13 March 1997
Omer Bartov, Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. xiv, 238.
Charles W. Sydnor, Jr., Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death's Head Division, 1933-1945. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977. Pp. xvi, 371.
When the German Army thundered across the Soviet frontier on the morning of 22 June 1941 a theatre was opened in the Second World War in which two ideologically hostile industrial giants would battle for supremacy over Eastern Europe and a stake in the postwar world order. To the National Socialist ideologues, crossing the Soviet border meant more than merely bringing another European nation under German hegemony. To the Nazis, the Eastern boundary of the Reich was the dividing line between Western civilization and the "Asiatic Bolshevik" hordes. In actuality, the Soviet border was a division between Communism and Fascism, the gateway to the majority of the Pale of Jewish settlement, and the route to the vast mineral and agricultural resources of Western Russia. The opening of the Eastern front irrevocably tied the war to Nazi ideology to the degree that the war was now to become a life and death struggle against Bolshevism, the front would now pass through the remainder of the European Jewish homeland, and the resources of Russia, the key to German World supremacy, was to be the prize to the victor. National Socialist ideology was now wed to the German war effort. To what degree, however, did this unholy matrimony reach the individual combatant? Omer Bartov's Hitler's Army and Charles W. Sydnor's Soldiers of Destruction both seek to analyze the relation between Nazi Weltanschauung and the individual soldiers who carried out Hitler's failed war of conquest.
Omer Bartov's Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich seeks both to prove that the Wehrmacht, the German armed forces during the Second World War, was, in fact, a politicized body, and to analyze the process that allowed the Wehrmacht to become "Hitler's army." Bartov stresses that the politicization of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern front was a result of a series of conditions, unique to the war in the East, which transformed the army into the Nazi party's private army (Bartov 28). This series of conditions can be organized into four chronological events, each assigned a chapter in the text: "The Demodernization of the Front" (Bartov 12), "The Destruction of the Primary Group" (Bartov 29), "The Perversion of Discipline" (Bartov 59), and "The Distortion of Reality" (Bartov 106). The overextension of the German war economy and logistic lines against the numerically superior Soviet population and economically superior Soviet war production program led to the "demodernization" of the Eastern front. Soldiers who had trained with modern machinery and tactics were forced to live and fight under deplorable conditions. The vast number of casualties and the constant arrival of new replacements that resulted from this change of warfare greatly curtailed the effects of primary group cohesion as a method of maintaining discipline in the face of battle. This resulted in the "perversion" of discipline by officers, and the transformation of minor infractions, such as falling asleep on duty, into capital crimes, such as treason. Additionally, the brutalization of the troops by both the enemy and the superior officers, in conjunction with the decriminalization of violence against civilians in the East, created a climate in which individual soldiers used violence against the local population as a convenient, officially sanctioned, release from the pressures of the war (Bartov 28). Finally, the culmination of these realities with the evergrowing despair of the military situation caused the soldiers, by and large, to further embrace Nazi ideology for the reasons that it promised salvation under these circumstances, and was, as a result of years of prewar indoctrination, a near religious force in the lives of the young Germans (Bartov 169). Bartov’s conclusion was that by the end of the war, the German Wehrmacht was, in fact, a highly politicalized force, though mainly as a result of the conditions faced in the Soviet theatre.
In contrast to Bartov's Hitler's Army, which describes the politicization of a relatively unpoliticized body, the Wehrmacht, Charles W. Sydnor's Soldiers of Destruction describes how an inherently politicized organization, the Schutzstaffel or SS, can provide a basis for an elite combat force, the Waffen, or armed, SS, able to play a decisive role in the German war effort. Sydnor documents the transformation of SS men into a coherent, capable, fighting force through a case study of the SS Totenkopfdivision, or Death's Head division, and it’s founder, Theodor Eicke. The text traces the life of the Totenkopfdivision from its formation out of Totenkopfverbände, the Death's Head units, that guarded concentration camps in prewar Germany, to its surrender after an illustrious career on the Eastern front as one of Germany's most reliable divisions. The text focuses on Eicke's efforts to make the SS Totenkopfdivision, or SSTK, into a racially pure, elite fighting force through his influence withing the concentration camp system and how Eicke's personal ideology and leadership helped to mold the men of the SSTK into the fanatic defenders of the Reich that they became.
Bartov's Hitler's Army and Sydnor's Soldiers of Destruction both address the issue of the role that Nazi ideology played in the combat forces on the Eastern front during World War II. In both cases the authors succeed in demonstrating the convergence of politics, specifically National Socialist ideology, with the experience of combat on the Soviet front. Both authors make the case that it was, in fact, the effective integration of ideology and soldiery that allowed the German army to continue fighting as long as it did after the Barbarossa offensive had ground to a halt. Bartov takes the position that the infusion of Nazi ideology into the Wehrmacht, including the idea of the life and death struggle against the racially inferior Asiatic Bolshevik menace and the unequivocal faith in the Führer, albeit as a result of the worsening situation on the Eastern front, served as a method for maintaining discipline and, therefore, allowed for prolonged German resistance to the oncoming Red Army. Sydnor, on the other hand, takes the position that Nazi ideology allowed for the SSTK to become the great force that it was. First, Eicke's experience within the camp system, a monument to Nazi ideology, gave him contacts from which he could acquire materiel for his division. Second, the ethnically homogenous stock from which the division was formed, combined with Eicke's personal philosophy emphasizing action over thought, fit well into Hitler's Weltanschauung, eventually resulting in preferential treatment of the SSTK within the military hierarchy. Third, the indoctrination of the SS soldiers with Nazi ideals of both the struggle against the Bolshevik threat and German cultural and racial superiority, combined with better equipment and Eicke's "action over contemplation" philosophy, allowed for a number of military successes against the Soviet army by the SSTK which fit well into Hitler's "stand and fight at all costs" strategy, thus further improving SSTK's prestige. This prestige paid off in the form of decorations and supplies, as SSTK was considered to be Germany's trump card to be played in many losing situations. Both authors prove their theses, that the conditions of the Eastern front resulted in the greater politicalization of the Wehrmacht and that an organization draped in Nazi ideology can create an effective military force as is demonstrated by the SS Totenkopfdivision. Furthermore, the authors prove that it was the politicization of the armed forces, by either means, that allowed for the prostrate German army to withstand the Soviet onslaught with the degree of resiliency that it did.
Omer Bartov proves his thesis quite handily in Hitler's Army. The text is concise, follows a logical pattern, and contains a great number of primary sources. The text's only setback is that numerous, extensive, quotations from letters of front line troops, cause the climactic final chapter of the book to seem disjointed and redundant at times. Quotation after quotation of five or more lines in length, although consistent with Bartov's thesis of the definite embrace of the Wehrmacht soldiers to National Socialist dogma, continually reiterate the same point for many pages without significant interjection by the author. Each quote seems to be yet another soldier regurgitating Goebbels' propaganda. Nevertheless, this long section of repetitious quotes does little to detract from the overall style and relevance of the text. In contrast to Hitler's Army, Sydnor's text is a straight narrative of he life of the SSTK. The book reads like a story. The prose is flowing, yet dense with factual information. Similar to the Bartov text, Soldiers of Destruction makes extensive use of primary sources, but rather than using a large number of letters and memoirs, Sydnor makes use of vast numbers of official German documents. Although the thesis of the text concerns the use of the heavily politicalized SS in a combat setting, the text avoids details concerning the "criminal" activities of the division both as its role in the concentration camps and with respect to Soviet civilians in occupied areas. For the most part, references to atrocities committed by SSTK soldiers are delegated to footnotes. The issue of war crimes by SSTK is not directly relevant to the thesis of the text, but would nonetheless, paint a clearer picture of the division to which this text was devoted. Both texts are historically significant because of their abilities to bring further insight into the German war machine during the Second World War. Hitler's Army discusses the experiences of the German soldier on the Soviet front and the results that these experiences had on the manner that the individual soldier reacted to the ever worsening conditions of the war. Soldiers of Destruction is an extremely detailed account of the life of the SS Death's Head division, including detailed descriptions of major battles that SSTK fought in and accurate casualty statistics after every major skirmish. In fact, Bartov actually cites Soldiers of Destruction in reference to a massacre of British troops by SSTK at Le Paradis during the 1940 campaign (Bartov 199 n. 21). Both books offer relevant testimony as to the experiences of German soldiers, albeit of different sorts, during World War II, and the role of Nazi ideology in their war experiences.
The opening of the Eastern front by the German army in June of 1941 created a new theatre of war in which ideology was to play a defining role. The Wehrmacht and other German armed forces did not merely face the Red Army on the field of battle. Not only were Germans fighting Russians, but National Socialism was fighting Soviet Communism in a struggle for hegemony over Eastern Europe and a seat at the table of World powers. Both Omer Bartov's Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich and Charles W. Sydnor, Jr.'s Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death's Head Division, 1933-1945 address how this ideological struggle between two extremes affected the German combat forces. For better or for worse, National Socialist dogma played a role in the attitude and morale of the German armed forces on the Eastern front in the European theatre of the Second World War.
Bartov, Omer. Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Sydnor, Charles W. Jr. Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death's Head Division, 1933-1945. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977.
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