The Third Reich: A New History by Michael Burleigh

Author:Michael Burleigh [Burleigh, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780330475501
Publisher: Pan Books
Published: 2001-07-03T22:00:00+00:00

It was no use pointing out that conditions in Flanders were otherwise; that shells were limited; and that such a strategy would lead in Russian conditions to a few tub-sized craters in the frozen ground. The discussion moved on to whether the objectives were worth the human sacrifice. When Guderian suggested that they were not and spelled out the casualties and inadequate equipment, Hitler responded:

I know that you have not spared yourself and that you have spent a great deal of time with the troops. I grant you that. But you are seeing events at too close a range. You have been too deeply impressed by the suffering of the soldiers. You feel too much pity for them. You should stand back more. Believe me, things appear clearer when examined at longer range.40

Manstein also provides astute insights on Hitler as a would-be warlord:

He was a man who saw fighting only in terms of the utmost brutality. His way of thinking conformed more to a mental picture of masses of the enemy bleeding to death before our lines than to the conception of a subtle fencer who knows how to make an occasional step backwards in order to lunge for the decisive thrust. For the art of war he substituted a brutal force which, as he saw it, was guaranteed maximum effectiveness by the will-power behind it. . . . Despite the pains Hitler took to stress his own former status as a front-line soldier, I still never had the feeling that his heart belonged to the fighting troops. Losses, as far as he was concerned, were merely figures which reduced fighting power. They are unlikely to have seriously disturbed him as a human being.41

While Hitler was pondering the ‘longer range’ from the vantage point of Rastenburg, Stalin lived up to his grim reputation as the bureaucrat’s bureaucrat by centralising ultimate civilian control of the war in the State Defence Committee (the only soldier present was Voroshilov) and military power in the Supreme Command or Stavka, which he also chaired.42 He could match Hitler not only in brutality and personal rudeness, but also in holding forth with irrelevant details from his capacious memory, albeit displaying his mastery of the nomenklatura rather than Hitler’s well-known rage des nombres. Like Hitler, he made catastrophic interventions in military dispositions, usually by ordering ill-prepared counter-offensives. Ultimately, however, Stalin listened to the advice of professionals, increasingly adjudicating between various alternative proposals, which his generals then wisely attributed to his strategic genius, while his opposite in Berlin followed the dictates of destiny and Providence.43 One can all too clearly imagine Hitler’s wild monologues and tirades, in contrast to Stalin’s menacingly taciturn presence, with that impassive pockmarked face silently puffing on a pipe or sipping lemon tea. Whatever their temperamental dissimilarities, the two dictators shared an indisposition to visit the fighting fronts, and a total indifference to casualties or other losses, including in Stalin’s case the capture and death of his son Yakov, an event shrugged off and never recalled in conversation.

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