Field Marshals Research Articles

‘Untarnished Regiment’? Divergent Perspectives on the Wehrmacht's 9th Infantry, 1939–1941

We know more about 9th Infantry than about other regiments in the Wehrmacht. Its ‘Prussian’ officer cadre produced two wartime field marshals, 27 generals, and a president of Germany in 1984–94. Several erstwhile officers conspired ahead of the putsch on 20 July 1944. Traditional accounts suggested that the regiment was ‘untarnished’ and not implicated in National Socialist crimes. This paper tests this by drawing on unexplored or little-known German, Polish, Jewish, and ex-Soviet sources. It finds that 9th Infantry did not differ from peers in supporting and joining illegalities in 1939–41. Moreover, in facilitating repression and Jewish ghettos in Poland and in shooting Soviet POWs it exceeded ‘typical’ criminality. Distortions seen in the traditional accounts are deconstructed. Some persist today in Germany's public sphere.

北宋 後期 西北邊 開邊策의 수행과 武臣 · 宦官의 활용 : 帥臣 · 大帥 임용을 중심으로

北宋 後期 西北邊 開邊策의 수행과 武臣 · 宦官의 활용 : 帥臣 · 大帥 임용을 중심으로

Российский генералитет 1730–1741 гг.: численность, национальный и социальный состав, тенденции развития

Referring to a vast number of archival and published sources, the author analyzes the social structure and development tendencies of the Russian General Officers between 1730 and 1741. The growth in the numbers of generals under Anna Ioannovna had ceased in the period in question. As opposed to the five previous years, the numbers of generals between 1730 and 1741 were directly conditioned by whether the army was involved in military activities. After the confirmation of the new staff in 1731, the number of generals decreased reaching 104–108 persons, while during the Russo-Turkish and Swedish wars, it increased to 113–129 persons. The structure of the general officers’ staff between 1730 and 1741 reflected the overall changes in the armed forces of the time. The number of generals in the field army was decreasing, while it remained unchanged in the military units financed by sources other than chevage (artillery, engineer corps, land militia, defence forces). According to the general data, between 1730 and 1738, 60 to 63 percent of the generals were Russian nationals, and 37 to 40 percent non-Russian nationals. Consequently, after Anna Ioannovna was enthroned, there were no significant changes in the general officers’ national structure. It was only at the very end of the period that due to a mass resignation of Russian generals, the numbers of foreign general officers grew: in 1739 they accounted for 42 percent, and between 1740 and 1741 – for 45–46 percent. In the field army, the growth of the number of non-Russian nationals continued with 35 percent in 1725, 42–45 percent in 1726–1730, and as many as 51–70 percent in 1739–1741. Foreign general officers prevailed, as previously, in the artillery and engineer corps with Russian generals employed in the military administration. The land militia forces were commanded by non-Russian generals. According to the general data between 1730 and 1741, equally to the preceding five years, the majority of foreign generals were from Germany (43 to 45 percent). Having started under Peter I, the incorporation of the Baltic nobility into Russian elite continued, while the numbers of Baltic Germans among the generals considerably increased (from 10 to 28 percent). Non-Russian generals taking service between 1730 and 1741, as a rule, had military experience and were assigned to the field army and land militia. The renewal of the command of the artillery, engineer and defence forces, as well as the military administration was mainly carried out by means of promoting the officers that were already serving in the Russian military forces. The development of the social structure of the Russian part of general officers remained unaltered. The amount of the traditional elite decreased from 40–43 percent in 1730–1731 to 34–35 percent in 1740–1741. After three decades since the start of the military reforms of Peter the Great, representatives of the Moscow nobility were promoted to generals in chief and accounted to the majority of such positions. It was only the senior rank of field marshals that was made up of the nobility. Overall, the development of the general officials’ corps between 1730 and 1741 followed the general pattern of the development of Russian military forces initiated under Peter the Great, and the changes of the beginning of Anna Ioannovna’s reign were the result of the internal policy that was formulated by the reformer-tsar’s associates between 1725 and 1727.

Archiwa hetmanów koronnych. Pojęcie, charakter i typologia dokumentacji

Adam Sędziwój Archives of great marshals (hetmani wielcy) and field marshals (hetmani polni) of the Polish Crown and of the Great Duchy of Lithuania functioned within an organisational framework very different to archives of other ministerial offices within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Marshals' archives should be regarded as belonging to private archives and, to be more specific, as fragments of archives belonging to clans and families from which marshals descended. The documents written by marshals while they were in office were considered their private property and they were entered into archives as their personal, private files. This is how a paradox occured because documents written by a person holding one of the most important offices in the country, and who was often seen as dangerous for the nobility's and the ruler's own interests and for the country's security, could not be made known to the public and existed beyond any control. Various documents survived amongst the archives of the marshals of the Polish Crown, different in terms of form, sender and subject matter. The first criterion that we can adopt while characterising the documentation found in marshals' archives is its form. Here, the first place definitely takes correspondence, followed by documents set out in tabular form, case files, books, and finally documents. Other criterion which can be applied is the sender and the addressee. According to this criterion, the documents can be divided into these incoming, addressed to marshal or people close to him (e.g. people working in his office), and these outgoing, written by marshal or people working with him. Another criterion used for typology of documentation found in marshals' archives is the subject matter, usually dependent of the function of marshal of the Polish Crown. And so the documents can be divided into the following categories: military, financial, judicial, diplomatic and private (these include documents related to the office held but referring directly to marshal, e.g. papers appointing to the office of marshal, documentation regarding remuneration, correspondence). Taking into consideration the fisical form in which the documents can be found at the moment, we can describe them as loose, glued or bound together. Certainly, all those forms could well be found in the past but it is important to remeber that the condition that the documents are in at present does not always correspond to their original form. They were usually produced as loose documents and were later bound into fascicles.

A field guide to the culture wars: the battle over values from the campaign trail to the classroom

Prologue: Wars and the Rumors of Wars Section One: Fighting Faiths Chapter 1. This I Believe Chapter 2. One Nation Chapter 3. Under God Chapter 4. In the Beginning Chapter 5. Male and Female He Created Them Chapter 6. Whose Life is it Anyway? Section Two: Opposing Armies Chapter 7. Field Marshals Chapter 8. Philosophers Chapter 9. Financiers Section Three: Battlegrounds Chapter 10. Congress Chapter 11. Campaign Trail Chapter 12. Courts Chapter 13. Classroom Chapter 14. Culture Chapter 15. Church Section Four: The Field Guide

Life and Death in the Demiansk Pocket: The 123rd Infantry Division in Combat and Occupation

During the past two decades, focus on the German-Soviet war has shifted from a nearly exclusive fascination with field marshals and their battles—“chaps and maps”—to one more concerned with the social aspects of the war. Issues of resistance and collaboration, German occupation policies and everyday life under Nazi rule, and the Soviet Union's recovery from the catastrophe of 1941 and its subsequent unprecedented mobilization during the latter stages of the war now constitute the main emphases of research. Many of these new lines of investigation revolve around the implementation and results of the GermanVernichtungskrieg, the war of annihilation carried out by the Wehrmacht, SS, and myriad other German agencies against the Soviet state and population. As the army was the largest and most powerful German institution operating in the Soviet Union, it has recently attracted the most attention and generated the most controversy. Historians have reached a rough consensus concerning the German High Command's complicity in implementing the Vernichtungskrieg; here, the set of orders commonly referred to in the literature as the “criminal orders” illustrate the army's means of achieving Hitler's goals. More recently, scholars have begun to investigate the army's responsibility for starving millions of Soviet civilians. While some dissenting voices have been heard, it is clear that the German High Command willingly and even enthusiastically participated in the war of annihilation.

The British Admirals of the Fleet, 1734-1995, A Biographical Dictionary (review)

Reviewed by: The British Admirals of the Fleet, 1734–1995, A Biographical Dictionary Anthony Clayton The British Admirals of the Fleet, 1734–1995, A Biographical Dictionary. By T. A Heathcote. Barnsley, U.K.: Pen & Sword Books, 2002. ISBN: 0-85052-835-6. Tables. Illustrations. Bibliography. Index. Pp xiii, 338. £25. This well-researched and presented compilation is timely and useful for two reasons. The work is invaluable as a source of reference for the careers, services and achievements of most, if not all, of the Royal Navy's more important commanders from 1734 to the decision by the John Major government no longer to reward peacetime Chiefs of the Naval Staff with promotions to the rank of Admiral of the Fleet. (They may be offered a Life Peerage of membership of the House of Lords instead.) Secondly, the entries include material on officers now forgotten but who were of very great importance in their day, for examples Geoffrey Phipps Hornby who led four battleships in a storm to Constantinople in 1878 at the time of the Russian threat, Osmond Brock who in 1922 saved the lives and evacuated the terrified Greek population of Izmir (Smyrna) in the face of fierce Turkish opposition, John Kelly whose personal leadership qualities restored the morale and discipline of the Atlantic Fleet after the 1931 Invergordon "Mutiny," and Rhoderick McGrigor who laid the foundation of a modernised Royal Navy, replacing guns with missiles [End Page 838] and steam with gas turbines, in his period at First Sea Lord, 1951 to 1955, work to be developed by his successor Mountbatten. The entries are arranged alphabetically and are preceded by an interesting introduction in which Heathcote sets out the origins and development of the rank, the origins lying in the status of the senior officer of the fleet, superior to the Admirals of the Van (The White) and the Rear (The Blue). Promotion to the rank was for long by seniority and dead men's shoes—Nelson would have had to live to the age of 86 before he could have become an Admiral of the Fleet. Heathcote also notes how social connections and luck, along with gunnery specialisation advanced careers after seniority was eventually discarded. Heathcote, as he notes, is constrained by the title of his work, a companion volume to his earlier The British Field Marshals. As honorary Admirals of the Fleet, foreign and British monarchs and princes had to be included, among them Wilhelm II of Germany and Nicholas II of Russia, while important sea officers who either because of disfavour or an early death, such as Charles Beresford, William Fisher, Max Horton, and Bertram Ramsay, could not appear. Perhaps a second edition could include a note on some of these men. In any case, their absence does not detract from the value of the work, as readable as it is informative. Anthony Clayton University of Surrey Guildford, Surrey, United Kingdom Copyright © 2006 Society for Military History

The masculine image of a great power

This essay will use visual representations to illuminate the process whereby seventeenth‐century Sweden became a great European power. During the seventeenth century, a new technology of visual representation had provided European leaders with the illusionist tricks so essential to image‐making. Throughout Europe, political imagery and propaganda assumed important roles in politics. In the Thirty Years War, Sweden projected a very masculine image. Visual representations stressed martial values and prowess, personified by Gustavus Adolphus. As a young female monarch, his daughter Christina did not fit this image. One immediate change during her reign was that the queen represented Sweden's political power, while the martial image was personified by the field marshals. In the late seventeenth century, during the absolutist era, the field marshals maintained their position in the visual representations of Sweden, then, however, in their role as servants to the king. During her reign, the representations of power also underwent several lasting changes. Christina was the first in the line of Swedish monarchs portrayed in her personal image, as a woman at leisure. Another important change was that royal imagery in her reign used visual representations of half‐real, half‐allegorical female figures, which prepared the way for a female allegory, Suecia, personifying Sweden from the era of royal absolutism in the 1680s.

Historical Event and Contemporary Experience: the Capture and Destruction of Magdeburg in 1631

In what way and when does a historical occurrence or experience become a significant historical event? According to one widely-shared view, it is largely the later history of an event, and above all the interpretations of historians, that decide, for it is primarily they who engage in the process of assessment and, from a more or less great temporal distance, determine the character of an occurrence as a significant historical event.' Such a view cannot be upheld for the capture and destruction of the city of Magdeburg on 20 May 1631.2 In this case, contemporary ideas, experiences and representations already elevated the factual event to the status of a historical one. In a certain sense, one might even say that the historical significance of this incident as a key event in the Thirty Years' War was cemented even before it happened. At any rate, Magdeburg was already a site of heroic memory for Protestant Germany long before the occurrences of 20 May 1631. The city had acquired this 'fame' in the mid sixteenthcentury wars of religion, particularly during and after the Schmalkaldic War, when it successfully defied the imperial declaration of proscription as well as siege by the troops of Moritz of Saxony in 1550-51. Even this earlier siege had been less a play for domination over a strategically and economicallyimportant commercial and fortified city than an intervention in a symbolic centre of Protestant Germany. Magdeburg was considered 'our Lord God's chancellery'3 a rebellious centre of Lutheran Protestantism in the north of the Holy Roman Empire, which had 'stood up well to the emperor'. Magdeburg also lived up to its reputation in 1629, when it resisted the siege of Wallenstein's troops until a favourable accord could be reached and the army retreated. 'Hold fast, Magdeburg, thou well-built house: foreign guests are coming to cast thee out. . .' was a song that, according to the contemporary account of the Premonstratensian provost Zacharias Bandhauer, was sung in 1629 and in the period immediately following 'in all the city's taverns and in the streets'.4 This song invokes a historically-developed consciousness of the threat to the city's religious and political liberty, as well as of Protestant resistance. When the siege of the city by the troops of the emperor and the Catholic League under Field Marshals Tilly and Pappenheim began in the autumn

Russians and Germans Fifty Years After World War II

We are approaching the fiftieth anniversary of the victory over Hitler's Germany when, one week after the fall of Berlin, those field marshals and generals of the routed and defeated fascist army who were still alive signed a document of total and unconditional surrender. This was the result of the most difficult and bloody war in human history, and everyone acknowledges that the peoples of Russia or, more accurately, the Soviet Union, made the greatest contribution to the Victory and, in the process, suffered the greatest losses. It is not surprising that Victory Day is celebrated in our country as our greatest national holiday.

German Field Marshals as War Criminals? A British Embarrassment

German Field Marshals as War Criminals? A British Embarrassment

Gustav Horn till häst

Summary At Salsta Manor there is a large equestrian portrait (fig. 2) of Gustav Horn (1592–1657), one of Gustav II Adolfs field marshals during the Thirty Year's War. In 1652 Horn was appointed Marshal of the Realm—one of the five highest offices in the country. The fact that Swedish magnates began to have their portraits painted on horseback in the 1650's can be related to the country's successes in the Thirty Years’ War. However, equestrian portraits remained an unusual genre during the whole of the seventeenth century. Horn's portrait was not painted during his lifetime, but was commissioned later by his son‐in‐law, the diplomat Nils Bielke, in whose manor at Salsta the picture has been hanging since 1690. It was executed by one of the painters in D. K. Ehrenstrahl's workshop, probably Martin Hannibal. The classical background landscape and the horse's gait, at the levade, are both features that Ehrenstrahl helped to introduce into Sweden. When portraying the face, the artist used as his model an older...

Thailand in 1976

Introduction The 6 October takeover by the National Administrative Reform Council (NARC) must be considered as a landmark in the otherwise normal socio-economic and political development in Thailand. It is clear that numerous political, social and economic problems of the country have been swept under the carpet to give the new leaders a clean slate to commence their benevolent rule. Priority has since been given to national security which, it is hoped, would be solved by the strengthen ing of the country's combat forces, by the intensive patriotic campaign centring on the Nation, the Religion and the Monarch, and by the hard-line policy towards communism. Politically, the disappearance of the various pressure groups (such as the students' organization, coherent workers' unions, farmers' federation, and the free press) has been one of the most regrettable consequences of the military takeover. These are the groups that have been championing the cause of the underprivileged suffering under the social and economic injustices of officialdom and the unscrupulous privi leged class. Since the 1973 Revolution, these pressure groups had been able to compel the government to redress some of the grievances of the common people. Moreover, the emergence of these reasonably effective pressure groups had, up till October 1976, put a stop to the military-faction politics dominating Thailand since 1957. Nevertheless, it is true that the political development of Thailand in 1976 has culminated in the polarization of Thai politics. As a consequence, the antagonism of the right-wing and left-wing line-up has further contributed to the already weakened position of the Seni Coalition. It is against this political back ground that the return of both Field Marshals ? Prapas in August and Thanom in September ? must be considered. Themselves not the actual cause of the up heaval leading to the overthrow of parliamentary government, they have undoubtedly tipped the precarious political balance in favour of the military. The year began therefore with some hope for further progress in carrying on parliamentary democ racy, despite weaknesses demonstrated by intra and interparty squabbles, but the events between April and October proved too much for an inherently weak coalition, led by an indecisive Prime Minister, who had not yet managed to secure the trust and genuine support of the forces. The socio-economic development has likewise come to an abrupt halt. The 1976 (commencing October 1975) and the 1977 (commencing October 1976) bud gets show a modest move towards improving the economic and social life of the common Thai. This trend, which has not officially been denounced after the Octo ber takeover, has suffered from the government's indecisiveness and lack of general guidelines. Generally the status quo exists.

Thailand's New Course

THERE IS A NEW flexibility Thai politics, both external and internal. The reason for this is clearly to bring Thailand more into line with changing conditions. The previous policy suited its times, at least from the point of view of a military-dominated, security-conscious, conservatively-inclined regime. There was then a community of interest between Thai governments headed by Field Marshals Phibun Songkram (i948-57), Sarit Thanarat (i958-63), and Thanom Kittikachorn (from i963) and successive United States administrations, whether Republican or Democratic. This was reflected U.S. commitments: mutual security (military and economic aid) 1950; Seato membership 1954; and the Dean Rusk-Thanat Khoman joint statement i962 of the U.S. obligation to help Thailand, regardless of the attitude of other Seato members, in case of Communist armed attack. The Thai-American was extended to the full by President Johnson's massive intervention Vietnam. It was shown by American use of Thai bases, at first not openly acknowledged by the Thais, to bomb North Vietnam and Communist-held areas of Laos. (The previous extreme of Thai commitment had been Phibun's war-time collaboration with the Japanese, admittedly as a result of force majeure; this alliance collapsed 1944, Phibun's downfall coinciding with Japan's decline.) Thus Johnson's dramatic reversal of his Vietnam policy i968-from the confident expectation of military success, revealed General Westmoreland's Four Phase plan, to the acceptance of peace talks with the enemy'-presented the Thai leaders with an entirely new situation. First, over the next few years the Thais face the prospects of United States disengagement from Vietnam and perhaps from mainland Southeast Asia. The current de-escalation of the Vietnam war cannot make sense unless it is seen as part of a policy of withdrawal (the alternative, resuming bombing the North and sending thousands more soldiers to bolster the South, is no longer feasible). Yet President Nixon has no more than two or three years which to carry out a substantial military disengagement-presumably as a result of a settlement of sorts-if he is to make a good showing at the next presidential elections. Next, there is the possibility of instability Vietnam.

Field Marshals in the Air

Field Marshals in the Air

Modern Aspects of Evolution

THIS volume represents the mature thought of an accomplished ichthyologist and traveller who speaks from the point of view of a naturalist and field observer and marshals, in the first nine chapters, all the difficulties that have arisen through field observation in the original concept of Darwinism. The title “Nomogenesis” signifies “evolution determined by law” rather than by selection from the accidents of variation. In the opinion of the author and in the language of Prof. D'Arcy Thompson, who writes the introduction, “No place is left for Chance in the manifestation of new characters; the course of evolution is fixed and determined. The same laws are at work in the growth of the individual as operated with like results in former generations; and what we call ‘recapitulation’ means nothing more.” Nomogenesis: or Evolution determined by Law. By Prof. Leo S. Berg. Translated from the Russian by J. N. Rostovtsow. Pp. xviii + 477. (London: Constable and Co., Ltd., 1926.) 28s. net.