Operational History (German) Section

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Franz Halder as a witness for the prosecution in the Nuremberg trial against the Wehrmacht High Command in 1948

The Operational History (German) Section of the Historical Division of the United States Army was established in January 1946 in order to make the operational knowledge and experience of prisoner-of-war German officers useful for the writing of war history . The institution was ordered on the American side by Colonel Harold E. Potter , the chief historian of the European department of the Historical Division. The former Chief of Staff of the Army, Franz Halder , was entrusted with leading tasks by the Americans. After the beginning of the Korean War in 1950, the focus of the elaborated publications shifted more and more to studies of the Wehrmacht's warfare in the war against the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1945. They found their way into the military training programs of the US Army and their operational guidelines for mobile defense. A number of former Wehrmacht officers traveled to United States military institutions to give lectures . Until the dissolution of the section in 1961, more than 300 high officers of the Wehrmacht worked out two and a half thousand studies. As early as 1954, important employees of this war history department worked together with civilian historians in the working group for defense research on the history of the Second World War .

Foundation and organizational development

First interrogations prisoners of war high-ranking German officers with the aim of making their insider knowledge for the US military historiography used were, shortly after the war by the Shuster -Commission in Camp Ashcan in Bad Mondorf , Luxembourg, performed. The Historical Division of the US Army, which was formed at the end of 1945 and whose main task was to produce depictions of combat operations and investigations into military conflicts, then decided in the course of preparing its own history of the Second World War not only to use the captured files, but also to have German officers work out war history studies. In January 1946, she commissioned Colonel Harold E. Potter, the chief historian of the European Department of the Historical Division, to set up an Operational History (German) Section serving this purpose , who and his staff were supposed to recruit former Wehrmacht officers who appeared suitable. Consequently, one of Potter's first official acts was the establishment of this German section of the American war history department in order to organize the preparation of studies on German operational history efficiently. He installed Colonel Charles W. Pence as its head. The European Department of the Historical Division and its Operational History (German Section) were both located in Frankfurt am Main from January 1946 .

In the summer of 1946, 328 high officers of the Wehrmacht who had become American prisoners of war were working in the camps in Oberursel, Allendorf (near Marburg) and Garmisch on descriptions of combat experiences and their previous service. Among these was General Waldemar Erfurth, who had a doctorate in history and was head of the war history department in the Army General Staff from 1935 to 1938 and was now a member of the "Advisory Board" in Garmisch camp under the former Field Marshal Georg von Küchler of the German "Scientific Commission". According to the historian Bernd Wegner , Erfurth endeavored to “teach the military editors the basics of historical method and source criticism”, but was thwarted by contrary instructions from Küchlers, who did not believe in American standards and called for “German war history to be written ".

The project was on the brink in the summer of 1947. The American military governor Lucius D. Clay , not an advocate of cooperation with former Wehrmacht generals, thought it was too ineffective and expensive. He ordered that the Historical Division should no longer employ former Wehrmacht officers from January 1, 1948. It was not until the then Chief of Staff of the Army and later President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower , who sent a personal telegram to Clay on August 30, 1947, asking him to reconsider his decision, intervened that that Clay withdrew his order. Eisenhower was the most influential proponent of working with former German officers. He had shown great interest in the work of the Operational History (German) Section and its studies at a meeting with Harold E. Potter in October 1946, and had agreed to participate in a seminar of the Historical Division in April 1947, the American War History Department to support and “protect in every possible way” in this regard. After Eisenhower had made clear his personal interest in the cooperation project between the Historical Division and the former Wehrmacht generals, Clay also agreed to an exemption requested by the Historical Division on the issue of denazification of the officers . On September 9, 1947, he approved that these high-ranking officers could be employed by the American War History Department even before they were denazified. In addition, he instructed the Hessian Liberation Minister Gottlob Binder to set up a special judgment chamber in Neustadt (Hesse) , which was supposed to accelerate the proceedings against the German officers. In addition, he decreed that judgments of the ruling chamber, which would result in a conviction to a labor camp or other severe sanctions and thus impair the war history work, could be suspended until the project work was completed.

The investigations commissioned by the Historical Division of the US Army in Washington were coordinated from June 1948 onwards by an eight-member control group , which was initially based in Königstein im Taunus and from 1949 in Karlsruhe . In February 1948, the Americans had designated Franz Halder as head of the Control Group , who then proposed the other seven members of this body. Halder had already been brought from the Nuremberg Palace of Justice to the Allendorf camp in August 1946 because, as the former Chief of Staff of the Army , he was supposed to oversee studies on the organization and functioning of the Army High Command (OKH). Since the General Staff was not counted among the criminal organizations in the verdict of the Nuremberg Trials of Major War Criminals , the way to cooperation with the Historical Division was now clear.

With one exception, the members of this control group were former generals of the High Command of the Army (OKH), who now worked as a “personal staff” to their former chief of staff, Halder, and the incoming manuscripts that the officers produced after their release from captivity both controlled and revised. The officers of the Control Group and their families moved into apartment buildings confiscated by the Americans. In addition to the cost of the apartments, the Americans paid food allowances and a fixed salary. The latter was initially 700 DM per month for Franz Halder, and 600 to 650 DM per month for the other members and increased considerably by the end of the 1950s - at Halder to 1700 DM per month. The homeworkers, now generally off-duty officers, were given thematically specified commissioned work on a fee basis, which they did at home and were remunerated according to the scope and time required. At the end of the 1940s, their pay was up to DM 600 per month at optimal capacity. They also received economic aid such as food packages and tobacco rations. These incomes and benefits to the German officers were financed through the Office of the US Military Government for Germany OMGUS and settled as part of the occupation costs.

The only member of the Control Group without an OKH background was the former chief of the Wehrmacht High Command (OKW), Vice Admiral ret. D. Leopold Bürkner . The other members were the former OKH generals: General of the Infantry Hans von Greiffenberg , head of the OKH's operations department; Major General Burkhart Müller-Hillebrand , Head of the Organization Department of the OKH; Lieutenant General Oldwig Otto von Natzmer , troop leader in the OKH's transport department; Major General Hellmuth Reinhardt , Chief of Staff in the General Army Office of the OKH; Major General Alfred Toppe , head of department at the Quartermaster General in the OKH and Colonel Alfred Zerbel , head of the training department in the OKH. After Natzmer (1949), Zerbel (1949), Bürkner (1949), Greiffenberg (1951), Müller-Hillebrandt (1955), Reinhardt (1956) and Toppe (1957) left the Control Group , they were replaced by Rudolf Hofmann , Wilhelm Willemer , Ludwig Rüdt von Collenberg , Joachim Schwatlo-Gesterding , Alfred Gause and Alfred Philippi replaced. The Control Group existed until the end of 1958 and was replaced by a smaller liaison group from 1959 until the section was finally liquidated in 1961 , consisting of Franz Halder, Ludwig Rüdt von Collenberg and General Walter Warlimont , the former deputy chief, who had meanwhile been released from the Landsberg war crimes prison of the Wehrmacht Command Staff.

Halder's self-image and specifications for the work in the section

As early as 1946, the former Army Chief of Staff, Franz Halder, justified his leading role in the Operational History Program by saying that he wanted to “continue the fight against Bolshevism ”. In 1949, Halder saw his task as Topic Leader in working together with the Control Group to “contribute to clarifying the internal relationships of major military issues beyond the determination of individual facts”. According to the accounts of the military historians Bernd Wegner and Wolfram Wette , Halder was addressed as "Colonel General" while he was working for the Historical Division . They describe the historical picture with which Halder investigated the "connections of major military questions" as follows:

"The Wehrmacht as a whole, but above all the army command, [were] downright historical victims of Hitler , or at least misused instruments of his criminal policy." The "war [was] a fatality", if not a "necessary preventive strike ", in particular what concerns the German-Soviet war from 1941 onwards, above all because of the "dilettantism and [the] unteachability of Hitler".

After the release of many generals from captivity, the studies were increasingly carried out by “homeworkers”: In the spring of 1949, 132 officers, including 82 former generals and admirals, were active in this form. The Control Group checked the incoming work with regard to the “interpretation framework defined by Halder”. Accordingly, criticism of the operational decisions of the former commanders-in-chief was also undesirable. It should "avoid any public conflict between old leading soldiers". In case of doubt, concerns of a field marshal affected by criticism were made the standard of the text version. Text passages that are problematic in this regard, according to a confidential source to the historian Bernd Wegner, have been "redrafted in abbreviated form in line with the observation made by Mr. Field Marshal".

The extent to which this self-image, represented by Halder, dominated a war history that highlighted the operational abilities of the Wehrmacht generals, is shown by an instruction from former Field Marshal Georg von Küchler, which he issued on March 7, 1947 for the field reports and treatises to be written in his area of ​​the Garmisch camp . According to this, the principle should apply that the presentation of historical truth should be combined with the praise of one's own army:

“No experience should be recorded, no management secrets should be explained or even divulged, but (in the manner of the Reich Archives about the First World War ) facts, the course of the fighting and the events on the German side should be described. [...] The German deeds are seen and determined from the German point of view and a memorial is thereby set for our troops. [...] The achievements of our troops are to be duly appreciated and emphasized. The truth must of course not be disregarded by this. "

Main focus of content, studies and reception in the US Army

The first studies of the former German Wehrmacht officers, compiled from mid-1946, were intended to be additions to the US armed forces' own studies of operations in Europe or the Western Front from the perspective of the enemy. They depict the most important operations in which German and American units faced each other on the Western Front. Accordingly, a working group was formed on the operations in Normandy, in northern and southern France, in the Ardennes, in the Rhineland and in Central Europe. In August 1946, a seventh working group was added, which dealt with the history of the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW), the Army (OKH), the Navy, the Air Force and the Commander-in-Chief West, the Reserve Army and the Todt Organization . With the intensification of the American-Soviet antagonism at the beginning of the Cold War , investigations came to the fore which exploited the German experience in Operation Barbarossa . "In the course of the emerging and worsening East-West conflict," said the former head of the Military History Research Office , Othmar Hackl , "the G2 officers of the US Army involved in military reconnaissance" now also issued corresponding orders. According to the military historians Michael Epkenhans and John Zimmermann , the studies carried out under Halder's direction should “be helpful for a possible new war against the Soviet Union”. As a rule, the studies prepared were not published; It was not until 1979 that a smaller part of it was published in a 24-volume work. In addition, in connection with the option of a war against the Soviet Union, the generals were asked "also about current problems of operational planning and the possibilities of a German defense contribution".

According to the US historian Charles B. Burdick , the Korean War in 1950 in particular increased the demand from various US armed forces for studies on “questions about the German experience in the guerrilla war in Russia, about supply issues in difficult terrain and about psychological issues Warfare against non-Western peoples ”. Many of these reports were used in the US Army for the training of soldiers of all ranks. Only 66 of the two and a half thousand studies dealt with the high command of the army, general staff service and general staff training. The military historian Hackl regarded these as valuable sources of military history and published some of them in 1999.

The studies of former officers on the Wehrmacht's war against the Red Army were used as educational and training materials for purposes of the US Army. In this context, a number of authors were regularly invited as guest lecturers at military schools and training institutions of the US Army in Europe and Germany between 1952 and 1958 in order to give lectures there. The senior officers who regularly visited the USA on lecture tours included, for example, Anton von Bechtolsheim , Friedrich von Boetticher , Hasso Freiherr von Puttkamer , Hellmut Schultze , Günther Reichhelm and Fridolin von Senger and Etterlin , who spoke about the strategy of the Wehrmacht against the Red Army Army lectured. Schultze trained members of the American armed forces on the subject of “Russian Partisans. Their Operations and German Countermeasures "(German:" Russian Partisans. Your Operations and German Countermeasures "), Reichhelm spoke about the" fighting qualities of the Russian soldier ", von Puttkamer about Soviet interrogation methods and methods of indoctrination of prisoners of war and von Boetticher about the importance of the Ground war . What the studies on Operation Barbarossa had in common was the narrative of the “Asian East”, which the Wehrmacht had to deal with in its fight against the Red Army. They consistently drew a stereotypical picture of the typical soldier of the Soviet armed forces, which was composed of the three leitmotifs “closeness to nature”, “contempt for people and death” as well as an overflowing “crowd”. It was their natural instincts, indifference to their own death and the abandonment of an individual character for the benefit of the mass of the Red Army that made them relentless fighters and dangerous opponents. For example, the former infantry general Friedrich Fangohr warned in his study “Russia as a Combat Room” (1950/1951) that because of the “much lower cultural level” of the people there, western soldiers would always encounter problems that civilized soldiers did not expect. The Russian soldier, because of his naive closeness to nature, possesses a talent for camouflaging and exploiting the terrain that is not given by Western soldiers. He behaves towards "heat and cold [...] just as indifferent as towards hunger and thirst". Former Colonel General Erhard Raus , in his study on the “peculiarities of Russian warfare” (1950), assessed as one of these peculiarities that Russian soldiers would show no empathy for killed comrades. He described the fighting style of the soldiers of the Red Army with the picture: “The crowd continued to swell until the supply of people was used up”.

The investigations of the German officers became important for the operational thinking of the US Army. In 1954 this integrated the “concept of mobile defense”, which the Wehrmacht had practiced when withdrawing from the occupied Soviet territories, into its official operational doctrine. According to the US Army manual, this form of mobile defense should “direct the attacking troops into terrain that is less favorable to them”, while the “bulk of the defending troops are used in offensive actions in order to destroy the enemy at one point in time and in one place which is particularly favorable for the defenders. ”Furthermore, references to successful mobile defense operations of the Wehrmacht in the“ Military Review ”of the United States Army Combined Arms Center , a training center of the US Army, and the interest in German studies on the Eastern War among the lecturers of the Command and General Staff College (CGSC) the importance of these studies for American operations doctrine. Hasso Neitzel's study "Rear Area Security" and Oldwig von Natzmer's study "Operations of Encircled Forces: German Experiences in Russia" on the battle of the German 1. Panzer Army deployed near Kamenets-Podolsk in March / April 1944.

The apologetic image represented in the German studies of a purely professionally operating Wehrmacht without any responsibility for the character of "Operation Barbarossa" as a war of annihilation continued to have an impact in American historians close to the US Army until the 1990s. The retired Lieutenant Colonel (Lieutenant Colonel) Peter G. Tsouras took over on the basis of German studies in his books “The Anvil of War. German Generalship in Defense on the Eastern Front "(1994) and" Fighting in Hell. The German Ordeal on the Eastern Front ”(1995) the corresponding patterns of interpretation of the former Wehrmacht generals: Hitler's unqualified interference in operational issues led to defeat, the withdrawal from Russia was carried out competently, even“ heroically ”despite the most adverse conditions, and the brutality of the Warfare is due to the combination of adverse geographical conditions with an allegedly almost inhuman mentality of the local population.

This connection of supposedly purely operational historiography with such historical images on the one hand and the fading out of one's own involvement in war crimes on the other hand because of the common intersection of interests was made possible: The US Army was interested in as much information as possible from motivated ex-generals of the Wehrmacht. The latter provided this combined with an effort - according to the historian Esther-Julia Howell in her relevant dissertation - “to present herself as apolitical and completely irresponsible for the preparation and course of the Second World War”. The Americans let them go, not least because “the argumentation strategy of Germany as a bulwark against the East was linked to a long-established view of the world, which was also updated by the Cold War.” This interest bond is the core of cooperation. The historian Bernd Wegner emphasizes that the cooperation with the Historical Division for the German officers was never really "an act that was apolitical or of scientific interest".

Most of the studies were received positively by the US Army. Criticism worth mentioning first came up in the mid-1950s. The head of the Writing Section of the Foreign Military Studies Branch in Washington, George C. Blau, pointed out deficiencies in the study by former Major General Alexander Ratcliffe on the partisan war in the Balkans. This was "completely worthless" as the basis for the history of the German fight against partisans, since it hardly took into account the numerous original documents made available. Blau also criticized the additions made by Franz Halder and Gotthard Heinrici to a study originally written by Adolf Heusinger on the campaign in Russia in 1941/1942. This too did not take sufficient account of the source material provided, so that the various operational phases of the first year of the war were drawn too imprecisely.

Dissolution of the Section 1961 / Journalism in the Civil Sector

At the end of 1961 the Operational History (German) Section was dissolved. The reasons for the dissolution of the German section lay in the drastic cuts in the US Army's budget that had taken place since the mid-1950s and the resulting austerity constraints. In addition, the introduction of tactical nuclear weapons relativized the importance of the concept of mobile defense and seemed to make the elaboration of further German studies unnecessary. By 1961, more than 300 high Wehrmacht officers had worked out more than two and a half thousand studies as part of their work for the war history department of the American armed forces. After the US Army discontinued the Operational History (German) Section in 1961 , it handed over the German copies of the studies to the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1960s. They were adopted by the Bundeswehr's Military History Research Office . Some of the studies, especially the writings from Halder's possession and from the estates of other officers, are in the Federal Archives-Military Archives in Freiburg.

Halder himself was opposed to submitting the studies to the Military History Research Office and further elaboration there, as he did not share its socio-scientific understanding of military history. As recently as November 1957, he had emphasized that the operational work had been carried out from the start with the perspective of “passing on to posterity the unchangeable concept of leadership, as it has developed in the German General Staff for generations”. For this reason, the German side demanded that the Americans “should be made available to a later resurrected German armed forces”. But already a year later he complained about a possible future handover to the Military History Research Office and the continuation of the military history studies there, he feared that in this case "what I hoped to be able to prevent would happen after all, namely, that the writing of history, which my working group served for ten years and with which we hoped to promote leadership training in the Bundeswehr, is now disappearing behind the bars of the Freiburg 'research institute' and will stagnate for many years ”. This ended Halder's "role of a doyen of German war historiography on the Second World War" in the context of his work for the Historical Division, but his influence on the war history representations of military writers, memoirs, newspaper editors and historians remained considerable, right up to the adoption of his war interpretations in the representations by British military historian Liddell Hart .

Even while he was working in the Historical Division , Halder played a leading role in founding the working group for defense research in 1954 . He made sure that his fellow authors from the Historical Division joined the working group. Compared to civil historians, they had a great informational advantage because, as employees of the German section of this American war history department, they had exclusive access to the confiscated military files of the Wehrmacht, which civil historians only gradually gained from the end of the 1950s. This gave Halder and his group of authors advantages in their efforts to implement their own interpretations of the Wehrmacht's actions in the war. The main criterion of a “truthful writing of history” for the Wehrmacht's actions should be a strictly operational-historical approach based on the competent evaluation of archive material that was processed from a general perspective understood as purely professional and apolitical. The responsibility for war, crime and defeat was attributed to Hitler and his closest circle and, as Halder put it in 1953, “a memorial was to be placed on the superhuman achievement of the German soldier in the last world war”. Within this working group, numerous officers and employees of the German section of the American war history department continued their journalistic activities in magazines and book series even after the German section was dissolved in 1961.

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ On the preparatory work of this historical commission in detail 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. 63–78.
  2. ↑ Potter was "Theater Historian" of the United States Forces from January 1, 1946, European Theater (USFET) of the Historical Division and from January 1, 1947 until his departure in 1951, "Chief Historian" of the United States European Command (EUCOM) . See 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. 351.
  3. ↑ 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. 89f. u. Pp. 309–314 (there a precise chronology of the war-historical cooperation including changing names of war-historical institutions and frequent changes of personnel); also Charles B. Burdick: From sword to pen. German prisoners of war in the service of preparing American war historiography on World War II. The organizational development of the Operational History (German) Section. In: Military history messages. Vol. 10, 1971, Volume 2, pp. 70-73; see also Othmar Hackl: General Staff, General Staff Service and General Staff Training in the Reichswehr and Wehrmacht 1919–1945. Studies of German generals and general staff officers in the Historical Division of the US Army in Europe 1946–1961. Biblio, Osnabrück 1999, p. 5 ff. And p. 25 ff.
  4. ↑ 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. 89f.
  5. ↑ 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. 310.
  6. ↑ Charles B. Burdick: From sword to pen. German prisoners of war in the service of preparing American war historiography on World War II. The organizational development of the Operational History (German) Section. P. 70 ff .; Wolfram Wette : The Wehrmacht. Enemy images, war of extermination, legends. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2002, p. 226.
  7. ↑ a b c d 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, pp. 287-302, here p. 294.
  8. ↑ 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. 331f. (Biogram of Erfurth, there also information about his previous function as head of the war history department).
  9. ↑ 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. 118.
  10. ↑ 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. 120.
  11. ↑ 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. 119f.
  12. ^ So Eisenhower in a letter to Harold E. Potter from April 11, 1947, quoted from 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. 119.
  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. 120f. u. P. 154f. - The Special Arbitration Chamber began its work at the end of 1947, but was dissolved in May 1948 after many disagreements and quarrels.
  14. ^ Gerhard Greiner, Josef Henke, Klaus Oldenhage: The Federal Archives and its holdings. 3. Edition. Boldt, Boppard am Rhein 1977, p. 418.
  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. 124.
  16. ↑ 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. 100.
  17. ↑ a b 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, pp. 287-302, here p. 292 f.
  18. ↑ 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. 125 f.
  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, p. 124 and p. 323 (listing of the members), p. 341 (on Reinhardt, who was obviously forgotten in the listing, p. 323).
  20. ↑ 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. 138 u. P. 323.
  21. ↑ Charles B. Burdick: From sword to pen. German prisoners of war in the service of preparing American war historiography on World War II. The organizational development of the Operational History (German) Section. P. 73.
  22. ↑ a b 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, pp. 287-302, here p. 293.
  23. ↑ 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, pp. 287-302, here p. 291 f. and p. 295; furthermore Wolfram Wette: The Wehrmacht. Enemy images, war of extermination, legends. P. 227 f.
  24. ↑ a b c 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, pp. 287-302, here p. 295.
  25. ↑ 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. 96–99.
  26. ↑ a b 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, pp. 287-302, p. 288.
  27. ↑ Othmar Hackl: General Staff, General Staff Service and General Staff Training in the Reichswehr and Wehrmacht 1919–1945. Studies of German generals and general staff officers in the Historical Division of the US Army in Europe 1946–1961. P. 5.
  28. ↑ Michael Epkenhans / John Zimmermann: The Wehrmacht - War and Crime . Reclam, Ditzingen 2019, ISBN 978-3-15-011238-0 , p. 126.
  29. ↑ 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, pp. 287-302. here p. 297, FN 49. Wegner names the 24-volume edition project by Donald S. Detwiler u. a .: World War II. German Military Studies. A Collection of 213 Special Reports on the Second World War prepared by former Officers of the Wehrmacht for the United States Army. 24 volumes. Garland, New York / London 1979.
  30. ↑ Charles B. Burdick: From sword to pen. German prisoners of war in the service of preparing American war historiography on World War II. The organizational development of the Operational History (German) Section. P. 78.
  31. ↑ Othmar Hackl : General Staff, General Staff Service and General Staff Training in the Reichswehr and Wehrmacht 1919–1945. Studies of German generals and general staff officers in the Historical Division of the US Army in Europe 1946–1961. P. 12 f. Excerpts from 19 of these 66 studies from p. 26.
  32. ↑ 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. 210ff.
  33. ↑ 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. 224ff.
  34. ↑ 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. 227.
  35. ↑ 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. 224 and p. 227 f.
  36. ↑ 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. 246–250.
  37. ↑ 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. 245 u. P. 248.
  38. ↑ 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. 249.
  39. ↑ 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. 234 u. P. 238 f. (there quote). The original English text in the Department of the Army Manual, FM 100-5. Field Service Regulations: Operations 1954, p. 120, reads: “Mobile defensive is that method of defense in which forward defensive positions are occupied by the minimum forces necessary to warn of impending attack, canalize the attacking forces into less favorable terrain, and block or impede the attacking forces, while the bulk of the defending forces is employed in offensive action to destroy the enemy at the time and place most favorable to the defender. "
  40. ↑ 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. 239.
  41. ↑ 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. 235.
  42. ↑ 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. 306 f .; Howell refers to Tsouras: The Anvil of War, pp. 9 u. Tsouras: Fighting in Hell, p. 9, where Tsouras writes in his “Introduction”: “Russia in its every harsh dimension was totally at the war with the Germans - the land in its primitive distances; the climate in its brutal extremes; and above all, is people in their almost inhuman ability to absorb far more punishment than Germany's western opponents and then lethally to strike back. Russia was a monster the Germans could not tame - a monster that eventually devoured its attacker “.
  43. ↑ 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. 266 and P. 268.
  44. ↑ 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, pp. 287-302, here p. 290.
  45. ↑ 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. 134 f. - The criticism relates to Ratcliffe's study Partisan Warfare: A Treatise Based on Combat Experience in the Balkans 1954.
  46. ↑ 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. 135.
  47. ↑ 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, 133-138.
  48. ↑ 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. 240.
  49. ↑ 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. Oldenbourg, Munich 1995, pp. 287-302, here p. 289.
  50. ^ Designation "Operational History (German) Section of the US Historical Division", signature ZA 1; Gerhard Greiner, Josef Henke, Klaus Oldenhage: The Federal Archives and its holdings. P. 418 f .; see also Peter Lieb : Conventional War or Weltanschauung war. Warfare and the fight against partisans in France 1943/44. Oldenbourg, Munich, p. 600.
  51. ^ Gerd R. Ueberschär: Colonel General Franz Halder. Chief of Staff, opponent and prisoner of Hitler. Musterschmidt, Göttingen 1991, p. 95.
  52. ↑ Wolfram Wette: The Wehrmacht. Enemy images, war of extermination, legends. P. 228.
  53. ↑ 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, pp. 287-302, here p. 298.
  54. ^ 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. Akadademie, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-05-004932-8 , pp. 45–60, here p. 51.
  55. ↑ 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. (Citation), pp. 280-284, et al. P. 304 f.
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