Adolf Hitler: A serial blunderer
Eighty years ago, on April 30, Adolf Hitler, probably the most barbaric dictator in history, committed suicide in his underground bunker in Berlin. A week later, Germany surrendered to the Allies. Despite the magnitude of the Allies’ triumph, the fact is that the German Fuhrer made so many blunders all through World War II that it seemed he was dying to hand victory on a platter to his enemies. And his British counterpart — Winston Churchill — appears to have been blessed with the luck of the devil himself.
If we look at all the critical turning points of the war, each one seems to have been a favour done by the Germans to their enemies. The first was letting most of the 3,38,000 besieged soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) escape from Dunkirk, northern France, in May 1940. It is a remarkable story of tenacity, pluck but, most of all, luck.
The escape was due more to the errors by the German military command, than bluster of the British leadership. Historians have speculated why the Germans pulled their punches. One theory is that Goering, the boss of the Luftwaffe wanted the air force to get the credit and stymied efforts by others to do the job. Another says that the Hitler was wary about getting his armour stuck in the surrounding marshland, just when they were needed for an operation planned in the south.
A third theory is that Hitler still hoped for a diplomatic peace with the Brits. Hitler's hesitation gave the British time to organise an evacuation of most of the troops.
In his book "100 Mistakes that Changed History", Bill Fawcett says, "The decision to stop panzers short of Dunkirk may well have been a mistake that lost Germany World War II."
The Dunkirk episode, covered in the second volume of Churchill's six-part history of WWII, is titled "Their Finest Hour". It could have turned out to be the darkest, but in truth, it was just the luckiest.
But, the mother of all blunders was Operation Barbarossa, Germany's invasion of Russia. By early 1941, Hitler had overrun most of Europe from Poland to the Pyrenees. He thought he was a military genius. France had fallen in weeks. So, in June, spurning the Non-Aggression Pact he had signed with Moscow, he attacked the Soviet Union across a 3,000-km front in the biggest invasion ever mounted anywhere.
Millions of Nazi troops with over 60,000 vehicles, including tanks, supported by the air force, moved into Russia. Hitler thought he would go in quickly, capture strategic locations, particularly Moscow and the oil field in the Caucasian region, and the Russians would sue for peace.
In September, his army was knocking at the gates of Leningrad (now St Petersburg), laying a siege that was to last over two years. In December, his troops could see the spires of the towers in the Soviet capital's Kremlin.
The following year, two panzer divisions reached the banks of the river Volga, beyond which lay Stalingrad. But the siege went into the winter. Ill-equipped soldiers froze to death in the thousands, the armour got stuck in marshy areas, their fuel freezing in the tanks and the grease in their barrels.
Even when it became apparent that his faulty strategy had led to the entrapment of thousands of his troops in various locations, he refused to cut his losses and get his troops back. Hitler acted against the advice of his more seasoned commanders, relying on incompetent sycophants to lead soldiers in the field. He planned neither for the tenacity of the Russians nor the harsh winter that had beaten back even invaders of the calibre of Napoleon. He learned nothing from history. Hubris clouded his judgment.
After two years, a badly mauled German army staggered back. Estimates of German losses vary, but the figure of casualties is said to have been in millions, plus a colossal loss of armaments.
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese suddenly attacked Pearl Harbor and that brought a reluctant US into the war. But even at this stage, though they sympathised with the Allies, most Americans were not keen to get embroiled in the European conflict. President Roosevelt, in his 'fireside chat' of December 9, vowed retribution and revenge against the Japanese, but still made no mention of entering the war across the Atlantic.
But two days later Hitler, in a show of support for Japan, declared war on the US. That settled it for the Americans. Germany, too, was their enemy now and their military added vital muscle to the Allied cause, making life difficult for the Axis powers. After the Russian fiasco, the scales tipped heavily against the Germans, but they could still have negotiated a truce. Once the US jumped into the fray, a devastating rout became inevitable.
Both Hitler and Churchill were racists and despised the untermenschen, including Asians. If one gassed and killed hundreds of thousands of Jews, the other let millions of Indians – whom he called "a beastly people with a beastly religion" – starve to death in a man-made famine.
Maybe, Hitler had a soft spot for his English foe. Historian Brian Bond says that well after the Dunkirk events, Hitler lamented that Churchill was "quite unable to appreciate the sporting spirit" in which he had refrained from decimating the BEF. Churchill should have thanked Hitler, in some small measure, if not profusely, for favours done all through the war.
