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The German Army (German: Heer, German: ⓘ; lit. ' army ') was the land forces component of the Wehrmacht, [b] the regular armed forces of Nazi Germany, from 1935 until it effectively ceased to exist in 1945 and then was formally dissolved in August 1946. [4]
The Wehrmacht formed the heart of Germany's politico-military power. In the early part of the Second World War, the Wehrmacht employed combined arms tactics (close-cover air-support, tanks and infantry) to devastating effect in what became known as Blitzkrieg (lightning war).
The 1st Army was activated on 26 August 1939, in Wehrkreis XII with General Erwin von Witzleben in command. Its primary mission was to take defensive positions and guard the western defences of Germany against Allied forces along the Maginot Line during the attack on Poland, [1] making it the principal German combatant during the short-lived French Saar Offensive.
German historian Jürgen Förster wrote that most Wehrmacht officers genuinely believed that most Red Army commissars were Jews who in turn were what kept the Red Army going and that the best way to bring about victory against the Soviet Union was to exterminate the commissars via enforcing the Commissar Order so as to deprive the Russian ...
The military career of Adolf Hitler, who was the dictator of Germany from 1933 until 1945, can be divided into two distinct portions of his life. Mainly, the period during World War I when Hitler served as a Gefreiter (lance corporal [A 1]) in the Bavarian Army, and the era of World War II when he served as the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht (German Armed Forces) through his ...
On 9 March 1943, Army Group B was renamed Army Group South. On 17 July 1943, a new Army Group B was formed in southern Germany and northern Italy. It was later sent to German-occupied France on 1 December 1943. On 26 July 1943, a new Army Group C was formed in Italy to manage the Italian campaign.
Russian émigrés and defectors from the Soviet Union formed the Russian Liberation Army or fought as Hilfswillige within German units of the Wehrmacht primarily on the Eastern Front. [7] Non-Russians from the Soviet Union formed the Ostlegionen (literally "Eastern Legions"). The East Legions comprized a total of 175,000 personnel. [8]
The book was first published in German with a title that translates as The Wehrmacht: Images of the Enemy, War of Extermination, Legends.According to Benjamin Schwarz, "These works have conclusively demonstrated that the Wehrmacht—and not, as postwar accounts by German generals would have it, merely the SS—freely and even eagerly joined in murder and genocide".