Military Leaders From Germany

"Keitel is nobody but the man who runs my office."

"Other visits (to the front) showed me that efforts were being made on the Western Front to arrive at understandings with the enemy on special problems. At Arnhem, I found General Bittrich of the Waffen-SS in a state of fury. The day before, his Second Tank Corps had virtually wiped out a British airborne division. During the fighting the general had made an arrangement permitting the enemy to run a field hospital situated behind the German lines. But party functionaries had taken it upon themselves to kill British and American pilots, and Bittrich was cast in the role of a liar. His violent denunciation of the party was all the more striking since it came from an SS general."

"I once spent an hour and a half trying to explain a situation to "Sepp" Dietrich with the aid of a map. It was quite useless. He understood nothing at all."

"In all my years as a soldier, I have never seen men fight so hard."

"He is the only man...who has any political sense. Go and listen to him one day."

"A field marshal is born, not made!"

"There is but one hope, and this hope is embodied in the national groups which desire our recovery."

"During the years of the so-called peace, politics—total politics—have only a meaning in as much as they prepare for total war."

"For example, Italy and Soviet Russia, superficially considered, each seem to constitute a united people. But any scrutinising glance will perceive there tensions which will disintegrate the peoples of these two States immediately the outbreak of war permits them to explode."

"I will give up troops gladly as long as I know that they will be used in the right place to bring victory."

"The un-Germanness in and about us...lies primarily in a lack of racial sense ... in international, pacifistic and defeatistic thinking and, finally, in the considerable advancement of the Jewish people within our boundaries."

"The German people had themselves coined the phrase "Prussian militarism," although this very "Prussian militarism," the spirit of unselfish loyalty, of the surrender of the individual to the conception of the State, had created Prussia and guaranteed Germany's brilliant development. People mistook externals for the substance of militarism, and failed to realize the national strength that issued from it. It should not have been resisted, but encouraged."

"What the enemy allows to us and praises in us, must be bad for us."

"The fifth act of the great drama in Flanders opened on the 22nd October. Enormous masses of ammunition, such as the human mind had never imagined before the war, were hurled upon the bodies of men who passed a miserable existence scattered about in mud-filled shell-holes. The horror of the shell-hole area of Verdun was surpassed. It was no longer life at all. It was mere unspeakable suffering. And through this world of mud the attackers dragged themselves, slowly, but steadily, and in dense masses. Caught in the advanced zone by our hail of fire they often collapsed, and the lonely man in the shell-hole breathed again. Then the mass came on again. Rifle and machine-gun jammed with the mud. Man fought against man, and only too often the mass was successful."

"I reject Christianity because it is Jewish, because it is international, and because, in cowardly fashion, it preaches Peace on Earth."

"There are strong reasons to suspect that had Kluge not committed suicide he would have been arrested anyway."

"By the Revolution the Germans have made themselves pariahs among the nations, incapable of winning allies, helots in the service of foreigners and foreign capital, and deprived of all self-respect. In twenty years' time, the German people will curse the parties who now boast of having made the Revolution."

"We must all understand that only manly discipline—unconditional subordination to selfless leaders guided only by their public spirit, relegation of our own thoughts, and confidence in the Führer—can guarantee that the moral force of the individual shall be aggregated into a power that will effect the re-building of the nation and the Fatherland."

"Model stood up to Hitler in a way that hardly anyone else dared and even refused to carry out orders with which he did not agree."

"Did you see that eye? I trust that man to do it, but I wouldn't want to serve under him."

"Model was a man who spent an incredible amount of time at the front. He didn't lead from behind, looking at maps, but he went wherever he believed his presence would help. In no way was he a politician. He was army through and through and all his thinking was military. In the high positions he later occupied he was criticize for this, with good reason."

"Field Marshal Model was a bold, inexhaustible soldier, who knew the front well and who won the confidence of his men by his habitual disregard for his personal safety. He had no time for lazy or incompetent subordinates. He carried out his intentions in a most determined fashion. He was the best possible man to perform the fantastically difficult task of reconstructing a line in centre of the Eastern Front."

"With regard to himself, Field Marshal Model allowed no compromise and was ruthless, but he was indulgent to the men in the front lines who adored him. He demanded nothing for himself."

"Field Marshal Model was a peerless master of the large-scale defensive battle. Always present himself at critical points, he asked a great deal of his troops. Often he was harsh, sometimes ruthless. But he always found the answer to the trickiest of situations, never leaving his men in the lurch."

"My best Field Marshal. (mein bester Feldmarschall)"

"It should be prefaced by quotation from Goethe in which a special impression of Model's personality is given, "I love those who yearn for the impossible. (Faust)""

""Where Model is present, nothing can go wrong. (Wo Model ist, geht's nicht schief)" or "Model remodeled very well again. (Das hat Model wieder hingemodelt)" were, at that time, which were often mentioned in the Eastern Front."

"Behr, I cannot imagine that I, as a Field Marshal, the one who out of conviction in victory for my country am responsible for the deaths of hundreds of my soldiers, should now emerge from these woods to approach Montgomery, or the Americans, with my hands in the air and say 'Here I am. Field Marshal Model, I Surrender.'"

"In all the major combatant nations, there was a change of leadership in the middle years of the war, reflecting a perceived need for greater energy and ruthlessness in mobilizing the nation and its resources. In France, Clemenceau came to power, Britain Lloyd George. In Germany, characteristically, it was not a radical civilian politician, but the two most successful generals, Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who took over the reins of power in 1916. The 'Hindenburg Programme' attempted to galvanize and reorganize the German economy to bend it to the overriding purpose of winning the war. Run by another middle-class general, Wilhelm Groener, the War Office co-opted the trade unions and civilian politicians in the task of mobilization. But this was anathema to the industrialists and the other generals. Groener was soon dispensed with."

"Has everything been done to justify our actions in the light of history? What can there be left for a commander in defeat? In antiquity they took poison."

"His firm belief in God, his homeliness and an strongly developed love for his family, as well as his heartfelt pleasure in men and nature, consummated the one of the most outstanding soldiers in World War 2. In the most intimate circles it was said of him, "Without fear and fault.""

"I sincerely believe that I have served a criminal. I led my soldiers in good conscience... but for a criminal government."

"In spite of intense efforts, the moment has drawn near when this front, already so heavily strained, will break. I consider it my duty to bring these conclusions to your notice...my Fuhrer."

"Mein Führer, who commands The Ninth Army, you or I?"

"We have lost a battle, but I assure to you that we will not lose the war! I cannot say more at the present moment although I know the losses are crowded in your minds. That this happened does not hold importance. What counts is not to lose confidence in the future of Germany. At the same time everyone must understand the gravity of the situation. This moment will be enough to distinguish the true men from the inept ones. Every soldier has the same responsibilities: if the advancing one falls, another must be ready to take his place in order to go on."

"Every minute that we lose will cost us great losses later that we will not be able to afford. We must push forward now, otherwise we risk everything. Hurry yourself with the technical aspects, a lot of time has already been lost."

"I envy you Galland, for going into action. I wish I were a few years younger and less bulky. If I were, I would gladly put myself under your command. It would be marvelous to have nothing to worry about but a good fight, like it was in the old days."

"He who leads troops has no right to think about himself."

"The colossus of World War II seemed to be like a pyramid turned upside down, and for the moment the whole burden of the war rested on the few hundred German fighter pilots on the Channel coast."

"I fully subscribe to those words with my special thanks to all officers, noncommissioned officers and men for the attitude displayed during this fighting."

"To use a fighter as a fighter-bomber when the strength of the fighter arm is inadequate to achieve air superiority is putting the cart before the horse."

"My Soldiers are My Children. (Meine Soldaten sind Meine Kinder)"

"Superior technical achievements — used correctly both strategically and tactically — can beat any quantity numerically many times stronger yet technically inferior."

"Pushing the civilian populations aside, Hindenburg and Ludendorff established a 'silent dictatorship' in Germany, with military rule behind the scenes, severe curbs on civil liberties, central control of the economy and the generals calling the shots in the formulation of war aims and foreign policy. All of these developments were to provide significant precedents for the more drastic fate that overtook German democracy and civil freedom less than two decades later."

"The best Kamerad inside the pocket will be the Kamerad outside the pocket. (Der beste K.I.K wird K.A.K)"

"Keitel, Jodl and Warlimont had never been in the war....Their lack of fighting experience tended to make them underrate practical difficulties, and encourage Hitler to believe that things could be done that were quite impossible..."

"Warlimont became renowned, with Keitel and Jodl, as one of the German officers most loyal to Hitler and was accordingly sentenced to 18 years' imprisonment in 1949 as a minor war criminal..."

"I was convinced before the war started that it was a great disaster, a great wrong. Even after the campaign in Poland my conviction didn't change because on 3rd September, the third day of our going to war, the Western Powers had declared war on Germany. After the campaign in France in 1940 my conviction became uncertain, but when I heard one or two months after the armistice with France that now Hitler was to go with Russia, the old conviction came up again and it was at this moment that I changed the place of living for my family, moved them from Berlin to the place where they are today."

"1. Political officials and leaders are to be liquidated. 2. Insofar as they are captured by the troops, an officer with authority to impose disciplinary punishment decides whether the given individual must be liquidated. For such a decision the fact suffices that he is a political official. 3. Political leaders in the troops (Red Army) are not recognized as prisoners of war and are to be liquidated at the latest in the prisoner-of-war transit camps."

"If one looks back at the short period of time of the Badoglio government, one must remember that the Italian longing and need for peace was no secret to the German command. Since the German retreat at el Alamein in November 1942 and the collapse of the Italian Army on the eastern front, the Italians had repeatedly stated their weariness of battle and had made certain suggestions. In steadily increasing numbers, measures were being taken by the German military command out of fear for the Axis loyalty of Italy. As the course of events showed, the view on betrayal dominated all other German reflections, nourished by the fall of Mussolini and his style of leadership."