Hitler's Panzer Generals: Guderian, Hoepner, Reinhardt and Schmidt Unguarded (6-30-24)

The Role Of God In Hitler’s Panzers East, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=154804

David Stahel writes in his 2023 book Hitler’s Panzer Generals: Guderian, Hoepner, Reinhardt and Schmidt Unguarded:

A common set of beliefs that all four generals shared was their relationship to the Protestant Church and the significance this assumed in explaining their values and behaviour.

Germany under Hitler was made up of 95 per cent Christians, and of these some 55 per cent were Protestants. The elite of the German officer corps was overwhelmingly made up of Protestants. This predominance had its roots in the Protestant Kingdom of Prussia, which dominated the German officer corps before the First World War and constituted the birthplace of Hoepner (Frankfurt an der Oder, 1886), Guderian (Kulm, 1888) and Schmidt (Berlin, 1886). Reinhardt was born in the likewise predominantly Protestant Kingdom of Saxony (Bautzen, 1887). Indeed, in 1907 only some 16.6 per cent of German officers were Catholic, which not surprisingly predetermined an enduring dominance of Protestants in the German high command of the Second World War. While one might assume a natural opposition between the Protestant Christian faith and the realities of wartime Nazism, the generals’ letters reflect no hint of confusion or contradiction in that regard. All four generals alluded to God in their letters,
sometimes in moments of open reflection, but also to buttress their periods of dejection and melancholy. Indeed, references to God in
their letters show a remarkable increase as the year progresses. During
the first fourteen weeks of the campaign (from June to the end of
September) there were only nine separate mentions of God, but in the
following nine weeks (October and November) this rose to thirteen
references. Most remarkably, however, in December alone, when the
harsh winter conditions took hold and the Soviet counter-offensive
began, the number of references jumps to seventeen. This suggests an
anecdotal correlation between adversity and religious motivation,
a trend that parallels the decline of Germany’s fortunes in 1941.
In order to ascertain the role and importance of religious belief
among the generals we must look at context. While references to God
are common to all of the letter collections, the devotion to faith was
much less conspicuous in letters written by Hoepner and Schmidt. Both
thanked God on a number of occasions, but less as explicit references to
deeply held beliefs and more as simple turn of phrase.

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