German General Staff

The German General Staff or Großer Generalstab was the most important German "weapon" for nearly two centuries.

History

Prussia was first among nations to create a separate standing unit dedicated entirely to the rational planning of all aspects of war. From the mid 1700s to the early 1800s, great military minds like Gerhard von Scharnhorst and August von Gneisenau helped to form and firm up the beginnings of the German General Staff. Though other European powers followed the idea, the Prussian and, later, German General Staff differed from the others in being vastly more powerful. Thus any staff officer had the right to contradict the commander of the formation to which he was attached by appealing to the commander of the next highest formation. For this reason, Prussian and German military victories should often be credited to the Chief of Staff, rather than to the nominal commander of an army.

The work of the Prussian General Staff was one of the main factors responsible for the unification of all the independent German states and the creation of a German Empire under Prussian control — King Wilhelm I was proclaimed "Emperor of Germany" on January 18, 1871, in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles following the Prussian victory against Napoleon III in the 1870–71 Franco-Prussian war. This victory surprised many military professionals around the world, since France had been considered a great power, while Prussia was known then as a small, isolated, German state.

With unification the Prussian General Staff became the German General Staff and began preparing for what seemed to be an inevitable war with France. With the departure of Bismarck as chancellor in 1890 France eventually managed to gain Russia as an ally. Germany then was at risk of being at war with both France and Russia, requiring active front lines on both the East and the West flanks. Thus, the Schlieffen Plan prepared a surprise offensive. It has been accused of being too rigid—Manuel de Landa, in War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (1991), showed how the Prussian army favorized the Jominian theory, which gave preeminence to the Army and to its autonomy compared to the civilian control advocated by Clausewitz. Thus, centralization of decision was preferred over decentralization allowing local initiative. The rigidity of the plan impeded any political move from being done, as did the emperor discover on the eve of the war, when he considered not invading France in order to avoid Great Britain's entrance in the war.

When Germany was defeated in 1918, the 1919 Treaty of Versailles specifically forbade the creation or recreation of the General Staff. Despite this, the German officer corps carefully set about planning the next war in a camouflaged general staff hidden within the Truppenamt ("troop office"), an innocent-looking human-resources bureau within the small army permitted by the peace accord.

When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 all he had to do was to follow the Truppenamt-General Staff plan to build up the Nazi war machine. However, the General Staff advised Hitler that the German army would be fully modernised and ready in 1944–45 only. As a result most artillery pieces were still horse drawn at the outbreak of war in 1939. Also, for all the duration German industry could not furnish small arms in sufficient quantities, forcing the Army to rely heavily on older weapons, prizes of war, and adaptations of former designs produced in conquered countries, thus producing an arsenal filled with a stunning array of incompatible pieces, unlike the smaller number of standard small arms used by the Allies. Thus the Prussian General Staff lost the war of attrition engaged against the Entente cordiale formed by France and the UK, in part due to logistics reasons. Focusing exclusively on military aspects of the war, the General Staff ignored political needs, which were to be discovered during the war itself, for example with the women on the home-front.

Chiefs of the Prussian General Staff (1808–1871)

Gerhard von Scharnhorst 1 March 1808–17 June 1810
Karl von Hake 17 June 1810–March 1812
Gustav von Rauch March 1812–March 1813
Gerhard von Scharnhorst March 1813–28 June 1813
August von Gneisenau 28 June 1813–3 June 1814
Karl von Grolman 3 June 1814–November 1819
Johann Rühle von Lilienstern November 1819–11 January 1821
Karl von Müffling 11 January 1821–29 January 1829
Wilhelm von Krauseneck 29 January 1829–13 May 1848
Karl von Reyher 13 May 1848–7 October 1857
Helmuth von Moltke (the elder) 7 October 1857–10 August 1888

Chiefs of the German General Staff (1871–1919)

Chiefs of Troop Office (1919–1933)

Hans von Seeckt 11 October 1919–26 March 1920
Wilhelm Heye 26 March 1920–February 1923
Otto Hasse February 1923–October 1925
Wilhelm Wetzell October 1925–27 January 1927
Werner von Blomberg 27 January 1927–30 September 1929
Baron Kurt von Hammerstein–Equord 30 September 1929–31 October 1930
Wilhelm Adam 31 October 1930–30 September 1933

Chiefs of the General Staff (1933–1945)

These were the Chiefs of the General Staff of the Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH):

Ludwig Beck 1 October 1933–31 October 1938
Franz Halder 1 September 1938–24 September 1942
Kurt Zeitzler 24 September 1942–10 June 1944
Adolf Heusinger 10 June 1944–21 July 1944
Heinz Guderian 21 July 1944–28 March 1945
Hans Krebs 1 April 1945–30 April 1945

Notes

With the creation of the Wehrmacht in 1936, it became the Generalstabs des Heeres (Army General Staff).

Readings

Addington, Larry H. The blitzkrieg era and the German General Staff, 1865-1941. New Brunswick, N.J., Rutgers University Press, 1971.
de Landa, Manuel. War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, 1991.
Foley, Robert. Alfred von Schlieffen's Military Writings. London, Frank Cass, 2004.
Goerlitz, Walter. History of the German General Staff, 1657-1945. New York, Praeger, 1959.

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