I found the footage of Manstein and Hitler I referred to earlier:
For a moment, please disregard what is being said by the interviewees (or the English subtitles) and just look at the original footage of Manstein interacting with Hitler, especially at 2:43 and at 2:34. Keep in mind that this is a Prussian-German officer talking to his commander-in-chief in public (it is being filmed, anyway). I find it extraordinary.Well.
There was Von Bock, who was outspoken to Hitler’s face. Von Runsdetd, who tended to back Manstein (who was after all a junior general). Von Leeb, who resigned, rather then follow Hitler’s directions in Russia and surprisingly retained Hitler’s respect throughout.
Reichenau (a war criminal of the worst stripe) argued heavily with Hitler over recruitment of Ukrainians and other non RUssian nationalties, he felt that they could be enlisted to support the war effort.
Kesselring publicly opposed Hitler’s initial decision to withdraw from Italy and resigned, prompting Hitler to reverse his decison and condemn the Allies to a long and bloody campaign.
Keital was perceived as a suck up; (how much he actually was, is open to dispute) and that perception has been extended to cover all of the German generals.
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I would love to see examples/discussion re the astounding comparison with US forces, however.
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Well two British examples are Auchienleck and Wavell.
Remember that Hitler needed his generals more than they needed him. Sure he could have them shot but where would he find a replacement for them.
Lincoln was certainly not the equal of the likes of Grant, Sherman, Thomas or Sheridan, though. As you say, he was stuck with a lot of generals in a situation that was rather perfectly designed to stick him with a lot of bad generals, at least until necessity sorted out who knew what they were doing and who didn’t.
Indeed, Lincoln was quite adamant in NOT interfering in soldierly matters once the real professionals were on the case.
Hitler is not precisely a case of lying on a continuum from “trusted the pros” to “stuck his nose in.” Hitler created a system whereby the armed forces was fundamentally dysfunctional in a number of ways that become more and more exposed as the war went on.
Hitler kept winning, for quite a long time. Simple as that.
A German general under Hitler would never have been in danger of being shot just for disagreeing on a military issue (unlike maybe a Soviet general under Stalin), but it could (and actually did in a number of cases) sink a military career. The way Manstein confronted Hitler, however, was unusual (I think it would even be considered unusual by modern standards in a democratic country).
Plus getting shot if you don’t. Never underestimate the happy healthy social effect of a bunch of sneering guys in long leather trenchcoats who may or may not break down your door at 3 AM because your neighbour dropped a dime on you. The closer to the end, the harsher “defeatism” was punished.
Well that’s really my question. Other than the invasion of France and Barbarosa until December 1941, what other battles did he win (or, at least, receive credit for the victory in the minds of the deutschen Volke)? Other than various tactical wins, did Germany achieve any other significant strategic victories after 1941? I am asking rhetorically because I don’t think there really were any.
Well, he conquered Crete. That was a biggie. :dubious: Plus Norway, and Greece (until late '44, anyway).
One other factor in deluding many Germans into thinking they might yet “win” the war was the belief that Germany would be able to conclude a favorable peace settlement because of Allied fears of the Soviet Union. Even some key leaders like Himmler convinced themselves there was no way the Allies would allow the Soviets to become a dominating world force, and so they’d fight alongside Germany to defeat Soviet Russia.
But it didn’t have to be strictly military victories. He revived the economy. He openly flouted the terms of Versailles and publicly started rebuilding the military machine. He re-militarized the Rhineland against the terms of the treaty, The Allies did nothing. He took over Austria without firing a shot. He took over Czechoslovakia without firing a shot. The Allies did nothing – even worse, they collaborated with him to do it.
Militarily, besides France. he helped Franco take power in Spain. He conquered Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Greece and Yugoslavia. Pretty much all in very short times at remarkably little cost.
What was not to like if you were on the winning side?
He looks a lot like a man desperately in need of a stiff drink.
yes, but what did the German hoi polloi think when the disaster at Stalingrad came out? Almost a million men killed and taken prisoner, and the German Army in retreat. things did not look too rosy in early 1943.
Other than, in a matter of weeks, defeating the massed allied armies that Germany had spent 4 years, and countless millions of lives, trying and failing to defeat in WW1?
I think you are underestimating how much of a big deal victory in the battle for France was for the German people. I don’t think your average German would have needed any more convincing that Hitler was in fact a military genius.
The invasion of Poland was a big deal since it put an end to the Polish Corridor to the sea that cut East Prussia off from the rest of Germany.
In regards to France, he made the French sign their armistice in the exact same railway carriage the Germans had signed the 1918 armistice, a considerable boost to national morale seeing the painful memories of what happened that November being reversed.
Just as important for building his support were his actions before the war, as the Germans saw it standing up for itself with a renewed national pride against foreign bullies, as Kershaw puts it;
“…the popular jubilation was in part an expression of relief that the western powers had not intervened, that the threat of another war – something which sent shivers of horror down the spines of most ordinary people – had been averted. The resulting popularity and prestige that accrued to Hitler drew heavily upon his ‘triumphs without bloodshed’.”
When war did come, the people rejoiced that it had been comparatively painless and one-sided due to the vision of the Fuhrer;
“A generation earlier, the fathers and uncles of these soldiers had fought for four years and not reached Paris. Now, the German troops had achieved it in a little over four weeks. The disparity in casualty figures mirrored the magnitude of the victory. Allied losses were reckoned at 90,000 dead, 200,000 wounded, and 1.9 million captured or missing. German dead numbered almost 30,000, total casualties just under 165,000.”
Fair enough. I may well have underestimated the effect that the stunning German victory in France had on the esteem in which the Führer was held. But, perhaps more importantly, it looks like I also underestimated how sustained that esteem was (with ‘idolization’ probably a better word than ‘esteem’).
With regard to the sustained belief the people had in Hitler for things military, I remember reading more than once, words to the effect of ‘the Führer will once more save us’ or ‘he will lead us to victory again’ or ‘Hitler has always found a way before; he will do so this time as well’. In other words, there is a recurring theme. It’s as if there was a series of victories that could be cited. And not just victories, mind you, but a series of victories even when things seemed bleak and the danger of collapse was very real and imminent. I still don’t believe there was anything even close to such a series.
There is also the “cult of the personality” that the Nazi regime surrounded Hitler with. The German people were presented with near-constant propaganda telling them how awesome he was, AND the fact that he seemed to mastermind an impossibly crushing easy victory on Germany’s historic enemies.
With hindsight we see German victory in the battle for France as inevitable, in the lead to up it it was not, and even the top brass in the Wermacht had plenty of doubts about it (whether the German people would have known this is dubious). The nature of the victory would have seemed almost miraculous to people who remembered the slaughter of WW1.
As well as the obvious answer that anyone who did start to question Hitler publicly was putting their life at serious risk, there’s also the massive propaganda campaign that ascribed anything that went well to Hitler and anything that went ill, to, well they had a number of people to point the finger at.
When he returned from France it was presented as Hitler’s personal triumph;“Hundreds of thousands cheered themselves hoarse. Hitler, lauded by Keitel as ‘the greatest warlord of all time’, was called out time after time on to the balcony to soak up the wild adulation of the masses. ‘If an increase in feeling for Adolf Hitler is still possible, it had become reality with the day of the return to Berlin,’ commented one report from the provinces. In the face of such ‘greatness’, ran another, ‘all pettiness and grumbling are silenced’. Even opponents of the regime found it hard to resist the victory mood.” (Kershaw, Hitler 1936-1945 Nemesis).
Yet after the first major German setback at Stalingrad it was not blamed on the fact that Hitler didn’t withdraw the Sixth Army and instead on the notion that they weren’t fighting ‘total war’, Goebbels asking the crowds;
Do you believe with the Führer and us in the final total victory of the German people? Are you and the German people willing to work, if the Führer orders, 10, 12 and if necessary 14 hours a day and to give everything for victory? Do you want total war? If necessary, do you want a war more total and radical than anything that we can even imagine today?
Individual failures were blamed on army commanders, regardless of how at fault they were, Hitler’s usual response to any setback was to sack the commander. After the July 20 plot in 1944 setbacks were blamed on aristocratic army officers sabotaging the war effort. Towards the end setbacks were blamed on cowardice and deserters, as well as the spread of ‘defeatism’, that is anyone who no longer bought Hitler’s bullshit. In Konigsberg, right in the path of the Soviets, a Nazi propaganda officer told civilians gathered in a hospital that “This was the Fuhrer’s long-cherished plan, to let the Russians in, the more surely to destroy them.” A doctor dismissed this as nonsense and was rebuked by colleagues for defeatism, and risking the wrath of the Nazis.
And, of course, there was the global Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy against Germany.
At the beginning of Ian Kershaw’s book “The End”, about the last days of Nazi Germany, Kershaw talks about a theology student in Ansbach who was arrested and hanged for sabotage about four hours before the American troops, who were just outside the city, got into the city.
This is an oversimplification. Even though Germany was a police state, there still were remnants of public debate, and sometimes the authorities even had to back down with a policy because public opinion had turned against it more strongly than had been expected. For instance, in 1941 Germany ended its euthanasia programme under which tens of thousands of mentally or physically disabled people had been killed, because of a public outcry directed against it. Another example of at least a perceived (by the authorities) potential public backlash against Nazi policies was the fact that the authorities went to great lengths to keep the existence of the extermination camps (Vernichtungslager, the type of concentration camp that existed for the very purpose of killing rather than incarceration or exploitation or forced labour) secret. They were frank about the other concentration camps, but the extermination camps were highly confidential and all of them were located in Eastern occupied areas, far away from the German population.