The First Soldier: Hitler as Military Leader

by Stephen Fritz

Overview

A leading expert reexamines history to offer a stunningly original portrait of Hitler as a competent military commander and strategist

After Germany’s humiliating World War II defeat, numerous German generals published memoirs claiming that their country’s brilliant military leadership had been undermined by the Führer’s erratic decision making. The author of three highly acclaimed books on the era, Stephen Fritz upends this characterization of Hitler as an ill-informed fantasist and demonstrates the ways in which his strategy was coherent and even competent.
 
That Hitler saw World War II as the only way to retrieve Germany’s fortunes and build an expansionist Thousand-Year Reich is uncontroversial. But while his generals did sometimes object to Hitler’s tactics and operational direction, they often made the same errors in judgment and were in agreement regarding larger strategic and political goals. A necessary volume for understanding the influence of World War I on Hitler’s thinking, this work is also an eye-opening reappraisal of major events like the invasion of Russia and the battle for Normandy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300251463
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	03/17/2020
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Stephen G. Fritz is professor at East Tennessee State University. His books include Frontsoldaten: The German Soldier in World War II and Ostkrieg: Hitler’s War of Extermination in the East. He lives in Johnson City, TN.

Table of Contents

List of Maps viii

List of Plates ix

Preface xii

1 Clausewitz, Hitler, and Absolute War 1

2 Emergence of the Idea 18

3 War in Peace 39

4 Blitzkrieg Unleashed 69

5 The Blitzkrieg Paradox 85

6 The Lure of Lebensraum 123

7 Barbarossa: The Last Blitzkrieg (June-August 1941) 157

8 Barbarossa: Catastrophe (September 1941-March 1942) 200

9 A World Power or Nothing at All (1942-3) 235

10 No Victory, No Peace (Summer 1943-4) 278

11 Never Again a November 1918 334

12 Hitler as Feldherr: An Assessment 364

Acknowledgments 376

Notes 378

Bibliography 410

Index 437

Editorial Reviews

Fritz does an excellent job of weaving together the best secondary source material with diaries, letters to wives, Nuremburg Trials testimony, wartime pronouncements and speeches . . . [and] an equally outstanding job of adding his own analysis and reading of events to create a new and refreshing understanding of many key episodes in the European theater of operations.”—Robert Kirchubel, H-Net Reviews

Selected by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Title of 2019

“Perhaps the best account we have to date of Hitler’s military leadership. It shows a scrupulous and imaginative historian at work and will cement Fritz’s reputation as one of the leading historians of the military conflicts generated by Hitler’s Germany.”—Richard Overy, author of The Bombing War

“Magnificent. Hitler emerges as a complex and nuanced military leader who cannot simply be dismissed as the dogmatic ideologue or the corporal in command. Original, insightful and authoritative Fritz’s latest work is something I will return to again and again.”—David Stahel, author of The Battle for Moscow

“Cuts a swathe through the reconstituted arguments of countless other books about Hitler. Meticulously researched and adopting a thoroughly readable style, Fritz offers profound new insights about Hitler as commander. This is a volume which should serve as a warning to strategic leaders who become blinkered by ideology, self-absorbed and neglect the requirements of successful leadership.”—Lloyd Clark, author of Blitzkrieg

From the Publisher

2018-09-02

Not a biography but a readable scholarly overview of how Hitler managed Germany's armed forces.

Fritz (History/East Tennessee State Univ.; Ostkrieg: Hitler's War of Extermination in the East, 2011, etc.) begins in 1933 when Hitler met with military leaders and assured them that he would return Germany's armed forces to the respect they enjoyed before 1918. Everyone understood that this would require going to war. Except for preferring more time to prepare, none objected, and few had problems with the cruelty with which he wanted to wage it. Most complained about his interference. None of this is controversial, but readers will take notice when the author writes that the image of a "fanatical, incompetent, amateurish, and irrational Hitler who at every turn frustrated or undermined the professional judgments of his generals" originated from the generals themselves in successful postwar efforts to shift the blame for their failures. Fritz maintains that Hitler was a self-educated military buff with solid technical knowledge, adding that he rejected invading France following the 1914 Schlieffen Plan and pushed through the dazzlingly successful attack in the Ardennes forest. There was probably no strategy that would defeat Russia, but his plan for a focused two-pronged assault made more sense than the generalized advance that occurred in June 1941. The author's villain is the dysfunctional high command itself, especially Franz Halder, chief of the general staff, a "crafty and devious bureaucratic infighter" but a mediocre strategist who fed Hitler misleading intelligence or withheld it entirely. Although he did not hesitate to bully generals, Hitler usually defended his decisions with arguments or elaborate memos and paid attention to opposing views. Fritz adds that he was an imaginative strategist, although his aggressiveness served him poorly once the Allies got their act together in 1942, and he ultimately lost touch with reality.

An expert account of Nazi war strategy that concludes that Hitler was not without military talent.

Kirkus Reviews