Failures of the German High Command's Generals?

Over the many years I've spent on the board and reading about WWII I've heard that German generals were just as responsible for Germany's defeat as Hitler. I'm not talking about all the generals, mind you, but mostly the ones in the OKH and OKW, though there were others not in the high command who screwed up royally. Can someone give a good overview of the problems with these generals and recommended reading?
 
The competence of the Generals themselves isn't the problem, the problem is the terrible German political structure that placed Generals whose training is to conduct military operations into the realm of national political strategy.
 
The general criticism of the German military is that while it was excellent at tactics and operations, it was bad at grand strategy and terrible at military intelligence/analysis. For example, Barbarossa simply assumed the Soviet Union would disintegrate and they didn't have a proper ending for their planned campaign. And they were constantly deceived by Allied deception plans - especially by the Soviets - and failed to anticipate the phenomenal reserves the Soviets kept putting up in 1941 and throughout the war. They kept thinking the Soviets had no reserves when in fact they were planning big offensives with large number of reserves.

I think some of that criticism is unfair because they were forced to operate under restrictions given to them by Hitler. If Hitler wants a one season campaign to destroy the Soviet Union, then that's what you need to give him.

Usually the talk about exonerating Hitler from some of his mistakes comes from 1) later learning that generals and not just Hitler were responsible for some of those mistakes and 2) that some of Hitler's supposedly dumb mistakes, like the retreat halt order given in the face of the Moscow Counteroffensive, were probably actually the best things that could have happened. It's basically a reaction against the generals' memoirs published where they blamed Hitler for everything instead of giving credit to the Red Army where it was due.
 
IMHO, shared by others, is that things were good along tactical plans, operational detail (usually). Strategy, not even grand strategy, was usually very poor even without the interference of Hitler. Part of that failing was totally crap attention to logistics. Mobilization plans (like the ones the Germans had prior to WWI) were great but once you got beyond that it went to hell. Even if the USSR had collapsed more than it did in the initial months of Barbarossa the logistics for even things like food, clothing, fuel were totally inadequate - throw in ammunition, medical supplies, rearward evacuation, spare parts for combat damage (on top of wear & tear of vehicles from crap Russian roads), and even with even minimal Russian resistance the Germans have severe limitations. The Germans knew the Soviet road system was crap, they knew the Russian RR gauge was different, they knew they were going to have to rely on rail for a lot of shipments. Did they make rational plans to deal with this, no.
 
When people talk about 'German generals' they are talking about a wide body of people with a hugely different set of views on the war.

Just look at what the generals offered for advice in regard to attack at Kursk in 1943 or to not attack or even among those who wanted to attack there were entirely different strategies. Some of the more typically aggressive generals wanted an unrelenting defense as well.
 
Any good reading about the German High Command you guys suggest?
Isabel V. Hull: Absolute Destruction.
Robert M. Citino: Quest for Decisive Victory: From Stalemate to Blitzkrieg in Europe.
David T. Zabecki. The German 1918 Offensives: A Case Study in the Operational Level of War.
 
Ah, more WWI than WWII, not my forte.
In my opinion you cannot really comprehend the midset of these generals without the context of the earlier conflicts.

As others have pointed out, the German officer corps sought to utilize operational, sometimes even tactical, solutions to strategic problems, time and time again. Hull shows where this tendency came from, and Zabecki shows how flawed it was for linking operations to strategy.

At the very least take a look at Citino, as he covers the theoretical debates of interwar years and the early war, all the way to summer 1940.
 
Any good reading about the German High Command you guys suggest?
Death of the Wehrmacht (also by Citino) is pretty good - from memory the concentration is on a slightly lower and more general level than just OKH/OKW, but many of the faults apply across the board. Remember that generals move around during their careers - you don't just unpack a box containing a brand new, shiny OKW general...
 
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