This is the first time I’ve posted, so this subject might have cropped up before.
I have wondered what would have happened had Hitler died after the Munich Crisis and Göering took over (I don’t think he was officially the Führer’s successor at this point—I may be wrong). The Reichsmarschall claimed, after his capture, that he faulted himself for not saying no to Hitler. I have contended that had Hermann Göering become ruler, Germany would not have gone to war, although it would still have been an authoritarian state, something along the line of Franco’s Spain.
Don’t kid yourself that Germany would have been a much nicer place though - Goering did after all found the concentration camps, although he was probably smarter than Hitler. If anything, he was potentially a more dangerous adversary for the other European powers.
It should be said that Goering had a tendency to lose power-struggles. Remember, not only was he the leader of the SA at one point, he was also the head of the Gestapo and was turned out by more ruthless bastards like Himmler and Heydrich. But I agree Goering was one of the smarter Nazis and probably one of the few with some genuine talent other than kissing Hitler’s ass. And his policies towards the Jews others of the Nazi racial pogroms might not have been quite as horrifying and one must remember that the initial concentration camps were a far cry from what the work and death camps became. The question is whether his addictions prevented him from becoming more ascendant, or perhaps make him more vulnerable to rivals. As I recall, he was the more or less official successor to Hitler for much of the War, but I think Adm. Doenitz gets that dubious honor towards the end as Goering lost favor due to the defeat of the Luftwaffe.
I recently got my stuff out of storage in DC and have a book in which I recall reading about more likely German nationalist/fascist rivals to Hitler and to Nazism in general, as the Nazis were not the only ultra-nationalist rightists (and leftists) in Germany spawned by the economic collapse. I think the possibility was raised of a much more traditional military dictatorship under the pretext of emergency powers due to the depression and some candidates were mentioned. Such a regime could also have became sort of permanent. It is said that such a regime would have been as Antisemitic, at least not to the point of official policy or orthodoxy, and would not have been as outwardly aggressive in seeking ‘Lebensraum.’ But had things gone to a a long War, they would have been far more competent than the Nazi regime. But I suppose that there is a double-edged sword in all this as although Hitler was a military incompetent that made impulsive, rash emotional decisions - there is a real possibility that a War with France never would have spawned the risky, but high reward invasion that “Sickle Cut” and Fall Gelb/Rot became. It was Hitler that pushed his reluctant generals for that plan. So Hitler looks like a genius for the success of the Battle for France, then a fool for long term prospects of Operation Barbarossa…
Germany wouldn’t have been a paradise even if Hitler had died in 1938, but at least the world would have been spared another war—maybe. Göering, had he succeeded, and he had many opponents in the regime, would have been very reluctant to take the Reich to war. He certainly deserved the noose–most of the leadership did–however.
Hitler, as most of you probably knew, never put his signature on anything (it was always ‘The Führer wishes’)–either that or his supporters destroyed any incriminating evidence in the final days. So Göering was stuck with signing the Nuremberg Laws. Göering claimed he wasn’t all that anti-Semitic. He did have a much-loved Jewish godfather.
Of all the Nazis, and I don’t believe he was ever a member of the party, I think Admiral Wilhelm Canaris the most interesting.
I don’t know what prompted it, but Canaris turned against Hitler beginning in 1938. Probably the good admiral was shrewd enough to realize the results of the road Hitler was taking, although Hitler’s gambles seemed to be paying off.
I just picked up a paperback at a church rummage sale–an old book (1948), The German Generals Talk by B.H. Liddell Hart. I was particularly interested in reading about my favorite field marshal, Gerd von Runstedt.
There’s no doubt that Göering was self-indulgent and stole as much of Europe’s art treasures as he could get his hands on for his various homes, principally Karinhall. I have never discovered whether the Reichsmarschall was addicted to morphine or to paracodeine, which is less addicting, and the reason he took so much of it. Whatever it was, once in custody by the Americans, he went through withdrawal and by the time of the Nuremberg trial was trimmed down and conducted a vigorous defense.
We have a tendency to downplay our enemies’ abilities and inflate our own. Hitler, in his way, was brilliant, and no coward. During the first war, he was a message runner, which prophesied a very short life.
The more I read about our own FDR, the less a fan I am of him. No one wants to admit their own mortality, but by the time of the 1944 election, he must have known he would never see the war through. Fortunately, he chose Harry Truman and Wallace didn’t get in. After Truman’s dismal twenty-percent approval rating towards the close of his term, he has slowly risen in popularity and has now reached the status of almost a folk hero. And I am saying this as a conservative.
Yes he had not only tendency to loose power - struggles but also to loose real battles and to say lies like that he can supply the whole 6th army in Stalingrad trough air , the battle of Britain also was complete dissaster filled with lies from Goering that Luftwaffe would win , all this make him impossible to take place as leader of the third reich .
Roosevelt didn’t second guess, overrule, and indiscriminately fire his generals. Something Hitler did in his manias, more often than not for his own failures --or for simply telling him the truth. Hitler was only brilliant at obtaining and holding absolute power will a skill set for dramatic public speaking and bluster. His actions showed a massive ineptitude and he made a chain of catastrophic decisions dooming any chance he had of winning to utter failure. And Hitlers ability to live in trenches on the Front lines and inability to adjust to some sort of civilian life afterward may show that he possessed a certain physical courage, but he lacked the moral courage to fact the consequences for his actions and in the end he blamed the German people for what were largely his failures and deranged dreams…
What makes him any worse than a Hitler who believed Goering? Who also believed a parade of inept, lying confidence men from Himmler to Goebbels? A prick that refused permission to his own army to make a tactical withdrawal rather than get involved in a city fight over nothing but a name and be enveloped by the Red Army…
Hitler believed in Goering’s boasts and posturing foretelling of victory. But then he ignored of marginalized his generals who preached any sort of realism…
I’m pretty sure the Sickle cut plan came from Manstein not Hitler. German history reports that Hitlers demands drove the planning process since he wanted and invasion in Nov 1939. Given such a small time from Poland invasion the best the OKW could come up with at such short notice was to dust off the WW-I Schlieffen plan and just update that with mechanized forces. Hitler demanded a more central armored push through Belgium instead of simply an ‘end around’ play. Manstein had pushed his plan quite early but it had been passed over since they were already having to adjust to a renewed schedule based on Hitlers demands. It was only after the invasion was posponed again that time was made available to include Mansteins campaign winning maneuver in the re-rescheduled updated plan.
Reportedly the German cancellation of their strategic bomber programme orginated from Goering need to satisfiy Hitlers demand for more bomber…thus the comment that he could build two mediums for every heavy. Without that pressure, the Luftwaffe could have included a strategic bomber force [albeit small] from the begining of the war. Further their are suggestions that the bombing of dunkirk and the BoB in General followed a similar pattern of Goering wanting to impress his Fuerher on just how well his own service branch could achieve Germanies strategic objectives against the west. This despite the fact that an internal 1937 Luftwaffe wargame/study had shown clearly that any airwar against the RAF without strategic bombers [but including the Ju-88] could never succeed since they could only reliably bomb southern England at best …and that assumed they had already captured airbases in the Belgium Holland coastal regions.
Well Hitler was Hitler with his view of war from WW1 , when commanding the army he used it as toy which should serve for him personally and do whatever he wants . But the problem was that he wasn’t general , not even officer and the other was that he was playing against many enemies , something like to play chess against 10 people together , you have to be genius to win . So Hitler was not the perfect choice for leader neither with all these hungry for power pricks as you say and generals which were nothing but toys because Hitler didn’t want anyone to interrupt his full absolute power ( anyone who did so ended in camp or shooted directly ) . He simply used his charisma to get the power and used it as he wish .
Goering didn’t have neither charisma , neither someone from the high ranks supported him to become a fuhrer , neither he had any success on the battlefield as chief of Luftwaffe , and if i remember at the end of the war Luftwaffe was nothing but a shadow of it’s former power and Goering was hiding in the shadows as well because Hitler realized that all Goering said was lie , at the end if i am not mistaken in his last words Hitler kicked Goering and Himmler out of the party but it was already too late for any general change .
Reading through this thread I was minded a bit before your post to make the point that there is a world of difference between different types of courage and determination, and that Hitler lacked the worthwhile types while FDR had them.
FDR represented some of the virtues of democratic systems of government over other types by reflecting and advancing the generally good values and virtues of the majority of voting Americans (even if many other Americans thought he was the socialist devil incarnate and would happily have destroyed him).
Hitler, having obtained power by undemocratic and devious means to become a dictator, was the opposite, although he certainly reflected and advanced the interests of a significant and especially an influential minority of Germans.
Hitler lacked the professional military training and experience to dictate the strategy and tactics he was able as Fuhrer to impose upon his professional officers.
Millions of men have been to war in various enlisted and officer capacities but almost, probably, none of them have been qualified by their junior to middle level experience to have even the faintest conception of how to direct a brigade, let alone a division, let alone a corps, and vastly less an army, and even much less an army group as Hitler routinely directed.
At the simplest level, how many of us on this board who routinely accepted and followed daily orders at about section, platoon or at most company level had any idea of how or why those orders came down from battalion or brigade or division or corps level, and what strategic objectives they were aimed at?
Hitler had the advantage of unbounded conceit about his abilities as a military strategist and the fatal weakness of his lack of training, experience and expertise in the same area.
Goering at least had much more significant officer experience in WWI than Hitler, although relatively at a level so far below anything that mattered in strategic and high command experience that he wasn’t much better trained than, albeit considerably more distinguished, than Hitler.
Goering’s experience and conduct as a fighter pilot in WWI shows a commendable and generous attitude to his enemies which displays a humanity which Hitler and his ilk, notably Himmler, lacked.
Goering, for all his many faults, was a stronger and better man than most of the Nazi leadership, if only for overcoming his morphine addiction in an era when this was achieved almost exclusively by personal strength of character.
Just to clarify a critical difference between FDR and Hitler which was assumed but not stated in my previous posts, Hitler at critical times acted as supreme military commander of his armed forces while FDR, despite being Commander in Chief of the American military forces, acted as an elected civilian president who told his armed force chiefs what he wanted them to achieve in the national interest and left it to them to use their professional skills to achieve it.
Churchill’s conduct was often similar to FDR’s, but with some distressing instances of Churchill being nearer Hitler by imposing his military conceit and ignorance upon his military chiefs to ensure that they and Britain suffered readily avoidable defeats in Greece, Crete, and Malaya, and almost in North Africa.
I’ve never pretended to have much understanding of military tactics—my primary interest is personalities, both Axis and Allied.
I’m presently trying to muddle through a book about Hitler’s generals, written immediately post-war. No less than Gerd von Runstedt (whom Eisenhower considered one of the finest soldiers in the world) at the time thought that Operation Barbarossa would open up western Europe to invasion. He later realized that the Allies were in no position to mount an operation at that time.
George C. Marshall went along with the concept of an early cross-channel invasion—and even convinced FDR of it, to start a second front to help the struggling Soviet forces. Churchill and the Imperial General Staff knew such a premature invasion was a complete impossibility—certainly not in 1942, or even in 1943. Therefore, Churchill sacrificed Commonwealth soldiers at Dieppe just to prove such an invasion wasn’t feasible.
You are correct. Sickle Cut was largely Manstein’s baby, but other officers (Gen. Halder? and Guderian) also had input to the plan and Hitler was generally unhappy with his generals seeing them as timid and understandably reluctant to attack the large military of France. But this may have been the one instance where Hitler was militarily correct as the French and British were counting on a long War so they could utilize their strategic advantage to increasingly isolate Germany and then attack when the French command felt they could fight a combined arms motorized armored battle on par with the Wehrmacht. I also recall one of the impetuses being the fact that in one of the great military blunders, a Heer officer crash landed in Belgium with what was essentially a reworked “Schlieffen Plan”. The German time tables were blown, but in the end it reassured the French that attempting to defend the low countries would have to be done even if it was not really in their strategic interests to do so and this ironically benefited Fall Gelb…
*It should also be stated that one of the reasons that “Sickle Cut” was so successful went beyond its planning. The aggressiveness of both Guderian and Rommel, and their willingness to countermand or ignore orders they felt were shortsighted and issued by commanders that were out of touch or behind the overall fluid situation was the main reason for its stunning success…
