To avoid being arrested for evading military service in
Austria-Hungary, Adolf Hitler left Vienna for Munich in May 1913 but was
forced to return–then he failed the physical. He volunteered for the
Bavarian army the following year and served during all of
World War I on the Western Front. His experiences in the fighting affected his thinking about war thereafter.
After World War I, Hitler came to control the National Socialist
German Workers Party, which he hoped to lead to power in Germany. When a
coup attempt in 1923 failed, he turned, after release from jail, to the
buildup of the party to seize power by means that were at least
outwardly legal. He hoped to carry out a program calling for the
restructuring of Germany on a racist basis so that it could win a series
of wars to expand the German people’s living space until they dominated
and exclusively inhabited the globe.
He believed that Germany should fight wars for vast tracts of land to
enable its people to settle on them, raising large families that would
replace casualties and provide soldiers for the next war of expansion.
The first would be a small and easy war against Czechoslovakia, to be
followed by the really difficult one against France and Britain. A third
war would follow against the Soviet Union, which he assumed would be
simple and quick and would provide raw materials, especially oil, for
the fourth war against the United States. That war would be simple once
Germany had the long-range planes and superbattleships to fight a power
thought inherently weak but far distant and possessing a large navy.
Once Hitler had come to power in 1933, German military preparations
were made for these wars. The emphasis in the short term was on weapons
for the war against the western powers, and for the long term, on the
weapons for war against the United States.
In 1938 Hitler drew back from war over Czechoslovakia at the last
minute but came to look upon agreeing to a peaceful settlement at Munich
as his worst mistake. When he turned to the war against France and
Britain, he could not persuade Poland to subordinate itself to Germany
to ensure a quiet situation in the east; hence, he decided to destroy
that country before heading west. He was determined to have war and
initiated it on September 1, 1939. To facilitate the quick conquest of
Poland and break any blockade, he aligned Germany with the Soviet Union,
assuming that concessions made to that country would be easily
reclaimed when Germany turned east.
Hitler had originally hoped to attack in the west in the late fall of
1939, but bad weather–which would have hindered full use of the air
force–and differences among the military led to postponement until the
spring of 1940. During that interval, Hitler made two major decisions.
Urged on by Admiral Erich Raeder, he decided to seize Norway to
facilitate the navy’s access to the North Atlantic and did so in April
1940. Urged by General Erich von Manstein, he shifted the primary focus
of attack in the west from the northern to the southern part of the
force that was to invade the Low Countries. They might then cut off
Allied units coming to aid the Belgians and the Dutch.
The new strategy at first appeared to work when the Germans in a few
days broke through the French defenses and, within ten days, reached the
Channel coast behind the Allied forces. Ordering their air force to
destroy the cut-off Allied units, the Germans first wanted to turn south
to prevent the buildup of a new defensive line, a decision on which the
German commander, Gerd von Rundstedt, and Hitler agreed. As it became
clear that many Allied soldiers might escape, the direction of the armor
was reversed again, but too late to halt the evacuation of much of the
British Expeditionary Force and many French soldiers. The thrust
southward in early June 1940 brought a swift collapse of remaining
French resistance, and this complete victory gave Hitler an aura of
triumph, which assured him the enthusiastic support of almost all of
Germany’s military leaders, especially as he systematically tied them to
himself by generous promotions and a system of mass bribery.
Because it looked as if this war was over, Hitler and the military
began planning for the wars against the United States and against the
Soviet Union. On July 11, the resumption of construction of the navy to
defeat the United States was ordered; by July 31, after first hoping to
invade the Soviet Union in the fall of 1940, Hitler, on the advice of
his military staff, decided to attack in the east in the late spring of
1941.
As Britain refused to accept defeat, Hitler planned to combine three
measures to knock it out of the war: the German air force would destroy
the country’s capacity to defend itself; there would be an invasion if
Britain did not surrender; and the expected quick defeat of the Soviet
Union would remove that country as a possible source of aid for Britain
and, by ending any danger to Japan’s rear, encourage that power to move
in the Pacific and tie up the United States.
Hitler wanted Japan to join in the war with Britain and promised to
join Japan in war with the United States if that was thought necessary
by Tokyo, assuming that this would be the other way for Germany to
acquire the navy for war with the United States. A short campaign in the
Balkans was to secure what he believed might be a vulnerable southern
flank; the last step in this, the airborne seizure of Crete, proved so
costly that the Germans attempted no major airborne operation
thereafter.
The German invasion of the Soviet Union, begun on June 22, 1941,
seemed at first to work as planned but quickly ran into trouble. The
initial blows, which were supposed to bring the Soviet Union crashing
down in a few weeks, did not have that effect. Thereafter, the question
always was which sector to attack and whether to retreat. In this,
Hitler was at times at odds with some generals, but others always took
his position. As the war turned increasingly against Germany,
disagreements became more frequent. Hitler still expected to win while
some generals were trying to find a less messy way of losing. None
advised against going to war with the United States. For the 1942
offensive in the east, Hitler and his military leaders agreed on
striking in the south; this project ended in disaster at Stalingrad. A
new major offensive in 1943 not only ended in defeat at Kursk but also
was followed by the first successful Red Army summer offensive.
When retreats were advocated, Hitler was always concerned about the
loss of mat[eacute]riel that could not be hauled back, about the need to
reconquer whatever had been given up, and about shorter lines, which
released Red Army units for new offensives. Some generals,
Erwin Rommel
and Walther Model, for example, occasionally acted without or against
orders to pull back and were not punished. Others were sent home to
collect their monthly bribes in retirement.
As Hitler saw increasing danger from the western Allies, he relied
more on Admiral Karl D[odie]nitz to hold them off by submarine warfare.
When that effort was blunted in 1943, he both supported the building of
new types of submarines and geared strategy on the northern portion of
the Eastern Front to protection of the Baltic area, where new submarines
and crews could be run in. Enormous resources were also allocated to
new weapons designed to destroy London. It was Hitler’s hope that the
Germans could drive any Allied troops who landed in the west into the
sea and then move substantial forces east in the interval before any
second invasion. When this plan failed, Hitler turned to holding all
ports as long as possible, to hamper Allied supply lines and to prepare
for a counterstroke that would defeat the western Allies. This
counterstroke, the
Battle of the Bulge, would then provide the opportunity to move forces east after all.
As the Allies closed in on Germany, Hitler increasingly hoped for a
split in the alliance he had forged against himself. He believed Germany
had lost World War I because of the collapse of the home front and
therefore assumed that establishment of a dictatorship and the
systematic killing of all Jews would guarantee victory this time. When
the end was near, he married his mistress and then committed suicide
with her.
The term “Hitler’s War,” sometimes attached to
World War II,
is accurate at least to some extent; obviously, only the massive
energies of the German people, harnessed to his will, made the war
possible and made it last so long. But there cannot be any doubt that in
harnessing that energy to extraordinary projects and horrible crimes,
Hitler placed his stamp on that war and on the twentieth century.
The Reader’s Companion to Military History. Edited by Robert Cowley
and Geoffrey Parker. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
En
este post voy a tratar de desarrollar el proyecto final para el curso de AICLE
INTEF, con el desarrollo de un artículo sobre la unidad didáctica que he estado
trabajando en el mismo. 
