Word: hitlered
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Even before the Battle of Britain, Hitler wanted his generals to start planning an invasion of Russia in the fall of 1940. They managed to talk him into delaying until the following May. Germany signed a trade agreement with the U.S.S.R. as late as January 1941, but a month earlier Hitler had told his commanders, "The German armed forces must be prepared to crush Soviet Russia in a quick campaign." The battle plan called for some 148 divisions -- more than 3 million men -- to attack in three main drives along a 1,000-mile front. One army group would strike...
...most obvious speculations about Hitler focus on what would have happened if he had met more resistance, from the beginning. While Hitler's will to power seemed almost demoniac in its ferocity, that was partly because he encountered such feeble opposition. Starting in Germany, if the democratic forces had united against him, he would never have come to power. If even just the conservatives had opposed him, he could not have become Chancellor. And if the French had resisted his reoccupation of the Rhineland, his regime would have collapsed...
...that the German generals were ready to overthrow the dictator if the Czechoslovak crisis of 1938 led to actual fighting. But when the British and French caved in at Munich, so did the German generals. Assassins, too, narrowly failed on several occasions. In November 1939, for instance, Hitler made a speech in Munich, then left ahead of schedule -- just 13 minutes before a time bomb went off and killed several bystanders...
After the war started, even Hitler was surprised at the suddenness of his success. Yet many of his seemingly invincible tanks were very lightly armored and carried no offensive weapons heavier than machine guns. More important, the German war machine depended heavily on imported supplies: Swedish steel, Rumanian oil, South African chromium. The blitzkrieg was in part a response to the fact that a Germany blockaded by Britain did not then have the resources to wage war for more than six months. In addition to his natural gall and guile, though, Hitler had one attribute indispensable to a commander: luck...
...least as important and interesting as the question of what might have stopped Hitler early on is the question of whether he might have emerged victorious. First, by not going to war at all. If, instead of invading Poland, he had limited himself to threats and bullying, he might have achieved his main demands, control of Danzig and freedom of movement through the Polish Corridor. It is possible, of course, that the whole dynamic of Nazism required war, but if Hitler had been able to stop short of that, he would probably have been widely regarded...