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The Man Who Lost the War for Germany: Hitler's Tactical Blunders and their Catastrophic Consequences Book Essay
on: Bevin Alexander, Hitler Could Have Won World War II: The
Fatal Errors That Led To Nazi Defeat by Colin
Gerber for
Prof. Marcuse's lecture course |
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& Abstract |
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About Colin Gerber I am a third year Political Science major and History minor. I chose to minor in History because it has always been a hobby of mine. Out of all the history I have studied throughout my education World War Two has captivated more than any other subject. I chose my book on Hitler's military strategy because I am very interested in not only the history of World War Two and everything it entails, but also the military strategy of the conflict. More specifically, I am fascinated by Germany's great victories in the early stages of the war and the horrific defeats it suffered during the second half of the conflict. Abstract (back to top) In his book How Hitler Could Have Won World War II: The Fatal Errors That Led To Nazi Defeat, Bevin Alexander examines the tactical errors made by Hitler during World War Two that led to the destruction of Nazi Germany and his "Thousand Year Reich." It is the individual decisions made by Hitler, which ignored practical rationality, that sealed Germany's fate. Alexander uses historical fact and educated speculation to construct a series of scenarios that would have completely altered the outcome of World War Two. The resulting product is a haunting portrait of what could have been if Hitler had properly managed the war instead of gambling his country's fate on high risk military operations such as the invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarosa) and the Battle of the Bulge. Though part speculation, Alexander's book also describes the actual events and outcomes of the war in contrast to his constructions. |
Essay (back to top) The Allies’ victory in World War Two is widely considered to be the result of stunning tactical and material advantages possessed by the Allied forces. But look deeper into the facts and another explanation is presented; it was not the Allies who won the war, but Hitler who lost it. Bevin Alexander’s book, How Hitler Could Have Won World War II: The Fatal Errors that Led To Nazi Defeat, which is part historical analysis and part scholarly speculation, offers this alternate viewpoint. Alexander argues that a combination of Hitler’s military gambles and mounting paranoid irrationality led to a series of devastating tactical errors that doomed Nazi Germany and lost the war for the Axis powers. By presenting historical fact with careful speculation, Alexander offers a frightening picture of what could have been, if Hitler had not blundered tactically with such catastrophic results throughout the course of the war. Some of the great tactical errors Alexander considers significant in changing the tide of war against Nazi Germany include: the fatal invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, before complete victory in the west, the slaughter of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad, the failure to recognize North Africa and the Middle East for the tactical advantages they offered, the ineptitude of Hitler’s decision making during the Normandy invasion in June of 1944, and finally Hitler’s final gamble with Battle of the Bulge and its unrealistic goals. For the first seven years of his reign over the so-called “Thousand Year Reich”. Hitler gained stunning victories through deceptive/ruthless international diplomacy and a shrewd tactical doctrine, attacking his enemies where they were the weakest. Alexander explicitly states this in the introduction of his book “…from 1933 to 1940, he avoided strength, struck at weakness, and achieved such stunning success that he was on the threshold of complete victory” (Alexander, ix). From Hitler’s ascension into power in Germany, up to the invasion of the Soviet Union in June of 1941, Nazi Germany knew nothing but swift and crushing victory. The invasion of Russia marks the first step in a line of horrific blunders perpetrated by Hitler that would seal the fate of Nazi Germany. The absurdity of Hitler’s plan to attack the Soviet Union head-on was a blaringly apparent reality. Hitler was attacking a foe with seemingly limitless manpower deep into its own territory. Napoleon failed in his 1812 invasion of Russia (Alexander, 109), and so would Hitler. The invasion of the Soviet Union, codenamed “Operation Barbarosa”, after Frederick I, one of the most influential of the Holy Roman emperors, the invasion called for some two-hundred and five German divisions (Alexander, 89). This invasion met with great initial success against the less than prepared Soviet forces, including the stunning victory at Kiev where German forces captured a staggering 665,000 Russian soldiers (Alexander, 99). These successes eventually slowed then ceased because of limitations caused by the material/ personnel limitations of the German army against a country with limitless potential (the Soviet Union), as well as the most deadly of Russian weapons, winter. The invasion of the Soviet Union also marks Hitler’s first major military blunder of the war, a decision that “…worried a number of German senior officers” (Alexander, 45). These officers included Major General Alfred Jodl (armed forces supreme command) and Admiral Erich Raeder (Commander of the German Navy). Both of these most senior and talented military officers in Hitler’s general staff opposed a direct strike to the east, but rather favored a “peripheral strategy” (Alexander, 46). This more favorable approach also endorsed by Alexander would have consisted of the German Army seizing a weak North Africa and Middle East. At the time of France’s surrender North Africa contained only roughly 30,000 British soldiers and an incomplete armored division to protect Egypt and the Suez Canal (Alexander, 53). During this same time, Germany possessed forty inactive armored divisions, and if just four of the divisions had been sent to North Africa, Germany would have scored an almost unopposed victory (Alexander, xi). With North Africa secure, Germany would have been able to easily take control of the Middle East and possess and a limitless supply of the one resource Germany’s war machine needed most of all, oil. From there, Alexander asserts that the Germans would have had direct control of all the resources it needed to make war (Alexander, 50). Further, Germany would not only control vast amounts of oil, but would also threaten the Soviet Union’s oil resources in the Caucuses located in the Caspian Sea region, just north of Iran. By controlling North Africa and the Middle East, Nazi Germany would greatly marginalize Britain and severely lower its capacity to counter the German threat on continental Europe. At the same time, control of the previously stated regions by the Germans would paralyze the Soviet Union. Not only could the Germans attack from the west, but also from the south and endanger the regions from which Russia derived much of its vital economic material (Alexander, 53). Alexander adds that the strategy to take North Africa and the Middle East would have yielded swift and total victory while greatly destabilizing Great Britain by causing them to allocate all their remaining strength to protect their colonial possessions, and isolating the Soviet Union by virtually surrounding and cutting off the entire country. Additionally, Alexander insists that an attack pointed at peripheral targets instead of a direct attack on the Soviet Union would have coincided succinctly with the established German order of battle: attacking the enemy in its weakest points (Alexander, 51). This is the reason why Alexander states that the attack on the Soviet Union was the first and biggest tactical mistake made by Hitler during the war, it is very apparent that this decision took Nazi Germany from the brink of total victory and world domination to the depths of total annihilation at the hands of the Allies. Not only was the initial decision to invade Soviet Union a tremendous military blunder made by Hitler, but so were many of the decisions handed down by Hitler to his armies throughout the campaigns in the east. None more apparent than the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942, Alexander sums up the effect of the Battle of Stalingrad by describing it as: “One of the most poignant examples ever recorded of a ruler engineering his own destruction” (Alexander, 145). This battle officially signaled not only the beginning of the end for the German army in the east, but also the fragile and irrational state Hitler’s mind was deteriorating into. This battle ultimately caused the needless capture of over twenty two much-needed divisions and the destruction of the entire German Sixth Army (Alexander, 155). This catastrophic loss could have been avoided if Hitler had not insisted, irrationally, on the capture at any cost of the city that bore Joseph Stalin’s name (Alexander, 146). Along with being absolutely committed to capturing the city, Hitler gave the order: by penalty of death that there were to be no retreat, even when defeat was imminent. One general wrote of Hitler’s military leadership: “Obstinate defense of every foot of ground gradually became the be all and end all” (Alexander, 162). This statement cleanly sums up Hitler’s military strategy as the war’s tide turned against Germany. Following horrific defeat after defeat Hitler insisted on holding every inch of ground and not allowing his generals to withdraw their men even in the face of annihilation. This self-destructive doctrine adopted by Hitler clearly cements Alexander’s thesis that it was a series of personal military blunders by Adolf Hitler that lost the war for Nazi Germany. Not only did Hitler’s increasingly delusional military strategy affect his forces on the eastern front, but there were also many crucial tactical mistakes made in the west. None of these mistakes is greater than the poor and indecisive manner by which Hitler reacted after the commencement of the Normandy invasion in June of 1944. The greatest error that Hitler made during this operation was the belief that the Normandy invasion was a diversion for an eventual incursion that was to come at the Pas de Calais (Alexander, 251). This prompted Hitler to hold most of his best armored divisions in reserve during the Normandy invasion, even when brilliant German strategist and war hero, Erwin Rommel insisted on their release. By the time Hitler realized that the Normandy invasions were indeed the real attack on France by the Allies as opposed to a diversion, the German forces had lost the initiative and the Normandy campaign became a defensive operation for the Germans (Alexander, 253). Alexander describes the Normandy invasion as the one event besides the Battle of the Bulge that sealed Germany’s fate in the west. He concludes that Hitler’s micromanagement of the armored forces needed to counterattack the Normandy beachheads, in conjunction with his insistence on holding all positions, similar to orders given in the east, led to Germany’s ultimate defeat in the west (Alexander, 255). The battle of Normandy furthers the cause of Alexander’s theory of the reason why Germany lost the war. This battle is once again an example where Hitler’s own decisions and irrational choices lead to Nazi Germany’s greatest losses of the war, bringing them ever closer to total defeat. Just as detrimental as the Battle of Normandy, Hitler’s final military gamble of the war, and consequently Germany’s last general offensive, the Battle of the Bulge sealed Germany’s fate in the west. Alexander describes this attack by Germany as: “…betting everything on a single roll of the dice.” (Alexander, 277). This description aptly sums up the desperation of this plan. Hitler intended to sweep through the Ardennes forest in Belgium and hook behind the Allies, cutting them off, and then eventually driving north to the port of Antwerp to reopen the western front (Alexander, 277). This last gamble by Hitler would entail throwing every available division in the west against the Allies. Astonishingly, Hitler managed to gather a total of twenty-eight divisions (250,000 men) for this offensive (Alexander, 280). This attack initially took the Allies by surprise, even obliterating several green American divisions (106th Infantry and the 14th Calvary Group), (Alexander, 285). These initial successes eventually dwindled due to the shortage of German supplies, particularly fuel for the Panzer forces, and the intervention by the Allied air forces and fresh armor reinforcements from the south in the form of Patton’s 7th army (Alexander, 288). The German defeat in this battle squandered many of Germany’s irreplaceable tanks and troops, while the losses suffered by the Allies were swiftly recuperated. Alexander notes that this battle delayed the Allies a couple weeks in the west, but overall, greatly accelerated Germany’s path to defeat (Alexander, 289). Once again as seen in the Battle of Normandy, Hitler’s choices brought German forces horrific defeat and loss, bringing the country closer to collapse. Hitler’s decision to gamble his last fresh troops in a grandiose and idiotic last ditch plan against insurmountable odds illustrate the point to which Hitler’s delusions had taken a hold of his tactical decision-making ability. In retrospect, reversing tactical decisions made by Adolf Hitler could have changed the outcome of the war to Germany’s favor. There is still the possibility that the Allies would not have reacted as predicted by Alexander. Victory by Nazi Germany depended heavily on keeping the United States out of the war and preventing an alliance between the western powers and the Soviet Union (Alexander, ix). It was these very circumstantial factors that would have allowed Hitler and Nazi Germany to gain total victory. By permitting Hitler to divide his enemies and attack them at their weakest, Nazi Germany would have bought valuable time to gain strength and cement its influence on conquered territories. Though Germany would remain virtually unchecked in continental Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, Germany would still have to contend with Britain’s immense naval power and its vast network of colonies. These obstacles would plague the German war machine and further aspirations of world domination. Alexander makes many educated guesses out of necessity, filling in the blanks by putting himself in Hitler’s shoes to look at the war through his eyes. Though these are highly educated guesses, no one can ever be completely sure as to how these decisions would have affected the outcome of the war. Overall, Alexander’s work in How Hitler Could Have Won World War II: The Fatal Errors That Led To Nazi Defeat, accurately portrays Hitler’s negligent mismanagement of the war for Germany. Though military gambles bring Hitler astounding victories in the early stages of the war, these victories were also products of careful planning and exploitation of the enemy’s weaknesses by Hitler’s best generals. As the war progressed Hitler’s bold gambles began to backfire, and irrationality take hold of his decision making. Alexander highlights the choice to invade the Soviet Union as opposed to seeking another avenue to be Hitler’s greatest mistake of the war. Parallel to the disastrous invasion of the Soviet Union, Alexander points to Hitler’s great blunders in the west, including his inability to turn back the Allied landings at Normandy because of indecision and the wasteful loss of soldiers in the Battle of the Bulge in a wasteful final gamble. This book offers a very provocative picture of what could have been, if Hitler had not made poor tactical decisions, such as the ones mentioned above. Alexander’s book is important for understanding the significance one person can have on the outcome of history from minor events to Hitler’s decisions and their effects on the entire course of World War Two. |
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Any student tempted to use this paper for an assignment in another course or school should be aware of the serious consequences for plagiarism. Here is what I write in my syllabi:
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