where the "Hitler should have listen to his general " come from?

[ljadw]

I am not sure how high-powered the German military was. Very little of the army was motorized. Lots of captured foreign weapons were in use. The strategic bombing force was small. Other than U-boats, the navy was weak.

Very little is a big exaggeration : the WM was more motorized than other European armies .The strategic bombing force of other European countries also was small .And other armies used also captured foreign weapons .

[Peter89]

names of generals besides Guderian, Halder, and Manstein???

Erich Reader, von Leeb and von Brauchitsch were extremly involved. The more they supported nazism, the lesser money they demanded.

It's not that I say they were wrong or incompetent.

They were corrupt and therefore they are not good symbols for morale.

Again, I'm not saying that they were far worse persons than any other military officiers of their time. But they were not better, that's for sure.

[ljadw]

Hitler did as Napoleon ,who made his generals dukes and princes and gave them a lot of money . And their reaction was the same as Hitler's generals : they abandoned him after Waterloo, as Hitler's generals abandoned him after the war .You can't buy fidelity : ingratitude is the way of the world . It was always so, it always will be so .

[Steve Wilcox]

Pardon my ignorance. Who is Wallie?

I am guessing it is the occasionally seen contraction for Western Allies.

[Felix C]

Thanks. I suppose that means Churchill and FDR and perhaps Chiang Kai-shek?

[AbollonPolweder]

C-IN-C was an actual position that Groner established in the late 1920s , and Von Blomberg was first to hold . The position was Apolitical- so Hitler was never C-IN-C just by being head of government.

In fact he was, if William Shirer and Wiki didn't lie.

Three hours later it was announced
that in accordance with the law passed by the cabinet the day before death
Field Marshal's, the functions of the Chancellor and the President are combined in one person and that
Adolf Hitler assumed the powers of the head of state and
commander in chief of the armed forces

In August of the same year, on Blomberg's initiative and that of the Ministeramt chief General Walther von Reichenau, the entire military took the Hitler oath, an oath of personal loyalty to Hitler.

Hitler signed the Barbarossa being the C-in-C of Wehrmacht. (Der Oberstebefehlshaber der Wehrmacht),

[Cult Icon]

You might think it's a joke but it is not; Hitler fired him as Chief of General Staff in March 1945. Some years later he wrote the Erinnerungen eines Soldatens (The memoirs of a soldier), which was a complete crap, complaining about the Polish border which cut him off from his estate.

Postwar senior German officiers never admitted that they were corrupt to the bone. They let their military knowledge be overshadowed by corruption money.

So you name 6? generals...but corruption is life. Which of these Generals wanted Hitler to listen....?! Some of these were fired for military failures and having strong differences in what they wanted their armies/army group to do. Hoepner (Pzgruppe 4) was fired in 1942 and executed in 1944, von Bock (Army group commands) was fired due to his actions in Case Blue, Leeb for AGN 1941, etc.

The firing of Guderian in March 1945 had a lot to do with the failure of Operation Solstice

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Solstice

https://www.amazon.com/Under-Himmlers-C ... 1874622434

[Peter89]

You might think it's a joke but it is not; Hitler fired him as Chief of General Staff in March 1945. Some years later he wrote the Erinnerungen eines Soldatens (The memoirs of a soldier), which was a complete crap, complaining about the Polish border which cut him off from his estate.

Postwar senior German officiers never admitted that they were corrupt to the bone. They let their military knowledge be overshadowed by corruption money.

So you name 6? generals...but corruption is life. Which of these Generals wanted Hitler to listen....?! Some of these were fired for military failures and having strong differences in what they wanted their armies/army group to do. Hoepner (Pzgruppe 4) was fired in 1942 and executed in 1944, von Bock (Army group commands) was fired due to his actions in Case Blue, Leeb for AGN 1941, etc.

The firing of Guderian in March 1945 had a lot to do with the failure of Operation Solstice

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Solstice

https://www.amazon.com/Under-Himmlers-C ... 1874622434

By 1945 every senior German general lost at least a fight.
It was about loyality; who wants to continue this hopeless war? From 1943 the latest every general knew the war was lost. The more conservative and military-minded generals backed off or demanded huge compensation to carry on, but more ideologically supportive ones (eg. Model, Schörner, Dönitz) came forth.

I can name any number of generals, since they were all receiving money and privileges. Just think of Konto 5. It ensured: had they won the war, they would be social elite.

Corruption is not life. Corruption is decay (it's a bottomless hole), and the senior German generals could not wash themselves out of it.

We can observe a somewhat same situation in present-day Hungary. Those who were fired from the media of an oligarch (who gained all his money from corruption), and they were suppprting our autocrat pm previously, now they all say they were protesting against the tyranny of the pm (while they worked for him) and they were disgusted and discontent, but now they are free and independent and ask for our money. Now they deny they knew of the very things they communicated!
Yeah they served the autocrat pm and had they bet on the winning side, they would not be posing as independent professionals, but well-paid independent professionals. It is even more repulsive that they received their salary from corruption money and now they write in their new and independent and professional media that the autocrat is corrupt.

Look. The senior German officiers did everything to pose as independent professionals after the war. They denied that they knew of the very things they were participating in. Had they bet on the winning side, they would not simply just be independent professionals, but well-paid independent professionals.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Peter89,

I would suggest that criticism from those inside Hitler's camp (and Orban's) may be all the more telling because of their insider knowledge.

If Hitler, Orban, or indeed Trump, surround themselves with numerous unreliable, corrupt individuals, this necessarily tells us something about them themselves.

Cheers,

Sid.

[BDV]

If Hitler, Orban, or indeed Trump, surround themselves with numerous unreliable, corrupt individuals, this necessarily tells us something about them themselves.

Or Bill Clinton, or Macron, or Trudeau, or indeed Merkel surround themselves with numerous unreliable, corrupt individuals, this necessarily tells us something about them themselves.

Or we can steer clear of projecting current politics onto Axis historical discussions.

The Axis history is plenty source for polemics on its own.

[Peter89]

I was describing a phenomenon where professionals earn money because they are serving a politican. When the politican fails, they always claim they were protesting from inside, they didn't know who they worked for, etc. It happened after WW2 and it's happening now.

I'm sorry for my example, let's not change subject.

[Duncan_M]

C-IN-C was an actual position that Groner established in the late 1920s , and Von Blomberg was first to hold . The position was Apolitical- so Hitler was never C-IN-C just by being head of government.

Groener was a politician, he retired from the Heer in 1919. He was a political appointee when he held the position of minister of the Reichswehr. Von Blomberg was first to hold position of C-in-C of Wehremacht because it didn't exist previously, it was called the Reichswehr. Blomberg was a political appointee as well. Its a cabinet position, not bureaucratic, not military. Its meant for someone chosen by the leader of the nation to perform, as a way of delegating military matters to a subordinate in the same way a foreign minister, who handles diplomacy, is a delegated task. But just because the position exists doesn't mean the actual national leader doesn't have a say or can't just remove the position if he sees it doesn't serve any point.

Honestly listening to winging over 'lies' in some ones diary is mindless and juvenile. Its his opinion Vs the next POV. The fact that historians were forced to rely on these diaries for so long. Thats a serious problem in the study of history.

The fact is that historians relied on diaries of German generals and is only now being addressed/fixed. Some don't like that though, they claim its revisionist. I disagree, I think its good history, which should never just say "History is settled!" We're actually getting a much better understanding of the dynamics of WW2 and especially the German generals that post war claimed it was all Hitler's fault, they were lying. Some of it was his fault, a lot, but a lot of it was their fault too. And they were not only complicit in Hitler's regime (the pay offs), they were also largely in agreement with him, they were proponents for many of the same things they later turned on, and they all mostly relieved because of personal failures, not because of high handed ethics over the Nazis.

[gracie4241]

finally people are re-looking at the myth of "the generals knew best" which is most assuredly not true.It began right after the war when every general said" if only the Austrian Corporal had listened to me General...…(fill in the blank).This was lapped up by journalists and by early historians, and lazily repeated for decades thereafter as gospel. In many cases-Halder in particular-he flatly LIED when his own diaries establish that he did, but nobody looked(JFK gave Halder a medal in 1962)In the transcripts that survived of Hitler Conferences 42-45("Hitler and his Generals") if anyone can locate any pearls of wisdom from one of the generals let me know, because I haven't.A humorous(?) example -because so different from stereotype-is the exchange between Kluge and Hitler on july 26, 1943 when Hitler is demanding Kluge retreat FASTER to free up troops needed in the Mediterranean, and Kluge is vehemently OPPOSING THAT.Oh well.Its good a little more historical balance is surfacing

[Cult Icon]

finally people are re-looking at the myth of "the generals knew best" which is most assuredly not true.It began right after the war when every general said"

That's kind of a blanket statement..

This is not original- IIRC a recent work on Barbarossa (I am thinking of Stahel's multi-volume on 1941 here) claim this narrative but they fail to name " all the generals" and what exactly their issues were and what they actually advocated postwar. Was it 3 generals? (Halder appears, then Guderian and Manstein..) 6 generals? Was it 15? Was it 50? It makes a nice polemical tale though.

while we're at it, I would nominate Rundstedt for getting fired for being defeatist in Normandy.

[Duncan_M]

That's kind of a blanket statement..

This is not original- IIRC a recent work on Barbarossa (I am thinking of Stahel's multi-volume on 1941 here) claim this narrative but they fail to name " all the generals" and what exactly their issues were and what they actually advocated postwar. Was it 3 generals? (Halder appears, then Guderian and Manstein..) 6 generals? Was it 15? Was it 50? It makes a nice polemical tale though.

while we're at it, I would nominate Rundstedt for getting fired for being defeatist in Normandy.

The postwar narrative was that Germany lost because of numbers and that Hitler had not listening to the advice of his professional generals. That itself was a blanket statement and nonetheless was the basis of history up until a few years ago when modern histories are rightfully tearing that narrative to pieces using actual historical sources that weren't postwar memoirs and interviews written by a select number of dubious ex generals trying to save their reputations and preserve their ego.