Black Marks: Hitler's Bribery of His Senior Officers during World War II

Abstract

Though scholars have paid little attention to Adolf Hitler’s bribery of his senior military officers during World War II, the fact that large secret cash payments existed is not news. German officers in the two highest ranks received monthly tax-exempt supplements to their salaries, which more than doubled their salary total, from 1940 until the end of the war. In 1941 and 1942, certain top-ranking officers also received tax-exempt checks of 250,000 Reichsmark (RM) for milestone birthdays (fiftieth, sixtieth, and sixty-fifth), and in 1944 a small group of officers was given tremendous landed estates, some valued at over 1 million marks, also with no tax liability. The base materialism of these practices once interested historians of the DDR, and the secrecy surrounding them has caught the imagination of journalists more recently. Meanwhile, the importance of corruption in the context of Hitler’s war combined with the virtual absence of resistance in the top ranks has brought leading historians to call for further investigation.1 Yet a truly systematic analysis has been missing for several reasons. First, the source material is sparse. A relatively small number of files in the German Federal Archives along with occasional diary entries and some postwar accusations are all that document Hitler’s cash gifts to his senior officers. Second, the study of illicit gift giving in general and modern corruption in particular