rise-and-fall-of-the-third-reich-william-shirer-pdf

330 THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICHprepared a ringing speech that the Army Commander in Chief was to read,rallying the senior generals behind him in a common insistence that there be noNazi adventures leading to armed conflict. Alas for Beck, Brauchitsch lacked thecourage to read it. Beck had to be content with reading his own memorandumof July 16, which left a deep impression on most of the generals. But no decisiveaction was taken and the meeting of the top brass of the German Army broke upwithout their having had the courage to call Hitler to count, as their predecessorsonce had done with the Hohenzollern emperors and the Reich Chancellors.Brauchitsch did summon up enough courage to show Beck’s July 16 memorandumto Hitler. Hitler’s response was to call in not the resisting rankinggenerals, who were behind it, but the officers just below them, the Army andAir Force staff chiefs of various commands who formed a younger set on whichhe believed he could count after he had treated it to his persuasive oratory.Summoned to the Berghof on August 10 – Hitler had scarcely budged from hismountain villa all summer – they were treated after dinner to a speech that,according to Jodl, who was present and who described it in his faithful diary,lasted nearly three hours. But on this occasion the eloquence of the Fuehrerwas not so persuasive as he had hoped. Both Jodl and Manstein, who was alsopresent, later told of ”a most serious and unpleasant clash” between Generalvon Wietersheim and Hitler. Wietersheim was the ranking officer at the gatheringand as designate chief of staff of the Army of the West under GeneralWilhelm Adam he dared to speak up about the key problem which Hitler andthe OKW were dodging: that with almost all of the military forces committedto the blow against Czechoslovakia, Germany was defenseless in the west andwould be overrun by the French. In fact, he reported, the West Wall could notbe held for more than three weeks.The Fuehrer [Jodl recounted in his diary] becomes furious and flamesup, bursting into the remark that in such a case the whole Armywould not be good for anything. ”I say to you, Herr General [Hitlershouted back], the position will be held not only for three weeks butfor three years!” 344With what, he did not say. On August 4, General Adam had reported tothe meeting of senior generals that in the west he would have only five activedivisions and that they would be overwhelmed by the French. Wietersheimpresumably gave the same figure to Hitler, but the Fuehrer would not listen.Jodl, keen staff officer though he was, was now so much under the spell of theLeader that he left the meeting deeply depressed that the generals did not seemto understand Hitler’s genius.The cause of this despondent opinion [Wietersheim’s], which unfortunatelyis held very widely within the Army General Staff, is basedon various grounds.First of all, it [the General Staff] is restrained by old memories andfeels itself responsible for political decisions instead of obeying andcarrying out its military assignments. Admittedly it does the lastwith traditional devotion but the vigor of the soul is lacking becausein the end it does not believe in the genius of the Fuehrer. And onedoes perhaps compare him with Charles XII.