Word: junker
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Headquarters, Sedan. Marshal von Rundstedt is seldom on the coast by night. Slim, immaculate, the apotheosis of the old Junker class that has furnished the upstart Hitler with his military brains, Gerd von Rundstedt stays by night close to his headquarters at Sedan...
Plan for Defense. In the lexicon of Rundstedt's Hohenzollern-made class, there is no such word as "won't." When Adolf Hitler, whom few Junker officers regard with kindness, ordered straight-backed Rundstedt to a secondary area, and a defensive job to boot, no old-line officer could have been surprised that he took the job. Or that he did it well...
There was prophecy in this alignment, but its fulfillment was delayed. Rundstedt was like Bock and Leeb, but there were other variations from the Junker pattern. Broad-faced Brauchitsch truckled to Hitler, became Commander in Chief of the German Army in 1938. Jaunty, rakehell Keitel made compromises, became Chief of the Supreme Command. Haider became Chief of the General Staff...
Into the headquarters of thin-lipped Junker von Bock, who has squandered men to win and lose some of Nazi Germany's greatest battles,* poured military dispatches that told him his foe was all but whipped in the northern Caucasus, that Timoshenko's main strength was apparently concentrated in a vast arc before Stalingrad, that German positions along the Don at Voronezh were safe for the moment. Bock might be on the threshold of an even greater victory. He could look with satisfaction on what his Panzers, shock troops, snub-nosed caterpillar guns and rank-on-rank...
Colonel General Halder belongs to a canny group of officers who cottoned to the Nazis when Hitler first came to power. While the Army's Prussian and Junker aristocrats stood aloof, the middle-class opportunists made friends at Brown House, successfully ignored the atrocities there and enjoyed Nazi favor long before the Prussian-ruled Reichswehr capitulated. Now they rate highly with Hitler: Jodl, of the Führer's personal staff; Dietl, who commands the extreme northern front in Russia; List, who probably now commands the central front...