dagorkan said:
Jaime Lannister said:
The biggest problem of the new-born German nation in the 19th century was exactly the lack of mythic roots. So they made up those roots. Whereas the Jews for example have very strong mythic roots that go back to to the creation of the universe.
Spooky, I was reading an essay on exactly that topic just yesterday. How Nazi war-time 'propaganda' attempted (consciously?) to mirror the Biblical tales, as seen through movie production, but that they failed to find any original myth. The entire point of the war, from an ideological point of view, was the "thousands of year" Reich, but nobody (including Hitler) could come up with genuine motivation or the necessary shift in imagination to found a new civilization. The neo-Aryan, Odinist stuff was an attempt but was not taken seriously, even Hitler didn't believe in it and it didn't penetrate into the population at large. Hitler was a practical politician, not a visionary and WW2 Germany remained too 'German' (rooted in classical, Western European traditions) - and that's why they lost.
Very interesting.
Just wondering if thats a personal opinion or te opinion of some historians. I have read quite a few articles and books on the war and the most prominent reasoning for the failure of the Wehrmacht can be boiled down to these:
1. Hitler's insistence to meddle and change strategy overiding the intelligent experienced decisionmaking of military officers for his own ego and personal granduer. For example by strationing Rommel well off the map during the Normandy invasion, Rommel had no chance to act for a couple of days after the Allied landings. Rommel had planned massive armored and artillery counterattacks immediately upon the landings, but Hitler held him back for about two days...If Rommel had his way, the Allied forces would have been swept back into the ocean.(luckily they were not)
2. The change in the overall strategic goal of Blitzkreig swift assault and gain more ground as quickly as possible, to encirclement and slow seige on Russian cities. The failure at Stalingrad saved the Russian military and prevented the Wehrmacht from reaching Moscow. Stalin was about to off himself hiding in the Urals when his officers came to see him, he thought they were coming to kill him. If the Germans would have continued to chug to Moscow, Stalin might not have even survived by his own doing.
It was not the lack of industrial resources or raw materials for their downfall. Stalingrad could have been lightly encircled, and held in a slow seige by artillery by only a small fraction of the troops wasted on it. The rest of Army groups A & B could have rolled in a direct spearhead to Moscow using proven tactics with proven results. The russian armies would have backtracked to protect Moscow, and similar encirclements to the one in Stalingrad could have been enacted on the rest of the cities as the russian military-industrial complex would have moved all of their operations behind the Urals. It would have been a very long seige to hold over Moscow, with the Russians fighting from the Urals after Moscow would have eventually capitulated. Wit all the gains from the Cacauses and cities, the Wehrmacht woud have been fighting a garrisoned guerrilla war against Russians attacking from the East. If Hitler had some sense, he woul dhave been in communications with the Japanes long before to get them to invade Russian through either Siberia or China. With a press from the east, the Russians would not have been able to hold up nearly as well as they did. A German-Japanese pincer movement would have sealed the Russian front much quicker.
As to the Normandy invasion, Hitler should not have intervened and let Rommel command as he was originally intended to do. Rommel would have launched tank assault and artillery counters along the Normandy coasts pulverizing the freshly landed troops back into the water. The Normandy invasion would have failed. Europe and Russia and parts of Asia would have been under the Nazi and Imperial Japanese yolk. It is possible that England would have been invaded later, or just forced to pay tribute. It is most likely it would have taken til the 80s or 90s for Europe and Russia to be free. It would have been a Nazi-Japanese cold war with the U.S. and U.K.
As to the level of belief in the Germanic traditions, Himmler was a massive proponent of the belief systems along with the SS. It was they that spearheaded the ideological viewpoint of the military-political complex. Himmler himself travelled to Tibet searching for the Aryan originator link. They also had a large garrison and occultists stationed with the "Spear of Longinus", the same spear with which Charlemagne conquered most of Europe,until the Allies and Patton overan the fortress and funny enough the tide of the war really turned at that point whence the Germans were winning almost non-stop, but after that event the losses piled up and the tide turned.
There is also some writings concerning Nazi sponsored occultists recruited to attempt to alter the weather during the Battle of the Bulge to prevent Allied air flights.
So there belief in the tradtions, mythologies, and occult was great indeed.
I don't see any sources citing lack of faith in Nazi myth-cultural ideology as being any type of prime ingredient in the overall failure.
However, we can all be glad tha indeed Hitler's influence proved to be the end just as he started that era.
