On 3rd August 1934, the army swore a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler, this was a huge landmark in his successes because it meant that there was a 100,000 strong army prepared to fight and die to follow his orders, this is a sign of extreme loyalty. At this time, for an army the oath was much more serious than it is viewed in modern days, this oath meant that future resistance was seen as an act of treachery so they felt that they had bound themselves by oath to his regime. This new oath was demanded by Hitler of all his soldiers and accepted by Field Marshal von Blomberg, the War Minister, and General von Fritsch, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army. All of Hitler’s soldiers were to declare, “I will render unconditional obedience to the Fuhrer of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler, the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces.” In March 1935, conscription was introduced in the army to give Germany up to 550,000 soldiers, this would win Hitler great support from the elites in the army who had been disgusted at the original ‘Treaty of Versailles.’ Conscription would provide massive promotion chances, but meant that the German army was falling way over the boundaries of the Treaty of Versailles. A propaganda bureau had been set up to make sure that conscription was successful in raising a large army.
This breaking up of the ‘Treaty’ would have impressed the Officer Corps, as it would make them look stronger on the world scale. Hitler here was showing that the support of the army was far more important to him than the boundaries of the ‘Treaty of Versailles’, obviously army Generals would be very pleased about this. In a more literal sense, Hitler also broke the Treaty of Versailles with the Remilitarisation of the Rhineland in March 1936, proving popular with the right-wing army elites and the army. The introduction of conscription and the re-militarisation of the Rhineland were both great moves for Hitler and the army, as Hitler would have a bigger and more loyal army behind him and the army Generals were finally getting what they had wanted, the breaking up of the ‘Treaty of Versailles.’
Hitler pulled off a very successful publicity stunt on 22nd March 1933 called the ‘Day of Potsdam’, the day before the Enabling Law was passed. The ‘Day of Potsdam’ was planned to reassure the German people that Hitler was a nice guy with their best interests at heart and it appeared to show that Hindenburg was behind Hitler and totally supported him. The hope was of Hitler being associated with traditional German values and therefore reassuring specifically Conservative Elites that Hitler could be trusted and also reassuring society in general. The whole event worked very well for Hitler and didn’t just gain general loyalty from the army but from elite Junkers such as the von Moltkes, Stamflenburgs and Schulenburg’s whose families had been in the army for generations. The support of these families gave Hitler credibility and made him look like less of a threat because he had these highly-respected aristocratic families behind him for publicity stunts like this, he could then gain more mass support from army elites and the actual army. The army elites really wanted an authoritarian society again with a Royal Family so would have been impressed by Hitler’s show of respect for the Crown Prince Frederick. The army would have also been very pleased at one of Hitler’s first major changes in 1933, the setting up of a ‘Defence Council’ consisting of Hitler, Defence Minister, Foreign Minister, Propaganda Minister and Finance Minister. This was good for Hitler and the Nazi party because???
The Conservative elites present at the Hossbach meeting in November 1937 accepted Hitler’s pan-German aims to recover German land and people lost in Central Europe, but Blomberg, Fritsch and Neurath, given Germany’s state of military unpreparedness, were seriously concerned by Hitler’s talk of war and conquest. The reservations of these men were only involving the risks, timing and the state of German rearmament, but Hitler had very serious doubts that these and other representatives of the old elites in high places would block his plans. Hitler was convinced that the army leadership was weak and he knew that they could oppose his policies so he looked for any opportunity to get rid of them and establish his control over the army. The opportunist in Hitler must have been overjoyed in November 1937, as he couldn’t have anticipated the circumstances of the Blomberg-Fritsch crisis. The peculiarities of Blomberg’s marriage coupled with the allegations of Fritsch’s homosexuality, triggered a chain of events that led Hitler to carry out major changes in the armed forces, these events in 1938 severely damaged the army’s independence from Hitler. It appears that by 1938, Hitler had control of these officers but had lost their loyalty. The departures of Blomberg and Fritsch were shortly followed by the retiring of 16 generals and the transfer of 44 other high-ranking officers, all of who did not totally agree with Hitler’s plans and ideas. Hitler replaced these generals with Keitel and Brauchitsch who would benefit Hitler as they were dedicated and loyal supporters of him. These changes made it possible for Hitler to complete the process of securing his power. The majority in the army continued to support the Fuhrer and his policies anyway, whether out of fear or a sense of loyalty to their oath as soldiers.
There were limitations in Hitler’s attempts to win the loyalty of the army especially closer to 1938 because he may have won over the mass loyalty or if not the control of the army, but he was dealing with a very different institution in 1938. The army was now contained and controlled but there were a minority of individual resistances against Hitler. There were individuals like Beck who were at the heart of the resistance to bring the Nazi Party down which started in 1938, there were many assassination attempts on Hitler and many of these were linked and related to these enemies of the regime like Beck. Blomberg for example had been a big fan of the Nazis until he made a radical change after finding out Hitler’s plans on the 5th November 1937 at the Hossbach meeting where he strongly hinted that Germany would re-arm and that there would be conquest of the lands to the East and ruthless Germanization of conquered territories. Hitler still had to be weary in 1938 of what he could and couldn’t do within his powers to stop the rebels. At this time Beck was still involved at a lower level in the army so Hitler couldn’t possibly have him killed. Whereas Beck carried on at a lower rung in the army, Blomberg and Fritsch were unwillingly forced into early retirement. There were other High-Ranking officers like these that stood up and let their voices be heard against the Nazi regime.
In conclusion, Hitler was very successful in the early stages of his rise around 1933 of winning mass loyalty from the army. However some of this loyalty was lost closer to 1938, but by this time it didn’t matter because Hitler had consolidated his power and was now working as a dictator so he didn’t need the loyalty or support of certain high-ranking individuals in the army. There were many assassination attempts on Hitler from people in the Officer Corps, On July 20 1944, Stauffenburg actually placed a bomb under the table that Hitler was sat at, this only resulted in superficial injuries though. This shows that Hitler wasn’t able to gain the loyalty of all of the High-Ranking officers in the army, but not having the loyalty of high-ranking army Generals didn’t matter that much to him anyway by 1938 because he was now ruling as a dictator so was far to powerful for the opposition of people like Beck to stop him.
