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Friedrich · #3 (**permalink**) July 24th, 2002, 05:02 PM

Excellent question!

Specialist in Soviet armed forces of the Royal Military Academy of Sandhurst said this: "Adolf Hitler was not as brilliant as he thought he was nor as imcompetent as others said". And I totally agree with that. Of course the lack of experience of leading men into combat and knowledge of staff-jobs affected him when he interferred in the lower levels... But we must remember that he was a super intelligent man. His political hability, not knowledge was amazing and as PzJgr says he could know his enemies weakness. Beside, his strategic conceptions were very, very good. He planned the strategies of taking the Rheinland, Sudetenland, Austria and Czhecoslovakia without any shots. He gave orders to his general staff and asigned them just strategic objectives. But we must remember that he came up with many special and innovative operations during the campaigns of Norway and France. Did you know that Hitler had started thinking about the posibility of attacking the Ardennes before Halder presented him Von Manstein's masterpiece, the "Sichelschnitt"? He came up with the idea of using paratroopers in dutch uniforms, etc., etc. He loved these innovative plans, many of them invented for him, althought very superfitially...

His first error was during the planning of "Barbarossa", when his strategic planning failed when he did not designated the last objective of the campaign. Then, he had realised he was not that bad in strategy; well, all the campaigns he had planned since 1936 had worked, hadn't they? THe problems started when he left the strategy behind and started focusing on tactics... Certainly, I do not condemn too much his diversion of the armour in August, because not only him, but many others were worried about the flanks. But this strategic misconception made us lose the war. In Moscow his order of not retreating worked and held the Russians. Unfortunately it convinced that he was so brilliant. He was brilliant but not that brilliant... After that he still had his good strategic conceptions, but he started getting into tactic and logistics aspects, not in a high, but a low level. Even an experienced, expert commander far from the front cannot do his job properly. Well, Hitler was away from the front and wanted to do the tactics even to division levels!!! Then his enormous lack of experienced turned obvious and his misconceptions happened because he did not listen to sugestions and advices... And at the end of the war, not even his strategic hability worked, because the man was already far away from reality...