Wehrmacht Academy

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The Wehrmacht Academy was a higher educational institution of the Wehrmacht from 1935 to 1938. Its task was to introduce general staff officers of all branches of the armed forces to an overall strategic leadership approach, to discuss questions of overall warfare from political, economic and technical aspects and to give graduates a position in the high command prepare for the armed forces . Forerunners of this facility, such as the so-called "Reinhardt courses" , already existed in the Reichswehr .

Forerunner: Reinhardt and Wachenfeld courses

The institution of a central general staff had been forbidden to the German Reich by the provisions of the Versailles Treaty ; As a result, a training center for general staff officers was also banned. However, the armed forces circumvented this ban by setting up the so-called troop office within the Reichswehr Ministry, which camouflaged the business of the Great General Staff. The training took place in 1920 on the leader assistant training locally at the various military district commands , and later with the group commands instead. However, the later further training of the Fuehrer's assistants and General Staff officers caused problems. The long-distance tasks and staff trips planned for this remained limited in their effect. General of the infantry Walther Reinhardt , the former chief of the army command, tried to remedy the situation after his departure. He found the training of general staff officers to be too technical and one-sided, which is why he considered it necessary to sharpen their awareness of the big questions of overall warfare - economy, logistics, history. To this end, he started a kind of university course in Berlin ; later these became known as "Reinhardt courses".

Every year ten army and two naval officers were sent to Berlin based on Reinhardt's proposals and officially enrolled at Humboldt University . There they attended seminars that were determined by the troop office. Two further seminars of your choice remained optional. Lectures on operational, war history and general topics were held once a week. On another day, Reinhardt initially reserved himself lectures on the history of war and operational principles. In addition, there was an exercise trip lasting several weeks between the semesters. In order to promote the perspective and the language skills of the course participants, the officers were sent on a trip abroad for two months at the end of the course. The destination of the trip was left to the participants individually.

The aim was to promote critical thinking in larger contexts, including within the entire Reichswehr. After Reinhardt died unexpectedly in 1930, General Edmund Wachenfeld took over the leadership of the course, which was now called the "Advanced Training Course for Officers" (often also called "Wachenfeld Course" for short) and took place for the last time in 1933.

Well-known participants in the courses included the later field marshals Albert Kesselring and Wilhelm List , as well as the later generals Hans-Gustav Felber , Waldemar Erfurth and Hans von Greiffenberg . A teacher for constitutional, parliamentary and historical lectures was the later first Federal President Theodor Heuss , who later reported positively on this.

Wehrmacht Academy

General of the Infantry Wilhelm Adam (1938), head of the Wehrmacht Academy

After the National Socialists came to power, the Wehrmacht began to rearm . The army , navy and soon the newly founded air force therefore forced the training of their officers, which also included general staff officers. At the same time, the Wehrmacht Office in the Reichswehr Ministry was expanded as the central office for all Wehrmacht parts. There was also a national defense department (L), in which one saw the nucleus of a superordinate “Wehrmacht General Staff”. In order to train well-trained officers for this institution and other offices at ministry level, Major General Walter von Reichenau (later General Field Marshal ), as head of the Wehrmacht Office, had prepared the establishment of an academy that spanned the armed forces. The opening of the new Wehrmacht Academy as the “leadership school of the entire Wehrmacht” finally took place on October 1, 1935. The Imperial Defense College founded in 1927 served as a model in a certain way. It is also possible that the American War College was the godfather, which had made a lasting impression on War Minister Werner von Blomberg on an earlier trip to America in 1931.

education

Head of the Academy, its own building in Berlin-Moabit referred was Infantry General Wilhelm Adam , who previously had been chief of the military office (1930-1933). The aim was to train general staff officers who were able to think within the framework of the entire Wehrmacht. To do this, you should familiarize yourself intensively with the other branches of service. In theory, after their actual general staff training, the officers should first prove themselves in active staff service within the framework of their armed forces and then attend the Wehrmacht Academy with some practical experience. After that, they were to be used in the Reichswehr Ministry, and from 1938 in the High Command of the Wehrmacht .

Since the participants were to be trained in science, technology, economics and politics, the training was designed to be very diverse. There were theoretical war games in which the economic and war potentials of the various states were analyzed, but also lectures on the top-level structure of armed forces or on the interaction of different branches of the armed forces. General of the Infantry Adam reserved the lecture on warfare for himself, in which he emphasized above all the relation to politics. The program was supplemented by speakers from various departments : university professors, military attachés , ministers and ambassadors. The lessons also took place through educational trips to the armaments industry as well as general staff trips. In addition, every participant was encouraged to learn a foreign language. However, the participants also devoted themselves to practical drafts. Work was carried out on a fictitious rule of "conduct of war" that was supposed to take into account all possible aspects - colonial war, coalitions, economic war, management of the armed forces.

A surviving lesson plan from the beginning of 1938 saw, for example, the subjects warfare, naval tactics (lecturer Vice Admiral Otto Groos ), air force command, European pact system (lecturer Ministerialdirektor Friedrich Gaus ), psychology and technology of propaganda (lecturer Emil Dovifat ), foreign policy situation (lecturer Ministerialdirektor Freiherr von Weizsäcker ), war economics, war and international law (lecturer Colonel Alfons Fonck ).

Participants and sphere of activity

Right from the start, the academy suffered from the fact that the armed forces did not send it to suitable officers. As a rule, the various personnel offices decided on the commanding of the candidates, but since the most qualified officers were indispensable in the development phase of the armed forces, the best candidates were not sent. Since there was neither an entrance nor a final examination, but only a general assessment at the end of the course, no selection could take place in this way either. Even General of the Infantry Adam described the course participants as "mediocre".

In total, only three one-year courses were completed. In each there were two air force and naval officers and six army officers. The total number of participants was therefore 30 general staff officers. Six officials from different ministries also took part in the last course. The individual participants can no longer be determined from the sources, well-known graduates of the Wehrmacht Academy were:

The Academy's sphere of activity was accordingly limited, so that there could not be any lasting impulses for the development of an overall strategic management approach. That this represented a deficit became evident during the Second World War , when the army, air force and navy repeatedly had to work closely together. Officers like General of the Infantry Waldemar Erfurth regretted in retrospect the lack of a facility that spanned the armed forces, such as the Wehrmacht Academy, which he took for granted in modern armed forces, as well as a central general staff.

Closure of the facility

The foundation of the Wehrmacht Academy took place in a phase of antagonism between the Wehrmacht Office in the Reich Ministry of War on the one hand and the three armed forces on the other. The former claimed the command of the entire armed forces and prepared the establishment of a Wehrmacht general staff, which was capable of curtailing the powers of the individual armed forces high command. The army feared for its dominant position of precedence within the armed forces and the navy worried about its independence. The Air Force was the Academy - especially in its first Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Walther Wever - more receptive to because she was naturally relies on to support the army and the navy and combat the economy of an opponent in a strategic air war. Your task therefore required thinking on a larger scale anyway. But after Wever's death, Hermann Göring, as Reich Aviation Minister and Commander in Chief of the Air Force, showed no interest in handing over powers to the Wehrmacht Office.

Even Reich Minister of War Werner von Blomberg , to whom the Wehrmacht Academy was subordinate, only visited the facility once a year for about half an hour. General Adam also wrote that he had never received any instructions from Blomberg, so Blomberg hardly cared about the academy. Shortly after the Blomberg-Fritsch crisis , the War Academy was therefore closed on March 31, 1938.

literature

  • Horst Boog : The German Air Force leadership 1935-1945 - leadership problems, top structure, general staff training. (= Contributions to military and war history. Volume 21). Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-421-01905-3 .
  • Waldemar Erfurth : The history of the German general staff from 1918 to 1945. Verlag Musterschmidt, Göttingen 1957.
  • Hansgeorg Model : The German General Staff Officer - His selection and training in the Reichswehr, Wehrmacht and Bundeswehr. Bernard & Graefe Verlag für Wehrwesen, Frankfurt am Main 1968.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hansgeorg Model: The German General Staff Officer - His selection and training in the Reichswehr, Wehrmacht and Bundeswehr. Frankfurt am Main 1968, p. 61 f.
  2. ↑ Waldemar Erfurth: The history of the German General Staff from 1918 to 1945. Göttingen 1957, p. 195.
  3. ↑ Hansgeorg Model: The German General Staff Officer - His selection and training in the Reichswehr, Wehrmacht and Bundeswehr. Frankfurt am Main 1968, p. 63.
  4. ↑ Theodor Heuss: Soldierhood in our time. Tübingen 1929, p. 27 f.
  5. ↑ Alfred Wätzig: people, nation, state - a contribution to national political training of our young compatriots. Stuttgart 1936, p. 83.
  6. ↑ Waldemar Erfurth: The history of the German General Staff from 1918 to 1945. Göttingen 1957, p. 63, 195.
  7. ↑ Geoffrey P. Megargee: Hitler and the Generals - The Struggle for the Leadership of the Wehrmacht 1933-1945. Munich / Vienna 2006, p. 43 f.
  8. ^ Kirstin A. Schäfer: Werner von Blomberg - Hitler's first field marshal. Paderborn 2005, p. 151.
  9. ↑ a b c Federal Archives: Wehrmacht Academy - Introduction. on: argus.bundesarchiv.de
  10. ↑ a b c d Hansgeorg Model: The German General Staff Officer - His selection and training in the Reichswehr, Wehrmacht and Bundeswehr. Frankfurt am Main 1968, p. 106.
  11. ^ A b Horst Boog: The German Air Force Command 1935–1945. Stuttgart 1982, p. 406 f.
  12. ^ Andreas Toppe: Military and international law of war - legal norm, technical discourse and war practice in Germany 1899-1940. Munich 2008, p. 252 f.
  13. ^ A b Horst Boog: The German Air Force Command 1935–1945. Stuttgart 1982, p. 406.
  14. ^ A b Horst Boog: The German Air Force Command 1935–1945. Stuttgart 1982, p. 409.
  15. ↑ Waldemar Erfurth: The history of the German General Staff from 1918 to 1945. Göttingen 1957, p. 196.