Denouncing Hitler for Very Different Reasons:

A Noltean Perspective on the Origins, Errors, and Consequences of World War II

Author’s note: this essay was published on Kevin MacDonald’s publication, The Occidental Observer. Readers are encouraged to visit that iteration of this piece as well as his excellent publication generally. This helps foster future collaborations with MacDonald and others.

---

General Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg: “Any objective observer will admit that National socialism did raise the social status of the worker, and in some respects even his standard of living.”

Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb: “This is one of the great achievements of national socialism. The excesses of National socialism were in the first and final analysis due to the Führer's personality.”

General Heinz Guderian: “The fundamental principles were fine.”

Leeb: “That is true.”

- excerpt from a secretly recorded conversation during allied captivity after the war

                                                                             ◊

To the shock and dismay of those of a more mainstream, conservative persuasion, many different voices in dissident right, far right, and populist right circles have expressed adulation, admiration, and approval for Adolf Hitler, seemingly without qualification or reservation.[1] Particularly in “Culture as Programming,” I have expressed sympathy for and agreement with much of the German perspective in World War II (as it existed at the time), while still expressing strong aversion for Hitler, as I have done so in many different contexts and venues in my personal life and online for many years. More particularly, I, unlike so very many even today, understand and acknowledge the number of underlying causes that can be rightly discerned as the true origins of World War II, a litany of which is set forth below, as many of these causes and grievances reveal the Anglo-American alliance in the First World War and its aftermath to be anything but the force for good that so many believe it to be to this day. The piercing of this veneer further impugns and indicts the same alliance in the Second World War. Careless or casual readers, or those who simply stop reading upon encountering even one sentence sympathetic to Germany in World War II or the years before, might make the error of interpreting assertions on such matters as endorsing or approving of Hitler without reservation or qualification. To the contrary, this author embraces a more novel but eminently correct and enlightened position that not only understands but endorses legitimate German grievances at the time, agrees with and admires many (but not all) principal tenets of national socialism and more particularly fascist movements more broadly, while still harboring a deep aversion for Adolf Hitler due to his myriad moral, political, and military failures, to mention nothing of crimes against white Slavic peoples and the German people themselves. This view is largely derived from the thinking of Ernst Nolte in particular. One might suppose that these views are also derived to a lesser extent from Patrick Buchanan’s Churchill Hitler and the Unnecessary War, except that I was already convinced of this Noltean position long before Buchanan’s excellent treatment of this subject matter was published. Furthermore, my position takes a more benign view of the German perspective than does the eminent American paleoconservative.

There is usually nothing the least bit interesting or novel about denouncing this dictator: denouncing Hitler is not only the safest take perhaps in the history of discourse, but is obligatory for most and almost a sort of daily rite in modern life, a sort of banal routine as common for many as everyday things like brushing one’s teeth or putting shoes on before going about one’s day. But as will be demonstrated, the reasons for my aversion and even contempt for the dictator distinguish this unique and admittedly controversial position from the sort of boring, garden variety denunciation of the Führer that pervades most all historical and cultural discourse—a position that alienates both mainstream conservatives and those of a more radical persuasion. Stated bluntly, I do not denounce Hitler for the reasons Abraham Foxman, Jonathan Greenblatt, the Anti-Defamation League, or indeed the “post-war consensus” implores; rather I denounce him for effectively losing the Second World War by way of a series of blunders, both tactical and strategic, outlined below, as well morally reprehensible policies in the treatment of white gentile Slavic peoples and even the German people themselves at the end of the war. It must be noted in passing that, while the Holocaust is, I suppose, to be condemned, it is, to quote the late Jean Marie Le Pen, a “mere detail in history” in a century in which over a hundred million people were murdered by various state powers, and certainly should never have been allowed to be used as a tool for blackmail and extortion by various Jewish organs, in the manner documented and exposed by Norman Finkelstein in The Holocaust Industry. Given that Europe is on the precipice of oblivion as European peoples propel themselves headlong into racial suicide and civilizational ruin, and given that many of the intellectual movements and various machinations underpinning these existential threats have a very strong Kosher flavor and aftertaste, to put it mildly, the Holocaust really should be of no import to anyone who discerns and recognizes the existential threats faced by the sons and daughters of Europe.[2]

This unique but enlightened perspective may not be immediately apparent to those who survey my writings or utterances concerning the Second World War, or indeed those in my personal life or acquaintance who learn of my personal interest and even affinity for the German armed forces in World War II, as expressed in certain interests and hobbies, as well as a deep and abiding interest in the German perspective in the history of World War II and the years preceding it, revealing its true causes and origins. Stated another way, I am a hardcore and unrepentant “Wehraboo.” My increasing disillusion with and even disdain for democracy is also likely to mislead many into mistaking me for a Hitler fanboy. Examining this matter must first begin with a brief but concise synopsis of why Germans, without the advantage of hindsight, followed Hitler and embraced the swastika in the first place.

Sympathy for Nazi Germany: A Brief Synopsis on the Origins and Causes of World War II

The Treaty of Versailles is one of the greatest injustices in history, exposing the lie of so-called American exceptionalism to any person sensible enough to see the abject hypocrisy and monstrosity of American foreign policy at that time, and really ever since:[3] a lie obvious and in plain view to anyone who cares to see it. Although overshadowed by the monstrous and unconscionable fate of the Germans after the Second World War, the Versailles Diktat assigned sole blame of the Great War on the German people and imposed on Germany the requirement to pay reparations for all costs and losses associated with the Great War, notwithstanding the belligerence and provocations of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, Russia, and even France which contributed more to the sudden chain reaction that very quickly unraveled into the outbreak of war than supposed German belligerence ever did. This is true even as Imperial Germany has been so effectively vilified that many ignorant Americans to this day think Germany alone was responsible for the outbreak of World War I, or that the Kaiser sought world conquest. The blockade that preceded the signing of the Diktat led to mass starvation and deprivation, leading to the deaths of just under one million Germans. Danzig, Posen, and areas of West Prussia with either large German minorities or outright German majorities and which had belonged to Germany or predecessor states before German Unification in 1871 were wrongly taken from Germany and indeed violated the principle of “self-determination” that Woodrow Wilson and his supporters claimed to espouse. The Germans suffered hyper-inflation during several periods of the Weimar years. Requiring wheelbarrows instead of wallets, everyday Germans were not only paying millions of marks for a loaf of bread, but very often billions of marks for a loaf of bread. This was compounded by a number of sharp business practices, principally perpetrated by Jews such as the Barmat Brothers[4], who were at the center of a bribery and currency speculation scandal that made headlines in 1925 and well afterwards. The hyper-inflation that afflicted Germany, rendering German currency worthless, provided opportunities for outsiders, usually Jews, to buy up real estate with foreign currency for practically nothing:[5] an unconscionable exploitation of the suffering of the German people in the name of abject (Jewish) greed. It is of note that Germany’s first laws prohibiting sharp business practices were promulgated by the national socialist regime, and still exist on the books to this day. Finally, Germany’s defeat in World I is directly attributed to the Balfour Declaration, which, at least according to what is known as the Benjamin Freedman theory, the British government, at the behest of Lord Rothschild, would cede Palestine to Jewish Zionists in return for Jewish financiers and lobbyists in America to bring the United States into the Great War. The injustice and tyranny imposed on Germany by the United States in particular (Germany would probably have won without American intervention) sowed the seeds of World War II, even while the evils perpetrated by this country are cloaked with the sickly sweetness of Doris Day herself among other assorted delusions, hallucinations, and figmentations of American intermeddling and war-mongering as “American exceptionalism.” This in turn tragically led to even greater injustice and tyranny imposed on the German people, including the evisceration of East Prussia, Silesia, and East Pomerania, with the once great German cities of Danzig, Breslau, and Königsberg lost forever, all attended with wholesale murder and rape at the hands of a maurading Red Army, with approval from Churchill himself (as discussed below).

The most comprehensive map this author could find, illustrating the changes and losses of territory by various German states in the 20th Century. This map unfortunately does not depict the acquisition and lost of Memelland in 1939 and 1945. This map also does not depict Danzig as an independent city state—nor does it depict Berlin or Hamburg as independent city states.

The economic hardship, deprivation, and destitution suffered by the German people is compounded by the moral depravity that had descended on certain urban centers of Germany, most notably Weimar Berlin, which is not of course some sort of merger between Berlin and Weimar, but Berlin during the so-called Weimar Republic. The sexual libertinism and indeed profligacy that had descended on Berlin during this era is well documented, but curiously has not received nearly enough exposure. There is perhaps no better avatar for such degeneracy than Anita Berber, a notorious figure in Berlin’s “party” scene. Dead before her 30th birthday, she was a bisexual drug addict, who partook in cocaine, heroin, opium and other drugs with abandon. Among her various escapades of abject depravity was a threesome with another woman and that woman’s 15-year-old daughter, both of whom Berber kept as “sex slaves” (Gordon 57-58). On a societal level, not only was prostitution commonplace, child prostitution and prostitution of young girls just past puberty were rampant as well. The appeal of national socialism and its continued relevance to the problems of the modern world is revealed in other ways as well. The transgender menace plaguing modern society of course originated in Weimar Berlin. Magnus Herschfeld, a homosexual Jew, founded the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, from which modern lunacy about transgenderism derives. The Nazis destroyed the Insitut and burned most or all of its writing, and were in the absolute right to do so. It is also illustrative that Cultural Marxism, an existential threat to Europe and the Occident, originates from the Frankfurt School, a cabal of Jewish academics who were unfortunately allowed to escape from Germany to the United States where they then reestablished the Frankfurt School at Columbia University, from which their insidious ideas soon infected all of American and then Western academia in the infamous march through the institutions.[6]

The rise of national socialism was a response to these and myriad other outrages, and—without the advantage of hindsight—an eminently just and proper response that ameliorated these and other evils with unwavering conviction and swift carriage. The specter of Soviet Bolshevism in Germany and Europe at large was also a reason for the appeal of national socialism. German language newspapers, unlike their counterparts in the Anglo-American world at the time and even to a lesser extent today, documented what transpired in Stalin’s killing fields.

The legitimacy of Germany’s territorial claims on Danzig and Posen have already been mentioned. These claims were ultimately a principal if not the principal catalyst for the outbreak of war when Germany invaded Poland in 1939, but the post-war consensus almost uniformly condemns remilitarization of the Rhineland, the Austrian Anschluss, and the Sudetenland crisis as harbingers of what is perceived as Hitler’s unending conquest for more and more land that, according to conventional wisdom, implored a firm and proper response by the do-goody Allies. The failure of intervening during the Sudetenland crisis, conventional wisdom dictates, led to the outbreak of World War II by not nipping the supposed Nazi menace “in the bud,” as the war ultimately became the greatest disaster in the history of humanity.[7]

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Germany was right to remilitarize the Rhineland. It is after all German soil, and this is particularly so given France’s policy of placing black colonial troops in the Ruhr region of Germany in the 20s, which had led to instances not just of miscegenation on a consensual basis but rape and sexual assault as well. In hindsight, the Anschluss is similarly decried, but both the Germans and Austrians wanted it. And the notion that Austrians are a distinct nationality separate and apart from Germany is somewhat dubious, as the difference in dialect, customs and so on is no more pronounced than certain other regions in Germany, from Bavaria to those who speak Plattdeutsch, or PlattdUEtsch as those Germans sometimes spell it; the exclusion of certain German speaking peoples based on the legacy of the Hapsburg dynasty would seem to be a most dubious proposition if it were not settled by the dictates and whims of the ultimate victors. Germany also had legitimate territorial claims on Sudetenland, despite how appeasement on this matter is so often used to condemn Neville Chamberlain and indeed the very notion of appeasement in most any context in modern foreign policy.

The aftermath of the Sudetenland crisis, in which Hitler partitioned the rest of Czechoslovakia between the Reich and a newly formed puppet state of Slovakia in March of 1939, is the first outrage for which Hitler is rightly condemned. Unlike other territorial concessions, Germany did not have legitimate territorial claims on the rest of Czechoslovakia, namely Bohemia and Moravia. And in this push to grab land, Hitler utterly and permanently discredited himself and the legitimacy of Germany’s many grievances on the international stage. Chamberlain was outraged by it, and felt that he had been duped into agreeing to the reasonable and just concessions made during the Sudetenland crisis. Alienating Britain in particular in this way made it impossible to regain Danzig through diplomatic means, and the proximate cause of destroying such hope for diplomatic resolution of these matters was Hitler’s annexation and partition of Czechoslovakia. To this day, deluded Britons and others who clamor to the absurdity that Winston Churchill was the “greatest Briton” and deny that Britain would be better off had she sued for peace, either after Danzig or in the wake of Dunkirk and the Fall of France, routinely aver that Hitler “repeatedly” broke treaties and that Britain would be absurd to trust him on anything. The problem with this position is obvious: namely that, unlike Czechoslovakia, Britain had the Royal Navy and the English Channel as a protective barrier, as well as an Empire stretching across the globe, all of which would make such unilateral and sudden annexation and occupation of Britain by the German Reich impossible. Instead of being subjugated or subservient to Germany, she became subservient and beholden to the American Empire and all of its many ugly, pernicious, civilization destroying proclivities.

Conventional wisdom—the orthodoxy of the “post-war consensus”—uniformly condemns any and all action by the German armed forces as barbaric, wanton, naked aggression, replete with delusions that Hitler somehow wanted to conquer the world: delusions that persist among the more ignorant, particularly in the Anglo-American world. This is especially preposterous because Germany never had, in either of the two world wars, even a fraction of the maritime power to threaten the Western Hemisphere at all, nor could she envision a period in which she could come close to achieving such capacity. In relation to the reasons for Fall Weiss specifically and the outbreak of war in September 1939, Germany had, as stated before, legitimate territorial claims on Poland, Danzig and Posen in particular. Despite Hitler’s dishonorable and deplorable actions in relation to the partition of Bohemia and Moravia, France and Britain would have been wise to seek a diplomatic solution (the loss of the British Empire, the demographic implosion in France and much of Europe attests to that). Onerous, deplorable occupation policies brutalizing Polish gentiles are to be condemned of course, but Germany nevertheless had legitimate territorial claims and war could have been avoided if Poland had ceded Danzig and other territories which rightly belonged to Germany.

Some even to this day are unaware that Germany did not declare war on France or Britain, but rather France and Britain declared war on Germany. In addition to the centuries of aggression inflicted on Germany by France (Otto von Bismarck once stated that Napolean did not leave a single tree in Germany left unscratched), this declaration of war by the Allies legitimizes the invasion of France as well as the invasion of Belgium and Netherlands out of military necessity: the Maginot line in particular required the invasion of the Low Countries for Germany to have any chance of success. Victory over France could only be achieved by some variation of the Von Schlieffen plan, notably with Manstein’s masterstroke, the Sichelschnitt.

Just as the flux capacitor makes time travel possible in Back to the Future, Manstein’s Sichelschnitt is what made the successful conquest of France possible, except the latter is no Hollywood fairy tale. A pity that such a spectacular victory sowed the seeds of such catastrophic ruin and defeat, largely due to the blunders and shortcomings of Adolf Hitler.

The invasion of Denmark and Norway was similarly necessary. In addition to plans on mining Norwegian waters, Britain, Churchill in particular before becoming Prime Minister, had designs on invading Norway. Germany invaded Denmark as a springboard to take Norway before the British did, and to secure vital Swedish ore through the port of Narvik. Those who villainize Nazi Germany routinely point out the conquest of Greece as an indictment of Germany’s militarism and wanton desire to conquer more and more land. Never mind that Mussolini first invaded Greece, not Hitler. Hitler was actually incensed at Mussolini for doing this unilaterally, not just out of defiance of the pecking order in the Pact of Steel, but because it gave the British a foothold in southern Europe, ultimately requiring the Wehrmacht—not the Italian Army—to win the campaign in Greece after the Greeks stymied Italian forces in such embarrassing fashion. The Invasion of Yugoslavia was similarly necessary, as there was an anti-fascist coup just prior to Operation Barbarossa. As an aside, the invasion of Yugoslavia delayed the Invasion of the Soviet Union by a month or more; unleashing Operation Barbarossa a few weeks earlier may have given the Germans enough time to sack Moscow before being completely bogged down by the historic Russian Winter of 1941-1942.

Condemning Hitler, But Embracing the Swastika Still

While the invasion of these countries was justifiable and even necessary, brutal occupation policies in Southern and Eastern Europe in particular perpetrated not by combat units, at least not generally, but occupation forces was repugnant and counterproductive. This salient passage from Tapping Hitler’s Generals between Oberst Horst Egersdorf and Major Ulrich Boes is most illustrative. After one of the German officers denounced “our behaviour in all the occupied territories—I witnessed it in Greece too,” the other[8] responded by stating:

The soldiers [of the deutsche Wehrmacht are] the best propaganda for the Third Reich that [one] could possibl[y] imagine. These people in France and in the Balkans whom I met were enthusiastic about the discipline of the German army. And the very moment the Party and the SS took. . . control, even the most harmless citizens became fanatics—against us. …Is that wise or part of the creed? If that really were a part of national socialism, then national socialism would be the greatest crime there is. But it isn’t so by any means-national socialism is actually a wonderful creed! The people who are at present playing first fiddle aren’t national socialists at all, they are criminals (Neitzel 173) (grammatical and typographical anomalies corrected).

This brief synopsis and appraisal of Germany’s actions prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union does not suggest much reason to regard Hitler or more particularly Germany’s war effort with such aversion as alluded to earlier, the one exception of course being onerous occupation forces not by frontline units but police and auxiliary units that were notorious for such things.[9]

Many condemn Hitler for what is often regarded as a war-losing blunder of invading the Soviet Union. The invasion of the Soviet Union was ultimately a key, decisive factor in Germany’s catastrophic defeat, but it is unclear at all that the campaign was doomed from the start as some contend.[10] More importantly, the decision must be appraised based on the information available at the time. The Imperial German Army made rather quick work of the Russian Empire in the First World War, although that adversary obviously did not fall in six weeks as France had in 1940. Earlier the Red Army failed in spectacular fashion to subjugate plucky Finland in the Winter War. It is also worth noting that American intelligence predicted, rather grimly given who controlled Washington even then, that the Soviets would collapse in a matter of months.

While Operation Barbarossa is properly assessed and analyzed based on the information available at the time, the invasion of the Soviet Union does inform the more enlightened sort of denunciation embraced by this author. This condemnation is however largely derived from blunders committed at Stalingrad and elsewhere, rejecting the premise that the decision to invade the Soviet Union was inherently a blunder, and instead focusing on various considerations that contributed directly to the capitulation and ruin of Germany. First and foremost, invading the Soviet Union under the color of Hitler’s peculiar racial theories about European Slavic peoples allowed Stalin to consolidate power, rally the Russian and other Soviet peoples to resist what were arguably genocidal policies against them, the success of which ultimately allowed Stalin to defeat Hitler, and take Berlin and half of Europe in the process. If the Reich had invaded with far less malevolent intentions, as liberators of Soviet Bolshevism, rather than quasi genocidal conquerors brutalizing much of the Russian and other populations, a critical mass of Russian people would most likely have revolted, sided with the Germans and Soviet Bolshevism would have been quickly vanquished. These and other such moral failings underscore how Hitler, contrary to those who eulogize him so crudely, was no pan-European nationalist, but a German nationalist with the very worst propensities for barbarism and brutality.

Condemnation of Nazi Germany’s treatment of the Russian people—at Hitler’s directive—must of course be prefaced with a number of qualifications. One important consideration is that the Soviet Union never signed the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war. There are some indications German emissaries tried to persuade the Soviets to ameliorate that. Manstein’s memoirs and other sources as well contend that gruesome atrocities were first initiated by the Soviets against captured German soldiers, a credible allegation but not one that is universally acknowledged by all or even perhaps most historians. German treatment of the Ukrainian people is particularly confounding, as many accounts indicate the Germans did come as liberators for the Ukrainians, and were received as such. This did not last, at least not categorically, as many Soviet partisans would ambush vulnerable contingents of German forces, before torturing and mutilating them, before and after death. Partisans would often perpetrate these atrocities in a way that would implicate a friendly or neutral Ukrainian town or village. German occupation forces regularly took the bait and carried out gruesome reprisals against innocent civilians framed by the partisan terrorists, which some historians falsely contend turned Ukrainians categorically against the Germans. This of course is belied by the large numbers of Ukrainians who volunteered to fight for the Germans to the end, a point of contention in the modern Ukrainian war as some Ukrainian units adopt Third Reich imagery and symbols. This has created strange bedfellows in relation to the modern war, as the Canadian parliament even received a Ukrainian veteran of the Waffen SS.

Finally, large contingents of the German officer corps did not share Hitler’s dehumanizing view of the Russian people, as many veterans recount at least some friendly interactions with Russian civilians, the veracity of which is questioned by those insistent on condemning the entirety of the German armed forces to each and every single man[11]. These and other qualifications and reservations notwithstanding, German barbarism regularly—but not, as if often contended, categorically—meted out to Russians is deplorable, and discredits Hitler apologists who falsely portray Hitler as a Pan-European nationalist.

With these important qualifications regarding the treatment of Russians and other Slavic Europeans established, focus can again return to the question of how Hitler’s tactical and strategic blunders substantially contributed to Germany’s defeat and utter ruin. Some condemn Hitler for not going directly for Moscow, but instead delaying the push east to finish off isolated pockets of the Red Army in Ukraine and elsewhere that were surrounded and enveloped by quick advances of the German armed forces. Guderian, von Leeb, and others have articulated, somewhat persuasively but not conclusively so, why this decision was a blunder, but this question continues to be debated to this day. Far more damning, and a central foundation for my condemnation of the Führer, was Hitler’s absurd decision to declare war on the United States while bogged down on the outskirts of Moscow in the midst of the worst winter seen in a century. This while Britain remained in tact on the home islands and Egypt. In other words, Hitler involved Germany in a war with a third peer power while desperately contending with two other great powers on two different fronts while defending the Atlantic coast of France and the lowlands as a third front. And he did so even though the first principle of military and political strategy for Germany and her predecessors, going back many centuries, was her vulnerability, sitting in the very center of Europe, and her first priority of avoiding entanglement in wars with multiple fronts and the necessity to avoid prolonged entanglements of any sort. Indeed, this first principle of German military strategy through the centuries was the genesis for the formulation of Bewegungskrieg, which has been the very core of German military doctrine going back to the Prussian Army and Fredrick the Great and before. One German officer rightly decried such madness “to think we could challenge the world” as “fatuously stupid” (Neitzel, 159).

Invariably such objections to and condemnation of Hitler have subjected this author to a torrent of criticisms and derisive comments, the vast majority of which are uttered by the irretrievably stupid and the intentionally obnoxious.[12] Very often detractors will accuse me of being ignorant of the circumstances leading up to Germany declaring war on the United States, while still desperately fighting with Britain and the Soviet Union. This author is of course well aware that the United States was “neutral in name only.” Lend-lease policies to both Great Britain and Joseph Stalin after the Invasion of the Soviet Union, loaning destroyers to Britain to help fight the Battle of the Atlantic are just some of the provocations. The incident concerning the USS Reuben James, which attacked a German U-boat without provocation and was happily torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat is particularly noteworthy, as that incident has informed my denunciation of the Anglo-American alliance generally and the United States particularly for many years. American aggression against German U-boats, despite best efforts not to attack American ships was such a problem that many high-ranking officers in the Kriegsmarine applauded the decision, even though it an immediate and obvious strategic blunder that all but doomed Germany.

Some Hitler enthusiasts also aver that war with the United States was inevitable. That may or may not be true. Before Hitler stupidly declared war, duped, incidentally, by the Japanese with false promises of declaring war on the Soviet Union, American popular opinion was decidedly against joining the war. Pearl Harbor and Germany’s declaration of war changed that, and no longer required FDR or his largely Jewish cabinet to try and persuade the American public to declare war on Germany. Hitler did that favor for them. Whether the American people would be so keen on declaring war on Germany, particularly if the Reich had been able to capitulate the Soviet Union, is equally unclear, particularly given the brutal fighting that occurred in the Pacific, in which the Japanese did not abide by Western norms such as surrendering when overwhelmed or defeated in battle. Regardless, there is no advantage in not delaying war with the United States as long as possible, in the event that war would have been inevitable, precisely because Germany did not have the military capacity or wherewithal to prosecute a war against the United States with any prospect of success while also at war with the United Kingdom and pitted against the Red Army in the most brutal and horrific fighting that was the Ostfront.

These and other considerations demonstrate conclusively that America’s many provocations and offenses against Germany do not change the analysis regarding the decision to declare war on the United States. If Germany and her war machine were a truly omnipotent force, as invincible as imaginary space invaders from Mars or some other fantastical distant planet, Germany would have been absolutely and utterly justified in declaring war on the United States. But even as the Wehrmacht was the very paragon of military discipline and one of the greatest fighting forces in the annals of military history, the Wehrmacht, although a most lethal instrument indeed, was not so omnipotent. Because even the German military had its limitations as to the maximum threshold as to what material superiority it could ever possibly overcome, any sane, rational person is compelled to condemn the decision to declare war on the United States, which in effect gave both Churchill and FDR precisely what they wanted, dooming Germany in the process. By involving Germany with a third peer power before pacifying either of the other two powers she was at war with, Hitler rendered Germany’s defeat a nigh absolute, mathematical certainty, regardless of the unparalleled sacrifice, valor, and fighting prowess of those fallen, tragic heroes, those great defenders of Germany and Mother Europa, those fearsome columns of feldgrau that were the vaunted deutsche Wehrmacht.

Compare and contrast Hitler’s megalomania which drove him to such a disastrous strategic blunder with how Abraham Lincoln handled The Trent Affair. The Trent Affair concerned the detainment of, as one might guess, a British vessel called the Trent, which was transporting two confederate delegates to the British Isles on a diplomatic mission. The USS San Jacinto of the Union Navy intercepted and detained the Trent, in contravention of international and maritime law, and impounded the Confederate diplomats, who were in British custody, thus violating British sovereignty and provoking the most powerful nation on Earth. This outraged public opinion in Britain, and created the real prospect of drawing Britain into the war on the side of the Confederacy, notwithstanding the aversion to the institution of slavery held by a large majority of the British. Despite the hawkish temperament of some in his cabinet, Lincoln released the confederate delegates. When some in his cabinet balked, Lincoln simply replied “One war at a time, gentlemen.” This temperance allowed Lincoln to win his war. The lack of such temperance, despite fairly outrageous provocations by FDR and his cabinet with a very strong kosher aftertaste, doomed Germany and made it nigh impossible for Germany to win the Second World War, likely dooming Europe and the West in the process.

One of the fallen heroes of Stalingrad. On the left is a famous image of one of the German soldiers to die at Stalingrad. Fairly well decorated, the captain's Iron Cross First Class, wound badge, and combat clasp are in plain view, with the top of the combat clasp broken off, a practice adopted by German soldiers in Stalingrad to denote the particular brutality of the combat conditions they experienced. His name was Friedrich Konrad Winkler, and to the right readers will behold his wedding picture. He died shortly after surrendering in February 1943. Those who so cavalierly dismiss Hitler’s criminal malfeasance regarding Stalingrad and other debacles are to be reminded of the callous disregard for the lives of hundreds of thousands of men like Winkler, men far better than those who are so dismissive of the manner in which they were betrayed.

Despite how improbable German victory was after this decision, Hitler further failed Germany and national socialism as a cause by other strategic and more particularly tactical blunders. First and foremost was Hitler’s absurd stand or die order in the wake of the Battle of Stalingrad. Many of his generals wisely did not share the fixation on Stalin’s namesake, as many historical books and treatises persuasively demonstrate Hitler’s insistence to capture the city under those particular circumstances was utterly foolish. But once the offensive broke down, and once the corridor, consisting mostly of Romanian, Hungarian, and Italian troops was threatened, Hitler refused to react by withdrawing the beleaguered Sixth Army to safety, and instead issued his utterly absurd stand or die order. This order doomed the Sixth Army, and led directly to its encirclement and destruction. Even as Manstein orchestrated General Hermann Hoth’s heroic but failed effort to relieve the Stalingrad pocket, Hitler refused to allow von Paulus to withdraw and fight towards Hoth’s 4^th Panzer Army[13], sealing the grim fate of the Sixth Army, with hundreds of thousands of German soldiers dying in the Stalingrad pocket or dying in Soviet captivity under unspeakably depraved conditions that typified life of German POWs in the Soviet gulag.

Similar orders were made in other contexts, including the German response to Operation Star, as well as in the aftermath of Rommel’s offensive being repelled at El Alamein, in which the Desert Fox disobeyed this suicidal Führerbefehl. Paul Hausser, commanding general of the SS Panzer Corps holding Kharkov, disregarded such orders by withdrawing his beleaguered forces. Had he not done so, three of the most celebrated—and feared—units in the German armed forces—Waffen SS Panzer Divisions Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler (LAH) and Das Reich as well as Panzergrenadier Division Großdeutschland [14] would almost certainly have suffered the same fate as their fallen comrades in the Sixth Army at Stalingrad. Manstein disobeyed such an order as well in early 43 around the same time, but instead of flatly disobeying and retreating in defiance of the Führerbefehl, Manstein persuaded Hitler to come to his headquarters at Zaporizhia some 50 kilometers from the front, and convinced Hitler to sign off on the necessary withdraw. Manstein saved Army Group Don on the Donbas basin through his masterful withdrawal, while establishing the precursors to his celebrated Backhand Blow at Kharkov.[15] Had either Hausser or Manstein failed to disobey Hitler in their own particular ways, Hitler’s ridiculous “stand and defend” orders would have led to precisely the same or even worse disasters as had befallen the Sixth Army, hastening Germany’s defeat by a year or more, likely allowing the Red Army to march through all of Europe, all the way to the English Channel. This offers just a small taste of Hitler’s abysmal failures operationally and tactically. There are others. For example, on the day of the landings at Normandy, the defending German forces were in a period of inaction during the most critical hours because certain generals prone to sycophancy refused to wake the Führer up, noting he likes to sleep in. This and other episodes were likely connected to addiction to opiates, amphetamines, and other illicit substances, an issue that Darryl Cooper expounded on at some length during his recent appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast.

These and other blunders are compounded by the callous disregard and even disdain he exhibited towards the lives of the German people and—as demonstrated repeatedly in the issuance of suicidal stand and defend orders recounted above—even the soldiers and officers fighting under his command. In the closing months of the war, this callous disregard for the lives of Germans escalated to mass murder of a different, more deliberate sort, when Hitler turned his demonic brutality against the German people themselves outright. SS units of the Dirlewanger brigade sort—and generally not of bona fide combat units such as SS LAH, Das Reich—and other rogue elements went on killing sprees of any German even suspected of desertion, whether pressed into the military or civilian. This was not done with any hope of changing the outcome of the war, but to buy Hitler and his top entourage a few more days to live before having to do the inevitable. Far more appalling was the Nero Decree given to Albert Speer, which quite thankfully Speer never considered carrying out. Had he done as ordered, this Nero decree would have done far more than merely decimate the German population.

To be sure, the policy of unconditional surrender was a catalyst, cornering a vicious, dangerous, and wounded animal in a situation where he dies regardless of what he does. Despite the Allies deserving much more of the blame than the “post war consensus” affords, Hitler’s intentions with the German people during the closing phases of the war is beyond repugnant. While Germany is in the throes of an existential threat she can barely perceive properly through the distorted perspective induced by war guilt, allied propaganda, and the various auspices of American Unkultur that have been installed[16] into the German consciousness through nearly a century of occupation, Hitler’s designs at the end of the war would truly have been Finis Germania, as he would practically have carried out the Morgenthau Plan on his own, saving the Yids the trouble of doing much of the dirty work themselves. The order to burn Paris almost a year earlier, which was also refused, is also an indictment. Returning to what he intended for the German people, in the wake of Germany’s pending capitulation, he intended to decimate large numbers of the German population on his account of HIS abject failure—morally and militarily, as demonstrated by this blood-chilling recount by Albert Speer of what Hitler said to him when giving Speer orders to carry out the Nero decree:[17]

If the war were lost, the nation would also perish. This fate was inevitable. There was no necessity to take into consideration the basis which the people would need to continue a most primitive existence. On the contrary, it would be better to destroy these things ourselves, because this nation will have prove[n] to be the weaker one and the future belongs solely to the stronger eastern nation. Besides, those who would remain after the battle were only the inferior ones, for the good ones had been killed." (498)

Other statements demonstrate Hitler had the audacity to blame the German people and above all the millions of German soldiers and officers who fought so fiercely and bravely, dying all too often in the process for his blunders and failures.

None of this means that I regard or that anyone should regard the Allies and more particularly the Soviets as anything other than an evil unto their own, as bad or indeed worse than Hitler was. It must also be stressed that Hitler’s worst characteristics did not present themselves in earnest until after American provocations that preceded his disastrous decision to declare war on the United States (again, disastrous not because it was unjustified but because Germany did not have the material power or the tactical or strategic position to declare and prosecute a war against the United States successfully when embroiled with the Soviet Union and the British Empire). The matter is hotly debated among historians, and while I regard the Holocaust as “a mere detail in history,” I am persuaded by the likes of Richard J. Evans who argues that the Holocaust was only initiated after war with the United States seemed inevitable, describing the Final Solution as the “greatest hostage scenario” in the history of humanity. Indeed, Darryl Cooper recently noted that the yellow Juden star Jews were forced to wear in Nazi occupied Europe was implemented only after the publication and promulgation of Germany Must Perish by Theodore Kaufman.

Brutal criminal occupation policies seemed to have stepped up as well once Germany was rendered as a wounded, trapped animal with no apparent escape. Those who have read and understood “The Scottish Play” understand how doom and despair leads to wanton and senseless killing, above all when contending with tyrants such as this. Quoting the once brave MacBeth when so cornered:

“I am in blood / Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”

The degree to which Allied policy, notably Britain’s refusal to negotiate peace after the Fall of France as well as the Anglo-American policy of “unconditional surrender” inform what may seem a contradictory view that, despite the list of indictments above, Britain in particular would have been better off had Nazi Germany prevailed, either with Lord Halifax prevailing during the War Cabinet Crisis or even in a less likely scenario in which Germany could somehow manage occupation and capitulation of Britain in 1940-1941,[18]

Nor is it the case that the Allies are really any better concerning the wholesale murder of innocent civilians or their unabashed war-mongering. Those who prattle on about the supposed “myth of the clean Wehrmacht” [19] like to carry on about the war crimes of an isolated occupation unit in this or that village in Yugoslavia or some terrible happening in a Russian village, whereas the entirety of the American and British air forces were targeting the entire German population through terror bombings, campaigns that were known about and universally supported by the Anglo-American world at large. While rear-guard units would shoot a hundred or even one thousand civilians as reprisals for illegal partisan atrocities against the German military, and did so while looking their victims in the eye, the self-righteous Americans and British were killing tens of thousands and on some occasions such as the Bombing of Dresden even hundreds of thousands of German civilians on a daily basis, sight unseen. Stalin and Churchill arranged the fate of Prussia and Silesia by agreeing to the revision of Soviet, Polish, and German borders with three matchsticks. The consequence of this was “ethnic cleansing” of all Germans from East Prussia, Silesia, and other areas, replete with wholesale murder and rape by the marauding Red Army.[20] Despite having the leverage of the atomic bomb, the do-goody Allies acquiesced and allowed the Soviets to partition what was left of Eastern Germany into the German Democratic Republic, more commonly known as East Germany. This of course followed complicity if not tacit approval of the wholesale rape and murder of German civilians in Prussia, Silesia, and other areas populated by Germans.[21] One third of German fatalaties suffered, and fatalaties suffered by the allies in the last six months could have perahps been avoided if unconditional surrender had not been insisted upon. The fate of German POWs handed over the by the Western Allies to to the Soviets as well as German POWs who died in Allied captivity, the statistics of which are murky at best, further bloody the “cleans hands” of the Allies. Finally, most do not consider just how close the infamous Morgenthau Plan was to being implemented, although it seems that it has been implemented, just on a much gentler, more gradual scale. Deluded and brainwashed by a constant, unremittent diet of Allied post war propaganda and war guilt, many modern “good” Germans somehow think Americans—more precisely the American Empire—are their friends.

It must also be noted—not conceded, but noted, as I have never suggested otherwise—that Hitler did desire peace early on and tried to negotiate with Britain several times as the French Campaign was winding down. Churchill and later FDR after him were as much war mongers and mass murderers as Hitler was, but at least the latter is taken at face value rather than cloaked with the absurd national myth that is so deeply imbued on both sides of the Atlantic as to be indelible.

Two letters from British veterans who survived long enough to see Britain in modern times, taken from thepp0p book The Unknown Warriors. However damning the assessment of Hitler may be, this author agrees with their assessment, notably because the worst propensites of the Führer were only exhibited once uttter doom and despair had taken hold, a concept readily accessible to anyone who has read and understands MacBeth.

Despite whatever hollow or empty assertions offered by those who support the Austrian painter so unreservedly, the bottom line is HITLER LOST THE WAR. The consequences of that are manifold, obvious, and incalculable. The partition of Europe between the United States and the Soviet Union solidified the rise of the American Empire, with the United States being the lone super power for almost 35 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The United States is certainly in decline, and has proven unable to defeat a variety of rag tag, sandal shod, third world adversaries, from the rice patty farmers of North Vietnam to the Taliban in Afghanistan, both armed with not much more than ak-47s and improvised explosive devices. Even so, blessed with two oceans, a nuclear arsenal and sufficiently formidable armed forces (at least on paper), the decline of the United States may be inevitable, but it will just as assuredly be slow, almost imperceptible as it transpires over many decades or even a century or longer, the ultimate effect of which will be that the United States will, in all probability, remain just long enough to consummate the death of Mother Europa and the posterity of her sons and daughters. While there is still hope for Germany in particular, prospects seem grim at times as the German national consciousness has been subject to a deep marinade of war-guilt, augmented by the steady, inexorable evisceration of their language and culture by the import of American Unkultur, the saturation of German and other cultures in English language advertising, music, and other media, as well as the infusion of shit music and shit culture into all aspects of European society. The defeat of Nazi Germany, for which Hitler bears so much responsibility, has allowed America, the “nation producing this “culture,” to the extent one can call it culture at all, to occupy Europe, while reducing the nations of Europe as “vassal states: above all sacred Germany.”

Looking Forward: Out from under His Long Shadow

The many credible and tangible benefits and advantages of national socialism particularly but right-wing authoritarianism more generally have been so thoroughly discredited by these and other failures by the Führer, both morally and militarily, that European civilization may never disabuse itself from the lie—from the self-destruction—that is modern liberalism and democracy itself. This is particularly critical because the democratic system has proven itself utterly unfit and unable to respond to a multitude of evils that threaten racial suicide and civilizational ruin, from the Great Replacement and the demographic winter, to unbridled capitalism’s propensity to peddle any number of vices, from pornography to illicit drugs, from sports and other gambling to garbage fast-food that is not fit for consumption by anyone, most particularly European men and women.

These and other failures demonstrate that, while authoritarianism is capable of implementing state policy through actions that are actually capable of solving real problems, having one man as absolute ruler is a most dangerous prospect. The risk of vesting in one man absolute authority leading any such authoritarian movement to disaster is too great. Some recommend limiting the vote to landowners, never bothering to notice the sorts of people that own land in far greater proportion to their numbers while overlooking the problems of generational wealth and other similar considerations. Thomas Jefferson envisioned what he called a “natural aristocracy,” whereby those who have the raw, native abilities in native intelligence, good bodily health, and some semblance of a classical education—irrespective of the family wealth or poverty were born into—should be hoisted into the highest stations of a more enlightened society. This ideal was actually embraced by the Nazis in a concept known as Volksgemeinschaft, which emphasized the importance of downplaying and diminishing class differences that existed between the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, and the proletariat and awarding and recognizing the individual based on merit, while fostering greater cohesion and unity in the German people. As I and many others have written, Robert Heinlein offers a large part of the solution in the society he envisioned in the unfortunately named Starship Troopers. “Service guarantees citizenship,” i.e. those serve or have served the nation, in the military or in other important areas of public service alone have a say. Jettison the multi-culti, united peoples of the world feel in the novel and infuse instead with the first principles of race, blood and soil and a solution to the sorts of problems presented in Hitler’s catastrophic failure is revealed. Churchill, FDR, and the cabal of International Jewry certainly wanted the destruction of Germany, but if Hitler and a handful of his more odious henchmen such as Himmler, Goering, and Goebbels somehow died in a plane crash as Fall Gelb was underway and a sort of grand national socialist council consisting of Germany’s finest military and other leaders were given power, or if Albert Speer, Rudolf Hess or an equivalent had assumed leadership, it is doubtful many of the war-losing mistakes outlined above would have been made.

Setting these colossal problems with Hitler aside, and even presupposing that each of these strategic and tactical blunders as well as monstrous, barbaric acts against white Slavic Europeans and the German people themselves could somehow be overlooked, as various detractors so foolishly insist, those who support right-wing populism and share either a skepticism or even disdain for democracy and the American Empire should and must regard Hitler with a comparable level of aversion simply because, even if one could overlook, excuse, or explain these gigantic flaws, the public view of Hitler will never be reformed by a sufficiently large number of the populace to make such rhetoric a viable strategy for convincing a critical mass of people on the common issues shared by national socialism then and the dissident right, ethno-nationalist right, and right-wing populist movements of today.

A collage of memes that express many of the grievances made by Hitler enthusiasts, but which recognize the fundamental distinctions set forth in this treatise. All but one were created by this author.

This is not to suggest that any discussion of the Third Reich or the legitimate grievances of the German people and the number of matters that national socialism discerned correctly should not be discussed or embraced; however, to whatever extent Hitler believed in those tenets that are applicable to the number of problems faced by the Occident in modern times, he ultimately betrayed those principles by failing in such catastrophic and gruesome fashion as outlined above. Dick Morris’s genius strategy of triangulation, which allowed Bill Clinton to win reelection in 1996 by absorbing many of the strengths of the Republicans in the wake of the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress while deflecting criticisms of the Democrat party at large reveals how this can be done. Instead of absurd memes that foolishly eulogize Hitler, despite the litany of crimes and failures listed above, and many others besides, embrace the unique vision proffered in this essay and most especially by Ernst Nolte, enunciating that most essential distinction between the German people as well as the deutsche Wehrmacht (and even many combat units of the Waffen SS) on one hand and the political leadership at the top so irredeemably marred and discredited by the crimes and failures outlined above on the other. Despite twenty plus years of an insidious but largely successful effort to criminalize the entirety of the deutsche Wehrmacht that impugns any charitable or favorable view of the men who fought and all too often died for Germany as the “myth of the clean Wehrmacht,” large swathes of the Anglo-American world nonetheless admire the fighting prowess of the German armed forces to this day. Using the Wehrmacht and the Noltean view of the German perspective can redeem those principles of national socialism that are still relevant to the salvation of European peoples today, while disavowing the many liabilities associated with Hitler and those who eulogize him in such simplistic and ignorant fashion.

Despite blithe and often petulant insistence to the contrary, the unique perspective and insight embraced by this author will be key for any resurgence of right-wing authoritarianism in the Occident, as this perspective recognizes and discerns the legitimate grievances of the German people at the time, that recognizes and embraces the many advantages of national socialism in principle, while still recognizing both the evil personal propensities of Hitler, as well as how the defeat and ruin of Germany resulted directly from these propensities. As Heinz Guderian so aptly quipped to his colleagues while in Allied captivity, “the principles were fine.” It was a problem of leadership—the leadership of Adolf Hitler.

PLEASE NOTE: This treatise required a fair amount of time in writing and composition and reflects an accumulation of, if not expertise, a formidable level of knowledge of this subject matter over a long period of time. Readers who appreciate the insight and perspective set forth in this treatise are urged to consider offering a paid subscription or even a founding member subscription, provided such expenditures are not unduly burdensome. Readers who enjoyed this piece and found it informative and insightful are also encouraged to signify their favor for this and other writings by clicking on the “like emoji,” as well as sharing this and other articles to those who would find this and other essays and articles interesting, insightful, or provocative.

Follow Richard Parker on twitter (or X if one prefers) (@)astheravencalls.com. Remove the parentheses, which were inserted to avoid conflict with Substack’s own handle system.

---

[1] This phenomenon compelled Keith Woods to publish this essay, “National Doesn’t Need National Socialism.” Private correspondence demonstrates this treatise was already undergoing composition and revision before this essay by Woods was published.

[2] Anomalies such as reductions in deaths at Auschwitz from 3.5 million to 1.5 million are indeed interesting. It is also interesting that Unit 731, a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit—really a gruesome human experiment, torture, and murder factory—ran by the Japanese in China, left very few surviving victims. Nonetheless, contesting or disputing figures insisted by Jewish and other interests is counterproductive and unnecessary. First, a critical mass of people will never be convinced otherwise. Second, this author wishes to continue to travel to Europe. With figures insisted upon granted, the Holocaust narrative can still be attacked as a “mere detail in history,” as the populist right can expose and decry the shakedown that Norman Finkelstein and others have criticized in books and essays like The Holocaust Industry.

[3] On the particular matter of Pax Americana, I often think of the music of German aggrotech band Feindflug, particularly the spoken word samples from the song Neue Sieger, which recount the account below of the millions dead attributed to U.S. military action (not all of it unjustified such as actions in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, as well as the initial response in Afghanistan), juxtsposing that with what appears to be a pronouncement of a death sentence for war crimes, possibly a recording from the Nuremberg Trials. One of course laments that Feindflug also did not recount needless millions of dead Germans that soil American (and British) hands. The first half of this juxtaposition reads as follows, note however that eight million figure does not include millions of dead from military action in Iraq, or most of the time in Afghanistan (the song is from 2005), Libya, Syria, or deaths imputed from billions given to Isreal, which in turn directly supports “crimes against humanity” perpetrated against the Palestinians. Even so, the first sound sample reads as follows:

Japan, China, Nordkorea, Bosnien, Sudan, Jugoslawien, Afghanistan
Alle diese Länder haben etwas gemeinsam, was ist es, he?
Diese Länder sind in den vergangenen 60 Jahren von Amerikanischen Truppen bombardiert worden
Das bedeutet 8 Millionen Tote in 22 Nationen. Wer glaubt das wäre gerecht?
Sowas wie Gerechtigkeit werdet ihr nirgendwo finden!

[4] An internet search in both English and German will demonstrate this happened, but there is scant discussion of the precise nature of this scandal with detailed particulars, other than lamentations as to how the Nazis exploited this to fan the flames of so-called anti-Semitism, never mind that the charges made by the Nazis are doubtlessly true. The scandal is mentioned briefly in Before the Deluge: Portrait of Berlin in 1920s, but with no particular details. It is curious that so little information is available given that the scandal harmed the SDP dramatically in the polls, as SDP politicians in office were accepting bribes from the Barmat Brothers. It is peculiar indeed that there is so little content concerning such a momentous moment in Weimar Republic. Could it be that those who control the past, control the present, and therefore the future?

[5] Darryl Cooper, better known as “Martyr Made,” stipulates this dirty little secret in his excellent commentary concerning the outbreak of war in Ukraine and its origins. In this excellent podcast, the right-wing historian compares and juxtaposes how American foreign policy “thanked” the Russian people for giving the world a bloodless, velvet Revolution in 1991 and afterward with the misery and death imposed on the German people by the do-goody Allies for agreeing to an armistice in 1918. In discussing the deprivations of hyper-inflation and what is in effect the death of a national currency, he comments briefly on how mostly Jews procured real estate and other holdings in Germany for next to nothing by obtaining foreign currency.

[6] See generally Culture of Critique by Kevin MacDonald, for starters.

[7] This received orthodoxy never considers Hitler’s multiple attempts to negotiate peace with Britain.

[8] The transcript of the secret recordings identifies the officers present and speaking but does not identify who is speaking when.

[9] Given that terror bombings originated with RAF, including such abominations as “calling cards” used to as incendiary devices to burn down the black Forrest and civilian population centres as well as Allied policy towards German civilians both during the Second World War and at the end and during the aftermath of the First World War, to say nothing of the game with matchsticks described later and its grim consequences, such strong focus, as mandated by received orthodoxy, only on what the Germans did seems peculiar and hypocritical.

[10] This is the position espoused by John Ellis in By Brute Force, among other historians. Others disagree. While this author is convinced Germany could have prevailed against the Soviet Union if winter clothing was not neglected, and more particularly if Hitler’s blunder at Stalingrad had been avoided, it is certainly a debatable question that will continued to be a subject of much controversy.

[11] Off-hand this is evidenced throughout War Without Garlands and even Tapping Hitler’s General’s. Even though Neitzel and the publishing house tout the volume as somehow discrediting the supposed “myth of the clean Wehrmacht,” the impression it left on this reader was quite the opposite, as I reject the absurd complicity and knowledge standards of collective culpability described in footnote nineteen. One anecdote is intended to be particularly damning, concerning a captain who sat down with a Russian villager at a table before shooting him in cold blood in front of his wife and child, before shooting the deceased’s screaming wife, and then their baby. The entire unit was outraged, and the commanding officer had sought to court martial him for murder, punishable by death. The captain alleged in defense it was not murder because Russians are not human. A directive from the Führer was handed down asserting this is correct, requiring that the captain was to only face lesser charges. This is appalling, but it is of note the entire unit was outraged and the commanding officer wanted him executed for it (192-193).

[12] Note these insults are not directed at those in ideological and political affinity with this author who have a more benign view of Hitler, but is confined solely to those who spew such ridiculous blather, as exposed and refuted in this treatise.

[13] Hoth’s rush to Stalingrad reached as close as just 30km from the Stalingrad pocket.

[14] Großdeutschland was not, of course, under Hausser’s direct command but the GD withdrew in concert with his decision to disobey Hitler and withdraw SS Panzer Divisions LAH and Das Reich.

[15] For a general account of these and other events on the Donbas basin in the wake of the destruction of the Sixth Army at Stalingrad, see generally Last Victory in Russia by George M. Nipe, particularly chapters four through seven. There are of course other volumes on this critical period on the Eastern Front.

[16] Several essays by this author explain how the externalities of a given cultural milieu greatly limit individual autonomy, and even serve as a sort of programming of the mind.

[17] The significance of this excerpt requires reproduction in Speer’s verbatim statement, in the German:

Wenn der Krieg verloren geht, wird auch das Volk verloren sein. Dieses Schicksal ist unabwendbar. Es sei nicht notwendig, auf die Grundlagen, die das Volk zu seinem primitivsten Weiterleben braucht, Rucksicht zu nehmen. Im Gegenteil sei es besser, selbst diese Dinge zu zerstören. Denn das Volk hatte sich als das schwächere erwiesen und dem stärkeren Ostvolk gehöre dann ausschließlich dte Zukunft. Was nach dem Kampf übrigbliebe, seien ohnehin nur die Minderwertigen; denn die Guten seien gefallen.

[18] The near total consensus is that Sea Lion could never have worked, although Manstein argues a somewhat persuasive counterargument in Lost Victories. Kurt Student was convinced use of the Fallschirmjäger to capture key ports and areas long the coast would have been high risk but feasible. In my mind the hypothetical that would have most likely led to a negotiated peace was if the Dunkirk salient was properly destroyed or captured. Alas, it was not.

[19] Since an exhibition Verbrechen der Wehrmacht. Dimensionen des Vernichtungskrieges 1941–1944 and accompanying documentary Der unbekannte Soldat exposing or rather embellishing the crimes of the German military during the second world, a new generation of historians have unleashed a concerted campaign to impute culpability to the German military generally and, in practical terms, categorically to each and every German soldier and officer who served his country. The Myth of the Eastern Front, a laughably biased polemic that originally was subjected to many poor reviews on amazon.com (they were eventually deleted) and other websites is a notable exemplar of this school of thought. It is noteworthy that screeds like “Crimes of the Wehrmacht: A Re-evaluation” by Alex. J Kay and David Stahel and other texts, both “academic” and otherwise, assign guilt on complicity and knowledge standards. If a solider was in the general vicinity of reprisals against Soviet partisans, carrying out of the commissar order, or even the systemic murder of Jews and others targeted by the Reich, this school of thought regards any such individual as similarly culpable on this complicity and knowledge standard. It is laughably ridiculous to expect a solider or officer to take arms against his own military or commit desertion or some.other act, particularly when all these men were otherwise focused on fighting for their nation in the throes of a death struggle against Soviet Bolshevism while also trying to simply survive. There are other problems with this reasoning, including how men who served for example in an artillery battalion would be in anyway responsible, or for that matter panzer crews in das Heer and even the Waffen SS. The reputation of the Waffen SS in particular has been so tarnished as to seem utterly beyond redemption, but it remains unclear how a man like Michael Wittmann and his crew were war criminals or did anything other than engage and destroy Soviet and later allied armor in a heroic bid to save their country. In defiance of a new consensus among an academic elite subject, to put it mildly, to ideopolitical capture, I submit that the vast majority of the Wehrmacht and even appreciable numbers of the Waffen SS fought fiercely and with honor and incredible fighting prowess the likes of which the world may never see again, and did so in ways that do not deserve being branded as war criminals or the like. Unfortunately, what passes as modern historical scholarship, subject to certain ideolpolitical capture, is so uniform and lockstep on this matter it is difficult to find recent works which rebut or even criticize this mantra. While consisting of anecdotes from Germans who lived during this time, as recounted over half a century, Professor of Germanics Frederic Tubach reaches a somewhat similar conclusion in German Voices, in which he makes a firm distinction between what he calls German patriots and nationalists on one hand and bona fide Nazis on the other. One interview of a German veteran who was captured in Italy is particularly moving, as Tubach recounts that he sensed, with disapproval, that the veteran was despondent even in old age that they lost.

[20] See generally de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge and After the Reich by Giles MacDonogh, among other works. Statistics on number of dead from Churchill and Stalin matchstick play vary, but most estimates place the number underor a little more than two million, not counting those who lost everything, rape survivors, and so on.

[21] See e.g. Churchill and Stalin playing with matchsticks and the accompanying footnote.

WORKS CITED.

Buchanan, Patrick J. Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World. Crown, 2008.

Cooper, Darryl. "Enemy: The Germans' War, Prologue." The Martyrmade Podcast.

https://martyrmade.com/ Audio.

Cooper, Darryl. "Thoughts on Ukraine (Remastered)." The Martyrmade Podcast,https://martyrmade.com/. Audio.

Evans, Richard J. The Coming of the Third Reich. Penguin Books, 2004.

Evans, Richard J. The Third Reich at War. Penguin Books, 2009.

Evans, Richard J. The Third Reich in Power. Penguin Books, 2006.

Feindflug. "Neue Sieger." Volk und Armee, 2005, Album.

Finkelstein, Norman. The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering. Verso, 2000.

Friedrich, Otto. Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s. Harper & Row, 1972.

Glantz, David M., et al. Slaughterhouse: The Handbook of the Eastern Front. Aberjona Press, 2005.

Gordon, Mel. The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber: Weimar Berlin’s Priestess of Decadence. Feral House, 2006.

Heinlein, Robert A. Starship Troopers. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1959.

Jelavich, Peter. Berlin Cabaret. Harvard UP, 1996.

Kaufman, Theodore N. Germany Must Perish! Argyle Press, 1941.

Kay, Alex J., and David Stahel. "Crimes of the Wehrmacht: A Re-evaluation." Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 55, no. 2, Apr. 2020, pp. 236-258, doi:10.1177/0022009419864166.

Kershaw, Robert J. War Without Garlands: Barbarossa 1941-42. Ian Allan Publishing, 2000.

Le Pen, Jean Marie. [Specific work unknown; quote attributed to interview or speech, publication details unavailable].

MacDonald, Kevin. The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements. Praeger, 1998.

Manstein, Erich von. Lost Victories. Translated by Anthony G. Powell, Zenith Press, 2004.

Neitzel, Sönke. Tapping Hitler’s Generals: Transcripts of Secret Conversations, 1942–45. Translated by Geoffrey Brooks, Frontline Books, 2007.

Nipe, George. Last Victory in Russia: The SS-Panzerkorps and Manstein’s Kharkov Counteroffensive, February–March 1943. Schiffer Military History, 2000.

Nolte, Ernst. Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966.

On Moonlight Bay. Directed by Roy Del Ruth, performances by Doris Day and Gordon MacRae, Warner Bros. Pictures, 1951.

Pringle, Nicholas. The Unknown Warriors. Lulu.com, 2012.

Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, Folger Shakespeare Library, Simon & Schuster, 2003.

Smelser, Ronald, and Edward J. Davies. The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture. Cambridge UP, 2008.

Tubach, Frederic C. German Voices: Memories of Life during Hitler’s Third Reich. U of California P, 2011.

United States Congress. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Volume XVI. Library of Congress, 1946, https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/llmlp/2011525338_NT_Vol-XVI/2011525338_NT_Vol-XVI.pdf.

United States Congress. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Volume XLI. Library of Congress, 1946, https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/llmlp/2011525338_NT_Vol-XLI/2011525338_NT_Vol-XLI.pdf

Woods, Keith. "Nationalism, not NS." Keith Woods, March 5, 2025..

YouTube. "The Norway Campaign 1940." Uploaded by Zoomer Historian, 9 Jun. 2023.

IMPORTANT: Hitler idolators and obnocios Jews commenting on another essay have compelled the promulgation of an official COMMENT POLICY.

---