Dana Mathewson

According to history I've read, Hitler willingly went to war with Russia because -- against all advice from his generals, who were not stupid and wanted nothing to do with a two-front war -- he "needed Russia's oil." It was one of many instances where Hitler ignored his generals. If he hadn't, and had not taken over operational command early in the war, we might all be speaking German here.

Germany had no petroleum reserves, but they did some clever things with synthetic oil. Every time you buy a can of Mobil One, you're buying Hitler's technology. Posted by: Dana

Tim adds:

Hitler's great misfortune was he got lucky rolling the dice early with HIS plan and not the Wehrmacht's. Had he been spanked early he probably would have known to stay out of military affairs and let the pros do it. He had the best in the world, after all. But he bucked the generals and won and so believed he was omnipotent.

The V2 was a prime example of Hitler's meddling costing them. The military people wanted mobile V2 launch sites so the Allies couldn't bomb them. Hitler insisted on stationary sites and got them - and the Allies bombed them. Had they gone with the mobile sites the V2 could have wrecked total havoc on Britain. But they wound up being reasonably ineffective because the Allies could get planes to the sites faster than the sites could be constructed.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:29 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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