During the
invasion of Poland, Brauchitsch oversaw most plans. The Polish campaign was often cited as the first example of "
blitzkrieg", but blitzkrieg was not a theory or an official doctrine. The campaign did not resemble the popular perception of what became known as blitzkrieg. The Panzer divisions were spread thinly among the infantry and were not granted operational independence or grouped
en masse, as they would be in the 1940 invasion of Western Europe. The operative method of the Wehrmacht in Poland followed the more traditional
Vernichtungsgedanke. What is commonly referred to as blitzkrieg did not develop until after the campaign in the west in June 1940. It was not the cause but rather the consequence of victory. Brauchitsch himself had to be convinced that armour could act independently at the operational level, before the campaign. Brauchitsch supported harsh measures against the Polish population, which he claimed were needed for securing German
Lebensraum ("living space"). He had a central role in the death sentences for Polish prisoners taken in the
defence of the Polish Post Office in Danzig, rejecting the clemency appeal.
Invasion of Western Europe and the Balkans By early November 1939, Brauchitsch and Chief of the General Staff
Franz Halder started to consider overthrowing Hitler, who had fixed "X-day", the invasion of France, as 12 November 1939. Both officers believed that the invasion was doomed to fail. On 5 November 1939, the Army General Staff prepared a special memorandum purporting to recommend against launching an attack on the Western powers that year. Brauchitsch reluctantly agreed to read the document to Hitler and did so in a meeting on 5 November. Brauchitsch attempted to talk Hitler into putting off X-day by saying that morale in the German Army was worse than in 1918. Brauchitsch went on to complain: "The aggressive spirit of the German infantry is sadly below the standard of the First World War ... [there have been] certain symptoms of insubordination similar to those of 1917–18." Hitler flew into a rage, accusing the General Staff and Brauchitsch personally of disloyalty, cowardice, sabotage, and defeatism. He returned to the army headquarters at
Zossen, where he "arrived in such poor shape that at first he could only give a somewhat incoherent account of the proceedings." After Brauchitsch's meeting with Hitler in November 1939, both he and Halder told
Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, a key leader of the anti-Nazi movement, that overthrowing Hitler was simply something that they could not do and that he should find other officers to take part in the plot. Hitler called a meeting of the General Staff, where he declared that he would smash the West within a year. He also vowed to "destroy the spirit of Zossen", a threat that panicked Halder to such an extent that he forced the conspirators to abort their second planned coup attempt. On 7 November, following heavy snowstorms, Hitler put off X-Day until further notice, which removed Brauchitsch and Halder's primary motivation for the plot. While preparations were underway for the
Battle of France, General
Erich von Manstein, then serving as chief of staff of
Army Group A, produced his famous
Sichelschnitt ("sickle cut") plan, only to have it rejected by both Brauchitsch and Halder. When Manstein demanded that
Sichelschnitt be presented to OKH, Halder suggested transferring Manstein somewhere to the east, excluding him from the planning process. Brauchitsch agreed and transferred him to Silesia. However, Hitler invited a group of officers to lunch, and Manstein was among them. He managed to present his plan directly to Hitler. The following day, Hitler ordered Brauchitsch to accept Manstein's plan, which the Führer presented as his own. Despite his original scepticism, Brauchitsch eventually saw the plan's potential and felt that the army had a real chance of success in France. After the surprisingly swift fall of France, Brauchitsch was promoted to field marshal in July 1940, during the
1940 Field Marshal Ceremony. After France had been occupied and divided, he and the rest of the high command were looking forward to a similarly easy and swift campaign against Great Britain, now seriously weakened by the French campaign. He was confident that Britain would be easily defeated: "We consider the victory already won. England remains secure, but only so long as we choose." Had
Operation Sealion, the plan for the invasion of Britain, succeeded, Hitler intended to place Brauchitsch in charge of the new conquest. As the
Luftwaffe could not gain the requisite air superiority, the
Battle of Britain was lost and so the plan was shelved and eventually cancelled. In the swift invasion and occupation of
Yugoslavia and
Greece in early April 1941, the Germans committed some 337,000 men, 2,000 mortars, 1,500 artillery pieces, 1,100 anti-tank guns, 875 tanks and 740 other armoured fighting vehicles, all of which were under the overall command of Brauchitsch. By the end of the month, all of Yugoslavia and Greece were in German hands.
Operation Barbarossa Brauchitsch ordered his army and commanders to cease criticism of racist Nazi policies, as harsh measures were needed for the "forthcoming battle of destiny of the German people". When Germany turned East and
invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, he again played a key part, making modifications to the original plan. Like his friend and colleague,
Wilhelm Keitel, Brauchitsch did not protest when Hitler gave the German army the same instructions as the SS on whom to kill in the occupied territory, but he later issued a series of decrees that ordered that
Commissars were to be
shot only if their anti-German sentiments were "especially recognizable". As the
Battle of Moscow got underway, his health was starting to fail. Even so, he continued his work, as he was determined to take Moscow before the start of winter. During the battle for Kiev, Brauchitsch had made a proclamation to the Ukrainian people that if the Ukrainians would join the German forces to help defeat the Russian army, Hilter would establish Ukraine as a free state. This led many thousands of Ukrainians to join the German forces in late 1941 after the capture of Kiev. The army's failure to take Moscow earned him Hitler's enmity, and things worsened for him, as he suffered a heart attack in November. He was also informed that he had a malignant cardiac disease, most likely incurable.
Dismissal In the aftermath of the failed offensive at Moscow, Brauchitsch was dismissed as Commander-in-Chief of the German Army on 19 December and transferred to the
Führerreserve (officers reserve), where he remained without assignment until the end of the war; he never saw Hitler again. He spent the last three years of the war living at his castle-like hunting lodge "Dreiröhren" in the
Brdy mountains southwest of
Prague. One of his few public comments after retirement was a statement condemning the
20 July plot against Hitler for which he denounced several former colleagues. Later, he excused himself to Halder, claiming he had been forced to do so to save a relative's life. ==Postwar confinement and death==