For Colonel Heinz Guderian and other German officers whose careers spanned the tumultuous period between the two world wars, the death of Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg on August 2, 1934, marked the end of an era. A war hero who overcame defeat by the Allies in 1918 to win election as president, Hindenburg was reduced to a figurehead by Adolf Hitler, who abolished his office when he died and assumed his role as commander in chief. Officers would now have to swear allegiance to a former corporal who distrusted military leaders and feared they might thwart his efforts to remake the armed forces and restore Germany to greatness.
Even innovators like Guderian, who had impressed Hitler earlier in the year by demonstrating how tanks could break through enemy lines, had qualms about submitting to a supreme commander with no command experience, whose plans for rearmament defied strict limits imposed by the Allies at Versailles. "Tomorrow we swear the oath to Hitler. An oath heavy with consequence!" Guderian wrote his wife. "The army is accustomed to keep its oaths. May the army be able, in honor, to do so this time."
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