S
Sniffles
Guest
I don't find it entirely implausible for Hitler to be an F. His reasoning for things was rather F. I mean, in his eyes, it was all one big epic war of that which is pure over that which is filthy. Good and bad, light and dark.
That's pretty much how it played it out eventually. It should be mentioned that Hitler's original intention in 1939 was for a more limited war. He was literally shocked when he heard about Britain and France declaring war, remarking "What do we do now?"
Of course, he should've fucking seen this eventuality since breaking the Munich agreement, plus Chamberlain's war guarantee to Poland in March 1939. Sorry Im just having trouble buying the argument that Hitler was somehow forced to attack Poland. Try again Buchanan and AJP Taylor.
In terms of skills, Hitler was a brilliant manipulator of peoples' spirits, but he didn't know shit about commanding an army. He really bares a lot of responsibilities for Nazi millitary defeat, and he probably should have let his wiser generals make the decisions. In fact, it was often his inability to accept certain realistic, but depressing possibilities, that made him give crazy military orders.
Yes and no. It was only untill 1941 after he sacked Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, thus taking direct command of the army, that Hitler started to show his flaws as a commander. Up untill this time, Hitler did show considerable skill when limiting himself to the proper role of overall commander-in-chief.
He certainly made a wise decision to bypass the General Staff's plan for the 1940 campaign(which was a rehash of the old Schliffen plan of 1914) and instead back von Manstein's plan for a surprise attack through the Ardennes. This was key to the German victory over France, and succeeded beyond anybody's belief(especially Hitler's). During the same campaign, he did play some role in planning the assault on Fort Eben-Emael, which to this day still remains a textbook example of the tactical use of special forces.
It's generally agreed that his decision to hold the line at all costs against the Soviet counter-attacks in '41 did save the Wehrmacht from possible total annhiliation.
There's also this issue brought up by B.H. Lindell Hart in his History of the Second World War that Hitler's "intuition" deduced that the Allies would probably land somewhere near Normandy in 1944, which ran counter to the calculations of the General Staff. Of course the constant rivalry between Rommel and von Rundstedt on not only where the Allies would land but how to respond, plus lack of time and resources, prevented the Germans from better preparing their defenses.
So it'd be wrong to say Hitler was completely incompetent in military affairs. He really bit off more than he could possibly chew(especially at Stalingrad, telling squads where to fight in heavy street-fighting 1000 miles from the front).