Walter Model
Encyclopedia
Otto Moritz Walter Model (ˈmoːdəl) (24 January 1891 – 21 April 1945) was a German
general
and later field marshal
during World War II
. He is noted for his defensive battles in the latter half of the war, mostly on the Eastern Front
but also in the west
, and for his close association with Adolf Hitler
and Nazism
. He has been called the Wehrmacht
's best defensive tactician.
Although he was a hard-driving, aggressive panzer
commander early in the war, Model became best known as a practitioner of defensive warfare. His success at the head of the 9th army in the defensive battles of 1941-1942 determined his future career path.
Model first came to Hitler's attention before World War II, but their relationship did not become especially close until 1942. His tenacious style of fighting and aggressive personality won him plaudits from Hitler, who considered him one of his best field commanders and repeatedly tasked him with retrieving desperate situations. However, their relationship had broken down by the end of the war, after Model was defeated at the Battle of the Bulge
.
Model was considered a thorough and competent leader but was known to "demand too much, and that too quickly", accepting no excuses for failure from either his own men or those who outranked him. His troops were said to have "suffered under his too-frequent absences and erratic, inconsistent demands", for he frequently lost sight of what was or was not practically possible. Yet his dislike of bureaucracy and his crude speech often made him well liked by many under his command.
, Saxony
, he belonged to a lower-middle class, non-military family. He entered the army officer cadet school (Kriegsschule) in Neisse (now Nysa, Poland
) in 1908, where he was an unexceptional student, and was commissioned a lieutenant
(Leutnant) in the 52nd Infantry Regiment von Alvensleben in 1910. He made few friends among his fellow officers and soon became known for his ambition, drive, and blunt outspokenness. These were characteristics that would mark his entire career.
, the 52nd Infantry formed part of the 5th Division, fighting on the Western Front
. Model served as the adjutant
of his regiment's 1st Battalion. In May, 1915, he was severely wounded near Arras
, and in October he won the Iron Cross, First Class. His deeds brought him to the attention of his divisional commander, who despite misgivings about his "uncomfortable subordinate" recommended Model for a posting on the German General Staff
. Among other things, this meant that Model took part in only the initial stages of the Battle of Verdun
and escaped the carnage of the Battle of the Somme, to which his division was committed in his absence.
Model sailed through the abbreviated staff officers' course and returned to the 5th Division as adjutant of the 10th Infantry Brigade, followed by postings as a company commander in both the 52nd Infantry
and the 8th Life Grenadiers. He was promoted to captain (Hauptmann) in November, 1917, and in 1918 was assigned to the staff of the Guard Ersatz
Division, which fought in the German Spring Offensive
of that year. He ended the war with the 36th Reserve Division
.
, head of the slimmed-down Reichswehr
, from his staff postings during the war; and he was equipped with an excellent reference from Major-General Franz von Rantau, commander of the 36th Reserve Division. It was thus no surprise that he was one of the 4,000 officers retained in the Reichswehr. Model generally kept away from politics in the chaotic period that marked the birth of the Weimar Republic
, although as an army officer he was involved in the bloody suppression of the 1920 communist uprising in the Ruhr
.
The next year he married Herta Huyssen; they would in time have three children, Christa, Hella, and Hansgeorg. Model hated war stories and never discussed politics or the war with his wife.
In 1925, Model was posted to the 3rd Infantry Division, an elite formation of the Reichswehr and one which was heavily involved in testing the technical innovations of that era. From 1928, he lectured in tactics and war studies for the basic General Staff training course, and in 1930 he was transferred to the Training Branch of the Truppenamt
. He became known both for his enthusiastic support of military modernisation and for his complete lack of tact. In 1938, the year he became a brigadier general
(Generalmajor), he led a testfiring of the Mörser 18
on mocked-up Czech fortifications which did not impress Hitler.
As many army officers at the time, Model was a supporter of the National Socialist government; his time in Berlin
also brought him into contact with senior members of the Nazi regime. Closer relationships with Goebbels and Speer developed during the war.
as a chief of staff, first of IV Corps during the invasion of Poland, and then of Sixteenth Army during the Battle of France
. He was promoted to major general
(Generalleutnant) in April 1940, and earned his first senior command posting in November that year, when he was assigned to lead the 3rd Panzer Division. He immediately proceeded to ignore all formalities of organization and command, which endeared him to his men and exasperated his staff—who often had to clean up the mess he left behind. He also instituted a combined arms
training program where his men were thrown together in various ad-hoc groupings regardless of their parent unit: tank
ers would train with infantry
, engineers
with recon
units, and so on. Model thus anticipated by some months the regular German use of kampfgruppe
n in World War II; while this would become routine later on, it was still not a universal practice in the Wehrmacht
in late 1940 and early 1941.
, the 3rd Panzer Division was assigned to the XXIV Panzer Corps, itself part of the Second Panzer Group, commanded by Heinz Guderian
. The campaign opened on 22 June 1941, with Guderian urging his divisions forward at breakneck speed. This suited Model just fine, and by 4 July, his advance elements leading the panzer group's charge had reached the Dnieper
, an exploit that earned him the Knight's Cross
. Crossing it in strength was another matter, however, as the Red Army
was prepared to defend the river line. 3rd Panzer's vanguard was thrown back by the Soviet 21st Army
, and it was not until 10 July that the Germans were in a position to force a crossing. For this operation, Model, now reinforced with additional troops, reorganized his command into three groups: an infantry-heavy force that would cross the river and establish a bridgehead, a mobile armoured
group that would pass through the bridgehead and continue the advance, and a fire support group containing nearly all his artillery
. The plan worked so successfully that the river crossing cost scarcely any casualties. There followed two weeks of hard fighting to defend the panzer group's flank, during which he was assigned the 1st Cavalry Division in addition to 3rd Panzer as Gruppe Model, and then an attack to break up Soviet forces massing near Roslavl
.
After the fall of Smolensk
, Hitler ordered a change of direction, and Guderian's panzer group turned south into the Ukraine
. Its objective was to trap the Soviet forces defending Kiev
, an unsupported advance of 275 km (172 mi), and again 3rd Panzer would form the spearhead. From 24 August to 14 September Model conducted a lightning thrust into the rear of the Soviet Southwestern Front
, in which he impressed on his men that speed was everything. The maneuver reached its conclusion when 3rd Panzer made contact with the 16th Panzer Division from Army Group South
at Lokhvitsa. While it would take several more days to eliminate all resistance, the trap around Kiev had been closed.
Throughout the opening stages of Barbarossa, Model had driven his men hard, achieving the rapid pace of advance that Guderian called for. He had taken great risks—at one point 3rd Panzer had only 10 tanks operational—but his audacity and improvisational skills (and the tactical ineptness of his foes) had brought him rich rewards.
(lieutenant general) and placed in command of XLI Panzer Corps, which was embroiled in Operation Typhoon
, the assault on Moscow
. The attack had begun on 2 October 1941, and Model arrived at his new command on 14 November in the midst of the battle.
The corps, part of Georg-Hans Reinhardt
's Third Panzer Group, was located at Kalinin
, 160 km (100 mi) northwest of Moscow. It was worn out, at the end of a long and tenuous supply line (Model had been promoted on 28 October, and needed two weeks just to get to Kalinin), and the cold weather was starting to hamper the Germans. Nevertheless morale remained high, and the final push towards Moscow began shortly after his arrival. Model was a whirlwind of energy, touring the front and exhorting his troops to greater efforts; he also ran roughshod over the niceties of protocol and chains of command, and in general left his staff trailing in his wake. By 5 December, XLI Panzer Corps' 6th Panzer Division had reached Iohnca, just 35 km (22 mi) from the Kremlin
. There, the advance stopped, as the winter—thus far comparatively mild by Russian standards—took hold. Temperatures dropped to 20 to 40°C below zero, weapons and vehicles froze solid, and the Germans were forced to call a halt to offensive operations.
Just as the Germans had made that decision, the Soviet Kalinin
, Western
and Southwestern Front
s launched a massive counteroffensive, aimed at driving Army Group Centre
back from Moscow. The attacks were especially strong against Third Panzer Group, which had made some of the closest penetrations to the city. In three weeks of confused, savage fighting, Reinhardt extricated his troops from potential encirclement and fell back to the Lama River
line. Placed in charge of covering the retreat, Model's harsh, almost brutal style of leadership now paid dividends as panic threatened to infect the German columns. On several occasions he restored order at a congested crossroads with a drawn pistol, but the retreat never became a rout
.
During this period, Model noticed that the Soviet attacks—made en masse
and with poor tactical coordination—tended to be most successful when the Germans employed a strongpoint defence instead of a continuous line. Moreover, Soviet logistics
were still inadequate to support a fast-moving battle; thus even if a gap was made, it did not automatically mean a crisis. Therefore he ordered his men to spread themselves out, which exploited his corps' advantage in artillery
over the Soviets, while he created small mechanized kampfgruppen to deal with any breakthrough. His tactics were successful, if costly (by the end of 1941, 6th Panzer Division mustered 1,000 men, including all frontline, support and staff personnel). He would continue to advocate similar tactics throughout his career.
Model's success in holding his front had not gone unnoticed, and in January 1942 he was placed in charge of the Ninth Army occupying the Rzhev
salient
, leapfrogging at least 15 more senior commanders in Army Group Centre alone. Ironically, although he felt great displeasure towards officers bearing the red trouser-stripe of the General Staff, the fact is that he had valuable experience as a division and corps commander and as chief of staff to both a corps and an army.
There is a popular anecdote concerning his arrival at army headquarters in Sychevka on 18 January. He swept into the operations room without ceremony, examined the situation map while polishing his monocle, and finally pronounced the army's predicament to be "rather a mess". When informed by Lieutenant Colonel Blaurock that his current plans extended no further than pushing the Russians away from the rail line, he demanded a counterattack with the final goal of "strike the Russian flank and catch them in a strangle-hold". When the astounded Blaurock inquired "And what, Herr General, have you brought us for this operation?", Model looked him severely and responded "Myself!" before bursting into laughter.
Just prior to his departure for the front, the new army commander had held lengthy consultations with both Hitler and Halder. They impressed upon Model that great firmness would be necessary to save the army from destruction, and his vehemence in return had so impressed Hitler that upon the general's departure he remarked: "Did you see that eye? I trust that man to do it, but I wouldn't want to serve under him". When Model took over, his sector was in a shambles: the Kalinin Front had broken through the line and was threatening the Moscow-Smolensk railway, the main supply route for Army Group Centre. Despite the danger, he realized the precarious position the attackers themselves were in and immediately counterattacked, cutting off the Soviet 39th Army. In the ferocious battles that followed, he repelled multiple Soviet attempts to relieve their trapped soldiers, the last being in February. He then squeezed out the pocket at his leisure, in a series of operations culminating in mid-July. For this, he was awarded the Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross
and promoted to General
(Generaloberst).
Having restored Ninth Army's front, Model set about holding it. His defensive doctrine, which combined conventional thinking with his own tactical innovations, was based on the following principles:
Using these tactics, he would successfully defend his front throughout 1942 and into 1943, despite giving up troops and vehicles for the battles further south. In this time he fought off several major Soviet offensives; one of these, codenamed Operation Mars
by the Soviets, has been described as Marshal Georgy Zhukov
's worst defeat of the war. It all added to his reputation as a "lion of defence".
Ninth Army eventually evacuated the salient in Operation Buffalo (Büffel) in March 1943, as part of a general shortening of the line. Large-scale anti-partisan
sweeps were carried out in the weeks before the operation (the army's sector was a hotbed for partisan activity), in which an estimated 3,000 Russians were killed, the great majority of whom were unarmed. The withdrawal itself took two weeks, with minimal casualties or disruption: no mean feat when the army numbered about 300,000 men including civilian hangers-on, 100 tanks and 400 guns. In its wake, Model personally ordered the deportation of all male civilians, wells to be poisoned, and at least two dozen villages razed. In the same month, he received the Swords to his Knight's Cross, and Ninth Army received orders to move into Orel
.
during Operation Citadel
, a plan which had caused great controversy within the German high command. Günther von Kluge
and Erich von Manstein
, commanding Army Groups Centre
and South
respectively, had originally urged that the salient be attacked in May, before the Soviets could prepare their defences. Others, including Heinz Guderian
, felt that attacking was unnecessary, and the Germans should instead wait for the Soviets to launch their own offensive before defeating it. Model was also dubious about attacking, pointing out that Konstantin Rokossovsky
's Central Front
was strongly dug in and outnumbered him two to one in men, tanks and artillery. Rather than conclude that the offensive be called off, however, he said it should be postponed until he could receive further reinforcements, in particular the new Panther
tanks and Ferdinand
tank destroyers.
Model's true opinion on the value of the offensive remains unclear. Von Manstein took his recommendation at face value, while Guderian said that he was categorically against attacking. It has similarly been suggested that Model in fact hoped to scuttle the operation, by causing it to be delayed until the Soviets launched their own attack.
Model's assault was a failure, as Ninth Army quickly became enmeshed in the elaborate Soviet fortifications. If he had hoped to gain an advantage by waiting for reinforcements, he had made a critical error: the Red Army's strength in the salient was in fact growing much faster than that of the attacking force. Nor did his tactical plan of attack meet with great success. Having less armour and more artillery than von Manstein in the south, and fearing that the deep Soviet defences would stall an armour-heavy attack (the hallmark of the German Blitzkrieg
), he decided to use his infantry to breach Rokossovsky's line before unleashing his armour. It did not work. The Germans took heavy losses to advance less than 12 km (8 mi) in seven days, and were unable to break through to open ground. Model threw his armour into the fray, but with little effect beyond incurring more casualties. (As mitigating factors, the Soviets had concentrated more of their strength facing Model in the north; and Rokossovsky had correctly anticipated where the attack would come, defending that sector heavily. Model's use of infantry assaults also meant his losses in armour were lower than von Manstein's.)
Prior to Kursk, Model had anticipated the possibility of a Soviet attack into the Orel salient, and had (without OKH's knowledge) constructed extensive defensive works to meet such an attack. Following the stalling of his advance, the Soviet counteroffensive, Operation Kutuzov
, duly opened on 12 July. It involved not just Rokossovsky's Central Front, but also the Bryansk
and Western Front
s, a greater concentration of forces than Model had assaulted in Operation Citadel. For the battle, von Kluge placed him in command of Second Panzer Army in addition to Ninth Army—again, a larger total force than he had commanded in Citadel. The Soviet preponderance of strength was such that Stavka
expected it to take only 48 hours to reach Orel, splitting the German forces into three parts; instead, the battle ended three weeks later with Model's orderly withdrawal from the salient. An idea of the scale of the fighting compared to Citadel can be gained from the combined casualty lists for Second Panzer and Ninth Armies: from 1 to 10 July, the Germans took 21,000 casualties, and from 11 to 31 July, 62,000. Despite these losses he had inflicted similarly heavy casualties on the three Red Army Fronts, shortened the line, and avoided annihilation. His reputation thus survived the failure of Citadel.
After the loss of Orel, Model withdrew to the Dnieper
as the Soviets went on the offensive from Smolensk
in the north to Rostov
in the south. He was relieved of command of the Ninth Army at the end of September, and took the opportunity to go on three months' leave in Dresden
with his family. It was the last Christmas he would spend at home.
Model's relief was not a sign that he had lost Hitler's confidence, but rather that he had gained it: the Führer wanted him available should another emergency break out needing his attention. Thus on 29 January 1944, he was urgently sent to command Army Group North
, which two weeks earlier had seen its stranglehold on Leningrad
broken by the Volkhov
, Leningrad
and 2nd Baltic Fronts. The situation was dire (a circumstance that Model would come to be familiar with): two of the three corps of the German Eighteenth Army
had been shattered, and contact lost with the III SS Panzer Corps defending Narva
.
The army group's previous commander, Georg von Küchler
, had pleaded for permission to withdraw to the Panther Line in Estonia
, which was still only half-completed at that stage. Model immediately cracked down on such talk, instituting a new policy he called Shield and Sword (Schild und Schwert). Under this doctrine, ground would only temporarily be ceded, to gather reserves for an immediate counterattack that would drive the Soviets back and relieve pressure on other areas of the front. These statements of aggressive intent won over Hitler and OKH, who had no substantial reserves to send him but were still unwilling to lose territory. Historians have since debated their significance; some claim that Shield and Sword was Hitler's invention, while others say they were a calculated ploy by Model to disguise his true intent—to pull back to the Panther Line.
Regardless, the "temporary" loss of ground usually became permanent, as Model conducted a fighting withdrawal to the Panther Line. He delegated responsibility for the Narva front to Otto Sponheimer commanding Army Detachment Narva, while he concentrated on extricating Eighteenth Army from its predicament. Without OKH's notice or approval, he constructed a series of interim defensive lines to cover its retreat, slowing down and inflicting heavy losses on the Soviets in the process.
By March, the withdrawal was complete. His forces were mostly intact, but the fighting had been fierce: his Shield and Sword counterattacks alone had cost him some 10,000–12,000 men. These counterattacks usually failed to recover ground, but they kept the Soviets off-balance and won Model time to pull his units back. They also allowed him to say to Hitler that he was pursuing an aggressive approach, even as the front moved steadily to the west.
On 1 March Model was promoted to field marshal
(Generalfeldmarschall
), the youngest in the Wehrmacht. His meteoric rise from colonel to field marshal had taken just six years.
in Galicia, which was withdrawing under heavy pressure from Zhukov's 1st Ukrainian Front
. He replaced von Manstein, who had fallen out of favour with Hitler; despite von Manstein's previous victories, the Führer wanted someone who could be unyielding in defence, and Model fit the bill. There, he came into conflict with von Manstein's associates, in particular Hermann Balck
and Friedrich von Mellenthin
at the XLVIII Panzer Corps. Like their previous commander, they favoured the concept of "elastic defence", which called for a thinly held front line and strong armoured reserves to counterattack Soviet breakthroughs; they now refused to implement Model's preferred tactics. Model solved the problem by transferring XLVIII Panzer Corps' tanks to Hermann Breith's III Panzer Corps, leaving Balck and von Mellenthin in charge of four weak infantry divisions in the front line.
By mid-April Zhukov's advance had come to a halt, before the argument over which defensive doctrine was superior could be decided. On 28 June Model was sent to rescue Army Group Centre, which had been torn apart by Operation Bagration, the Soviet offensive in Belorussia
. The Ninth Army (Model's old command) and Fourth Army were trapped, and the Soviets were about to liberate Minsk
. Despite the catastrophic situation, Model believed that he could still hold Minsk, but this would require Fourth Army to break out of its pocket, and reinforcements to counterattack the Soviet advance. The reinforcements in turn could only be obtained by pulling back, thus shortening the line and freeing up troops. The consensus is that the German position was doomed regardless of what Model could have done, but Hitler refused to sanction either Fourth Army's escape or a general withdrawal until it was too late.
Minsk was liberated by the Soviet 1st
and 3rd Belorussian Front
s on 3 July, but Model still hoped to re-establish the front to the west of the city, with the aid of divisions from Army Groups North and North Ukraine. However, German strength was unequal to the task, and he had been driven out of Vilnius
and Baranovichi
by 12 July. At the same time, the 1st Ukrainian Front (now commanded by Ivan Konev
) and the 1st Belorussian Front's left wing (which had been uncommitted thus far) opened up a fresh offensive
against Army Group North Ukraine. In this battle the First Panzer Army managed to hold the line east of Lvov
using Model's defensive tactics, but was forced to retreat when the Fourth Panzer Army, weakened by the steady flow of units to Army Group Centre, was unable to stem the Soviet penetrations of its front. Model stopped the Red Army's advance just short of Warsaw
, after Hitler finally consented to release four experienced and fresh panzer division
s to him (3rd SS Panzer
, 5th SS Panzer
, Hermann Göring and Grossdeutschland). He was assisted in this by the Soviets themselves, who paused their offensive to regroup and resupply, and allow the Germans to crush the non-communist Warsaw uprising
.
At various times in 1944, Model commanded each of the three major army groups on the Eastern Front
, and for a short period in the middle of the year was commanding both Army Groups Centre and North Ukraine simultaneously. He therefore came closer than anyone else in the Wehrmacht to effective command of the entire theatre.
On 17 August 1944, Model received from a grateful Hitler the Diamonds to go with his Knight's Cross with Oakleaves and Swords, a reward for patching up the Eastern Front. Simultaneously, he was transferred to the west, replacing von Kluge as commander-in-chief of Army Group B
and OB West
. The front in Normandy
had collapsed after nearly two months of severe fighting, the U.S. Third Army was driving for the Seine
, and the army group was in danger of being completely annihilated in the Falaise pocket
.
Model's first order was that Falaise be defended, which did not impress his staff. However he quickly changed his mind, convincing Hitler to authorize the immediate escape of the German Seventh Army and Panzer Group Eberbach—something that von Kluge, with his limited political clout, had not been able to do. He was thus able to salvage a remarkable proportion of his units, albeit at the cost of nearly all his armour and heavy materiel
. When Hitler demanded that Paris
be held, Model replied that he could do so, but only if given an extra 200,000 men and several panzer divisions—an act that has been described as naivety by some, and canny bargaining by others. The reinforcements were not forthcoming, and the city's liberation
took place on 25 August. Meanwhile, Model fell back to the German border.
By early September, Model was finding the task of juggling his responsibilities at Army Group B and OB West increasingly difficult, in the face of Allied air superiority and his own predilection for roaming the front lines. Thus he was happy to relinquish OB West in that month to Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt
. He retained command of Army Group B, a post he would keep until the army group's final dissolution in April 1945.
, near Arnhem
in the Netherlands
, where he set about the massive task of rebuilding Army Group B. In mid-August 1944, von Kluge committed suicide and Model was given command of OB West for eighteen days before he was relieved of duty and Gerd von Rundstedt
was once again placed in command in the west.
On 17 September, his lunch was rudely interrupted when the British 1st Airborne Division
dropped into the town: Operation Market Garden
, the Allied attempt to capture the bridges on the lower Rhine, Maas
and Waal, was under way. Model initially thought they were trying to capture him and his staff, but the size of the assault quickly disabused him of that notion.
When Model perceived what the Allies' real objective was, he ordered the II SS Panzer Corps
into action. The corps, containing the 9th SS Panzer
and 10th SS Panzer Divisions
refitting after Normandy, had been overlooked by Allied intelligence: while still seriously understrength, it was composed of veteran troops and a deadly threat to lightly equipped paratrooper
s. 9th SS Panzer took on the British at Arnhem, while the 10th moved south to defend the bridge at Nijmegen.
Model believed that the situation represented not just a threat, but also an opportunity to counterattack and possibly clear the Allies out of the southern Netherlands. Towards this end, he forbade SS General Willi Bittrich and SS Lieutenant General Heinz Harmel
, commanding II SS Panzer Corps and 10th SS Panzer respectively, from destroying the Nijmegen bridge. With the exception of this tactical error, Model is considered to have fought an outstanding battle and handed the Allies a sharp defeat. The bridge at Arnhem was held and the 1st Airborne Division destroyed, dashing the Allies' hopes for a foothold over the Rhine before the end of the year.
Arnhem restored much of Model's self-confidence, which had been shaken by the experience of Normandy. From September to December he fought another Allied thrust to a standstill, this time by Omar Bradley
's U.S. 12th Army Group into the Hürtgen Forest
and Aachen
. While he interfered less in the day-to-day movements of his units than at Arnhem, he still kept himself fully informed on the situation, slowing the Allies' progress, inflicting heavy casualties and taking full advantage of the fortifications of the Westwall, known to the Allies as the Siegfried Line
.
The Hürtgen Forest cost the U.S. First Army at least 33,000 killed and incapacitated, including both combat and noncombat losses; Germans casualties were between 12,000 and 16,000. Aachen eventually fell on 22 October, again at high cost to the U.S. Ninth Army. The Ninth Army's push to the Roer River
fared no better, and did not manage to cross the river or wrest control of its dams from the Germans. Hürtgen was so costly that it has been called an Allied "defeat of the first magnitude", with specific credit being assigned to Model.
by surprise. The objective he had in mind was to split the Allied front and capture Antwerp. This operation, codenamed Wacht am Rhein (Watch on the Rhine), would force the British and Americans to sue for peace, leaving Germany free to concentrate on fighting the Soviet Union.
Model, along with all the other commanders involved, believed the idea was unachievable given the scarce resources available in 1944. At the same time, both he and von Rundstedt felt that a purely defensive posture—as had been adopted since retreating from Normandy—could only delay Germany's defeat, not prevent it. Thus he prepared Operation Herbstnebel
, a less ambitious attack that did not attempt to cross the Meuse
, but would still have inflicted a severe setback on the Allies. A similar plan had been developed by von Rundstedt at OB West, and the two field marshals combined their plans to present a joint "small solution" to Hitler. It was rejected, and the "big solution" of aiming for Antwerp went ahead.
For this operation, Model had at his disposal Sixth SS Panzer Army, Fifth Panzer Army and Seventh Army, including a dozen panzer and panzergrenadier divisions, representing the last strategic reserve
of the Third Reich. Despite his misgivings, Model threw himself into the task with his usual energy, cracking down on any defeatism he might find. A staff officer complained about shortages, causing him to snap: "If you need anything, take it from the Americans". He remained acutely aware of both the operation's significance, and its most likely outcome. When Colonel Friedrich August von der Heydte, ordered to lead a parachute drop as part of the operation, said that the jump had no more than a 10 percent chance of success, he replied: "Well, then it is necessary to make the attempt, since the entire offensive has no more than a 10 percent chance of success. It must be done, since this offensive is the last remaining chance to conclude the war favourably."
The operation was launched on 16 December 1944 and enjoyed initial success, but it lacked air cover
and experienced infantry
, and most critically, fuel
. Sixth SS Panzer Army ran into stiff resistance, and while Fifth Panzer Army managed to make a deep thrust into Allied lines, Model was unable to exploit the breakthrough. The Germans had failed to capture the vital road junction at Bastogne
; combined with the poor weather and impassable terrain, this caused the German columns to bank up into huge traffic jams on the roads behind the front. Starved of fuel and ammunition, the attack had ground to a halt by 25 December, and was called off on 8 January.
By mid-March, Model had been forced back to the Ruhr
after his failure to destroy the bridge over the Rhine at Remagen
. The explosives had been defused by two Polish engineers from Silesia
, forced conscripts into the Wehrmacht
. Sergeant Alexander A. Drabik
, a Polish American
, led the charge across the bridge under heavy gunfire, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross
.
On 1 April, Army Group B was encircled in the Ruhr
by the U.S. First and Ninth Armies. Hitler's response was to declare the Ruhr a fortress, from which surrender or escape were denied (much like Stalingrad
had been); he further ordered its industries to be destroyed to prevent them falling into Allied hands. Model ignored these orders.
On 15 April, after the Allies had split the pocket in two, Major General Matthew Ridgway
, commanding the U.S. XVIII Airborne Corps
, urged Model to surrender rather than throw the lives of his soldiers away. The reply was that Model, still bound by his oath to Hitler and his sense of honour as a field marshal, considered surrender out of the question. Rather than continue fighting, however, he ordered the army group dissolved. The oldest and youngest soldiers were discharged, and the remainder given the option of surrendering or attempting to break out on their own. In fact, he could do little else: the Fifth Panzer Army had already laid down its arms, and German command and communications in the pocket had all but disintegrated. On 20 April, Joseph Goebbels
' Propaganda Ministry denounced Army Group B as traitors, marking the final break between Model and the collapsing Nazi regime.
was sealed when he learned that the Soviets had indicted him for war crime
s, specifically the deaths of 577,000 people in concentration camps
in Latvia
and the deportation of 175,000 others as slave labour
. After his attempts to seek death on the front line came to nothing, he shot himself in the head in a wooded area on 21 April 1945. The location, between Duisburg
and the village of Lintorf, is today part of the city of Ratingen
.
. Hansgeorg himself served as an officer cadet with the Grossdeutschland Division
in late 1944 and 1945; after the war he joined the Bundeswehr
, rising to the rank of brigadier general
.
, another field marshal who preferred to lead from the front, Walter Model was almost universally disliked by those who had to work with him. For example, when he was made commander of the XLI Panzer Corps in 1941, the entire corps staff asked to be transferred. Not only was he foul-mouthed and abusive, but he made a habit of micromanaging his subordinates, changing plans without consultation, and bypassing the chain of command when it suited him. He was oblivious to the niceties of etiquette, often reprimanding or castigating his officers in public. When he departed Army Group North
in March 1944 after being sent to the Ukraine, the army group's chief of staff remarked: "Schweinfurt (Schweinfurt is a city in Bavaria. Schwein fort would mean the pig is gone." (the swine is gone). It was a reference to Model's nickname among his staffers, that he had earned during his time at XLI Panzer Corps: "Frontschwein" (the frontline pig).
It has been said in literature that he never succeeded in leading a successful offensive operation. However the time of the large-scale offensives were over when Model came to the top. The fighting at Rzhev
brought success in attack, especially the first of the four battles in which in the final phase a Russian army was surrounded and destroyed and another suffered severe losses. The two big offensives in which Model participated, Zitadelle and the Ardennes offensive, were in their final forms executed against his repeated warnings. Moreover, any specialist in retreats should also be able to attack with success, because a retreat that succeeds is more difficult to execute than an attack. The Büffel movement, the retreat on the Hagen line during the Russian Orel offensive and the improvisation during the restoration of the front at Army Group Center and in the west must count as examples of extraordinary retreat operations.
His command style had worked when he was leading a division or corps, but once promoted to command of an army, it opened him to criticism over whether the advantages gained were enough to offset the loss of efficiency that followed.
The statement that he was no strategist can be agreed to because the conditions for that existed for no general in the Third Reich.
It has been observed that he showed little inclination to contemplate those stretches of the front he did not command.
mind, especially when on the defensive, and an "outstanding talent for improvisation". At 3rd Panzer Division he was a pioneer in the use of Kampfgruppe
n, which would soon become standard practice for the Germans. He had a formidable memory and eye for detail, which allowed him to dominate his staff officers, especially those in charge of specialist areas such as artillery, transport and communications.
Before the war he was put in charge of analyzing technical advances at home and abroad and his enthusiasm for innovation earned him the nickname Armee Modernissimus ("the army modernization fanatic"). Model fought nearly all his battles in the northern and central parts of the Eastern Front; he was never tested on the steppe
s of southern Russia, where the open terrain would have made mobile warfare a more attractive proposition. Nevertheless, his defensive record indicated the value of his approach. At Rzhev, Orel, in Galicia and in Estonia he stymied opponents who expected to overwhelm him, and as late as November 1944, he gave the U.S. 12th Army Group a bloodied nose in the Hürtgen Forest
.
His approach was not pretty. Model was a ruthless commander, willing to inflict and take casualties to stabilize his front. The splitting up of units was continually practiced by Model and took place on the regimental and divisional level. The objective was always to give necessary reinforcements to the centers of gravity when no reserves were available. From an operational viewpoint this allowed Model to achieve defensive successes, which would not have been possible otherwise. According to Newton the sending of theatre or operational reserves into the line where the fighting was toughest was meant to preserve the units Model saw as organically tied to his own command. For example, he was given the elite Grossdeutschland Division in September 1942, when his Ninth Army was under heavy attack during Operation Mars
. Though he was told that the division was not to be broken up, Model nonetheless split it into battalions and companies, which he used to plug any gaps that appeared. Grossdeutschland took nearly 10,000 casualties out of a strength of 18,000 men, and at one point was reportedly close to mutiny; but from Model's viewpoint these losses were acceptable because they meant that Ninth Army's own troops did not have to suffer them. That said, he did not simply treat these reserve units as disposable. In early 1942, the Der Führer Regiment of the 2nd SS Division Das Reich
was reduced to a handful of men in three weeks of bitter fighting—but in that time it also received reinforcements including 88 mm gun
s, artillery pieces, and StuG III assault guns, and Model himself visited the sector daily, calculating the minimum support that would be needed to hold off the Soviet attacks.
Model was aware of the negative effects of the splitting up of units. For example, on the 7th of October 1944 he forbade the splitting up of regiments into autonomous battalions to be used outside the division.
Allied to this were his boundless determination and vigour and stubborn refusal to countenance defeat. He held himself to the same high standard as he held those around him, saying: "He who leads troops has no right to think about himself". His visits to the front may not have helped operational efficiency, but they energized his men, who consistently held him in much higher regard than did his officers. As commanding general of Ninth Army
he was once recorded as personally leading a battalion attack against a Soviet position, pistol in hand. His peers respected his ability and iron will, even though they may have detested his personality. Guderian thought him the best choice to command Army Group Centre during the crisis of Operation Bagration; the Ninth Army's War Diary recorded, after he arrived at army group headquarters in Minsk: "The news of Field Marshal Model's arrival is noted with satisfaction and confidence."
Model was the master of the type of defense which can be called 'defense limited in time'; in which you defend as long as possible but then retreat to avoid breakthrough and destruction. He was always at the critical points and took away battlegroups or even single battalions from less threatened sectors. With these units holes were plugged at other locations or short counterattacks were executed and so opportunities were created for bigger solutions. Thus, a closed front was guaranteed while the mixing and tearing apart of units was viewed as the smaller evil.
's field marshals most closely identified with Hitler. Postwar opinions on him have varied. Some historians have called him "blindly loyal" or a "zealous disciple" of Hitler; others take a more nuanced view, seeing in Model a coldly calculating opportunist who used the Führer to his advantage, whether or not he was committed to him or the ideals of Nazism
. The contradictions between his Lutheran
upbringing and his later association with the Nazis have similarly been the subject of comment.
As one of the few German generals of middle class
upbringing, Model's background appealed to Hitler, who distrusted the old Prussia
n aristocratic
order that still dominated the Wehrmacht's officer corps
. His defensive tactics were a much better fit to Hitler's instincts never to give ground, than airy talk of "elastic defence"—even if Model did not entirely share those instincts. His stubbornness, energy and ruthlessness were more qualities that Hitler found admirable, and Model's blunt and direct manner of speaking also made an impression.
In a much-noted incident, Model had to deal with an attempt by Adolf Hitler to interfere with his arrangements. A telephone call from Army Group Center's chief of staff
on 19 January 1942 informed him that Hitler, having become nervous about the direct Soviet threat against Vyazma, had decided that XLVII Panzer Corps (Germany)
, 2nd SS Division Das Reich
, and 5th Panzer Division were not to be employed in the imminent counterattack
but reserved for other use in the rearguard
. Immediately, Model drove back from Rzhev to Vyazma in a raging blizzard and boarded a plane for East Prussia. Bypassing the figure of field marshal
Günther von Kluge
, his immediate superior, he sought a personal confrontation with Hitler. At first he attempted to lay out his reasons in the best, dispassionate General Staff manner, only to find the Führer unmoved by logic. Suddenly, glaring at Hitler through his monocle, Model brusquely demanded to know: "Mein Führer, who commands Ninth Army, you or I?". Hitler, shocked at the defiance of his newest army commander, tried to find another solution favorable for both, but Model still wasn't satisfied. "Good, Model", the exasperated Hitler finally responded. "You do it as you please, but it will be your head at risk".
According to the Hitler's Table Talk
recorded that night, the Führer commented: "I distrust officers who have exaggeratedly theoretical minds. I'd like to know what becomes of their theories at the moment of action". But when an officer "is worthy of command", he told Reichsführer-SS
Heinrich Himmler
, "he must be given the prerogatives corresponding to his functions". Shortly after Model's departure to Rzhev area, Hitler also stated that: "Generals must be tough, pitiless men, as crabbed as mastiffs - gross-grained men, such as I have in the Party". Importantly, however, Model never challenged Hitler on political issues: a point that has been identified as the secret to their successful relationship.
Helped by his defensive successes, he thus gained Hitler's full trust and confidence; the Führer called him "my best field marshal" and (after Operation Bagration) "the saviour of the Eastern Front". In turn, this granted Model a degree of flexibility available to no other German general. He frequently disputed, ignored or bypassed orders that he felt unsupportable: at Rzhev and Orel he had constructed defensive fortifications in defiance of a ban, and his use of Shield and Sword tactics while at Army Group North proved to be simply a cover for a staged withdrawal. His relationships with his superiors were marked by dissembling, where what he wrote in his reports could bear little resemblance to what was actually happening. While other generals who clashed with Hitler were fated to be dismissed, Model's standing remained undiminished—so long as he produced results.
to appoint a Waffen-SS
officer as his adjutant
at Army Group North in 1944, after the Heerespersonalamt
had refused him an adjutant, and filled the Nationalsozialistischer Führungsoffizier (NSFO, essentially a Nazi political commissar
) post at Army Group B that had been vacant before his arrival. His habit of parroting the Führer's orders caused him to be viewed as a sycophant, even if he often undermined or ignored those orders in practice.
Following the July 20 Plot
, Model was the first senior commander to reaffirm his loyalty to Hitler. However, he also refused to give up General Hans Speidel
, his chief of staff at Army Group B who was heavily implicated in the plot, to the Gestapo
. Model was well aware of Speidel's political leanings, as were his predecessors at Army Group B, Rommel
and von Kluge
. Like them, he shielded Speidel for as long as possible, while ignoring such treasonous talk as might take place.
While on the Eastern Front, Model showed no objection to the treatment of civilians by the SS in the areas under his command, and oversaw several anti-partisan
operations, mostly while commanding Ninth Army. These operations, conducted by Wehrmacht troops as well as SS, were bloody, although not unusual by German Eastern Front standards. In conjunction with the ruthless scorched earth
policies he followed during his retreats, they would lead to the Soviet Union declaring him a war criminal.
Despite this, while commanding Army Group Centre, he refused to dispatch troops to put down the Warsaw uprising
(a task that ultimately was carried out by the SS), viewing it as a rear-area matter. He stated that the revolt arose from the mistreatment of the Polish population by the Nazis, and the army should have nothing to do with it. On the other hand, he showed no hesitation in clearing the Warsaw suburbs of Praga
and Saska Kępa
, through which vital supply lines ran,.
It has been argued that the best explanation for Model's behaviour and suicide is that he was not necessarily a Nazi, but an authoritarian militarist who saw in Hitler the strong leader that Germany needed. This characterized many in the German officer corps, but in Model's case it was accompanied by a cynical willingness to placate the Nazi regime to expedite his own goals, and a complete internalisation of the image of the professional, apolitical soldier. He had dedicated his life to the army, whether the Reichswehr or the Wehrmacht, and in his final days in the Ruhr, more than one observer had detected in him a struggle to cope with the fact that its destruction was imminent. In this view, Model's decision to take his own life was less to do with matters of honour or Soviet retribution, as with an inability to come to terms with utter defeat.
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
general
General (Germany)
General is presently the highest rank of the German Army and Luftwaffe . It is the equivalent to the rank of Admiral in the German Navy .-Early history:...
and later field marshal
Generalfeldmarschall
Field Marshal or Generalfeldmarschall in German, was a rank in the armies of several German states and the Holy Roman Empire; in the Austrian Empire, the rank Feldmarschall was used...
during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. He is noted for his defensive battles in the latter half of the war, mostly on the Eastern Front
Eastern Front (World War II)
The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of World War II between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union, Poland, and some other Allies which encompassed Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945...
but also in the west
Western Front (World War II)
The Western Front of the European Theatre of World War II encompassed, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and West Germany. The Western Front was marked by two phases of large-scale ground combat operations...
, and for his close association with Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
and Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
. He has been called the Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
's best defensive tactician.
Although he was a hard-driving, aggressive panzer
Panzer
A Panzer is a German language word that, when used as a noun, means "tank". When it is used as an adjective, it means either tank or "armoured" .- Etymology :...
commander early in the war, Model became best known as a practitioner of defensive warfare. His success at the head of the 9th army in the defensive battles of 1941-1942 determined his future career path.
Model first came to Hitler's attention before World War II, but their relationship did not become especially close until 1942. His tenacious style of fighting and aggressive personality won him plaudits from Hitler, who considered him one of his best field commanders and repeatedly tasked him with retrieving desperate situations. However, their relationship had broken down by the end of the war, after Model was defeated at the Battle of the Bulge
Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge was a major German offensive , launched toward the end of World War II through the densely forested Ardennes mountain region of Wallonia in Belgium, hence its French name , and France and...
.
Model was considered a thorough and competent leader but was known to "demand too much, and that too quickly", accepting no excuses for failure from either his own men or those who outranked him. His troops were said to have "suffered under his too-frequent absences and erratic, inconsistent demands", for he frequently lost sight of what was or was not practically possible. Yet his dislike of bureaucracy and his crude speech often made him well liked by many under his command.
Early life and career
Model's decision to burn all his personal papers at the end of World War II means relatively little is known about his early years. Born to a music teacher in GenthinGenthin
Genthin is a town in the Jerichower Land district, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It is situated on the Elbe-Havel Canal, approx. 50 km northeast of Magdeburg, and 27 km west of Brandenburg....
, Saxony
Province of Saxony
The Province of Saxony was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia and later the Free State of Prussia from 1816 until 1945. Its capital was Magdeburg.-History:The province was created in 1816 out of the following territories:...
, he belonged to a lower-middle class, non-military family. He entered the army officer cadet school (Kriegsschule) in Neisse (now Nysa, Poland
Nysa, Poland
Nysa is a town in southwestern Poland on the Nysa Kłodzka river with 47,545 inhabitants , situated in the Opole Voivodeship. It is the capital of Nysa County. It comprises the urban portion of the surrounding Gmina Nysa, a mixed urban-rural commune with a total population of 60,123 inhabitants...
) in 1908, where he was an unexceptional student, and was commissioned a lieutenant
Lieutenant
A lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...
(Leutnant) in the 52nd Infantry Regiment von Alvensleben in 1910. He made few friends among his fellow officers and soon became known for his ambition, drive, and blunt outspokenness. These were characteristics that would mark his entire career.
World War I
In World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, the 52nd Infantry formed part of the 5th Division, fighting on the Western Front
Western Front (World War I)
Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the German Army opened the Western Front by first invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The tide of the advance was dramatically turned with the Battle of the Marne...
. Model served as the adjutant
Adjutant
Adjutant is a military rank or appointment. In some armies, including most English-speaking ones, it is an officer who assists a more senior officer, while in other armies, especially Francophone ones, it is an NCO , normally corresponding roughly to a Staff Sergeant or Warrant Officer.An Adjutant...
of his regiment's 1st Battalion. In May, 1915, he was severely wounded near Arras
Arras
Arras is the capital of the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France. The historic centre of the Artois region, its local speech is characterized as a Picard dialect...
, and in October he won the Iron Cross, First Class. His deeds brought him to the attention of his divisional commander, who despite misgivings about his "uncomfortable subordinate" recommended Model for a posting on the German General Staff
German General Staff
The German General Staff was an institution whose rise and development gave the German armed forces a decided advantage over its adversaries. The Staff amounted to its best "weapon" for nearly a century and a half....
. Among other things, this meant that Model took part in only the initial stages of the Battle of Verdun
Battle of Verdun
The Battle of Verdun was one of the major battles during the First World War on the Western Front. It was fought between the German and French armies, from 21 February – 18 December 1916, on hilly terrain north of the city of Verdun-sur-Meuse in north-eastern France...
and escaped the carnage of the Battle of the Somme, to which his division was committed in his absence.
52nd Infantry Division (Germany)
The 52nd Infantry Division served in southern Poland, close to Katowice and were primarily a division for training with a lot of young cadets.The officials were especially selected for training young boys...
and the 8th Life Grenadiers. He was promoted to captain (Hauptmann) in November, 1917, and in 1918 was assigned to the staff of the Guard Ersatz
Ersatz
Ersatz means 'substituting for, and typically inferior in quality to', e.g. 'chicory is ersatz coffee'. It is a German word literally meaning substitute or replacement...
Division, which fought in the German Spring Offensive
Spring Offensive
The 1918 Spring Offensive or Kaiserschlacht , also known as the Ludendorff Offensive, was a series of German attacks along the Western Front during World War I, beginning on 21 March 1918, which marked the deepest advances by either side since 1914...
of that year. He ended the war with the 36th Reserve Division
36th Reserve Division (German Empire)
The 36th Reserve Division was a unit of the Imperial German Army, in World War I. The division was formed on mobilization of the German Army in August 1914. The division was disbanded during the demobilization of the German Army after World War I...
.
Inter-war years
By the end of the war, Model had gained a reputation as a capable officer with great potential. Early on in his military career, Model had written a book on the Prussian general, Wilhelm Gneisenau. In addition, he was already known to Hans von SeecktHans von Seeckt
Johannes Friedrich "Hans" von Seeckt was a German military officer noted for his organization of the German Army during the Weimar Republic.-Early life:...
, head of the slimmed-down Reichswehr
Reichswehr
The Reichswehr formed the military organisation of Germany from 1919 until 1935, when it was renamed the Wehrmacht ....
, from his staff postings during the war; and he was equipped with an excellent reference from Major-General Franz von Rantau, commander of the 36th Reserve Division. It was thus no surprise that he was one of the 4,000 officers retained in the Reichswehr. Model generally kept away from politics in the chaotic period that marked the birth of the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
, although as an army officer he was involved in the bloody suppression of the 1920 communist uprising in the Ruhr
Ruhr Area
The Ruhr, by German-speaking geographers and historians more accurately called Ruhr district or Ruhr region , is an urban area in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With 4435 km² and a population of some 5.2 million , it is the largest urban agglomeration in Germany...
.
The next year he married Herta Huyssen; they would in time have three children, Christa, Hella, and Hansgeorg. Model hated war stories and never discussed politics or the war with his wife.
In 1925, Model was posted to the 3rd Infantry Division, an elite formation of the Reichswehr and one which was heavily involved in testing the technical innovations of that era. From 1928, he lectured in tactics and war studies for the basic General Staff training course, and in 1930 he was transferred to the Training Branch of the Truppenamt
Truppenamt
The Truppenamt or 'Troop Office' was the cover organisation for the German General Staff from 1919 through until 1933 when the General Staff was re-created. This subterfuge was deemed necessary in order for Germany to be seen to meet the requirements of the Versailles Treaty...
. He became known both for his enthusiastic support of military modernisation and for his complete lack of tact. In 1938, the year he became a brigadier general
Brigadier General
Brigadier general is a senior rank in the armed forces. It is the lowest ranking general officer in some countries, usually sitting between the ranks of colonel and major general. When appointed to a field command, a brigadier general is typically in command of a brigade consisting of around 4,000...
(Generalmajor), he led a testfiring of the Mörser 18
21 cm Mörser 18
The 21 cm Mörser 18 was a German heavy howitzer used in the Second World War by independent artillery battalions and batteries. A number were also used by coast defense artillery units.-Design & History:...
on mocked-up Czech fortifications which did not impress Hitler.
As many army officers at the time, Model was a supporter of the National Socialist government; his time in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
also brought him into contact with senior members of the Nazi regime. Closer relationships with Goebbels and Speer developed during the war.
World War II
Model spent the first year of World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
as a chief of staff, first of IV Corps during the invasion of Poland, and then of Sixteenth Army during the Battle of France
Battle of France
In the Second World War, the Battle of France was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries, beginning on 10 May 1940, which ended the Phoney War. The battle consisted of two main operations. In the first, Fall Gelb , German armoured units pushed through the Ardennes, to cut off and...
. He was promoted to major general
Major General
Major general or major-general is a military rank used in many countries. It is derived from the older rank of sergeant major general. A major general is a high-ranking officer, normally subordinate to the rank of lieutenant general and senior to the ranks of brigadier and brigadier general...
(Generalleutnant) in April 1940, and earned his first senior command posting in November that year, when he was assigned to lead the 3rd Panzer Division. He immediately proceeded to ignore all formalities of organization and command, which endeared him to his men and exasperated his staff—who often had to clean up the mess he left behind. He also instituted a combined arms
Combined arms
Combined arms is an approach to warfare which seeks to integrate different branches of a military to achieve mutually complementary effects...
training program where his men were thrown together in various ad-hoc groupings regardless of their parent unit: tank
Tank
A tank is a tracked, armoured fighting vehicle designed for front-line combat which combines operational mobility, tactical offensive, and defensive capabilities...
ers would train with infantry
Infantry
Infantrymen are soldiers who are specifically trained for the role of fighting on foot to engage the enemy face to face and have historically borne the brunt of the casualties of combat in wars. As the oldest branch of combat arms, they are the backbone of armies...
, engineers
Combat engineering
A combat engineer, also called pioneer or sapper in many armies, is a soldier who performs a variety of construction and demolition tasks under combat conditions...
with recon
Reconnaissance
Reconnaissance is the military term for exploring beyond the area occupied by friendly forces to gain information about enemy forces or features of the environment....
units, and so on. Model thus anticipated by some months the regular German use of kampfgruppe
Kampfgruppe
In military history and military slang, the German term Kampfgruppe can refer to a combat formation of any kind, but most usually to that employed by the German Wehrmacht and its allies during World War II and, to a lesser extent, in World War I...
n in World War II; while this would become routine later on, it was still not a universal practice in the Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
in late 1940 and early 1941.
Invasion of the Soviet Union
For Operation BarbarossaOperation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
, the 3rd Panzer Division was assigned to the XXIV Panzer Corps, itself part of the Second Panzer Group, commanded by Heinz Guderian
Heinz Guderian
Heinz Wilhelm Guderian was a German general during World War II. He was a pioneer in the development of armored warfare, and was the leading proponent of tanks and mechanization in the Wehrmacht . Germany's panzer forces were raised and organized under his direction as Chief of Mobile Forces...
. The campaign opened on 22 June 1941, with Guderian urging his divisions forward at breakneck speed. This suited Model just fine, and by 4 July, his advance elements leading the panzer group's charge had reached the Dnieper
Dnieper River
The Dnieper River is one of the major rivers of Europe that flows from Russia, through Belarus and Ukraine, to the Black Sea.The total length is and has a drainage basin of .The river is noted for its dams and hydroelectric stations...
, an exploit that earned him the Knight's Cross
Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross
The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross was a grade of the 1939 version of the 1813 created Iron Cross . The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross was the highest award of Germany to recognize extreme battlefield bravery or successful military leadership during World War II...
. Crossing it in strength was another matter, however, as the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
was prepared to defend the river line. 3rd Panzer's vanguard was thrown back by the Soviet 21st Army
21st Army (Soviet Union)
-June to September 1941:21st Army was a part of the Second Operational Echelon of the RKKA. It was formed from the forces of the Volga Military District in May 1941 and was initially based on 63rd Rifle Corps and 66th Rifle Corps. The army was under the command of Lieutenant-General Vasilii...
, and it was not until 10 July that the Germans were in a position to force a crossing. For this operation, Model, now reinforced with additional troops, reorganized his command into three groups: an infantry-heavy force that would cross the river and establish a bridgehead, a mobile armoured
Armoured warfare
Armoured warfare or tank warfare is the use of armoured fighting vehicles in modern warfare. It is a major component of modern methods of war....
group that would pass through the bridgehead and continue the advance, and a fire support group containing nearly all his artillery
Artillery
Originally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with projectile weapons, artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons...
. The plan worked so successfully that the river crossing cost scarcely any casualties. There followed two weeks of hard fighting to defend the panzer group's flank, during which he was assigned the 1st Cavalry Division in addition to 3rd Panzer as Gruppe Model, and then an attack to break up Soviet forces massing near Roslavl
Roslavl
Roslavl is a town and the administrative center of Roslavlsky District of Smolensk Oblast, Russia. It is a road and rail junction and a market town. Population: It was founded in 1137 by the Smolensk prince Rostislav Mstislavitch, hence the name...
.
After the fall of Smolensk
Battle of Smolensk (1941)
The Battle of Smolensk was a largely successful encirclement operation by the German Army Group Centre's 2nd Panzer Group led by Heinz Guderian and the 3rd Panzer Group led by Hermann Hoth against parts of four Soviet Fronts during World War II...
, Hitler ordered a change of direction, and Guderian's panzer group turned south into the Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
. Its objective was to trap the Soviet forces defending Kiev
Battle of Kiev (1941)
The Battle of Kiev was the German name for the operation that resulted in a very large encirclement of Soviet troops in the vicinity of Kiev during World War II. It is considered the largest encirclement of troops in history. The operation ran from 23 August – 26 September 1941 as part of Operation...
, an unsupported advance of 275 km (172 mi), and again 3rd Panzer would form the spearhead. From 24 August to 14 September Model conducted a lightning thrust into the rear of the Soviet Southwestern Front
Soviet Southwestern Front
The Southwestern Front was a name given to a Front by the Imperial Russian Army during the First World War, by the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic during the Russian Civil War, and by the Red Army during the Second World War.The Southwestern Front in this article describes several...
, in which he impressed on his men that speed was everything. The maneuver reached its conclusion when 3rd Panzer made contact with the 16th Panzer Division from Army Group South
Army Group South
Army Group South was the name of a number of German Army Groups during World War II.- Poland campaign :Germany used two army groups to invade Poland in 1939: Army Group North and Army Group South...
at Lokhvitsa. While it would take several more days to eliminate all resistance, the trap around Kiev had been closed.
Throughout the opening stages of Barbarossa, Model had driven his men hard, achieving the rapid pace of advance that Guderian called for. He had taken great risks—at one point 3rd Panzer had only 10 tanks operational—but his audacity and improvisational skills (and the tactical ineptness of his foes) had brought him rich rewards.
Before Moscow
Shortly thereafter Model was promoted to general of panzer troopsGeneral der Panzertruppe
General der Panzertruppe was a rank of German Army General introduced by the Wehrmacht in 1935. As the commander of a Panzer Corp this rank corresponds to a US Army Lieutenant-General...
(lieutenant general) and placed in command of XLI Panzer Corps, which was embroiled in Operation Typhoon
Battle of Moscow
The Battle of Moscow is the name given by Soviet historians to two periods of strategically significant fighting on a sector of the Eastern Front during World War II. It took place between October 1941 and January 1942. The Soviet defensive effort frustrated Hitler's attack on Moscow, capital of...
, the assault on Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
. The attack had begun on 2 October 1941, and Model arrived at his new command on 14 November in the midst of the battle.
The corps, part of Georg-Hans Reinhardt
Georg-Hans Reinhardt
Georg-Hans Reinhardt was a German general of World War II. He commanded Third Panzer Army from 1941 to 1944, and Army Group Centre in 1944 and 1945. His highest rank was Generaloberst . He was also a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords...
's Third Panzer Group, was located at Kalinin
Tver
Tver is a city and the administrative center of Tver Oblast, Russia. Population: 403,726 ; 408,903 ;...
, 160 km (100 mi) northwest of Moscow. It was worn out, at the end of a long and tenuous supply line (Model had been promoted on 28 October, and needed two weeks just to get to Kalinin), and the cold weather was starting to hamper the Germans. Nevertheless morale remained high, and the final push towards Moscow began shortly after his arrival. Model was a whirlwind of energy, touring the front and exhorting his troops to greater efforts; he also ran roughshod over the niceties of protocol and chains of command, and in general left his staff trailing in his wake. By 5 December, XLI Panzer Corps' 6th Panzer Division had reached Iohnca, just 35 km (22 mi) from the Kremlin
Moscow Kremlin
The Moscow Kremlin , sometimes referred to as simply The Kremlin, is a historic fortified complex at the heart of Moscow, overlooking the Moskva River , Saint Basil's Cathedral and Red Square and the Alexander Garden...
. There, the advance stopped, as the winter—thus far comparatively mild by Russian standards—took hold. Temperatures dropped to 20 to 40°C below zero, weapons and vehicles froze solid, and the Germans were forced to call a halt to offensive operations.
Just as the Germans had made that decision, the Soviet Kalinin
Kalinin Front
The Kalinin Front was a Front of the Soviet Army during the Second World War. This sense of the term is not identical with the more general usage of military front which indicates a geographic area in wartime, although a Soviet Front may operate within designated boundaries.The Kalinin Front was...
, Western
Soviet Western Front
The Western Front was a Front of the Red Army, one of the Red Army Fronts during the Second World War. This sense of the term is different from the more general usage of military front which indicates a geographic area in wartime, although a Soviet Front usually operates within designated...
and Southwestern Front
Soviet Southwestern Front
The Southwestern Front was a name given to a Front by the Imperial Russian Army during the First World War, by the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic during the Russian Civil War, and by the Red Army during the Second World War.The Southwestern Front in this article describes several...
s launched a massive counteroffensive, aimed at driving Army Group Centre
Army Group Centre
Army Group Centre was the name of two distinct German strategic army groups that fought on the Eastern Front in World War II. The first Army Group Centre was created on 22 June 1941, as one of three German Army formations assigned to the invasion of the Soviet Union...
back from Moscow. The attacks were especially strong against Third Panzer Group, which had made some of the closest penetrations to the city. In three weeks of confused, savage fighting, Reinhardt extricated his troops from potential encirclement and fell back to the Lama River
Lama River
Lama River is a river in the Moscow and Tver Oblasts in Russia, a tributary of the Shosha River. The length of the river is 139 km. The area of its basin is 2330 km². The Lama River freezes up in November and stays under the ice until late March - early April. Historically, the river was...
line. Placed in charge of covering the retreat, Model's harsh, almost brutal style of leadership now paid dividends as panic threatened to infect the German columns. On several occasions he restored order at a congested crossroads with a drawn pistol, but the retreat never became a rout
Rout
A rout is commonly defined as a chaotic and disorderly retreat or withdrawal of troops from a battlefield, resulting in the victory of the opposing party, or following defeat, a collapse of discipline, or poor morale. A routed army often degenerates into a sense of "every man for himself" as the...
.
During this period, Model noticed that the Soviet attacks—made en masse
Human wave attack
Human wave attack, also known as human sea attack, is an offensive infantry tactic, in which an attacker conducts an unprotected frontal assault with densely concentrated infantry formations against the enemy line, intended to overrun the defenders by engaging in melee combat.-Definition:According...
and with poor tactical coordination—tended to be most successful when the Germans employed a strongpoint defence instead of a continuous line. Moreover, Soviet logistics
Military logistics
Military logistics is the discipline of planning and carrying out the movement and maintenance of military forces. In its most comprehensive sense, it is those aspects or military operations that deal with:...
were still inadequate to support a fast-moving battle; thus even if a gap was made, it did not automatically mean a crisis. Therefore he ordered his men to spread themselves out, which exploited his corps' advantage in artillery
Artillery
Originally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with projectile weapons, artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons...
over the Soviets, while he created small mechanized kampfgruppen to deal with any breakthrough. His tactics were successful, if costly (by the end of 1941, 6th Panzer Division mustered 1,000 men, including all frontline, support and staff personnel). He would continue to advocate similar tactics throughout his career.
Rzhev
Rzhev
Rzhev is a town in Tver Oblast, Russia, southwest of Staritsa and from Tver, on the highway and railway connecting Moscow and Riga. It is the uppermost town situated on the Volga River. Population:...
salient
Salients, re-entrants and pockets
A salient is a battlefield feature that projects into enemy territory. The salient is surrounded by the enemy on three sides, making the troops occupying the salient vulnerable. The enemy's line facing a salient is referred to as a re-entrant...
, leapfrogging at least 15 more senior commanders in Army Group Centre alone. Ironically, although he felt great displeasure towards officers bearing the red trouser-stripe of the General Staff, the fact is that he had valuable experience as a division and corps commander and as chief of staff to both a corps and an army.
There is a popular anecdote concerning his arrival at army headquarters in Sychevka on 18 January. He swept into the operations room without ceremony, examined the situation map while polishing his monocle, and finally pronounced the army's predicament to be "rather a mess". When informed by Lieutenant Colonel Blaurock that his current plans extended no further than pushing the Russians away from the rail line, he demanded a counterattack with the final goal of "strike the Russian flank and catch them in a strangle-hold". When the astounded Blaurock inquired "And what, Herr General, have you brought us for this operation?", Model looked him severely and responded "Myself!" before bursting into laughter.
Just prior to his departure for the front, the new army commander had held lengthy consultations with both Hitler and Halder. They impressed upon Model that great firmness would be necessary to save the army from destruction, and his vehemence in return had so impressed Hitler that upon the general's departure he remarked: "Did you see that eye? I trust that man to do it, but I wouldn't want to serve under him". When Model took over, his sector was in a shambles: the Kalinin Front had broken through the line and was threatening the Moscow-Smolensk railway, the main supply route for Army Group Centre. Despite the danger, he realized the precarious position the attackers themselves were in and immediately counterattacked, cutting off the Soviet 39th Army. In the ferocious battles that followed, he repelled multiple Soviet attempts to relieve their trapped soldiers, the last being in February. He then squeezed out the pocket at his leisure, in a series of operations culminating in mid-July. For this, he was awarded the Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross
Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross
The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross was a grade of the 1939 version of the 1813 created Iron Cross . The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross was the highest award of Germany to recognize extreme battlefield bravery or successful military leadership during World War II...
and promoted to General
General
A general officer is an officer of high military rank, usually in the army, and in some nations, the air force. The term is widely used by many nations of the world, and when a country uses a different term, there is an equivalent title given....
(Generaloberst).
Having restored Ninth Army's front, Model set about holding it. His defensive doctrine, which combined conventional thinking with his own tactical innovations, was based on the following principles:
- Up-to-date intelligenceMilitary intelligenceMilitary intelligence is a military discipline that exploits a number of information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to commanders in support of their decisions....
, based on frontline sources and reconnaissance instead of relying on reports from rear-area analysts. - A continuous front lineFront lineA front line is the farthest-most forward position of an armed force's personnel and equipment - generally in respect of maritime or land forces. Forward Line of Own Troops , or Forward Edge of Battle Area are technical terms used by all branches of the armed services...
, no matter how thinly held. This was counter to standard German doctrine, which called for a screen of outposts and the main body held further back. - Tactical reservesMilitary reserveA military reserve, tactical reserve, or strategic reserve is a group of military personnel or units which are initially not committed to a battle by their commander so that they are available to address unforeseen situations or exploit suddenly developing...
to halt any imminent breakthrough. In practice, this meant dispersing his armourTankA tank is a tracked, armoured fighting vehicle designed for front-line combat which combines operational mobility, tactical offensive, and defensive capabilities...
into individual platoons and companies along the front to support the infantry, instead of concentrating it into a sizable striking force. - Centralized artilleryArtilleryOriginally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with projectile weapons, artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons...
command and control. Since the end of World War IWorld War IWorld War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, German divisionDivision (military)A division is a large military unit or formation usually consisting of between 10,000 and 20,000 soldiers. In most armies, a division is composed of several regiments or brigades, and in turn several divisions typically make up a corps...
s had had their artillery spread out amongst their component regimentRegimentA regiment is a major tactical military unit, composed of variable numbers of batteries, squadrons or battalions, commanded by a colonel or lieutenant colonel...
s, which made it difficult to bring the maximum weight of fire to bear on any one point. Model reorganized his artillery into special battalions under the direct control of the divisional and corpsCorpsA corps is either a large formation, or an administrative grouping of troops within an armed force with a common function such as Artillery or Signals representing an arm of service...
commanders. - Multiple static lines of defenceFortificationFortifications are military constructions and buildings designed for defence in warfare and military bases. Humans have constructed defensive works for many thousands of years, in a variety of increasingly complex designs...
, to delay the enemy's advance. Hitler had in fact forbidden the construction of multiple lines, saying that soldiers would be tempted to abandon their current line in favour of falling back to the next; Model simply ignored this inconvenient order.
Using these tactics, he would successfully defend his front throughout 1942 and into 1943, despite giving up troops and vehicles for the battles further south. In this time he fought off several major Soviet offensives; one of these, codenamed Operation Mars
Operation Mars
Operation Mars was the codename for the Rzhev offensive operation part of the Rzhev-Vyazma strategic offensive operation launched by Soviet forces against German forces during World War II. It took place between 25 November and 20 December 1942 in a salient in the vicinity of Moscow...
by the Soviets, has been described as Marshal Georgy Zhukov
Georgy Zhukov
Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov , was a Russian career officer in the Red Army who, in the course of World War II, played a pivotal role in leading the Red Army through much of Eastern Europe to liberate the Soviet Union and other nations from the Axis Powers' occupation...
's worst defeat of the war. It all added to his reputation as a "lion of defence".
Ninth Army eventually evacuated the salient in Operation Buffalo (Büffel) in March 1943, as part of a general shortening of the line. Large-scale anti-partisan
Partisan (military)
A partisan is a member of an irregular military force formed to oppose control of an area by a foreign power or by an army of occupation by some kind of insurgent activity...
sweeps were carried out in the weeks before the operation (the army's sector was a hotbed for partisan activity), in which an estimated 3,000 Russians were killed, the great majority of whom were unarmed. The withdrawal itself took two weeks, with minimal casualties or disruption: no mean feat when the army numbered about 300,000 men including civilian hangers-on, 100 tanks and 400 guns. In its wake, Model personally ordered the deportation of all male civilians, wells to be poisoned, and at least two dozen villages razed. In the same month, he received the Swords to his Knight's Cross, and Ninth Army received orders to move into Orel
Oryol
Oryol or Orel is a city and the administrative center of Oryol Oblast, Russia, located on the Oka River, approximately south-southwest of Moscow...
.
Kursk and Orel
On 5 July 1943 Model led the northern assault on KurskKursk
Kursk is a city and the administrative center of Kursk Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Kur, Tuskar, and Seym Rivers. The area around Kursk was site of a turning point in the Russian-German struggle during World War II and the site of the largest tank battle in history...
during Operation Citadel
Battle of Kursk
The Battle of Kursk took place when German and Soviet forces confronted each other on the Eastern Front during World War II in the vicinity of the city of Kursk, in the Soviet Union in July and August 1943. It remains both the largest series of armored clashes, including the Battle of Prokhorovka,...
, a plan which had caused great controversy within the German high command. Günther von Kluge
Günther von Kluge
Günther Adolf Ferdinand “Hans” von Kluge was a German military leader. He was born in Posen into a Prussian military family. Kluge rose to the rank of Field Marshal in the Wehrmacht. He was also a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords...
and Erich von Manstein
Erich von Manstein
Erich von Manstein was a field marshal in World War II. He became one of the most prominent commanders of Germany's World War II armed forces...
, commanding Army Groups Centre
Army Group Centre
Army Group Centre was the name of two distinct German strategic army groups that fought on the Eastern Front in World War II. The first Army Group Centre was created on 22 June 1941, as one of three German Army formations assigned to the invasion of the Soviet Union...
and South
Army Group South
Army Group South was the name of a number of German Army Groups during World War II.- Poland campaign :Germany used two army groups to invade Poland in 1939: Army Group North and Army Group South...
respectively, had originally urged that the salient be attacked in May, before the Soviets could prepare their defences. Others, including Heinz Guderian
Heinz Guderian
Heinz Wilhelm Guderian was a German general during World War II. He was a pioneer in the development of armored warfare, and was the leading proponent of tanks and mechanization in the Wehrmacht . Germany's panzer forces were raised and organized under his direction as Chief of Mobile Forces...
, felt that attacking was unnecessary, and the Germans should instead wait for the Soviets to launch their own offensive before defeating it. Model was also dubious about attacking, pointing out that Konstantin Rokossovsky
Konstantin Rokossovsky
Konstantin Rokossovskiy was a Polish-origin Soviet career officer who was a Marshal of the Soviet Union, as well as Marshal of Poland and Polish Defence Minister, who was famously known for his service in the Eastern Front, where he received high esteem for his outstanding military skill...
's Central Front
Soviet Central Front
The Central Front was a Front of the Soviet Army during the Second World War.The Central Front describes either of two distinct organizations during the war...
was strongly dug in and outnumbered him two to one in men, tanks and artillery. Rather than conclude that the offensive be called off, however, he said it should be postponed until he could receive further reinforcements, in particular the new Panther
Panther tank
Panther is the common name of a medium tank fielded by Nazi Germany in World War II that served from mid-1943 to the end of the European war in 1945. It was intended as a counter to the T-34, and to replace the Panzer III and Panzer IV; while never replacing the latter, it served alongside it as...
tanks and Ferdinand
Elefant
The Elefant was a "schwerer Panzerjäger" of the German Wehrmacht used in small numbers in World War II. It was built in 1943 under the name Ferdinand, after its designer Ferdinand Porsche. In 1944, after modification of the existing vehicles, they were renamed Elefant...
tank destroyers.
Model's true opinion on the value of the offensive remains unclear. Von Manstein took his recommendation at face value, while Guderian said that he was categorically against attacking. It has similarly been suggested that Model in fact hoped to scuttle the operation, by causing it to be delayed until the Soviets launched their own attack.
Model's assault was a failure, as Ninth Army quickly became enmeshed in the elaborate Soviet fortifications. If he had hoped to gain an advantage by waiting for reinforcements, he had made a critical error: the Red Army's strength in the salient was in fact growing much faster than that of the attacking force. Nor did his tactical plan of attack meet with great success. Having less armour and more artillery than von Manstein in the south, and fearing that the deep Soviet defences would stall an armour-heavy attack (the hallmark of the German Blitzkrieg
Blitzkrieg
For other uses of the word, see: Blitzkrieg Blitzkrieg is an anglicized word describing all-motorised force concentration of tanks, infantry, artillery, combat engineers and air power, concentrating overwhelming force at high speed to break through enemy lines, and, once the lines are broken,...
), he decided to use his infantry to breach Rokossovsky's line before unleashing his armour. It did not work. The Germans took heavy losses to advance less than 12 km (8 mi) in seven days, and were unable to break through to open ground. Model threw his armour into the fray, but with little effect beyond incurring more casualties. (As mitigating factors, the Soviets had concentrated more of their strength facing Model in the north; and Rokossovsky had correctly anticipated where the attack would come, defending that sector heavily. Model's use of infantry assaults also meant his losses in armour were lower than von Manstein's.)
Prior to Kursk, Model had anticipated the possibility of a Soviet attack into the Orel salient, and had (without OKH's knowledge) constructed extensive defensive works to meet such an attack. Following the stalling of his advance, the Soviet counteroffensive, Operation Kutuzov
Operation Kutuzov
Operation Kutuzov was a military operation by the Red Army in its fight against the German Wehrmacht during World War II. It was named after Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov, the Tsarist General credited with saving Russia from defeat during the invasion by Napoleon in 1812.The Operation began on 12...
, duly opened on 12 July. It involved not just Rokossovsky's Central Front, but also the Bryansk
Bryansk Front
The Bryansk Front was a Front of the Soviet Army during the Second World War.General Andrei Yeremenko was designated commander of the Front when it first formed in mid-late August 1941, comprising, in Erickson's words, 'on paper two armies, 50th and 13th, with eight rifle divisions each, three...
and Western Front
Soviet Western Front
The Western Front was a Front of the Red Army, one of the Red Army Fronts during the Second World War. This sense of the term is different from the more general usage of military front which indicates a geographic area in wartime, although a Soviet Front usually operates within designated...
s, a greater concentration of forces than Model had assaulted in Operation Citadel. For the battle, von Kluge placed him in command of Second Panzer Army in addition to Ninth Army—again, a larger total force than he had commanded in Citadel. The Soviet preponderance of strength was such that Stavka
Stavka
Stavka was the term used to refer to a command element of the armed forces from the time of the Kievan Rus′, more formally during the history of Imperial Russia as administrative staff and General Headquarters during late 19th Century Imperial Russian armed forces and those of the Soviet Union...
expected it to take only 48 hours to reach Orel, splitting the German forces into three parts; instead, the battle ended three weeks later with Model's orderly withdrawal from the salient. An idea of the scale of the fighting compared to Citadel can be gained from the combined casualty lists for Second Panzer and Ninth Armies: from 1 to 10 July, the Germans took 21,000 casualties, and from 11 to 31 July, 62,000. Despite these losses he had inflicted similarly heavy casualties on the three Red Army Fronts, shortened the line, and avoided annihilation. His reputation thus survived the failure of Citadel.
After the loss of Orel, Model withdrew to the Dnieper
Battle of Smolensk (1943)
The second Battle of Smolensk was a Soviet strategic offensive operation conducted by the Red Army as part of the Summer-Autumn Campaign of 1943...
as the Soviets went on the offensive from Smolensk
Smolensk
Smolensk is a city and the administrative center of Smolensk Oblast, Russia, located on the Dnieper River. Situated west-southwest of Moscow, this walled city was destroyed several times throughout its long history since it was on the invasion routes of both Napoleon and Hitler. Today, Smolensk...
in the north to Rostov
Rostov-on-Don
-History:The mouth of the Don River has been of great commercial and cultural importance since the ancient times. It was the site of the Greek colony Tanais, of the Genoese fort Tana, and of the Turkish fortress Azak...
in the south. He was relieved of command of the Ninth Army at the end of September, and took the opportunity to go on three months' leave in Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
with his family. It was the last Christmas he would spend at home.
Estonia
Army Group North
Army Group North was a German strategic echelon formation commanding a grouping of Field Armies subordinated to the OKH during World War II. The army group coordinated the operations of attached separate army corps, reserve formations, rear services and logistics.- Formation :The Army Group North...
, which two weeks earlier had seen its stranglehold on Leningrad
Siege of Leningrad
The Siege of Leningrad, also known as the Leningrad Blockade was a prolonged military operation resulting from the failure of the German Army Group North to capture Leningrad, now known as Saint Petersburg, in the Eastern Front theatre of World War II. It started on 8 September 1941, when the last...
broken by the Volkhov
Volkhov Front
The Front was reformed on the 9 June 1942 from the Volkhov Operational Group of the Leningrad Front and served until 15 February 1944, participating in the relief of the Siege of Leningrad and taking part in other operations including:-Campaigns:...
, Leningrad
Leningrad Front
The Leningrad Front was first formed on August 27, 1941, by dividing the Northern Front into the Leningrad Front and Karelian Front, during the German approach on Leningrad .-History:...
and 2nd Baltic Fronts. The situation was dire (a circumstance that Model would come to be familiar with): two of the three corps of the German Eighteenth Army
German Eighteenth Army
The 18th Army was a World War I and World War II field army.-World War I:The 18th Army was formed in 1918 by the German OHL and commanded by General Oskar von Hutier.-World War II:...
had been shattered, and contact lost with the III SS Panzer Corps defending Narva
Battle of Narva (1944)
The Battle of Narva was a military campaign between the German Army Detachment "Narwa" and the Soviet Leningrad Front fought for possession of the strategically important Narva Isthmus on 2 February – 10 August 1944 during World War II....
.
The army group's previous commander, Georg von Küchler
Georg von Küchler
Georg Karl Friedrich Wilhelm von Küchler was a German Field Marshal during the Second World War. He was also a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves...
, had pleaded for permission to withdraw to the Panther Line in Estonia
Estonia
Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...
, which was still only half-completed at that stage. Model immediately cracked down on such talk, instituting a new policy he called Shield and Sword (Schild und Schwert). Under this doctrine, ground would only temporarily be ceded, to gather reserves for an immediate counterattack that would drive the Soviets back and relieve pressure on other areas of the front. These statements of aggressive intent won over Hitler and OKH, who had no substantial reserves to send him but were still unwilling to lose territory. Historians have since debated their significance; some claim that Shield and Sword was Hitler's invention, while others say they were a calculated ploy by Model to disguise his true intent—to pull back to the Panther Line.
Regardless, the "temporary" loss of ground usually became permanent, as Model conducted a fighting withdrawal to the Panther Line. He delegated responsibility for the Narva front to Otto Sponheimer commanding Army Detachment Narva, while he concentrated on extricating Eighteenth Army from its predicament. Without OKH's notice or approval, he constructed a series of interim defensive lines to cover its retreat, slowing down and inflicting heavy losses on the Soviets in the process.
By March, the withdrawal was complete. His forces were mostly intact, but the fighting had been fierce: his Shield and Sword counterattacks alone had cost him some 10,000–12,000 men. These counterattacks usually failed to recover ground, but they kept the Soviets off-balance and won Model time to pull his units back. They also allowed him to say to Hitler that he was pursuing an aggressive approach, even as the front moved steadily to the west.
On 1 March Model was promoted to field marshal
Field Marshal
Field Marshal is a military rank. Traditionally, it is the highest military rank in an army.-Etymology:The origin of the rank of field marshal dates to the early Middle Ages, originally meaning the keeper of the king's horses , from the time of the early Frankish kings.-Usage and hierarchical...
(Generalfeldmarschall
Generalfeldmarschall
Field Marshal or Generalfeldmarschall in German, was a rank in the armies of several German states and the Holy Roman Empire; in the Austrian Empire, the rank Feldmarschall was used...
), the youngest in the Wehrmacht. His meteoric rise from colonel to field marshal had taken just six years.
Ukraine and Poland
On 30 March Model was placed in command of Army Group North UkraineArmy Group North Ukraine
The Army Group North Ukraine was a major ground force formation of the German armed forces.It was created on the 1 April 1944 by renaming Army Group South on trial basis, in the course of the separation of troops under command of General Field Marshal Erich von Manstein and General Field Marshal...
in Galicia, which was withdrawing under heavy pressure from Zhukov's 1st Ukrainian Front
1st Ukrainian Front
The 1st Ukrainian Front was a front—a force the size of a Western Army group—of the Soviet Union's Red Army during the Second World War.-Wartime:...
. He replaced von Manstein, who had fallen out of favour with Hitler; despite von Manstein's previous victories, the Führer wanted someone who could be unyielding in defence, and Model fit the bill. There, he came into conflict with von Manstein's associates, in particular Hermann Balck
Hermann Balck
Hermann Balck was a career German army officer who served in both World War I and World War II, rising to the rank of General der Panzertruppe. He was a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds...
and Friedrich von Mellenthin
Friedrich von Mellenthin
Friedrich Wilhelm von Mellenthin was a Generalmajor in the German Army during World War II. A participant in most of the major campaigns of the war, he became well-known afterwards for his memoirs Panzer Battles, first published in 1956 and regularly reprinted since then.- Early life :Mellenthin...
at the XLVIII Panzer Corps. Like their previous commander, they favoured the concept of "elastic defence", which called for a thinly held front line and strong armoured reserves to counterattack Soviet breakthroughs; they now refused to implement Model's preferred tactics. Model solved the problem by transferring XLVIII Panzer Corps' tanks to Hermann Breith's III Panzer Corps, leaving Balck and von Mellenthin in charge of four weak infantry divisions in the front line.
By mid-April Zhukov's advance had come to a halt, before the argument over which defensive doctrine was superior could be decided. On 28 June Model was sent to rescue Army Group Centre, which had been torn apart by Operation Bagration, the Soviet offensive in Belorussia
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
. The Ninth Army (Model's old command) and Fourth Army were trapped, and the Soviets were about to liberate Minsk
Minsk
- Ecological situation :The ecological situation is monitored by Republican Center of Radioactive and Environmental Control .During 2003–2008 the overall weight of contaminants increased from 186,000 to 247,400 tons. The change of gas as industrial fuel to mazut for financial reasons has worsened...
. Despite the catastrophic situation, Model believed that he could still hold Minsk, but this would require Fourth Army to break out of its pocket, and reinforcements to counterattack the Soviet advance. The reinforcements in turn could only be obtained by pulling back, thus shortening the line and freeing up troops. The consensus is that the German position was doomed regardless of what Model could have done, but Hitler refused to sanction either Fourth Army's escape or a general withdrawal until it was too late.
Minsk was liberated by the Soviet 1st
1st Belorussian Front
The 1st Belorussian Front was a Front of the Soviet Army during World War II...
and 3rd Belorussian Front
3rd Belorussian Front
The 3rd Belorussian Front was a Front of the Soviet Army during the Second World War...
s on 3 July, but Model still hoped to re-establish the front to the west of the city, with the aid of divisions from Army Groups North and North Ukraine. However, German strength was unequal to the task, and he had been driven out of Vilnius
Vilnius
Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...
and Baranovichi
Baranovichi
Baranovichi , is a city in the Brest Province of western Belarus with a population of 173,000. It is a significant railway junction and home to a state university.-Overview:...
by 12 July. At the same time, the 1st Ukrainian Front (now commanded by Ivan Konev
Ivan Konev
Ivan Stepanovich Konev , was a Soviet military commander, who led Red Army forces on the Eastern Front during World War II, retook much of Eastern Europe from occupation by the Axis Powers, and helped in the capture of Germany's capital, Berlin....
) and the 1st Belorussian Front's left wing (which had been uncommitted thus far) opened up a fresh offensive
Lvov-Sandomierz Offensive
The Lvov-Sandomierz Offensive or the L'vov-Sandomierz Strategic Offensive Operation was a major Red Army operation to force the German troops from Ukraine and Eastern Poland...
against Army Group North Ukraine. In this battle the First Panzer Army managed to hold the line east of Lvov
Lviv
Lviv is a city in western Ukraine. The city is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically has also been a major Polish and Jewish cultural center, as Poles and Jews were the two main ethnicities of the city until the outbreak of World War II and the following...
using Model's defensive tactics, but was forced to retreat when the Fourth Panzer Army, weakened by the steady flow of units to Army Group Centre, was unable to stem the Soviet penetrations of its front. Model stopped the Red Army's advance just short of Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, after Hitler finally consented to release four experienced and fresh panzer division
Panzer Division
A panzer division was an armored division in the army and air force branches of the Wehrmacht as well as the Waffen-SS of Nazi Germany during World War II....
s to him (3rd SS Panzer
3rd SS Division Totenkopf
The SS Division Totenkopf , also known as 3. SS-Panzergrenadier-Division Totenkopf and 3. SS-Panzer-Division Totenkopf, was one of the 38 divisions fielded by the Waffen-SS during World War II. Prior to achieving division status, the formation was known as Kampfgruppe Eicke...
, 5th SS Panzer
5th SS Panzer Division Wiking
The 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking was one of the elite Panzer divisions of the thirty eight Waffen SS divisions. It was recruited from foreign volunteers, from Scandinavia, Finland, Estonia, The Netherlands, and Belgium under the command of German officers...
, Hermann Göring and Grossdeutschland). He was assisted in this by the Soviets themselves, who paused their offensive to regroup and resupply, and allow the Germans to crush the non-communist Warsaw uprising
Warsaw Uprising
The Warsaw Uprising was a major World War II operation by the Polish resistance Home Army , to liberate Warsaw from Nazi Germany. The rebellion was timed to coincide with the Soviet Union's Red Army approaching the eastern suburbs of the city and the retreat of German forces...
.
At various times in 1944, Model commanded each of the three major army groups on the Eastern Front
Eastern Front (World War II)
The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of World War II between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union, Poland, and some other Allies which encompassed Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945...
, and for a short period in the middle of the year was commanding both Army Groups Centre and North Ukraine simultaneously. He therefore came closer than anyone else in the Wehrmacht to effective command of the entire theatre.
Normandy
On 17 August 1944, Model received from a grateful Hitler the Diamonds to go with his Knight's Cross with Oakleaves and Swords, a reward for patching up the Eastern Front. Simultaneously, he was transferred to the west, replacing von Kluge as commander-in-chief of Army Group B
Army Group B
Army Group B was the name of three different German Army Groups that saw action during World War II.-Battle for France:The first was involved in the Western Campaign in 1940 in Belgium and the Netherlands which was to be aimed to conquer the Maas bridges after the German airborne actions in Rotterdam...
and OB West
OB West
The German Army Command in the West The German Army Command in the West The German Army Command in the West (Oberbefehlshaber West (German: initials OB West) was the overall command of the Westheer, the German Armed Forces on the Western Front during World War II. It was directly subordinate to...
. The front in Normandy
Normandy
Normandy is a geographical region corresponding to the former Duchy of Normandy. It is in France.The continental territory covers 30,627 km² and forms the preponderant part of Normandy and roughly 5% of the territory of France. It is divided for administrative purposes into two régions:...
had collapsed after nearly two months of severe fighting, the U.S. Third Army was driving for the Seine
Seine
The Seine is a -long river and an important commercial waterway within the Paris Basin in the north of France. It rises at Saint-Seine near Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plateau, flowing through Paris and into the English Channel at Le Havre . It is navigable by ocean-going vessels...
, and the army group was in danger of being completely annihilated in the Falaise pocket
Falaise pocket
The battle of the Falaise Pocket, fought during the Second World War from 12 to 21 August 1944, was the decisive engagement of the Battle of Normandy...
.
Model's first order was that Falaise be defended, which did not impress his staff. However he quickly changed his mind, convincing Hitler to authorize the immediate escape of the German Seventh Army and Panzer Group Eberbach—something that von Kluge, with his limited political clout, had not been able to do. He was thus able to salvage a remarkable proportion of his units, albeit at the cost of nearly all his armour and heavy materiel
Materiel
Materiel is a term used in English to refer to the equipment and supplies in military and commercial supply chain management....
. When Hitler demanded that Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
be held, Model replied that he could do so, but only if given an extra 200,000 men and several panzer divisions—an act that has been described as naivety by some, and canny bargaining by others. The reinforcements were not forthcoming, and the city's liberation
Liberation of Paris
The Liberation of Paris took place during World War II from 19 August 1944 until the surrender of the occupying German garrison on August 25th. It could be regarded by some as the last battle in the Battle for Normandy, though that really ended with the crushing of the Wehrmacht forces between the...
took place on 25 August. Meanwhile, Model fell back to the German border.
By early September, Model was finding the task of juggling his responsibilities at Army Group B and OB West increasingly difficult, in the face of Allied air superiority and his own predilection for roaming the front lines. Thus he was happy to relinquish OB West in that month to Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt
Gerd von Rundstedt
Karl Rudolf Gerd von Rundstedt was a Generalfeldmarschall of the German Army during World War II. He held some of the highest field commands in all phases of the war....
. He retained command of Army Group B, a post he would keep until the army group's final dissolution in April 1945.
Retreat to Germany
After the debacle of Normandy, Model established his headquarters at OosterbeekOosterbeek
Oosterbeek is a village in the Dutch province of Gelderland. It is located in the municipality of Renkum, about 5 km west of Arnhem.The oldest part of the village of Oosterbeek is the Benedendorp , on the northern bank of the river Rhine...
, near Arnhem
Arnhem
Arnhem is a city and municipality, situated in the eastern part of the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of Gelderland and located near the river Nederrijn as well as near the St. Jansbeek, which was the source of the city's development. Arnhem has 146,095 residents as one of the...
in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, where he set about the massive task of rebuilding Army Group B. In mid-August 1944, von Kluge committed suicide and Model was given command of OB West for eighteen days before he was relieved of duty and Gerd von Rundstedt
Gerd von Rundstedt
Karl Rudolf Gerd von Rundstedt was a Generalfeldmarschall of the German Army during World War II. He held some of the highest field commands in all phases of the war....
was once again placed in command in the west.
British 1st Airborne Division
The 1st Airborne Division was a division of the British airborne forces during the Second World War. The division was formed in 1941, after British Prime Minister Winston Churchill demanded an airborne force...
dropped into the town: Operation Market Garden
Operation Market Garden
Operation Market Garden was an unsuccessful Allied military operation, fought in the Netherlands and Germany in the Second World War. It was the largest airborne operation up to that time....
, the Allied attempt to capture the bridges on the lower Rhine, Maas
Meuse River
The Maas or Meuse is a major European river, rising in France and flowing through Belgium and the Netherlands before draining into the North Sea...
and Waal, was under way. Model initially thought they were trying to capture him and his staff, but the size of the assault quickly disabused him of that notion.
When Model perceived what the Allies' real objective was, he ordered the II SS Panzer Corps
II SS Panzer Corps
The II SS Panzer Corps was a Nazi German Waffen-SS armoured corps which saw action on both the Eastern and Western Fronts during World War II.- Formation - Kharkov :...
into action. The corps, containing the 9th SS Panzer
9th SS Panzer Division Hohenstaufen
The 9th SS Panzer Division "Hohenstaufen", also known as SS-Panzergrenadier-Division 9, SS-Panzergrenadier-Division 9 Hohenstaufen or 9. SS-Panzer-Division Hohenstaufen, was a German Waffen-SS Armoured division which saw action on both the Eastern and Western Fronts during World War II. The...
and 10th SS Panzer Divisions
10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg
The 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg or 10.SS-Panzer-Division Frundsberg was a German Waffen SS panzer division. The division was formed at the beginning of 1943 as a reserve for the expected Allied invasion of France. However, their first campaign was in the Ukraine in April 1944...
refitting after Normandy, had been overlooked by Allied intelligence: while still seriously understrength, it was composed of veteran troops and a deadly threat to lightly equipped paratrooper
Paratrooper
Paratroopers are soldiers trained in parachuting and generally operate as part of an airborne force.Paratroopers are used for tactical advantage as they can be inserted into the battlefield from the air, thereby allowing them to be positioned in areas not accessible by land...
s. 9th SS Panzer took on the British at Arnhem, while the 10th moved south to defend the bridge at Nijmegen.
Model believed that the situation represented not just a threat, but also an opportunity to counterattack and possibly clear the Allies out of the southern Netherlands. Towards this end, he forbade SS General Willi Bittrich and SS Lieutenant General Heinz Harmel
Heinz Harmel
Heinz Harmel was a German Waffen-SS General during World War II. He was also a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords...
, commanding II SS Panzer Corps and 10th SS Panzer respectively, from destroying the Nijmegen bridge. With the exception of this tactical error, Model is considered to have fought an outstanding battle and handed the Allies a sharp defeat. The bridge at Arnhem was held and the 1st Airborne Division destroyed, dashing the Allies' hopes for a foothold over the Rhine before the end of the year.
Omar Bradley
Omar Nelson Bradley was a senior U.S. Army field commander in North Africa and Europe during World War II, and a General of the Army in the United States Army...
's U.S. 12th Army Group into the Hürtgen Forest
Battle of Hurtgen Forest
The Battle of Hürtgen Forest is the name given to the series of fierce battles fought between U.S. and German forces during World War II in the Hürtgen Forest, which became the longest battle on German ground during World War II, and the longest single battle the U.S. Army has ever fought...
and Aachen
Battle of Aachen
The Battle of Aachen was a battle in Aachen, Germany, which occurred between 2–21 October 1944. By September 1944, the Wehrmacht had been pushed into Germany proper, after being defeated in France by the Western Allies...
. While he interfered less in the day-to-day movements of his units than at Arnhem, he still kept himself fully informed on the situation, slowing the Allies' progress, inflicting heavy casualties and taking full advantage of the fortifications of the Westwall, known to the Allies as the Siegfried Line
Siegfried Line
The original Siegfried line was a line of defensive forts and tank defences built by Germany as a section of the Hindenburg Line 1916–1917 in northern France during World War I...
.
The Hürtgen Forest cost the U.S. First Army at least 33,000 killed and incapacitated, including both combat and noncombat losses; Germans casualties were between 12,000 and 16,000. Aachen eventually fell on 22 October, again at high cost to the U.S. Ninth Army. The Ninth Army's push to the Roer River
Rur
The Rur , — not to be confused with the Ruhr — is a river which flows through portions of Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. It is a right tributary to the river Meuse...
fared no better, and did not manage to cross the river or wrest control of its dams from the Germans. Hürtgen was so costly that it has been called an Allied "defeat of the first magnitude", with specific credit being assigned to Model.
Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein
Following the end of Market Garden, Hitler decided that the Germans should launch an offensive in the west, which would catch the Western AlliesWestern Allies
The Western Allies were a political and geographic grouping among the Allied Powers of the Second World War. It generally includes the United Kingdom and British Commonwealth, the United States, France and various other European and Latin American countries, but excludes China, the Soviet Union,...
by surprise. The objective he had in mind was to split the Allied front and capture Antwerp. This operation, codenamed Wacht am Rhein (Watch on the Rhine), would force the British and Americans to sue for peace, leaving Germany free to concentrate on fighting the Soviet Union.
Model, along with all the other commanders involved, believed the idea was unachievable given the scarce resources available in 1944. At the same time, both he and von Rundstedt felt that a purely defensive posture—as had been adopted since retreating from Normandy—could only delay Germany's defeat, not prevent it. Thus he prepared Operation Herbstnebel
Operation Herbstnebel (Northwest Europe)
Unternehmen Herbstnebel was an offensive planned by German Field Marshal Walter Model and his Army Group B operational staff in late 1944 during World War II...
, a less ambitious attack that did not attempt to cross the Meuse
Meuse River
The Maas or Meuse is a major European river, rising in France and flowing through Belgium and the Netherlands before draining into the North Sea...
, but would still have inflicted a severe setback on the Allies. A similar plan had been developed by von Rundstedt at OB West, and the two field marshals combined their plans to present a joint "small solution" to Hitler. It was rejected, and the "big solution" of aiming for Antwerp went ahead.
For this operation, Model had at his disposal Sixth SS Panzer Army, Fifth Panzer Army and Seventh Army, including a dozen panzer and panzergrenadier divisions, representing the last strategic reserve
Military reserve
A military reserve, tactical reserve, or strategic reserve is a group of military personnel or units which are initially not committed to a battle by their commander so that they are available to address unforeseen situations or exploit suddenly developing...
of the Third Reich. Despite his misgivings, Model threw himself into the task with his usual energy, cracking down on any defeatism he might find. A staff officer complained about shortages, causing him to snap: "If you need anything, take it from the Americans". He remained acutely aware of both the operation's significance, and its most likely outcome. When Colonel Friedrich August von der Heydte, ordered to lead a parachute drop as part of the operation, said that the jump had no more than a 10 percent chance of success, he replied: "Well, then it is necessary to make the attempt, since the entire offensive has no more than a 10 percent chance of success. It must be done, since this offensive is the last remaining chance to conclude the war favourably."
The operation was launched on 16 December 1944 and enjoyed initial success, but it lacked air cover
Aerial warfare
Aerial warfare is the use of military aircraft and other flying machines in warfare, including military airlift of cargo to further the national interests as was demonstrated in the Berlin Airlift...
and experienced infantry
Infantry
Infantrymen are soldiers who are specifically trained for the role of fighting on foot to engage the enemy face to face and have historically borne the brunt of the casualties of combat in wars. As the oldest branch of combat arms, they are the backbone of armies...
, and most critically, fuel
Fuel oil
Fuel oil is a fraction obtained from petroleum distillation, either as a distillate or a residue. Broadly speaking, fuel oil is any liquid petroleum product that is burned in a furnace or boiler for the generation of heat or used in an engine for the generation of power, except oils having a flash...
. Sixth SS Panzer Army ran into stiff resistance, and while Fifth Panzer Army managed to make a deep thrust into Allied lines, Model was unable to exploit the breakthrough. The Germans had failed to capture the vital road junction at Bastogne
Bastogne
Bastogne Luxembourgish: Baaschtnech) is a Walloon municipality of Belgium located in the province of Luxembourg in the Ardennes. The municipality of Bastogne includes the old communes of Longvilly, Noville, Villers-la-Bonne-Eau, and Wardin...
; combined with the poor weather and impassable terrain, this caused the German columns to bank up into huge traffic jams on the roads behind the front. Starved of fuel and ammunition, the attack had ground to a halt by 25 December, and was called off on 8 January.
Defeat at the Ruhr
The failure of Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein marked the end of Model's special relationship with Hitler, who on 21 January 1945, issued an order that all the divisions of Army Group B would thenceforth be personally responsible to him. Withdrawing to the Rhine was forbidden, and the army group was directed to conduct its defence without giving up an inch of ground.Ruhr
The Ruhr is a medium-size river in western Germany , a right tributary of the Rhine.-Description:The source of the Ruhr is near the town of Winterberg in the mountainous Sauerland region, at an elevation of approximately 2,200 feet...
after his failure to destroy the bridge over the Rhine at Remagen
Ludendorff Bridge
The Ludendorff Bridge was a railway bridge across the River Rhine in Germany, connecting the villages of Remagen and Erpel between two ridge lines of hills flanking the river...
. The explosives had been defused by two Polish engineers from Silesia
Silesia
Silesia is a historical region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with smaller parts also in the Czech Republic, and Germany.Silesia is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesia's largest city and historical capital is Wrocław...
, forced conscripts into the Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
. Sergeant Alexander A. Drabik
Alexander A. Drabik
Sgt. Alexander A. Drabik was the first American soldier to cross the Rhine River into Germany. Under heavy machine-gun fire, Drabik dashed across the Ludendorff Bridge near Remagen on March 7, 1945, while Germans tried desperately to detonate it. For his heroism, Drabik was awarded the...
, a Polish American
Polish American
A Polish American , is a citizen of the United States of Polish descent. There are an estimated 10 million Polish Americans, representing about 3.2% of the population of the United States...
, led the charge across the bridge under heavy gunfire, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross
Distinguished Service Cross (United States)
The Distinguished Service Cross is the second highest military decoration that can be awarded to a member of the United States Army, for extreme gallantry and risk of life in actual combat with an armed enemy force. Actions that merit the Distinguished Service Cross must be of such a high degree...
.
On 1 April, Army Group B was encircled in the Ruhr
Ruhr
The Ruhr is a medium-size river in western Germany , a right tributary of the Rhine.-Description:The source of the Ruhr is near the town of Winterberg in the mountainous Sauerland region, at an elevation of approximately 2,200 feet...
by the U.S. First and Ninth Armies. Hitler's response was to declare the Ruhr a fortress, from which surrender or escape were denied (much like Stalingrad
Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in southwestern Russia. The battle took place between 23 August 1942 and 2 February 1943...
had been); he further ordered its industries to be destroyed to prevent them falling into Allied hands. Model ignored these orders.
On 15 April, after the Allies had split the pocket in two, Major General Matthew Ridgway
Matthew Ridgway
Matthew Bunker Ridgway was a United States Army General. He held several major commands and was most famous for resurrecting the United Nations war effort during the Korean War. Several historians have credited Ridgway for turning around the war in favor of the UN side...
, commanding the U.S. XVIII Airborne Corps
U.S. XVIII Airborne Corps
The XVIII Airborne Corps is the corps of the United States Army designed for rapid deployment anywhere in the world. It is referred to as "America's Contingency Corps". Its headquarters are at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.-World War II:...
, urged Model to surrender rather than throw the lives of his soldiers away. The reply was that Model, still bound by his oath to Hitler and his sense of honour as a field marshal, considered surrender out of the question. Rather than continue fighting, however, he ordered the army group dissolved. The oldest and youngest soldiers were discharged, and the remainder given the option of surrendering or attempting to break out on their own. In fact, he could do little else: the Fifth Panzer Army had already laid down its arms, and German command and communications in the pocket had all but disintegrated. On 20 April, Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
' Propaganda Ministry denounced Army Group B as traitors, marking the final break between Model and the collapsing Nazi regime.
Suicide
Model's decision ended the war for his men, but he himself had little desire to witness the aftermath of defeat. He said to his staffers before dissolving his command: "Has everything been done to justify our actions in the light of history? What can there be left for a commander in defeat? In antiquity they took poison". His decision to commit suicideSuicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
was sealed when he learned that the Soviets had indicted him for war crime
War crime
War crimes are serious violations of the laws applicable in armed conflict giving rise to individual criminal responsibility...
s, specifically the deaths of 577,000 people in concentration camps
Nazi concentration camps
Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...
in Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
and the deportation of 175,000 others as slave labour
Unfree labour
Unfree labour includes all forms of slavery as well as all other related institutions .-Payment for unfree labour:If payment occurs, it may be in one or more of the following forms:...
. After his attempts to seek death on the front line came to nothing, he shot himself in the head in a wooded area on 21 April 1945. The location, between Duisburg
Duisburg
- History :A legend recorded by Johannes Aventinus holds that Duisburg, was built by the eponymous Tuisto, mythical progenitor of Germans, ca. 2395 BC...
and the village of Lintorf, is today part of the city of Ratingen
Ratingen
Ratingen is a town in the district of Mettmann, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, in the northwestern part of Berg - about 12 km northeast of Düsseldorf...
.
Postscript
Model was buried where he fell. In 1955 his son, Hansgeorg Model, guided by his father's former officers, recovered his father's body. Walter Model was reinterred in the Soldatenfriedhof Vossenack, a German military cemetery near the town of Vossenack in the Hürtgen ForestHurtgen Forest
The Hürtgen forest is located along the border between Belgium and Germany in the southwest corner of the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Scarcely in area, the forest lies within a triangle outlined by Aachen, Monschau, and Düren...
. Hansgeorg himself served as an officer cadet with the Grossdeutschland Division
Großdeutschland Division
The Großdeutschland Division was an elite Heer combat unit of the Wehrmacht. The Großdeutschland was considered to be the premier unit of the German Army and as such it was one of best-equipped unit of the German Armed Forces, receiving equipment before all other units.- Early history -...
in late 1944 and 1945; after the war he joined the Bundeswehr
Bundeswehr
The Bundeswehr consists of the unified armed forces of Germany and their civil administration and procurement authorities...
, rising to the rank of brigadier general
Brigadier General
Brigadier general is a senior rank in the armed forces. It is the lowest ranking general officer in some countries, usually sitting between the ranks of colonel and major general. When appointed to a field command, a brigadier general is typically in command of a brigade consisting of around 4,000...
.
Limitations
Unlike Erwin RommelErwin Rommel
Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel , popularly known as the Desert Fox , was a German Field Marshal of World War II. He won the respect of both his own troops and the enemies he fought....
, another field marshal who preferred to lead from the front, Walter Model was almost universally disliked by those who had to work with him. For example, when he was made commander of the XLI Panzer Corps in 1941, the entire corps staff asked to be transferred. Not only was he foul-mouthed and abusive, but he made a habit of micromanaging his subordinates, changing plans without consultation, and bypassing the chain of command when it suited him. He was oblivious to the niceties of etiquette, often reprimanding or castigating his officers in public. When he departed Army Group North
Army Group North
Army Group North was a German strategic echelon formation commanding a grouping of Field Armies subordinated to the OKH during World War II. The army group coordinated the operations of attached separate army corps, reserve formations, rear services and logistics.- Formation :The Army Group North...
in March 1944 after being sent to the Ukraine, the army group's chief of staff remarked: "Schweinfurt (Schweinfurt is a city in Bavaria. Schwein fort would mean the pig is gone." (the swine is gone). It was a reference to Model's nickname among his staffers, that he had earned during his time at XLI Panzer Corps: "Frontschwein" (the frontline pig).
It has been said in literature that he never succeeded in leading a successful offensive operation. However the time of the large-scale offensives were over when Model came to the top. The fighting at Rzhev
Battles of Rzhev
Rzhev Battles is a general term for a series of World War II offensives launched during January 8, 1942—March 31, 1943 by the Soviet Red Army in the general directions of Rzhev, Sychevka and Vyazma against a German salient in the vicinity of Moscow, known as the "Rzhev meat grinder" for...
brought success in attack, especially the first of the four battles in which in the final phase a Russian army was surrounded and destroyed and another suffered severe losses. The two big offensives in which Model participated, Zitadelle and the Ardennes offensive, were in their final forms executed against his repeated warnings. Moreover, any specialist in retreats should also be able to attack with success, because a retreat that succeeds is more difficult to execute than an attack. The Büffel movement, the retreat on the Hagen line during the Russian Orel offensive and the improvisation during the restoration of the front at Army Group Center and in the west must count as examples of extraordinary retreat operations.
His command style had worked when he was leading a division or corps, but once promoted to command of an army, it opened him to criticism over whether the advantages gained were enough to offset the loss of efficiency that followed.
The statement that he was no strategist can be agreed to because the conditions for that existed for no general in the Third Reich.
It has been observed that he showed little inclination to contemplate those stretches of the front he did not command.
Strengths
What Model possessed was an excellent tacticalMilitary tactics
Military tactics, the science and art of organizing an army or an air force, are the techniques for using weapons or military units in combination for engaging and defeating an enemy in battle. Changes in philosophy and technology over time have been reflected in changes to military tactics. In...
mind, especially when on the defensive, and an "outstanding talent for improvisation". At 3rd Panzer Division he was a pioneer in the use of Kampfgruppe
Kampfgruppe
In military history and military slang, the German term Kampfgruppe can refer to a combat formation of any kind, but most usually to that employed by the German Wehrmacht and its allies during World War II and, to a lesser extent, in World War I...
n, which would soon become standard practice for the Germans. He had a formidable memory and eye for detail, which allowed him to dominate his staff officers, especially those in charge of specialist areas such as artillery, transport and communications.
Before the war he was put in charge of analyzing technical advances at home and abroad and his enthusiasm for innovation earned him the nickname Armee Modernissimus ("the army modernization fanatic"). Model fought nearly all his battles in the northern and central parts of the Eastern Front; he was never tested on the steppe
Steppe
In physical geography, steppe is an ecoregion, in the montane grasslands and shrublands and temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biomes, characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes...
s of southern Russia, where the open terrain would have made mobile warfare a more attractive proposition. Nevertheless, his defensive record indicated the value of his approach. At Rzhev, Orel, in Galicia and in Estonia he stymied opponents who expected to overwhelm him, and as late as November 1944, he gave the U.S. 12th Army Group a bloodied nose in the Hürtgen Forest
Hurtgen Forest
The Hürtgen forest is located along the border between Belgium and Germany in the southwest corner of the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Scarcely in area, the forest lies within a triangle outlined by Aachen, Monschau, and Düren...
.
His approach was not pretty. Model was a ruthless commander, willing to inflict and take casualties to stabilize his front. The splitting up of units was continually practiced by Model and took place on the regimental and divisional level. The objective was always to give necessary reinforcements to the centers of gravity when no reserves were available. From an operational viewpoint this allowed Model to achieve defensive successes, which would not have been possible otherwise. According to Newton the sending of theatre or operational reserves into the line where the fighting was toughest was meant to preserve the units Model saw as organically tied to his own command. For example, he was given the elite Grossdeutschland Division in September 1942, when his Ninth Army was under heavy attack during Operation Mars
Operation Mars
Operation Mars was the codename for the Rzhev offensive operation part of the Rzhev-Vyazma strategic offensive operation launched by Soviet forces against German forces during World War II. It took place between 25 November and 20 December 1942 in a salient in the vicinity of Moscow...
. Though he was told that the division was not to be broken up, Model nonetheless split it into battalions and companies, which he used to plug any gaps that appeared. Grossdeutschland took nearly 10,000 casualties out of a strength of 18,000 men, and at one point was reportedly close to mutiny; but from Model's viewpoint these losses were acceptable because they meant that Ninth Army's own troops did not have to suffer them. That said, he did not simply treat these reserve units as disposable. In early 1942, the Der Führer Regiment of the 2nd SS Division Das Reich
2nd SS Division Das Reich
The 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich was a Waffen-SS division during World War II. It is considered to be an elite formation amongst the thirty-eight divisions fielded by the Waffen-SS....
was reduced to a handful of men in three weeks of bitter fighting—but in that time it also received reinforcements including 88 mm gun
88 mm gun
The 88 mm gun was a German anti-aircraft and anti-tank artillery gun from World War II. It was widely used by Germany throughout the war, and was one of the most recognizable German weapons of the war...
s, artillery pieces, and StuG III assault guns, and Model himself visited the sector daily, calculating the minimum support that would be needed to hold off the Soviet attacks.
Model was aware of the negative effects of the splitting up of units. For example, on the 7th of October 1944 he forbade the splitting up of regiments into autonomous battalions to be used outside the division.
Allied to this were his boundless determination and vigour and stubborn refusal to countenance defeat. He held himself to the same high standard as he held those around him, saying: "He who leads troops has no right to think about himself". His visits to the front may not have helped operational efficiency, but they energized his men, who consistently held him in much higher regard than did his officers. As commanding general of Ninth Army
German Ninth Army
The 9th Army was a World War II field army.The 9th Army was activated on May 15, 1940 with General Johannes Blaskowitz in command.-1940:The 9th Army first saw service along the Siegfried Line when it was involved in the invasion of France...
he was once recorded as personally leading a battalion attack against a Soviet position, pistol in hand. His peers respected his ability and iron will, even though they may have detested his personality. Guderian thought him the best choice to command Army Group Centre during the crisis of Operation Bagration; the Ninth Army's War Diary recorded, after he arrived at army group headquarters in Minsk: "The news of Field Marshal Model's arrival is noted with satisfaction and confidence."
Model was the master of the type of defense which can be called 'defense limited in time'; in which you defend as long as possible but then retreat to avoid breakthrough and destruction. He was always at the critical points and took away battlegroups or even single battalions from less threatened sectors. With these units holes were plugged at other locations or short counterattacks were executed and so opportunities were created for bigger solutions. Thus, a closed front was guaranteed while the mixing and tearing apart of units was viewed as the smaller evil.
Relationship with Hitler
Before the war, Model had been content to leave politics to the politicians, preferring instead to concentrate on military affairs. Despite this, he became one of the WehrmachtWehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
's field marshals most closely identified with Hitler. Postwar opinions on him have varied. Some historians have called him "blindly loyal" or a "zealous disciple" of Hitler; others take a more nuanced view, seeing in Model a coldly calculating opportunist who used the Führer to his advantage, whether or not he was committed to him or the ideals of Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
. The contradictions between his Lutheran
Lutheranism
Lutheranism is a major branch of Western Christianity that identifies with the theology of Martin Luther, a German reformer. Luther's efforts to reform the theology and practice of the church launched the Protestant Reformation...
upbringing and his later association with the Nazis have similarly been the subject of comment.
As one of the few German generals of middle class
Middle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
upbringing, Model's background appealed to Hitler, who distrusted the old Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
n aristocratic
Junker
A Junker was a member of the landed nobility of Prussia and eastern Germany. These families were mostly part of the German Uradel and carried on the colonization and Christianization of the northeastern European territories during the medieval Ostsiedlung. The abbreviation of Junker is Jkr...
order that still dominated the Wehrmacht's officer corps
Officer (armed forces)
An officer is a member of an armed force or uniformed service who holds a position of authority. Commissioned officers derive authority directly from a sovereign power and, as such, hold a commission charging them with the duties and responsibilities of a specific office or position...
. His defensive tactics were a much better fit to Hitler's instincts never to give ground, than airy talk of "elastic defence"—even if Model did not entirely share those instincts. His stubbornness, energy and ruthlessness were more qualities that Hitler found admirable, and Model's blunt and direct manner of speaking also made an impression.
In a much-noted incident, Model had to deal with an attempt by Adolf Hitler to interfere with his arrangements. A telephone call from Army Group Center's chief of staff
Chief of Staff
The title, chief of staff, identifies the leader of a complex organization, institution, or body of persons and it also may identify a Principal Staff Officer , who is the coordinator of the supporting staff or a primary aide to an important individual, such as a president.In general, a chief of...
on 19 January 1942 informed him that Hitler, having become nervous about the direct Soviet threat against Vyazma, had decided that XLVII Panzer Corps (Germany)
XLVII Panzer Corps (Germany)
The XLVII Panzer Corps was a Panzer Corps formed by Field Marshal Günther von Kluge during the Battle for Normandy, and for Operation Lüttich...
, 2nd SS Division Das Reich
2nd SS Division Das Reich
The 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich was a Waffen-SS division during World War II. It is considered to be an elite formation amongst the thirty-eight divisions fielded by the Waffen-SS....
, and 5th Panzer Division were not to be employed in the imminent counterattack
Counterattack
A counterattack is a tactic used in response against an attack. The term originates in military strategy. The general objective is to negate or thwart the advantage gained by the enemy in attack and the specific objectives are usually to regain lost ground or to destroy attacking enemy units.It is...
but reserved for other use in the rearguard
Rear guard
A rear guard or rearguard is that part of a military force that protects it from attack from the rear, either during an advance or withdrawal...
. Immediately, Model drove back from Rzhev to Vyazma in a raging blizzard and boarded a plane for East Prussia. Bypassing the figure of field marshal
Field Marshal
Field Marshal is a military rank. Traditionally, it is the highest military rank in an army.-Etymology:The origin of the rank of field marshal dates to the early Middle Ages, originally meaning the keeper of the king's horses , from the time of the early Frankish kings.-Usage and hierarchical...
Günther von Kluge
Günther von Kluge
Günther Adolf Ferdinand “Hans” von Kluge was a German military leader. He was born in Posen into a Prussian military family. Kluge rose to the rank of Field Marshal in the Wehrmacht. He was also a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords...
, his immediate superior, he sought a personal confrontation with Hitler. At first he attempted to lay out his reasons in the best, dispassionate General Staff manner, only to find the Führer unmoved by logic. Suddenly, glaring at Hitler through his monocle, Model brusquely demanded to know: "Mein Führer, who commands Ninth Army, you or I?". Hitler, shocked at the defiance of his newest army commander, tried to find another solution favorable for both, but Model still wasn't satisfied. "Good, Model", the exasperated Hitler finally responded. "You do it as you please, but it will be your head at risk".
According to the Hitler's Table Talk
Hitler's Table Talk
Hitler's Table Talk is the title given to a series of wartime conversations and monologues delivered by Adolf Hitler, which were transcribed from 1941 to 1944...
recorded that night, the Führer commented: "I distrust officers who have exaggeratedly theoretical minds. I'd like to know what becomes of their theories at the moment of action". But when an officer "is worthy of command", he told Reichsführer-SS
Reichsführer-SS
was a special SS rank that existed between the years of 1925 and 1945. Reichsführer-SS was a title from 1925 to 1933 and, after 1934, the highest rank of the German Schutzstaffel .-Definition:...
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
, "he must be given the prerogatives corresponding to his functions". Shortly after Model's departure to Rzhev area, Hitler also stated that: "Generals must be tough, pitiless men, as crabbed as mastiffs - gross-grained men, such as I have in the Party". Importantly, however, Model never challenged Hitler on political issues: a point that has been identified as the secret to their successful relationship.
Helped by his defensive successes, he thus gained Hitler's full trust and confidence; the Führer called him "my best field marshal" and (after Operation Bagration) "the saviour of the Eastern Front". In turn, this granted Model a degree of flexibility available to no other German general. He frequently disputed, ignored or bypassed orders that he felt unsupportable: at Rzhev and Orel he had constructed defensive fortifications in defiance of a ban, and his use of Shield and Sword tactics while at Army Group North proved to be simply a cover for a staged withdrawal. His relationships with his superiors were marked by dissembling, where what he wrote in his reports could bear little resemblance to what was actually happening. While other generals who clashed with Hitler were fated to be dismissed, Model's standing remained undiminished—so long as he produced results.
Model and Nazism
Many of Model's fellow officers considered him a Nazi. He frequently harangued his troops to have faith in the Führer and uphold the virtues of National Socialism. He accepted the offer of SS-Gruppenführer Hermann FegeleinHermann Fegelein
SS-Obergruppenführer Hans Georg Otto Hermann Fegelein was a General of the Waffen-SS in Nazi Germany, a member of Adolf Hitler's entourage, brother-in-law to Eva Braun through his marriage to her sister, Gretl, and husband of the sister-in-law to Adolf Hitler through Hitler's marriage to Eva...
to appoint a Waffen-SS
Waffen-SS
The Waffen-SS was a multi-ethnic and multi-national military force of the Third Reich. It constituted the armed wing of the Schutzstaffel or SS, an organ of the Nazi Party. The Waffen-SS saw action throughout World War II and grew from three regiments to over 38 divisions, and served alongside...
officer as his adjutant
Adjutant
Adjutant is a military rank or appointment. In some armies, including most English-speaking ones, it is an officer who assists a more senior officer, while in other armies, especially Francophone ones, it is an NCO , normally corresponding roughly to a Staff Sergeant or Warrant Officer.An Adjutant...
at Army Group North in 1944, after the Heerespersonalamt
Heerespersonalamt
The Heeres Personal Amt, Heerespersonalamt or Heeres Personalamt, is a German military agency formed in 1920 and charged with the personnel matters of all officers and cadets of the army of the Reichswehr and later the Wehrmacht. With increased recruitment of officers in 1935 and especially in the...
had refused him an adjutant, and filled the Nationalsozialistischer Führungsoffizier (NSFO, essentially a Nazi political commissar
Political commissar
The political commissar is the supervisory political officer responsible for the political education and organisation, and loyalty to the government of the military...
) post at Army Group B that had been vacant before his arrival. His habit of parroting the Führer's orders caused him to be viewed as a sycophant, even if he often undermined or ignored those orders in practice.
Following the July 20 Plot
July 20 Plot
On 20 July 1944, an attempt was made to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Führer of the Third Reich, inside his Wolf's Lair field headquarters near Rastenburg, East Prussia. The plot was the culmination of the efforts of several groups in the German Resistance to overthrow the Nazi-led German government...
, Model was the first senior commander to reaffirm his loyalty to Hitler. However, he also refused to give up General Hans Speidel
Hans Speidel
Hans Speidel: Born in Metzingen, was a German general during World War II and the first German NATO Commander during the Cold War.- 1914–1945 :...
, his chief of staff at Army Group B who was heavily implicated in the plot, to the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
. Model was well aware of Speidel's political leanings, as were his predecessors at Army Group B, Rommel
Erwin Rommel
Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel , popularly known as the Desert Fox , was a German Field Marshal of World War II. He won the respect of both his own troops and the enemies he fought....
and von Kluge
Günther von Kluge
Günther Adolf Ferdinand “Hans” von Kluge was a German military leader. He was born in Posen into a Prussian military family. Kluge rose to the rank of Field Marshal in the Wehrmacht. He was also a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords...
. Like them, he shielded Speidel for as long as possible, while ignoring such treasonous talk as might take place.
While on the Eastern Front, Model showed no objection to the treatment of civilians by the SS in the areas under his command, and oversaw several anti-partisan
Partisan (military)
A partisan is a member of an irregular military force formed to oppose control of an area by a foreign power or by an army of occupation by some kind of insurgent activity...
operations, mostly while commanding Ninth Army. These operations, conducted by Wehrmacht troops as well as SS, were bloody, although not unusual by German Eastern Front standards. In conjunction with the ruthless scorched earth
Scorched earth
A scorched earth policy is a military strategy or operational method which involves destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy while advancing through or withdrawing from an area...
policies he followed during his retreats, they would lead to the Soviet Union declaring him a war criminal.
Despite this, while commanding Army Group Centre, he refused to dispatch troops to put down the Warsaw uprising
Warsaw Uprising
The Warsaw Uprising was a major World War II operation by the Polish resistance Home Army , to liberate Warsaw from Nazi Germany. The rebellion was timed to coincide with the Soviet Union's Red Army approaching the eastern suburbs of the city and the retreat of German forces...
(a task that ultimately was carried out by the SS), viewing it as a rear-area matter. He stated that the revolt arose from the mistreatment of the Polish population by the Nazis, and the army should have nothing to do with it. On the other hand, he showed no hesitation in clearing the Warsaw suburbs of Praga
Praga
Praga is a historical borough of Warsaw, the capital of Poland. It is located on the east bank of the river Vistula. First mentioned in 1432, until 1791 it formed a separate town with its own city charter.- History :...
and Saska Kępa
Saska Kepa
Saska Kępa is a neighbourhood in Warsaw, Poland, currently part of Praga Południe district. It is a seat of Park Skaryszewski-History:In the 17th century one of areas of present Praga Południe was turned into a military camp...
, through which vital supply lines ran,.
It has been argued that the best explanation for Model's behaviour and suicide is that he was not necessarily a Nazi, but an authoritarian militarist who saw in Hitler the strong leader that Germany needed. This characterized many in the German officer corps, but in Model's case it was accompanied by a cynical willingness to placate the Nazi regime to expedite his own goals, and a complete internalisation of the image of the professional, apolitical soldier. He had dedicated his life to the army, whether the Reichswehr or the Wehrmacht, and in his final days in the Ruhr, more than one observer had detected in him a struggle to cope with the fact that its destruction was imminent. In this view, Model's decision to take his own life was less to do with matters of honour or Soviet retribution, as with an inability to come to terms with utter defeat.
Dates of rank
- 22 August 1910: 2nd Lieutenant, Infantry
- 25 February 1915: 1st Lieutenant
- March 1918: Captain
- 1929: Major
- 1932: Lieutenant Colonel
- 1 October 1934: Colonel
- 1 March 1939: Brigadier General (Generalmajor)
- 1 April 1940: Major General (Generalleutnant)
- 1 October 1941: Lieutenant General of Panzer Troops (General der Panzertruppe)
- 28 February 1942: General (Generaloberst)
- 1 March 1944: Field Marshal (Generalfeldmarschall)
Service history
- 1909: Officer cadet training
- 1910: 52nd Infantry Regiment von Alvensleben
- 1917: Staff assignments
- 1925: Commanding officer, 9th Company, 8th Infantry Regiment
- 1928: Staff officer, 3rd Division, Berlin
- 1930: Staff officer, Section 4 (Training), Truppenamt, Berlin
- 1932: Chief of Staff, Reich Kuratorium for Youth Fitness
- 1933: Battalion commander, 2nd Infantry Regiment
- 1935: Head of Section 8, General Staff, Berlin
- 1938: Chief of Staff, IV Corps
- 1939: Chief of Staff, Sixteenth Army
- 1940: Commander, 3rd Panzer Division
- 1941: Commander, XLI Panzer Corps
- 1942: Commander, Ninth Army
- January – March 1944: Commander, Army Group North
- March – June 1944: Commander, Army Group North Ukraine
- June – August 1944: Commander, Army Group Centre
- August – September 1944: Commander-in-Chief, OB West
- August 1944 – April 1945: Commander, Army Group B