Has Anyone Analyzed the Grip that Hitler had on Germany?

I don’t think anyone has really really understand the grip that Hitler had on German High Command, Germany and the Axis powers. It’s very mind boggling Honestly. As 1944 starts the Axis powers are losing ground in Russia. Have lost North Africa and the allies are taking Italy. The war is over. It’s just a matter of time till the Allies take everything. Everyone in the Axis powers has to know it by now. Yet they continue to fight on. They continue to follow Hitler.

Everyone in the Axis powers knows they’ve committed crimes against humanity. The Allies are not going to be very nice to the Axis powers. Especially the Russians. If the Axis powers want to make a deal the time is now. Yet they don’t.

There’s three doors the leaders of the Axis powers have.

  1. Suicide.
  2. Execution
  3. Go to jail for considerable amount of time.
  4. History will hate them for their actions. That will be their legacy.

It’s so weird that German High Command and the rest of Germany will follow Hitler to the ends of the earth and they also know that Hitler is actively taking drugs like Methamphetamines. The thought of following someone like this is mind boggling to me. GHC are not stupid, they are highly educated and they’ve got a lot of connections and they have great careers. Yet they chose to just blindly follow Hitler who’s going to basically ruin them.

After the July 22 plot anyone in GHC could have run to allies lines to surrender, but none of them did. Particularly Erwin Rommel. He was four hours away from Allied lines at the time and all he had to do is get in his car with his family and drive East, hoist a white flag, say who he is and he would have survived the war. No one is going to stop him. Instead he took the suicide route.

GHC would rather follow a leader who’s actively addicted to drugs, face suicide, execution, and/or jail than surrender. Talk about commitment. It’s just mind blowing.

It was definitely a different time. No one follows leaders like that today. We can hate Hitler for all we want but he was able to get people to follow him to the ends of the earth and past it. Has anyone tried to understand that?

At this point its like the people in GHC have an addiction and no one is telling them it’s a problem.

3 Likes

Yes, after 79 years it is known in the former Axis populations. In early 1944 the whole world was not so sure.

I don’t believe that. I mean come on. They had to know they weren’t going to be taking back Italy, Russia and North Africa. They had to know it’s all downhill from here.

If humans do not want to know, there is no limit of ignorance. And knowig the war was lost was something you have had to hide, because if you did not do so the penalty was KZ, serving in a penal regiment or execution.

1 Like

You’re trying to tell me that the greatest military minds that Germany can produce are going to claim ignorance? These guys are career military officers they are highly respected within Germany and their foes. I don’t believe that either. It can’t be that simple.

Yes, but I have to disaggree to the “greatest military minds” nonsense.

Well, at their height they had conquered most of Europe, North Africa, and a large portion of Russia. Not to mention the Allies had to put their whole countries on war footing and it took them six years to win the war.

You can call them whatever you want, but it’s clear they know how to fight a war and they were pretty good at it.

But we’re getting off the subject. My question is how in the world in Zeus’s butthole did Hitler get these guys to go to war, conduct it in a fashion so that after it they will either commit suicide, go to jail, or be executed while Hitler was tuned up on Methamphetamines? Not to mention they will never ever think about surrendering.

You can disagree with Hitler’s cause all you want. How messed up Hitler’s cause was even adds to his ability to lead because even though it was a seriously bad cause he still was able to get people to follow him into the most destructive war the world has ever seen and get his followers to never think about surrender and his followers knew if they lost the options were suicide, go to jail or be executed.

The history makes it seem like Hitler is the best leaders the world has ever seen… My question is how the hell did he do that? It doesn’t make any sense.

Hitler gave the German High Command what they wanted, initially. Respect, freedom from arms limitations, the use of the armed forces to implement foreign policy and a war against comunism in the East. Plus finishing old business with France.

But as of now, the German High Command are in over their heads. The British and Americans have little sympathy any more for Germany. This is the Second war in living memory against Germany. A negotiated peace is discredited. This is going to be Gernany’s last act. There arent going to be any negotiations. This war is a fight to the finish.

2 Likes

That’s really not true. The finish has already been defined. A complete Allie victory was going to be the result. The fact that they fought till Hitler died was probably the reason why the Allies were so hard on Germany. When Italy surrendered most of the Italian government survived the war and didn’t go to jail.

Of the three Axis powers Italy, Japan, Germany. I’d say Germany was punished the harshest.

1 Like

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” - L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

It’s easy to say “its just a matter of time”. In late 1941, one might have said that about the USSR. Nobody knows. If Churchill dies in early 1944, do the British stay in the war? Who can say? If the Americans take that as a reason to go Pacific-only, what happens then?

One might say the same thing about the French in late 1914. Its ‘obvious’ that they’ll be crushed by the Germans, right? Or the South in the American Civil War in 1862. Or the North if Lincoln contracted a deadly disease in 1865 (he had smallpox in 1863, typhoid fever in 1863 and 1864, and still had after-effects of malaria), and Johnson (a southerner - born in North Carolina) winds up President? Or Napoleon in 1809, after Aspern-Essling? Or the Romans after Cannae. The ‘losing side’ always hangs on and hopes for a surprise change that gives them a way to change their fortune.

By 1944, there was no one to make a deal with. Let’s remember that Kaltenbrunner, Schellenberg, Ribbentrop and Himmler (and, of course, Hitler) were all for the war going on until Spring 1945, and only Schellenberg started looking for an exit for even then (Himmler’s feeble machinations are just that, feeble.)

The Allies (including the Russians) had agreed among themselves to fight to the end, with no deals with the Nazis. The only ‘deal’ offered by the Allies was entirely unofficial, and included surrender, removal of the Nazi government, and war crimes trials, which all the above were not interested in. The only ‘deal’ offered by the Germans even as the roof was falling in was with the Western Allies only, and not the Russians. The Western Allies immediately informed the Russians of the offer, and turned it down.

The people involved did not think as you describe. They just didn’t. The only solution is to remove Hitler (that is, kill him), and then fight the Waffen SS for control of Germany. That was tried, and it didn’t work.

The German military had all sworn an oath of personal allegiance to Hitler, which they took seriously. That might boggle your mind, but they were different people than you in practically every way (including their personal histories and social standing).

They simply didn’t see things as obvious as you do.

2 Likes

Cult of Personality.

While it seems insane, it’s not really remarkable. Look at the Confederate Army at the end of the American Civil War. It’s early 1865. Lincoln has been reelected to another four years. European recognition is a dead letter. No ports remain open to blockade runners. Grant is slowly crushing Lee at Petersburg and Lee’s army is hemorrhaging deserters. The only other major field army has been utterly wrecked in Tennessee and is now trying to contest Sherman with brigades the size of regiments. Sherman has marched through Georgia and is now marching through the Carolinas.

The war is obviously utterly lost. So what does the Confederate government do? They offer to negotiate peace…on the condition of their independence! When Richmond and Petersburg fall, Jeff Davis is convinced he can keep the war going, even if it means waging a guerilla war from Texas. And that was without a cult of personality or war crimes.

Never underestimate the depths of denial people can sink into.