Germany's principal ground forces consisted of the army (which reached a peak strength of 6.55 million men in 1943), the Waffen-SS (which peaked in 1945 at 830,000 men), and several thousand men in the field (ground troop) divisions of the Luftwaffe. The term Wehrmacht is often mistakenly used as a synonym for the German Army. Wehrmacht, which means "defense power," was actually the collective term for all the German armed forces, and, as an institution, the Wehrmacht took the place of a war ministry or war department. Adolf Hitler exercised direct control over the Wehrmacht and, therefore, over all of the armed forces. By the time of World War II, soldiers, sailors, and airmen of all ranks swore an oath of personal loyalty to Hitler, not to Germany. (Officers had been required to swear the personal loyalty oath since 1934.)

At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the army, called in German das Heer, had grown rapidly into a force of 3.74 million men, mostly conscripts, who were organized around a core of highly professional officers and veteran noncommissioned officers. The Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I permitted Germany a 100,000-man army. The German military used this severe limitation to its advantage, building a Fuhrerheer, or leader army, of highly trained officers and enlisted men as a cadre around which a much larger conscript army could, in very short order, be raised. Thus, at the outbreak of World War II and through most of the war, the German army was highly skilled, very disciplined, and quite well equipped. It was a most formidable force, with many extraordinary, even legendary, commanders. The traditions of the peerless Prussian Army endowed the modern German Army with an excellent staff-officer echelon, which greatly facilitated the execution of high command orders. Officers in the field were uniformly of a high level, and, contrary to the notion that the German Army was inflexible, field officers were given great latitude in operational decisions. Moreover, officers at every level were groomed for leadership and were taught never to regard themselves as mere functionaries. This autonomy and commitment to leadership was brought to bear in the execution of Auftragstaktik, or mission-oriented tactics, which produced a high degree of efficiency.

Army high command, the Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH), was, at the outbreak of war, headed by Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, whom Hitler dismissed in December 1941 as the invasion of the Soviet Union faltered. From this point on, Hitler, who already had direct charge of the Wehrmacht, assumed personal command of the OKH as well. It was an act of supreme hubris, which, to the good fortune of the Allies, proved highly destructive to the army as well as to the overall war strategy. Indeed, as the war progressed, relations between Hitler and his top generals deteriorated. The OKH became a shell. Hitler's word was final, and by the middle of the war, he rarely listened to his generals, but simply gave commands. . .

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