This diatribe only illustrates your massive prejudice against German commanders. All of it is complete nonsense. Mostly the typical leftist prejudices about the imagined cold war conspiracy against poor red army. Makes me laugh. You are massively misrepresenting what German commanders wrote after the war.That they allegedly pretended to have been able to win the war,if not for Hitler is far from the truth. Good joke that they supposedly determined NATO doctrine.Not really. Had nothing to do with Mansteins ideas.Duncan_M wrote: ↑09 Oct 2019, 17:24Early war success had so much to do with other factors than Halder's supposed competence, especially when so many of the better decisions made ran counter to his recommendations. In my opinion, he was unfit for the job he held, if for no other reason than the chief of staff of the general staff cannot have an antagonistic relationship with the boss, regardless if that person is Hitler, Stalin, Jesus, or Lucifer, holding that position requires a team player with a good relationship with the commander in chief, obedience and loyalty, and an innate understanding of the commander's intent, all of which Halder was absolutely devoid of. Forgetting his political, economic, strategic, logistical foibles (which he had many), that above was enough that he should have been relieved far earlier than he was, but Hitler didn't have cause until it became apparent Halder was blatantly not right for the job, after botching two major offensives.Max Payload wrote: ↑01 Oct 2019, 11:46The description of Halder as an idiot is, however, glib. Clearly neither the hierarchy of the interwar Heer nor the postwar US military subscribed to that opinion and his supposed idiocy seems to have been well hidden during the planning of Weiß, Gelb and Rot.
Postwar Halder came across to the Western Allies as an intelligent military professional that was anti-Hitler (to the point he later claimed that he'd wanted to assassinate Hitler earlier in the war) and was able and ready to tell US Army and British officers what they wanted to hear about basically everything (Liddell-Hart being the worst), but especially about being responsible for the history of the war from perspectives unknown to the Western Allies, the Eastern Front where the Germans fought the massive Asiatic hordes of evil Russkies. He literally wrote the history of the Eastern Front for the US Army, and helped create tactics, operational doctrine, and strategy based on his advice and knowledge, which is sad and hilarious at the same time, because it was not for many decades later that it became clear everyone had been duped by him (similarly to how so many had been duped, even to this day, by a certain facially scared SS lieutenant colonel leader of commandos, who turned out to be a fraud too).
The problem we still face today because of individuals like Halder is that so much of what they gave up as history was farce, as it was their highly sanitized version of events made to favor themselves, full of blame game against Hitler and others who were no longer alive, maligned the Red Army fully (postwar US Army tactics, operational doctrine, and strategy, based on Halder's, Manstein's, and other former general's accounts of the Red Army was framed on falsehoods and racism, and had they been implemented in actual fighting would have led to disaster). Worse, it was a literal conspiracy, since it was all done in concert with other surviving generals who used the opportunity to make money, revive their reputations, earn their pensions, remove the stigma of war crimes surrounding the Wehrmacht (they created the Clean Wehrmacht Myth). They even managed to become postwar mythical heroes, super competent captains of war who would have won easily against amazing odds if not for Hitler! Its scary what they managed to accomplish, all because the Cold War forced the US and British to remilitarize West Germany.
They lost the war, badly, often through their own incompetence, and then managed to be write the history of the war. So much for "history is written by the victors."
It was only fairly recently when scholars ignored their narratives and took a more indepth and unbiased examination of the records and found that, what a surprise, incompetent Nazi allied generals with massive egos have a tendency of lying. So for that to happen, again, in my opinion at least, Halder needs to be knocked off of any historical pedestal he exists on and the actual truth acknowledged.
Scholars have always used memoirs by German commanders with the necessary critical sense,together with many other sources. Never was military history of WW2 written solely on the basis of memoirs.That recently these memoirs have been ignored is blatantly untrue.