Alaric Searle. Wehrmacht Generals, West German Society, and the Debate on Rearmament, 1949-1959. Westport: Praeger, 2003. 316 S. EUR 76.00 (gebunden), ISBN 978-0-275-97968-3.
Reviewed by Stefanie Trombley (Department of History, University of New Hampshire)
Published on H-German (February, 2005)
Old Wehrmacht Generals in the New German Society
Alaric Searle's monograph argues that understanding the role of former generals in West German rearmament is crucial to understanding that process because their divisions--and the public's perception of them--illuminate the "political psyche of postwar German society in the West" (p. 288). In the German public mind, the members of the General Officer Corps served as "representatives, leaders, and spokesmen of a political, professional, and homogeneous social group" (p. 15). However, in reality only a select group of politically active individuals--from what was ultimately a deeply divided group--influenced the rearmament debate.
Searle argues that the role of former Wehrmacht generals in the rearmament debate was "of the utmost significance" (p. 3). Some generals played active roles as technical advisors, public officials, and vocal citizens in the public debate. However, one role shared by the entire rank was more passive: their symbolic value as militarists responsible for the crimes of Nazism, and subsequent vilification in the public mind. Wehrmacht Generals addresses three primary questions. First, was the former General Officer Corps a unified body as it approached the rearmament issue? Second, did this group oppose the democratization of the Federal Republic in general and the new Bundeswehr in particular? And third, both within the officer corps and in society at large, how did the generals address the controversies over the National Socialist past?
On the question of unity, Searle contends that though the General Officer Corps was initially united by common experience, competition for positions in the new armed forces brought out pre-existing tensions and divisions. In other words, though their group suffering and prejudicial treatment following World War II united them to some extent, it could only whitewash the deep fissures that existed under the National Socialist regime. This emerged in political responses to the process of dealing with the past (Vergangenheitspolitik)--particularly the debate over the role of Nazism in the military and responsibility for the crimes of the Third Reich--as well as the struggle over the present spirit of the armed forces, between forces supporting military tradition and hierarchy, and those advocating democratization (Innere Fuehrung).
In response to the question of whether Wehrmacht generals attempted to circumvent democratization and subjection of the military to civilian authorities, Searle gives a "qualified yes," but he also adds that it would be a mistake to overestimate the influence of neo-Nazi sentiments (p. 281). Instead, he argues that the Speidel-Heusinger group--an influential group of generals centered around Generalleutnant Hans Speidel and Generalleutnant Adolf Heusinger--exerted itself to minimize the influence of reformist elements for the sake of military tradition and to distance the officer corps from any responsibility for Nazi crimes. They were not entirely successful, however, partly because of the efforts of other generals who were in favor of reform. As the democratic government began to function more and more effectively, the generals' attitudes toward it improved. Searle concludes that democratization in the Federal Republic and in the Bundeswehr was "never greatly endangered" by the former General Officer Corps (p. 282).[1]
The third issue is perhaps the most complicated. The debate over the military responsibility for the Nazi past fractured the ranks of the former generals like no other issue. Searle presents polling data indicating that they had been vilified as militarists in large portions of the German population, which of course questioned their trustworthiness to participate in the creation of a democratized military. Some former generals argued that the Wehrmacht had also been betrayed by the Nazis and denied any complicity in the National Socialist regime. However, Searle points out that these arguments did not reach an audience broader than those already convinced and represented mostly the small group of military traditionalists. The Speidel-Heusinger group, in order to push for rearmament, needed to create a positive image of generals and military officers for the West German population, but instead of attempting to justify the Wehrmacht, they exerted their efforts to suppress the past. However, by the mid- to late 1950s, the division within the General Officer Corps was even more apparent, as many more former generals became willing to criticize their colleagues "who had sought to transfer Nazi philosophy to the Wehrmacht" (p. 282). Indeed, Searle argues that most Wehrmacht generals ultimately accepted key reform concepts and a changed approach to military organization (p. 128).
While the General Officer Corps was undergoing this process of development and division, Searle argues that German public opinion never fully lost its strong anti-Wehrmacht sentiment. Though it diminished to a certain extent in the public opinion polls of the early 1950s, by 1954 and 1955 it had risen again to a fevered pitch just as actual rearmament began. This assertion that the generals were vilified in German society provides a less-than-stable foundation for Searle's argument. His own evidence indicates that most animosity was directed at individual generals guilty of crimes against Germans; this volume offered no persuasive demonstration that Wehrmacht officers, even at the highest ranks, were universally condemned as Nazi criminals in the public mind.
Nevertheless, Wehrmacht Generals is most effective in its contention that there was a distinct correlation in German society between public opinion on rearmament and public opinion on the General Officer Corps of the Wehrmacht. It is less convincing in advancing the thesis of a more active role for this Corps as a group. Though Searle acknowledges that "the role of former Wehrmacht generals was wide-ranging, diverse, and, at times, contradictory" (p. 277), there is certainly a tension in this work between the tendency to speak of the generals as a cohesive interest group advancing particular aims and his own evidence and argument about the great and increasing divisions in the General Officer Corps due to past resentments, personal conflicts, and increasing competition for roles in the new armed forces and aspirations for gaining the ear of the Federal Republic's political leaders.
Searle terms those who actively participated in the conflicts surrounding rearmament a "politicized minority from within the former General Officer Corps" (p. 277). His methodological approach is one of prosopography, examining the roles of approximately thirty generals that appear regularly in the debate over rearmament, and it is in these biographies that he is most successful. The monograph establishes clear connections between individuals' experiences during and immediately following World War II and their ultimate position in the rearmament debate. In addition, Searle also demonstrates the ways in which earlier relationships, conflicts, and connections affected later power struggles. The weakness of the prosopographical approach is that it is often difficult to draw the connections between the individual machinations of these thirty generals--undoubtedly an elite sampling--and Searle's broader conclusions about the Generalitaet. Despite qualifying statements throughout the book, these individuals are often held up as spokesmen, when--as Searle's own evidence reflects--they were not even able to control or to consolidate the ideals of the veterans groups (Chapter 5).
According to Searle, Wehrmacht Generals is an attempt to remedy the gap in the English language literature. He claims that very few works actually examine rearmament within its social and cultural context, and those that do he dismisses with somewhat troubling brevity.[2] He offers little comment other than that they "contain serious flaws and methodological weaknesses" (p. 3).[3] Further, he attacks what he terms the "Bundeswehr-sponsored official history" that gives Speidel and Heusinger (and thus Adenauer) too much credit for the ultimate shape of rearmament, ignoring their efforts to circumvent the democratization of the new military as well as those Generals who successfully opposed them (p. 285). These histories, he claims, distort the realities of rearmament and German society by placing too much emphasis on foreign policy.
Searle includes a helpful Selected Bibliography and several useful tables in this volume. It is clear that he has given great attention to the details of his research. Wehrmacht Generals excels at the presentation of evidence in case studies, but the statistical limitations--thirty generals out of a group of approximately three thousand (p. 17-18)--detract from the effectiveness of his broader argument. There is a somewhat tenuous connection between his discrete points and his broader conclusions. Nevertheless, Searle has raised some provocative questions about the origins of the Bundeswehr and the relative success of democratization at different levels in the former military hierarchy.
Notes
[1]. In this point, he comes to the same conclusion as Jay Lockenour, Soldiers as Citizens (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2001). However, while Searle argues that important generals, even those working with the government, tried to circumvent the democratic system, Lockenour argues that instead former officers tried to work within it.
[2]. James Diehl, The Thanks of the Fatherland: German Veterans after the Second World War (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1993) and David Clay Large, Germans to the Front: West German Rearmament in the Adenauer Era (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1996) receive positive comments. However, Searle points out that the former is only tangentially related to rearmament, while the latter covers "the military and internal political dimensions" of the rearmament debate (p. 2).
[3]. Included in this list are Lockenour, Soldiers as Citizens and Johannes M. Becher, Die Remilitarisierung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und das deutsch-franzoesische Verhaeltnis (Marburg: Hitzeroth, 1987).
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Citation:
Stefanie Trombley. Review of Searle, Alaric, Wehrmacht Generals, West German Society, and the Debate on Rearmament, 1949-1959.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
February, 2005.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=10199
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