Hitler's Biggest Mistake

Discussion in 'General' started by paulyb102, Feb 14, 2005.

  1. Za Rodinu

    Za Rodinu Hot air manufacturer

  2. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    My view has been quite simple.Hitler's strategic mistake was to take Germany to war on two fronts.Not heeding past history was his downfall.

    He tried to achieve an understanding with Britain after Dunkirk without success.We are lucky that the right people were in charge to spurn his offer.We now know that had Halifax become P.M, Great Britain would have probably had the status of Vichy France,a puppet government.

    However,his first mistake occurred in March 1939, when, despite his assurances to the contrary and not satisfied with the Sudetenland, he marched into the rest of Czeckslovakia proclaiming the Third Reich's presence as a "protector". From then on both Great Britain and France were alert to the fact that Hitler could not be trusted and would tear up any treaty to achieve his territorial ambitions.Suspicions were clearly formed and it was clear that war would follow in the not to distant future.
     
  3. L J

    L J Senior Member

    My view has been quite simple.Hitler's strategic mistake was to take Germany to war on two fronts.Not heeding past history was his downfall.

    He tried to achieve an understanding with Britain after Dunkirk without success.We are lucky that the right people were in charge to spurn his offer.We now know that had Halifax become P.M, Great Britain would have probably had the status of Vichy France,a puppet government.

    However,his first mistake occurred in March 1939, when, despite his assurances to the contrary and not satisfied with the Sudetenland, he marched into the rest of Czeckslovakia proclaiming the Third Reich's presence as a "protector". From then on both Great Britain and France were alert to the fact that Hitler could not be trusted and would tear up any treaty to achieve his territorial ambitions.Suspicions were clearly formed and it was clear that war would follow in the not to distant future.
    I have to disagree on your last point:Britain and France knew before march 1939 that Hitler could not be trusted:he wanted not only the Sudeten heim ins Reich,but also German domination of the remaining of Czechoslovakia (btw:a lot op people were convinced that this would automatically follow ),but of course he could not say this publically .
     
  4. Gerard

    Gerard Seelow/Prora

    I would agree with Harry on his last point LJ - up to that point it could be reasoned that Hitler was trying to bring all German-Speaking people and provinces back into the Reich - Once Czechoslovakia fell the West realised that appeasement would not halt Hitler's aims and the only thing that would was force, or the threat of.
     
  5. coastwatcher42

    coastwatcher42 Junior Member

    Operation Barbarossa, in my opinion, was Hitler's biggest mistake but it was the combination of all his mistakes that did him in. Smaller things, such as not developing a long-range heavy bomber to driving out the Jewish (and non-Jewish) intelligencia played major roles in Germany's defeat. Imagine if he had embraced the Jews and Einstein and other physicists had stayed. Germany might have developed an atomic bomb in time to bring the war to a close on their terms.
     
  6. L J

    L J Senior Member

    Operation Barbarossa, in my opinion, was Hitler's biggest mistake but it was the combination of all his mistakes that did him in. Smaller things, such as not developing a long-range heavy bomber to driving out the Jewish (and non-Jewish) intelligencia played major roles in Germany's defeat. Imagine if he had embraced the Jews and Einstein and other physicists had stayed. Germany might have developed an atomic bomb in time to bring the war to a close on their terms.
    Germany had not the means to develop a ABomb;even if the Germans had the ABomb(depending in which year ),it would not be sufficient to prevent a defeat .
    The importance of the Bomb in WW II is a myth:when the US used the Bomb,Japan was already defeated;I think that it is a illusion that a bomb on Tokyo in 1942 would force Japan to capitulate .
     
  7. brndirt1

    brndirt1 Senior Member

    Germany had not the means to develop a ABomb;even if the Germans had the ABomb(depending in which year ),it would not be sufficient to prevent a defeat .
    The importance of the Bomb in WW II is a myth:when the US used the Bomb,Japan was already defeated;I think that it is a illusion that a bomb on Tokyo in 1942 would force Japan to capitulate .

    I respectfully disagree with only the last portion of your post, the Germans truely didn't have either the means nor the material with which to produce an atomic device. They weren't just going down the wrong path, they didn't know how much of the material they couldn't produce would be needed for a critical mass. Heisenberg had assured Hitler that while he couldn't produce an atomic device during the war, that virtually guaranteed that their enemies wouldn't be able to do so either. Hubris without doubt.

    I do agree that the Japanese might have been defeated in reality, but they didn’t acknowledge the reality of their situation until the bombs. Starving is an especially horrible way to die, but that would take much more time to bring the slightly built Japanese to their knees. They could grow rice, turnips, cabbage, mullet, and Koi in the home islands as well as fish the near shore with throw nets, and while the fare would be slim and their calories limited, they could survive for quite some time (at a reduced population number) even with firebombings. America was tiring of war, and with the threat of Hitlerism now non-existent, the Japanese seemed to be the lesser of the two evils. How to bring them to the surrender table as quickly as possible is the question. In the case of the firestorms, WOW what a scary thing that would be. Not a blinding second between life and death (in the atomic blast area). But, hours and/or days of bombing to finally build up a self-sustaining fire with hurricane force winds sucking people, debris, and animals into the center of the fire. More civilians died as the direct and infection rates of the firestorms than both atomics and the radiation effects combined.

    Can you imagine being caught out on the street when the 150 mph wind started dragging your light-weight body down the street while bricks "popped", asphalt boiled, and lamp-posts softened and bent in toward the "heart of the blaze"? How terrible would those moments be psychologically? Or how about doing the intelligent thing and getting into a shelter below ground level ? As the roar of the wind moving down the channels of the streets increased, the oxygen in your shelter would be "sucked out" to feed the fire, there you would be suffocated. Or as many Japanese did, jump into a canal to escape the fire, and there be boiled alive. Must have taken much time for all of those nasty things to happen.

    The firestorm created in Toyama just a few days before the Hiroshima bombing devoured about 98 percent of the city, neither Hiroshima or Nagasaki suffered that extent of loss. The very "effectiveness" of the Toyama firestorm may have unwittingly made the second atomic on Nagasaki necessary. With the huge devastation at Toyama, and similar (but lesser) destruction at Hiroshima those in command wondered if it really was a "new" weapon, or just an improvement on the creation of firestorms which the Americans were getting better and better at. They never sent scientists to either Hiroshima or Nagasaki to measure radiation levels until after Aug. 10th.

    Fire, no matter how destructive, is a natural occurrence, and can be combated. Harnessing a "force of nature", especially the "basic power of the universe" (incorrect terminology, but used by Truman in his speech), against an "Empire of the Sun", ruled by a "Son of the Sun" was emotionally, politically, and militarily too much to deny as the "beginning of the end". In the minds of many religious Japanese we had captured their goddess and used her power against them. The Japanese religion, Shinto, teaches that the emperor is the descendant of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu. As such in 1945 he was a living god and could, according to the Shinto religion control nature such as the power of the sun. Shintoism further teaches that the emperor has a duty to bring all the peoples of the world under the rule of Amaterasu a sun goddess whose power is the power of the sun itself.

    This bomb, using the "basic power of the universe" made Hirohito, as Amaterasu's son, a fake and thus showed him and the others in the war cabinet to be without the divine mandate of the goddess. That the hated enemy now had her mandate was more than just a shock to the average Japanese; it in affect destroyed their world view and their very view of themselves as Japanese.

    The Japanese would have fought the allies until they were all dead or we had gone back to the US and given up, for fighting men is easy. But how does one fight a goddess? Japan and her people, still deeply religious, believed in the goddess's mandate from heaven, I think they felt they had no choice but to surrender. The Japanese knew better than to fight with nature, and this was clearly a force of nature that had been harnesseed. They could fight people who invaded, fires, bullets, and the impact of conventional bombing.

    They could not and never did fight nature, not tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, or volcanic eruptions. Soviet entry in to the war between the two atomic explosions, helped make the decision more urgent; but as Hideki Tojo's diary states the atomic bombs killed the god and goddess of Japan and thus forced the emperor to surrender his nation. The bombs psychological value as a weapon out weighted their destructive and killing power. With the power of their oldest goddess, the creator of Japan and spiritual mother of their emperor now in Allied hands, the Japanese who had the power to do something about ending the war, knew they had no choice but to surrender.
     
  8. Smudger Jnr

    Smudger Jnr Our Man in Berlin

    I personally believe that the first blunder was invading Poland, thinking or believing that there would be no intervention.

    Hitler was warned by Von Ribbentropp that Britain and France would declare war if Poland was invaded.

    The fact is he chose to disregard this advice and show surprise when it occurred
    defies belief.

    The fact was that Hitler believed Danzig to be German and I believe offered to withdraw his troops if allowed to keep possession of Danzig and the corridor lost after the First World war.

    This left Hitler with a two front war when he turned East, not recommended.

    Regards
    Tom
     
  9. Stephen

    Stephen Member

    It is often said Hitler was stupid to wage a two front war but he never intended to wage a two front war. The war in the west was effectively over after the battle of Britain. The British were easily evicted from Greece early in 1941 something that had been factored into the planning for Barbarossa and until the end of 1942 only a Panzer Corps and some other units were involved in propping up the Italians and tying down British forces in the Middle East not attempting to conquer it as often thought. For the German army it was possible to concentrate almost all their forces in the east and most of the air force could also be moved east.

    Hitler expected to eventually fight the UK and the USA in the west, the USA was never neutral it was hostile to Germany. As previously stated Hitler was becoming increasingly dependant on the USSR for raw materials and they had refused to become allies in 1941, could he face a future major war in the west sure the USSR would not stab him in the back.

    No doubt ideological reasons served to bolster his decision to invade but the main reasons seems to have been a belief that the UK would not make peace as long as the USSR was a possible ally and he could not trust Stalin. If America joined in the war and Stalin took advantage of Germany being involved in a major war in the West Germany could lose so eliminate the USSR as a player and seize the resources Germany needed.

    The campaign was planned as being over by the winter based on the Red Army they had met in Poland and the performance of the Reds in Finland. Hitler had his intelligence estimates of the size of the Red Army and by December 1941 this force had been destroyed as planned so the campaign should have been over. As previously mentioned it was the ability of the Soviets to mobilise large numbers of new divisions who though poorly trained and equipped were able to stop the Germans that foiled the plan. This came not only as a shock to Hitler but also to Britain and the USA who just as Hitler did were writing off the Soviets at the end of 1941. If Hitler was mad to invade the USSR Britain and America did not think so at the time but of course after the event they knew he could never have succeeded.
     
  10. slaphead

    slaphead very occasional visitor

    prefacing this wit "in my humble oppinion"....
    Not sure if it would count as the biggest mistake but certainly a major blunder was not thinking outside the blitzkrieg mentality.
    If Hitler had always envisaged a war against an adversary as vast as the Soviet Union then a long range strategic bomber was essential. In the late 30's, carpet bombing hadn't been "invented". Medium level, relatively precise bombing was thought to be the ultimate weapon of the time, but "unfortunately" for the Nazis, they had developed close air support and very good Wehrmacht / Luftwaffe combined attacks. This blinded them to the notion of sending a few long range bombers to flatten the Kremlin and Stalin's Dacha on Day one of Barbarossa.
     
  11. Stig O'Tracy

    Stig O'Tracy Senior Member

    The fact was that Hitler believed Danzig to be German and I believe offered to withdraw his troops if allowed to keep possession of Danzig and the corridor lost after the First World war.



    Regards
    Tom

    Can someone support this. Although I've read a fair amount about the war, I don't recall reading of such an offer, not to say it didn't happen.
     
  12. Za Rodinu

    Za Rodinu Hot air manufacturer

    Slaphead, strategic bombing wasn't really all it was supposed to be. It took years for the allied round the clock bombing to do anything useful about German industry, and the Soviets had the biggest country in the world to disperse their industry. The Germans had no means at all to produce anything like the 8th AF/ Bomber Command combine, and in any case it would be a large waste of resources.

    As for ability to flatten the Kremlin or Stalin's dacha (which one?), may I remind you that the 8th/BC at time has trouble in hitting Germany at all, let alone surgical targets like it's done nowadays with laser and GPS buided bombs.
     
  13. Smudger Jnr

    Smudger Jnr Our Man in Berlin

    Can someone support this. Although I've read a fair amount about the war, I don't recall reading of such an offer, not to say it didn't happen.


    Whilst I have never read the account personally in any book of the subject, this was commented on in a documentary regarding Battleships of the Second World War.

    Following the bombardment of Danzig and strongpoints in the area by two old battleships, which also landed stormtroopers, the port was captured when the Polish Garrison surrendered.

    The narrator stated that on the 2nd September 1939, Hitler indicated to the western allies that he would withdraw from Poland if allowed to keep possession of Danzig and the corridor.

    This documentary has also been questioned with reference to the Hood being sunk by Prinz Eugen, which members of this forum have refuted as the Prinz Eugen only fired HE rounds which one did hit and cause a fire, but not the fatal shot that penetrated the light deck armour and caused the magazine to explode.

    It could well be that this comment about withdrawal from Poland is also incorrect.
    But I would welcome anyone with knowledge of the political communications which would confirm or deny this comment in the documentary.

    Regards
    Tom
     
  14. slaphead

    slaphead very occasional visitor

    Hi Za,
    You are, of course, right. Strategic/carpet bombing was pretty useless especially at the start of the war before the pathfinder squadrons.
    My comment was mainly about the way Hitler (and everyone else of that era) thought.

    British thinking in the 30's was that "the bomber would always get through" and so whats the point of defending against it. The theory then went that the only way to stop the bomber was to destroy the means of production thus destroying the bombers before they got built. Thats one of the reasons why Britain started developing long range heavy bombers in the late 30's. Both America and Russia are vast countries and they developed aircraft based on that experience. Long range bombers, long range fighters.
    The Germans on the other hand had a much shorter range view. Lets face it, in continental Europe you are never that far away from the next countries capital!

    So my supposition was that Hitlers main mistake was to not develop a long range bomber.
    As to how best to use it, well, as we all know, carpet bombing was wildly innacurate, but the Dam Busters were pretty surgical in their strikes as were the low level mossie squadrons.
    Whether any 1939 era planner was actually capable of thinking that far outside the box and come up with those kind of raids is another matter!
     
  15. Gerard

    Gerard Seelow/Prora

    I'm always intruiged about claims that Germany needed a strategic bomber force. the fact that they needed one is not in doubt, but if they had poured resources into this area then the Luftwaffe would not have developed their tactical bomber force to the extent it did. One of the successes of blitzkrieg was the close co-operation between army and luftwaffe. If the Luftwaffe had gone down the strategic route, it would have looked a far different force in 1939. It certainly wouldnt have suited Hitler's plans, always short-term.
     
  16. slaphead

    slaphead very occasional visitor

    Aha! so we are saying that Hitlers biggest mistake was to think "short term" !:)

    I see your point. The war would not have been the one we know today if there were fewer He111 and more FW Condor size bombers. Short sharp Blitzkriegs did serve Germany very well to start with.

    p.s.
    Anyone else think that an exclamation mark followerd by a grumpy smiley looks like Hitler? !:-(
     
  17. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    It could well be that this comment about withdrawal from Poland is also incorrect.
    But I would welcome anyone with knowledge of the political communications which would confirm or deny this comment in the documentary.

    Regards
    Tom[/quote]

    There is some truth in what Tom states.However the covert exchanges of view did not go through Hitler and Chamberlain or their Foreign ministries it was a dialogue between one of Chamberlain's advisers,Sir Horace Wilson and Ribbentrop's undercover representative Fritz Hesse.There had already been talks betwen these two parties which resulted in the laying down of surprising proposals.

    Hitler had been applying political pressure for some time to the Poles threatening war if the Danzig question was not resolved so it is not surprising that there were "wheelers and dealers" involved to save the peace.

    During late August,there is also an account of Goring along with the influencial Swedish business man Birger Dahlerus meeting similarly several influencial Englishmen on a Danish country estate in order to save the peace.From this meeting,it was Goering who persuaded Dahlerus to fly to England with a message to the Chamberlain goverment that negotiations between the Germany and England should start immediately.On 25 August,Lord Halifax,the Foreign Minister, saw Dahlerus and was optimistic as Hitler had called just off an invasion of Poland and by Chamberlain's approval, replied in a letter to Goring indicating England's genuine desire to arrive at a peaceful solution.Dahlerus was able to deliver the letter to Goring who was seen by Dahlerus as the only person who could orevent war.

    After the attack on Poland and responding to the diplomatic pressure on Hitler,Ribbentrop did offer, through his undercover representative,Fritz Hesse to Sir Horace Wilson that "the Fuhrer is prepared to move out of Poland and offer reparation damages provided that we receive Danzig and a road throught the corrider" The background to the events became somewhat clearer but also did lead to Chamberlain being accused of vacillation.
     
  18. guaporense

    guaporense Member

    I'm always intruiged about claims that Germany needed a strategic bomber force. the fact that they needed one is not in doubt, but if they had poured resources into this area then the Luftwaffe would not have developed their tactical bomber force to the extent it did. One of the successes of blitzkrieg was the close co-operation between army and luftwaffe. If the Luftwaffe had gone down the strategic route, it would have looked a far different force in 1939. It certainly wouldnt have suited Hitler's plans, always short-term.

    Strategic bombing is for fags. :p

    The function of the airforce is to give support to the ground forces. The kind of terrorist bombing practiced in WW2 by all belligerent powers, with the exception of the USSR, didn't have any impact in Britain 1940-1941, and on Germany 1942-1945, had the rather small impact of reducing munitions production by about 20% in 1944. But by them the USSR had already defeated the Wehrmacht.
     
  19. guaporense

    guaporense Member

    His biggest mistake was declaring war on the United States.

    The declaration of war on the US didn't have a great impact in the war. Because the US was giving aid to Britain and the USSR before and the American navy was shotting German naval vessels before that too.

    By far, the invasion of the USSR was Hitler's biggest mistake.
     
  20. Gerard

    Gerard Seelow/Prora

    Strategic bombing is for fags. :p

    The function of the airforce is to give support to the ground forces.
    An exponent of the Tactical branch of air doctrinev then -figures :D
     

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