How Hitler Could Have Won World War II

^{SS Lieutenant Colonel Joachim Peiper, whose battle group massacred eighty-six captured and unarmed Americans and a number of Belgians at Malmedy during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. (Topham/The Image Works)}

^{Brigadier General Anthony C. McAuliffe, who said “Nuts!” to a German demand that he surrender the American 101st Airborne Division he commanded at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. (Topham/The Image Works)}

^{General George S. Patton Jr., the most aggressive and imaginative Allied commander in the west, who led the American 7th Army into Sicily and the 3rd Army through France after the breakout from Normandy in late July 1944. (Topham/The Image Works)}

^{Leaders of Overlord, the invasion of Normandy in June 1944. Seated (from left): RAF Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, deputy commander; General Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander; British field marshal Sir Bernard L. Montgomery, ground forces commander. Standing (from left): General Omar Bradley, American ground commander; Royal Navy Admiral Sir Bertram H. Ramsey, naval commander; RAF Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, air support commander; and Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower’s chief of staff. (Topham/The Image Works)}

^{Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt awards Iron Cross decorations to German soldiers who distinguished themselves in combat. Rundstedt commanded Army Group A, which struck through the Ardennes in May 1940 and led quickly to the defeat of France and the eviction of the British from the Continent. Rundstedt commanded an army group in Russia and was commander in chief in the west when the Allies invaded Normandy in June 1944. (Topham/ The Image Works)}

^{The senior Allied commanders in Normandy in June 1944 (from left): Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery, chief of all ground forces; General Miles C. Dempsey, commander of the British 2nd Army; and General Omar Bradley, commander of the American 1st Army. (Topham/The Image Works)}

^{General George C. Marshall, chief of staff of the U.S. Army and President Roosevelt’s principal military adviser. Marshall was slated to become commander of the invasion of Normandy in 1944, but Roosevelt decided that he could not dispense with his advice and gave the command to Dwight D. Eisenhower. (Topham/The Image Works)}

^{General Hasso von Manteuffel (second from right) discusses defense plans in France just prior to the Allied invasion on June 6, 1944. Manteuffel conducted a brilliant defense in Tunisia in 1943 against Allied forces and commanded the 5th Panzer Army in the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. (AP/Wide World Photo)}

^{Marshal Georgy K. Zhukov, who led the Soviet drive into Germany in 1945, makes a toast at Frankfurt shortly after the German surrender. With him is American General Dwight D. Eisenhower, western Allied supreme commander. (Topham/The Image Works)}

^{Albert Speer (left), Nazi armaments chief; Grand Admiral Karl Donitz (center), German U-boat chief and last chancellor of the German Reich; and General Alfred Jodl, operations chief of the high command, at their arrest at Flensburg, Germany, on May 24, 1945. (Topham/The Image Works)}

Notes

A note on the Notes: Some references cite only the last name of the author or editor. These works are cited in full in the Selected Bibliography. References not so listed are cited in full where they appear. Numbers refer to pages.

Chapter 1: Germany’s Opportunity for Victory

p. 2: “after France fell.” Kimball, 48.

p. 2: “the European continent.” Ian Kersaw in Finney, 132.

p. 3: “Schutzstaffel or SS.” Dahms, 332–38.

p. 4: “or were murdered.” This book focuses on the military and political decisions open to Germany in World War II. Nothing in it should be misunderstood as approval for what the Third Reich did in six years of pillage and genocide, carried out by Nazi authorities and private soldiers alike. This book seeks to explore how close we came to losing the war, and how close Adolf Hitler came to creating the unspeakable world he wanted. There is insufficient space to examine the Holocaust and other murderous programs Hitler and Nazi Germany pursued to the very last days of the war. There are many fine books on this aspect of Nazism. Two of the best are Hitler’s Willing Executioners by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, and an official German study of the Einsatzgruppen, or murder units, in eastern Europe from 1939 to 1942: Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges (The Troops of the War of Ideology) by Helmut Krausnick and Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm. For human losses, see Zabecki, vol. 1, 32–34 (Paul J. Rose); Omer Bartov, Hitler’s Army, 83–84.

p. 6: “kinds of vehicles.” Fuller, vol. 3, 379–81.

p. 7: “‘had time to react.’” Rommel, 124.

p. 7: “infantryman could walk.” France had about 3,400 modern tanks, though not all were in organized tank units. Britain sent about 700 tanks to the Continent, mostly Mark VI light tanks, with 14-millimeter armor and armed with two machine guns, the rest Matildas, a powerful, slow (maximum speed 15 mph, but operating even slower) “infantry” tank with 70-millimeter main armor. Most were the Mark I version armed only with a machine gun, and only 50 were Mark IIs with a high-velocity two-pounder (40-millimeter) gun. On May 10, 1940, 2,300 French tanks had been formed into 51 battalions: 12 in three armored divisions, 12 in three light mechanized divisions, 27 in independent battalions. Each French battalion usually had 45 medium or light tanks, or 33 heavy tanks. The French deployed mostly infantry tanks with thick armor (34–60 millimeters), short range, and slow speed. Most had a good 37-millimeter gun, and some had an excellent high-velocity 47-millimeter gun. Either could pierce most German armor. See Goutard, 27–28; Zabecki, vol. 2, 1107–10, 1131–32 (Kenneth J. Swanson, Robert G. Waite, and John Dunn); Ellis, 88–89.

p. 8: “speed of only 240 mph.” This was the 1938 model with a 490-mile range used in the 1940 campaign. In 1941 the Ju-87D came out with a 4,000-pound pay-load and a 950-mile range. The D-model saw heavy and successful service in North Africa and Russia.

p. 8: “on the battlefield.” The German Wehrmacht (armed forces) were the first to develop close tactical or battle cooperation between aircraft and ground troops. A Stuka could drop a bomb within a hundred yards of any target designated by the ground forces. The Luftwaffe sent liaison officers to corps and panzer divisions to relay requests for support. In the campaign in the west, panzer forces could receive air support forty-five to seventy-five minutes after the request was made. See Corum, 271–75.