The Himmerod memorandum (German : Himmeroder Denkschrift) was a 40-page document produced in 1950 after a secret meeting of former Wehrmacht high-ranking officers invited by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to the Himmerod Abbey to discuss West Germany's Wiederbewaffnung (rearmament). The resulting document laid the foundation for the establishment of the new military force (Bundeswehr) of the Federal Republic.
The memorandum, along with the public declaration of Wehrmacht's "honour" by the Allied military commanders and West Germany's politicians, contributed to the creation of the myth of the clean Wehrmacht. [1] [2]
The Potsdam Conference held by the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States from 17 July to 2 August 1945, largely determined the occupation policies that the occupied country was to face after its defeat, including demilitarization, denazification, democratization and decentralization. The Allies' often crude and ineffective implementation caused the local population to dismiss the process as "noxious mixture of moralism and 'victors' justice'". [3]
For those in the Western zones of occupation, the advent of the Cold War undermined the demilitarization process by seemingly justifying the key part of Hitler's foreign policies, the "fight against Soviet bolshevism". [4] In 1950, after the outbreak of the Korean War, the Americans felt that a West German army clearly had to be revived to help face off the Soviet Union, and American and West German politicians confronted the prospect of rebuilding the West German armed forces. [5]
From 5 to 9 October 1950, a group of former senior officers, at the behest of Adenauer, met in secret at the Himmerod Abbey (hence the memorandum's name) to discuss West Germany's rearmament. The participants were divided in several subcommittees, which focused on the political, ethical, operational and logistical aspects of the future armed forces. [6]
The resulting memorandum included a summary of the discussions at the conference and bore the name "Memorandum on the Formation of a German Contingent for the Defense of Western Europe within the framework of an International Fighting Force". It was intended as both a planning document and a basis of negotiations with the Western Allies. [6]
The participants of the conference were convinced that no future German army would be possible without the historical rehabilitation of the Wehrmacht and so the memorandum included these key demands:
The chairman of the conference summarised the foreign policy changes demanded in the memorandum with this comment: "Western nations must take public measures against the 'prejudicial characterization' of the former German soldiers and must distance the former regular armed forces from the 'war crimes issue'". [7] Adenauer accepted the memorandum and began a series of negotiations with the three Western powers to satisfy those demands. [5]
Adenauer accepted the propositions and, in turn, advised the representatives of the three Western powers that German armed forces would not be possible as long as German soldiers remained in custody. To accommodate the West German government, the Allies commuted a number of war crimes sentences. [5]
A public declaration from Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower followed in January 1951 that attested to the Wehrmacht's "honour". Prior to signing the declaration and discussing it with the press, Eisenhower met with former Wehrmacht Generals Adolf Heusinger and Hans Speidel, both of whom participated in the Himmerod conference, and was impressed by them. The declaration read in part: [1] [2]
I have come to know that there was a real difference between the German soldier and Hitler and his criminal group.... For my part, I do not believe that the German soldier as such has lost his honor.
In the same year (1951), some former career officers of the Wehrmacht were granted war pensions under Article 131 of the Common Law. [8] Eisenhower's public statement gave the former Wehrmacht generals the ability to expand on the revisionist work that they had already done for the United States Army Historical Division, thus getting their message beyond the small circle of Allied intelligence officers. [2]
Adenauer made a similar statement in a Bundestag debate on Article 131 of the Basic Law, West Germany's provisional constitution. He stated that the German soldier fought honourably as long as he "had not been guilty of any offense". The declarations laid the foundation of the myth of the clean Wehrmacht, which reshaped the West's perception of the Nazi war effort and led to Wehrmacht's eventual rehabilitation in the eyes of the public and the Allied authorities. [1]
The Bundeswehr is the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany. The Bundeswehr is divided into a military part and a civil part, the military part consisting of the German Army, the German Navy, the German Air Force, the Joint Support Service, the Joint Medical Service, and the Cyber and Information Domain Service.
The final battles of the European theatre of World War II continued after the definitive surrender of Nazi Germany to the Allies, signed by Field marshal Wilhelm Keitel on 8 May 1945 in Karlshorst, Berlin. After German leader Adolf Hitler's suicide and handing over of power to grand admiral Karl Dönitz on the last day of April 1945, Soviet troops conquered Berlin and accepted surrender of the Dönitz-led government. The last battles were fought on the Eastern Front which ended in the total surrender of all of Nazi Germany’s remaining armed forces such as in the Courland Pocket in western Latvia from Army Group Courland in the Baltics surrendering on 10 May 1945 and in Czechoslovakia during the Prague offensive on 11 May 1945.
The German Army is the land component of the armed forces of Germany. The present-day German Army was founded in 1955 as part of the newly formed West German Bundeswehr together with the Marine and the Luftwaffe. As of 2024, the German Army had a strength of 63,047 soldiers.
Franz Halder was a German general and the chief of staff of the Army High Command (OKH) in Nazi Germany from 1938 until September 1942. During World War II, he directed the planning and implementation of Operation Barbarossa, the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union. Halder became instrumental in the radicalisation of warfare on the Eastern Front. He had his staff draft both the Commissar Order and the Barbarossa Decree that allowed German soldiers to execute Soviet citizens for any reason without fear of later prosecution, leading to numerous war crimes and atrocities during the campaign. After the war, he had a decisive role in the development of the myth of the clean Wehrmacht.
Friedrich von Mellenthin was a German general during World War II. A participant in most of the major campaigns of the war, he became known afterwards for his memoirs Panzer Battles, first published in 1956 and reprinted several times since then.
The German Instrument of Surrender was a legal document effecting the unconditional surrender of the remaining German armed forces to the Allies, ending World War II in Europe. It was signed at 22:43 CET on 8 May 1945 and took effect at 23:01 CET on the same day.
Hans Speidel was a German military officer who successively served in the armies of the German Empire, Nazi Germany and West Germany. The first general officer of the Bundeswehr, he was a key player in West German rearmament during the Cold War as well as West Germany's integration into NATO and international negotiations on European and Western defence cooperation in the 1950s. He served as Commander of the Allied Land Forces Central Europe (COMLANDCENT) from 1957 to 1963 and then as President of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs from 1964.
Panzer Battles is the English language title of Friedrich von Mellenthin's memoirs of his service as a staff officer in the Panzerwaffe of the German Army during World War II.
West German rearmament began in the decades after World War II. Fears of another rise of German militarism caused the new military to operate within an alliance framework, under NATO command. The events led to the establishment of the Bundeswehr, the West German military, in 1955. The name Bundeswehr was a compromise choice suggested by former general Hasso von Manteuffel to distinguish the new forces from the Wehrmacht term for the combined German forces of Nazi Germany.
The Flensburg Government, also known as the Flensburg Cabinet, the Dönitz Government, or the Schwerin von Krosigk Cabinet, was the rump government of Nazi Germany during a period of three weeks around the end of World War II in Europe. The government was formed following the suicide of Adolf Hitler on 30 April 1945 during the Battle of Berlin. It was headed by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz as Reichspräsident and Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk as the Leading Minister. The administration was referred to as the "Flensburg Government" because Dönitz's command relocated to Flensburg in northern Germany near the Danish border on 3 May 1945. The sports school at the Mürwik naval academy was used as the government headquarters.
Adolf Bruno Heinrich Ernst Heusinger was a German military officer whose career spanned the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, West Germany and NATO. He joined the German Army as a volunteer in 1915 and later became a professional soldier. He served as the Operations Chief within the general staff of the High Command of the German Army in the Wehrmacht from 1938 to 1944. He was then appointed acting Chief of the General Staff for two weeks in 1944 following Kurt Zeitzler's resignation. That year, Heusinger was accused of involvement in the 20 July plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, but was cleared by the People's Court. Heusinger was later appointed head of the military cartography office when the war ended. He later became a general for West Germany and served as head of the West German military from 1957 to 1961 as well as Chairman of the NATO Military Committee from 1961 to 1964.
HIAG was a lobby group and a denialist veterans' organisation founded by former high-ranking Waffen-SS personnel in West Germany in 1951. Its main objective was to achieve legal, economic, and historical rehabilitation of the Waffen-SS.
Friedrich Oskar Ruge was an officer in the German Navy and recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross of Nazi Germany. He served as the first commander of the post-war German Navy.
The Wehrmacht forces for the Ardennes Offensive were the product of a German recruitment effort targeting German males between the ages of 16 and 60, to replace troops lost during the past five months of fighting the Western Allies on the Western Front. Although the Wehrmacht was keeping the Allied forces contained along the Siegfried Line, the campaign had cost the Wehrmacht nearly 750,000 casualties, mostly irreplaceable. However, the rapid advance of the Allied armies in August and September after Operation Overlord had created a supply problem for the Allies. By October, the progress of the Western Allies' three army groups had slowed considerably, allowing the Germans to partly rebuild their strength and prepare for the defense of Germany itself. Adolf Hitler decided that the only way to reverse his fortunes would be to launch a counter-offensive on the Western Front, forcing both the United States and Great Britain to an early peace, and allowing the Wehrmacht to shift its forces to the Eastern Front, where it could defeat the much larger Soviet Red Army.
The Wehrmacht were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer (army), the Kriegsmarine (navy) and the Luftwaffe. The designation "Wehrmacht" replaced the previously used term Reichswehr and was the manifestation of the Nazi regime's efforts to rearm Germany to a greater extent than the Treaty of Versailles permitted.
Johannes "Hans" Poeppel was a general in the German Bundeswehr. He served as Inspekteur des Heeres 1979–81.
Hermann Foertsch was a German general during World War II who held commands at the divisional, corps and army levels. He was a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross of Nazi Germany.
The Schnez-Truppe or Schnez Organisation was an illegal clandestine paramilitary organisation formed in West Germany in 1949 by veterans of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS under the leadership of Albert Schnez. The paramilitary was intended to fight against the Soviet Union in the event of an invasion or German communists in a civil war. It has been reported as having been founded with a membership of some 2,000 former officers; later obtaining a total strength of up to 40,000 members.
The myth of the clean Wehrmacht is the negationist notion that the regular German armed forces were not involved in the Holocaust or other war crimes during World War II. The myth, heavily promoted by German authors and military personnel after World War II, completely denies the culpability of the German military command in the planning and perpetration of war crimes. Even where the perpetration of war crimes and the waging of an extermination campaign, particularly in the Soviet Union – the populace of which was viewed by the Nazis as "sub-humans" ruled by "Jewish Bolshevik" conspirators – has been acknowledged, they are ascribed to the "Party soldiers corps", the Schutzstaffel (SS), but not the regular German military.
The 285th Security Division was a rear-security division in the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany. The unit was deployed in German-occupied areas of the Soviet Union, in the Army Group North Rear Area.