Gustav Anton von Wietersheim

World War I and inter-war period

Born in Breslau in 1884, Wietersheim attended a Kadettenanstalt (an institute for military cadets) and began his military career in 1902. From 1903 until the end of World War I, Wietersheim continued to serve in the army and was awarded the Iron Cross, 1st and 2nd Class.

After the war, Wietersheim had two simultaneous General Staff assignments as a captain in the staff of the 3rd Division, and also the general staff of the XXV Reserve Corps. He was promoted to major and was made an Abteilungsleiter, or department manager, at the Reich Defense Ministry (Reichswehrministerium), the governmental organ that determined the overarching policy of the Reichswehr in relation to the Weimar Republic.

During the early 1930s, Wietersheim served as the Chief of Staff of the 3rd Division and continued his work with the Defense Ministry. He was promoted to Oberst (colonel) in November 1932 and to Generalmajor (major general) in July 1934. When the Defense Ministry was reorganized as the War Ministry (Reichskriegministerium) under Adolf Hitler, chancellor of Germany and dictator since 1933, in 1935 to match Hitler's simultaneous dissolution of the Reichswehr and creation of the greatly expanded, war-oriented Wehrmacht, Wietersheim was made the Oberquartiermeister I (O. Qu. I) of the General Staff. This position, "immediately subordinated to the Chief of the General Staff," entailed the control of several departments of General Staff, "carrying command of the operations, transport and supply sections." As the General Staff was put on a war footing, this high-level logistics command was a "key position," and von Wietersheim, "a brilliant Generalmajor," held this role from March 1935 until later-Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, at that time junior to von Wietersheim, took over for him in October 1936. During this time Wietersheim had been promoted to Generalleutnant, and, after handing over his post as O. Qu. I to Manstein, he took over command of the 29th Infantry Division on 1 October 1936— his first real position outside the internal command structure of the General Staff.

On 1 February 1938 von Wietersheim was promoted to General der Infanterie, and was given command of XIV Motorised Corps, later renamed to XIV Panzer Corps, on 1 April 1938, upon the formation of this unit.

Pre-war conflict with Hitler

Von Wietersheim was an officer in the category of the "old school," i.e. he had attained rank and influence as a staff officer and department head in the Reichswehr during the Weimar period prior to Hitler's rise to power. During the rise of Nazism in the 1930s, his place in the military hierarchy also preceded political change. Von Wietersheim reached the grade of Oberst, the highest field rank (equivalent to a full colonel), by 1932, the year before Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany. Two years later, he was promoted to Generalmajor, a year before to the 1935 announcement of the Wehrmacht and subsequent large-scale German rearmament. As a result, though the development of Germany's new "war machine" certainly led to von Wietersheim's later (mostly successful) career as a combat commander, he owed less of his overall professional success in the inter-war military establishment directly to the political success of the Nazi Party and Hitler himself. In consequence, von Wietersheim's relationship with Hitler was not based primarily on personal indebtedness as was the case with many of Hitler's generals, especially after the Blomberg-Fritsch Affair in early 1938. This lack of personal commitment to the Party system and, in addition, his pre-World War II experience in the predominantly defense-oriented Reichswehr, meant that von Wietersheim and Hitler were often in open disagreement over the latter's characteristically incautious military strategy (and later, at Stalingrad, tactics as well).

On two occasions prior to the war von Wietersheim criticized Hitler's plans of action during meetings with the Supreme Commander, first in August 1938, between the Anschluss of Germany and Austria and the Invasion of Czechoslovakia, and second in August 1939, just prior to the Invasion of Poland.

In the first case, on 10 August 1938 von Wietersheim had been called to the Berghof, Hitler's Bavarian retreat, along with a group of other high-ranking Wehrmacht chiefs of staff in order that Hitler could attempt to persuade them that invading Czechoslovakia was a good plan of action. Most of the generals were not convinced by Hitler's arguments, but Generals Jodl and Manstein later commented that von Wietersheim, who was the highest-ranking officer in attendance (and the Chief of Staff of General Wilhelm Adam's Second Army Group, which was in charge of any potential Western Front), was the only one present to argue with Hitler directly about the faults in his plan, namely that an invasion of Czechoslovakia would leave the West Wall along the German-French border weak and in risk of being overrun within a few weeks should a French force decide to attack. Jodl reported in his diary that Hitler "became furious" and yelled at von Wietersheim: "I say to you Herr General...[the West Wall] will be held not only for three weeks but for three years!" Although, from a certain point of view, this comment proved to be correct, it ultimately exhibited to more cautious, experienced German commanders like von Wietersheim that Hitler's military philosophy was not only misguided, but potentially ruinous if he were allowed to continue driving military policy.

Although the 1938 West Wall confrontation is well documented, based on remarks by witnesses and other contemporaries (and several secondary sources), the second time von Wietersheim and Hitler fought openly can only be discerned from a paragraph in OKW chief Wilhelm Keitel's memoirs, who reports that he was there when von Wietersheim again disapproved of Hitler's war plans, this time for the much more drastic goal of attacking Poland:

Early in August 1939 [Hitler] conceived the idea of addressing his ideas to the various army chiefs of staff by themselves, in other words without their Commander-in-Chief, at the Berghof. From the shadows I was probably in the best position to study its effect and I realised that he had failed to achieve his object: for while General von Wietersheim [chief of staff of the Second Army Group] was the only one to find his tongue enough to show by his questions how little he agreed with what Hitler had outlined, this in itself probably crystallised in Hitler's mind the suspicion that he was confronted with an iron phalanx of men who inwardly refused to be swayed by any speech they thought was just a propaganda speech.

Keitel believed that Hitler's "pronounced distaste for the General Staff" and "its 'caste' arrogance", which would become something of an obsession of his later, was in part a result of this meeting and Wietersheim's comments. Hitler no doubt considered Wietersheim's disagreements with him as a kind of treason: in 1946 Manstein told the Nuremberg tribunal that after the August 1938 incident Hitler no longer allowed the military to directly question any of his decisions.

Poland, France, and Russia

Von Wietersheim's XIV Motorised Corps participated in the Polish Campaign in 1939, where it fought at Radom and Warsaw, as well as in the Battle of Kock. The Corps later saw action in the Battle of France in 1940 as the Wehrmacht drove from the Ardennes to the English Channel.

In June 1941, the unit under von Wietersheim participated in Operation Barbarossa, where, as part of the First Panzer Group, it served with Army Group South on the southern sector of the eastern front, advancing via Lvov, Tarnopol and Zhitomir to Kremenchug and Mirgorod, and south to Marfinskaya in the Mius sector. The corps spearheaded First Panzer Group's difficult and impressive drive to Kiev during the Battle of Kiev (1941), and participated in the Battle of Rostov (1941).

Stalingrad

Early in the battle, von Wietersheim used his tanks to protect the advance from the Don River to the Volga, which was criticized for being an inappropriate use of an armored formation.[4] Soon after, having encountered exceptionally strong resistance from Red Army troops, he suggested a partial withdrawal to the Don, due to high casualties among his troops in the salient north of Stalingrad, just to the west of the Volga. Deemed acts of incompetence and defeatism, he was relieved of command by the head of the German Sixth Army, Friedrich Paulus, and subsequently dismissed by Hitler. Historian Alan Clark reported that von Wietersheim returned to Germany after his dismissal, only reappearing in any military context in 1945 as a private in a Pomeranian Volkssturm unit. There is a reference that Wietersheim was the Chief of the Military Transport Division in 1942, perhaps as an immediate replacement to his command of the XIV Panzer Corps, but it is clear that whether a 61-year-old private or military functionary, his career was over.

Post-war

Von Wietersheim, like most high-ranking German generals, gave his testimony to the post-war Nuremberg Military Tribunals, held from 1946 to 1949. The Telford Taylor Papers, held at the Diamond Law Library at Columbia University Law School, list von Wietersheim as having been interrogated on 13 February 1948. He does not appear to have been considered for trial or received any punishment as a result of his testimony. He died in 1974 in Bonn, the capital of West Germany.