How the (German) Nazis did control the military?
No love affair
The relationship between the Nazis and the German military was no love affair right from the start.
When Hitler and his brown-shirted buddies stormed onto Germany’s political stage, the mood in the Reichswehr officer corps was about as cheerful as a CEO when the tax auditors arrive.
The Reichswehr liked to see itself as the last bastion of dignity and tradition: aristocratic accents, stiff uniforms, and the comforting smell of pipe tobacco in the officers’ mess. The Nazis, by contrast, looked like a gang of brawling soccer hooligans who had somehow stolen a flag factory.
For the generals, these upstarts were noisy, unruly, and far too fond of parades with bad choreography. Worst of all, their SA goons had this brilliant idea of replacing the professional army with a “people’s militia.” To the Reichswehr, that sounded about as appealing as handing over the keys of the national treasury to a kindergarten. In their minds, the army was their exclusive club, and the Nazis were the drunk guys banging on the door.
The crisis
By 1934, the tension between the Nazis and the Reichswehr had turned into a full-blown soap opera. On one side, you had the Reichswehr generals, clinging to their exclusive professional army like it was the last decent bottle of wine in Germany. On the other side, you had Ernst Röhm and his SA, a few million strong, marching around in cheap uniforms and loudly demanding to become the new people’s army.
Röhm’s dream? To shove the old officer corps aside and hand over the armory keys to his beer-hall stormtroopers. To the Reichswehr, that was basically a nightmare where their prestigious army got replaced by an armed fan club. The generals were already skeptical of Hitler, but Röhm’s ambitions turned skepticism into muttered coup fantasies.
Meanwhile, Hitler was caught in the middle. He needed the army if he ever wanted to make Germany great again, but he also owed his rise to the SA, who thought they’d get rewarded with shiny new ranks and sharp toys. Add to that a German economy still wobbly, political elites breathing down Hitler’s neck, and former war hero and president Hindenburg (who was more than ready to let the generals “restore order” if things got messy), and you had a pressure cooker about to blow.
A "balanced" approach
So, summer 1934: Hitler finally decides it’s makeover time. Out with the brown-shirted riffraff, in with the polished brass buttons of the Reichswehr, but not without making everyone sweat first.
First, he takes out Ernst Röhm, his old pal turned liability. Röhm had been swaggering around, telling anyone who’d listen that the SA would soon replace the Reichswehr. That kind of talk made the generals grind their monocles in frustration, so Hitler solved the problem the quick way: Röhm and most of the SA leadership were invited to a “meeting,” which turned out to be more bullets (without points) than minutes.
But Hitler, never one for half measures, didn’t stop there. He used the Night of the Long Knives to also eliminate other inconvenient figures, like General Kurt von Schleicher, the former chancellor who still had many, many friends in uniform and might have been tempted to play the “bring back stability” card. Conveniently for him, Schleicher and his wife ended up very dead, and suddenly there were fewer alternative leaders for the army to rally around. The message to the generals: in this regime, accidents were very well organized.
And just to make sure the Reichswehr brass didn’t get too cocky, Hitler also started “discovering” juicy scandals and about the current army leadership. Nothing like a little blackmail to keep the top brass from daydreaming about coups. The message was clear: I can get rid of your enemies, but I can just as easily make you my next target.
The blood oath
After the Night of the Long Knives, the Reichswehr brass were breathing a little easier. Röhm was gone, the SA was declawed, but Schleicher was six feet under. For once, the officers could sip their cognac without worrying that tomorrow a million half-trained stormtroopers would be knocking at the barracks door.
And then, right on cue, old President Hindenburg kicked the bucket in August 1934. That left a gaping hole at the top of the state, which Hitler happily filled by merging the offices of president and chancellor into the snazzy new title of Führer und Reichskanzler. But Hitler wanted more than a title; he wanted the army’s soul on paper.
Enter the oath of loyalty. Before 1934, soldiers swore allegiance to the constitution and the state. Boring stuff. Now, they were made to swear a personal oath: not to Germany, not to some abstract law, but directly to Adolf Hitler. Think of it as a political marriage contract written in blood: “I vow to obey you, personally, unto death, no take-backs.”
For the generals, it was a devil’s bargain. They got their exclusive status confirmed, the SA permanently out of the way, and promises of rearmament and shiny new divisions. In return, they chained themselves to a man who had just demonstrated he could shoot his friends and his rivals on the same weekend.
From that moment on, the Reichswehr was no longer just an army of the state. It was Hitler’s army. And once you’ve promised eternal obedience in front of God, his version of history wouldn’t allow for ‘just kidding.’
Carrot and stick
Once the oath had them hooked, Hitler kept the Reichswehr (now rebranded as the Wehrmacht and with shiny new toys) on a short leash. His method? The classic carrot-and-stick routine, except the carrot was dipped in gold and the stick came with a firing squad.
The carrots first: Hitler showered his generals with money, titles, and shiny bits of metal. Promotions came fast, medals were handed out like candy, and the gifts? Often loot straight out of conquered lands. Estates in Poland, art from France, cash and jewelry plundered from occupied territories or stolen from Jewish families: Hitler had a whole empire of “rewards” that didn’t actually cost him anything. For the generals, it was like Christmas morning, only every present was stolen from the neighbors.
And the stick? Oh, that was very real. Generals who got too independent, too critical, or simply too unlucky often discovered that loyalty to Hitler had an expiration date. Some were forced into early retirement, others were publicly disgraced, and quite a few ended up dead. In fact, Hitler personally had more German generals executed than all the Allies combined managed to kill during the entire war. That’s not micromanagement; that’s murder as a management style.
The result was an officer corps living in a constant state of whiplash: one day you’re sipping champagne on your new stolen estate, the next day you’re branded a traitor and quietly “removed.” Greed and fear, the two leashes Hitler knew how to pull best.
Lessons learned
In the end, the story of the Nazis and the Reichswehr is simple: the generals started out sneering at Hitler, then let him shoot their rivals, swore undying loyalty to him, and finally grew fat on stolen loot while living in terror of his next purge. They thought they were using him, turns out, he was using them, until the Wehrmacht wasn’t “Germany’s army” anymore, but just another trophy in Hitler’s wardrobe of horrors.
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