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Xerox University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 74-12,320 QUINNETT, Robert Lee, 1928- HITLER'S POLITICAL OFFICERS: THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST LEADERSHIP OFFICERS. The University of Oklahoma, Ph.D., 1973 History, modern University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan © 1974 ROBERT LEE QUINNETT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFimED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE HITLER'S POLITICAL OFFICERS: THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST LEADERSHIP OFFICERS A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY ROBERT LEE QUINNETT Norman, Oklahoma 1973 HITLER'S POLITICAL OFFICERS: THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST LEADERSHIP OFFICERS APPROVED DISSERTATION COMMITTEE PREFACE When the Convention ruled France, the revolutionary government instituted représentants en mission. The task of these representatives on mission was to organize the new provincial governments and to supervise the French revolu tionary armies and their generals in the field. Given wide latitude, they were largely on their own. If revolutionary France was to have an army capable of meeting the forces of Europe, she had to entrust the army's leadership to former officers of the king who could not be fully trusted. Thus, the representatives on mission had the duty to oversee the loyalty of these officers. As to the success or failure of these first political commissars, historians have ever since differed. To some, they were meddling civilians who knew nothing of military affairs; to others, they were champions of liberty, democracy, and the rights of the com mon soldier. It seems unlikely that the controversy can be adequately settled, since France's revolutionary armies were victorious as well as defeated both with and without them. A similar statement can be made concerning the Red Army's on-again off-again experiments along the same path. I l l When the bolsheviks created the Red Army during the Russian Revolution, they instituted a system similar to that of revolutionary France over 100 years previously. They either had to use old Tsarist officers in the Red Army, men of doubtful political reliability, or face a crushing defeat at the hands of the professionally-led counterrevo lutionary forces. Trotsky's solution resembled that used by the French Convention. He assigned a political commis sar, called a Politruk at lower levels, to every commander in order to monitor his activities and to ensure his loy alty to the communist regime. No operational order held validity unless countersigned by the commissar who stood virtually on the same level as the commander. The officers were to train the army and lead it into combat while the commissars watched their conduct, prevented treason, and educated the rank and file politically. After 193^ these commissars only supervised troop morale and political in doctrination, but after Stalin's purge of the army in 1937, they again regained their former status. During the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 19^1, the commissar (hereafter called the Politruk for the sake of simplicity) again took up his "co-commander" duties, but in October 1942, as part of Stalin's appeal to Russian nationalism, he once more reverted to the role of political advisor and propagandist. The Politruk is the foil in this study which concerns a pale German version of the Politruk, the National iv Sozialist Fuhrungs Offizier (NSFO--National Socialist Leadership Officer). The NSFO had the duty of ensuring the final nazification of the German army. German condi tions were both different from and yet similar to those which called forth the NSFO's precursors. The German army had a strong officer corps in being which followed age-old military and social traditions; however, Hitler questioned the loyalty of those in the higher ranks of this officer corps. Still, tradition dominated the officers, and the nazi party was not strong enough to assert its own absolute domination through the activities of the NSFO. When first established in late 1943, the NSFO served as a staff ad visor to his commander for the indoctrination of the German troops in nazi ideology. However, in the last few months of the war he more and more began to resemble a Politruk as Germany appeared headed for total defeat, and certain mem bers of the nazi party tried to give him full Politruk-like powers. Yet in the last few weeks the party failed in an attempt to take over the NSFO system in its entirety. Thus the NSFO never became a Politruk. Although the evaluation of his success or failure is clouded by the defeat of the Third Reich in 1945, enough evidence is at hand to pro nounce the NSFO a failure. This study will investigate the reasons for the establishment of the NSFO system and the way it worked; it will also evaluate the accomplishments and failures of this system within the Wagnerian mists of the last months of the war and assign reasons, and blame where appropriate, for its failure. This work arose out of an interest in nazism dating back to my youth and from my twenty years of military serv ice as a regular officer in the U.S. Army. Two things sparked this interest. The first was two periods of army service in Germany where I met and talked with people who had lived through the nazi period and where I visited many of the "shrines of nazism." The second was a graduate seminar conducted by my major professor in German history at the University of Oklahoma, Dr. Gordon Drummond, who assigned me the task of presenting a review of a documen- tive article by G. L. Weinberg on the NSFO. (See sources consulted.) Looking for a suitable theme at that time for a master's thesis, the NSFO seemed to offer a challenge and a possible solution to my dual interest in nazism and the military, especially sincj it was an untried subject. Professor Drummond suggested the value of using the same subject for both the master's thesis and my doctoral dis sertation and recommended that I conduct research on the party side of the NSFO question in Germany. I was not exactly thrilled with incorporating information on the party because I had conceived the thesis and dissertation as military works. To this end, for my thesis I used The Captured German Records Filmed at Alexandria, Virginia vi which I purchased from the National Archives on microfilm. His rationale finally enthused me, and for my dissertation I conducted research in the records of the N.S.D.A.P. in Germany. This led to significant results. The records in the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz provided startling answers to some of the questions I had tried to answer in my master's thesis. Thus, this work is a political-military study of one facet of the nazi era--the party's attempt to nazify the German army. Those who expect a history of nazism or a biographical sketch of leading nazi or military person alities will not find it here. There are countless excel lent studies of this nature for those who are interested, and some of the best are listed in the sources consulted. Wherever I thought that information concerning a man's character or past was important for understanding a par ticular event, it is, of course, present. Also, the ele ments of the so-called nazi ideology are interwoven through out the study. The two main primary sources for this study are the National Archives microcopies of the Captured German Records F ilmed at Alexandria, Virginia, referred to in footnotes as NAM (National Archives Microcopy), and documents contained in the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz, Germany, referred to in footnotes as BAK (Bundesarchiv Koblenz).