Georg Thomas
Georg Thomas | |
---|---|
Army | |
Rank | General der Infanterie |
Commands held | Head of the Defence Economy and Armament Office in the OKW |
Battles/wars | World War I World War II |
Other work | Chief economic strategist for the Wehrmacht. Deeply involved in the development of the strategy for economic exploitation of the Soviet Union following the German invasion, including the Hunger Plan. |
Georg Thomas (20 February 1890 – 29 December 1946) was a
Career summary
Thomas was born in
Despite his misgivings about National Socialism following the dismissal of Colonel General Baron
Thomas was promoted in 1940 to
During the planning of Operation Barbarossa, General Thomas' pragmatic and realistic nature once again gripped him as he thought a full-scale war with the Soviet Union should be delayed until the logistical concerns were remedied. Thomas informed Colonel-General Franz Halder, the Chief of the OKH General Staff, that the attack on the Soviet Union would experience logistical delays due to the fact that Russian railways were of a different gauge than German ones. Thomas also warned Halder of the insufficiency of German transport vehicle tires for the task ahead of them, and most significantly, Thomas revealed to Halder that the Germans only had two months' worth of fuel oil and petrol for the invasion. Inexplicably, Halder did not convey this information to Hitler and when Thomas tried to, General Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel suppressed the report.[7] Reassurances soon made their way to General Thomas when the Reichsminister, Hermann Göring, told him not to worry about using Germany's resources since "they would soon be masters of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands", adding that they would plunder resources in the "captured territories".[8]
In November 1942, Thomas resigned from the Defence Economy and Armament Office.
Resistance to Hitler
Through contacts with his former superior
Role in Hunger Plan
Thomas has been described as someone who at times "toyed with opposition to Hitler's war" but who fundamentally was a "ruthless pragmatist" whose only concern was "Germany's future as a great power".[13] He was deeply involved in the making of Nazi policy for the occupied Soviet Union, which was to exploit the resources of the country for the benefit of Germany and the German armed forces, at the expense of the deaths by starvation of millions of people.[13] This became known as the Hunger Plan. Thomas worked closely with Herbert Backe, the de facto chief of Nazi agriculture, in developing this plan. On 2 May 1941, Thomas held a meeting to review the strategy. An internal Wehrmacht memorandum prepared by his staff described this policy and acknowledged that "if we take what we need out of the country, there can be no doubt that many millions of people will die of starvation".[2] This memorandum has been described as,
...one of the most extraordinary bureaucratic records in the history of the Nazi regime. In far more unvarnished language than was ever used in relation to the Jewish question, all of the major agencies of the German state agreed to a programme of mass murder, which dwarfed that which Heydrich was to propose to the Wannsee meeting nine months later.[2]
The historian,
Notes
- ^ a b c Mitcham and Mueller, Hitler's Commanders, pgs. 17-20.
- ^ a b c d Tooze, Wages of Destruction, p. 479.
- ^ Hans Rothfels, The German Opposition to Hitler: An Appraisal, pg. 79.
- ^ Wheeler-Bennett, The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics, 1918-1945, pp. 431–432.
- ^ William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, pp. 744–745.
- ^ Joachim Fest, Hitler, pg. 626.
- ^ Barnett, Hitler's Generals, pg. 115.
- ^ Anthony Read, The Devil's Disciples: Hitler's Inner Circle, pg. 603.
- ^ Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich, pg. 303.
- ISBN 9780773566408.
- ^ "My Part in the Fight Against Hitler". lawcollections.library.cornell.edu. Retrieved 2018-11-01.
- ^ (Men of Wehrmacht) http://menofwehrmacht.blogspot.com/2021/04/bio-of-general-der-infanterie-georg.html
- ^ a b Tooze, Wages of Destruction, p. 478.
- ^ Browning, The Origins Of The Final Solution, 2004, p. 235
- ^ Tooze, Wages of Destruction, p. 480.
References
- ISBN 978-0-8021-3994-8
- ISBN 978-0-15-602754-0
- Mitcham, Samuel W., and ISBN 978-1-4422-1153-7
- ISBN 0-393-32697-7
- Rothfels, Hans. The German Opposition to Hitler: An Appraisal. Hinsdale, IL: Henry Regnery Company, 1948.
- Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988.
- Speer, Albert. Inside the Third Reich. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.
- ISBN 3-570-55056-7.)
- Wheeler-Bennett, John W.The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics, 1918–1945. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1967.