HITLER  AND HIS TOTAL  WAR
Hitler was a warrior.  As a kid he loved to play cowboys and indians. As a young  adult,
he reveled in the perils of WW1. As a mature political leader, he thought that war was
"the will to self-preservation."  "Warfare, he argued, was something quite in keeping
with nature, desirable for its own sake to keep a  people  vigorous and  healthy." (1)
With Hitler in charge, war ceased to be a military
matter but the matter of all the  German people who
would be mobilized at the most tender age to be
prepared  to total war for survival of the Nordic race
Hitler saw himself as the
Leader of the German
people who was humiliated
by the Allies and the Treaty
of Versailles.
(1) In the 1928 unpublished sequel to Mein Kampf, Hitler's secret book  
(2) According to military historian Correlli Barnett,  the Treaty of Versailles was extremely lenient
in comparison with the peace terms Germany herself, when was she was expecting to win the
war, had had in mind to impose on the Allies. Furthermore, it was "hardly a slap on the wrist"
when contrasted with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that Germany had imposed on a defeated
Russia in March 1918, which had took away a third of Russia's population, one half of Russia's
industrial undertakings and nine-tenths of Russia's coal mines, coupled with an indemnity of
six thousand million marks.  Whenever Germans complained of the harshness of the Treaty of
Versailles they were often reminded of Brest-Litovsk. However it seemed to meet with deaf
ears and blank stares on the Germans' part.  As it was seen by them, Versailles happened to
them and Brest-Litovsk to the other fellows. It helped to perpetuate the myth of the Dolchstoss
legende (backstabbing) where the Germans could not believe they lost in the field when they
were deep inside enemy territory at the time of the Armistice. Thus it was a psychological
contributing factor to World War II.
(3)(4) Source : Hitler and Stalin the dictators, by  Richard Overy. p.453, W.W Norton London
ISBN 0-393-32797-3pbk
(5) Versus 13% in USSR in 1938.

But there was more to war than self preservation of the German race threatened by the
Jewish-Bolshevism : firstly, there was an opportunity of revenge for the humiliations of
the 1918 defeat and the  infamous and allegedly unfair Versailles Treaty (1919) (2);
secondly, war would be the justification of his dictatorial mission; war would become a
necessary act of historical regeneration.  War was justified and an act of  holiness
whose Hitler was the great priest, the Supreme Leader, a sort of redemptive God
showing the path to salvation to a crowd of mesmerized and grateful Germans.

However  the preparation for war became well before Hitler's accession to power : as
soon as 1925, Germany' s military secretly mobilized itself for the next war.  The
astonishing decision to collaborate with the Red Army in 1926 was the sign that
Germany was trying to get around the restrictions on weapons imposed by the
Versailles treaty. When Hitler came to power in 1933 he ceased this collaboration but a
lot of  military experiments have been done by the Germans in USSR.

The fact is that Hitler did not start  the belligerent mood of Germany, he only
jumped on the band wagon and amplified the spirit of the time. Hitler too was a
product of his epoch and not the contrary : he developed the idea that "his mission
was to restore the German people's inner strength and then launch a series of
victorious military campaigns to win the resources needed."

This meant that war became a total war, mobilizing not only a military arm but the
whole strength of the  people as soon as the youngest age.  After 1933,  he soon
made it clear that the resources for war can not be too large and the Four-Year Plan
established clearly that social and economic priorities were defined by the
demands of war preparation :"all other desires are  unimportant." (3)

For those who doubt the aggressive nature of  Hitler's mind and his determination to wage a total war since the
inception of the IIIrd Reich, a glance at the following table of Defence expenditures will give an accurate idea of
the transformations of the regime from 1928 to 1939  (4) :  
Budget year
Germany
(billion of
RM)
1928
0.75
1929
0.68
1930
0.67
1931
0.61
1932
0.62
1933
0.75
1934
4.09
1935
5.49
1936
10.27
1937
10.96
1938
17.25
1939
38.00
On the eve of WW1, Germany spent only 3% of the national product on
defence whereas in 1938 the ratio reached 17% (5) while the 100,000
military men  imposed by Versailles in 1919 had become an army of more
than 2 million in 1939.  On the same scale was the development of
investments in war-making capacities : between 1937 and 1939, this type of
investments represented 2/3 of all industrial investments.  For instance,
the 368 light aircrafts of 1933 became the 8,295 bombers and fighters of
1939 while the 5,667 military vehicles of 1934 turned out to be 66,930 by
1939.

The mobilization concerned material and men and women : in 1938, the
Reich Defence Council calculated that the total active population capable of
mobilization was 43.5 million of which 7 million men were would be claimed
for the armed forces in case of war. And in May 1939, Hitler warned the Army
that the country had to be prepared for a "war of 10 to 15 years' duration for
which the unrestricted use of all resources is essential."

An editorial of the magazine Deutsche Wehr  (German Defence) ran in
1938  that "war is the secret ruler of our century; peace no longer signifies
more than a simple armistice between two wars."   It was an old idea that
sprouted at the end of WW1 with the emergence of the Freikorps,  
precursors of the Sturm-Abteilung  (SA) which were created in 1921.  The
Freikorps were created by the army to wage war in the streets of Germany
against the Communists and the Democrats.  Once more Hitler did nothing
else than jumping on the band wagon and developing the final goal : to
eliminate the opponents and to  purify the master race of its enemies, i.e.
the Internationalist Jews and the Bolshevik Reds.  Other enemies like the
capitalist Anglo-Saxons and the French would be dealt with accordingly but
they were not on the priority list of  Adolf Hitler.

Even the growth of  political armies was not the exclusive of the Nazis
and of  Hitler :  after WW1, the Democrats had their Reichsbanner militia,
the Communists their Red Front,  the Conservative their  Wehrwolf or  
Burgerwehr and the Monarchists  their Stahlhelm (Steel Helmet) which
boasted of 300,000 men at the end of the 20s.  So German militarism
was not the creation of Adolf Hitler : it was his inheritance and he thrived
on it.   Oswal Spengler, the author and philosopher who published  
Decline of the West in 1918 wrote once that "at the beginning was war."
Not God.  And Ernst Jünger wrote that "we are not bourgeois, we are
sons of war and civil wars." Germany before Hitler was obsessed with
war and heroism whereas France and Britain were  obsessed with
peace and social  justice.

The regimentation of the German people that followed this philosophy
of public life was extraordinary :  young boys joined the Jungvolk at 10,   
were forcedly put between 14 and 18  in the Hitler's Youth regiments
where they were given preliminary military training,   had one year of  
labour service (Arbeitsdienst) organized on pure military linesafter 18;  
after 1935 and the reintroduction of the conscription, they had 2 years of
military service.  Even young German girls had to  join the BDM (Bund
Deutscher Mädel-League of German Girls) where they were given an
intensive training in gymnastics, swimming and walking. The goal was
to prepare healthy women for the procreation of the  superior Nordic race.

For most  German  boys and  girls, that form of militarization of their
early years was all what they knew of life : they did not have a choice or a
chance to know, experience and see anything else. Between the age of
10 and the end of their paramilitary or  military duties,  German boys had
11 years of Nazi brain washing, apprenticeship of military values and
training to combat against the evils of the time, the Jews and the Reds.  
This military diet prepared them to the aggression against the USSR and
the necessary brutality that followed. Even if the same sort of training
was imposed upon their Soviet  young enemies, notably in the  
Komsomol,  the outcome of this was evident : young Germans were
psychologically prepared to the great wars of the future whereas  young
French and  young British were busily preparing themselves to avoid
them.  The first method produced men like Guderian and Sepp Dietrich
in Germany or  Zhukov in Russia, the second men like Chamberlain in
England and  Gamelin in France with the final result that everybody  
knows : total collapse of the Anglo-French army in 1940, total victory of
the Soviet army in 1945.
In 1934, the SA
army comprised 4
million armed
men all devoted
to wage war to the
enemy.
German love for militarism was not
introduced by the Nazis : it was an old
habit instilled after 1871 by the Prussians
and exacerbated by the defeat of 1918.
Hitler promised revenge of the  
humiliation to a people who had not
seen a French soldier on German soil
during four years and who was told they
had lost the war.
The preservation of the German race as
illustrated by this sculpture by Arno
Breker was the justification of Hitler's
wars against the inferior Jewish and
Slavic degenerated races.

The result of this militarization of a vanquished Germany was  the announcement
in April 1935 by Hitler of the re-establishment of the German armed forces outside
the terms of the Versailles  treaty : Germany reintroduced compulsory military
conscription  and rebuilding of the armed forces. This included a new Navy
(Kriegsmarine), the first full armoured divisions (Panzerwaffe) and an Air Force
(Luftwaffe). For the first time since the war, Germany's armed forces were as strong
as those of France.  France and Britain barely protested.

Four years later, the German nation was fully prepared for war at least on the
psychological side :  Hitler was convinced that his people were ready for total war
even if most of his Generals were less easily persuaded.  The gambling raid on
France and the swift victory over a powerful enemy convinced the whole nation that it
had nothing to fear from a total war. In 1941, on the eve of the invasion of Russia,
Paul J. Goebbels wrote :"The Führer says: right or wrong, we must win. It is the only
way. And victory is right, moral and necessary. And once we have won, who is going
to question our methods?"  This mix of naivety and cynicism was the trademark of a
nation that had been brainwashed in the notion that war is just and unavoidable.
"Germany will as always have to be regarded as
the focus of the Western world against the attacks
of  Bolshvism. I only want, in these lines, to
express my conviction that this crisis cannot and
will not fail to occur. The extent of the military
development of our resources cannot be too
large, nor its pace too swift."

           A.Hitler, August 1936

Hitler  was convinced that this war was no ordinary war but a struggle of
two  opposing world views which had to be fought mercilessly to
exterminate communism for all time.  The initial successes of the
Wehrmacht against the Red Army seemed to vindicate this  viewpoint : by
November  1941,  four months only after the  onset of the attack on  
Russia, the German army was only 12 miles away from Moscow and the
failure of the Soviets to prepare for the attack seemed to indicate that the
regime was incapable to defend itself and its population.

Hitler could momentarily triumphed and in December 1941 boasted that
the  "Soviet dragon would never rise again." But as he had made the Jews
responsible for the loss of the Great War, he was once more totally wrong.
The Soviets were better enemies, better organized and better motivated
than the Germans thought they were : above all, they were fighting to save
the Russian soil whereas the Germans were embroiled in a sheer war of
conquest that  created the  outlook of professional robbers and the rather
false doctrine that they were fighting for the survival of the German race.  
Hitler's war might have been total  but it was also totally artificial while
Stalin's war was defensive and patriotic.
In the early 20s, tired of being held responsible for the defeat of
WW1, the Jews published this propaganda poster remembering
German opinion that 12,000 Jewish soldiers had died for  the
Vaterland between 1914 and 1918.

As soon as October 1941, Stalin declared  a state of siege in  Moscow  and let it be  known that
"we will not surrender Moscow."  He appointed General Zhukov commander in chief in charge of
the defence of the capital.  In December a counter-offensive was mounted and held the Germans
back.  The anticipated  blitzkrieg over Russia on the model of the campaign of France had failed.
Therefore contrary to Hitler's expectations, the war was going to be long, slow and much more total
than he ever warned his generals.  It would still last 3 years and a half and coasted the life of 5.5
million of German soldiers.  

Far from being only total, the war was also barbaric : Hitler had warned that it would be a war of
extermination and it was so. Very fast, soldiers on each side got accustomed to an extraordinary
violence and lost all respect  for the usual  laws of war. One SS officer wrote to his wife that "the
sight of the dead is not  very cheering", but soon he regretted those stupid scruples and added in a
following letter that to be able to stand the sight of the dead, one had to do it more often.  In other
words, let's get used to commit massacres and violence will become an non-upsetting  daily
routine. And it is exactly what happened. The total German war became totally barbaric and this
aspect was not only wanted by the supremer  leader Hitler but by many generals too : in July 1943,
a German decree permitted forces "to spread the kind of terror that would make the Soviet people
lose all interest in insubordination." In September,  General Keitel, chief of staff at Hitler's Supreme
Command, issued  the Hostage Order allowing troops to execute 50 to 100 Soviet citizens for
every German killed by partisans and "bandits" as Himmler  called the guerrilla men and women
of Russia.

In spite of the violence unleashed against the Soviet enemy and his Jewish pioneers, Hitler did
not win the war against the USSR of Stalin.  The critical  balance between the two armies was - as  
British historian Richard Overy demonstrated very well (3)- in the artillery, not in the level of
violence or the more or less global involvement of each nation :  Soviet factories produced artillery
pieces in hundreds of thousands, German in tens of thousands.  Artillery and tanks supplied by
the Allies in the context of the Lend-Lease Act of 1941   provided the means to break through
enemy  positions even in the quality of German weapons continued to be higher until the end of the
war.
"We are fighting this war for the
survival or non survival of our people.
It is a weakness not to be able to stand
the sight of the dead  people."  SS
Officer Kretschmer in a letter to his
wife in 1942.

A lthough Hitler took his role of Commander-in-Chief of the armies very seriously -he never took a
single day away from the war effort during the four years of the conflict with Russia and the USA-   
he failed to control what was going on on the battlefield because he refused to adoptmore
responsive and less bureaucratic structures in the conduct of the war. He centralized everything to
wage his total war but refused to delegate and in the two last years of the war even totally
distrusted his Generals who were forbidden to  improvise and adapt their commandment to ever
changing situations.  As the war was becoming nastier and more total than expected, Hitler
refused to acknowledge his  military limitations and to rely more on the advice of  professional
soldiers.

All the contrary he persuaded  himself that he was a war genius opposed to "incapable
Generals",  "cowards" and "defeatists". In the end, he was convinced to be the best strategist, the
shrewdest tactician and that  his Officers were not worth any delegation of decisions. Actually he
had a very weak grasp of operational realities, all his life as Führer, he remained volens nolens the
 ex-Lance-Corporal estafette of WW1  with  limited knowledge of the conduct of war on the
battlefield and he was  incapable to admit it for one reason : his idea to be the Germany's supreme
and infallible warlord was the  only justification of the dictatorial regime he  had imposed on his
people and of  the barbaric war he was  waging  against the Soviets and to a lesser extent against
the Anglo-Americans.  

But the reality on the battlefield was different : at the end of 1994, out of 38,000 letters send in
September by the soldiers of the XIVth Army, only  2% still displayed faith in the Führer and only 5%
believed in the final victory. The warlord had lost the trust of his men but continued to wage his
global war and nourished childish hopes in the development of wonder weapons like the V1, V2
and some Jet-fighters that could barely fly to the enemy before to have to go back home for lack of
fuel.  Eventually when the SS Officer  Koschorrek learnt about the suicide of  Adolf and Eva Hitler on
the 30th of April 1945, he and his comrades were shocked that the proud warlord had shirked his
responsibilites but "within a couple of  hours, he was forgotten."  If the German people continued to
fight to the end, it was not by fidelity to a failed Führer but simply because -after having been told
during 4 years to fight a total  war against the enemy-  they desperately tried to prevent  Germany's
total destruction.   
"Victory will be ours" says the
poster. Unfortunately victory was
on the side of the people who had
a real reason to fight and who
were the best equipped to wage a
total and barbaric war."
All writing   on this site  is Copyright Michel Cahier  2003-2100 unless indicated otherwise. All rights reserved.
                                             NOTES