{"id":154804,"date":"2024-04-21T01:10:25","date_gmt":"2024-04-21T09:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=154804"},"modified":"2024-04-21T06:20:23","modified_gmt":"2024-04-21T14:20:23","slug":"the-role-of-god-in-hitlers-panzers-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=154804","title":{"rendered":"The Role Of God In Hitler’s Panzers East"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Stahel writes in his 2023 book Hitler’s Panzer Generals: Guderian, Hoepner, Reinhardt and Schmidt Unguarded<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A common set of beliefs that all four generals shared was their relationship to the Protestant Church and the significance this assumed in explaining their values and behaviour.<\/p>\n

Germany under Hitler was made up of 95 per cent Christians, and of these some 55 per cent were Protestants.101 The elite of the German officer corps was overwhelmingly made up of Protestants. This predominance had its roots in the Protestant Kingdom of Prussia, which dominated the German officer corps before the First World War and
\nconstituted the birthplace of Hoepner (Frankfurt an der Oder, 1886), Guderian (Kulm, 1888) and Schmidt (Berlin, 1886). Reinhardt was born in the likewise predominantly Protestant Kingdom of Saxony (Bautzen, 1887). Indeed, in 1907 only some 16.6 per cent of German officers were Catholic, which not surprisingly predetermined an enduring
\ndominance of Protestants in the German high command of the Second World War.102 While one might assume a natural opposition between the Protestant Christian faith and the realities of wartime Nazism, the generals\u2019 letters reflect no hint of confusion or contradiction in that regard. All four generals alluded to God in their letters,
\nsometimes in moments of open reflection, but also to buttress their periods of dejection and melancholy. Indeed, references to God in
\ntheir letters show a remarkable increase as the year progresses. During
\nthe first fourteen weeks of the campaign (from June to the end of
\nSeptember) there were only nine separate mentions of God, but in the
\nfollowing nine weeks (October and November) this rose to thirteen
\nreferences. Most remarkably, however, in December alone, when the
\nharsh winter conditions took hold and the Soviet counter-offensive
\nbegan, the number of references jumps to seventeen. This suggests an
\nanecdotal correlation between adversity and religious motivation,
\na trend that parallels the decline of Germany\u2019s fortunes in 1941.
\nIn order to ascertain the role and importance of religious belief
\namong the generals we must look at context. While references to God
\nare common to all of the letter collections, the devotion to faith was
\nmuch less conspicuous in letters written by Hoepner and Schmidt. Both
\nthanked God on a number of occasions, but less as explicit references to
\ndeeply held beliefs and more as simple turn of phrase. For example, in
\nJuly Hoepner wrote to Irma: \u2018The heat has been unbearable for the last
\neight days, 30\u00b0 in the shade, 48\u00b0 in the sun. Thank God that we\u2019ve found
\nice here.\u2019103 Similarly, on 27 November he wrote: \u2018We\u2019re advancing,
\nthank God.\u2019104 Such casual allusions to God are instructive because they
\nartificially inflate the number of recorded references without seriously
\nengaging with the idea or meaning of faith. More to the point, Hoepner,
\nunlike the other generals, never engages in anything more substantive.
\nThere is no further discourse on the importance of God or his faith,
\nwhich, given the emotional demands and unrelenting pressures of the campaign, is suggestive of Hoepner\u2019s diminished faith or perhaps lack
\nthereof.
\nSchmidt, by contrast, is somewhat more ambiguous. In his small
\nnumber of letters from the early months of the war Schmidt made just
\none reference to God when, after a period of wet weather had ended in
\nAugust, he noted simply \u2018thank God\u2019.105 Infrequent and cavalier usage
\nwould seem to fit with Hoepner\u2019s indifference, yet Schmidt seems to
\nhave fallen back more and more on his faith as the war dragged on and
\nhis position became steadily more desperate. Fighting against superior
\nSoviet forces at Tikhvin in November, Schmidt for the first time
\nincluded an explicit appeal to God\u2019s providence and good grace. After
\ntallying the formidable Soviet forces arrayed against him Schmidt concluded,
\n\u2018These will be difficult days. God willing, they will be successfully
\novercome.\u2019106 Later in the hard winter fighting, after detailing to
\nFridel his lack of strength and the impact of the cold weather, he
\nconcluded: \u2018It isn\u2019t easy . . . But, God willing, it will come right.\u2019107 In
\nsuch a context it is impossible to differentiate between a literal and a
\nfigurative meaning in Schmidt\u2019s mind, but importantly the references to
\ndivine intercession only appeared once the material strength of his
\nforces had sunk so low that the enemy threatened to overwhelm him.
\nIf Hoepner and Schmidt exhibited a more circumspect relationship
\nto their faith, the letters of the Guderians and Reinhardt attest to far
\nstronger religious feelings. Yet here too one can observe a progression
\nboth in the aggregate number of references to God and in the increasing
\nearnestness of those discussions. In fact, throughout the summer months
\nnone of the generals engaged in a substantive discourse about God or
\ntheir faith, rendering their portrayal of the German advance essentially
\na secular affair won exclusively through strength of arms. Unlike later
\nperiods, God was evoked neither to aid victory nor in gratitude for it.
\nYet as the campaign dragged on and the conditions worsened,
\nReinhardt found himself reflecting more and more on his faith and
\nwriting about it to Eva.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Stahel writes in his 2023 book Hitler’s Panzer Generals: Guderian, Hoepner, Reinhardt and Schmidt Unguarded: A common set of beliefs that all four generals shared was their relationship to the Protestant Church and the significance this assumed in explaining … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13633],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-154804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-germany"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=154804"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":154832,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154804\/revisions\/154832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=154804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=154804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=154804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}