Goering was commander of a fighter wing in WWI, a recipient of the Blue Max, and quite a celebrity in Germany. He was also someone looking for a movement to lead, and became involved with Hitler from the first, even being wounded in the failed beer hall putsch in 1923. Without Hitler, he might have risen to be a major leader anyway - especially since he would 't have been addicted to morphine as a result of being shot during the putsch.
Heinz Guderian was an officer in the General Staff during WWI, and one of Hitler’s top generals in WWII. Erich von Manstein was commander of the Wermacht in WWII, but was already a Chief of Staff to a division in WWI. Gerd von Rundstedt was a Major in WWI, but was chief of staff to several divisions.
But the person who most closely fits the bill was Erich Ludendorff, who was one of the most important generals in WWI, and almost immediately after the war became a nationist, anti-Semitic rabble rouser. He allowed the Nazis to use his reputation and took part in the 1923 Putsch. He was popular enough in Germany to run for President against Hindenberg, and only left the Nazi Party after Hitler became its undisputed leader. Had Hitler not been around Ludendorff might have easily been the Nazi leader. And he might have been as bad as Hitler, but with more military skill. He died of cancer in 1937, but if the world had been different, who knows?
None of them rose to a rank where they would be given responsibility for wider political matters (or insight into them), rather than local military tactics, in WW1. And most were vehement believers in the “stabbed in the back” myth and opposed to the armistice.
True, and was the relatively easy victory over France, driving Britain from the Continent, so unlikely that German generals would have dismissed it as a possibility? Of course they worried, as generals should to a degree. And the Allied performance was surprisingly ineffective on the whole. But it wasn’t that far fetched that the Germany would succeed in its 1940 offensive despite, barely, having failed in 1914 and subsequent offensives during WWI, in a two front war and with an eventual deadline after 1917 to win before the US could become a large factor on the ground in the West. Which is why it’s plausible to say every German general should have been against both the 1941 war with the Soviets having failed to defeat or reach an accord with Britain, and adding the US again as an enemy. Those things are hard to explain in hindsight, though partly it’s hindsight and not obvious German generals were implacably opposed to those later moves either. But there wasn’t even a really good reason (militarily that is) to oppose another go at France.
Bit of a side track but is there any actual scholarly writing about these kind of counterfactuals? I was of the opinion they were strictly the reserve of amateur historians and the odd popular history or historical fiction book. I would have thought a real academic historian attempting to include a counterfactual like this one in an academic publication would have a bad time of it,
There’s a difference motivation involved. Being willing to do what the dictator of your country orders you to do is not the same thing as agreeing with the dictator. Just because German generals were willing to follow Hitler’s orders doesn’t mean they would have given those same orders if they had been running Germany.
Then consider instead the long European peace between 1815 and 1914. No nuclear weapons back then.
I think the key factor is that when there’s a really big war there is a post-war reaction against the idea of war. Countries become more hesitant to resort to war and more willing to seek compromises to avoid a war. It takes a long time for the memories of the war to fade enough that people start romanticizing it.
It happened after 1815 and it happened again after 1945. And for most countries it happened after 1918; most world leaders (and public opinion) wanted to avoid another major war. Hitler was the exception.
Serious historians like Stephen Ambrose, Antony Beevor, Niall Ferguson, Thomas Fleming, John Gill, Victor David Hansen, Alistair Horne, David Isby, John Keegan, David McCullough, James McPherson, Josiah Ober, Theodore Rabb, Andrew Roberts, Stephen Sears, and Arnold Toynbee have written alternate history scenarios.
The evidence really does not back this up. Yes the generals had some serious misgivings particularly about the timing (and, obviously, after the war the surviving generals all claimed that they had been dragged along kicking and screaming by Hitler). But the general staff at the start of WW2 did want war, and did want revenge for the “betrayal” at the end of WW1.
That “stabbed in the back” myth wasn’t created by Hitler, and it wasn’t just something the higher ups repeated just to keep the lower orders quiet. They genuinely believed it.
Case in point WRT to the “stabbed in the back” myth. Goering clearly did not thing the “stabbed in the back” myth was a convenient lie to keep the masses happy. He opposed the armistice to the end (telling the pilots under him the rumors of an armistice were defeatist lies). He refused to hand over his planes to the allies after the armistice WW1 as ordered, instead flew them back to Germany (even though it meant crash landing them there).
Though as I understand it they’ve written popular history books for public consumption on counterfactuals, not scholarly articles for academic consumption.
If you read about the mutiny (likely orchestrated by Canaris) that was going to occur before that idiot Chamberlain gave in to Hitler, you would see you are wrong here- or at least wrong at that period with those generals.
The ultimate failure of these early plots and the small number of senior officers involved doesn’t really prove the point. If the overwhelming majority of the general staff really thought war period, was a catastrophic mistake (not just war before the Wermacht was ready for it) the result would have been different I am sure.
Why should we believe what Goering was saying? As you point out, he was lying to his own men at the time. I’m sure it wasn’t the first or last lie he told.
You said that counterfactuals were “the reserve of amateur historians” rather than “real academic historians”. I was giving you examples of some of the later who write counterfactuals.
I’m going to give them credit and assume they stand by what they write, regardless of whether it’s “popular history books” or “scholarly articles” and consider both as legitimate work. Historians don’t go off the clock and stop being historians when they publish outside of academic journals.
Yup. Ludendorff also did not want an armstice. That kind of goes to the point that there were a lot of angry and disaffected officers in the military, and there were plenty of competitors for the title of leader of the crazy anti-Semitic right. I believe the rise of Communism made a right-wing reaction in Europe almost inevitable, and anti-Semitism was rampant in many countries.
Also, don’t forget that Hitler was surrounded by some fanatical believers like Hess and Goebbels, and if anyone else had become leader other than Hitler, they may have been surrounded by and influenced by the same people.
Other leaders might not have been quite as expansionist as Hitler, but they also might not have been as bad at actually conducting a war. That could have made them even more dangerous.
I’m sure there must be an alternate scenario out there where Hitler is replaced by someone a little less crazy, and that basically has the effect of delaying the war in Europe for a few years or a decade, and Germany might have been much stronger by then and had a huge lead in military weapons technology and a much more advanced military in general.
Maybe WWII would have been fought in 1955 with jets and with nuclear tipped missiles fired from Germany.
I wouldn’t assume that WWII represents the worst of all possible outcomes, but we will never know.
Firstly what motivation would he have, at that point to lie? If he did realize at that Germany had catastrophically lost the war and that the armistice was right decision, why lie about it at the time? This isn’t some post war political event, it is squadron at war. Why would he defy his superiors if he realized that in fact they were correct?
Secondly he didn’t just talk he acted, he actually disobeyed orders and took the risk of flying his planes back to Germany. If he was fully aware of the situation of Germany and the correctness of the decision to surrender, why would he do this?
Its clear there was a huge amount of self-delusion involved in the process (he clearly didn’t want to believe the war was lost). But I am in no doubt that most of those German military men, like Goering, who fell for the “stabbed in the back” myth genuinely believed it. Not that it excuses anything that followed in any way, of course.
Why would a military officer go along with a story that said military officers weren’t to blame for his country’s recent catastrophic defeat? There’s obvious self-interest there.
Actually, Ludendorff was the individual who asked for the surrender. He told the Kaiser that the German army couldn’t keep fighting and Germany needed to ask for terms.
Within a few months, he began rewriting history and claiming that the army had been stabbed in the back. But he was deflecting blame away from himself.
For Ludendorff, yes clearly, there is a huge self interest as it was literally his fault (in as much as it was anyone’s, he was basically in charge of the whole show by 1918). For a squadron leader? No one was laying blame at his feet for the defeat of a country of 65 million people. It would be ridiculous for him to think so.
The only reason to behave as he did is if he genuinely thought Germany had not really lost the war, despite the evidence to the contrary.