In their own, horrifying, monstrous way, the death camps were pretty efficient.
Germany had a guy named Doctor Death? Awesome moniker!
“This is not peace. It is an armistice for 20 years” - Marshall Ferdinand Foch, on the subject of the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler at the time was an unknown former Corporal and failed art student. War was coming even if Mrs. Hitler had a headache when Mr. Hitler was feeling frisky in 1888. Hitler was a gifted speaker and politician, but thought he knew far better than his generals; God’s gift to Germany and a master strategist. He was not.
Kill him during the war and he’s a martyr for Nazis the world over, resentful Germans wondering whether they would have triumphed over Jewish Bolshevism and the Asiatic horde if their beloved Fuhrer wasn’t taken from them during the struggle. This is not just the plot of a movie, it was part of the reason the real-life [Operation Foxley, a British SOE plot to assassinate him was called off.
As for being the German war effort; his efforts lead to the total annihilation of the Sixth Army at Stalingrad for no strategic gain beyond his stubbornness and stupidity. Paulus begged the Fuhrer to withdraw, only to be told to fight to the death. His blundering interference caused the German Officer Corps to tear their hair out over the conflict between their oath of obedience to Hitler and knowledge that his orders were dooming the German nation.
Surrendering to the Russians, if Hitler dies? Even the July plotters thought that they could form a separate peace with the Western Allies in order to better continue the war with the Soviets. The Western Allies had no intention of making a separate peace and Russia agreeing to a peace is even more unlikely. Stalin scented blood; he was the least likely of any leader in the war to make peace when his forces were in the ascendant.
You’ve got to be kidding me if you think the Bohemian Corporal was a gift to Germany’s ability to continue the war.
Foxley was 5 months before Hitlers death. I doubt it matters much either way at that point. Hitler’s death would have hastened the end of the war by a few months but not what the conclusion would have looked like. If we are talking about a much earlier part of the war? Hitler’s death would certainly made the war effort crumble under the weight of all the infighting and lack of support from the military. If you are making this thread about the end of 1944 it doesn’t matter who you killed. The war was lost.
I think you mean “real-life German James Bond villain” No, not because of Nazi. I mean look at him! Don’t know why Wikipedia took that picture down. The scars are from mensur, by the way. He certainly prolonged the Italian front, but not for long.
Reinhard Heydrich was kind of brutal. He got killed halfway through the war, though, and maybe was only regionally important.
And Himmler? Some of the July 20 plotters were unwilling to take out Hitler if that means that Himmler (and maybe Göring) were to live and become Fuhrer.
Obviously it was lost, but the timing could still have been altered. For instance, do you really believe von Rundstedt (Montgomery described him as an even tougher opponent than Rommel) would have signed off on throwing Germany’s last armoured reserve through the Ardennes in the middle of December, if it hadn’t been one of the Fuhrer’s genius ideas?
Just a guess but he would probably have tried to fortify the border and attempt to sue for peace thus saving the lives of thousands on both sides. At that point the general staff knew the war was as good as lost. It was Hitler, his cronies and the fear of being garrotted that kept them going.
Kind of brutal? One of the main architects of the holocaust is kind of brutal? The man Hitler described as the man with an iron heart is kind of brutal?
That’s like saying World War II was just a minor misunderstanding among best friends.
It does make me wonder what someone would have to do for you to call them pure evil or a total asshole.
Put ketchup on filet mignon?
Heydrich was one of the few Nazi’s to be assassinated by the Allies. As he called the Wannsee conference I think its fair to call him the architect of the Holocaust. All too competent.
Yeah I was thinking the most competant Nazi would be the one that killed the most jews. Otherwise better to ask which was the best german commander or something
Erhard Milch - made the Luftwaffe into the potent force that it was. If he’d been in ultimate control rather than Goering, maybe things would have panned out slightly differently.
Walter Model - Superb defensive general, enabled the German fighting retreat (and the odd successful counter-offensive) back through Russia, and did the same on the Western front, preventing a rout.
I go by the fact that the British set up a whole operation intended solely to eliminate Heydrich, and that the British weren’t idiots and were on the winning side to deduce that he was competent, and feared.
Or if Walther Wever had lived. He was Chief of Staff of the Luftwaffe and he pushed for the development of a strategic bombing force. But he was killed in a plane crash in 1936 and his successors had a different view of military aviation.
More likely they’d have used the 5th & 6th Panzer Divisions on the Eastern Front, particular against the Vistula offensive which they knew was coming. Had Hitler listened to his generals he would have also recalled his garrisons in Norway and the Aegean, while Germany was bleeding manpower he insisted on pointlessly maintaining these for prestige reasons.
Attempting to sue for peace on either front would never, ever have worked, with or without Hitler. Germany had made a powerful, vengeance fuelled enemy of the Russian people who would never entertain any suggestion of a ceasefire. Stalin would have executed any of his marshals who even flirted with it for high treason.
Stalin had the head of Red Army aviation executed for referring to crappy Soviet planes as ‘coffins’, negotiating with the Germans without consulting the Stavka (i.e., Stalin) would be a death sentence. The NKVD and political Commissars would silence any talk of it in the enlisted ranks.
Himmler of all people tried to make peace with the western Allies so that Germany could continue the war against the Soviets unmolested. Unsurprisingly the Allies didn’t listen. On why Germans continued to fight; Hitler and his gangsters knowing they were doomed if they lost is only part of the answer. Many Germans, including their finest generals, genuinely believed they were fighting a moral crusade against Bolshevism. They fought because they couldn’t imagine Germany under Soviet rule, this happening to their towns and villages across the heimat.
Himmler tried to sue for peace in April of 1945. Hitler died on the 30th. Of course they didn’t go for it. The war was already over. If you insist on bring up things that happened in the last few weeks of the war I don’t know what to say. Of course the allies had no incentive to make a peace in 1945. At that point the removal of any Nazi (or any ally)wouldn’t have much effect. Your OP did not specify when this assassination would happen. Do you really think that taking out Hitler in 1939 through lets say at least mid 1944 would have little effect? Or even that the war would continue through to the same conclusion? Or even a positive effect on the German war effort? There is no way I see Goering or Himmler holding together the country nearly that long.
Much effect? Every day the war continued meant thousands more lives hanging in the balance, be it 24 hours, a week, a month, catastrophic consequences can still be envisioned, though Germany of course still loses.
Even in 1940 Churchill decided to fight on alone and reject German peace feelers, on the sound reasoning that one should never trust a Nazi and that it was either us or them who would decide the future of Europe. After Barbarossa the rival tyrannies of Nazism and Stalinism were involved in a death-struggle for Eastern Europe I doubt could be stopped, even if Hitler were dead. If he were, the 6th Army would have survived Stalingrad at least and Operation Citadel (aka the Battle of Kursk) would have gone differently, if it happened at all.
Goering had the ambition and Himmler certainly had the ruthlessness. Bormann though was an extremely devious bastard, so he’d probably find a way to gain the reigns of power one way or another without Hitler.
By 1939 everything was in motion, a long war was inevitable. If Hitler had been killed then he would have been a great martyr for Germany and naturally the course of the war would change, probably in Germany’s favour as I suspect that Germany’s generals would delay Operation Barbarossa until they were satisfied that Britain was contained (Hitler was impatient to take on his true enemy, communism), nor declare war on the United States as Hitler did. I’m not sure why you credit Hitler with any sort of strategic or tactical sense, he demonstrated repeatedly throughout the war that he had neither. Anyway, this is getting off-topic, assassinating Hitler has already been discussed to death.
That’s kind of pandering. He clearly stated that any particular assassination that late in the game wouldn’t affect the length of the war. And imho, if Hitler had been killed early in the game, Germany could have “won” by accepting and consolidating what they had quickly and physically won.
I didn’t get that he was doing that. Sorry to jump in the middle but you seem to be seriously off base with this post, imho.
Disagree 100% on the first point. Even in early 1945, get rid of the competents and the war shortens, maybe by days, weeks, who knows. Without Speer the armaments dry up. Without Guderian one of the few generals willing to stand up to Hitler is gone and there’s no-one to oppose his lunacy. And so on.
On the second point, I’m not particularly interested in arguing otherwise I would have posted about a Hitler assassination. But it was the point of the original objection, that Hitler’s removal would have been a bad thing for the German war effort. I disagree with that, that there are many, many more Nazis who were more competent and made the war more difficult for the Allies than Hitler did.
Okay for you but personally I find arguing that a 6 year conflict that happened 60 yeats ago might have been shortened by a week or two by this or that person’s death is pretty silly.