re: What was Hitler’s worst blunder?

My thoughts...

Later in the war, 1944, there was discussion by the allies to try an assassinate Hitler, but it was determined that he was making so many huge blunders that it was better for the war effort that he remain alive than to try and kill him.

I do believe that switching targets in the Battle of Britain was Goering responsibility. Hitler left all that up to him.

In France and Dunkirk... Stopping the German Panzers for three days while they were driving on the British and French today remains a mystery as to why he ordered them stopped. Had he not done that, he most likely would not have let the British Expeditionary Force get away at Dunkirk.

In Russia.. Somewhere in the beginning as Guderian was driving his Panzers on Moscow, Hitler ordered them to turn south and assist with the taking of Kiev I believe instead of advancing on to Moscow... This delayed taking Moscow before the Winter set in... Had that not have happened, Army Group Center may have taken Moscow the first year.

As to Stalingrad being meaningless... All the Oil from the Caucasus' and other supplies were flowing up the Volga to Central Russia.. Holding Stalingrad was critical for both sides.

I think that the big blunder here was not letting Paulus breakout when they became entrapped. I had heard that Germany Army lost 1/4 of all it's equipment in Stalingrad. That's a huge amount.

Another big blunder was not pulling out the Afrika Korp. Upon the Middle East falling to Montgomery and Russia being the Primary focus.. 150,000 men of the Afrika Korp Surrendered in 1943. Those forces should have been evacuated instead of being taken prisoner...

BTW fellas... You see my handle... I enjoy collecting any and all WWII items...

Bombing civilians in retaliation for the massacre at Dresden, he should have kept being the bigger man

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What was Hitler’s worst blunder?

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Eating sugar alcohols

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being brainwashed by Margaret Sanger

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This is the second Margaret Sanger comment I've noticed in this thread. Did she have some type of Nazi affiliation that I'm unaware of?

Her main thing was birth control, which was illegal in the US in the early/mid 1900s. Her "support" of legal abortion was a method to end back alley abortions, not so much a zeal for killing babies. I know there are people who think Sanger and Planned Parenthood was/are soley focused on providing as many abortions as possible, but that's not really accurate.

She did support eugenics, but she was hardly alone in her viewpoint. Eugenics programs had support across the US in the first half of the 1900s. She was focused primarily on socio-economic eugenics - if you can't afford those kids, you shouldn't have them. (Most OTers seem to agree with that viewpoint today. I know I do.) She did think profoundly retarded people should be sterilized or segregated from the opposite sex to prevent reproduction. That's a stickier issue, but it doesn't quite compare to Nazis gassing God knows how many mental and physical defectives.

And FYI ... Several US states were still running eugenic programs into tbe late '60s, including NC and CA. They weren't gassing people, but they were sterilizing the mentally challenged, often without their knowledge. Margaret Sanger and Hilter were both dead by then.

You're correct that the Luftwaffe had the RAF on the ropes during the Battle of Britain. If they had continued to attack the airfields, and if they had focused on the RAF radar sites, things might have ended differently with regard air superiority/supremacy. But Sea Lion was never going to happen in 1940. Germany didn't have the landing craft necessary for a successful large scale amphibious assault and Andrew Higgins lived in New Orleans, not Hamburg.

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Not the worst, but switching from military targets to civilian targets in the Battle of Britain.

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Disagree. They didn’t do that on a whim. Luftwaffe couldn’t sustain operations and they were seeing no real diminishment of the RAF’s combat ability in spite of mission successes.

They had to try SOMETHING different, or call off the attack all together. A more interesting argument is if they should have engaged in the Battle of Britain at all, saving that air power to contest the channel and free up air support assets for Operation Barborossa.

Which would have probably succeeded, if his armored divisions were better designed for handling mud. Even just a few inches of tread width on the tanks probably would have changed everything. But that was a design issue so probably not Hitler’s call itself so....


I’m going to go with having two generals in front of you offering their proposals on how to defend the Atlantic coast from Allied invasion, and rather than picking one (which each had its merits) went with a mixture of the two which inherited the cons of both with no upside.

Battle of Britain was Summer/Fall of 1940. Barbarossa was June of '41. How would air assets be freed up? Are you referring to Luftwaffe losses in the B of B that could have been better used in Barbarossa?

Invading North Africa to help the Italians and then not supplying Rommel adequately.

Also, declaring war on USA after Japan attacked. He could've stayed out of it.

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The USSR was going to attack Germany Hitler and had no choice

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Another ill-informed apologist for Nazi Germany's invasion of the USSR. Where do you people come from?

It wasn't a matter of "no choice" for Hitler. He always intended on conquering the Soviet Union. It was even in Mein Kampf - lebensraum in the East and all that jazz.

Surviving his birth.