Talk:Ludwig Beck

Problems

"In 1935, he had a series of meetings with Prince Bernard von Bülow, the State Secretary of the German Foreign Office and the Chief of the Hungarian General Staff to discuss plans "for the division of Czechoslovakia".

Prince Bernard von Bülow died in 1929.

I confirm that newspapers reported he died October 28, 1929, but found no cause of death in the Rio de Janeiro Correio da Manhã for October 29, p1c9. I ended up here searching for that causa mortis. translator (talk) 17:09, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

You are correct, Interpreter, but the Prince von Bülow the article is talking about is not the former Chancellor who died in 1929, but rather his nephew also named Bernard von Bülow who served as the State Secretary at the German Foreign Office between 1930 and his death in 1936. So there is no problem with this article.--A.S. Brown (talk) 22:09, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

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—Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.182.254.91 (talk) 02:47, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

The main problem of this article is that it reads like it was written by Borat.

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At the start of the article Beck's death is recorded as being on July 20th, 1944, the day of the plot to assassinate Hitler. However, at the end of the article, it claims that he commit suicide during the morning of the 21st. The 21st appears to be accurate, so I've changed the date of death at the top. --Solinox 20:36, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

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Who says that the Wehrmacht was not strong enough to win a war against Britain? I'm fairly certain that's debatable.

It would have been a war against Britain, France and any other Allies they might be able to drum up. Don't forget France and Britain were global superpowers at the time, their empires were far larger than Germany's. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.146.46.247 (talk) 12:40, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

In 1938, Germany would have been rapidly defeated if only for economic reasons. Before World War Two, 80% of the oil used in Germany was imported from Mexico, the United States and Venezuela, which called the relative strenghts of the Royal Navy and the Kriegsmarine in 1938 would meant that the British would imposed a blockade that would severed the Germans from their oil supplies in the New World (just like what happened in 1939). But unlike in 1939, since Germany and the Soviet Union did not share a common frontier, the Soviets would have not have able to supply the massive qualities of oil that they provided to the Germans in 1939-41 (a sign no doubt of the deep anti-fascist repulsion that some have claimed to have guided Joseph Stalin's foreign policy). The other major sources of oil the Germans had during World War Two would not have been operative in 1938. Romania was a ally of Czechoslovakia through the Little Entente and ally of France through the Franco-Romanian alliance of 1927, so German aggression against Czechoslovakia would brought Romania into the war that would have triggered in 1938. The other major of oil the Germans used during the war, namely artificial oil produced by coal carbonation was simply not ready for mass production in 1938 as General Beck was fond of reminding Hitler in his memos. If for other reason then the oil issue, a war in 1938 would resulted in a swift German defeat, so is why General Beck was so determined that Germany must avoid a war in 1938 no matter what. Even Hitler was finally forced to understand that, for contrary to public opinion, it was Hitler who backed down at the summit that produced the Munich Agreement. The inital summary of the 1938 crisis that was presented here was quite wrong. Hitler did NOT want the Sudetenland, and in private, Hitler could have cared less about the Sudetenlanders. What Hitler wanted above all in 1938 was a war of aggression to destroy Czechoslovakia. The Sudeten issue was a pretext for aggression, and in fact, Hitler regarded the Munich Agreement as a major diplomatic defeat that had "cheated" him of the war he was desperate to start in 1938. Again, contrary to the information first provided here, what happened at Munich was that the British did declare that they would go to war if Germany attacked Czechoslovakia while at the same time making clear that they were very open to settling Hitler's public demands, which were of course for the Sudetenland. But Hitler did not want his public demands to be satisfied because they would deprive him of his excuse for aggression. In fact, during his three meeetigs with Chamberlain in September 1938, Hitler was constantly being frustrated with Chamberlain's willingness to oblige Hitler's public demands, which is why Hitler kept upping the ante during his three summits out of the hope that his public demands might finally be refused, and he could have the war he wanted to launch in 1938. Confronted with firm British warnings in September 1938 about what were the likely results of attacking the Czechoslovaks (namely a war with Prague, Paris and London) and the mobilization of the Royal Navy, Hitler backed down and agreed to receive the Sudeteland peacefully, thereby giving him what he had demanded in public, but which was the last thing in the world that he wanted in private. To be fair, the Munich Agreement was very harsh to Czechoslovakia, and resulted in the dismemberment of that state, but that does not change the fact that the Munich Agreement was not what Hitler wanted. What Hitler wanted in 1938 was a limited war in Central Europe between Germany and Czechoslovakia, and which as Beck was fond of stating to Hitler, that was not possible. At least in this respect, Beck was right that Hitler's conduct in 1938 was the height of folly that was going to take Germany down quite rapidly, which is why Beck was finally driven to the desperate expedient of considering a putsch to stop the war that Hitler wanted to start--A.S. Brown (talk) 17:42, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

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Beck's Date of Death

I, too, noticed the discrepancies in the Date of Death for Beck. I searched through every source Google could throw at me, and the only one showing the July 21st date was Wikipedia. All others state it as July 20. I did find one that stated he was arrested very close to midnight on the 20th. I believe we would need to look at the time sequence involved: the time of day the assassination attempt on Hitler occurred; having to identify Beck as one of the perpetrators; find and arrest him, etc. Perhaps it was late in the day by the time all of this was accomplished. Perhaps, after his own unsuccesful attempts, he was actually shot by the guard after midnight. Enough speculation. I would like to know the source of the present Wikipedia article. I believe that's where the answer lies. What are your thoughts? Michael David 22:36, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

I've been in the Bendler Block in Berlin this week end I saw a sign stating that Beck commited suicide at the LATE EVENING HOURS of July 20th at this point. I think the guys at the Bendler Block should know exactly when he killed himself.... So in my opinion the date of death should be changed to 20th of July

Regards

Jörg

I second this. Every other source I could find including online material and offline state Beck's death as the July 20th. --VeritasSannhet (talk) 01:52, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Picture

The picture is of really bad quality and should be replaced. Search 10 secs at google and you´ll find a better one. This one remembers me to Don Corleone but not a general. --—Preceding unsigned comment added by Andrzej anonimus (talk • contribs) 17:45, 23 January 2007 I think I found a better picture. Captainvp 03:33, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Biased

This whole article needs a rewrite. It's more of a eulogy than an article. Making assumptions about him being a hero or about the survivors of the holy grail honoring is not appropriate when writing a factual artice. Seektrue 11:46, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Well. I have to take back my last remarks, formally it seems, you have a point. However, if you lived in the times and did have some personal experience, you would understand, all this is only a plain, matter of the fact truth. Astonishing, how quick vanishes the memory, the next generations are unable to realize, what really happened. Andrzej anonimus 13:17, 31 December 2006 (GMT+1)

Agreed. The article is terrible and very un-encyclopedic. I started deleting the obvious POV stuff and cute asides and personal opinions but only a few paragraphs in it just becomes overwhelming. A thorough rewrite on the whole article is needed. Anyone interested in collaborating? Inoculatedcities 01:38, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

This whole article needs a rewrite. It's more of a eulogy than an article. Making assumptions about him being a hero or about the survivors of the holy grail honoring is not appropriate when writing a factual artice. Seektrue 11:46, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. The article is terrible and very un-encyclopedic. I started deleting the obvious POV stuff and cute asides and personal opinions but only a few paragraphs in it just becomes overwhelming. A thorough rewrite on the whole article is needed. Anyone interested in collaborating? Inoculatedcities 01:38, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

==The Wehrmacht wasn't strong enough to win a war against Britain, but it was useful for propoganda reasons for Britain to portay tself as Little England standing alone against great odds, and there was certainly a propoganda advantage to the Nazis portraying Britain this way (in motivating Axis soldiers and citizenry).

This article seems also to have been written by someone with an inexpert grasp of English and needs to be re-written simply to be readable.

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I agree with all of the above. This is terribly bad. Will somebody please do a complete rewrite? Preferably someone who is wholly proficient in the English language. SK 19.21, January 20, 2007 (CET)

Drek factor

There is a LOT of analysis in this article. It does not even mention Beck's death anymore. It seems that User:Andrzej anonimus increased the drek factor by a large amount. -- 199.33.32.40 23:53, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. It looks like much of his material has been removed, thankfully, and the article is being improved. I took the liberty of rewording some awkward phrasing, fixing some tenses and grammar, and removing some impertinent material. The article still needs a lot more work and proper organizational headings to make it a more proper biography. Inoculatedcities 19:30, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Clean-Up

Much of the information contained in this page is very wrong. To start with, if Beck's statements at the Ulm trial in 1930 are anything to go by, when he all but endorsed the Nazi Party, he was a highly enthusiastic supporter of the Nazis in the early 1930s. Two, Beck was not opposed to "wars of conquest". Beck totally shared the Nazi idea of self-determination, namely it was unacceptable for Germans to ruled over by Czechs or Poles, but it was also unacceptable for Czechs or Poles to be ruled over Czechs or Poles. For Beck, like Hitler, Germans were the Herrnvolk (Master Race) destined to the masters of Eastern Europe, and it was natural and right for Germans to rule over Czechs and Poles. See Beck's memo arguing against attacking Czechoslovakia, when he calls the latter state's existence "intolerable" to Germany (Müller, Klaus-Jürgen “The German Military Opposition before the Second World War” from The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement edited by Wolfgang Mommsen and Lothar Kettenacker page 65). Beck felt that in 1938, Germany was not ready for war with Britain and France, and believed that a German attack on Czechoslovakia would trigger a war with the former two states. In other words, Beck was arguing with Hitler over the timing of a attack on Czechoslovakia, not against the idea of aggression on Czechoslovakia. Beck felt that Germany need some time to rearm before committing aggression against her neighbors. Third, the claim that the British regarded Nazi Germany as a "useful bulwark" against the Soviet Union, and so would not back Beck's proposed putsch is really very wrong. To start with, there was no common German-Soviet frontier in 1938, so how could Germany be a "bulwark" against a state in which she had no common border with? If building a "bulwark against Bolshevism" in Central Europe was really the prime motivating force in British policy in the 1930s, then the logical country for that role would have been Poland, not Germany, but Anglo-Polish relations were very cool at best for almost all of the interwar period, which would suggest that fear of the Soviet Union was not a very important factor in British policy; presumably if it was, the British would have been desperate to build Poland up instead of largely shunning Warsaw until 1939. Which brings me to my another point, namely the British policy was not dominated by a fear of the Soviet Union as this article asserts. British policy-makers had extremely low opinion of Soviet military capacity. If one wants some proof of that, read the article by James Herndon “British Perceptions of Soviet Military Capability, 1935-39” pages 297-319 from The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement. How was it possible for London to simultaneously hold the Red Army in near total contempt as an fighting force and be totally terrified of the Red Army overrunning Central Europe? Moreover, the real reasons why Britain wished to avoid a war had nothing to do with fear of the Soviet Union. To cite just one, the capacity of German bombers to destroy London was much exaggerated in 1938. Typical of these fears was the diary entry of Edmund Ironside from September 1938 that "We have not the means of defending ourselves and he [Chamberlain] knows it...We cannot expose ourselves to a German attack. We simply commit suicide if we do" (Dutton, David Neville Chamberlain pages 173-174). In September 1938, Chamberlain was advised by the Chiefs of Staff that within three weeks of war being declared, it could reasonably expected that German bombers would kill at least half-million people (in fact, the 150, 000 were close to the entire British dead from bombing during the entire war), but however, people acted on the information they have at the time. None of this has anything to do with keeping Germany as "bulwark" against the Soviet Union. Anyhow, given that Beck & company were all of the extreme right of the German political spectrum, just why would fear of the Soviet Union prevented London from backing his proposed putsch is not clearly explained here; a regime head by Beck would have been just as anti-communist as the Nazi regime. Anyhow, Beck did not really want to stage a putsch against Hitler; he only resorted to the idea out of desperation when it appeared to the only way of stopping a German attack on Czechoslovakia. Which brings up the basic paradox of Beck's dealings with the British. What he really wanted the British to do was issue a very firm warnings meant to dissuade Hitler from foreign adventures. As the German historian Klaus-Jürgen Müller points out quite correctly, to have meaningful impact on politics, Beck needed the threat of war to stage a putsch, while at the same time, the Beck was working to try to prevent the war that represented his only realistic chance of coming to power (Müller, Klaus-Jürgen “The German Military Opposition before the Second World War” from The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement page 72). Beck's actions in 1938 should be understood as anti-war, not anti-Nazi. Indeed, in working to try to save Hitler from a war that Beck believed he could not win, his action should be understood as part of a "loyal opposition" that basically shared Hitler's views and beliefs, and only wished to save the Fuhrer from his own folly. Given that Beck believed that Germany would lose a war with Britain and France in 1938, if he was really anti-Nazi, he should have welcomed such a war. By seeking to avoid a war in 1938 that he believed Germany could not win, he was seeking of course to preserve the regime he allegedly hated. Fourth, one of the major reasons why the British had no interest in supporting Beck's proposed putsch was that the German conspirators were not very well organized. For example, the three three visits to London in the summer of 1938 by three different envoys from the German opposition, each bearing the same message that if only a firm British stand was made in favor of Czechoslovakia, then a putsch would remove the Nazi regime, and each ignorant of the other envoys presented an picture to the British of a group of people not well organized, which understandably created a great deal of doubt in London about the capacity of Beck and his group to overthrow Hitler. Is it really very realistic and fair to expect that the British should have in 1938 based their entire German policy on the words of a few individuals, who did not appear to be very well organized, and who may or may have spoken for broader currents within Germany? Anyhow, the basic British policy in 1938 was to avoid a war with Germany, not overthrow Hitler, and had a putsch been attempted in 1938, it would probably have failed, and if British complicity in the putsch was discovered, the result would have been a Anglo-German war. Given that in 1938, the Labour Party, strange as it may seem to modern ears were very strongly criticizing Chamberlain for "war-mongering" and not giving peace a chance, had a Anglo-German war resulted from a failed putsch, the result have been a war in which the Nazis could have claimed the moral high ground, and much of the British Left would have formed a powerful anti-war movement that would have been in accord with those claims. There would have been massive pacifistic demonstrations all over Britain, in which Chamberlain would have been denounced for his folly in interfering in Germany’s internal affairs by backing the failed putsch of General Beck, and provoking the war. Given the putsch attempt of 1944 was just as poorly organized as the proposed putsch of 1938, had a putsch been attempted in 1938, it would almost certainly failed, so all this talk about how Neville Chamberlain supposedly missed a “golden opportunity" to overthrow Hitler is really just nonsense. All this talk of a missed “golden opportunity" in 1938 is really just a an really digusting apologia for Germans, in which the German unwillingness and/or inability to overthrow their dictatorship is somehow really all the fault of the British. Beck was a half-hearted conspirator against Hitler because in his heart of hearts, Beck largely shared the same values as Hitler. General Beck spent 5 years of his life (1933-1938), first as chief of the Truppenamt (Troop Office), and then as Chief of the General Staff working very hard to build Hitler’s military machine, which is a very strange form of activity for a man who allegedly hated Hitler and everything he stood for. --A.S. Brown (talk) 06:01, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

What did he doing the war?

The article kind of skips from the late 30's to 1943/44, straight to his resistance activities. What was he doing in the meantime? Historian932 (talk) 03:53, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Editing the Article/Beck

This is a well constructed, seriously researched and referenced article on a historical figure who occupied a senior position in the German Armed Forces during the National Socialist Administration. It would be preferable if those readers who would edit the page had, themselves, a background in the military history of the period and/or professional experience in editorial work and/or relevant work, related to the subject, in a university faculty.

The original writer is clearly well versed in the history of the period and has extensive knowledge of the person in question. It is also clear however, that he is not a native english speaker although his knowledge of the language is of a very high order. I suspect that he is a native german speaker and this would explain the difficulties in presenting such an essay.

No native german speaker can avoid 'germanisms' leaking though into an english text. These consist, mainly, of long 'run-on' sentences which also contain extensive 'asides' and discussions related to the original topic; the use of 'passive voice' and other aspects (such as repetitiveness), all of which are part of a normal, highly sophisticated, german dialogue but which simply do not work in english. I am well aware of the difficulties involved. I am co-author/editor of Ludwig Beck's Field Manual 'Truppenfuhrung' which was published in 2001 (Boulder Co.) (Q.V.)

I suggest that contact be made with the original writer, who is clearly very capable, to seek his agreement and co-operation in re-editing the article to a colloquial form of english with the Chicago Style Book forming the baseline reference. If the original writer and other readers have comments and suggestions, please let me know. Thanks.Miletus (talk) 19:50, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

The 'New' picture

The generally accepted/used picture of Ludwig Beck is the photograph of him at his desk in the Truppenamt. He is wearing his white tunic jacket and his decoration ribbons. Although the 'new' picture is different, it is not really something exceptional. Was the change the result of a personal preference by a passing editor? Are personal preferences relevant here? Will the final edited verson of this section accept such a picture. Also, what is the relevance to 'Borat' (whoever that is)? Are we expected to use the antics of a low comedian as some kind of academic reference?Miletus (talk) 10:55, 22 February 2009 (UTC)