When Adolf Hitler came into power, many General Staff officers hoped he would reestablish the Great General Staff with its former powers. General of the Artillery Ludwig Beck, who was the chief of the Armed Forces Office from 1935, wanted to reintroduce the right of direct consultation of the head of state. This wish turned out to be an illusion in the Hitler state. In the Reichswehr, the chief of the Armed Forces Office ranked only fourth in the hierarchy after the Reichswehr Minister, the Ministry Office and the chief of the Army command. From 1935 there were four top-level staffs of the Wehrmacht which tended to General Staff tasks: The Wehrmacht Operations Staff-Hitler's personal working staff; and second, the Army General Staff under General Beck. (Coming from the Armed Forces Office, he personified the heritage of the old General Staff.) Third, the Air Force General Staff was newly formed. And finally, the Navy High Command with its chief Admiral of Warfare formed the Wehrmacht's fourth operations staff. The divisions of the newly formed Army General Staff were headed by five Senior Quartermasters. In 1939 the German officer corps comprised 25,000 men, 500 of whom were General Staff officers.
General Beck transformed the Armed Forces Office (Truppenamt) into the Army General Staff. He had the question of joint responsibility painstakingly and critically examined. The excesses of Ludendorff's "chief system" and the times of the princely commanders in chief were gone forever. The results of the examination showed that the right to joint command and control responsibility of chiefs of staff of high level commands had never been laid down in written form, but had been passed on orally, as had been the case with many institutions and working procedures of the General Staff. It was proposed to the Chief of the Army General Staff to state in the "Manual for the General Staff in Wartime" that the military commander alone was accountable for his area of responsibility.
The traditionalist Beck declined this proposal, because he did not want to give up an institution which had proved successful for so many years and had been used repeatedly by Moltke. His successor, General of the Artillery Franz Halder, explicitly dropped the joint responsibility of General Staff officers for command and control when the new manual for the General Staff in Wartime was written, for he considered it outdated. He decreed that the commander alone was responsible externally and internally, and that the General Staff officer had to take a share in everything and deal with the problems as if he had to bear the responsibility himself. However, the General Staff officer would only be internally responsible. This resulted in the Bundeswehr General Staff officer of today having joint responsibility and accountability for the relevance of his advice. The former "General Staff channel" was thus reasonably restricted and took into consideration that most of the top-level military leaders of the Wehrmacht before World War II were General Staff officers. Army General Staff officers retained their special insignia. Officers of the Armed Forces High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht) received golden collar patches. Air Force General Staff officers wore the Air Force collar patches on crimson cloth. The Navy did not introduce special insignia for Admiral Staff officers.
From the beginning of his work as the Chief of the General Staff of the Army, General Beck had to deal with many officers who were enthusiastic about National Socialism and demanded the "political soldier." The later chief of the Wehrmacht operations staff, General Alfred Jodl, demanded the abolition of the advising and jointly responsible General Staff officer. He and other officers took the view that, in the modern "Fuehrer State," the General Staff could only play the traditionally prominent role as a planning and training staff in peacetime, but would not be required as a leadership body in wartime. Furthermore, they claimed that in wartime the "Fuehrer Principle" had to take full effect and the General Staff officers' work was merely to assist the leaders in the planning and execution of operations, and independence had to be ruled out.
On October 15, 1935, the 125th anniversary of Scharnhorst's General War School, the War Academy was reopened in Hitler's presence. The major address was given by War Minister, General Colonel von Blomberg. He praised Scharnhorst as the founder of the German General Staff and of the War Academy, and as a revolutionary who had established "the unity of the people, the state and the armed forces." The parallels between the revival of Prussia after its humiliating defeat at the hands of Napoleon in 1806 and the revival of Germany after the defeat of 1918 were enthusiastically stressed throughout Blomberg's speech. General of the Artillery Beck, the next speaker, also drew from history for his theme when he outlined the objectives of General Staff training. Some people were of the opinion that he wanted to point out the main differences between the General Staff officer as developed by Scharnhorst and Hitler's idea of the soldier within the "Fuehrer State" in the presence of the Fuehrer himself. Beck said, among other things:
...As the recognition of a correct thought does not always automatically mean the adherence to it, I would like to point out on the occasion of today's anniversary, too, that the transition from knowledge to skills, to the free, creative activity on a scientific basis, which is the case with a high level military leader, necessitates as its foremost prerequisite the education and training of the mind by means of the sciences of war. To grasp and deal with the connections of military problems profoundly by applying systematic brain work, step by step.... required careful studying and practice. Nothing would be more dangerous than to follow erratic, incomplete ideas, however prudent and ingenious they may appear, or carry on the basis of wishful thinking, however fervent it may be. We are in need of officers who systematically proceed on the way of logical reasoning to the end, whose character and nerves are strong enough to do what their reason dictates....
In 1938 General Beck resigned from his office in protest of Hitler's political activities against Czechoslovakia. Later on he was one of the leaders of the uprising against Hitler on July 20, 1944. Beck committed suicide on the evening of the unsuccessful revolt. For all time he exemplarily represents the responsible and intellectual General Staff officer who followed his conscience and sacrificed his life in the revolt against the criminal dictator Hitler when he had recognized that only the dictator's death would save Germany from total destruction.
In 1936 about 1,000 officers assembled at the military district headquarters to take the compulsory examination for future field grade officers. Out of these, about 150 entered the War Academy. In order to increase the output of the Academy between 1933 and 1937 the course was reduced to 2 years. The primary aim of the newly structured General Staff course was to train General Staff officers as advisers and assistants to major unit commanders or as members of the central command apparatus of the General Staff of the Army. The new course was not designated to train future senior commanders, nor to provide staff officers for Wehrmacht interservice or ministerial appointments.
Students were assessed by their tactics instructors throughout the course. There was no final examination. Borderline cases were, however, closely watched by their senior instructors. Candidates who did not qualify for General Staff appointments were usually sent to the War Ministry or became senior adjutants or tactics instructors in military schools. Those who qualified went to a "probationary period" (Probezeit) of up to 18 months in a General Staff appointment. When this was successfully completed the candidates were entitled to add the "i.G." to their military rank and to wear the insignia of the General Staff officers. The qualities sought, in addition to military competence and knowledge, included quick mental perception, the ability to think logically, swiftness in decision making; insight for essentials and for coherence, the ability to be creative and not to cling to regulations.
In the battles of World War II, the German General Staff officer proved once again his exceptional skills and knowledge. During the campaigns in Poland and France, the chief of the Army General Staff still directed the successful operations to a great extent independently. This changed when Hitler increasingly interfered in the command and control of the operations. In the course of the war the Army General Staff remained responsible for the campaign in Russia under Hitler's direct command; the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht was responsible for the war theaters and occupied territories of Norway, Finland, Africa, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands and for the replacement army. Throughout World War II the German High Command suffered from the serious rivalry between the Wehrmacht High Command and the Army General Staff. Both staffs were drawn from the ranks of the General Staff Corps, and the rivalry between them was not initially over the question of support of Hitler's policies, but over the problem of the control of the Wehrmacht in war. The Wehrmacht High Command never assumed the role of a joint command over the services. Hitler failed to develop the Wehrmacht High Command into a functioning Wehrmacht General and Admiral Staff.
Many General Staff officers participated in the attempted assassination against Hitler on July 20, 1944, and took the bitter consequences which included penal liability of their whole families or executions by shooting or hanging, which were inflicted on them by the sentences of the People's Court (Volksgerichtshof). The aftermath of July 20, 1944 shattered all the General Staff officers as over 60 were arrested. The loss of many General Staff officers, including 24 hanged and 16 suicides, added to the heavy casualties suffered by the General Staff, which by the end of 1944 reached 166 killed in action, 10 from illness and 143 missing. Unlike many other professional groups in Hitler Germany, many of the best General Staff officers participated in the "revolt of conscience" against the dictator and followed their code of ethics which ruled out tyranny and crimes. The German General and Admiral Staff officers can be proud of this heritage.