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TRANSLATION OF G.34, ADOLF HITLER ALS FELDHERR
ADOLF HITLER, THE GENERAL
Adolf Hitler took over the Supreme Command of the German Army on the 19th December 1941.
His was not merely a symbolic gesture. Hitler really took over the personal planning and
leadership of the military operations and there was a great purge among those German Field
Marshals and Generals who up to then had been responsible for German strategy. Against their
technical knowledge and experience Adolf Hitler set his intuition. For the first time in the
military history of Europe a great army was no longer led by a military expert but by a civilian
who, in his own military career a quarter of a century before had not got above the rank of
Corporal.
This extraordinary event has had extraordinary effects. In the one and a half years that have
elapsed since then two catastrophes have befallen the German Army, which are unparalleled in
the previous history of the German Army. Not only did all the German offensive campaigns of
the summer of 1942 go wrong – and more than the entire territorial conquests of that year lost –
but at Stalingrad and Tunis two German Armies have been wiped out to the last man – the Sixth
Army and the Panzer Army Africa. Their officers and men are either dead or prisoners. Their
Supreme Commanders, Field Marshal von Paulus and Generaloberst von Arnim, are Russian
and English prisoners respectively.
And these were not just any armies. They were not second class troops which one could perhaps
sacrifice on purpose in order to cover a retreat elsewhere. They were the elite, the spearhead of
the great offensive thrusts of 1942: they were to have taken Stalingrad and Suez. They had been
given the toughest troops, the most experienced staffs, the most modern weapons. In the military
history of all peoples there is hardly an example of two such complete battles of destruction
having occurred within the short space of four months.
It is, however, only fair to say that even a military genius of the first order could today probably
no longer bring victory to the German Army. The conditions under which the German Army is
having to fight today are too unevenly balanced for that. When Adolf Hitler made himself
Supreme Commander of the German Armies he had already, as Chancellor of the German
Reich, seen to it by his politics that even the best German Commanders could not fulfil their
tasks. For by challenging England, by attacking Russia, by declaring war against America he had
made quite certain that the German Army would have to fight on three fronts against the three
strongest World Powers. Nevertheless, the exceptional and dramatic catastrophes which befell
the German Armies in the first five months of the year 1943 cannot alone be explained by the
mistakes of the statesman Adolf Hitler. They are definitely the first-fruits of the strategy of Adolf
Hitler, the general. It is instructive to study the campaigns that led up to these catastrophes, since
they throw an interesting light on the character and mental make-up of the man who today is still
leader of Germany.
Count Schlieffen, in his study on “Cannae”, pointed out that no complete battle of annihilation
is possible without the enemy generals’ involuntary cooperation. One can beat the enemy, thanks
to one’s own skill and material superiority, but in order to destroy him his own folly and
clumsiness must be added to this. To bring about a Cannae one needs not only a Hannibal who
sets the trap but also a Varro who sticks his neck into it. Never has this fundamental truth been
more clearly demonstrated than by Hitler in the battles of Stalingrad and Tunis. These battles of
annihilation both arose from offensives which Hitler, and not Schukov or Alexander, took the
initiative.
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TRANSLATION OF G.34, ADOLF HITLER ALS FELDHERR
Both the battles – Stalingrad as well as Tunis – are the result of a great plan of campaign which
Hitler worked out himself in the winter of 1941/42. His plan was to break through to the Volga
and to Suez. Thus first the artery of Russia and then that of the British Empire were to be severed
and both these great opponents were to be paralysed. Then a vast pincer was to be thrown round
the British Middle East position, the whole of Asia Minor was to be cut off and conquered, and
the link with Japan was to be established via the Indian Ocean. Having once gained this
unassailable position and having all the raw materials necessary for the war, Hitler hoped to be
able to wait for the coming Anglo-Saxon attack in the West and to beat it when it came.
It was a grandiose plan – on paper. But it had the typical faults of all amateur military dreams.
Hitler only took account of his own strength while the strength of his opponents never entered
his calculations. In order to set about his plan, Hitler had to split the forces of the German Army
so that they were nowhere strong enough to achieve success. What he did achieve, was to drive
Rommel’s Army in Africa and von Paulus’ Army in Southern Russia dangerously far forward,
over-stretching their lines of communication and laying open their weak flanks, so that they got
stuck in front of their goal. In Russia, Hitler, led on by his dazzling initial success, made the
position of the armies worse by splitting off the armies of List and von Kleist from the main
attacking force and driving them farther down into the Caucasus, despite the fact that Stalingrad
had not yet fallen. Between these armies and the armies of Paulus and von Hoth at Stalingrad he
thus created a vast gap, which positively invited a Russian breakthrough.
All this was not ignored in the German Supreme Command. By September 1942 it was crystal
clear to anyone who had eyes to see that Hitler’s megalomaniac plan had failed, and that now, as
long as there was still time, one would have to go back a step in order to save what there still was
to save. In this month there was a military crisis in the German Supreme Command. From all
sides there came warnings: Rommel declared that a great British attack was coming and
demanded either to be given the necessary reinforcements or to be allowed to fall back. The
Chief of General Staff, Halder, warned Hitler that the entire Mediterranean was threatened and
that he could no longer put off a complete regrouping of the German forces, and, together with
Field Marshal von Bock, who was then Supreme Commander on the Russian Southern Front, he
pointed out that to continue the simultaneous offensives against Stalingrad and the Caucasus
(which had been stationary for weeks) was more than the German forces could undertake.
All these warnings fell on deaf ears. Hitler’s “intuition” told him that if only he went on with his
bluff to the bitter end all these military thunder-clouds, which had gathered over his armies,
would disappear, just as in his previous career as Party Leader the political dangers which had
threatened him from Brüning and Schleicher had disappeared. The typical mistake of a politician,
who has ventured on to strange territory. He could not distinguish between the cobwebs of
political intrigue and speculation and the hard reality of military events. He played with tanks,
bombs and guns as though they were electioneering pamphlets and voting sheets. He dismissed
von Bock and Halder, whilst the weaker character Rommel, having been fobbed off by a
“handshake of victory”, allowed himself to be brought round and, against his better judgement,
boasted that he held the key to Cairo in his hand and that no one would ever take it away from
him. And Hitler, who had so often put an end to his political difficulties by an inflammatory,
demagogic speech, thought that he could do the same thing now that he was threatened by
military dangers. He went to Berlin and in the Sportpalast made a great speech in which he
shouted: “We will take Stalingrad – You can rely on that!”, and called his opponents “military
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TRANSLATION OF G.34, ADOLF HITLER ALS FELDHERR
idiots”. Having done this, he returned to his Headquarters as satisfied as if he had by doing this
already beaten them.
Then fate overtook him. On the 4th November the 8th British Army broke through at El
Alamein and Rommel’s defence broke down. On the 8th November British and American forces
landed in great strength in Algiers and Morocco. On the 19th November the Russians attacked
the flanks and rear of the Sixth Army before Stalingrad, broke through and encircled it.
Now was the last moment, when the worst could still be avoided. Admittedly, to do this it would
be necessary to change into reverse. The Sixth Army still had a chance to break through the
Russian ring and to fight its way back towards the West, just as Litzmann did at Brezesiny.
Rommel still had a chance to evacuate the greater part of his army from Tripoli. Africa and the
Volga would have been irreparably lost but the irreplaceable armies could still be saved. Only
one thing was necessary for all this: that the Supreme Commander Hitler should have the moral
courage not only to realise his mistake but to admit it and retrieve it.
That is what was lacking. Faced with the most fateful crisis of the war, the leader of Germany
and the Supreme Commander of the German armies behaved like a stubborn child that puts its
hands over its ears and stamps its foot. Go back? Admit a mistake? Not he – not Adolf Hitler!
The Sixth Army received the order to hold its position to the last man. They were promised relief
by Christmas Eve. Rommel was ordered to stay in Africa, to retreat step by step on Tunis. And
this was not all: Hitler, despite indescribable sacrifices, also threw the army of von Arnim across
the Mediterranean straight into the trap. 466 ships with their cargoes were sacrificed in order to
bring this Army, with the most modern weapons, to Tunis – into an untenable position from
which retreat was impossible! One might just as well have shipped these men straight into the
British prisoner of war camps and have sent their Tiger tanks and 88 mm guns direct to General
Giraud who had only been waiting for this material in order to equip his French Colonial Army.
What followed was the almost automatic development of military events, which could no longer
be altered. The Sixth Army and the Panzer Army Africa, who had been prepared for destruction
by their Supreme Commander, were destroyed. The only difference was that the Sixth Army was
stupid and trusting enough to believe in the promised relief and to go on fighting to the last, with
the result that 240,000 men were killed and only 91,000 were saved by being taken prisoners,
while the Panzer Army Africa in the end surrendered in mass, once they had the choice of death
or surrender. This time more than 200,000 prisoners were brought in. No one can blame them.
They merely drew the logical consequences from the position into which their own leadership
had manoeuvred them.
A minor point in all this is the large number of captured generals. 23 generals of the Sixth Army
and 16 generals of the Panzer Army Africa, including their Supreme Commanders General Field
Marshal Paulus and Generaloberst von Arnim, allowed themselves to become Prisoners of War.
The man who, however, really got away with it was General Field Marshal Rommel. A week
before things got really bad he quietly disappeared. Without a word to his troops he left for
Germany, and there received from Hitler’s own hands the Oak Leaves with swords and
diamonds to the Knights’ Cross of the Iron Cross. For this, too, there is no previous example in
the history of the German Army.
But Adolf Hitler still remains the Supreme Commander of the German Army.
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TRANSLATION OF G.34, ADOLF HITLER ALS FELDHERR
Pictures
Captions
1. German prisoners
224,000 prisoners.
2. Von Arnim
General von Arnim as a prisoner in English hands.
3. Paulus
General Paulus as prisoner in Russian hands.
4. Rommel shaking hands
with Hitler
“The handshake of the certainty of victory.”
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