It’s perhaps worth pointing out that a lot of modern historians now agree that WW1 was really kicked off by an unholy combination of Serb nationalists and French bankers. The Germans read signals that the French planned a war to recover Alsace-Lorraine screened by Serb and Russian eruptions against the Austro-Hungarian empire. Of course they had annexed Alsace-Lorraine in the first place…it all goes back, really, to Frederick the Great.
“Germany” at the time of WW1 was basically the Prussian Empire - the most militarised state in the world. The system survived well enough after WW1 to maintain the traditions of the military (it was heavily concealed) and so by 1939 there was a whole new generation trained and ready. But Hitler envisaged a series of short wars. In a war of attrition - which was the Eastern Front - Germany would ultimately lose.
Even so, by May 1945 they had units consisting basically of 12 year old kids with Panzerfausts. If Germany has been rather peaceable for the last 70 years, consider that by mid-1945 almost all of the more aggressive Germans were dead, even the teenagers. Reading the accounts of some of them who were forced to fight hopeless battles with the threat of being executed for desertion by the SS should remind us that many Germans were as much victims of Hitler as anybody else.
Nuts!*
Man, I really like that story…
I once had a visit from a guy whose job was to investigate military foul-ups (he was advising us on a project.) He basically said that the British Army runs on the Red Books (“Major’s logic”) and what the sergeants do to make stuff actually work (“Sergeant’s logic”). On the ground, the Army actually runs on sergeant’s logic, which is sensible. The trick is to educate officers to realise that the sergeants may not be following the book but they are doing the right thing, and that sensible officers learn sergeant’s tricks and ensure they get spread around.
A favourite sergeant trick, when taking over stores, was to arrive early in the day when things like fuel would be cold, so the level in tanks would be lower, then try to ensure the next takeover would be in the late afternoon when expansion would make the levels higher, thus allowing the sergeant to siphon off fuel for private use. A knowledgeable officer would put a stop to this by requiring all levels to be checked at the same time of day. A clever officer would let the sergeant carry out his little trick, then confiscate the siphoned fuel.
What about confiscating half of the siphoned fuel? Wouldn’t that be a stable long-term arrangement?
With the Germans, given the existence of complete bastards like Skorzeny, no communication even by fairly high ranking officers could be trusted in the slightest. Given that confused signalling between diplomats and politicians was a major cause of WW1, one would have thought the Germans might have learned something; but instead they acquired a leader who had been a mere corporal in WW1 and who never understood what you might call the higher political functions. Really, the only possible response to a German signal was “Nuts”.
Having said that, a former colleague, a brilliant linguist, was embedded with the Czech partisans. In the closing phases of the war he avoided shootouts several times by his ability to sound convincingly like a high ranking German officer. But, as he said, by then what a lot of the Germans in Czechoslovakia really wanted more than anything was to hear what sounded like a Prussian general instructing them to lay down their weapons and march out in single file because the War was over.
You tend to be much more successful when the message you want to persuade the other ones about is the one they want to hear.
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