Walter Model
“He who leads troops has no right to think about himself”
On January 24, 1891 Otto Moritz Walter Model was born the son of a music teacher in the Saxon town of Genthin. Despite the lack of military heritage in his middle class family, he enrolled in an officer’s academy in 1909 immediately after secondary school, graduating a year later and being assigned to an infantry regiment.
When the Great War began in 1914 his regiment was deployed onto the Western Front, where Model would serve until being wounded near Arras in early 1915. After his recovery he returned to his unit, and would win the Iron Cross, First Class for bravery by the end of the year. This, and his ability, would lead to his being assigned to a General Staff Officer’s Course despite his reputation as an officer who was blunt to the point of near insubordination at times. By the end of the war he was serving as a staff officer in a Guards division, participating in the German Spring Offensive (Operation Michael) in early 1918. He would end the war on the staff of a reserve division, when the German Empire collapsed and an armistice declared.
German troops advance through the blasted Somme Sector during Operation Michael in 1918
Well connected by the end of the war, he was retained in the downsized Reichswehr of the Weimar era, taking part in the suppression of various coups and attempted uprisings during the turbulent early years of the Republic. He would serve in various high level administrative posts during this period, and was a notable campaigner for modernization of the Reichswehr. As political turmoil boiled up again in the early 1930s, Model was appointed to a commission aimed at drawing youth away from political paramilitary groups and into the military, but these efforts would be left redundant in 1933, as Hitler and the Nazis took control of the government.
The SA, which had been a major target of Model and the commission, took control of it and quickly dissolved it, leaving him transferred to a battalion command. Despite this antagonistic introduction to the Nazis, he would be promoted to Colonel in late 1934, taking command of a regiment. Following this he served on an armaments development board, where he was a major advocate of the development of a self-propelled, armored infantry gun platform, an idea that would eventually develop into the Sturmgeschutz, or StuG that would see significant use in the coming Second World War. 1938 would see a promotion to Generalmajor, and his appointment as a staff officer in a corps level command.
Model confers with subordinates during Operation Barbarossa (German Federal Archives)
When the Wehrmacht invaded Poland in September of 1939 Model was serving as Chief of Staff to the IV Corps, part of the 10th Army, tasked with pushing into Southern Poland. Subsequently he would be posted as Chief of Staff of the 16th Army during the Battle of France in early 1940, and took command of his first division, the 3rd Panzer, in November of that year following a promotion to Generalleutnant. In this role he would pioneer the use of ad-hoc formations, Kampfgruppen, special formations of various troops capable of fulfilling a variety of roles as the battlefield situation required. His division would be well training in such tactics by the time of their first deployment with Model in command.
When Operation Barbarossa came in the early summer of 1941 the 3rd Panzer Division was stationed along the demarcation line in Poland, and served as one of the spearheads of the invasion as part of Heinz Guderian’s 2. Panzergruppe. His aggressive leadership saw his tanks on the Dnieper within two weeks, a 250 mile advance that would net him the Knight’s Cross (Nazi Germany's highest decoration) and increasing notoriety in Berlin. He would continue to drive into the Belorussian SSR and into Russia, until his force, now consisting of both the 3rd Panzer Division and the 1st Cavalry Division, were diverted south to Ukraine, where Kiev was besieged.
Model’s units would link with other German forces after a 172 mile advance, closing the envelopment of Kiev on September 14. Kiev would fall soon after, and Model’s success would see him promoted to General der Panzertruppe within a month. He was subsequently reassigned back to the north, taking command of a Panzer Corps taking part in Operation Typhoon, the German drive on Moscow. Despite the exhausted state of this force, they commenced the attack almost immediately after the arrival of their new commander in November. Model endeared himself to his men with his frequent frontline visits and seemingly endless energy, and his forces were only 22 miles from the Kremlin when the combination of weather, low supply and Soviet resistance stopped the panzers.
Model confers with a StuG crew during the frigid winter of 1943 on the Eastern Front
A counteroffensive promptly slammed into the German lines, forcing them to retreat. Tasked with covering the withdrawal, Model held the line and prevented a rout, showing a harsh command style to maintain discipline as well as a talent for defensive warfare. He arrayed his forces in a continuous line to prevent Soviet breakthroughs with wave attacks, with his panzers organized into mobile Kampfgruppen to respond to breakthroughs. This would be pivotal, and as Hitler removed several generals from command after the debacle Model was appointed to command the 9th Army.
Positioned in a salient near Rzhev the 9th Army was on the verge of envelopment by Soviet forces, but despite the poor situation there he counterattacked immediately, cutting off the attacking Soviet 39th Army and repelling all attempts by the Red Army to relieve it. He concurrently destroyed the 39th Army inside the pocket, winning the Oak Leaves to his Knight’s Cross and becoming a favorite of Hitler in the process. Further successful defensive operations near Rzhev would cement his reputation as one of the Wehrmacht’s top defensive commanders.
A Panzer IV and Sdkfz251 halftrack at Kursk (German Federal Archives)
The salient at Rzhev was abandoned in the late spring of 1943, as the Germans executed a tactical withdrawal to strengthen their line. Model issued orders for the brutal capture and execution of suspected partisans as well as a scorched earth policy of razing villages and burning fields as his 9th Army withdrew. These actions placed him highly on Allied lists of war criminals, to match his reputation with his own side for defensive prowess.
In the summer of 1943 the 9th Army was tasked with forming the right wing of Operation Citadel, the German offensive at Kursk. Despite Model’s own hesitance about the planned attack, the offensive commenced on July 5th, with Model unable to make significant progress.However, he had been preparing for a possible Soviet offensive in his sector, quietly defying orders by preparing a defense in depth near Orel, and these preparations would soon pay off. When the Soviets counterattacked as the drive on Kursk failed, Model was placed in temporary command of an additional field army, with his strong defenses allowing the Wehrmacht to pull most of its forces to safety across the Dnieper. Following this operation Model returned to Germany for a 90 day leave.
Model confers with SS Brigadefuhrer Heinz Harmel in his Arnhem headquarters (German Federal Archives)
The German Army Group North, which had been laying siege to Leningrad, was broken in early 1944 by the Soviets, and Model was ordered by Hitler to take command of the formation urgently to prevent complete collapse. There is some debate over the policy adopted here by Model, “Sword and Shield”, which entailed a temporary retreat to gather forces for counterattack. Some historians believe that this was actually an invention of Hitler while others argue it was clever wordplay by Model to disguise his true intention of withdrawal to prepared defense works. The German High Command, OKW, had forbidden any retreat, but Model had little choice in the Army Group North sector. His effectiveness as a commander was again rewarded on March 1, as he was promoted to Field Marshal.
By now nicknamed “Hitler’s Fireman” for his habit of being reassigned to dire sectors by the Fuhrer, Model later took command of forces in Ukraine and Belorussia, where he eventually shored up the line east of Warsaw. With the Eastern Front stabilized in mid 1944, Model was transferred to the Western Front.
Following the Allied landings in Normandy the West was a shambles. The Anglo-American forces were driving on Paris, and most combat effective German units were surrounded in a pocket near Falaise. Model was able to exert his favor with Hitler to allow for the forces at Falaise to be evacuated, breaking out and rejoining the main German lines, saving some 50,000 German soldiers. With Paris liberated by the end of August, Model orchestrated a withdrawal to the German border and into Holland, setting up his headquarters in a village near Arnhem in The Netherlands.
German troops near Arnhem (German Federal Archives)
When the Allies launched their next move in late 1944, it was directly into Model’s immediate vicinity. Operation Market Garden saw US and British paratroopers landing around several major river crossings on a road through Holland, crossing the Rhine via Arnhem. Model immediately put all of his local forces into action, surprising the Allied paratroopers with counterattacks by SS panzer divisions, resulting in the destruction of the British 1st Airborne Division as his forces prevented ground forces from linking up with them and eliminating the surrounded British paratroopers. As the autumn set in, Model oversaw the tenacious defense of the German border, bringing the Americans into costly, brutal fights in the Hurtgen Forest and the old Imperial city of Aachen.
Model in a staff car near Aachen (German Federal Archives)
Aachen would fall to the Americans, but the fighting in the Hurtgen Forest fought them to a standstill. The forest was held, with the Americans suffering some of their worst losses of the entire war. This was followed in December of 1944 with a massive surprise offensive in the West through the Ardennes, a campaign which would become known to history as the Battle of the Bulge. Hitler had personally planned the attack, aimed at Antwerp in Belgium, and had insisted on it despite the objections of both Model and his fellow senior commanders.
Despite his personal feelings about the plan, Model faced the task with the energy that had made him famous. Using the last major reserve forces available to Germany, he struck deep into the American lines, bolstering his limited reserves of weapons, ammunition and fuel with supplies captured from American positions. Poor weather hampered operations and the Americans refusal to yield the road junction at Bastogne further complicating movements. The same weather that had hampered German advance was also its greatest advantage, however, as it prevented the Allies bringing their overwhelming air power to bear on the attackers. When the clouds cleared enemy aircraft and reinforcements blunted the German offensive and threw them back. The Germans were soon back where they started, but without any significant reserve of quality troops or armored vehicles left for the defense of the interior of the Reich.
Model congratulates Hitler Youth who have been building fortifications in Western Germany (German Federal Archives)
The failure of the Ardennes Offensive resulted in Model falling out of favor with Hitler. The Fuhrer took direct responsibility for overall command of the forces in the West, forcing Model and other commanders on the front to fight for every inch of ground, essentially forbidding any maneuvers by his forces. By March of 1945 the Americans had seized an intact bridge over the Rhine at Remagen, bypassing the last major natural barrier into the German heartland, and the Wehrmacht began to disintegrate. Model was soon trapped with his Army Group B in the Ruhr, Germany’s industrial center, as the Allies surrounded it by April first. Hitler ordered that no surrender or breakout was permitted, despite the hopeless situation. In response, Model disbanded Army Group B on April 15, allowing the now detached formations within it to surrender on their own prerogative. The pocket in the Ruhr had been cut in half by American penetrations of the lines, and Model was no longer able to command the Army Group at any rate due to the collapse of communications.
Model and all the men of Army Group B were declared guilty of treason by Berlin on April 20, the same day the Soviet Army penetrated the suburbs of the German capitol. The day after, Model left his headquarters, walked into the forest near Duisburg, and shot himself. His Fuhrer would outlive him by only nine days, and the Third Reich collapsed entirely by early May.
Walter Model left behind a controversial legacy as an excellent defensive commander, but was considered by many within the German military and without as an ardent Nazi. His close relationship with Hitler and the SS was considered damning, and this was not helped by the simple fact that he was dead, and therefore not able to defend himself from the allegations of other German generals eager to shift the blame at war crimes trials. Many historians consider Model to be less an enthusiastic Nazi, however, and more a simple militarist that held a similar belief in authoritarian leadership and thus acquiesced to the crimes of National Socialism. In general, there remains debate as to his political leanings. He was unpopular with other officers for his tendency to push for more difficult solutions, but generally very well respected by the men he commanded, although he was universally considered a very demanding and harsh leader. His culpability for war crimes, both in the Soviet Union and in the Ardennes in 1944, are, however, considered beyond doubt, whatever his reasoning for them.
