Question Mark

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In 1918, as all good Nazis know, the great German Army was betrayed and brought down by a collapsing home front. That could never happen this time; Fuehrer Adolf Hitler had taken measures. Yet this week Hitler was face to face with another of the savage ironies of history: the great German Army was showing signs of caving in. Would the ironbound Nazi home front be betrayed and brought down in 1944 by a collapsing, demoralized Wehrmacht?

Germany was beset on all fronts by enemies of vast and growing power. But no salvo of massed Russian cannon, no U.S. or British blockbuster thundered louder in the ears of the Herrenvolk than the bomb of Berchtesgaden. That was the chilling symbol of disintegration in the Nazi regime's only bulwark against total defeat and ruin.

In the panic of fear and repression that followed the attempted assassination, Adolf Hitler turned, as though by blind instinct, to his old party comrades, Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, men as tightly and irrevocably bound to the Nazi system as himself. But to the Army they were no symbols of confidence. And so as a new Chief of the Army General Staff, the Fuehrer chose a different sort of man. He was neither an all-out Nazi nor an old-line Prussian officer, but an adroit military technician, with links to both camps. He was Colonel General Heinz Guderian (rhymes with agrarian), the Wehrmacht's No. 1 tank general, the kind of officer (Hitler hoped) who would not break, no matter how sure was defeat, how dismal the amateur attempts of the Party high command to stave it off.

What Manner of Man? Guderian's appointment to replace bumbling, Nazified Colonel General Kurt Zeitzler surprised military observers in the Allied capitals (and perhaps in Germany as well). The choice raised puzzling questions. Why did an Army everywhere in retreat need a tank specialist as its top planner? Was Guderian to be the strong man for the Army, or a figurehead for Hitler himself? Was his main job military (to revise Army strategy) or political (to hold the lid down during a ruthless purge of "unreliable" elements)? Was Guderian himself politically reliable, as far as the Party was concerned? Or just politically indifferent, and more calloused spiritually than even the run of Germany's high professional officers?

Only events could give the final answers.

But in Heinz Guderian's career, there were a few clues. At 56, taking over the biggest command of his life, Guderian was judged by his enemies a sound tactician and dynamic leader. His personal courage and tactical aggressiveness were well established. A singleminded, painstaking planner, he was always willing to take a calculated risk. He had won some of Germany's most striking victories in World War II. But he was also a general who had lost his most important battle--at a high-water mark of Nazi conquest.

That was in November 1941, when Guderian, commanding the Second Tank Army, thundered up to encircle Moscow from the south. By Dec. 3 he seemed on the verge of victory; some of his light tanks had penetrated the Soviet capital's suburbs. But Partisan attacks had been weakening his flanks; the tanks were behaving badly in bitter cold and 10 to 20 inches of snow. Marshal Zhukov launched a counterattack with reserves hoarded in the woods near Moscow. Four days later Moscow intercepted a grim radio message from Guderian to his advance units: "Burn the machines and retreat southward."

In the Shadow. After that dreadful failure, the earlier successes in Poland and France lost some of their savor for Heinz Guderian. He disappeared from the military scene for a time, then turned up in a rear-area job, reorganizing armored formations. He tackled his assignment with characteristic energy, and for the past year has served as Inspector General of Panzer Troops. When he returned to the center of the stage this week he showed his old confidence. But when he gave an interview, it sounded more like the work of Dr. Goebbels than the expression of a sound soldier. Example:

"The present Soviet assault will not only be broken,, but the Bolshevik intruders will again be thrown out of all the territory that at present they are devastating so cruelly. . . . Naturally the Soviets' numerical superiority gives us a certain amount of trouble, but we will master them."

General Guderian did not go so far as to explain how this was to be done. For all his bumptious words he must have known that the military situation in itself was desperate--apart from the just-revealed proof of serious disaffection in the German Army's officer corps.

Just how seriously the Wehrmacht chain of command had been affected, the world--and possibly Heinz Guderian--did not know. But Guderian did know what it was to fight a decisive battle with corroded, broken-down armor, and he knew now that the rust of desperation was spreading swiftly through his war machine.

Sixteen Generals. How deep that rust has eaten, Guderian could judge from the statement issued last week by 16 of his fellow generals, now prisoners of war in Russia. They urged all German generals and officers to break with the Nazis and end the war speedily, to save Germany from the abyss to which she had been led by "the adventurist political and strategic leadership of Adolf Hitler."

Twenty-one German generals had been captured in the disastrous Battle of White Russia, which they bitterly described as "a game of chance." Sixteen signed the original statement, a 17th added his name later. Thus only four were loyal to the Nazi Government, at least to the extent of keeping silent.

By contrast, of 24 generals captured by the Red Army at Stalingrad, only nine made such appeals. They had taken six months to a year to think matters over before making up their minds to denounce Hitler. Within two years, disintegration had gone a long way.

Damnation of the Demigods. The 16 could oppose Hitler from the safety of prisoner-of-war camps. Within Germany other Wehrmacht officers had paid with their lives for the bomb plot. Nazi authorities announced only four names of dead ringleaders, but reports sifting through rigid censorship indicated that a ferocious purge of the Army was being carried out, with arrests and executions.

By now there was probably not an old-line officer in the German Army who would feel anything but profound relief if the earth were to open up and swallow Hitler and his entire Nazi heirarchy. The demigods of German militarism, Prussian elite officers, hunting, dueling squires of the broad East Prussian estates, were in eclipse. Theirs was the tradition of always stopping a losing war in time to keep fit for the next one.

In 1918, following this tradition, the Junker generals had let the Kaiser go packing when the jig was up, and graciously permitted a new civilian government to bear the onus of defeat. But the Kaiser had not had a Heinrich Himmler, with his SS and Waffen SS, armies within armies, spies and informers, ruthless execution squads.

When Hitler came to the top the officers had gladly, if scornfully, done business with him: he had given them arms, troops, honors, for a time even victories. Now they had the payoff: short of a wholesale uprising, they were completely under the control of the Nazis, who had to fight to the last pistol bullet, because for them there could be no next war.

Stopgap. Though Hitler had his officers under control, he still had the problem of keeping them serviceable; he would shoot a general if he must, but he would use the man if he could. He had worked systematically to infiltrate 100% Nazi officers into key military commands. But with the present crisis in bloom he could sense the morale-shattering effect of introducing any young Nazi upstart as Chief of the Army General Staff.

What he needed was an able officer, acceptable to the old-line officers and to the Party men, but not too deeply involved with either group. In bringing Heinz Guderian back from obscurity Hitler may well have tapped the only general who could and would take the job.

Guderian was not one of the innermost circle of Prussian officers. He lacked the Junker background. But he was not an outsider. Born at Chelmo on the Vistula, in German Poland, he was an officer's son. He had an eminently correct career as cadet, junior officer, staff officer in World War I.

A more or less typical Pomeranian of medium height, stocky, with heavy features, thinning grey hair, a small mustache, Heinz Guderian has deep-set eyes, prominent cheekbones and a patronymic that might indicate an Armenian strain.

Shorn of his occupational handicaps, Heinz Guderian could pass as a good fellow. He unbends rather more than a high-ranking German officer should before civilians and is a mannerly, affable conversationalist. But he is all Army. In the old days he liked best to sit with fellow officers beer-drinking and shop-talking, especially about the employment of armored force.

Tanks in Russia. After World War I, Guderian remained in the army of 100,000 left to Germany. At the time his chance of becoming a tank expert was slim; tanks were forbidden to the Reichswehr. But the Junker generals could always find a way. Russia was an outcast country, too, and a secret agreement was worked out in 1922 allowing the establishment of German training bases on Russian soil. Because he spoke fluent Russian and Polish, Guderian was sent to study tank warfare; the tank became his obsession.

Soon after Hitler's rise to power, he got the green light to proceed with the formation of 24 motorized infantry companies and lay the foundation of a tank corps to work with them. Around this time he was riding his hobby so hard that many fellow officers regarded him as something of a crackpot, like the tank-minded De Gaulle in France or air-minded Billy Mitchell in the U.S. More fortunate than either, he was a prophet with official support in his own country.

He dashed about briskly, campaigning for tanks and tank warfare. He even appealed to the public. He whipped off pieces for the magazines on the Motor v. the Horse. He hit the market in 1938 with a book, Achtung Panzer! U.S. readers would find it heavy going, but to generals like Rundstedt and Beck it was a disgusting popularization of matters which were none of a civilian reader's business.

Worst of all, the book became a bestseller. Then Guderian brashly declared his opinion that the armored-force commander ought to command the whole army in battle. If this unseemly activity had continued, the Prussians might have decided to do something about Guderian, but the war came along, and presently, in Poland, in France, in Russia they found the man with the tanks mowing down the opposition. He was popular: he won victories, laurels, decorations, occasionally even field marshals' batons for his superiors.

Tank Defense. Guderian's own baton presumably was waiting for him at Moscow, but, like a Chekhov character, he never got there. After that defeat he apparently did some sober thinking, and set out to rewrite his tank doctrine in terms of defense tactics. In the past year he has reorganized German Panzer formations, especially training units of Panzer Grenadiers for antitank warfare. He also had dealings with Himmler's SS troops, supervising the transformation of several SS divisions to SS Panzers, and trained higher SS officers to serve as tank commanders. This willingness to do anything to get along in the world may have helped restore him to Adolf Hitler's favor.

When the call for Chief of Staff came, Guderian made no public show of reluctance. A man of great ambition and vast self-confidence, he could no more have turned down such a promotion than he could give up breathing.

He could reason that, after all, he had survived two of Hitler's rug-biting rages: one after the Moscow repulse, one in the 1938 "conquest" of Austria, when his tanks, all dressed up for the Fuehrer's victory parade in Vienna, ran out of gas many miles away. Presumably he could survive a third, if need be. Guderian may also have it in mind that he used to be regarded as one of the "realistic" officers who demanded collaboration with Russia--a fact that might recommend him as a member of some future negotiating committee. Until such time Hitler could probably depend on him.

At any rate, he took up his new task with a brief radio speech, offering polite homage to Hitler, a tactful reference to the late Field Marshal von Hindenburg (still the idol of the Junkers) and even a hollow gesture to the despised civilians: "And now, people, to arms!"

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