Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)

Winston Churchill once described Hitler as "a maniac of ferocious genius, the repository and expression of the most virulent hatreds that have ever corroded the human breast..." Adolf Hitler's unprecedented appeal, the elevation of this man to the status of a demi-god, can be explained only on the hypothesis that he and his ideology almost exactly met the needs, longings, and sentiments of the majority of Germans. Hitler was no accident, he was no innovator, and his appeal was based precisely on his lack of novelty. Every significant element of the Nazi regime was a recapitulation [however magnified] of elements previously manifested in Imperial Germany, or other countries around the world.

"The initial, personal cause of his grievance against the universe can only be guessed at; but at any rate the grievance is here. He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon. One feels, as with Napoleon, that he is fighting against destiny, that he can’t win, and yet that he somehow deserves to. The attraction of such a pose is of course enormous; half the films that one sees turn upon some such theme." So wrote George Orwell in 1940, when he reviewed the latest edition/translation of Mein Kampf for the New English Weekly.

"Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people ‘I offer you a good time,’ Hitler has said to them ‘I offer you struggle, danger and death,’ and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet. Perhaps later on they will get sick of it and change their minds, as at the end of the last war. After a few years of slaughter and starvation ‘Greatest happiness of the greatest number’ is a good slogan, but at this moment ‘Better an end with horror than a horror without end’ is a winner. Now that we are fighting against the man who coined it, we ought not to underrate its emotional appeal.”

For centuries, the Germans were hoping for a restoration of the German Empire to its former mediaeval glory. Hundreds of beautiful myths and legends predicted the return of the Kaiser Frederick I, or, as he was popularly nicknamed, Friedrich Barbarossa, "der Rothbart," who, as the legend ran, had never died, but was sleeping in the caves of the Kyffhauser Mountain. With him a large army of valiant knights was said to be concealed in the subterranean abode, who would, at the proper season, awake and break forth under his leadership to liberate Germany and to restore its union. It was told that, after every lapse of a hundred years, the old emperor, whose beard had grown all around the marble table upon which his head was resting, would call a shepherd to his cave, and ask him whether the ravens were still flying around the mountain-top; One of the first and signal deeds with which Barbarossa was expected to astonish the world was to wage a successful war against France.

Germans followed Hitler because Hitler represented everything that official Germany had been conditioned to want, to wish for and to accept. One may take it as axiomatic that sixty or seventy million intelligent people would not support and would not sustain a form of government that did not represent something of what they wanted. The nineteenth century in Germany was a preparation for the advent of the Hitler Regime. That is why Walter Lippmann, in his column on July 15th 1943 could write: "Though Nazism is evil incarnate, Nazism is the culmination of tendencies in Germany which are older than Hitler and may presumably survive him." The forces and elements in Germany that raised Hitler to power and maintained him were the forces that stood behind Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm. The German people repudiated Hitler when he failed; but as long as Hitler was successful in bringing home the bacon, they wanted him.

After World War Two, Germans clung to the belief that they had been held hostage by a criminal gang led by the charismatic Hitler, bent on conquering Europe and exterminating Jews. Hitler's irresistible charisma that captivated Germans was largely artificially constructed by the Nazi propaganda machine, which pumped out pictures of entranced fans at rallies. Large parts of the population supported Hitler while others were opportunistic in following him. Finally with almost limitless power he was no longer dependent on the consent of the population.

Beginning with Erich Kordt's book "Between Madness and Reality", published back in 1947, a large number of books appear in the historical literature that justify all the former Hitlerite diplomats who, played a significant role in unleashing the war. In these books an attempt is made to prove that Hitler's diplomats were in ardent opposition to ... Hitler's diplomacy. In some of these works, an attempt is made to link the military and diplomatic opposition together, removing the blame from the military and diplomatic figures both for starting the war and for the defeat of fascist Germany in this war. Franz Halder's book "Hitler as a Commander" is not a memoir, or rather not only a memoir. This is a work that claims to evaluate an entire stage of history and is conceived precisely as a historical work. At the same time, he characterizes the early stage in the development of West German historiography, the stage that continues until about 1951. At this stage, the main task of West German historiography was to find the main culprit behind the defeat of Germany in World War II, while at the same time justifying its true initiators and organizers - German monopoly capital and the German military.

The very title of Halder's book "Hitler as a General" speaks of the intentions of the author. By placing the figure of Hitler at the center of his research, Halder seeks to make him the sole culprit for all of Germany's misfortunes, chiefly for all the defeats of the fascist troops in the Second World War. This is a peculiar expression of the myth "about a stab in the back with a dagger." This myth was first formulated by General Ludendorff in a conversation with the English General Malcolm in 1919. “The German army,” said Ludendorff at the time, “is not to blame for the defeat. We were stabbed in the back with a dagger.” Twenty-six years later, in May 1945, Hitler's Field Marshal von Rundstedt, after listening to Minister Schwerin von Krosig's speech on the surrender of Germany, declared: "It is not the German army that is to blame for this ... The German army had bad political leaders."

Halder reduces the reasons for the defeat of fascist Germany in the war to the fact that Hitler neglected the advice of the generals - to concentrate the main forces of the German troops to capture Moscow - and at the "decisive moment" gave preference to the southern direction, in particular operations against Kiev. This allegedly led to an overstrain of troops and made it possible for the Soviet Army to prepare for a counteroffensive. Halder's book is dedicated to spreading the legend of "good generals" who could not lead Germany to victory just because they were bound hand and foot by bad politicians, and first of all by Germany's "evil genius" Hitler.