Hitler as war leader

Hitler as war leader. No leader played so large a part in the national war effort of his country as Adolf Hitler (1889–1945). His ideas on foreign policy and military strategy dominated German public affairs in the late 1930s and throughout the war. As Führer (leader) of the German people and supreme commander of German forces, he was responsible for making the major decisions in home affairs and war policy. His views were almost impossible to challenge, yet his increasingly wayward and irrational leadership was largely responsible for Germany's complete defeat in 1945. By the end, like Napoleon, he trusted no one to take even the smallest decisions. Germany's fortunes during the war were bound to the whims and convictions of a leader incapable of fulfilling the vast tasks he set for himself; a leader whose vindictive and obsessive personality launched Europe and the world on war, and almost destroyed the European Jews.

Hitler's uninhibited role as war leader stemmed from the nature of the dictatorship he established in Germany after 1933. His rule began as chancellor in a multi-party cabinet. Within two years he fused the offices of chancellor and president to become the Führer; all other political parties were banned and Hitler ruled with emergency, dictatorial powers. In 1937–8 he dispensed with many of his erstwhile conservative supporters, promoted Nazi Party leaders to prominent positions in the state and, in February 1938, assumed Supreme command of the armed forces. This move permitted him to fuse together in one individual direct responsibility for strategy, military planning, and state policy in general. No major affairs of state could be conducted without approval from Hitler's chancellery, or from the office of the Supreme Commander (OKW).

He brought with him a particular style of leadership. He deliberately sought to construct what has been called the ‘myth of the Führer’, a popular belief that he could single-handedly carve out Germany's destiny, that he stood above party as a genuine national leader. A corollary of this myth was acceptance of him as supreme decision-maker. Skilful propaganda drew widespread popular support, even from those who had previously opposed him. The collective endorsement of his image as the saviour of Germany made opposition or criticism difficult to pursue. By the late 1930s he had succeeded in stifling avenues of policy of which he disapproved; his own views came more and more to dominate German strategy.

Hitler's ideas shaped the nature of his leadership, and the nature of German foreign policy and war-making. He believed that in political life will power, intuition, and conviction were more important qualities than rational evaluation and shared responsibility. Though he recognized the importance of luck, or providence as he usually called it, and opportunity, he saw his own political success as a product of his iron determination and fanatical belief in his mission. He saw himself as someone who took great risks that paid off; as someone who would never admit the impossible. Leadership required above all, he once remarked, ‘perseverance and fanatical tenacity’. The more successful his political career, the more convinced he became of his providential calling and his power to overcome all obstacles.

Hitler saw his mission as the salvation of Germany and the building of a new European, even world, order with Germany at its core (seeGermany, 4). In foreign policy he formulated the view early on that Germany should not merely reverse the terms of the Versailles settlement, but should transcend them by creating a German-dominated Europe and carving out ‘living-space’ or Lebensraum, for Germany in the east. At first he hoped to achieve this in agreement with the British Empire, but by 1937 he saw the UK too as an enemy of German destiny. By the late 1930s he saw Germany's role in more grandiose terms, aiming for world power even at the expense of eventual conflict with the UK and the USA. To achieve Germany's bid to become a super-power Hitler recognized that it was necessary to establish domestic political and social unity. This was to be achieved by a combination of terror and propaganda, and by the isolation of internal enemies, the Jews in particular (see Final Solution). It was also necessary to build up German economic resources. Hitler was convinced on the evidence of the First World War that a healthy economy was essential if a major war was to be waged with any success, and if the danger of a collapse of the Home Front was to be averted. From 1936 onwards he personally authorized the transformation of the German economy to meet the needs of war, setting higher and higher goals for rearmament and insisting on the preparation of the economy and workforce for total mobilization. In May 1939 he told his generals: ‘The idea of getting out cheaply is dangerous. There is no such possibility.’

Hitler began his plan for Germany slowly, waiting for his political power to be secure, and for the economy to recover. Step by step he undermined the Versailles settlement. In 1935 he declared German rearmament; in 1936 he re-occupied the de-militarized zone of the Rhineland; in March 1938 he forced political union with Austria, land of his birth; in September 1938 he bullied the western states into giving him the German areas of Czechoslovakia (see Munich agreement). This series of bloodless victories won him widespread domestic support and fed his growing sense of invincibility. German expansion also provided essential material resources without which, as Hitler always recognized, it would be impossible to build up sufficient military strength. By 1939 he was convinced that the Versailles signatories would no longer oppose further German expansion eastwards, and that the smaller states of eastern Europe, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, would become economic and political satellites of Germany. Between July 1938 and January 1939 he authorized large new armaments programmes for all three services, which were designed to make Germany the major military power in Europe by the mid-1940s. It was then that the struggle for German ascendancy would begin in earnest.

During the course of this gradual extension of political influence in eastern Europe, Hitler met with resolute opposition for the first time. Poland refused to become a satellite state, or to hand back the German areas lost in 1919. Hitler's reaction was typical of his behaviour later in the war: he immediately ordered the armed forces to prepare for an attack on Poland to punish the Poles for their obduracy (see Polish campaign). He sent German forces into the rump of Czechoslovakia in March; trade treaties were signed with Romania and Yugoslavia; a non-aggression treaty was signed with the USSR in August 1939 (see Nazi–Soviet Pact). The object was to isolate Poland and to defeat it in a rapid campaign in the early autumn. Hitler remained convinced throughout that the western states would not actively intervene, but only make gestures of defiance. Despite widespread and public evidence that the UK and France would fight for Poland, Hitler based his judgement on what he perceived as the weak will of his potential enemies. Here, too, he eschewed serious evaluation in favour of conviction. Despite growing misgivings among his advisers and military leaders, who knew that Germany was not yet ready for major war, Hitler insisted throughout the crisis that the war could be localized. This was the first, and in some ways the most important, strategic misjudgement of Hitler's foreign policy career. In September he found himself at war with the UK and France over an issue that he had assured all his subordinates could be solved without the intervention of the Great Powers.

Once again his reaction was typical. He was thrown into a rage by the western declaration of war and immediately ordered the armed forces to begin planning for a winter offensive against France to ‘beat her to pulp’. For almost the last time Hitler was prevailed upon by his military commanders to accept that Germany was simply not yet ready to wage such a campaign, though in the end only bad weather finally convinced him. Later in the war he accused his generals of missing a golden opportunity to exploit the lack of French preparation and the poor state of British assistance.

During the last months of 1939 Hitler personally supervised much of the planning for a spring offensive and ordered the full conversion of the economy to war in order to meet the much enlarged production programmes finally approved in December. He gave top priority to production for the 1940 campaign, at the expense of development programmes for military output in later years. He was not prepared to accept a defensive stance, but resolved to defeat the western powers in one single and decisive offensive blow. The generals were sceptical of such an assault, which they assumed the western powers would anticipate. Hitler talked of an attack through the Ardennes forest, but not until General von Manstein produced a detailed operational plan for such a thrust (see FALL GELB) did Hitler seize on the idea and insist on its prosecution against all warning and advice. The plan was almost undone by fears that the UK might occupy Scandinavia and outflank German forces, but here too Hitler insisted, against expert advice, that Norway could be occupied at low cost to pre-empt the British and pave the way for the attack in the west. In both the Norwegian campaign and the fall of France he played a central part in deciding on strategic and operational priorities.

In both cases Hitler's judgement was vindicated. This was only partly due to the nature of the strategic conception, which carried great risks. Weaknesses and poor preparation on the Allied side, and the high fighting skills and operational competence of German forces produced victory against general expectations. If Hitler's caution and Göring's ambition had not combined to give the British time to evacuate their forces at Dunkirk, the victory would have been complete.

By the summer of 1940 Hitler had achieved domination of the continent. The German people thought the war was over, but Hitler saw both opportunities and dangers in the situation created by victory. He offered the UK the opportunity to make peace, though on his terms, a move designed to free him for the possibility of conflict in the east. As early as July 1940 it became evident to Hitler that his war with the west was being used by Stalin as a lever to increase Soviet influence in eastern Europe, and he began to explore the prospect of a pre-emptive strike against the USSR the following spring. He reasoned that his forces would be better prepared than the Soviets, and that war would provide the downfall of the chief ideological enemy and provide large material resources at the same time. These resources would be necessary to hold down the German empire and, if necessary, to confront the increasingly hostile USA.

Against his expectations, the UK refused the peace offer, and Hitler half-heartedly explored the prospect of an invasion instead (see SEALION). But his eyes were now turned to the USSR as the failure of the Luftwaffe to defeat the RAF in the battle of Britain inclined him more and more to tackle the problem in the east first. By September the invasion plans were postponed, though he ordered the bombing of Britain to continue. This was partly a violent response to the bombing of Berlin by the RAF, partly a final attempt to get the British to see things his way and sue for peace. It was a poorly-thought-out gambit, which succeeded only in strengthening British resolve, thoroughly alienating American public opinion, and wearing down the Luftwaffe to a point where it could barely field more aircraft against the USSR in 1941 than it had had for the Polish campaign. While the Blitz continued, Hitler ordered the armed forces to prepare for BARBAROSSA, the invasion of the USSR. To meet the demands of the campaign he laid down in July 1940 extensive new plans for the economy and the armed forces. He demanded an army greater than all enemy armies put together—180 divisions, 20 of them armoured—and substantial increases in army output. He planned to take the USSR by surprise and to knock out its armed forces in six months.

During the war Hitler withdrew from much of the day-to-day running of the Home Front. Decisions were taken by his chancellery chief, Hans Lammers, or his secretary, Martin Bormann, although any major ones would be passed on to Hitler for final approval. He concerned himself much more with military and technical issues, or with foreign policy (see Axis strategy and co-operation), which he discussed in his military headquarters, or on his special train, complete with offices and bedrooms. For relaxation he spent time going over the plans and architects' models for the rebuilding of Berlin and other German cities. He became increasingly cut off from contact with the outside world; his evenings were devoted to a small circle of cronies to whom he delivered monologues on any subject that caught his fancy. He took seriously his pledge made at the outset of the war that he would live a frugal and abstemious existence as long as the war lasted. Usually he wore simple military dress.

In the spring of 1941 Hitler terminated air attacks on the UK and prepared for an assault on the USSR in May. Exactly as a year before the programme was interrupted by fears of British intervention on the German flank, this time in the Balkans. British assistance to Greece was followed by a Yugoslav army revolt which overthrew the pro-Hitler regime. Hitler realized that unless the situation in the Balkans could be stabilized BARBAROSSA might be compromised and ordered the armed forces to improvise an assault on Yugoslavia at short notice. In April Yugoslavia was defeated and British forces ejected from Greece (see Balkan campaign). German paratroopers captured Crete in May and drove Allied forces out of the Balkans and Near East, leaving the way clear for an attack on the USSR a month later than planned. On 22 June German forces began the assault and within weeks drove far into Soviet territory. Hitler once again looked beyond the immediate task. He ordered war production to shift from army weapons to air and naval equipment for the renewed attack on the UK, and in case conflict developed with the USA. He also began to involve himself much more in the domestic war economy. Dissatisfied with the level of output achieved for BARBAROSSA, during the summer and autumn of 1941 he ordered greater rationalization and streamlining of the economy to meet the additional demands for war matériel issued in July. In December 1941 he issued a decree on production designed to compel the armed forces to reduce the complexity of their weapons and to open the way to greater mass production. In February 1942 he appointed his architect Albert Speer to reorganize the war economy to make the fullest use of Germany's industrial resources (see Speer Plan). From then on he intervened directly in the war economy and in questions to do with the technical development of weapons through regular Führer conferences with Speer.

Hitler's growing involvement in the details of economic life matched an increasing intervention in military affairs. He never trusted the regular staff officers in the army, whom he regarded as unadventurous and pessimistic. His well-known dislike of professional expertise, and his growing belief that he was, like Frederick the Great, a natural strategist and military leader, increased his conviction that he knew better than the generals what was possible. When the German campaign in Russia finally bogged down in the winter mud, and Soviet forces began to counter-attack around Moscow, Hitler insisted against his military advisers that the line should be held firm at all costs. On 19 December 1941 he finally decided to take over command of the army directly. From then on he became not only supreme commander but Feldherr, leader of the armies in the field. At this critical juncture in the war he chose to increase his responsibilities rather than reduce them.

This decision was taken against a sudden deterioration in Germany's international position. In December Japan attacked the USA at Pearl Harbor and Hitler surprised his entourage by declaring war on the USA on 11 December. This placed Germany at war with the major economies of the world, with the USSR and the UK undefeated. In retrospect the decision seems perverse, but by this time Hitler could see that the USA was giving the UK and the USSR all the help it could short of actual war, and the German Navy was even engaging American ships in the battle of the Atlantic. Hitler had a limited and superficial view of the USA. He considered Roosevelt an ‘imbecile’ and American foreign policy as mere Bluffpolitik. When he declared war he believed that Japan would keep the USA occupied while he completed the defeat of the USSR. With Soviet economic resources under his control, he would then confront the Anglo-Saxon states. In practice December 1941 marked a turning-point for Hitler: German forces suffered their first major defeat, in the Western Desert campaigns; German armies came to a halt before Moscow; and Hitler now faced a combination of the other major powers whose material resources vastly outweighed those available to Germany.

For the next nine months, under Hitler's direct leadership, German armies reached their fullest extent, from the frontiers of Egypt to the lower reaches of the Caucasus mountains. These final successes owed as much to the fighting skills of German forces as they did to any strategic or tactical insight of Hitler's. Indeed it was Hitler who insisted against his staff's advice to place the main emphasis on the southern flank when fighting began again in the German–Soviet war in the spring of 1942. His object was to seize Soviet oil supplies, although it turned out later in the year that hardly any preparations had been made in Germany to exploit the oil once it had been captured. The summer saw rapid advances into and beyond the Crimea, but it left the Germans seriously overstretched and allowed Soviet forces to regroup and choose their place of engagement. At the point where Hitler was at his most confident of final victory, the Allies planned to turn the tide. The victory at the second battle of El Alamein began the long retreat from North Africa; at Stalingrad the Soviet armies began their planned assault to break the Southern Front; in Morocco and Algeria Allied forces landed to secure the southern Mediterranean (see North African campaign). Hitler's reaction was to insist on a general policy of no retreat. The result was the loss of the North African armies and a great deal of Axis shipping in the attempt to keep Rommel supplied. In Russia the result was the defeat of German forces at Stalingrad, where Hitler insisted that his soldiers hold fast even when an orderly retreat might have been possible. When the crisis worsened in December, Hitler accepted Göring's promise that German armies in the city could be supplied from the air: the result was heavy loss of aircraft as well. He refused to accept operational reality, arguing instead that willpower and racial character would overcome physical handicaps. The defeat at Stalingrad set the pattern for the rest of the war. Hitler blamed the morale and attitude of his forces for the capitulation and was horrified when the commanding officer at Stalingrad, Field Marshal Paulus, did not commit suicide.

For the next two years Hitler presided over the long retreat, in Italy, across the whole Soviet front, and, after the Normandy landings, in June 1944 (see OVERLORD), in the west as well. German forces fought with great skill, but were worn down by the sheer array of strength that Hitler's strategy had brought down upon them. Hitler made the task harder by insisting on holding the existing line wherever possible rather than carrying out strategic withdrawal. Effective resistance was also undermined by the difficulty local commanders experienced in getting clear orders from a supreme commander simply overburdened by the tasks he faced. Hitler's real interest lay in the conflict in the east. In the west he underestimated Allied strength and fighting power, and lack of contact with the situation there led to a confused and ultimately ineffective German response. He was also prepared to gamble on secret weapons which he felt sure would turn the tide of the war. He was convinced that the V-weapons would not only compel the Allies to end the bombing of Germany, but might even end their invasion. He placed a similar reliance on the development of the jet aircraft. He insisted, against the advice of air force leaders, that the new jets should be used as fighter-bombers rather than fighters, holding up the development programme significantly and reducing what tactical impact the new aircraft might have had. None of the wonder weapons was capable of turning the tide of the war, as any serious strategic evaluation would have shown.

By 1944 many German military and political leaders wanted an end to the war. In July 1944, frustrated by what they saw as Hitler's frivolous destruction of German forces and the German state, a large number of senior officers conspired to assassinate Hitler and sue for peace (see Schwarze Kapelle). The failure of the assassination attempt convinced Hitler that, despite all the problems faced by German forces, fate had saved him in order to salvage German fortunes from the wreckage. These delusions fuelled his determination to fight to the death. The grip that party fanatics had on German society made it difficult to challenge the Führer's determination to wage a bitter total war rather than admit defeat. As the war went on, Hitler vented his anger against those he blamed for Germany's situation. He was obsessed with the defeat in 1918, and was determined that no internal social crisis or dissent should weaken his war effort. He gave the internal machinery of repression under Himmler, head of the SS, free rein against ‘saboteurs’ and ‘traitors’. Convinced that the Jews were the chief enemy of Germany's ambitions, he waged a war against them as well as the Allies; the more bitter and prolonged the conflict Germany faced, the more savage Hitler's anti-Semitism became. Although the operational aspects of the Jewish genocide were undertaken by others, there can be no doubt that Hitler was the inspiration for the escalation of violence against European Jews. He demonstrated the same cynical brutality, the same moral blindness, against any group or individual who crossed his prosecution of the war effort. The slow hanging of the conspirators in the July plot was filmed for his own viewing.

In the last year of war Hitler even turned against his own forces, blaming them for cowardice or incompetence and dismissing anyone who dared to argue with him. Though his chief lieutenants either tried to urge an end to the war or seek one them selves separately, Hitler refused to consider such a course. In the last months he clung to the expectation that Providence would again come to his assistance. In December 1944, ignoring his generals' advice once more, he decided on one final offensive stroke in the Ardennes to drive a wedge between the British and American forces. His idea was to create such confusion and demoralization on the Allied side that the alliance would break up and he could concentrate on his war in the east. The failure of the socalled ‘Battle of the Bulge’ (see Ardennes campaign) was transformed in Hitler's mind into a successful spoiling action and his delusions were pandered to by soldiers terrified of his vindictiveness, but equally fearful of Soviet victory. When Hitler heard the news of Roosevelt's death in April 1945 he saw it as a sign that Germany's fortunes would revive, as had those of Frederick the Great following the death of the Russian Empress Elizabeth in the Seven Years War. Only in the final stages of the conflict did he come to realize that the war was lost. In its last days he blamed the Germans for not playing the role he had assigned for them in history: ‘If the German people loses this war, it will have proved itself not worthy of me.’ On 30 April 1945, with Soviet forces close and the fall of Berlin imminent, he committed suicide.

Hitler's leadership exerted a fundamental influence on the course and nature of the war. At all the major turning-points it was his decision to seize the initiative: the invasion of Poland; the assault on France; the proposed invasion of England; the attack on the Soviet Union, and the declaration of war against the USA. No one else could have made these decisions, for Hitler exercised a form of dictatorial authority based on the wilful desires and intuitive judgements of a single person. By those around him this could be interpreted as a strength rather than a weakness. Hitler did take risks, and did stick with unrelenting determination to a course of action once he had decided on it. His style of leadership required this kind of single-mindedness and egotism. He saw himself as indispensable to the war effort. In August 1944 he told his staff that since 1941 it had been his task ‘not to lose my nerve, under any circumstances’. He remained convinced that without his ‘iron will’ Germany would not win the ‘struggle of the peoples’ that his ambition and arrogance had generated. Under these circumstances he possibly achieved more than he might have done, given the obvious weaknesses in his style of leadership and decision-making, and his increasingly irrational and self-deluding view of the world. Singleness of purpose and a messianic self-belief infected those around him, and infused his whole strategy. Even at the end of the war dispirited generals recorded how an interview with Hitler could revive belief in Germany's cause.

In practice much of Hitler's early diplomacy and military successes rested on the slow or divided response of other states to the unorthodox or unexpected. The illusion of strong leadership could be maintained in the light of others' weaknesses. Hitler depended, much more than he would concede, on the high fighting skills of German forces (which had little to do with Hitler) and the mistakes and ineffectiveness of the forces opposing them. Hitler and the propaganda machine made a great deal of victory in conflicts which were always heavily loaded in Germany's favour—against Poland for example. Hitler failed to defeat the major states he confronted: the UK, the USSR, and the USA. Only the defeat of France, in which he took a decisive role in choosing the campaign plan and urging his forces on to achieve its aims, could be viewed as a success in these terms. From 1942 onwards, when Hitler identified himself more closely than ever with the direction of the war, the weaknesses of leadership by willpower and intuition became manifest.

The early military successes masked the basic strategic misjudgements that characterized Hitler's leadership. In 1938 he failed to recognize how strong resistance from the west would be in his conflict with the Czechs; he made the same mistake a year later over Poland. In late 1940 he hesitated between a British and an eastern strategy; in 1941 he greatly underestimated the strength of the USSR and the UK's willingness to prosecute the war. In December 1941, with two major enemies still undefeated, he took on the USA, dividing Germany's forces damagingly and provoking a coalition of very great material and manpower resources. At every turn he justified his strategy in terms of the racial feebleness or moral inadequacy of his opponents. By extension, he believed that German forces could achieve more than the material balance might allow because they were invigorated by the justness of their racial cause. He consistently used the alleged qualitative superiority of German soldiers and weapons as a factor in Germany's favour when faced with states that relied on mere mass and quantity.

Such views might well have been modified by some effective system for the evaluation of strategy or the discussion of policy. In practice Hitler eschewed war by committee. He listened to advice when he needed it, or searched out detailed information. But in both military affairs and state policy there was no war cabinet, no chiefs of staff committee, no forum where strategy, operations, and diplomacy could be weighed up, investigated, and recommended. Much of the operational planning was conducted by the staffs of the separate services, whose standards of staffwork were very high. But the office of the supreme commander had no high-level planning staff, and liaison officers from the three services were usually relatively junior. As the war went on Hitler interfered with the processes of staff evaluation to such an extent that it became difficult (and dangerous) for officers to suggest or promote alternatives. The war effort was governed throughout its course by War Directives which came from Hitler himself. There were 74 directives in all, the first on 31 August 1939, the last, an order to the soldiers on the Eastern Front on 15 April 1945 to fight to the death against ‘the last assault of Asia’. The directives combined general strategic considerations with detailed operational instructions. They provided the whole war machine with the drift of Hitler's thinking; they were unalterable, and binding on everyone.

The high-level conduct of the war was therefore inordinately influenced by Hitler's own strategic and tactical preconceptions and intuitions. He was by preference an army leader. He understood very little about naval power and was little interested in naval solutions. The navy was starved of resources and its leaders found it difficult to persuade Hitler that it had much of a role until submarine warfare began to bite in 1942–3. Grand Admiral Raeder's attempt in 1939–40 to get Hitler to agree to a naval and air blockade of the UK broke down on Hitler's innocence of naval strategy and Göring's refusal to collaborate. Hitler was also much less at home with air strategy. He toyed with the idea of strategic bombing, but did little to throw his weight behind it. The Blitz on Britain persuaded him that bombing an enemy economy did not achieve very much, and he assumed for a long time that Allied bombing was a mere terror tactic, which could be countered by yet more terror. No serious attempt was ever made by Hitler to integrate German air power into a broader strategic framework. He was slow to authorize an effective defence force, and remained hostile to the views of air leaders who in 1943 and 1944 wanted to concentrate on fighter aircraft for defence against bombing, at the expense of the fighter-bombers and medium bombers needed for the front. He remained wedded to a tactical conception of air power. Yet in 1944, as the bombing increased in intensity, he turned on the air force for not having done more to halt the bombing offensive. He advocated the use of V-weapons as an alternative to air power, strengthened the anti-aircraft forces, and threatened the Luftwaffe with disbandment. The result was widespread demoralization in the Luftwaffe and an end to the effective prosecution of the air war.

Hitler's primary interest was the German Army in which he had served as a corporal in the First World War. He had a very straightforward view of the army's function: to annihilate the enemy in great blows and sweeps, to prosecute the offensive at every opportunity, and to brook no retreat. Doubtless some of this conception stemmed from his understanding of the First World War. But it made it difficult for his generals to operate in adverse situations, or to think defensively, or to retreat in good order. Hitler simply would not brook the abandonment of territory once gained, or the notion of surrender against overwhelming odds. In a speech in December 1944 he said: ‘In my life I have never learned to know the word “capitulation”.’ Generals did withdraw and stand on the defensive, risking his anger. The success of the long retreat and the rearguard engagements in 1944 and 1945 came despite, rather than because of, Hitler. There remained scope for ignoring what emanated from supreme headquarters, where Hitler was all too often immersed in details.

The Führer's concern for the minutiae of operations or of technology was well known. He took pride in his ability to remember instructions or specifications which his staff could not recall in front of him. He gave the impression to others of an extraordinary, if amateur, grasp of the most complex technical issues. This facility helped to boost the image of the omnicompetent leader. There is no doubt that he was fascinated by technical questions, particularly in the field of army weapons, but his interest was that of the enthusiatic amateur, absorbed by novelty and distinction but unable to grasp wider strategic or technical issues (the support he gave to the rocket programme, which achieved very little, was a prime example). Hitler's judgement was all too often flawed by his excessive concern for detail, all the more so given the sheer range of responsibilities that he took upon himself. His reluctance to delegate or share responsibility led to failures of discrimination and evaluation, and to an uneven distribution of effort. One man, even Hitler, could not hope to devote sufficient weight to all the affairs, major and minor, that required his attention. This problem lay at the core of the ‘Führer-state’: the more responsibility the leader assumed, the more his subordinates shunned decision-making, and the greater still became his responsibility.

Hitler was not an easy leader to follow. He imposed demands on his subordinates which were difficult, if not impossible, to fulfil scrupulously or with a clear conscience. The German war effort produced a stream of prominent suicides—the Luftwaffe's Ernst Udet and Hans Jeschonnek, the army Field Marshals Rommel, Model, and von Kluge; and so on. Hitler demanded exceptional levels of loyalty, and in return remained loyal to his party comrades appointed to tasks far beyond their competence. The Luftwaffe lacked a serious commander-inchief for much of the latter period of the war, but Hitler resisted all recommendations for Göring's dismissal. For a great many officials and soldiers during the war Hitler's leadership was a constant source of friction and frustration—there were resignations as well as suicides—but what is surprising is the extent to which Hitler was able to retain the active support of those who ran the war effort. The support ran thinner as the war went on, but however grudging the endorsement or acquiescence, residual support for Hitler lasted until the very last months of conflict. It was retained partly through the sheer force of his personality, partly through the structural pressures in German government and society that made conformity desirable and penalized dissent. He had also become by the start of the war a symbol of German revival and national renewal. Loyalty to him became the test of patriotism and social allegiance in general. In the end he spurned that loyalty. He stubbornly refused to end his quest for the New Order when Germany clearly faced disaster, and blamed the German people for their failure to grasp their racial destiny. Hitler bore the responsibility for that failure. It was he who deliberately provoked war, who exulted in conquest, and who, without a shred of remorse, brought his country down in flames around him.See also Germany, 1.

Richard Overy

Bibliography

Carr, W. , Hitler: a study in personality and politics (London, 1978).
Kershaw, I. , Hitler, 2 vols. (London, 1991, 2000).
Lewin, R. , Hitler's Mistakes (London, 1984).
Trevor-Roper, H. (ed.), Hitler's War Directives 1939–1945 (London, 1964).