Hitler's speech to the commanders-in-chief on June 14, 1941

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Hitler's speech to the commanders-in-chief on June 14, 1941 was a speech by Hitler to the commanders-in-chief of the Wehrmacht and the army groups and armies intended for Operation Barbarossa . He gave his instructions for the attack and action of the Wehrmacht and issued final orders.

place

The meeting took place in the Reich Chancellery . For camouflage, the arrival of the numerous officers was distributed to different entrances and staggered in time. In the morning, the individual army group and army leaders gave lectures to Hitler about the operations they had planned for the first days of the war against the Soviet Union . After lunch in the dining room of his apartment, Hitler gave his speech, which lasted about an hour.

Attendees

The following participants were present at Hitler's speech:

army

Navy

air force

OKW

Adjutantur of the Wehrmacht

Content of the speech

Hitler had already given a speech to the commanders-in-chief on March 30, 1941, since the attack on the Soviet Union was originally supposed to begin in May 1941; but this attack was delayed by the Balkan campaign . Surprising changes in situation forced rescheduling and the need to keep plans secret. As is usually the case with Hitler's speeches to the military, there is no record of the speech. There are some memories and diary entries, for example by Franz Halder , Fedor von Bock , Otto Hoffmann von Waldau , Heinz Guderian , Albert Kesselring and Hitler's adjutant Nicolaus von Below . After the war, Adolf Heusinger wrote a longer account of the speech from memory.

Hitler once more disseminated his known thoughts and plans; He is said to have asserted that a campaign against the Soviet Union would secure Germany's food and raw material supplies and induce England to conclude peace; so the war could be won. England will understand that US aid will come too late to be able to do anything against the German position of power on the continent and against the successes of the German submarines and the air force against the British influx. Ian Kershaw , drawing on Below's memoirs, stressed that Hitler highlighted the war as a "fight against Bolshevism ." The Soviet Union would fight hard and strong air strikes would be expected; the worst part will be over in six weeks. Every soldier should know that he is fighting to destroy Bolshevism. If the war were lost, Europe would be Bolsheviks. In Bock's words, Hitler expressed the thought:

“Whether and which areas Germany wants to take over after a victory is being considered; it was clear that Russian influence would have to be pushed out of the Baltic Sea and that Germany would have to secure decisive influence in the Black Sea, because there were now essential interests for us, such as B. the oil. "

Reception in research

According to the historian Jürgen Förster , the "legend of the German preventive war against the Soviet Union" was "born" on June 14, 1941 during his "fundamental political speech" to the commanders in chief of the army, navy and air force. According to the historian Johannes Hürter , Hitler essentially only repeated what he had already said in his speech to the commanders on March 30, 1941: "This address only confirmed what the commanders-in-chief already knew". Nevertheless, his remarks served the political instruction of the military leadership. The speech was "a further building block in the intellectual preparation for a war that is immoderate in terms of its goals and enemy images". For Jürgen Kilian, the lack of reaction by the military to this speech marks the “last decisive step in the genesis of the Wehrmacht into a compliant instrument of Hitler”. Here, according to Kilian, the “ideological alliance” between well-known members of the generals and their “Führer” took place.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Müller, Übersär: Hitlers war in the east, Berghahn books NY, 2002, page 104, quote: on 14 June 1941 in the chancellery in Berlin Hitler had presented the gathered Wehrmacht commanders with the operational goal fort he attack on the SU ...
  2. ↑ United states office: Nazi conspiracy and War Crimes, Volume 4, US government printing 1946, page 807, quote: On June 9, 1941 the order of the Fuehrer went out for final reports on Barbarossa to be made in Berlin on June 14, 1941 , 8 days before D-Day ...
  3. ↑ A document on the regulation of arrivals and use of inputs is as Document C-78: International Military Tribunal Nuremberg (ed.): The trial of the major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal (Nov. 14, 1945 to October 1, 1946) . Nuremberg 1947, Volume 34, pp. 308-312.
  4. ^ Walter Warlimont : At the headquarters of the German Wehrmacht from 1939 to 1945 . Augsburg 1990, Volume 1, p. 162 f.
  5. ^ William Young, German diplomatic relations 1871-1945 , I-universe Inc., NY 2006, p. 287.
  6. ^ Franz Halder : War diary. Daily records of the Chief of the Army General Staff 1939–1942 . Stuttgart 1962, Volume 2, p. 455.
  7. ↑ Klaus Gerbet (Ed.): Generalfeldmarschall Fedor von Bock. Between Duty and Refusal - The War Diary. Munich 1995, p. 193.
  8. ↑ BA-MA , RL 200/17.
  9. ↑ Heinz Guderian : memories of a soldier . Stuttgart 1994, p. 136.
  10. ^ Albert Kesselring : Soldier until the last day . Bonn 1953, p. 113.
  11. ^ Nicolaus von Below : As Hitler's Adjutant 1937-1945 . Selent 1999, p. 277.
  12. ^ Adolf Heusinger : Orders in conflict . Tübingen and Stuttgart 1950, p. 120 ff.
  13. ^ Jürgen Förster : The company 'Barbarossa' as a war of conquest and extermination . In: Military History Research Office (Hrsg.): The German Reich and the Second World War . Volume 4. Stuttgart 1983, p. 444.
  14. ↑ Ian Kershaw : Hitler. 1936-1945 . Munich 2002, p. 508.
  15. ↑ Quotation from Johannes Hürter : Hitler's Heerführer. The German commanders-in-chief in the war against the Soviet Union in 1941/42. R. Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-57982-6 , p. 221.
  16. ↑ Jürgen Förster: Summary . In: Bianka Pietrow-Ennker (ed.) Preventive War? The German attack on the Soviet Union . Fischer paperback, Frankfurt a. M. 2000, ISBN 3-596-14497-3 , pp. 208-214, here p. 209.
  17. ↑ Johannes Hürter : Hitler's Army Leader. The German commanders-in-chief in the war against the Soviet Union in 1941/42. R. Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-57982-6 , p. 221.
  18. ↑ Jürgen Kilian: Wehrmacht and Occupation in the Russian Northwest 1941-1944 . Volume 75 of the series: War in History . Edited by Stig Förster , Bernhard R. Kroener , Bernd Wegner , Michael Werner, Paderborn 2012, p. 77.