The Myth of Hitler the Military Genius
In this day and age, where fake news is so prevalent in our society, it is important to make sure our history is not under threat. Although we think of history is something set in stone, forever unaltered, it has been been common practice throughout the recorded history for states, governments, and even individuals to “edit” the historical record to support some sort of partisan position. Many people think that problem has been mostly alleviated today, and while it might be within academia, the common people’s perception of history is sometimes lacking, and valuable to manipulation by an outside powers. As Napoleon famously put it, history “is a series of lies people have agreed to believe in.”
In this article I want to talk about what I consider the most dangerous historical myth I see today, and that is the depiction of Hitler and the Nazis as some sort of gang of evil geniuses. It is the sort of opinion not expressed in high society, but on message boards and the comment sections of YouTube videos. However distasteful, I want to talk about this because I feel a large enough section of the population is exposed to it for it to deserve a rebuttal. I want to not talk about the reprehensible acts ordered by Hitler and committed in his name like the Holocaust, but focus on his role as the German head of state and commander of its armed forces for the twelve years he was in power. This myth seems somewhat understandable, given that Germany’s forces did hold back the world’s three strongest countries for four years. However, this stretch of supposid military prowess was only thanks to a combination of enemy incompetence, the Nazis’ unpredictable foreign and military policy, and finally, an unbelievable amount of luck, as I will discuss below.
The foreign policy of Nazi Germany was unprecedented in that there had never been a series of bloodless conquests leading up to World War II. The German economy and military, out of the hands of the Nazis before the war and staffed with technocrats, exploded into powerful new forces that backed Germany’s seemingly outlandish revanchist demands. The real source of these bloodless victories may lie in how Nazi propaganda interacted with the attitudes of international policy makers at the time. The world of the 1920s and 1930s, in terms of international relations, was covered with clouds of suspicion and mistrust, especially when countries had every reason to hide their true military strength, especially after arms reduction treaties like the Washington Naval Treaty of 1932. Instead the Nazis, to everyone’s shock, not only built a modern air force and armor units in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, but deliberately exaggerated numbers their numbers.
Countries like Britain and France never thought that the Germans would say they had more illegal war material then they would actually have. After all, all of this was in violation of Versailles and thus, the Germans were thus inviting war on themselves. It was this fear of war that was felt by many Germans when Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland in 1936, in violation of Versailles. In 1936, France and Britain could have easily beaten Germany in a war. However, the Western powers’ focus on appeasement allowed Germany to steamroll into the strongest power in Western Europe. In a pattern that seems to evolve into a theme of the 1930s, the Nazis succeeded only due to the incompetence or fear of their opponents.
While much historical focus is given to the famous Munich Agreement that gave the Czechoslovak border regions known as the Sudetenland to Germany, little attention seems to be given to Germany’s invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia several months later. It was here that Hitler made his greatest foreign policy blunder. After the invasion of Czechoslovakia, Hitler felt like he was invincible, and that the apparently spineless British and French governments would let him walk over any Central or Eastern European nation he choose. However, he was sorely mistaken. The occupation of Czechoslovakia had mobilized public opinion among the previously apathetic populations of France and Britain. Both countries signed defensive alliances with Poland, Germany’s new most likely target, and followed the Poles to war, much to Hitler’s chagrin. For the most part, Nazi foreign relations broke down after 1939, and by 1945, they were war with almost the rest of world. However, there is one more story I would like to tell which really exposes Hitler’s lack of diplomatic acumen, and that was his shock of Britain’s refusal to come to terms after the fall of France.
Many students of history do not really understand why the German invasion of France was so successful. Most people seem to think that the German strategy in 1940 was simply a repeat of 1914, and that the seemingly incompetent Allies were powerless to stop the German blitzkrieg. However, that could not be further from the truth. The Allies had spent the last twenty years coming on with a series of plans to respond with a potential German war against France and Britain, and many simply assumed the Germans would follow the route of 1914 through central Belgium, which is compose of flat ground perfect for armoured warfare. This meant that the Allies had put their soldiers on the Franco-Belgian border and raced into Belgium as soon as the German had attacked Belgium. This plan did leave a gap that seems obvious in hindsight, which was the heavily forested Ardennes woods, nuzzled in between the planned Allied battle line and the Maginot defense line that would protect northern France. It was through its small dark roads that the Germans would move and cut off the Allied armies, now in Belgium, from Paris, causing the famous British retreat at Dunkirk and later the fall of France as the Nazis raced across the undefeated lands to their south.
While the Battle of France had been one of the greatest victories ever recorded in the annals of warfare, it could have easily could become a disaster if the Allies had managed to intercept the German forces. The gamble made by the German general staff had paid off, but in both Germany and the Allied Powers, credit was given to Hitler for this awe-inspiring victory. Furthermore, it seemed to Hitler that he was a military genius, and was destined to conquer the world. All of those thoughts would soon be proved wrong when Germany finally invaded the Soviet Union.
The invasion of the Soviet Union was supposed to be launched in March 1941, but German forces were delayed by a critical three months that may have saved the Soviet capital, as the Germans had to save the Italians from their failed invasion of Greece, and in the process occupied and divided Yugoslavia. Even still, the Nazis were not shaken that they now had six months to conquer Russia before the infamous Russian winter. Official German timetables for Operation Barbarossa, as the invasion was codenamed, estimated that the Soviets would collapse within three months. However, when 3 million Axis troops finally invaded Russia in June, they found to their surprise that the Soviets, despite their shock, were perfectly equipped to resist the German invasion. German troops, brainwashed by years of propaganda extolling Germany’s racial and technological superiority, were shocked when German shells seemed impervious to the T-34, the mainstay of the Soviet armed forces. The surprise of the Germans was only matched by the weakness and ineptitude of Soviet government. Stalin was supposedly stunned beyond believe, and it took him a week to first address the Soviet people (I could just as easily write something like this about Stalin.) In addition, the Soviet armed forces, with its officer ranks systematically purged by Stalin during the 1930s, often issued terrible order, most notably ordering Soviet forces surrounded. In addition, the Russians managed to negate their areas of suproiety, like when insufficient supply depots and repair centers lead to many of the superior Soviet tanks being broken down or abandoned during the first month of the war in the east Ultimately, the arrival of hundreds of thousands of troops from the Far East and Russia’s General Winter narrowly saved Moscow from conquest. In the aftermath of the failure to take Moscow, Hitler appointed himself to directly command the German armed forces. From there, it was only downward for German military fortunes.
Further bad results of Hitler’s foreign policy became obvious he were shown when Italian, Hungarian, and Romanian troops holding the German line were destroyed in the Soviet’s Operation Uranus and the Red Army surrounded the German forces in Stalingrad. From there, the flaws in Hitler’s “military genius” became apparent. Obsessed with German soldiers holding territory above all else, Hitler refused to allow the Wehrmacht to retreat, allowing it to be destroyed piecemeal. As the years passed, the Germans continue to pour their entire male population into the the meatgrinder of the Eastern Front, as for every month that passed after a second German offensive was crushed at Stalingrad, the Red Army pushed closer to Berlin, and thus, Germany’s ultimate defeat.
I would like to conclude by noting what I consider the most dangerous part of this myth. Seeing the Nazis as simply evil, but making calculated actions by committing genocide and countless war crimes could allow us and those to follow us to rationalize their actions, a potentially horrific result for anyone interested in trying preserve the horrific story of World War II to ensure something like it does not happen again. People need to recognize the actions of these horrible human beings had no logic attached to them, but were rather the actions of military and diplomatic novices. Much of their initial success was only due to their unpredictability, and history showed that as soon as the Allied learned their game, and the more control the Nazis exerted over the army, the more Germany’s fortunes declined. Despite what anyone says, picking an sub-par option to surprise your enemy will never constitute an effective military strategy
A true understanding and a true telling of history could show the world how truly evil, misguided, and foolish these monsters really were. There is no way that anyone should strive to emulate or commemorate any decisions made by a group of murders that lost Germany 20% of its territory and committed the largest genocide in history, and it is a message that, more than ever in today’s circumstances, needs to be heard.