Brauchitsch, Field Marshal Walter von

Brauchitsch, Field Marshal Walter von (1881–1948),German Army officer who served as C-in-C of the German Army from February 1938 to December 1941.

Brauchitsch distinguished himself as a member of the German General Staff during the First World War and, when the General Staff was forbidden by the Versailles settlement, in its clandestine substitute, the Truppenamt. A talented artilleryman, he was involved in developing the 88 mm. dual-purpose gun, the Germans' most potent artillery piece of the war. By 1936 he was a lt-general and in January 1938, when Fritsch was suspended from duty for an alleged homosexual offence, he was nominated to the army's highest post by Keitel, who wanted an unpolitical C-in-C to please Hitler.

But it was more Brauchitsch's private life than his lack of political acumen which enabled Hitler to obtain the compliance of his new C-in-C and further the process of subordinating the army to the Nazi Party. Brauchitsch wanted a divorce in order to remarry, but he could not meet his wife's demands for a financial settlement. Hitler gave him the money, at least 80,000 Reichs marks, and Brauchitsch's second wife, a fervent Nazi of dubious reputation, never allowed Brauchitsch to forget the Führer's munificence; the prospect of unsavoury publicity about her was another source of potential blackmail. By taking the money, and by accepting the post of C-in-C before Fritsch had even been tried, Brauchitsch weakened not only his own position but the chance of the army's leaders uniting to depose Hitler.

Throughout his time as C-in-C Brauchitsch was aware of a conspiracy to remove Hitler, but though he sympathized with the conspirators he did nothing to encourage them (see also X-report). He did try to rally his fellow generals against Hitler's designs on Czechoslovakia, but was made to look merely faint-hearted when the Munich agreement gave the Führer what he wanted. He was in favour of attacking Poland when Hitler assured him it would not lead to a more widespread conflict, and was able to conduct the Polish campaign without interference. But, fearing the consequences, he did raise objections to a western offensive (see FALL GELB), which Hitler announced without consulting Brauchitsch beforehand. He was ignored, and after it was launched he was ignored again when he urged Hitler that the halt order before the Dunkirk perimeter be reversed.

Brauchitsch, having been promoted general in February 1938, was given his field marshal's baton in July 1940. Unlike Raeder, he was optimistic about the prospects of invading the UK (see SEALION) and he showed how far he had been drawn into the Nazi fold when he signed an order for the deportation of all able-bodied British males between 17 and 45 for forced labour after the UK had been occupied.

As C-in-C of the German Army during its invasion of the USSR in June 1941 (see BARBAROSSA), Brauchitsch and his chief-of-staff, Halder, were able to take credit for the planning of the operation and the early sweeping victories. But when Brauchitsch urged that Moscow be captured immediately Hitler ignored his C-in-C yet again, and by the time he had changed his mind it was too late. The failure of the German offensive against the Soviet capital led directly to Brauchitsch's dismissal on 19 December 1941, when he was replaced by Hitler himself.

Brauchitsch spent the rest of the war in retirement. He gave perjured evidence at the Nuremberg trials concerning, among other matters, his complicity in Hitler's orders to murder Soviet commissars. He died before he could be tried himself, but historians have not exonerated him. ‘Although it was Hitler who wanted to transform BARBAROSSA into a war of extermination against Bolshevism and Jewry, it was the Wehrmacht senior officers and their legal advisers who cast his ideological intentions into legally valid form’ ( Jürgen Förster, quoted in C. Barnett (ed.), Hitler's Generals, London, 1989, p. 89).

Bibliography

Mitcham, S. , Hitler's Field Marshals and their Battles (London, 1988).