Among the top level of Nazis, were there any who were good, in the sense of being competent at their job?
For example, the previous thread talked about Hermann Goering, who was an outstanding individual pilot, but was a clear failure as head of the German Air Force, both in making effective use of the force, and in the logistical functions of design & production of aircraft.
The same seems to be true of most of the top level Nazi leaders – they just weren’t up to the job (thank heavens!). Possibly because they were often chosen for their loyalty to Hitler more than for their experience or qualifications.
So were there any who were actually good at their jobs?
Some possibilities that I can think of:
Todt (and later Speer) in the construction of defensive fortifications in occupied Europe, especially the Atlantic wall in France, seemed to be effective. (Of course, that was mostly pointless. The Atlantic wall, like the French Maginot line before it, was of little practical effect in the end – the attacking forces just went around it.)
Speer also did pretty well when he was put in charge of all (nearly) German manufacturing & allocation of resources. Though it was pretty much too late by then anyway. His success may have been from his close personal connection to Hitler, and his use of that to cut through bureaucratic infighting to enforce his priorities.
Doenitz commanding the German Navy U-boat force also seemed to do an effective job – he nearly blockaded Britain, despite a limited supply of U-boats. But his wolf pack tactics required a lot of radio communications, a real mistake given the extensive British network of radio direction finders. And his insistence that German Enigma codes were secure (despite knowing that the equivalent British codes had been broken by German intelligence) was another mistake.
And when appointed as the 2nd Fuhrer after Hitler’s suicide, he took 10 days (and thousands of German lives) to do what he should have done immediately – surrender.
And some that might be suggested, that I think do not meet the criteria:
Goebbels: the German people & soldiers did keep fighting to the very end. But was his propaganda responsible for this? It’s unclear if people actually believed it, or were just too scared to question it openly. Or if their morale came from his propaganda or from a patriotic ‘defending the Fatherland’ spirit.
Rommel: contrary to popular feelings, I don’t think he was that brilliant a General. The battles in North Africa seemed to go back and forth depending on which side had the best supply lines at the time. You could say this theater of war was decided by the conflicts between supply convoys and attacking submarines out in the Mediterranean Sea. Later, he was put in charge of defending against the invasion, and was not able to stop (or even anticipate) D-day.
Anybody want to suggest other top-level Nazis who were actually good at their job?
For a nation that’s supposedly lead by incompetents, it seemed to have a lot of success. Completely overrunning France, pushing the British out of the continent, pushing Russia back a thousand miles and killing 20 million of them in the process. They managed all that using an Air-force, Army and Navy they had to rebuild almost from scratch just a few years before the war started, while facing larger, better equipped forces.
I mean if their leadership is incompetent, what does that make ours?
Ramel has a point. For a country in the state it was in post-WWI, Germany accomplished a huge amount in a relatively short amount of time. They played the diplomatic game in the run-up to the war exceedingly well, wrong-footing Britain and lining up key allies. The initial blitzkrieg tactics worked well too. Had they not ultimately overextended themselves in Russia they might have held on even longer than they did in the end. Not too shabby from a military POV.
Hjalmar Schacht was president of the Reichsbank (the German central bank) before Hitler rose to power, and was made minister for the economy from ´1934 until 1937. He seems to have been quite an able banker and economist, and he put these talents to the service of the Nazi regime; his most important contribution were the MEFO bills, a financial scheme designed to extend, in effect, Reichsbank loans to the government for armament purposes without making this explicit or visible (which would have violated the Reichsbank statute and undermined confidence in the German currency). The MEFO scheme played an important part in financing German pre-war armament.
Schacht also took pride in the fact that when the defendants in the Nuremberg trial were, during their arrest, tested for IQ, he scored highest of all of them.
But that was the military leadership, which had proven itself in the past. The military leaders would have been in place whether Hitler took power or not (though probably they wouldn’t have been called upon to go to war quite so soon).
In any case, the military leadership planned things after Versailles to be in a position to be strong quickly. The German army between then and Hitler’s rearming was, in effect, nothing but officers – the “privates” were trained and treated like second lieutenants – there were no noncomissioned officers or general soldiers. The army knew that they would be easy to find if you had the leadership in place.
John Rabe, a Nazi living in Nanking, China. He was so appalled by the Japanese atrocities that he created and enforced a protective district for the Chinese civilians during the Rape of Nanking.
He was even writing Hitler to get the Japanese to chill out. Imagine that.
Art critic Robert Hughes’ take on Speer on youtube is interesting. Basically he was an anbitious son of a bitch who had people killed, like all typical Nazis.
Leni Riefenstahl is an interesting comparison to Werner von Braun. She only made effective propaganda movies, and as amoral as her ambition may have been, she lost her stomach for glorifying the Nazis once the shooting started. Once it stopped her career was dead meat. Whereas Von Braun, while the holes he blasted into London were still being filled never went hungry and was given the US space program as a toy train set. Who says art counts for less than science?
Ernst Rohm, the leader of the SA, seemed to be pretty good at intimidation and being the leader of the muscle of the Nazi party. Not so good at predicting back stabbing though.
Himmler was largely responsible for the SS. Not sure if the SS were competent or just had easy targets.
Hitler had a good intuition for people’s fears and hopes and how far he could push them, until 1939.
I don’t know if the leader(s) of the Brandenburgers were nazis (they were part of the SD, the nazi intel service) but after having read about them, they come off like a whole unit of James Bonds.
I don’t know what he really did during those ten days, but I can imagine some sensible reasons for delaying the inevitable. Perhaps he tried to negociate a kind of surrender that was not unconditional. He may even have wanted to delay the Soviets in the east, allowing the western Allies to capture as much German territory as possible, to save it from Soviet occupation.
It was the latter, more or less. He was stalling the surrender to give German troops and refugees as much time as possible to surrender to the Western Allies.
This was the first name to come to mind. For his trouble, he was detained by the Gestapo, his film of the depredations was confiscated, and he was ordered to keep silent about the atrocities in China.
Not a high-ranking member of the Nazi Party, but Hanna Reitsch was a fanatical Nazi, and very good at her job as a test pilot. A bit fanatical, period—I always wondered if she was disappointed the whole Reichenberg project never worked out…
Donitz has already been mentioned, and I remember reading that, Das Boot to the contrary, the U-Boat force as a whole was very pro-Nazi.
I don’t know if Alfred Jodl qualifies under the OP criteria as a “Nazi”. I’m not sure if he was officially a member of the Nazi party, but he was enough a Nazi to be hanged at Nuremburg (though many think that was not a good decision). He was the Operations Chief of the armed forces for much of the latter part of the war, responsible for much of the planning, and by most accounts was more than competent.
Also, Hitler himself could arguably be described as a military genius. He was very hands on in military matters, and did not leave things to his generals, who he generally thought were too timid and incompetent. From the late 1930s to about 1942 he was in consistent disagreement with the army general staff, and was also consistently right in his judgments. Of course, things went downhill for him after 1942, which you can ascribe to either him not being a genius after all, or to him being insane and not knowing when to compromise.
