Hitler as Military Commander

by John Strawson

Was Hitler 'the greatest strategic genius of all time' as Nazi propaganda would have us believe, or a facile amateur in military affairs? Why was the startling success of his campaigns in Poland and France followed by the blundering mistakes in Russia, Tunis and Normandy? Might the German General Staff have won the war without Hitler's continual disastrous interference? John Strawson answers these and other questions by showing how Hitler's insatiable preoccupation with war and conquest was translated into reality. While the willpower behind the revitalized German army was Hitler's the author examines the Fuhrer's eccentric use of the most formidable war machine the world had ever seen. This lucid assessment is brought alive by the accounts of those who served Hitler both on his staff and as field commanders. The Western Front

Genres: Military History, World War II, Biography, History, War, Nonfiction

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Major General John Strawson, CBE was a British Army officer, best known for his service during the Second World War in the Middle East and Italy, and afterwards in Germany and Malaya.

Following the amalgamation of the 4th and 8th Hussars as The Queen's Royal Irish Hussars, he commanded the Regiment in Malaysia and Germany. For his leadership during the Borneo campaign he was invested O.B.E. (Officer of the Order of the British Empire).

Later he commanded at brigade level and was Chief of Staff, United Kingdom Land Forces. For this latter service he was advanced to C.B.E. (Commander of the Order of the British Empire). He had previously been awarded the US Bronze Star for his leadership during the Italian campaign of 1944-45. In civilian life he became a prolific author, especially on military matters.

After retiring from the Army, Strawson wrote a number of books of military history and biography, including studies of the British Army. He collaborated with General Sir John Hackett and others in writing the two volumes of "The Third World War". His later books include "The Duke and the Emperor; Wellington and Napoleon" (1994) and "Churchill and Hitler: In Victory and Defeat" (1997).

Reviews

[Jur · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very readible chronological narrative of Hitler's carreer in command and control of the German army. To me the most interesting thing was Hitler's relationship with the generals, and how he managed to subject them to his ends step by step, and how he always acted towards that end. By and large they stuck with him till the end.

I guess we have come to know much more of how war was conducted in the 40 years since the first release of this book, but as it doesn't touch too much on these details, I guess it is still quite a good account generally.

It starts out with Hitler's own military carreer, as it would shape his later views on the army and especially the 'Prussian' generals that he despised and blamed for the defeat in WWI.

Waterson the describes how Hitler first got the army on his side in 1934 to consolidate his political power, dealing with the pretentions of the SA to create a revolutionary army. Strawson points out that Hitler correctly saw that he could revolutionise the army through his spell over the junior officer corps. In return Hitler also gains a personal oath to himself from every soldier, which proved a very strong deterrent to opposition in later stages of the war.

From then on Hitler slowly but surely extended his control over the army, removing minister of War Blomberg and armed forces commander Fritsch in 1937 with dirty tricks to bring the armed forces under his direct command. By early 1938 some in the army started to get second thoughts about Hitler as his occupation of Austria and Czechia exceed the revisionist programme they had gladly subscribed to. At several points there was talk of a coup, but it never materialised.

While Hitler's pragmatism and opportunism served him well while executing his plans to reunite the German irridenta and bring Austra 'back home in the Reich', it failed him after the Fall of France. By then he had limitless, wide ranging options and enough resources to play on more than one board at a time without immediate failure. So despite his decision in the summer of 1940 to attack Russia, he allowed himself to be distracted by Italian problems in the Mediterranean.

And during Barbarossa, his indecision cost the Wehrmacht precious time before deciding finally on Moscow. By then, it was too late. However, it was also the point where Hitler finally attained full control over the army. As the Red Army counterattacked in December 1941, Hitler demanded the Wehrmacht fought where it stood and sacked every general or officer that disagreed or retreated without orders. The fact that the Wehrmacht survived this crisis seemed to vindicate Hitler's choice and confirmed his confidence in his own genius.

Strawson effectively argues that Hitler grew more erratic as his control became greater, and his opportunism led to march and countermarch and misunderstandings on objectives with his subordinates. He micro-managed the battlefield and robbed commanders of their initiative, exactly the point where German operational art had been superior.

Also, he was losing his grasp on what was realistic. Point was of course that he'd always been 'proved' right when playing bold and imaginative strokes. That may have worked well in fluid political circumstances, it was no help in a drawn out toe to toe with the Ruskis.

Hitler used the same tactics against the generals as he used against his other opponents by overstepping boundaries of decency that others felt themselves constrained by. He continually harangued the top generals on their caution, lack of vision and lack of faith in his genius. Trusting his own gut feeling (which in the mid-1930s was eerily accurate) he pushed through his programme over muted protest.

And yet, he could command great loyalty from subordinates, instill confidence in those previously dejected, even up to the last days of April 1945. The highest ranking generals lost their ability to argue against him. His personality was overwhelming.

The great crisis of the 20th July 1944 plot critically undermines the trust of Hitler in his generals, even though those complicit are only a tiny fraction of the army. Hitler takes severe revenge on those implicated and nazifies the army. It is strange that in a book that puts so much emphasis on the relationship between Hitler and his general, this event only gets 2 pages of attention. If you want to know about the plotter's side of the equasion and it's long history, you are better served with Joachim Fest's Plotting Hitler's Death.

Strawson concludes that Hitler is neither a genius nor a foolish amateur, but a complex man, who had the measure of his political opponents in the 1930s, who grasped the idea of Blitzkrieg [it is disputable whether he really did], had extraordinary will power and ability to inspire and intimidate but also micromanaged, could not hold to one strategical objective nor co-operate effectively with the army and who finally lost his grasp of reality.

One of the things that bugs me out is that some of the highest ranking opponent of Hitler, Halder, never did anything, not even resign. His predecessor, Beck, had at least stepped down when Hitler planned to invade Czechia. And Halder professed in his diary to hate Hitlers guts. Yet he planned all the Blitzkrieg campaigns from Poland to Barbarossa until he was himself relieved in 1942. Similarly, guys like Guderian and Rundstedt who keep coming back after being dismissed. That goes beyond mere obeyance.

[Andrew Wardle · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. This is very good military history. A broad overview of Hitler's performance as Commander-in-Chief of the German Army in WWII, it is crisp, factual, considered, and intelligently-written. Other reviews on this site complain that it is "dated". By this I can only assume they mean the writing, because it was published in 1971 - can history written 26 years after the event be "dated" ? No new facts have emerged about WWII from a German perspective in the subsequent years, so all that has changed is fashions in history writing. And this is indeed old-fashioned military history writing - giving the facts, but also giving a considered opinion with the benefit of hindsight. I suspect the problem for the doubters is that some of the opinion is unfashionable. This is a sharp antidote to the school of thought fashioned by Sir Basil Liddell-Hart's "The Other Side Of The Hill" - which pretty much gave the surviving German generals of 1939-45 carte blanche to provide us with their self-serving accounts of how they were all geniuses and the only reason they lost the war was because of Hitler's blunders. Just like all the atrocities were committed by "the Nazis" and "the SS" and the regular German army was as pure as the driven snow. Really ? No.
General Strawson presents a much more balanced view of Hitler as military commander. Yes, he blundered, especially late in the war where the odds were against him and Germany. But early on, his grasp of strategy, informed by his experience as a demagogic politician, was better than that of his professional advisers, who advised caution where he felt that rapid action would paralyse the opposition - the very essence of "Blitzkrieg". But then things started to go wrong, and he was unable to adapt his thinking to conduct a long war for which Germany was unprepared. But who, in 1940, would have predicted that Great Britain, the remnants of her army straggling back from France, bereft of allies, would have refused to make peace ? He "dissipated" his armies rather than concentrate on the vital strategic objectives - but at the time, there were sound reasons for this which are easy to deride in retrospect. And his prediction that Russia would collapse "as soon as the door was kicked in", as France had, proved to be catastrophically wrong - but most contemporary strategists agreed with him. Gratuitously declaring war on the USA, and then failing to make any overtures towards his accidental ally Japan to coordinate strategies, was crass, hubristic folly. And, like Napoleon before him, he had no inkling of the importance of naval strategy in conducting a global war.

As in his other books, the widely-read General Strawson quotes many great political and military thinkers in support of his arguments. His command of the language and his rhetorical skills are first-rate. There are too many apposite points, crisply made, to quote in an amateur review like this.
Two vignettes summed up for me his final verdict on Hitler's failure. Firstly an analysis of his response as things started to go awry:
"In choosing or taking a course of action, he was constantly finding good reasons for supporting a policy already decided on rather than examining all the factors involved and so arriving at a good policy. There was far too much reliance on intuition and willpower, not enough on reasoned military calculation."
And secondly the account of the Fuhrer-Conferences of late 1942, where situation maps of the whole of the German Army's operations were replaced by one large-scale map of a single city - Stalingrad. Not even an original objective of the 1942 campaign, it became a fatal distraction.......and a turning-point.

My one cavil about the historical analysis would be that the author discusses the "dissipation" of the German Army - its dispersion on too many divergent campaigns rather than concentrating to pursue one objective - which occurred after the Battle of France in 1940. But he fails to mention the simultaneous "dilution" of its most important elements, the armoured divisions, which was just as important. After the French Campaign Hitler "doubled" the number of Panzer divisions overnight - by halving the tank strength, and therefore the hitting power, in each one. This didn't matter in the Balkans campaigns, where they easily prevailed over understrength British forces and Greek and Yugoslav armies with no armour at all - but it became a significant factor in Operation Barbarossa, where it quickly became clear that German Army Groups required two tank armies (Panzergruppe) to make progress. Since (without further dilution) they only had 4 between 3 Army Groups, this meant in practice that two Army Groups stalled whilst one advanced (thus exposing its flanks to counterattack). Once German objectives became obvious (Moscow, Leningrad, Crimea, the Caucasus, Stalingrad.......), this became untenable. And that dilution, definitely, was Hitler's fault.

[Roger · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Strawson was a retired British General by the time he came to write this book, which looks specifically at Hitler's ability as a commander of armed forces, which he was over every battleground during World War Two.

Strawson divides his book into two sections; the period of the War when Hitler was making the geopolitical and military running and other countries were reacting to his moves, and the latter period of the War when he was reduced to himself reacting to the decisions and actions of the Allied powers.

Over the course of his narrative, Strawson makes a case that while Hitler had a strong geopolitical sense, and grasped how modern weaponry and combined-arms operations could change the way war could be fought, he had no real grasp of how individual armies should be manoeuvred and used tactically or even strategically.

It was the Battle of France that, despite the German success, is the first illustration of these fundamental flaws within Hitler. He quickly grasped the way that a combined arms attack could quickly dislocate and destroy the French position and lead to disarray, with a bolder vision than that held by his General Staff. The absolute success of the attack on France fed Hitler's massive ego, and led him to believe that not only was he a better strategist than his Generals, but also superior when it came to tactics.

However, it was precisely at the level of army tactics that Hitler let down his armed forces. As Strawson writes "...in spite of being a gambler [Hitler] was unwilling to stake all on a winning number." As evidence of this view Strawson puts forward several examples, including Hitler's failure at Dunkirk, and his failure to adequately support the Afrika Korps until it was too late to make a decisive difference.

The most interesting part of the book for me was Strawson's writing on the Mediterranean Theatre, explaining that far from being a sideshow, if Hitler had fully understood Grand Strategy he would have grasped that: a) it was important to keep the Allies out of the basin as that secured his Southern flank (the Balkans, Italy, Greece, Türkiye) and b) that by pushing the British out of Egypt (eminently possible if Rommel had been supported in an adequate and timely manner) he could have threatened Ukraine and the Caucuses oil fields far more effectively and changed his Russian campaign.

That he didn't do these things comes down fundamentally to the fact that Hitler lacked the imagination to create dynamic strategy. All he could see is the dreams of his youth, and was unable to change as the situation of the War developed. He was unable to see the openings that his gambles had created, and unable to take advantage of them.

His lack of experience in tactics of deploying armies (as opposed to Companies or Platoons, which he also did) and his refusal to listen to those that did have experience led to the suicidal attacks and last-man defences that did so much to destroy the Wehrmacht as a fighting force as the War progressed.

Strawson's book is well-argued, but written in a somewhat pedestrian manner. There is a lot of explicatory material that - while it might be necessary for those unschooled in this subject - can bog down the reader. Of interest to arm-chair strategists only methinks.

Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strawson, a military man, confines himself entirely with battles . He does not discuss ancillary activities such as the German military's involvement with partisan conflicts, internal security or the extermination of peoples behind the lines, all of which constituted severe drains and constraints on the Wehrmacht. This constitues, in my opinion, a considerable flaw, the deployment of troops and resources to such ancillary activities surely ranking as one of the major mistakes made by Hitler, second only perhaps to his invasion of the Soviet Union. Still, as a retelling of the major battles of the war this book certainly wasn't bad and Strawson writes well enough.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short, and concise, full of information, but as a student history, I didn't really discover anything new about Hitler's megalomania.

[Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book difficult to follow. The grammer and sentence structure made for a confusing read. Strawson knows his stuff, though.

[Nathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Chronological account, now somewhat dated, of Hitler's role in strategic and command decisions before and during the War, and his dealings with politicians and generals.

Written in the 70s, before access to most Russian sources was available, this has an overemphasis on the western front, but at least makes an effort to draw out examples from there that can be used as wider truths. Oh, and he thinks Monty was the best thing going, a view which has changed a bit since.

Nothing terribly new here. Go watch Downfall instead.

Rated PG for war themes.

[Dave · Rating 1 out of 5]

A decent look at Hitler's role in military decisions during World War II, but largely outdated now (this book was written in 1971).