Hilters Strengths and Weaknesses as a Leader

How good was Hitler as a military commander? Was he, as his former subordinates claimed after World War Two ended, a meddlesome amateur who kept them from conducting the war properly? What were his strengths and weaknesses, his goals and methods? The answers to these questions reveal a man who was indeed responsible for Germany's downfall, though not entirely in the way that his generals claimed.

Hitler was ... determined to command personally.

Hitler was, first and foremost, determined to command personally. According to his so-called Leader Principle (Führerprinzip), ultimate authority rested with him and extended downward. At each level, the superior was to give the orders, the subordinates to follow them to the letter. In practice the command relationships were more subtle and complex, especially at the lower levels, but Hitler did have the final say on any subject in which he took a direct interest, including the details of military operations, that is, the actual direction of armies in the field.

Moreover, as time went on he took over positions that gave him ever more direct control. From leader (Führer) of the German state in 1934, he went on to become commander-in-chief of the armed forces in 1938, then commander-in-chief of the army in 1941. Hitler wanted to be the Feldherr, the generalissimo, exercising direct control of the armies himself, in much the same sense that Wellington commanded at Waterloo, albeit at a distance.

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Hitler, Field Marshal General Wilhelm Keitel and General of the Artillery Alfred Jodl, discussing the war over maps in the Führer's headquarters, 1941 Adolf Hitler with Field Marshal General Wilhelm Keitel and General of the Artillery Alfred Jodl, in the Führer's headquarters, 194...

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.... He was, after all, one of the two men who first thought up the campaign plan that the Wehrmacht (the German army) used against France with such stunning success in 1940, and he had to push hard before the General Staff would accept it. As time went on he came to believe that Germany's victories were his alone and that most of his generals were narrow-minded, overly cautious and incapable.

... the generals expressed admiration for Hitler's political skills and goals.

For their part, the generals expressed admiration for Hitler's political skills and goals. His defence minister from 1933 to 1938, General Werner von Blomberg, said that Hitler's rise to power represented 'a broad national desire, and the realisation of that towards which many of the best have been striving for years'. Their attitude toward his military leadership, on the other hand, ran hot and cold.