Warlimont’s post-war statement, therefore, is somewhat misleading, bearing in mind past attempts made by Army officers to present a unified front and the memory of those many occasions when OKW had preferred to follow its own inclinations contrary to OKH advice. Really all that Warlimont attempted was justification in hindsight for OKW’s (and Hitler’s) assumed infallibility. Whether or not Guderian’s methods were realistic is a matter for argument; in fact he probably deluded himself when writing that he thought he had brought about an improvement. But he had always been a convinced advocate of unified command and, from the earliest days under Blomberg and Reichenau, had supported the attempts to merge the various, and often competing, agencies of the Wehrmacht. The effectiveness of the OKW was, in his opinion, diminished because of the inadequacy of Wilhelm Keitel who, in practice, was compelled to use it as nothing better than Hitler’s military secretariat. After the war Guderian laid the blame for military failure on Hitler’s declining health, added to the ‘mental irritability … which led to a further splintering of the military command authority’.
Nevertheless Warlimont’s reference to ‘general outlook’ and ‘the consequential animosities’ was apt. All men have blind spots and among Guderian’s was the tendency to persist in his indignation with Kluge: others he could forgive, but never Kluge, not even in Panzer Leader. Within hours of becoming Chief of Staff Guderian was endeavouring to remove Kluge from command in the West by suggesting to Hitler (without avail) that he should be replaced because ‘he did not have a lucky touch in commanding large armoured forces’. Guderian’s reason, regardless of Kluge’s implication with the plot, was less than just at the time and still more unjust when, after the war (and long after Kluge’s suicide at the end of August 1944), Guderian persisted in denigrating Kluge’s handling of the armour. To his interrogators he complained about Kluge splitting panzer divisions, committing them piecemeal into action and utterly failing to concentrate more than half the armoured force available for the counter-stroke against the Americans at Mortain. While it was true that, at times in the East, Kluge had split formations, conditions in the West were different. The crippling effect of Allied air attacks upon lines of communication and the consequential difficulties in achieving concentration of forces of any sort precluded Guderian’s old tactics of concentration. It must be remembered that Guderian was not present in Normandy during the battle: nor was he responsible for operations there. In any case Kluge suffered from the Führer as much as every other C-in-C and the record of his courageous resistance to Hitler’s maniac insistence upon suicidal counter-attacks by the panzer divisions at Mortain is valedictory of a desperate man.
To obtain an alteration to one of Hitler’s preconceived notions demanded hard wrangling and endless patience at a moment when time was at a premium. Kluge’s operations in Normandy were ruined by Hitler’s interventions. Guderian, for his part, quotes the Führer’s odurate resistance to his own proposals for the construction of a system of fortifications along Germany’s eastern frontier and his strenuous efforts to build them in the autumn in accord with begrudging permission from Hitler. It was some feat to get that much, for Hitler shut his mind to the threat in the East once the Russian offensive came to a halt at Warsaw, and dealt only with the current threat presently in the West where the Siegfried Line was being probed by the Anglo-American armies, and the main industrial complex of the Ruhr threatened. As fast as Guderian built up fresh fortress units in the East, Jodl, anxious for the Ruhr, had them transferred to the West: when Guderian asked for the release of captured enemy equipment from store, Keitel and Jodl denied that these weapons existed. But once Guderian proved them wrong, Jodl seized the best and then sent them westward too. Guderian had no part in the offensive projected in the West. He could only stand and hope in the East, deprived of reserves, and be witness to gathering Russian strength, on the one hand, and, on the other, Himmler’s combing out of manpower from industry to create yet another German army – a People’s Army imbued with National Socialist ideals and banded into so-called ‘Volksgrenadier Divisions’ and the like.
Once he came to realise that direct opposition to Hitler and his entourage was likely to be abortive, Guderian resorted to methods which had stood him in good stead on the battlefield when senior commanders thwarted his designs. He either ignored the orders or tried to circumvent them. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. For a while he was able to evade attending the Court of Honour, which sat under Rundstedt, until Keitel insisted that he at least put in an appearance. It was good for him that he did attend since he was able to hear, first hand, the methods to which the Gestapo had descended in order to condemn Army officers. There was little enough that could be done to save those against whom there was the faintest evidence of conspiracy or those whom the Führer was determined to punish. And as a last resort, Hitler employed General Burgdorf, Schmundt’s inferior replacement, an officer reviled by Guderian for his bad behaviour and whom he called ‘the evil genius of the officer corps’. This man was instrumental in aiding Himmler in his schemes. This ‘fanatical adherent of the National Socialist Party’ (Guderian’s words) was the Führer’s personal emissary to Rommel with the message and the poison which brought about that officer’s suicide in October. Guderian did what he could* and some of the conspirators could be saved, among them Rommel’s Chief of Staff, Hans Speidel, whose stolid pleas of innocence (even though he was implicated with the Putsch) could not be broken: he one day would play a leading part in reforming the extinct German Army.
When, on pages 348 and 349 in Panzer Leader, Guderian discusses his own attitude to the assassination, and the motivations, characters and fates of those senior officers who were driving forces behind it, there occurs one very strange anomaly.
For his part he ‘… refuses to accept murder in any form. Our Christian religion forbids it in the clearest possible terms. I cannot therefore approve of the plan of assassination. Apart from this religious reason, I must say also that neither the internal nor the external political situation was conducive to a successful coup d’etat’. With regard to personalities, he castigates Dr Goerdeler for security carelessness, refers to General feldmarschall von Witzleben as a sick man, is critical of Generals Beck, Hoeppner and Olbricht for their ineptitude in coping with the special circumstances and is ambivalent in his comments about Fromm and the ‘impulsive’ Oberst von Stauffenberg.
Incredibly, however, he makes no mention in Panzer General of Fellgiebel’s clever involvement, let alone his courageous, leading role in the plot. Not only as a member of the Court of Honour would he have been aware of his involvement, but also, as Chief of the General Staff when Fellgiebel’s successor, Generalmajor Albert Praun, had to report with alarm that the entire Signals Corps was in danger of breakdown due to Hitler’s demand for the dismissal and punishment of all the signallers involved in the assassination attempt. As it was, Praun, probably supported by Guderian, had to take his life in his hands by, successfully on operational grounds, convincing the Führer of the dire consequences of this impulsive madness. The outcome was to be the savage execution in September only of Generals Fellgiebel and Thiele, and Oberst Hahn. Guderian only gradually became aware of the treatment being inflicted by the SS and Gestapo on the Army’s ‘20th July families’ in the aftermath of the assassination attempt. Segregated and incarcerated in concentration camps and prisons, they constantly stood in peril of execution as the war drew close to its end. Members of Fellgiebel’s family were notably at risk.
Guderian’s son has only recently informed the author that his father, while Chief of the General Staff, took steps to ensure their safety. But, due to his father’s reluctance to discuss or write about the matter, was never himself told how or why this was done. Now, in 2002 from Fellgiebel’s daughter, Susanne, the author has learnt how she spent nine weeks in solitary confinement in prison at Gorillas. But then was released on the intervention of Guderian once he heard of her plight. Meanwhile her mother, Klare, and brother, G
ert, were kept in prison in Crones/Doer. Klare shared a cell with six or eight other women who were held for political reasons – probably because they were married to resistance activists, it is suggested. Gert, who was only 16, was placed with what were described as ‘real criminals’. They too were released at Guderian’s instigation soon after he received information through Susanne.
A letter by Klare written to a Herr Brinkmann confirms the above and goes on to say how Gert was sent to an Arbeitsdienst labour force in Berlin, where he fell seriously ill. No doctor would dare treat anyone with the name Fellgiebel so he was transferred to a Panzer unit at Erfurt, no doubt at Guderian’s insistence. But suddenly, after Guderian’s retirement at the end of March, he was transferred to an infantry unit and sent into action without training. Five days later he was dead. Meanwhile Susanne had married a medical student who (perhaps not surprisingly!) was posted to Guderian’s staff.
“So”, writes Susanne, “General Guderian helped me and my family a lot and I am very grateful to him for his courageous help”. She goes on to say that Gretel Guderian visited my husband and me on our first daughter’s birthday in March 1947. “She stayed more times with us in Marburg because she could then quite easily from there reach the internment camp at Stadt Allendorf where her husband was imprisoned with other generals.
Guderian’s intervention, at immense personal risk, in order to save the family of one of his oldest and most admired comrades, was a typically impetuous and courageous act that was fully in accord with his character at a time when, day after day, he struggled, under appalling stress, to combat the Führer’s meglomania. Also, it provides yet another indication of his ambivalence of feelings when it came to grappling with the controversial removal of Hitler and his criminal gang when what was left of the Third Reich was in its death throes.
It is known for sure however, that in mid-April 1945, (after Guderian had been relieved of duty and stripped of power on 28 March) elements of the Wehrmacht moved decisively to rescue all the families from the clutches of the Gestapo, whom they disarmed. In the months and years to come the families held reunion gatherings which the surviving Fellgiebel members attended. Gradually their story has unravelled. Wildhagen’s book in 1970 about Erich Fellgiebel did much to place the story much closer to the real truth. Yet only recently has research by Stauffenberg’s son disclosed that the Fellgiebel names are missing from the list of families. Maybe, he ironically suggests, “the Gestapo was not as efficient as many believe”. Or possibly Guderian’s staff had something to do with rearranging matters!
Germany’s allies were deserting her as the Russians approached or entered their countries. In turn, Rumania, Finland and Bulgaria changed sides as August turned to September and the autumn foreshadowed far worse to come. Hungary was in disarray but her regent, Admiral Horthy, had something to teach Guderian about political expediency on the eve of his nation’s collapse: ‘Look, my friend, in politics you must always have several irons in the fire’. It is instructive that Guderian quoted that remark in Panzer Leader, as an indication, no doubt, of his own mind’s working.
The Western Allied air forces began concentrating their attacks upon the plant manufacturing oil as the Ploesti oil fields fell into enemy hands. The fuel of mobile defence drained rapidly away and the German motorised troops gradually came to a halt. In any case the panzer divisions were shadowy organisations of improvisation: rarely in the summer could the latest, reduced establishment of barely 120 tanks be made good. Meanwhile a flood of Russian, American and British armour did much as it pleased except where it met well-fashioned, static defences covering vital localities. But nothing that was German could last for long and the next line of defences to be breached were those tenuously defended by Army Group North. This was territory that protected the Prussian homeland and, with its past associations, was dear to Guderian. In August he prised a quick decision out of Hitler by playing upon his habit of delayed reaction until a threat became disaster. Permission was given to switch reinforcements from the southern front in Rumania (where the battle had yet to become catastrophically critical) to the north. This was the only alternative since nothing could be taken from the west (where the planning of what was to be the December, Ardennes offensive would soon be in progress) and OKH reserves were non-existent. But having, as a result, forced the Russians to pause near Riga and having opened a corridor through which the large German forces, trapped in Estonia and the rest of the Baltic States, might escape, the opportunity to evacuate completely was thrown away because Hitler forbade it. Early in October the Russians attacked once more and, this time, reached the sea near Memel, effectively locking the remains of Army Group North in the Kurland peninsula, whence they could only be supplied by sea. Also Russian forces set foot, for the first time, on the sacred soil of East Prussia. The sound of the guns was audible in Lötzen and Rastenburg. Soon Hitler would be forced to withdraw to his last headquarters at the Chancellery in Berlin.
The encirclement of Army Group North in Kurland, tragic though it was, merely wrote an incidental paragraph in the history of Hitler’s mismanaged strategy. Its effect upon the outcome was militarily insignificant in the context of a chapter of total disaster. So far as Guderian was concerned it provoked him to the heights of indignation, not simply through the utter waste of strong, badly needed forces in holding too long a line, but as a subject for demonstrating his sympathy and devotion for the soldiers whose fate, a quite appalling one at Russian hands, was sealed. It mattered little that a further pause would now take place in the fighting in the East and that fortifications could be strengthened. Hitler’s eyes were fixed upon the Ardennes and the out-moded dream of winning a victory of diplomatic as well as military consequence. He deluded himself, and a few dupes, that the Western Allies could be intimidated. But the delusion was ironically, in part, the making of Speer and the Inspector General of Panzer Forces for it was they who produced the flood of new armoured vehicles which filled the panzer division establishments almost to capacity. The remaining irony was the fuel shortage that hampered them.
In common with almost every other senior officer, Guderian saw little hope of anything worthwhile coming from the Ardennes project. Denied a hand in the planning he had only to bear with the loss of soldiers taken from his command to fill the ranks of the armies in the West and read the daily intelligence reports which told of oncoming failure. ‘For the sake of my country I had hoped,’ he wrote, ‘that it would lead to a complete victory. But since, on December 23rd, it was clear that it could no longer result in a great success, I decided to drive to Supreme Headquarters to request that the battle, which was causing us heavy casualties, be broken off …’ This he did on the 26th.
This request, like so many of those he made, was, according to Guderian, rejected and the angry atmosphere which regularly clouded his meetings with Hitler grew more intense. But he did obtain a few reinforcements.* These meetings were monuments to time wasting and irrelevance such as few cabinets can ever have had. They would go on for hours at a time, a grotesque mixture of discussion on high policy interspersed with trivial interjections when Hitler aired his knowledge of individual weapon performances, or gave the minutest examination to some local deployment or reminiscence about the triumphs or sins and omissions of years gone by. The transcripts frequently make bizarre reading, filled as they are with the phobias of Nazidom in its dying throes. The rise and fall of voices is lost in flat transcript, but the provocation of the Army by Hitler and his adherents stands out along, somewhat astonishingly, with Guderian’s patient and persistent efforts to guide the discussion back to essentials. Warlimont quotes, with italicised comments of his own, an attempt by Guderian to have implemented, in September, a ruling by Hitler in July that the Navy, Air Force and civil authorities should relinquish badly needed lorries to the panzer divisions.
Guderian: All that’s necessary is for the Reichsmarschall to give his agreement.
Hitler: I am giving the agreement now. We have got
a Defence Staff. We have got an organisation the envy of every country in the world, OKW. No one else has such a thing. It hasn’t been much talked about merely because the Army Staff didn’t like it.
Keitel: (as usual using stronger words to express the same idea): Has in fact fought hard against it!
Hitler: (taking up Keitel’s expression): Has in fact fought hard against it! After we had fought for years to get this organisation.
Guderian: Air Fleet 3 has such a large number of lorries.
Thomale: We must flush them out.
Kreipe: (Chief of Staff Luftwaffe): We’ve already lost so many using them on Army jobs (refuses).
By the first week in January, when Hitler still persisted in trying to revive the offensive in the West and incontrovertible evidence accrued of an imminent Russian offensive, the tone of the meetings deteriorated. In an effort to achieve the essential concentration of resources along Germany’s eastern frontier, Guderian doggedly endured the conferences, entering into asperity only when the main issue was under consideration or when the welfare of officers and soldiers was being harmed. He visited the fronts to gather a consensus of Army Commanders’ opinions and from these drew the conclusion that the war was hopelessly lost. Not only was Germany overwhelmingly outnumbered but ‘We had neither commanders nor troops of the 1940 quality any more …’ On January 9th he resolved upon a show-down and produced a detailed intelligence report that proved beyond doubt the imminence of the Russian offensive and the impossible odds mounting against the German Army in the East. Hitler lost his temper and rejected the report, declaring that the man who made it, General Gehlen, was a lunatic and should be shut up in an asylum. Guderian says that he, too, lost his temper and told Hitler that Gehlen was ‘… one of my very best General Staff officers … If you want General Gehlen sent to a lunatic asylum then you had better have me certified as well’. He refused to sack Gehlen and the row subsided. But Gehlen’s conclusions were not converted into remedial action so that, when the Russians attacked three days later (precisely as Gehlen and Guderian had predicted), there was another disaster among troops whose deployment Hitler had refused to change to meet the conditions. At the end of the conference Hitler had once more tried to placate Guderian with soft words of gratitude and flattery, but these no longer availed. Guderian says that he told the Führer, ‘The Eastern Front is like a house of cards. If the front is, broken through at one point the rest will collapse …’ And so it proved to be, though it would probably have happened whether or not reinforcements had arrived from the west.
Guderian: Panzer General Page 30