 , later the German Society for Defense Technology e. V., which published the military technical monthly books, decided in 1956 to join the AfW as a corporation.

After the death of the old president, Franz Halder and Alfred Philippi pushed through the election of Anton Freiherr von Bechtolsheim , the second preferred candidate, as chairman in 1957 ; he held this position until 1961. The former military officer Friedrich von Boetticher had previously refused because he was not prepared to accept that the historian Gerhard Ritter had been allowed to give a lecture as part of the AfW because he had presented a critical work on the Schlieffen Plan . In 1959 the AfW moved from Frankfurt to Stuttgart after Rohwer had taken over the management of the contemporary history library there. The reason for this was, according to the AfW, "to be able to deepen his research work through closer connection with this largest special library in the field of contemporary history and recent military history". Bechtolsheim's successor as chairman was Vice Admiral a. D. and Inspector of the Federal Navy Friedrich Ruge . Halder was skeptical of his election in 1961 - the same year the Operational History (German) Section was dissolved - because he feared that the “young maritime-oriented forces” who were at work in the Presidium would become too strong. But although Halder tried to intervene with the Inspector General of the Bundeswehr, Adolf Heusinger, to get his candidate, the former Infantry General Gerhard Matzky , through, he could not prevent Ruge from being elected. Rohwer himself, now director of the library for contemporary history, gave up his position as managing director of the AfW to his successor, the historian Gerhard Hümmelchen , but remained in a leading position as a member of the executive committee until the end of the AfW in 1991, from 1971 as the first "civil" president . In addition, from 1958 to 1986 he was editor-in-chief of the magazine Marine-Rundschau, which is also published by the AfW . According to the historian Winfried Mönch, these journals served as a publication location for “activity reports” or “military-scientific and historical studies” . Due to the "temporal and [...] professional proximity" of some authors, individual articles are not optimal in terms of their factual expressiveness.

International cooperation and end of 1991

The working group worked with international research institutions such as the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the Center for Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, the Institut Atlantique in Paris, the Institute for Basic Military Strategic Research at the National Defense Academy in Vienna and the Royal United Services Institute in London.

The successor organization of the working group is the Scientific Forum for International Security (WIFIS) at the Leadership Academy of the Federal Armed Forces (FüAkBw) in Hamburg. Due to the changed assignment of tasks - away from historical and towards present and future-related research - the members' meeting of the AfW changed its name accordingly in October 1991.

Journalism of the working group

Halder's circle of authors who shaped the AfW in the 1950s

The circle of authors of former Wehrmacht officers won by Franz Halder, through his work for the war history department of the US Army, had exclusive access to the military files of the Wehrmacht that had been confiscated by the Americans, which was only gradually made possible for civilian historians from the end of the 1950s. This exclusive access to the files gave Halder and his group of authors advantages in their efforts to assert their own interpretations of the Wehrmacht's actions in the war. The main criterion of a "truthful history writing in the sense of the supposedly so neutral Reichsarchivwerk of the twenties" for the actions of the Wehrmacht should be a strictly operational- historical approach based on the competent evaluation of archive material, which was processed from a purely professional and apolitical general perspective. The responsibility for war, crime and defeat was attributed to Hitler and his closest circle and, as Halder put it in 1953, "a literary monument to the superhuman achievement of the German soldier in the last world war" should be erected.

The former officers used the opportunity and the permission of the Americans to publish in German publishers in order to present their view of historiography, especially on the Second World War, through the Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau magazine published by the AfW from 1954 onwards . According to Jost Dülffer been the subtitle of this led in turn by the former generals Alfred Toppe, Georg von Sodenstern and Alfred Philip as "editor" magazine pointed "Journal of European security" on their relation to the remilitarization , even if they with their title to the alleged tradition the Military Scientific Review , which was responsible for the military science department of the General Staff , tried to build on. In the academic operation of university history, the Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau and the Wehrkunde magazine of the cooperating working group for defense technology were hardly noticed. In addition to the Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau , the series of studies and documents on the history of the Second World War published by Muster-Schmidt- Verlag offered appropriate publication opportunities .

Gradually, civil historians were also won over to journalistic activities within the working group, in particular for articles and reviews in the most important journal of the AfW, the Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau . At Halder's instigation, this journal was published as early as 1951, three years before the AfW was founded, for which - and for "separate volumes" - "established" and young historians from the university environment Gerhard Ritter , Percy Ernst Schramm and Egmont Zechlin were won over could become. First and foremost were the later renowned scientists Hans-Adolf Jacobsen and Andreas Hillgruber , both doctorates from Schramm, and then Klaus-Jürgen Müller and later Wilhelm Deist . The former wrote numerous articles (including a "Chronicle of the Second World War" by Hillgruber and Hümmelchen) and book reviews for the Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau , but Jacobsen and Hillgruber published their monographs at the Institute for European History in Mainz. The largest project of the AfW, the edition of the war diary of the High Command of the Wehrmacht , was done by Schramm himself; Hillgruber took over a partial volume.

Increasing contradiction and journalistic influence of civil historians after 1960

At the beginning of the 1960s, civil historians increasingly opposed their advisers from the circles of former generals in their publication projects. The historians Hans-Adolf Jacobsen and Jürgen Rohwer, who acted on behalf of the AfW as editors of the anthology “Decision battles of the Second World War”, rejected the demand of the former Colonel General Hermann Hoth, who were closely associated with Erich von Manstein , for the Wehrmacht generals to have a greater say in the presentation of the War events back. At a general meeting of the AfW in November 1960, Hoth complained that it was not clear enough that “we lost the war thanks to Hitler”, wrote too much about the defeats of the Wehrmacht and saw the danger of “a degradation of German leadership”. Jacobsen replied that those involved in war events naturally judged them differently than younger historians committed to studying the files. But it is important for the AfW to appreciate them instead of rejecting them, otherwise "the few who tend to deal with military problems" would also turn to other topics.

The later Chichele Professor of the History of War Michael Howard and the German historians Andreas Hillgruber, Erich Maschke and Michael Salewski gave positive reviews in the 1960s and 1970s of works published as part of the AfW. Dülffer writes that, in contrast to the Wehrmacht officers in the "Historical Division", historians, based on "files, have completely different approaches than indictment and defense, completely new narratives".

Working meetings of the AfW

One of the main focuses of activities at the interface between research and journalism was the working group's workshops. It dealt exclusively with current defense technology and armaments-related topics. Starting with the first conference in 1956 “Possibilities and Limits of Defense Research” to the conference topic “Modern Technologies and their Consequences for Warfare” in 1978, 23 conferences were held solely by the AfW and the same number in cooperation with the “Deutsche Gesellschaft für Defense research "carried out. Each of these was reported on in the Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau , and some of them were also published in separate conference proceedings.

In the last available publication of the AfW, which was held in November 1990 at an international workshop on the subject of "Enemy images and military strategies since 1945", Jürgen Rohwer sums up that this was the 69th workshop that has been held by the working group since it was founded. Joint conferences took place with the Clausewitz Society (which was a "corporate member" of the AfW) and the German Society for Defense Technology. The events organized by the working group included, among others, the future head of the Military History Research Office, Hans Meier-Welcker (1956), the future Inspector General Brigadier General Ulrich de Maizière and the historian Gerhard Ritter (1957), the journalist Winfried Martini (1964) and the US - Historian David Kahn (1978) invited as speakers.

Published publications (selection)

  • The war at sea 1914–1918. Partly ed. in connection with the Federal Archives-Military Archive of the AfW by Walther Hubatsch . Multi-volume. Mittler, Hamburg et al. (1964 ff.).
  • Hans-Adolf Jacobsen , Jürgen Rohwer (ed. On behalf of the AfW): decisive battles of the Second World War. Verlag für Wehrwesen Bernard & Graefe, Frankfurt am Main 1960.
  • Franz Halder : War Diary. Daily records of the Chief of the Army General Staff 1939–1942. Edited by the working group for defense research, edited by Hans-Adolf Jacobsen. 3 volumes. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1962–1964.
  • Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Andreas Hillgruber (ed. On behalf of AfW): The Soviet history of the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945. Written by Boris Semjonowitsch Telpuchowski. Bernard & Graefe, Verlag für Wehrwesen, Frankfurt am Main 1961.
  • Percy Ernst Schramm : War Diary of the High Command of the Wehrmacht. 1940-1945. Run by Helmuth Greiner and Percy Ernst Schramm. On behalf of the Working Group for Defense Research. 4 volumes. Bernard & Graefe, Verlag für Wehrwesen, Frankfurt am Main 1961–1965.
  • Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau (1951–1983 / 1990; published by AfW from October 1954) - up to issue 12/1970 with the subtitle Zeitschrift für Europäische Sicherheit , from 1971 to 1983 with the subtitle Military leadership, strategy, military history, military law, military economy ; then until 1990 under the title Europäische Wehrkunde - Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau Verlag Europäische Wehrkunde Herford.
  • Marine Rundschau. Journal of marine life. Mönch, Bonn (1890–1989; published by AfW from August 1956).
  • Studies and documents on the history of the Second World War. Musterschmidt, Göttingen et al. 1957 ff.
  • Jürgen Rohwer, Gerhard Hümmelchen (ed. By AfW and the library for contemporary history ): Chronicle of the naval war 1939-1945. Stalling, Oldenburg 1968 (licensed from Stalling: Pawlak, Herrsching 1981; English translation by Derek Masters: Chronology of the war at sea 1939-1945. 2 volumes. Ian Allan, London 1972/74).
  • Detlef Bald (Ed. In cooperation with the AfW): Military responsibility in state and society: 175 years of general staff training in Germany. Bernard and Graefe, Koblenz 1986, ISBN 3-7637-5834-8 .
  • Günther W. Gellermann : Moscow calls Army Group Center ... What was not in the Wehrmacht report - the operations of the secret Kampfgeschwader 200 in World War II. Bernard and Graefe, Bonn 1988, ISBN 3-7637-5856-9 .
  • Péter Gosztonyi : Stalin's foreign armies. The fate of the non-Soviet troops in the Red Army 1941–1945. Bernard and Graefe, Bonn 1991, ISBN 3-7637-5889-5 .
  • Jürgen Rohwer (Hrsg.): Enemy images and military strategies since 1945. Papers at a conference of the working group for defense research in Bonn-Bad Godesberg on November 28th and 29th, 1990. Edition Temmen, Bremen 1992, ISBN 3-926958-97-9 .

literature

Secondary literature

Own representations

  • Working Group for Defense Research (Ed.): 15 years Working Group for Defense Research 1954–1969 . Stuttgart 1969.
  • Jürgen Rohwer : From the Naval Historical Team to the Defense Research Working Group . In: Hartmut Klüver u. Thomas Weis (ed.): Navy history - naval warfare - radio reconnaissance. Festschrift for Jürgen Rohwer . Düsseldorf 2004, ISBN 3-935091-16-8 , pp. 79-88.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ A b Eckardt Opitz : Military history. In: Ralf Zoll , Ekkehard Lippert, Tjarck Rössler (eds.): Bundeswehr and Society. A dictionary (= study books on social science. Vol. 34). Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 1977, ISBN 3-531-21419-5 , pp. 169–176, here p. 171.
  2. ↑ a b c d Esther-Julia Howell: Learn from the vanquished? The history of war cooperation between the US Army and the former Wehrmacht elite 1945–1961. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin 2015, p. 281. - Jürgen Rohwer states that he was from General von Sodenstern after a joint proposal by Admiral Wagner, who later became the head of the military history research office of the Bundeswehr, Colonel a. D. Hans Meier-Welcker and the later NATO general Johann Adolf Graf von Kielmannsegg was hired as managing director of AfW. See Jürgen Rohwer: From the Naval Historical Team to the Defense Research Working Group . In: Hartmut Klüver u. Thomas Weis (ed.): Navy history - naval warfare - radio reconnaissance. Festschrift for Jürgen Rohwer . Düsseldorf 2004, pp. 79-88, here pp. 85 f.
  3. ↑ Working Group for Defense Research (Ed.): 15 years Working Group for Defense Research 1954–1969. Stuttgart 1969, p. 3.
  4. ^ A b Hans Ehlert : Domestic disputes about the Paris Treaties and the Defense Constitution 1954 to 1956. In: Hans Ehlert, Christian Greiner, Georg Meyer, Bruno Thoß (eds.): Beginnings of West German Security Policy 1945–1956. Volume 3: The NATO Option. Edited by the Military History Research Office . R. Oldenbourg, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-486-51691-4 , pp. 235-560, here p. 336.
  5. ^ Jost Dülffer: Political historiography of the "45 generation". From the military history of World War II to critical contemporary history (1950–1970). In: Christoph Cornelißen (Ed.): History in the spirit of democracy. Wolfgang J. Mommsen and his generation. Akademie, Berlin 2010, pp. 45–60, here: p. 51 ff.
  6. ^ Gerhard Hümmelchen : 25 years working group for defense research. In: Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau. Vol. 28, 1979, No. 4, p. 107.
  7. ↑ a b Jost Dülffer: Political historiography of the "45 generation". From the military history of World War II to critical contemporary history (1950–1970). In: Christoph Cornelißen (Ed.): History in the spirit of democracy. Wolfgang J. Mommsen and his generation. Akademie, Berlin 2010, pp. 45–60, here p. 51.
  8. ↑ Bernd Wegner: Written victories. Franz Halder, the "Historical Division" and the reconstruction of the Second World War in the spirit of the German General Staff. In: Ernst Willi Hansen, Gerhard Schreiber , Bernd Wegner (eds.): Political change, organized violence and national security. Contributions to the recent history of Germany and France - Festschrift for Klaus-Jürgen Müller . Oldenbourg, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-486-56063-8 , pp. 287-302, here p. 296.
  9. ↑ a b Jost Dülffer: Political historiography of the "45 generation". From the military history of World War II to critical contemporary history (1950–1970). In: Christoph Cornelißen (Ed.): History in the spirit of democracy. Wolfgang J. Mommsen and his generation. Akademie, Berlin 2010, pp. 45–60, here p. 51 f.
  10. ↑ a b Jost Dülffer: Political historiography of the "45 generation". From the military history of World War II to critical contemporary history (1950–1970). In: Christoph Cornelißen (Ed.): History in the spirit of democracy. Wolfgang J. Mommsen and his generation. Akademie, Berlin 2010, pp. 45–60, here p. 52.
  11. ↑ Frank Reichherzer: Demilitarization, Bellification and Hybridization in the Sign of the "Total War". On the trail of war in German trade journalism in the interwar period. In: Markus Pöhlmann (ed.): German military journals in the 20th century (= Potsdam writings on military history. Volume 17). Military History Research Office, Potsdam 2012, pp. 37–48, here p. 48.
  12. ↑ Jürgen Rohwer: From the Naval Historical Team to the Working Group for Defense Research . In: Hartmut Klüver u. Thomas Weis (ed.): Navy history - naval warfare - radio reconnaissance. Festschrift for Jürgen Rohwer . Düsseldorf 2004, ISBN 3-935091-16-8 , pp. 79-88, here pp. 85 f. In addition to the chairman of Sodenstern, General der Flieger a. D. Wilhelm Speidel , Rear Admiral ret. D. Rolf Johannesson and Prof. Hermann Gackenholz , former war diary keeper of Army Group Center, joined the AfW Presidium.
  13. ↑ Esther-Julia Howell: Learn from the vanquished? The war-history cooperation between the US Army and the former Wehrmacht elite 1945–1961. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin 2015, p. 280f.
  14. ↑ Working Group for Defense Research (Ed.): 15 years Working Group for Defense Research 1954–1969. Stuttgart 1969, p. 4f .; Gerhard Hümmelchen: 25 years working group for defense research. In: Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau. Vol. 28, 1979, No. 4, p. 106; Information about the presidency times there; Esther-Julia Howell: Learn from the vanquished? The war-history cooperation between the US Army and the former Wehrmacht elite 1945–1961. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin 2015, p. 282 (on the election of the Tippelskirchs and his function as chairman of the VdS).
  15. ↑ Esther-Julia Howell: Learn from the vanquished? The war-history cooperation between the US Army and the former Wehrmacht elite 1945–1961. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin 2015, p. 281 f.
  16. ↑ Julia Howell: Learn from the vanquished? The war-history cooperation between the US Army and the former Wehrmacht elite 1945–1961. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin 2015, p. 281; for further influence p. 282–284.
  17. ↑ Julia Howell: Learn from the vanquished? The war-history cooperation between the US Army and the former Wehrmacht elite 1945–1961. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin 2015, p. 281; for further influence p. 282.
  18. ↑ Working Group for Defense Research (Ed.): 15 years Working Group for Defense Research 1954–1969. Stuttgart 1969, p. 5.
  19. ↑ Esther-Julia Howell: Learn from the vanquished? The war-history cooperation between the US Army and the former Wehrmacht elite 1945–1961. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin 2015, pp. 282–284.
  20. ^ A b c Gerhard Hümmelchen: 25 years working group for defense research. In: Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau. Vol. 28, 1979, No. 4, pp. 106-107, here p. 106.
  21. ↑ Esther-Julia Howell: Learn from the vanquished? The war-history cooperation between the US Army and the former Wehrmacht elite 1945–1961. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin 2015, p. 283 f.
  22. ↑ Esther-Julia Howell: Learn from the vanquished? The war-history cooperation between the US Army and the former Wehrmacht elite 1945–1961. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin 2015, p. 285.
  23. ↑ Working Group for Defense Research (Ed.): 15 years Working Group for Defense Research 1954–1969. Stuttgart 1969, p. 7.
  24. ↑ Jan Heitmann : Prof. Dr. Jürgen Rohwer on his 80th birthday. In: Schiff & Zeit / Panorama maritim . Vol. 59, 2004, p. 44 f .; Jürgen Rohwer on the website of the Württemberg State Library / Library for Contemporary History .
  25. ↑ Winfried Mönch : decisive battle "Invasion" 1944? Forecasts and diagnoses (= historical reports . Supplement 41). Steiner, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-515-07884-3 , p. 228.
  26. ^ Gerhard Hümmelchen: 25 years working group for defense research. In: Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau. Vol. 28, 1979, No. 4, pp. 106-107, here p. 107.
  27. ↑ a b Dietmar Klos (Red.): 50 years of the Bundeswehr leadership academy. 1957-2007. With a foreword by Wolf-Dieter Löser . Mittler, Hamburg a. a. 2007, ISBN 978-3-8132-0881-8 , p. 70. The exact organizational handling cannot be deduced from the literature; Klos writes about WIFIS as a “successor organization”, but at the same time about a “name change”. - According to Jürgen Rohwer, the end of the AfW in 1991 was a renaming, not a dissolution. This had become necessary because the Military History Research Office was now solely responsible for military history work and publications and no longer the AfW. See Jürgen Rohwer: From the Naval Historical Team to the Defense Research Working Group . In: Hartmut Klüver u. Thomas Weis (ed.): Navy history - naval warfare - radio reconnaissance. Düsseldorf 2004, Festschrift for Jürgen Rohwer , pp. 79–88, here p. 88.
  28. ↑ Esther-Julia Howell: Learn from the vanquished? The war-history cooperation between the US Army and the former Wehrmacht elite 1945–1961. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin 2015, p. 270 and p. 278.
  29. ↑ Esther-Julia Howell: Learn from the vanquished? The war-history cooperation between the US Army and the former Wehrmacht elite 1945–1961. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin 2015, p. 254 f. (Quote) u. P. 304 f.
  30. ^ Rainer Wohlfeil : Colonel i. G. Dr. Hans Meier-Welcker as a military historian. In: Military History Journal . Vol. 67, 2008, p. 453.
  31. ↑ Esther-Julia Howell: Learn from the vanquished? The war-history cooperation between the US Army and the former Wehrmacht elite 1945–1961. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin 2015, p. 270, p. 278 and p. 282.
  32. ^ Jost Dülffer: Political historiography of the "45 generation". From the military history of World War II to critical contemporary history (1950–1970). In: Christoph Cornelißen (Ed.): History in the spirit of democracy. Wolfgang J. Mommsen and his generation. Akademie, Berlin 2010, pp. 45–60, here: p. 52 f.
  33. ↑ a b c Jost Dülffer: Andreas Hillgruber - German great power, Nazi crimes and the state system. In: Hans Ehlert (ed.): German military historians from Hans Delbrück to Andreas Hillgruber (= Potsdam writings on military history. Vol. 9). On behalf of the German Commission for Military History and the Military History Research Office. MGFA, Potsdam 2010, ISBN 978-3-941571-06-8 , pp. 69-84, here p. 76.
  34. ^ Jost Dülffer: Political historiography of the "45 generation". From the military history of World War II to critical contemporary history (1950–1970). In: Christoph Cornelißen (Ed.): History in the spirit of democracy. Wolfgang J. Mommsen and his generation. Akademie, Berlin 2010, pp. 45–60, here p. 52 f.
  35. ↑ Oliver von Wrochem : Erich von Manstein. War of extermination and history politics (= war in history . Vol. 27). Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, ISBN 978-3-506-72977-4 , p. 287 f.
  36. ^ Andreas Hillgruber: decisive battles of the Second World War by Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Jürgen Rohwer. In: Journal of Politics . NF, Vol. 7, 1960, No. 4, pp. 405-412, here p. 412; Andreas Hillgruber: The German policy on France in 1940 from Compiègne to Montoire. The problem of a Franco-German rapprochement after the French campaign (Supplement 12/13 of the Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau) by Günter Geschke, Working Group for Defense Research. In: Journal of Politics. NF, Vol. 7, 1960, No. 4, pp. 413-415, here p. 415; Michael Howard: decisive battles of the Second World War by Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Jurgen Rohwer; War in Europe by Frido von Senger and Etterlin. In: International Affairs . Vol. 37, 1961, No. 3, pp. 351-352, here p. 352; Michael Howard: The campaign against Soviet Russia 1941–1945: An operational overview by Alfred Philippi, Ferdinand Heim; Hitler as Military Leader: Findings and Experiences from the War Diary of the High Command of the Wehrmacht by Percy Ernst Schramm. In: International Affairs. Vol. 39, 1963, No. 3, pp. 424-425; Michael Howard: Contemporary Military Strategy. from Morton H. Halperin; Politics and strategy: strategic thinking and political action. by Friedrich Ruge. In: International Affairs. Vol. 45, 1969, No. 1, pp. 125-126, here p. 126; Erich Maschke: The synthetic fuel, 1933–1945. A contribution to the national-socialist economic and armaments policy. by Wolfgang Birkenfeld. In: The Economic History Review . Vol. 18, 1965, No. 3, pp. 685-686, here p. 686; Michael Salewski: Italy's exit from the war in 1943. The German countermeasures in the Italian area: the “Alarich” and “Axis” cases. With 13 annexes, sketches, overview panels and 6 documentary photos. Studies and documents on the history of the Second World War, Vol. 10 by Josef Schröder, Working Group for Defense Research, Stuttgart. In: Journal of Politics. NF, Vol. 19, 1972, Issue 1, pp. 71 f.
  37. ^ Gerhard Hümmelchen: 25 years working group for defense research. In: Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau. Vol. 28, 1979, No. 4, p. 107; Hümmelchen probably means by the "German Society for Defense Research" the "German Society for Defense Technology".
  38. ↑ For example, the radio reconnaissance and its role in the Second World War. An international conference in Bonn-Bad Godesberg and Stuttgart from November 15 to 18, 1978. Ed. Jürgen Rohwer and Eberhard Jäckel. Motorbuch, Stuttgart 1979, ISBN 3-87943-666-5 .
  39. ↑ Jürgen Rohwer: Introduction. In: Jürgen Rohwer (Ed.): Enemy images and military strategies since 1945. Papers at a conference of the working group for defense research in Bonn-Bad Godesberg on November 28 and 29, 1990. Edition Temmen, Bremen 1992, pp. 6-9, here p 9.
  40. ↑ Viktor Toyka , Rüdiger Kracht: Clausewitz Society. Chronicle 1961–2011. Edited by the Clausewitz-Gesellschaft, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-9810794-6-3 , p. 27.
  41. ^ A b David Kahn: Codebreaking in World Wars I and II: The Major Successes and Failures, Their Causes and Their Effects. In: The Historical Journal . Vol. 23, 1980, No. 3, pp. 617-639, here p. 617.
  42. ^ Rainer Wohlfeil: Colonel i. G. Dr. Hans Meier-Welcker as a military historian. In: Hans Ehlert (ed.): German military historians from Hans Delbrück to Andreas Hillgruber (= Potsdam writings on military history. Vol. 9). On behalf of the German Commission for Military History and the Military History Research Office. MGFA, Potsdam 2010, ISBN 978-3-941571-06-8 , pp. 33-52, here p. 38.
  43. ^ John Zimmermann : Ulrich de Maizière, General of the Bonn Republic. 1912 to 2006 (= Security Policy and Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Germany. Vol. 12). Oldenbourg, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-71300-8 , pp. 208 f.
  44. ↑ Esther-Julia Howell: Learn from the vanquished? The war-history cooperation between the US Army and the former Wehrmacht elite 1945–1961. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin 2015, p. 283 f.
  45. ↑ Marcus M. Payk: Anti-Communist mobilization and conservative revolt. William S. Schlamm, Winfried Martini and the “Cold Civil War” in West German journalism in the late 1950s. In: Thomas Lindenberger (ed.): Mass media in the Cold War: Actors, images, resonances (= contemporary historical studies. Vol. 33). Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2006, ISBN 3-412-23105-3 , pp. 111-137, here p. 132.
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