Goldberg wants another Hitler so badly.
(twitter.com)
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (29)
sorted by:
Hit and miss.
Some were excellent. Most of those were no longer in command or alive by the end of the war, and it was typically Hitler's fault. A lot of the "better" generals really just hyped themselves up to the press. Overall, most of them were simply competent.
“Simply competent” would still be a step or two above what we have.
In fairness, some of them were openly treasonous, but at least they were openly treasonous for good reasons: "the war is lost and I don't want my kids raped by communists"; whereas our generals are openly treasonous because "I'm winning the war against you and I want your kids raped by communists"
Wasn't Rommel quite highly regarded by the Allies too?
Very much so. It helped that he criticized Hitler before he was forced to suicide, and he was never a dedicated National Socialist. Just a highly ambitious, and excellent armored commander. He was significantly more competent than most of his peers.
One of the reasons that France fell so quickly in 1940 was because some of the finest corps commanders ever produced from Germany were all simultaneously on the front line before anyone actually understood how good they were. In an unfortunate inverse, no one among the allies realized how poor French command, equipment, and training had actually gotten. It didn't help that the most elite units, tanks, generals and troops that Germany had, attacked French reservists with little training and little anti-tank equipment.
Another thing that I feel gets left out with France in 1940 is how much they had deliberately nerfed their own army for political reasons between the World Wars. Mostly because France was in a politically unstable situation for pretty much the entire inter-war period, and many of their Leftist governments were more concerned about a coup by their own military than German aggression (as they felt their military officers were too conservative, monarchist, and Catholic). This is a large part of the reason they favored the Maginot Line, since a static defense cant march on Paris.
Hell, they almost got rid of all of their tanks (and some called for getting rid of the entire army itself) because some unknown general named Charles De Gaulle wrote a paper about doctrine for tank warfare calling for a professional instead of conscript army, and calling for dedicated armored divisions as the tank was such that it could set the pace of battle through shock and the power of the attack (as well as combined arms with air force units). He was crushed down on by army officials who told him they would absolutely not publish his paper, De Gaulle went and did it privately, and a French Socialist minister found his book and used it as proof that the French army clearly had ulterior motives to create an army loyal to French officers and sweep a new Napoleon into power by overthrowing the Socialist government.
What is more shocking is that the British were blindsided by this rather than the idea that the French army would collapse under such circumstances.
I hadn't heard that story, but I also hadn't studied inter-war France that well. To the credit of the Socialist government, Fascism partially has an origin in France as well as Spain and Italy. So, it should be interesting to see the interplay in that period.
What I do know about the French Army of the time is that the logistical situation was so dire small famines actually broke out pre-war on the line.
Normalcy bias. "It's just the French being French"