“The Eastern Front is a house of cards. If it is broken at one point, the rest will all collapse.” - Generaloberst Heinz Guderian
The ultimate fate of the Third Reich was no longer in question by January of 1945. There was little doubt that the reign of terror that it had forced upon the world would soon be over. The only matter remaining was how quickly it would all end. Although Germany formally surrendered five months later on 8 May 1945, I would argue that barring a number of strategic leadership failures committed by Adolf Hitler during those final months, the final termination of war with Germany would have taken much longer. This paper will provide a brief setting of the scene in January 1945 on the Eastern Front to provide the reader context and then analyze several of Adolf Hitler’s strategic leadership failures that likely hastened the wars end.
Overview
In January 1945, the Eastern Front looked grim for the Germans. From June to August 1944, Josef Stalin’s Red Army had crushed German Army Group Center through OPERATION BAGRATION in its drive to the Vistula River. The German Army Group Center lost nearly one quarter of its military forces on the eastern from and the reeling Wehrmacht never recovered from its losses. The Red Army, having captured three bridgeheads on the Vistula River to support their next offensive, halted just outside of Warsaw to resupply and reorganize in preparation for its next assault during which the Warsaw uprising took place in August to September 1944. Regardless of the reasoning behind the Soviet operational pause outside of Warsaw, whether it was due to the strength of the German counter-offensive, Red Army logistical concerns, or political strategy, Stalin provided little suppo...
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...rts, Stalin's Wars: from World War to Cold War, 1939-1953, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006) 204.
Roberts, Stalin’s General, 209.
William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), 1078.
Michael Burleigh, Moral Combat – Good and Evil in World War II, (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), 320.
Ibid., 321.
Ian Kershaw, Hitler: A Biography, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008), 891.
Hastings, ARMAGEDDON. 457.
Erich von Manstein. Lost Victories, (Chicago: Regency, 1958), 285.
Ibid., 241.
Ibid.
Ibid., 240.
James Duffy, Hitler Slept Late And Other Blunders That Cost Him The War (New York: Praeger, 1991), 149-150.
Antony Beevor, The Fall of Berlin 1945, (New York: Viking Penguin, 2002), 6.
Ibid., 7.
Hastings, ARMAGEDDON. 243.
Roberts, Stalin’s General, 218.
Dawidowicz, Lucy S.. The war against the Jews, 1933-1945. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975.
Benz, Wolfgang, A Concise History of the Third Reich (University of California Press, California; 2007)
Bard, Mitchell G. The Complete Idiot's Guide to world War II, Macmillan Publishing, New York, New York, 1999
Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: a History of Nazi Germany. New York:
Goldhagen, Daniel J. (1997) Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (Abacus : London)
O'Neill, William L. World War II: A Student Companion. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. Print.
Mckale,Donald M.. Hitler’s Shadow War, the Holocaust and World War 2. New York: Cooper Square.2002.Print.
Berghahn, Volker R.. Germany and the approach of war in 1914. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973.
The battle fought between the Soviet Red Army and the Nazi Wehrmacht over the “city of Stalin” for four long months in the fall and winter of 1942-3 stands as not only the most important battle of the Eastern front during World War II, but as the greatest battle ever fought. Germany’s defeat at Stalingrad ended three years of almost uninterrupted victory and signaled the beginning of the end of the Third Reich. In this way, Stalingrad’s significance was projected beyond the two main combatants, extending to all corners of the world.
Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Vintage, 1997. Print.
The invasion of Poland by Germany in September 1939 is regarded as the trigger that unleashed the Second World War. After an analysis and study of the causes of the conflict, from my point of view I consider that the depiction of hostilities that would trigger this great war were developed long before and were only a matter of time before this war began. I consider it this way, because Germany as the defeated nation of the World War I, in which the victorious nations, imposed conditions within which Germany ceded part of its territory and its colonies, reduce its army and pay annual compensation to the victorious nations.
The debate as to whether Hitler was a ‘weak dictator’ or ‘Master of the Third Reich’ is one that has been contested by historians of Nazi Germany for many years and lies at the centre of the Intentionalist – Structuralist debate. On the one hand, historians such as Bullock, Bracher, Jackel and Hildebrand regard Hitler’s personality, ideology and will as the central locomotive in the Third Reich. Others, such as Broszat, Mason and Mommsen argue that the regime evolved out from pressures and circumstances rather than from Hitler’s intentions. They emphasise the institutional anarchy of the regime as being the result of Hitler’s ‘weak’ leadership. The most convincing standpoint is the synthesis of the two schools, which acknowledges both Hitler’s centrality in explaining the essence of Nazi rule but also external forces that influenced Hitler’s decision making. In this sense, Hitler was not a weak dictator as he possessed supreme authority but as Kershaw maintains, neither was he ‘Master of the Third Reich’ because he did not exercise unrestricted power.
Bessel, Richard, and Ian Kershaw. "Hitler And The Germans." Life in the Third Reich. 41. UK: Introduction & Suggestions for Futher Reading c. Richard Bessel, 1987, 2001. History Reference Center. Web. 23 Jan. 2014.
Shmoop Editorial Team.” Adolf Hitler in World War 2.” Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 26 Feb. 2014
Taubman, William. Stalin's American Policy: From Entente to Detente to Cold War. New York: Norton, 1982. Print.