Dem!god
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see many consider him as a general...what more to say,,,He was no general, just a sad mentally sick moron who though that he was a military genius
Hitler, Germany's Worst General
by Robert C. Daniels
Whether Germany could have won the
Second World War is a topic that even
today still generates debates among
the professional and lay historian
alike. It is commonly said that it is
the generals who make the least
amount of mistakes that win the
wars. However, this can also be said
about the leaders of the belligerent
nations as well, especially when they
assume a strong, sometimes
overbearing role in the military
leadership and planning of wars.
Germany's Adolf Hitler fits this later
category during World War II.
As the strong, overbearing dictator of
Germany during World War II, Hitler
made many mistakes in waging the
war. Two of the more prominent of
these mistakes, both with wide and
sweeping results, were the June 22,
1941 invasion of the USSR—Operation
Barbarossa—and the December 11,
1941 unprovoked and unwarranted
declaration of war on the United
States—against the advice of Hitler's
Foreign Minister, Joachim von
Ribbentrop.[1] It is commonly argued
that these two mistakes combined
eventually resulted in Germany's
ultimate downfall. However, even
with the enormity of these two
mistakes, one other mistake
outweighs both the launching of
Operation Barbarossa and the
declaration of war on the United
States in terms of possibly altering
the outcome of the war. Had Hitler
chosen to listen to his generals and
bring England to her knees prior to
the invasion of the USSR and the
declaration of war on the United
States by concentrating Germany's
overwhelming forces in defeating the
British in North Africa and the Middle
East in 1941, Germany could very well
have won the war.
By the end of May 1941, Germany,
under the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler,
had conquered or, with the support of
her allies and puppet rulers, gained
the effective control over nearly all of
Western Europe and was in
possession of most of North Africa.
Stalin, although not viewing Hitler as
particularly trustworthy, had signed a
non-aggression pact with Germany
and was not anticipating an invasion
from, nor planning an attack against
Germany. The United States, although
actively supporting England through
the Lend-Lease law enacted in
February 1941, and from the
beginning of April of that same year
was "operating a Neutrality Patrol
which effectively excluded U-boats
from the Atlantic west of Bermuda,"[2]
was still clinging to the isolationist
theory, and not readily eager nor
willing to enter the war. This left
Great Britain as Hitler's only
remaining military threat, and Great
Britain was in dire straits.
The British army, having had already
taken a beating in Norway and
France, leaving a substantial amount
of her war equipment on the beaches
of Dunkirk, was fighting a desperate
struggle to hold onto its last
remaining foothold of the war—Egypt.
Up to this point in the war, Hitler's
forces seemed invincible. In March of
1938 Hitler effectively annexed
Austria, 6 months later he did the
same to the Sudetenland, and in
March of 1939 annexed
Czechoslovakia. The August 22, 1939
signing of the non-aggression pact
between Germany and the USSR,
privately stipulating that the Baltic
States would go to the USSR and
Poland would be partitioned between
the USSR and Germany, left Hitler's
army free to invade Poland.[3] Less
than two months later Poland had
been invaded and was in Nazi hands
causing Great Britain and France to
declare war with Germany.
By the summer of 1940, Denmark and
Norway had also fallen to Germany.
May 10 to June 22, 1940, a timeframe
covering just over a month, saw the
German forces overrun, with relative
ease, the Western European states of
the Netherlands, Belgium,
Luxembourg, and even France in the
well thought out and planned
Operation Sichelschnitt, "Sickle
Stroke."[4] The Sichelschnitt plan,
along with the use of the Blitzkrieg,
"lightning war,"[5] proved to be a
novel, if not a stroke of genius, way
of overcoming and overwhelming an
enemy, especially an enemy that is as
surprised and ill equipped as was
those of the Allied armies of 1940.
In three years Hitler had gained
effective control over nearly all of
Western Europe, North Africa, and the
Mediterranean Ocean with only Great
Britain left standing in her way, and
England's only hold was in Egypt and
the Middle East. It was clearly the
time to eliminate this threat, and
clearly the logical next step in
Hitler's goal of eliminating all
threatening continental powers in
Europe, fulfilling Hitler's own political
statement for Germany:
Never suffer the rise of two
continental powers in Europe. Regard
any attempt to organize a second
military power on the German
frontiers, even if only in the form of
creating a state capable of military
strength, as an attack on Germany,
and in it see not only the right, but
also the duty, to employ all means up
to armed force to prevent rise of such
a state, or, if one has already arisen,
to smash it again.[6]
However, as history has shown,
going against the advice of many of
his general officers, Hitler ordered the
implementation of Operation
Barbarossa, the invasion of the USSR,
to begin on June 22, 1941, effectively
creating a two front war and
beginning the downfall of the German
Third Reich. Hitler's personal need to
strike at Russia was long ingrained
into his psyche. In the mid-1920's,
while serving time in Germany's
Landsberg Prison, Hitler wrote his
famous Mein Kampf, [7] where he
outlined his world plan for Germany.
In Mein Kampf Hitler laid out his plan
for Germany's lebensraum, or living
room. He wanted "to secure for the
German people the land and soil
which they are entitled on this
earth."[8] Referring once again to his
political statement for Germany, Hitler
wrote:
See to it that the strength of our
nation is founded, not on colonies,
but on the soil of our European
homeland. Never regard the Reich as
secure unless for centuries to come it
can give every scion of our people
his own parcel of soil. Never forget
that the most sacred right on this
earth is a man's right to have earth to
till with his own hands, and the most
sacred sacrifice the blood that a man
sheds for his earth.[9]
Stating, "We stop the endless German
movement to the south and west, and
turn our gaze toward the land in the
east," Hitler saw the lands of
Germany's eastern neighbors as the
best for his lebensraum.[10] Since he
was already in possession of
Czechoslovakia and Poland, Russia,
with its vast fertile western lands,
was next in line. It was clear to
anyone who took the time to read
Hitler's Mein Kampf that the invasion
of Russia was imminent as long as
Hitler was the Fuhrer; and Mein
Kampf was widely read throughout
Germany in the 1930s and early
1940s.
