I'm bored, can't sleep and figured Id write up a few things:

1 - Battle of Dunkirk. Although the German Army was out of gas, supplies, ammo and their tanks etc. needed massive repairs they pulled back and allowed the forces of GB to retreat. had they wiped those forces out using w/e they had, England would have been extremely vulnerable to invasion.

2 - Hitler did not want to be disturbed during his sleep. This I can agree with. Even when things are extremely stressful and crucial to your life your sicknesses, ailments etc. can make you extremely cranky and when you can actually sleep, you do not want to be woken up. Hitler's associates were terrified on numerous points to wake him up to tell him about allied troop movements, advances etc. This played a huge roll during the D-Day invasion.

3 - Not allowing Rommel amongst names to reinforce the Atlantic Wall. Many saw huge flaws in this, and saw possible invasion points that although would cause mass casualties, would be successful to the point where the allies could in fact land troops and set up even a small base of operations to get a better foothold closer to Germany.

4 - Warring with Russia. History has shown although the Russians may not be the greatest troops they have a mass supply of endless combatents and they know their own countries weather and can survive in it. Russia is far too vast for anyone to invade unless they come with multiple countries from all angles in a swift, well executed plan. If you fail, the Russians will unleash absolute hell on you and drive you back, and wipe out your country with there far more dense numbers of troops and resources.

5 - Poor communication lines with Japan, and bad alliance with Italy. Italy sucked, big time. Not to mention Austria. World War 1 should have been a perfect example. Austria had 90+% casualties in WWI. Did they think these people would be different? Italy was poorly ran, and was poorly trained. But I suppose to give you an extra few months of defense to prepare isn't such a bad option.

Their communication lines with Japan were so far thin, it took days even if a communication went threw to reach their forces. Not only this but Japan and Germany weren't the best of friends. Had it worked out in their favor and Japan and Germany were left standing, they would have warred each other, and the world would be a big shit hole even today.

6 - Hitler was on serious, massive and numerous amounts of medication. Not only having Syphillis ( which left untreated can make a person lose their sanity ) he had many other problems. He had injections, took various amounts of pills per day and was doomed if he didn't murder himself to die an early death. He may have been so far gone from all the medication at times his judgement and grasp on reality hindered him from making or accepting intelligent decisions on what to do and when to do it.

7 - Mass extermination of Jews, Poles and Ruskies etc. This made the Allies when they knew about this hate not only Hitler but Germany itself more. A lot of these people had no clue as to what was going on. Allies fought harder and took out harsh penalties on German POW's during WWII. I've talked with many German citizens that are over here on business and they are embarassed and will not really talk about the events on WWII. I remidn them that Hitler won the seat of Chancellor of Germany on a 30+% vote margin and not everyone was for him. Without WWII the advancement of technology wouldn't be where it is today. Although the loss of life on both sides is catastrophic had it not been for what happened we wouldn't be where we are today. Today still the German people are saddened and embarassed that something like that could have happened and did happen. Putting people into forced labor is one thing, but killing them off is another. Today because of one man, and his close followers the Germans are said to be all Nazi's by the average American when asked whats the first thing you think about Germany.

Although he wanted to exterminate all those inferior to the master race supposedly, it wouldn't have been a bad idea to force ALL of these people into mass labor camps to build more weapons, farm more food etc and work them to death, rather than to eliminate them. It would have far more profited the war effort than just killing them.

8 - Starting the war too soon without having an army capable of total world domination. Hitler was a genius at giving public speeches. His genius was taught by one of his idols in giving speeches. His ability to motivate a crowd and give great speeches will have him forever in the top few that can address not only a nation but the world as being inspirational, emotional etc. Similar to Reagan. Although being a great speaker, which is weird considering he had mass fear of public speaking he pushed too hard and too fast.

He was the local bully of Europe in terms of the leaders in Europe. He kept pushing nations further and further to the point where they would strike back. They may not have had the man power or resources to oppose such a nation and a man like Hitler had he properly planned for such a war, he would have realized that taking a bit more time and seizing less terrorities esp by force may have led to a more drawn out take over, but a more successful one to allow his armies to build a bigger defense strategy but allow his troops to gather more morale and his opposers to fear him even more.

9 - Failure to acknowledge his own mistakes and failure to properly communicate with his military leaders and political personnel. To him, he was always right and always knew what was going on. To others he had lost touch with reality and was a failure at military strategies. Germany had Rommel, one of the few threats to the allies as Patton was to the Germans. Thats another thing, they feared Patton so much it led to poor military planning. Hitler may have been able to rally the nation but he couldn't organize a good military strat to save his life.



I dunno if any of that made sense or w/e I am not pro Germany in WWII and I wouldn't change anything about WWII if I could go back in time, only to join up on the allies side and be a paratrooper. I would have probably been a pussy during WWII and cried for mom and died instantly. Theres truly only a few people on this board I think would have survived long enough to see a good portion of the war or even survive it. Only person I can think that would survive would be Mordis. Others I think would have done well would be Brian and Kain for diff reasons, Sam, Aram and Dex. The rest of us would have been without a clue and without any direction.

Even when asking my own grandparents who weren't very old during this war about WWII is hard on them to even respond. So life at home was something that isn't really talked about either.

I think for our history the best leader for Germany was and always will be Hitler. Why? The luck that the allies had in WWII in the European theater is unbelievable. It's like they won the 300 million dollar lottery countless times although it may not seem like it. Hitler's poor decisions, poor management, poor military planning skills helped lead the allied victory in Europe more than people think. There are medal of honor winners, great platoons, people, batallions etc. but I think our great hero in WWII was Hitler himself. He drove his own country to the ground and helped not only the allies win but his own allied help to fail.

The problem was Hitler had zero desire to invade Britain. He would have much preferred to ally with them. He said in Mein Kampf that the two country's that would be the best allies for Germany were Italy and Britain. He believed that if he crushed Britain, then the British Empire would have fallen into the hands of the United States, the Japanese, and the USSR.

Also, Hitler was convinced by Goering that the escape from Dunkirk would have been stopped by the Luftwaffe. It wasn't.



Consider too that Hitler spent many sleepless nights running the war. As the war progressed, he was constantly struggling with illnesses. When he could get sleep, it was rare. But there were few times when he slept through a major development in the war. D-Day is one exception, but even when he was awoken that, he wasn't convinced that the invasion was real until it was too late to move his Panzer reserves to the beach.



I'm not sure where you got that he didn't allow them to set-up the wall. It was under construction up until the invasion. The problem is that it was more complete in some areas than others. In Normandy, I believe it was less than 20% complete.



Hitler's entire foreign policy plan hinged on gaining land in the Ukraine. He believed this was needed so that Germans could expand and have enough food to supply the country during any conflict. Hitler was always going to invade Russia and once he had the strength, nothing was going to convince him otherwise.

With 20/20 hindsight, we can sit here and say "Oh, what a big mistake," but consider what Hitler knew at the time. He knew Napoleon took 600,000 troops into Russia and got eaten up by the winter. However, Hitler invaded with 3.2 million troops using mechanized armor to move much faster than the French ever could. Also consider that Hitler had three conflicts to observe the Russians' fighting capabilities: World War I, Polish-Soviet War, and Russia's invasion of Finland in 1940. In World War I, the Germans, with much smaller forces, were able to make large gains against the Russians. Russia eventually surrendered to Germany and signed away large amounts of territory. In 1919, Russia invaded Poland and was repelled. In 1940, Russia invaded Finland. Russia lost about 100,000 men to Finland's 25,000. Embarrassing. Also consider that Germany beat Russia in World War I, but couldn't beat France. Hitler had just beaten France in six weeks, so he reasoned that he could beat Russia too.

The Russians had massed a large number of divisions on their Western Front. Hitler believed that with his 3.2 million troops, he could quickly knock out Russia's "inferior" armies that were conveniently grouped on the border, and achieve victory. If there was any mistake in the military planning for the invasion, it was the German's complete lack of any real comprehension of the size of Russia's forces. By the Fall of 1941, the Germans had knocked out twice as many troops that they originally thought Russia could produce.



I totally agree with the communication thing. Mussolini invaded Greece before Hitler could even talk him out of it. I don't know if better communication with Japan would have helped. They were on opposite sides of the world and couldn't offer much support to each other.



I think the syphilis thing is was overplayed. The belief that he had this disease is still just a theory. However, he did suffer from other illnesses such as Parkinson's. After his assassination attempt is when he became the most delusional. He had many complications from it including a busted eardrum that had to be drained. Even when all this afflicting him, all of Hitler's doctors testified that he was sane until the last day.



Hitler did force millions into labor. In the winter of 1941, Hitler recalled German works on the Russian front and replaced them with prisoners. The extermination was of course a huge mistake, morally and strategically. Once the people of areas like the Ukraine realized that Germany was just as bad if not worse than Soviet Russia, they turned on the Germans.



Hitler actually regretted that he didn't start a war in 1938. He correctly assessed that if he waited longer, Britain, France, Russia, and the United States would become more equipped.



Hitler had good and bad military decisions. In 1941, the Germans won numerous victories such as capturing and killing approximately 4 million Russians. When Russians counterattacked in the winter, it was Hitler alone that was able to prevent a massive retreat. All of his generals disagreed with him. Not only did he keep territory, but he prevented the loss of thousands of pieces of equipment that would have been abandoned to the enemy.

Yet, Hitler's "bad decisions" were not his alone. German military leaders all thought the Russians were completely defeated in the first six weeks of the war. Six weeks later, they believed the war would be a long one. When Hitler attacked Stalingrad, his military commanders all believed the city was as good as theirs. Then when the Germans surrendered in Stalingrad, Hitler again prevented a mass, unorganized retreat. Instead, he was able to withdraw some 700,000 Germans south of Stalingrad with the loss of a few hundred.

You definitely forgot the biggest, most costly mistake of all of Hitler's: Declaring war on the United States. That was his and his alone. It lost him the war.

The biggest mistake Hitler made was not learning from Napoleon's.

I'm assuming you're simply referring to the invasion of Russia, right?

Considering the flaws at all levels of the Nazi heirachy there was little chance of them winning the war. When you research the Nazi regime extensively it becomes clear, they did remarkably well considering the chaos and corruption from the leadership to the lowest ranks of the party.

The two biggest mistakes Germany's leaders (not just Hitler) made was the gross underestimation of the resiliance of the Soviet people and armed forces, and secondly the vastness of the country and it's primitive infrastructure.

As for Hitler's medical problems I believe the summer of 1942 was a turning point and his health declined there after. If anyone does a bit of research you may come to similar conclusions.

Bob

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Nice Derek, and Scott, some really excellent responses there.

I think we can add two more -

1) Not getting Spain involved - Franko fighting on the side of facism had received aid from both Italy and Germany...why were they not made to join in on the side of the Axis!?

2) He should have taken Moscow. Cur the head from the body.


Jimma

Good read.

G'day Jimma.

Franco really played the fiddle well and while at times he gave Hitler the impression Spain would join the fight at times, it was never his intention to fight in WWII.

Remember Spain was a shambles after the civil war and being privy to the machinations of the Nazi's Franco knew any involvement in the war would be totally ruinous for his country. However one division, the Blue division was raisedand fought on the Eastern Front.

The Moscow option never happened because the German forces were stretched too thin everywhere and whatever option Hitler took it had it's dangers

Bob

LOL, I forgot I posted here. Yes I was referring to the invasion of Russia.