Werner Von Blomberg - Rise To National Prominence

Rise To National Prominence

In 1933, Blomberg rose to national prominence when he was appointed Minister of Defense in Adolf Hitler's government. Blomberg became one of Hitler's most devoted followers, working feverishly to expand the size and power of the army.

Made a colonel general for his services in 1933, in February Blomberg, on his own initiative, had all of the Jews serving in the Reichswehr given an automatic and immediate dishonorable discharge. As a result 74 Jewish soldiers lost their jobs for no other reason than their being Jewish. The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service had excluded those Jews who were World War I veterans, so Blomberg's discharge order was getting around the law. In 1935, Blomberg worked hard to ensure that the Wehrmacht complied with Nuremberg Laws by preventing so-called Mischling from serving.

Blomberg had a reputation as something of a lackey to Hitler. As such, he was nicknamed "Rubber Lion" by some of his critics in the army who were less than enthusiastic about Hitler. One of the few notable exceptions was during the run-up to the Night of the Long Knives in 1934. In early June, Reichspräsident Paul von Hindenburg decided that unless Hitler did something to end the growing political tension in Germany, he would declare martial law and turn over control of the government to the army. Blomberg, who had been known to oppose the growing power of the SA, was chosen to inform Hitler of this decision on the President's behalf.

In the same year, after Hindenburg's death, he personally ordered all soldiers in the army to pledge the Reichswehreid (oath of allegiance) not to Volk and Fatherland, but to the new Führer Adolf Hitler, which is thought to have limited later opposition to Hitler. The oath was the initiative of Blomberg and that of the Ministeramt chief General Walther von Reichenau, the entire military took an oath of personal loyalty to Hitler, who was most surprised at the offer; the popular view that Hitler imposed the oath on the military is false. The intention of Blomberg and Reichenau in having the military swear an oath to Hitler was to create a personal special bond between Hitler and the military, which was intended to tie Hitler more tightly towards the military and away from the NSDAP (Blomberg later admitted that he did not think through the full implications of the oath at the time).

In 1935, the Ministry of Defense was renamed the Ministry of War; Blomberg also took the title of Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. In 1936, the loyal Blomberg was the first Generalfeldmarschall appointed by Hitler.

Unfortunately for Blomberg, his position as the ranking officer of the Third Reich alienated Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler, who conspired to oust him from power. Göring, in particular, had ambitions of becoming Commander-in-Chief himself.

On 5 November 1937, the conference between the Reich's top military-foreign policy leadership and Hitler recorded in the so-called Hossbach Memorandum occurred. At the conference, Hitler stated that it was the time for war, or, more accurately, wars, as what Hitler envisioned were a series of localized wars in Central and Eastern Europe in the near future. Hitler argued that because these wars were necessary to provide Germany with Lebensraum, autarky and the arms race with France and Britain made it imperative to act before the Western powers developed an insurmountable lead in the arms race.

Of those invited to the conference, objections arose from the Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath, Blomberg and the Army Commander in Chief, General Werner von Fritsch that any German aggression in Eastern Europe was bound to trigger a war with France because of the French alliance system in Eastern Europe, the so-called cordon sanitaire, and if a Franco-German war broke out, then Britain was almost certain to intervene rather than risk the prospect of France's defeat. Moreover, it was objected that Hitler's assumption that Britain and France would just ignore the projected wars because they had started their re-armament later than Germany was flawed

Accordingly, Fritsch, Blomberg and Neurath advised Hitler to wait until Germany had more time to re-arm before pursuing a high-risk strategy of localized wars that was likely to trigger a general war before Germany was ready (none of those present at the conference had any moral objections to Hitler's strategy, with which they were in basic agreement; only the question of timing divided them). After the Hossbach Memorandum meeting of November 1937, Blomberg was one of the few who criticised Hitler's plans to go to war no later than 1942, much to Hitler's displeasure.