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Like many Army men, Brauchitsch welcomed Hitler as the liberator of the Army from its Versailles shackles. Unlike many of his colleagues, he was able to give his allegiance to the Nazis as well as to the Army. Marked as a man whom Hitler could trust, he rose rapidly after the Nazis came into power. In 1933 he was given command of the East Prussia Military District, one of the most important in Germany because of its vulnerability from both Poland and Russia. It was Brauchitsch who was responsible for the East Prussian fortifications that were built after 1933 — a complicated system of blockhouses and two heavy fortresses designed to make East Prussia impregnable on the East. When he was in East Prussia, Brauchitsch's chief of staff was General Walter von Reichenau, closest of all the Army officers to the Nazis and to their chief.
In 1937 Brauchitsch became chief of Group Command 4 in Leipzig, the jumping-off place to the top jobs in the German Army. By then the Army was in a turmoil. Hitler was impatient to begin his grabs and the Army knew it was not ready. Loyalties were split between the Army and the Nazis, and there was sharp disagreement between those who were willing to back Hitler in a bluff and those who counseled delay. Brauchitsch kept mum, but when the purge came and Blomberg and Fritsch lost their jobs,* his good friend Reichenau recommended him to Hitler as the man to lead the Army. In February 1938, he took over its command, with the rank of Colonel General, and became a member of the Secret Cabinet Council created to advise Hitler on foreign policy.
Just before the Anschluss, General Brauchitsch is supposed to have told Adolf Hitler: "Mein Führer, if you want to use the Army to support a bluff by military pressure, you can depend on us. For more serious business, we are not yet ready." A few days later he had taken over command of the Austrian Army. In September 1938, he said the same thing in almost the same words—and marched into the Sudetenland at the head of the German troops. He occupied Bohemia and Moravia last spring, but still the Army was not ready. Last month, as motorized divisions began concentrating in Slovakia, in Silesia and East Prussia, Walther von Brauchitsch said good-by to his pretty wife and flew across the corridor to take personal command of the awaited Polish campaign in his old stamping ground, East Prussia. This time he was ready and the campaign hung on him.
Prelude to 1939. For the kind of warfare that Germany is now waging, preparations are twofold, and the first preparation is defense. Without its Westwall, where a major battle was in progress last week (see p. 28), Germany might have been overrun almost as fast as it overran Poland. As soon as he took command of the Army, Brauchitsch began pressing for the completion of the fortifications in the West. Not until the Westwall was completed could Germany strike in the East. Hitler observed: "It will make the French Army a prisoner in France."