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126-765: With a production rate of 666 pieces per month as of October 1942, 6,000 were produced until October 1943. A small quantity of these Romanian weapons was also used by the Wehrmacht during the last two years of the Second World War. A carbine version of the Orita was designed, chambered in 9×23mm Steyr . Only one prototype was built; it is preserved in the National Military Museum in Bucharest . This article relating to submachine guns

252-468: A Munich café who told him: "You English were so foolish. If only you had sided with us. Together we could have defeated Bolshevism and ruled the earth!"—adding in for good measure that "The Jew is a louse!" As a result of this incident, Kershaw became keen to learn how and why ordinary people in Germany could support Nazism . His wife, Dame Betty Kershaw , is a former professor of nursing and dean of

378-857: A joint campaign with the Italian Army , and may be considered a separate theatre . More than 6,000,000 soldiers were wounded during the conflict, while more than 11,000,000 became prisoners. In all, approximately 5,318,000 soldiers from Germany and other nationalities fighting for the German armed forces—including the Waffen-SS , Volkssturm and foreign collaborationist units—are estimated to have been killed in action, died of wounds, died in custody or gone missing in World War II. Included in this number are 215,000 Soviet citizens conscripted by Germany. According to Frank Biess, German casualties took

504-500: A " Second Thirty Years' War " reflects many similarities with Ernst Nolte , A. J. P. Taylor and Arno J. Mayer who have also advanced the concept of a "Thirty Years' Crisis" to explain European history between 1914 and 1945. In the functionalism versus intentionalism debate, Kershaw has argued for a synthesis of the two schools, though leaning towards the functionalist school. Despite some disagreements, Kershaw has called Mommsen

630-527: A "good personal friend" and an "important further vital stimulus to my own work on Nazism". Kershaw has argued in his two-volume biography of Hitler that Hitler did play a decisive role in the development of policies of genocide, but also argued that many of the measures that led to the Holocaust were undertaken by many lower-ranking officials without direct orders from Hitler in the expectation that such steps would win them favour. Though Kershaw does not deny

756-465: A 1991 book about Hitler, Kershaw has argued that Hitler's leadership is a model example of Max Weber 's theory of charismatic leadership . Kershaw's 1991 book Hitler: A Profile in Power marked a change for him from writing about how people viewed Hitler to writing about Hitler. In his two-volume biography of Hitler published in 1998 and 2000, Kershaw stated, "What I tried to do was to embed Hitler into

882-606: A 2008 interview, Kershaw lists as his major intellectual influences Martin Broszat , Hans Mommsen , Alan Milward , Timothy Mason , Hans-Ulrich Wehler , William Carr , and Jeremy Noakes. In the same interview, Kershaw expressed strong approval of Mason's "Primacy of Politics" concept, in which it was German Big Business that served the Nazi regime rather than the other way around, against the orthodox Marxist "Primacy of Economics" concept. Despite his praise and admiration for Mason, in

1008-410: A backward country and had no equivalent of the "cumulative radicalization" towards increasingly irrational goals that Kershaw sees as characteristic of Nazi Germany. In Kershaw's opinion, Stalin's power corresponded to Max Weber 's category of bureaucratic authority, whereas Hitler's power corresponded to Weber's category of charismatic authority. In Kershaw's view, what happened in Germany after 1933

1134-536: A clandestine cadre of air force officers in the early 1920s. These officers saw the role of an air force as winning air superiority, strategic bombing, and close air support. That the Luftwaffe did not develop a strategic bombing force in the 1930s was not due to a lack of interest, but because of economic limitations. The leadership of the Navy led by Grand Admiral Erich Raeder , a close protégé of Alfred von Tirpitz ,

1260-468: A devastating critique of Daniel Goldhagen's simplistic and misleading interpretation of the Holocaust. Their contribution to the debate is, in my view, indispensable". Like Broszat, Kershaw sees the structures of the Nazi state as far more important than the personality of Hitler (or any one else) as an explanation for the way Nazi Germany developed. Kershaw subscribes to the view argued by Broszat and

1386-559: A distant and remote leader standing in many ways above his system, whose charisma and ideas served to set the general tone of politics. As an example of how Hitler's power functioned, Kershaw used Hitler's directive to the Gauleiters Albert Forster and Arthur Greiser to " Germanize " the part of north-western Poland annexed to Germany in 1939 within the next 10 years with his promise that "no questions would be asked" about how this would be done. As Kershaw notes,

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1512-664: A few of the Wehrmacht ' s upper leadership went on trial for war crimes, despite evidence suggesting that more were involved in illegal actions. According to Ian Kershaw , most of the three million Wehrmacht soldiers who invaded the USSR participated in war crimes. The German term "Wehrmacht " stems from the compound word of German : wehren , "to defend" and Macht , "power, force". It has been used to describe any nation's armed forces; for example, Britische Wehrmacht meaning "British Armed Forces". The Frankfurt Constitution of 1849 designated all German military forces as

1638-453: A racially cleansed Volksgemeinschaft provided the impetus for German officials to carry out increasingly extreme measures to win his approval, which ended with the Holocaust. The Israeli historian Otto Dov Kulka has praised the concept of "working towards the Führer" as the best way of understanding how the Holocaust occurred, combining the best features and avoiding the weaknesses of both

1764-527: A role in the day-to-day administration of the government of Nazi Germany . Kershaw's way of explaining this paradox is his theory of "Working Towards the Führer", the phrase being taken from a 1934 speech by the Prussian civil servant Werner Willikens : Everyone who has the opportunity to observe it knows that the Fuhrer can hardly dictate from above everything which he intends to realize sooner or later. On

1890-533: A scathing criticism of Gerhard Ritter 's claim that one "madman" (i.e. Hitler) "single-handedly" caused the Second World War in Europe, and added that he found the historical approach of Ritter's arch-enemy Fritz Fischer to be a far better way of understanding and recoiling German history. Along the same lines, Kershaw criticised the 1946 statement by the German historian Friedrich Meinecke that Nazism

2016-408: A single Joint Chief of Staff, Hitler refused. Even after the defeat at Stalingrad, Hitler refused, stating that Göring as Reichsmarschall and Hitler's deputy, would not submit to someone else or see himself as an equal to other service commanders. However, a more likely reason was Hitler feared it would break his image of having the "Midas touch" concerning military strategy. With the creation of

2142-697: A sudden jump with the defeat of the Sixth Army at Stalingrad in January 1943, when 180,310 soldiers were killed in one month. Among the 5.3 million Wehrmacht casualties during the Second World War, more than 80 per cent died during the last two years of the war. Approximately three-quarters of these losses occurred on the Eastern front (2.7 million) and during the final stages of the war between January and May 1945 (1.2 million). Jeffrey Herf wrote that: Whereas German deaths between 1941 and 1943 on

2268-604: A time frame of 10 years for remilitarization, but soon shortened it to four years. With the remilitarization of the Rhineland and the Anschluss , the German Reich's territory increased significantly, providing a larger population pool for conscription. Recruitment for the Wehrmacht was accomplished through voluntary enlistment and conscription, with 1.3 million being drafted and 2.4 million volunteering in

2394-568: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Wehrmacht The Wehrmacht ( German pronunciation: [ˈveːɐ̯maxt] , lit.   ' defence force ' ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer (army), the Kriegsmarine (navy) and the Luftwaffe (air force). The designation " Wehrmacht " replaced

2520-702: Is an English historian whose work has chiefly focused on the social history of 20th-century Germany . He is regarded by many as one of the world's foremost experts on Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany , and is particularly noted for his biographies of Hitler. He was a follower of the German historian Martin Broszat , and until his retirement, he was a professor at the University of Sheffield . Kershaw has called Broszat an "inspirational mentor" who did much to shape his understanding of Nazi Germany. Kershaw served as historical adviser on numerous BBC documentaries, notably The Nazis: A Warning from History and War of

2646-755: The Polnische Wehrmacht ('Polish Wehrmacht', 'Polish Defense Force') in German. In January 1919, after World War I ended with the signing of the armistice of 11 November 1918 , the armed forces were dubbed Friedensheer (peace army). In March 1919, the national assembly passed a law founding a 420,000-strong preliminary army, the Vorläufige Reichswehr . The terms of the Treaty of Versailles were announced in May, and in June, Germany signed

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2772-525: The Reichswehr , was established on 23 March 1921. General conscription was abolished under another mandate of the Versailles treaty. The Reichswehr was limited to 115,000 men, and thus the armed forces, under the leadership of Hans von Seeckt , retained only the most capable officers. The American historians Alan Millet and Williamson Murray wrote "In reducing the officers corps, Seeckt chose

2898-584: The Volksgemeinschaft (people's community) of Nazi propaganda , and that most Bavarians were far more interested in their day-to-day lives than in politics during the Third Reich. Kershaw concluded that the majority of Bavarians were either antisemitic or more commonly simply did not care about what was happening to the Jews. Kershaw also concluded that there was a fundamental difference between

3024-693: The Battle of Moscow , the Siege of Leningrad , Stalingrad , Tunis in North Africa , and the Battle of Kursk . The German Army was managed through mission-based tactics (rather than order-based tactics) which was intended to give commanders greater freedom to act on events and exploit opportunities. In public opinion, the German Army was, and sometimes still is, seen as a high-tech army. However, such modern equipment, while featured much in propaganda,

3150-515: The Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive bomber. The planes cooperated closely with the ground forces. Overwhelming numbers of fighters assured air-supremacy, and the bombers would attack command- and supply-lines, depots, and other support targets close to the front. The Luftwaffe would also be used to transport paratroopers, as first used during Operation Weserübung . Due to the Army's sway with Hitler,

3276-479: The Luftwaffe was often subordinated to the Army, resulting in it being used as a tactical support role and losing its strategic capabilities. The Western Allies' strategic bombing campaign against German industrial targets (particularly the round-the-clock Combined Bomber Offensive ) and Germany's Defence of the Reich deliberately forced the Luftwaffe into a war of attrition. With German fighter force destroyed,

3402-762: The OKH became the de facto Eastern Theatre higher-echelon command-organization for the Wehrmacht , excluding Waffen-SS except for operational and tactical combat purposes. The OKW conducted operations in the Western Theatre. The operations by the Kriegsmarine in the North and Mid-Atlantic can also be considered as separate theatres, considering the size of the area of operations and their remoteness from other theatres. The Wehrmacht fought on other fronts, sometimes three simultaneously; redeploying troops from

3528-471: The SS and Wehrmacht , many SS officers were former army officers, which ensured continuity and understanding between the two. Throughout the war, army and SS soldiers worked together in various combat situations, creating bonds between the two groups. Guderian noted that every day the war continued the Army and the SS became closer together. Towards the end of the war, army units would even be placed under

3654-599: The SS was to be "procured from the Wehrmacht upon payment", however "in peacetime, no organizational connection with the Wehrmacht exists." The army was however allowed to check the budget of the SS and inspect the combat readiness of the SS troops. In the event of mobilization, the Waffen-SS field units could be placed under the operational control of the OKW or the OKH. All decisions regarding this would be at Hitler's personal discretion. Though there existed conflict between

3780-445: The SS were stepped up as well. Following the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, fitness and physical health standards for Wehrmacht recruits were drastically lowered, with the regime going so far as to create "special diet" battalions for men with severe stomach ailments. Rear-echelon personnel were more often sent to front-line duty wherever possible, especially during the final two years of the war where, inspired by constant propaganda,

3906-539: The Soviet Union (1941) and North Africa (1941/42) are regarded by historians as acts of boldness. At the same time, the extent of advances strained the Wehrmacht's capacity to the breaking point, culminating in its first major defeat in the Battle of Moscow (1941); by late 1942, Germany was losing the initiative in all theatres. The German operational art proved no match to that of the Allied coalition , making

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4032-662: The Soviet Union , including the Caucasian Muslim Legion , Turkestan Legion , Crimean Tatars, ethnic Ukrainians and Russians, Cossacks , and others who wished to fight against the Soviet regime or who were otherwise induced to join. Between 15,000 and 20,000 anti-communist White émigrés who had left Russia after the Russian Revolution joined the ranks of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS , with 1,500 acting as interpreters and more than 10,000 serving in

4158-491: The Spanish Civil War . The effectiveness of officer training and recruitment by the Wehrmacht has been identified as a major factor in its early victories as well as its ability to keep the war going as long as it did even as the war turned against Germany. As the Second World War intensified, Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe personnel were increasingly transferred to the army, and "voluntary" enlistments in

4284-515: The Wehrmacht's weaknesses in strategy, doctrine, and logistics apparent. Closely cooperating with the SS and their Einsatzgruppen death squads, the German armed forces committed numerous war crimes (despite later denials and promotion of the myth of the clean Wehrmacht ). The majority of the war crimes took place in the Soviet Union, Poland, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Italy, as part of

4410-616: The antisemitism of the majority of ordinary people, who disliked Jews and were much coloured by traditional Catholic prejudices, and the ideological and far more radical völkische antisemitism of the Nazi Party , who hated Jews. Kershaw found that the majority of Bavarians disapproved of the violence of the Kristallnacht pogrom , and that despite the efforts of the Nazis, continued to maintain social relations with members of

4536-646: The war of annihilation against the Soviet Union, the Holocaust and Nazi security warfare . During World War II about 18 million men served in the Wehrmacht . By the time the war ended in Europe in May 1945, German forces (consisting of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine , the Luftwaffe , the Waffen-SS , the Volkssturm , and foreign collaborator units ) had lost approximately 11,300,000 men, about 5,318,000 of whom were missing, killed or died in captivity. Only

4662-524: The " battle of annihilation ", the Wehrmacht managed many lightning quick victories in the first year of World War II, prompting foreign journalists to create a new word for what they witnessed: Blitzkrieg . Germany's immediate military success on the field at the start of the Second World War coincides the favorable beginning they achieved during the First World War, a fact which some attribute to their superior officer corps. The Heer entered

4788-695: The "German Wehrmacht ", consisting of the Seemacht (sea force) and the Landmacht (land force). In 1919, the term Wehrmacht also appears in Article 47 of the Weimar Constitution , establishing that: "The Reich's President holds supreme command of all armed forces [i.e. the Wehrmacht ] of the Reich". From 1919, Germany's national defense force was known as the Reichswehr , a name that

4914-812: The "Goldhagen Controversy" of 1996, Kershaw took the view that his friend, Hans Mommsen , had "destroyed" Daniel Goldhagen 's arguments about a culture of "eliminationist antisemitism" in Germany during their frequent debates on German TV. Kershaw wrote that he agreed with Eberhard Jäckel 's assessment that Hitler's Willing Executioners was "simply a bad book". Though Kershaw had little positive to say about Goldhagen, he wrote that he felt that Norman Finkelstein's attack on Goldhagen had been over-the-top and did little to help historical understanding. Kershaw later went on to recommend Norman Finkelstein and Ruth Bettina Birn's extremely critical assessment of Goldhagen's book, A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth ; stating that "Finkelstein and Birn provide

5040-511: The "functionalist" and "intentionalist" theories. For Kershaw, Hitler held absolute power in Nazi Germany due to the "erosion of collective government in Germany", but his power over domestic politics became more challenging to exercise due to his preoccupation with military affairs, and the rival fiefdoms of the Nazi state fought each other and attempted to carry out Hitler's vaguely worded wishes and dimly defined orders by "Working Towards

5166-414: The "historical-philosophical", "political-ideological" and moral problems associated with the period, which thus poses special challenges for the historian. In The Nazi Dictatorship , Kershaw surveyed the historical literature and offered his own assessment of the pros and cons of the various approaches. In the 2015 edition of The Nazi Dictatorship , Kershaw, although he acknowledged plausible objections to

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5292-570: The "power blocs" was divided into factions). In Kershaw's opinion, the more "radical" blocs such as the SS/police and the Nazi Party gained increasing ascendancy over the other blocs after the 1936 economic crisis, and then increased their power at the expense of the other blocs. For Kershaw, the real significance of Hitler lies not in him, but rather in the German people's perception of him. In his biography of Hitler, Kershaw presented him as

5418-514: The 2000 edition of The Nazi Dictatorship , Kershaw was highly skeptical of Mason's "Flight into War" theory of an economic crisis in 1939 forcing the Nazi regime into war. In the Historikerstreit (Historians' Dispute) of 1986–1989, Kershaw followed Broszat in criticising the work and views of Ernst Nolte , Andreas Hillgruber , Michael Stürmer , Joachim Fest and Klaus Hildebrand , all of whom Kershaw saw as attempting to white-wash

5544-951: The Armed Forces, retaining the position until his suicide on 30 April 1945. The title of Commander-in-Chief was given to the Minister of the Reichswehr Werner von Blomberg , who was simultaneously renamed the Reich Minister of War. Following the Blomberg-Fritsch Affair , Blomberg resigned and Hitler abolished the Ministry of War. As a replacement for the ministry, the Wehrmacht High Command Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), under Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel ,

5670-568: The Bavarian Jewish community. Kershaw documented numerous campaigns on the part of the Nazi Party to increase antisemitic hatred, and noted that the overwhelming majority of antisemitic activities in Bavaria were the work of a small number of committed Nazi Party members. Overall, Kershaw noted that the popular mood towards Jews was indifference to their fate. Kershaw argued that during World War II , most Bavarians were vaguely aware of

5796-689: The British. Karl Doenitz , the U-Boat Chief, began unrestricted submarine warfare which cost the Allies 22,898 men and 1,315 ships. The U-boat war remained costly for the Allies until early spring of 1943 when the Allies began to use countermeasures against U-Boats such as the use of Hunter-Killer groups, airborne radar, torpedoes and mines like the FIDO . The submarine war cost the Kriegsmarine 757 U-boats, with more than 30,000 U-boat crewmen killed. In

5922-631: The Canadian historian Michael Kater . Kater contended that Kershaw downplayed the extent of popular antisemitism, and that though admitting that most of the "spontaneous" antisemitic actions of Nazi Germany were staged, argued that because these actions involved substantial numbers of Germans, it is wrong to see the extreme antisemitism of the Nazis as coming solely from above. Kulka argued that most Germans were more antisemitic than Kershaw portrayed them in Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in

6048-518: The Century . He taught a module titled "Germans against Hitler". Ian Kershaw was born on 29 April 1943 in Oldham , Lancashire, England, to Joseph Kershaw, a musician, and Alice (Robinson) Kershaw. He was educated at Counthill Grammar School , St Bede's College, Manchester , where he was taught by Father Geoffrey Burke the University of Liverpool (BA), and Merton College, Oxford ( DPhil ). He

6174-421: The Führer had three, which made things difficult for him, who knows? ... Even if Hitler could be regarded irrefutably as a sadomasochist, which scientific interest does that further? ... Does the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" thus become more easily understandable or the "twisted road to Auschwitz" become the one-way street of a psychopath in power? Kershaw shares Wehler's opinion, that, besides

6300-423: The German armed forces prior to 1941. With the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the government's positions changed. German propagandists wanted to present the war not as a purely German concern, but as a multi-national crusade against the so-called Jewish Bolshevism . Hence, the Wehrmacht and the SS began to seek out recruits from occupied and neutral countries across Europe: the Germanic populations of

6426-418: The German army's early success. In the strategies of the Blitzkrieg , the Wehrmacht combined the mobility of light tanks with airborne assault to quickly progress through weak enemy lines, enabling the German army to quickly take over Poland and France. These tanks were used to break through enemy lines, isolating regiments from the main force so that the infantry behind the tanks could quickly kill or capture

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6552-406: The German historian Hans Mommsen that Nazi Germany was a chaotic collection of rival bureaucracies in perpetual power struggles with each other. In Kershaw's view, the Nazi dictatorship was not a totalitarian monolith, but rather an unstable coalition of several blocs in a "power cartel" comprising the NSDAP , big business, the German state bureaucracy, the Army and SS /police agencies (and each of

6678-467: The German past in various ways. In the 1989 edition of The Nazi Dictatorship , Kershaw devoted a chapter towards rebutting the views of Nolte, Hillgruber, Fest, Hildebrand, and Stürmer. In regard to the debate between those who regard Nazism as a type of totalitarianism (and thus having more in common with the Soviet Union ) versus those who regard Nazism as a type of fascism (and thus having more in common with Fascist Italy ), Kershaw, though feeling that

6804-413: The Holocaust , but were vastly more concerned about and interested in the war than about the " Final Solution to the Jewish Question", making the notable claim that "the road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference." Kershaw's assessment that most Bavarians, and by implication Germans, were "indifferent" to the Shoah faced criticism from the Israeli historian Otto Dov Kulka and

6930-467: The Holocaust as a process rather than a plan is the antithesis of the extreme intentionalist approach as advocated by Lucy Dawidowicz , who argues that Hitler had decided upon genocide as early as November 1918, and that everything he did was directed towards that goal. Kershaw disagrees with Mommsen's "Weak Dictator" thesis: the idea that Hitler was a relatively unimportant player in Nazi Germany. He has agreed with his idea that Hitler did not play much of

7056-422: The Jews serving in the Reichswehr given an automatic and immediate dishonorable discharge . Again, on his own initiative Blomberg had the armed forces adopt Nazi symbols into their uniforms in May 1934. In August of the same year, on Blomberg's initiative and that of the Ministeramt chief General Walther von Reichenau , the entire military took the Hitler oath , an oath of personal loyalty to Hitler. Hitler

7182-403: The Marxist view of Nazism as the culmination of capitalism, then the Nazi phenomenon is universal, and fascism can come to power in any society where capitalism is the dominant economic system, whereas the view of Nazism as the culmination of Deutschtum means that the Nazi phenomenon is local and particular only to Germany. For Kershaw, any historian writing about the period had to take account of

7308-416: The Nazi era such as the debate between: As Kershaw noted, these divergent interpretations such as the differences between the functionalist view of the Holocaust as caused by a process and the intentionalist view of the Holocaust as caused by a plan are not easily reconciled, and that there was in his opinion the need for a guide to explain the complex historiography surrounding these issues. If one accepts

7434-399: The Nazi period could not be treated as a "normal" period of history, but he felt that historians should approach the Nazi period as they would any other period of history. In support of Broszat, Kershaw wrote that an Alltagsgeschichte approach to German history, provided that it did not lose sight of Nazi crimes, had much to offer as a way of understanding how those crimes occurred. During

7560-450: The Nazi state as articulated by the functionalists. Citing the work of the American historian Christopher Browning in his biography of Hitler, Kershaw argues that in the period 1939–1941 the phrase "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" was a "territorial solution", that such plans as the Nisko Plan and Madagascar Plan were serious and only in the latter half of 1941 did the phrase "Final Solution" come to refer to genocide. This view of

7686-441: The Netherlands and Norway were recruited largely into the SS , while "non-Germanic" people were recruited into the Wehrmacht . The "voluntary" nature of such recruitment was often dubious, especially in the later years of the war when even Poles living in the Polish Corridor were declared "ethnic Germans" and drafted. After Germany's defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad , the Wehrmacht also made substantial use of personnel from

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7812-920: The OKW, Hitler solidified his control over the Wehrmacht . Showing restraint at the beginning of the war, Hitler also became increasingly involved in military operations at every scale. Additionally, there was a clear lack of cohesion between the three High Commands and the OKW, as senior generals were unaware of the needs, capabilities and limitations of the other branches. With Hitler serving as Supreme Commander, branch commands were often forced to fight for influence with Hitler. However, influence with Hitler not only came from rank and merit but also who Hitler perceived as loyal, leading to inter-service rivalry, rather than cohesion between his military advisers. The German Army furthered concepts pioneered during World War I , combining ground ( Heer ) and air force ( Luftwaffe ) assets into combined arms teams. Coupled with traditional war fighting methods such as encirclements and

7938-403: The School of Nursing Studies at the University of Sheffield . In 1975, Kershaw joined Martin Broszat 's "Bavaria Project". During his work, Broszat encouraged Kershaw to examine how ordinary people viewed Hitler. As a result of his work in the 1970s on Broszat's "Bavaria Project", Kershaw wrote his first book on Nazi Germany , The "Hitler Myth": Image and Reality in the Third Reich , which

8064-448: The Third Reich , and that rather than "indifference" "passive complicity" would be a better term to describe the reaction of the German people to the Shoah . In 1985, Kershaw published a book on the historiography of Nazi Germany, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation , in which he reflected on the problems in historiography of the Nazi era. Kershaw noted the huge disparity of often incompatible views about

8190-426: The Third Reich . In this 1983 book, Kershaw examined the experience of the Nazi era at the grass-roots in Bavaria. Kershaw showed how ordinary people reacted to the Nazi dictatorship, looking at how people conformed to the regime and to the extent and limits of dissent. Kershaw described his subject as ordinary Bavarians: the muddled majority, neither full-hearted Nazis nor outright opponents, whose attitudes at one and

8316-436: The Western Allies had air supremacy over the battlefield, denying support to German forces on the ground and using its own fighter-bombers to attack and disrupt. Following the losses in Operation Bodenplatte in 1945, the Luftwaffe was no longer an effective force. The Treaty of Versailles disallowed submarines, while limiting the size of the Reichsmarine to six battleships, six cruisers, and twelve destroyers. Following

8442-400: The application of a common "totalitarianism" paradigm to both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, agreed with those who have generally made these criticisms "that it is in itself a wholly legitimate exercise, whatever essential differences existed in ideology and socio-economic structures, to compare the forms and techniques of rule in Germany under Hitler and the Soviet Union under Stalin". In

8568-446: The army that existed in World War I. In the 1920s, Seeckt and his officers developed new doctrines that emphasized speed, aggression, combined arms and initiative on the part of lower officers to take advantage of momentary opportunities. Though Seeckt retired in 1926, his influence on the army was still apparent when it went to war in 1939. Germany was forbidden to have an air force by the Versailles treaty; nonetheless, Seeckt created

8694-410: The beginning, there was friction between the SS and the army, as the army feared the SS would attempt to become a legitimate part of the armed forces of Nazi Germany, partly due to the fighting between the limited armaments, and the perceived fanaticism towards Nazism. However, on 17 August 1938, Hitler codified the role of the SS and the army in order to end the feud between the two. The arming of

8820-430: The coast of Norway, which had been occupied since 1940, convoys from North America to the Soviet port of Murmansk could be intercepted though the Tirpitz spent most of her career as fleet in being . After the appointment of Karl Dönitz as Grand Admiral of the Kriegsmarine (in the aftermath of the Battle of the Barents Sea ), Germany stopped constructing battleships and cruisers in favor of U-boats. Though by 1941,

8946-403: The command of the SS , in Italy and the Netherlands. The relationship between the Wehrmacht and the SS improved; however, the Waffen-SS was never considered "the fourth branch of the Wehrmacht ." The Wehrmacht directed combat operations during World War II (from 1 September 1939 – 8 May 1945) as the German Reich 's armed forces umbrella command-organization. After 1941

9072-447: The conquest of Europe, Kershaw tends towards the "continental" position. Kershaw agrees with the thesis that Hitler did formulate a programme for foreign policy based on an alliance with Britain to achieve the destruction of the Soviet Union , but has argued that a British lack of interest doomed the project, thus leading to the situation in 1939, where Hitler went to war with Britain, the country he wanted as an ally, not as an enemy, and

9198-412: The contrary, up till now, everyone with a post in the new Germany has worked best when he has, so to speak, worked towards the Fuhrer. Very often and in many spheres, it has been the case—in previous years as well—that individuals have simply waited for orders and instructions. Unfortunately, the same will be true in the future; but in fact, it is the duty of everybody to try to work towards the Fuhrer along

9324-449: The country he wanted as an enemy, the Soviet Union, as his ally. At the same time, Kershaw sees considerable merit in the work of such historians as Timothy Mason , Hans Mommsen , Martin Broszat and Wolfgang Schieder, who argue that Hitler had no "programme" in foreign policy, and instead contend that his foreign policy was simply a kneejerk reaction to domestic pressures in the economy and his need to maintain his popularity. Regarding

9450-559: The creation of the Wehrmacht , the navy was renamed the Kriegsmarine . With the signing of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement , Germany was allowed to increase its navy's size to be 35:100 tonnage of the Royal Navy, and allowed for the construction of U-boats. This was partly done to appease Germany, and because Britain believed the Kriegsmarine would not be able to reach the 35% limit until 1942. The navy

9576-571: The dictator's will". Kershaw has a low opinion of those who seek to provide "personalized" theories about the Holocaust and/or World War II as due to some defect, medical or otherwise, in Hitler. In his 2000 edition of The Nazi Dictatorship , Kershaw quoted with approval the dismissive remarks made by the German historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler in 1980 about such theories. Wehler wrote Does our understanding of National Socialist policies really depend on whether Hitler had only one testicle? ... Perhaps

9702-486: The different ways Forster and Greiser sought to "Germanize" their Gaue – with Forster simply having the local Polish population in his Gau signing forms saying they had "German blood", and Greiser carrying out a program of brutal ethnic cleansing of Poles in his Gau – showed both how Hitler set events in motion, and how his Gauleiters could use different methods in pursuit of what they believed to be Hitler's wishes. In Kershaw's opinion, Hitler's vision of

9828-621: The early stage of Operation Barbarossa in the Soviet Union (June 1941). After Hitler declared war on the United States in December 1941, the Axis powers found themselves engaged in campaigns against several major industrial powers while Germany was still in transition to a war economy. German units were then overextended, undersupplied, outmaneuvered, outnumbered and defeated by its enemies in decisive battles during 1941, 1942, and 1943 at

9954-555: The enemy troops. Originally outlawed by the Treaty of Versailles, the Luftwaffe was officially established in 1935, under the leadership of Hermann Göring . First gaining experience in the Spanish Civil War , it was a key element in the early Blitzkrieg campaigns (Poland, France 1940, USSR 1941). The Luftwaffe concentrated production on fighters and (small) tactical bombers, like the Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter and

10080-476: The ethnic cleansing campaign of Gauleiter Arthur Greiser in the Warthegau region annexed to Germany from Poland in 1939 led to a campaign of genocide by 1941, Kershaw argued that the process was indeed "improvised genocide" rather than the fulfilment of a master plan. Kershaw views the Holocaust not as a plan, as argued by the intentionalists, but rather a process caused by the "cumulative radicalization" of

10206-455: The fate of sixty-eight million people solely through the prism of one man is in Kershaw's opinion a flawed position. Kershaw wrote about the problems of an excessive focus on Hitler that "even the best biographies have seemed at times in danger of elevating Hitler's personal power to a level where the history of Germany between 1933 and 1945 becomes reduced to little more than an expression of

10332-427: The field of high politics, and by focusing only on the "effect" of one's actions, fails to consider the crucial element of the "intention" behind one's actions. Kershaw has argued that the term Widerstand should be used only for those working for the total overthrow of the Nazi system, and those engaging in behaviour that was counter to the regime's wishes without seeking to overthrow the regime should be included under

10458-625: The guard force of the Russian Protective Corps . In the beginning, women in Nazi Germany were not involved in the Wehrmacht , as Hitler ideologically opposed conscription for women, stating that Germany would " not form any section of women grenade throwers or any corps of women elite snipers. " However, with many men going to the front, women were placed in auxiliary positions within the Wehrmacht , called Wehrmachtshelferinnen ( lit.   ' Female Wehrmacht Helper ' ), participating in tasks as: They were placed under

10584-461: The historical debates about Widerstand (resistance) in German society, Kershaw has argued that there are two approaches to the question, one of which he calls the fundamentalist (dealing with those committed to overthrowing the Nazi regime) and the other the societal (dealing with forms of dissent in "everyday life"). In Kershaw's view, Broszat's Resistenz (immunity) concept works well in an Alltagsgeschichte approach, but works less well in

10710-423: The initiative in initiating policy to meet Hitler's perceived wishes, or alternatively attempted to turn into policy Hitler's often loosely and indistinctly phrased wishes. Though Kershaw does agree that Hitler possessed the powers that the "Master of the Third Reich" thesis championed by Norman Rich and Karl Dietrich Bracher would suggest, he has argued that Hitler was a "lazy dictator", an indifferent dictator who

10836-855: The intensifying theatre in the East to the West after the Normandy landings caused tensions between the General Staffs of both the OKW and the OKH ;– as Germany lacked sufficient materiel and manpower for a two-front war of such magnitude. Major campaigns and battles in Eastern and Central Europe included: For a time, the Axis Mediterranean Theatre and the North African Campaign were conducted as

10962-401: The lines he would wish. Anyone who makes mistakes will notice it soon enough. But anyone who really works towards the Fuhrer along his lines and towards his goal will certainly both now and in the future, one day have the finest reward in the form of the sudden legal confirmation of his work. Kershaw has argued that in Nazi Germany officials of the German state and Party bureaucracy usually took

11088-470: The name " Wehrmacht "; the Reichswehr was officially renamed the Wehrmacht on 21 May 1935. Hitler's proclamation of the Wehrmacht ' s existence included a total of no less than 36 divisions in its original projection, contravening the Treaty of Versailles in grandiose fashion. In December 1935, General Ludwig Beck added 48 tank battalions to the planned rearmament program. Hitler originally set

11214-411: The navy had already lost a number of its large surface ships, which could not be replenished during the war. The Kriegsmarine ' s most significant contribution to the German war effort was the deployment of its nearly 1,000 U-boats to strike at Allied convoys. The German naval strategy was to attack the convoys in an attempt to prevent the United States from interfering in Europe and to starve out

11340-403: The new leadership from the best men of the general staff with ruthless disregard for other constituencies, such as war heroes and the nobility." Seeckt's determination that the Reichswehr be an elite cadre force that would serve as the nucleus of an expanded military when the chance for restoring conscription came essentially led to the creation of a new army, based upon, but very different from,

11466-641: The next decade until the Germans finally left in September 1933. However, the arms buildup was done in secrecy, until Hitler came to power and it received broad political support. After the death of President Paul von Hindenburg on 2 August 1934, Adolf Hitler assumed the office of President of Germany , and thus became commander in chief. In February 1934, the Defence Minister Werner von Blomberg , acting on his own initiative, had all of

11592-560: The oldest and youngest were being recruited and driven by instilled fear and fanaticism to serve on the fronts and, often, to fight to the death, whether judged to be cannon fodder or elite troops. Prior to World War II, the Wehrmacht strove to remain a purely ethnic German force; as such, minorities within and outside of Germany, such as the Czechs in annexed Czechoslovakia , were exempted from military service after Hitler's takeover in 1938. Foreign volunteers were generally not accepted in

11718-536: The only source of political legitimacy. Kershaw sees this rivalry as causing the "cumulative radicalization" of Germany, and argues that though Hitler always favoured the most radical solution to any problem, it was German officials who, for the most part, in attempting to win the Führer's approval, carried out on their initiative, increasingly "radical" solutions to perceived problems like the "Jewish Question", as opposed to being ordered to do so by Hitler. In this, Kershaw largely agrees with Mommsen's portrait of Hitler as

11844-674: The opening year of the war. No aircraft carrier was operational, as German leadership lost interest in the Graf Zeppelin which had been launched in 1938. Following the loss of the German battleship  Bismarck in 1941, with Allied air-superiority threatening the remaining battle-cruisers in French Atlantic harbors, the ships were ordered to make the Channel Dash back to German ports. Operating from fjords along

11970-459: The other half performed obligatory services connected to the war effort ( German : Kriegshilfsdienst ). Legally, the commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht was Adolf Hitler in his capacity as Germany's head of state, a position he gained after the death of President Paul von Hindenburg in August 1934. With the creation of the Wehrmacht in 1935, Hitler elevated himself to Supreme Commander of

12096-586: The period 1935–1939. The total number of soldiers who served in the Wehrmacht during its existence from 1935 to 1945 is believed to have approached 18.2 million. The German military leadership originally aimed at a homogeneous military, possessing traditional Prussian military values. However, with Hitler's constant wishes to increase the Wehrmacht ' s size, the Army was forced to accept citizens of lower class and education, decreasing internal cohesion and appointing officers who lacked real-war experience from previous conflicts, especially World War I and

12222-456: The picture of Hitler drawn by intentionalist historians as a fanatical ideologue who was obsessed with social Darwinism , völkisch antisemitism (in which the Jewish people were viewed as a "race" biologically different from the rest of humanity rather than a religion), militarism and the perceived need for Lebensraum . In a 1992 essay, "Improvised genocide?", in which Kershaw traces how

12348-572: The previously used term Reichswehr ( Reich Defence ) and was the manifestation of the Nazi regime's efforts to rearm Germany to a greater extent than the Treaty of Versailles permitted. After the Nazi rise to power in 1933, one of Adolf Hitler 's most overt and bellicose moves was to establish the Wehrmacht , a modern offensively-capable armed force, fulfilling the Nazi regime's long-term goals of regaining lost territory as well as gaining new territory and dominating its neighbours. This required

12474-457: The primary level, and that Zitelmann has not offered a clear definition of what he means by "modernization". With regard to the Nazi foreign policy debate between "globalists" such as Klaus Hildebrand , Andreas Hillgruber , Jochen Thies, Gunter Moltman and Gerhard Weinberg , who argue that Germany aimed at world conquest, and the "continentalists" such as Hugh Trevor-Roper , Eberhard Jäckel and Axel Kuhn, who argue that Germany aimed only at

12600-430: The problem that such theories about Hitler's medical condition were extremely difficult to prove, they had the effect of personalising the phenomena of Nazi Germany by more or less attributing everything that happened in Nazi Germany to one flawed individual. Kershaw's biography of Hitler is an examination of Hitler's power; how he obtained it and how he maintained it. Following up on ideas that he had first introduced in

12726-537: The radical antisemitism of the Nazis, he favours Mommsen's view of the Holocaust being caused by the " cumulative radicalization " of Nazi Germany caused by the endless bureaucratic power struggles and a turn towards increasingly radical antisemitism within the Nazi elite. Despite his background in the functionalist historiography, Kershaw admits that his account of Hitler in World War II owes much to intentionalist historians like Gerhard Weinberg , Hugh Trevor-Roper , Lucy Dawidowicz and Eberhard Jäckel . Kershaw accepts

12852-481: The reinstatement of conscription and massive investment and defence spending on the arms industry . The Wehrmacht formed the heart of Germany's politico-military power. In the early part of the Second World War , the Wehrmacht employed combined arms tactics (close-cover air-support, tanks and infantry) to devastating effect in what became known as Blitzkrieg (lightning war). Its campaigns in France (1940) ,

12978-597: The same authority as ( Hiwis ), auxiliary personnel of the army ( German : Behelfspersonal ) and they were assigned to duties within the Reich, and to a lesser extent, in the occupied territories, for example in the general government of occupied Poland , in France , and later in Yugoslavia , in Greece and in Romania . By 1945, 500,000 women were serving as Wehrmachtshelferinnen , half of whom were volunteers, while

13104-473: The same time betray signs of Nazi ideological penetration and yet show the clear limits of propaganda manipulation. Kershaw went on to write in his preface: I should like to think that had I been around at the time I would have been a convinced anti-Nazi engaged in the underground resistance fight. However, I know really that I would have been as confused and felt as helpless as most of the people I am writing about. Kershaw argued that Goebbels failed to create

13230-543: The social and political context that I had already studied." Kershaw finds the picture of Hitler as a "mountebank" (opportunistic adventurer) in Alan Bullock 's biography unsatisfactory, and Joachim Fest 's quest to determine how "great" Hitler was senseless. In a wider sense, Kershaw sees the Nazi regime as part of a broader crisis that afflicted European society from 1914 to 1945. Though in disagreement with many of their claims (especially Nolte's), Kershaw's concept of

13356-517: The terms opposition and dissent, depending upon their motives and actions. In Kershaw's opinion, there were three bands ranging from dissent to opposition to resistance. Kershaw has used the Edelweiss Pirates as an example of a group whose behavior initially fell under dissent, and who advanced from there to opposition and finally to resistance. In Kershaw's view, there was much dissent and opposition within German society, but outside of

13482-502: The terms. Germany helped the Soviet Union with industrialization and Soviet officers were to be trained in Germany. German tank and air-force specialists could exercise in the Soviet Union and German chemical weapons research and manufacture would be carried out there along with other projects. In 1924 a fighter-pilot school was established at Lipetsk , where several hundred German air force personnel received instruction in operational maintenance, navigation, and aerial combat training over

13608-461: The totalitarianism approach is not without value, has argued that in essence, Nazism should be viewed as a type of fascism, albeit fascism of a very radical type. Writing of the Sonderweg debate, Kershaw finds the moderate Sonderweg approach of Jürgen Kocka the most satisfactory historical explanation for why the Nazi era occurred. In the 2000 edition of The Nazi Dictatorship , Kershaw wrote

13734-412: The treaty that, among other terms, imposed severe constraints on the size of Germany's armed forces. The army was limited to one hundred thousand men with an additional fifteen thousand in the navy. The fleet was to consist of at most six battleships , six cruisers , and twelve destroyers . Submarines , tanks and heavy artillery were forbidden and the air-force was dissolved. A new post-war military,

13860-486: The ultimate "unperson"; a boring, pedestrian man devoid of even the "negative greatness" attributed to him by Joachim Fest . Kershaw rejects the great man theory of history and has criticised those who seek to explain everything that happened in Nazi Germany as the result of Hitler's will and intentions. Kershaw has argued that it is absurd to seek to explain German history in the Nazi era solely through Hitler, as Germany had sixty-eight million people and to seek to explain

13986-480: The war with a minority of its formations motorized ; infantry remained approximately 90% foot-borne throughout the war, and artillery was primarily horse-drawn . The motorized formations received much attention in the world press in the opening years of the war, and were cited as the reason for the success of the invasions of Poland (September 1939), Denmark and Norway (April 1940), Belgium, France, and Netherlands (May 1940), Yugoslavia and Greece (April 1941) and

14112-413: The western front had not exceeded three per cent of the total from all fronts, in 1944 the figure jumped to about 14 per cent. Yet even in the months following D-day, about 68.5 per cent of all German battlefield deaths occurred on the eastern front, as a Soviet blitzkrieg in response devastated the retreating Wehrmacht. Ian Kershaw Sir Ian Kershaw FRHistS FBA (born 29 April 1943)

14238-522: The working class, very little resistance. Although Kershaw has argued that the Resistenz (immunity [against indoctrination]) concept has much merit, he concluded that the Nazi regime had a broad basis of support and it is correct to speak of "resistance without the people". The debate in the late 1980s between Martin Broszat and Saul Friedländer over Broszat's call for the "historicization" of Nazism, Kershaw wrote that he agreed with Friedländer that

14364-448: Was a very unbureaucratic leader who was highly averse to paperwork, in marked contrast to Joseph Stalin . Kershaw argued that Stalin was highly involved in the running of the Soviet Union, in contrast to Hitler whose involvement in day-to-day decision making was limited, infrequent and capricious. Kershaw argued that the Soviet regime, despite its extreme brutality and ruthlessness, was basically rational in its goal of seeking to modernise

14490-650: Was also prioritized last in the German rearmament scheme, making it the smallest of the branches. In the Battle of the Atlantic , the initially successful German U-boat fleet arm was eventually defeated due to Allied technological innovations like sonar , radar , and the breaking of the Enigma code. Large surface vessels were few in number due to construction limitations by international treaties prior to 1935. The "pocket battleships" Admiral Graf Spee and Admiral Scheer were important as commerce raiders only in

14616-422: Was dedicated to the idea of reviving Tirpitz's High Seas Fleet. Officers who believed in submarine warfare led by Admiral Karl Dönitz were in a minority before 1939. By 1922, Germany had begun covertly circumventing the conditions of the Versailles treaty. A secret collaboration with the Soviet Union began after the Treaty of Rapallo . Major-General Otto Hasse traveled to Moscow in 1923 to further negotiate

14742-484: Was dropped in favor of Wehrmacht on 21 May 1935. While the term Wehrmacht has been associated, both in the German and English languages, with the German armed forces of 1935–45 since the Second World War, before 1945 the term was used in the German language in a more general sense for a national defense force. For instance, the German-aligned formations of Poles raised during the First World War were known as

14868-501: Was first published in German in 1980 as Der Hitler-Mythos: Volksmeinung und Propaganda im Dritten Reich . This book examined the "Hitler cult" in Germany, how it was developed by Joseph Goebbels , what social groups the Hitler Myth appealed to and how it rose and fell. Also arising from the "Bavaria Project" and Kershaw's work in the field of Alltagsgeschichte ('everyday history') was Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in

14994-547: Was just a particularly unfortunate Betriebsunfall (industrial accident) of history. Kershaw was later in a 2003 essay to criticise Ritter and Meinecke, stating that by their promotion of the Betriebsunfall theory or by blaming everything upon Hitler, they were seeking to white-wash the German past. Writing of the work of the German historian Rainer Zitelmann , Kershaw has argued that Zitelmann has elevated what were merely secondary considerations in Hitler's remarks to

15120-465: Was most surprised at the offer; the popular view that Hitler imposed the oath on the military is false. The oath read: "I swear by God this sacred oath that to the Leader of the German empire and people, Adolf Hitler, supreme commander of the armed forces, I shall render unconditional obedience and that as a brave soldier I shall at all times be prepared to give my life for this oath". By 1935, Germany

15246-539: Was often only available in relatively small numbers. Only 40% to 60% of all units in the Eastern Front were motorized, baggage trains often relied on horse-drawn trailers due to poor roads and weather conditions in the Soviet Union, and for the same reasons many soldiers marched on foot or used bicycles as bicycle infantry . As the fortunes of war turned against them, the Germans were in constant retreat from 1943 and onward. The Panzer divisions were vital to

15372-621: Was openly flouting the military restrictions set forth in the Versailles Treaty: German rearmament was announced on 16 March with the "Edict for the Buildup of the Wehrmacht " ( German : Gesetz für den Aufbau der Wehrmacht ) and the reintroduction of conscription. While the size of the standing army was to remain at about the 100,000-man mark decreed by the treaty, a new group of conscripts equal to this size would receive training each year. The conscription law introduced

15498-463: Was originally trained as a medievalist but turned to the study of modern German social history in the 1970s. At first, he was mainly concerned with the economic history of Bolton Abbey . As a lecturer in medieval history at Manchester, Kershaw learned German to study the German peasantry in the Middle Ages . In 1972, he visited Bavaria and was shocked to hear the views of an old man he met in

15624-431: Was put in its place. Placed under the OKW were the three branch High Commands: Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH), Oberkommando der Marine (OKM), and Oberkommando der Luftwaffe (OKL). The OKW was intended to serve as a joint command and coordinate all military activities, with Hitler at the top. Though many senior officers, such as von Manstein , had advocated for a real tri-service Joint Command, or appointment of

15750-421: Was really not interested in involving himself much in the daily running of Nazi Germany . The only exceptions were the areas of foreign policy and military decisions, both areas that Hitler increasingly involved himself in from the late 1930s. In a 1993 essay "Working Towards the Führer", Kershaw argued that the German and Soviet dictatorships had more differences than similarities. Kershaw argued that Hitler

15876-409: Was the imposition of Hitler's charismatic authority on top of the " legal-rational " authority system that had existed prior to 1933, leading to a gradual breakdown of any system of ordered authority in Germany. Kershaw argues that by 1938 the German state had been reduced to a hopeless, polycratic shambles of rival agencies all competing with each other for Hitler's favour, which by that time had become

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