Chapter 67 Chapter 66

The Disintegration of the European Fortress (Excerpt from "Hitler as Military Leader", postscript to the book "Land, Sea and Air Battles of the Second World War" by General Armin von Roon) English translator's note: Almin.Feng.Long's postscript vividly describes the Führer's activities, especially as he nears his end.In this memoir, Long's analysis of Hitler is as rigorous and ruthless as his analysis of military operations; the editor of his original German book pointed out that this memoir was drafted by Long on his deathbed without revision. The memoir begins with this: In the High Command I had the opportunity to be in Adolf.Hitler watched him side by side for more than four years.Both Keitel and Yoddle, who enjoyed the same opportunity, have been hanged by the Allies.Most of the generals who knew the head of state were executed by him, or died of overwork or illness, or died in battle.I've never seen any military memoir that portrays him as a person.It is understandable that Guderian's and Manstein's writings both ignore the side of his life.

During my military career, I have said that as a statesman he displayed tact and inspiring strength, and have cited his strategic and tactical decisions for war, especially those that involved making the enemy Extraordinary talent when making a decision by surprise.I have shown that at the height of his prestige he has become in our eyes the soul of a regenerated Germany.I have also mentioned his serious flaws, which, as a supreme commander, led to havoc. As far as his character is concerned, he exposed his despicable and ugly character more and more in adversity.After his assassination on July 20, 1944, his actions showed his true colors.I sat next to him while watching a film of some German generals being executed.These great German generals are all my respected and beloved superiors and close friends. They were strangled to death naked by nooses made of piano strings. Their eyes protruded from their discolored faces, their purple tongues stuck out, blood and excrement Flowing down the jerky body.He stared contentedly, giggled, and clapped at the sight.No matter who it is, after seeing this scene, they can only treat Adolf.Hitler was disgusted.

If Germany is ever to rise again, we must root out these political and cultural weaknesses that lead us to follow such a man to failure, disgrace and partition.In view of this, I write down what I saw at the High Command as my personal, merciless account of the Führer. This is a far cry from the praise Long used in the first volume of "Land, Sea, and Air Battles"; such as "a romantic idealist, a great man who yearns for the unprecedented peak and depth of human possibility." Ideally an inspirational leader, but also a cool strategist endowed with an iron will, he is the soul of Germany."

It seems that Long decided to make a frank and fair evaluation of the Führer before he died.It may also be that Long was more sympathetic to him when describing the years of victory; later, when working on the second volume, the pain of defeat came back to him.In any case, the epilogue is a portrait of Hitler as a disgraced figure, and at the same time a vivid summary of the war.The final part of my translation of World Slaughter consists of excerpts outlining the course of the war up to the last moment. Tunisia and Kursk The titular "fortress of Europe" that Hitler boasted was pure propaganda and it was evident that it had begun to crumble in July 1943 when the Red Army crushed our massive summer offensive at Kursk , the Anglo-American coalition forces landed in Sicily, and Mussolini fell.

These catastrophes were a direct consequence of the worst, stupidest mistakes Hitler ever made: Stalingrad and Tunisia.I told Hitler after my inspection in Tunisia that Rommel was right that our victory over the inexperienced U.S. troops at the Kesselring Pass was short-lived and that we were ultimately unable to cross the ocean under enemy naval control against thirty Ten thousand Italian and German troops provided logistical support.But Goering rashly assured Hitler that Tunisia was within a hurricane of Italy, "within a hop," and that the Luftwaffe could supply troops there.Although Goering had made exactly the same promises about Stalingrad and then disgracefully failed to keep his promise, Hitler believed him and continued to send large numbers of troops to North Africa when in fact he should have withdrawn the troops that had already arrived there.If he had withdrawn all those troops to Italy as a reserve, he could have driven all the Allied troops out of Sicily and allowed Italy to continue fighting.After the heavy casualties we suffered in Tunisia, our southern front never recovered.

The offensive at Kursk was equally ill-conceived.On July 7th my son Helmut was killed in the vanguard of the tank battalion under the command of Manstein.If it wasn't for my father as an example, he probably wouldn't have become a professional soldier.He turned out to be a studious and docile boy.He was killed in a massive, fruitless campaign known as Operation Citadel.This operation was the last breath of the German strategic initiative. Like Guderian and Kleist, I am opposed to the "castle" operation.The British and American forces will soon attack a certain point on the mainland, and we must have our hands free to maintain mobility until we know the enemy's target.It would be wise to line up our eastern fronts, concentrate strong reserves, let the Russians attack first, and then counterattack, as at Kharkov, to crush their advance.Manstein is a veteran of this backhand: if the Soviets suffer another bloody setback like this, they will be more flexible in the secret peace talks.The Russians have shown that they are interested in peace talks, but their demands are still too high-spirited and unrealistic.There is no doubt that what Hitler wanted at Kursk was a huge victory that would improve his bargaining position with Stalin.

But Manstein and Kruger fell in love with the "castle" project at first sight.Like an actor who, when asked to play the leading role in a bad play, readily agrees and hopes that it will be a success, generals revel in the large-scale operations planned at their command.The Russians launched a winter counter-offensive against our front between Manstein's Southern Army and Kruger's Central Army, and at a key point on this front, that is, around the city of Kursk, they penetrated into our The phalanx formed a westward bulge.Manstein and Kruger had to use armored forces to make a pincer movement from the north and the south, cut off this protrusion, form a pocket, reverse the situation in Stalingrad, capture a group of Russian prisoners of war, and then pass through this bulge. The gap that had been opened in the Soviet front continued to march for God knows what colossal victory.

It's an intoxicating sight, but we are powerless and lack capital.Hitler was always bragging about how many divisions he had available to fight.We do have many such "divisions", but these figures are all bullshit.Almost all of these divisions are undermanned, and the soldiers who have been killed are the essence and main fighting force of them, and most of the rest are weak administrative service personnel.The other divisions have been wiped out, merely numbers on the charts.But Hitler ordered the "reorganization" of these units.look!As soon as he breathed, the troops reappeared—in his mind—the well-drilled, full-strength fighting forces he had squandered along the Volga, in the Caucasus, and Tunisia.He was escaping reality, gradually retreating into a dream world where he was still the overlord of Europe, commanding the most powerful army on earth.This fantasy world persisted until he became a complete paranoid.But before April 1945, the German combatants who were fighting bloody battles in the harsh field of battle had to obey insane orders from this hidden dream world.

And, while the Germans were sliding downhill, the Red Army was recovering and growing.Soviet generals have been studying our tactics for two years.Trucks, canned goods, tanks, and airplanes of American-lease supplies, plus new Russian tanks from factories behind the Ural Mountains, added to the fighting strength of the Russian forces.The inexhaustible manpower resources of the Russians provided their troops with new real and not imaginary fighting power.Our intelligence services had warned us to take all these disadvantages into account, but Hitler ignored them. Even so, the Kursk Offensive would have had a chance of making good progress if it had gone ahead as planned in May, when the Russians were exhausted from their counterattacks and their footing on the salient was still precarious.But he postponed the offensive for six weeks in order to try out our newest tanks.I had warned Yoddle that doing so would delay Operation Citadel well into the period when Anglo-American forces might start landing in Europe, but as usual, I was ignored.The Russians seized the opportunity to reinforce the rear of the Kursk salient with mines, trenches, anti-tank bunkers, etc., while at the same time moving more and more troops to the front.

Our intelligence speaks of half a million railroad wagons full of troops and supplies entering this salient!Hitler responded by allocating more divisions and air wings to Operation Citadel.As in an American poker game, the stakes continued to increase until Hitler committed as many tanks to the campaign as he had used throughout the Western Front in 1940.With the offensive delayed for two months, even Manstein and Kruger disagreed after serious reconsideration.despite this.Hitler finally ordered the attack on July 5th.What ensued was a tank and air battle on a scale never before seen in the world, and a total defeat.Our pincer offensive had great difficulty against the fixed Russian positions and hordes of tanks, and was only able to penetrate a few miles deep.The offensive lasted only five days, with both sides facing major setbacks.At this time Allied troops landed in Sicily.

How did Hitler react?At a hastily summoned meeting, he announced with feigned glee that Operation Citadel had offered him the opportunity to annihilate them in the Mediterranean, a "truly decisive theater of war." Will be revoked!Thus he escaped from his failure.Not a word of guilt, blame, or confession.Our remaining eighteen best armored and motorized divisions, a striking force which we should have kept in precious reserve which could never be replenished, was wasted.Hitler, in pursuit of the old dream of the grand summer offensives, threw them away on the Kursk battlefield with no scruples. After the Battle of the Castle, all German offensives came to an end.Any subsequent attacks we launch are tactical counterattacks designed to delay eventual defeat. Hitler soon learned that we cannot simply "undo" a major offensive.There is one more small issue worth considering, enemies.On both sides of the Kursk salient, the Russians counterattacked and within a month liberated the two central strongholds on our Eastern Front—the cities of Orel and Belgorod. After the Battle of the Citadel, our army slowly but irresistibly crumbled across the entire line before the Russian advance.The Russian advance did not stop until the Brandenburg Gate.If Stalingrad was a psychological turning point on the Eastern Front, Kursk was a military hub. This is not the place for me to pour out my love for my son.He was killed on the march to Kursk.Since then, millions of German sons will lay down their lives in the retreat step by step to keep the heads of Hitler and Goering and their ilk. The Downfall of Mussolini Meanwhile, my observations in Sicily and Rome convinced me that Italy was about to withdraw from the war or fall to the enemy.I saw that it was necessary for us to form a strong line of defense in the Apennines at the northern end of the Italian boot in order to reduce losses.Attempts to stand still in Italy will do no good.As soon as the war started, the country became a big, useless mouth that swallowed vast amounts of German war material and never played a role.The Southern Front is a chronic abscess.We welcome the Anglo-Saxons to occupy and feed Italy, I wrote in my summary report, so that our troops will be free to help stabilize the Eastern Front and defend the Western Front. When I told Keitel my opinion in Berchtesgaden, he put on a funeral face and asked me to change my tune.But I don't care anymore, my only son is dead, and I myself suffer from severe hypertension.Transferring me from High Command to the field seemed like a blessed prospect. So, in the debriefing, I described what I saw.The Allies had absolute air supremacy over Sicily, and Palermo had been razed.The various Sicilian divisions tasked with defending Sicily were gradually retreating into the countryside.In the German-held part of the island, ordinary people cursed and spit on our soldiers.Rome looked as if a city had ceased fighting because there were hardly any soldiers in the streets.None of our German soldiers showed up, while the Italian soldiers threw off their uniforms in droves.When I mentioned to Badoglio the issue of sending more German troops to Italy, he was evasive and vague.The Italians were strengthening their fortresses in the Alps, an action that could only be directed against Germany.This was my briefing to Hitler. He bowed his head to listen to my report, stared at me from under his gray eyebrows, tilted half of his mouth from time to time, and his mustache was disfigured in a smile or growl; he showed his teeth, showing his extremes dissatisfied.He merely expressed his opinion: "There must still be some decent people in Italy. They can't all be rotten." As for Sicily, he had an idea and decided to take command himself.Of course, that doesn't help either. Still, my report must have entered his heart, for he then arranged a meeting with Mussolini.The meeting, held in a house in rural northern Italy, was a somber meeting, and within days Mussolini fell.Hitler had nothing new to offer to the sickly-faced, discouraged Mussolini and his staff.He talked for an hour, giving optimistic statistics on manpower, raw materials, munitions production, and details of various improved or new weapons, while the Italians could only look at each other with their expressive black eyes. Showing a look of pain.It was clear on their faces that it was all over.While the conference was in progress, Mussolini received an urgent telegram that the Allies had launched their first air raid on Rome.He handed the telegram to Hitler, who glanced at it reluctantly, and then went on to talk about our growing arms production and all kinds of wonderful new weapons. The news of Mussolini's downfall came and the scene in the High Command was horrific.Hitler was like crazy, howling and roaring, cursing the treachery of the Italian court, as well as the Vatican and the fascist leaders who removed Mussolini from office.The rude language and threats uttered by his embassy were truly appalling.He would take Rome by force, he said, and capture "those rabble, those low rascals"—he meant Victor.King Emmanuel, the royal family, and the entire court—and let them crawl on the ground.He would take the Vatican, "clean out all the priests in that pustule," shoot the members of the diplomatic corps hiding in it, get all the secret papers, and say it was a misunderstanding in the war. He kept trying to speak to Goering on the phone. "He's an extremely calm guy," he said. "Extremely calm. You need an extremely calm man at this moment. Get Goering, get me! Iron will, with whom I have had countless difficult moments. Extremely calm, sir. Extremely calm." Goering hurried over, but he was only obsessive, agreeing with whatever Hitler said, full of vulgar language and obscene teasing.The so-called extreme calm, so it is. To keep Italy fighting, at least until we bring in enough German troops to take over the country peacefully, our German High Command made a hundred emergency decisions and operational plans.Hitler at this time fanatically planned a coup in Rome to bring Mussolini back to power, but the plan could not be carried out, and he later had to abandon it.He also planned to use the airborne troops to rescue the imprisoned Mussolini, and this plan was finally realized.It might make them both happier, but it doesn't help.In fact, in the photo that quickly spread around the world, a gleeful uniformed Hitler is seen, in a different suit, greeting the huddled and groveling former "leader." He was wearing a well-fitting black overcoat and a black fedora hat, with a sickly smile on his pale face.The photo announced more forcefully than any headlines that the famous axis was dead and that the "fortress of Europe" was doomed. My ascension all this had an unintended and unwelcome consequence—my return to Hitler's favor.He asserted that I was the first to see through the treachery of the Italians, that my "good Armin had a brain," and so on.He too had heard that Helmert was dead, and feigned grief to comfort me.He complimented me at some debriefings and—a rare favor for an officer of the General Staff in those days—invited me to dinner.Speer, Himmler and an industrialist were other guests that evening. It was an uncomfortable experience.Hitler talked for about five hours straight.The others didn't say a word, and only occasionally responded with one or two words of agreement, perfunctory and perfunctory.His rhetoric mixes history and philosophy, mostly involving the Jews.The real difficulty for the Italians, he said, was that the best of the country had been spoiled by the evil of the Church.Christianity is but a cunning ruse by the Jews to control the world by preaching weakness over strength.Jesus was not Jewish, but the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier.Paul was the greatest Jewish liar of all time.Disgusting like that.Late at night, he said something funny about Charlemagne.But I was too tired to concentrate and listen.Everyone fought desperately not to yawn.On the whole, his pompous language and pompous behavior were equally intolerable.No doubt it was a weakness which he had no control over, and it was due to his fasting and irregular habits.But sitting next to him at mealtimes was never a joy.How a man like Bowman survived for so many years is beyond me. He no longer invited me, but my wish to leave the high command and go to the battlefield was in vain.Both Yoddle and Keitel are always smiling when they see me now.I also got a month's sick leave so I could go see my wife and give her comfort.By the time I returned to Wolf's Lair, Italy had capitulated, and our long-planned Operation Alaric to seize the peninsula was in full swing. And so our depletion in the South will continue to the end.Adolf.Hitler could not face the political setback of abandoning Italy.When our army disgraced the much stronger Anglo-Saxons there and forced them to advance step by step northward on the boots at the cost of heavy casualties, it was a terrific military exercise. miscalculation.Hitler's blunt political egoism, wasting our strength in the south, when only a part of Kesselring's forces were sufficient to hold the Alpine barrier, finally led to the total collapse of our country under the attack of east and west.