Question Regarding Hitler!?

Question

hi all, juz to ask, was hitler a master tactician or was it mere stroke of luck that allowed him to achieve his foregn policy? hopefully someone would enlighten me about this question i've always had on my mind. thanks. (:

Answer 1

Overall Hitler was a very poor tactician. His successes were short term and due primarily to the excellent training of his army and abilities of his officer corps.

His failings are numerous, but the primary ones are probably:

1. Attacking the Soviet Union, before defeating the British. He had severly weakened the British, but instead of finishing them off, he divided his forces between two fronts. This allowed the British to slowly stop Nazi attacks and once the US came in, to start counter attacking in large numbers. If he had finished the British, he would have had more forces to dedicate to a later attack on the Eastern Front and the US would not have had a dependable base to use against Nazi Europe.

2. Delaying his initial attack on the Soviet Union for more than a month to win the battle in the Balkans. Attacking the Soviet Union was an error while still at war with Britian, as mentioned above, but when it was determined to attack, he should have attacked as soon as the spring rains stopped. The campaign season in Northeastern Europe is traditionally very short due to harsh winters and wet springs and falls. By waiting over a month to begin he lost valuable time, that cost his army a quick decisive victory. With the limited, the German army almost took Moscow, but when winter came early and strong, they were unable to complete it. If they had taken Moscow in that first summer, it is very possible that the entire Soviet Union would have collapsed.

3. He concentrated on landmarks and cities instead of important strategic areas. Hitler poured hundreds of thousands of soldiers into the battles for Leningrad and Stalingrad, even though the cities held very little strategic value. If he would have simply left a defensive force around the cities and sent the majority of his army into the oilfields of Baku or the factory regions farther east, the Soviets would not have had the capacity to wage war at a major scale.

4. Sending limited and poor quality troops to North Africa. Hitler's generals wanted to create a pyrmid which would have easily defensible boundries, to limit the number of troops needed to guard areas. The southern boundary of this area was supposed to be the Mediteranean, but when the Italians failed to conquer North Afirca, he needed to extend it. The next defensible boundry would have been the Sahara. If he had sent a large well trained force, they could have defeated the British in 6 months and locked down there southern boundary with a few thousand soliders. This would have also allowed his army to take the Suez canal, cutting British supply lines and severly weaking their war fighting capabilities.

5. Declaring war on the US. Japan and Germany had a very limited pact, agreeing to go to the others defense if attacked by a third party. When Germany attacked Russia, Japan did not declare war on Russia, because Russian did not instigate the attack. When Japan attacked the US, Germany had the same option. The US did not declare war on the US, FDR's speech to congress after Pearl Harbor did not mention the Germans at all. There was actually strong feelings in the US against going to war against the Germans. Most people felt that German was involved in a primarily European conflict that did not affect the US one way or the other, so we should concentrate on defeating the Japanese. FDR wanted to declare war on Germany, but he didn't have enough support to do it. Hitler resolved the problem for him by declaring war on the US a few days later. This allowed the US to openly and in much greater numbers send material to the allied forces and eventually start sending millions of soldiers to Europe.

6. Mistreating Soviet citizens. Many people in the Soviet Union hated the Soviet government, especially in the Western parts of the country, such as the Ukraine, Georgia, and the Baltic States. This people would have gladly fought against the Soviets, until Hilter abused them so badly that they felt that the Soviets were better than the other option. This led to the creation of thousands of guerilla groups in these areas that killed thousands of Germans and tied up thousands of others behind enemy lines.

7. Trying to build a powerful blue water navy instead of concentrating on U-boats. The Germans had great naval engineers, but didn't have the time or capacity to build a fleet comparable to the allies. In spite of this Hitler tried to match the allies, wasting all of those resources, when his most succesful asset, the U-boats were under resourced. If he had concentrated on U-boats there would have been a very good possibility that with increased numbers they could have cut off the UK from its supplies.

These are some of the most obvious problems, although there were many more. He did have a few good tactial or strategic ideas, but by and large he was horrible and luckily for everybody he was able to force his ideas through a general staff that disagreed with many of them. Otherwise the war could have ended very differently.

Answer 2

Most people under the age of 50, except historians, have no clue as to the actions of Hitler. The long answer from Ahoff provides some correct information, but some incorrect as well. Rather than correcting the incorrect info and taking up more space that any one should, I refer your the The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer. This 845 page historical account of the Third Reich was a commonly used text by all history departments at almost all the universities in America during 1960s-70s-80s.

Answer 3

Hitler had some strategic battlefield vision, however, he let his hatred for the non-pure and an increasing dependence on drugs interfere too much. The German army had some of the best weapons in the war, the precursor to the AK47, the best in Tanks, the dreaded 88, the V2 and buzz bombs, and some great Generals, like Rommel. Yet, Hitler was so erratic by the early 1940's, that one program was stopped while he sent his great minds off in another direction.

This is good news for us, or we might be typing in German right now; had the Germans concentrated on strategic air bombing, and some of their other industries, had they not held back at Dunkirk, yadda yadda. this would be a very different world.

Answer 4

Hitler contacted syphilis from a Jewish prostitute with whom he had sex in 1908. Left untreated it leads to madness and megalomania. King Phillip, Alexander's father had it too. So the hatred towards Jews arose. In his Mein Kampf he writes about eradication of syphilis and Jews. His Generals were mad to some extent. His foreign policy was to simply spread the dominant Aryan race all over. For that he had to remove the lesser people.

Answer 5

He was quite charismatic. He knew very well where to launch his campaigns -amongst poorer people. Had he launched his campaign in 1933 in the North of Germany, he would definitely have been arrested.In short he was a bit too intelligent for his own good.

Answer 6

There is not a day this question is asked here in Yahoo, you can look through all the hundreds of answers:

http://answers.yahoo.com/search/search_result;_ylt=Ao4CqjO.wwUWHSB_yJMvx9mHxQt.?p=hitler

Answer 7

Hitler was a maniac. The fact that he had to commit suicide in his bunker shows that he didn't achieve anything except to cause the death of some 20 million people in the 7 years he was in power.