"I know. The thought of it turns my stomach!!"

So Hitler said when he thought about the idea of launching Operation Citadel or as is more commonly known, the battle of Kursk. Field Marshal Model was against it ,Manstein was uncomfortable with, Guderian was opposed to it. For once the was near unanimity amongst the German High Command yet they went ahead anyway. The only person chiefly advocating it seemed to be Kurt Zeitzler.
Given that even had they broken through the defences they would not have had the forces to keep the Russians encircled never mind forcing them to surrender.

Manstein was in favor of a “Backslap” offensive, drawing the Russians into the Don bass and attacking southwards towards what would be an overextended Russian front and entrap any Russian divisions contained there.

I suppose I am asking two questions here

• Why do you think that they still went ahead with it?
• Could the Germans have refrained from attacking in the East in 1943 or were they in a no-win situation?

Here is a link to a page about the battle:


Kursk Page

 

Ok, this will probably be more my 'feeling' than historical 'fact', but I think the answers lies in more than just military terms. Hitler was fighting a war on three fronts in his head: military, ideological and psychological. One could argue that on a military level, Kursk was a disaster waiting to happen from the start. If Hitler had been coming at it from this angle only, then he may not have commited himself to another offensive.

But, ideologically, Hitler could not accept deafeat, nor reatreat from an enemy whom he classed as inferior and "untermensch" in every way. To do so would have wiped out the idelogical foundation upon which the Third Reich was built. In a sense, Hitler was commited to a fight to the death, whoever went down with him. He saw the Wehrmacht, and eventually the German citizens, as dispensible in the fight for supremacy, as can be seen in his attitude to the impending fall of Berlin. For him the war against the Bolsheviks was a religious crusade. One can see this attitude reflected in the following quote:

If the war is lost, the nation will also perish. This fate is inevitable. There is no necessity to take into consideration the basis which the people will need to continue a most primitive existence. On the contrary, it will be better to destroy things ourselves because this nation will have proved to be the weaker one and the future will belong solely to the stronger eastern nation [Russia]. Besides, those who remain after the battle are only the inferior ones, for the good ones have been killed.
Adolf Hitler
On his infamous March 1945 'scorched earth' directive that Germany be made one vast wasteland, explaining it to Albert Speer

Psychologically, Hitler was probably on the edge of a syphilis-induced insanity (which also explains his tremors), was possibly suffering from borderline personality disorder and was obviously a narcissistic personality. All of these things would have affected the nature of his military decisions. In short, Hitler's belief in himself as the saviour of Germany, a God-like figure, would have re-inforced his constant theme in rhetoric, of 'no capitulation'. This is most likely why, even until the 11th hour, Hitler was virtually incapable of ordering a retreat, even when the evidence in front of him screamed that all was lost, and victory was a hopeless dream.

Add all these things together, and Operation Zitadelle, despite the thought of it turning Hitler's stomach, makes terrible sense.

Thanks for the link, GH. I found another Soviet War Poem for my thread!

 

Attack somewhere else, go back for Moscow, anything rather than attack a well prepared defense. By this stage Hitler was just blind to the truth. Crazy.

 

would it have been possible for the whermact to withdraw to a strong defensible position,while it at least had some strength,a river perhaps.ukrane was still in german territory,so the living space of mein kampf was in fact still under hitlers rule.yours.lee.

 

Manstein was in favor of a “Backslap” offensive, drawing the Russians into the Don bass and attacking southwards towards what would be an overextended Russian front and entrap any Russian divisions contained there.

Backslap my backside. You are referring to the Kharkov offensive May '42. Von Manstein's victory here was facilitated by deficient strategic cooperation, where Southwstern Front in the direction of Kharkov became isolated and was left without the active support of adjacent fronts. This enabled the enemy to deliver strong attacks at the flanks of the attack group of SW Front, wich resulted in the defeat of its offensive forces. That mistake was studied and hardly repeated.

 

What about hitting the Russian line in areas away from the Kursk Salient? I like the Manstein tactic. The Russians seemed to overextend quite a bit. But if the line could be hit in weak areas the Russians would have to reinforce and slow their offensive. However tactical retreats would be the order of the day and this of course would not be to Hitler's liking. Hitlers inability to adapt to the flow of the battlefield pretty much doomed any chance of victory or possible negotiated peace.

 

Backslap my backside. You are referring to the Kharkov offensive May '42. Von Manstein's victory here was facilitated by deficient strategic cooperation, where Southwstern Front in the direction of Kharkov became isolated and was left without the active support of adjacent fronts. This enabled the enemy to deliver strong attacks at the flanks of the attack group of SW Front, wich resulted in the defeat of its offensive forces. That mistake was studied and hardly repeated.
Za, I'm not referring to the 1942 operation. It was a proposal by Von Manstein that is referred to in the book "Battle of Kursk" by Robin Cross.

 

Za, I'm not referring to the 1942 operation. It was a proposal by Von Manstein that is referred to in the book "Battle of Kursk" by Robin Cross.

And I'm telling you that Manstein's Backhand Victory worked because the Stavka had let SW front overextend, without giving consideration enough to flank support. They didn't fall for the same error again.

 

What about hitting the Russian line in areas away from the Kursk Salient?

Are you nuts? With the masses the Red Army had concentrated in the Kursk Salient and behind? They were just waiting for the German offensive to peter out so they could launch their own counter-offensives: google up Operations Kutuzov and Rumiantsev, what happened after Zitadelle lost steam. If the front would remain stable the Red offensive would be launched anyway, and this time without the losses suffered during the Kursk battle.

Then the GERMANS would have a problem, not the other way round!

By the way, while the battle of Prokhorovka still raged, Op. Kutuzov was already in full swing, on the north shoulder of the Kursk salient 9th and II Pz Army were cracking up already, hit by three Fronts!

And Ruminatsev was started after the Stavka created a little diversion expressly for the purpose further south on the Mius river, diverting the remainder of II SS PzK (minus LSSAH gone to Italy). Please give the Red Army some credit

 

And I'm telling you that Manstein's Backhand Victory worked because the Stavka had let SW front overextend, without giving consideration enough to flank support. They didn't fall for the same error again.
I completely agree with you Za. No arguments from on this one.

 

Psychologically, Hitler was probably on the edge of a syphilis-induced insanity (which also explains his tremors) ...
As much as I loathe Hitler, there isn't a shred of evidence that he was suffering from syphilis. He neither smoked, drank, nor indulged in promiscuous sex, and was obsessive about his health. When is he supposed to have contracted syphilis?

The same claim, incidentally, continues to be made about Mussolini by several authors, despite the evidence of his doctors and post-mortem analysis showing that there wasn't a trace of any venereal disease. In 1945 the Americans, however, refused to accept this, being convinced that Mussolini was 'mad' and that his insanity was due to longstanding syphilis.

R.J.B. Bosworth in Mussolini states... the American Military Authority doctors removed some brain tissue from the Duce's head and sent it back to their home country for examination. ... it was confirmed yet again that he did not suffer from Syphilis. ... On 25 March 1966 the remnants of brain matter were returned to [his wife] Rachele
As for Hitler's tremor see pp 726-728, Volume 2, Hitler 1936-1945 Nemesis, by Ian Kershaw, regarding his cardiac problem as well as Parkinson's Syndrome.

 

As much as I loathe Hitler, there isn't a shred of evidence that he was suffering from syphilis. He neither smoked, drank, nor indulged in promiscuous sex, and was obsessive about his health. When is he supposed to have contracted syphilis?

It is believed by some that Hitler contracted syphilis from a prostitute he visited as a young man in Austria, and that he was infected and never received any treatment. Have you read the book The Psychopathic God by Robert Waite? It goes into the ins and outs of Hitler's sexual life/preferences in some detail, and I was certainly surprised by some of his findings (not suitable for this forum I don't think!)

But if wrong Peter, of course I am happy to stand corrected!

 

There is a very interesting article here Culture Wars: Pox Review which goes into this subject in some depth. You need to go halfway down the page to find the references to Hitler, but the whole article is certainly worth reading. I have lifted these two paragraphs, for example:

Hitler was later embarrassed by his frankness in talking about syphilis. He would later tell Hans Frank, his lawyer, that the syphilis section of Mein Kampf was “too self-revealing.” As a result, mention of the disease disappeared from his public discourse, but not from his private concerns. In 1936 Hitler hired Theo Morell, a noted syphilologist as his personal physician, something which caused consternation, according to Albert Speer, among the high level Nazis surrounding Hitler. Hayden feels that Hitler “chose Morell, a syphilologist for the simple reason that he feared the progression of syphilis.”


Not surprisingly, the best test case for Hayden’s theory that syphilis changed the course of history is Adolf Hitler. The best indication that Hitler had syphilis is his own writing, namely, Mein Kampf. (I have already stated my case in Monsters from the Id. Dracula is about syphilis. the first Dracula movie was made in Weimar Germany around the same time Hitler wrote Mein Kampf. Germans were worried about syphilis. Hitler capitalized on their fears by associating syphilis with the Jews. Jew, vampire and syphilis are integral parts of one threatening Gestalt at the heart of Mein Kampf.) David Irving claims that Hitler did not have syphilis based on the results of one Wasserman test. But David Irving has also admitted that he has never read Mein Kampf. If the internal evidence of an autobiographical text has any significance, then the obsessions which get expressed in Mein Kampf give a clear indication that Hitler had syphilis, that he probably contracted it from a Jewish prostitute, and that he extrapolated from that experience a theory of race hatred that would, in Hayden’s terms, change the course of history.

The afore-mentioned Wasserman test was not always a successful indicator that syphilis was/wasn't present. There is some evidence that:

Hitler's tremors and irregular heartbeat during the last years of his life could have been symptoms of tertiary syphilis. Along with another doctor Morell diagnosed them as such by early 1945 in a joint report to Heinrich Himmler.


Make of it what you will!

 

It is believed by some that Hitler contracted syphilis from a prostitute he visited as a young man in Austria, and that he was infected and never received any treatment. Have you read the book The Psychopathic God by Robert Waite? It goes into the ins and outs of Hitler's sexual life/preferences in some detail, and I was certainly surprised by some of his findings (not suitable for this forum I don't think!)

But if wrong Peter, of course I am happy to stand corrected!
Zoya

Over the years I have read a great deal about Hitler, including all the major biographies, those of Bullock, Domarus, Fest, Haman, Hauner, Kershaw, Spotts, and Toland. None of these eminent historians, both British and German, accept for a moment that Hitler had syphilis or any other venereal infection.

Hitler first visited Vienna in 1906 when he was 17. At that time he was infatuated with a 17 year old Linz girl called Stephanie, spending all his time writing poems to her yet he never dared to tell her or approach her. These initial weeks he spent in Vienna were taken up visiting museums and the theatre. He went to Vienna again in 1907 to prepare himself for the entrance examination to the Academy of Fine Arts, returning there for the third time in 1908 and stayed there until May 1913, when he left Austria for good and moved to Munich.

You also have to bear in mind that before WW2 syphilis was incurable. It has three stages and death was inevitable. In the second stage, which comes 1 to 6 months in untreated syphilis (but occasionally up to 2 years) after the primary infection, it is quite impossible to hide it. It is characterised by extensive ulceration of the feet and hands with a severe body rash. This is the very least of it, as there is constant fever, weight loss, severe headaches, and enlarged lymph nodes. The mercury treatment that was then thought to be beneficial actually made matters worse.

Tertiary syphilis came 1 to 10 years after the initial infection. This is characterised with unsightly soft tumour-like swellings known as gummas caused by a breakdown of the immune system. It is at this stage that insanity develops, followed by dementia, and death.

There is simply no way that a syphilitic man would have been accepted into the German army in 1914 and passed as fit for service. And anyone contracting a venereal disease during service, rendering himself unfit for front line duty, would have been severely punished.

I haven't read R.G.L. Waite's book, it belongs to a genre which is popular in America but frowned upon in Europe, the psychoanalysis of dead historical figures. I have read reviews of which this is a short oneVon Ein Kunde

... Waite's book is one of the reasons that psycho-history remains, undeservedly, on the fringes of the academic community. No, I'm not an academic, so please don't think I'm looking down on Waite's effort from that perspective. But even the most cursory reading of the literature about Hitler makes clear that Waite has taken only the most sensational, and almost totally unreliable, information that he could dredge up, and then molded it into an "analysis" of Hitler designed to sell books. It is sad to see the selective use of materials to produce a book like this. For those interested in a sober, exceptionally researched book on Hitler, which also happens to be very well written, Ian Kershaw's Hitler biography, "Hubris", is the perfect antidote to Waite's extremely flawed book.
and another here, as to his sourcesThis is the by-product of a psychological profile of Hitler done for the Allies during WWII. Waite interviewed Germans who were in Canadian and American prisons. Hoping to be released if they cooperated, they gave Waite what he wanted, fanciful tales that made Hitler sound like a absolute lunatic. The whole book is a farce and should be read as such. It's current popularity is due to the fact that it allows people to explain Hitler as a monster who was an anomaly that can never happen again.
For Hitler's pre-WWI years in Vienna I would recommend Hitler's Vienna - A Dictator's Apprenticeship by Brigitte Hamann. Also Hitler - A Chronology of his Life and Time, by Milan Hauner, is quite useful.

Peter

 

Zoya

I did not read your further post until after I had replied to your earlier post. But this sentence you quote is approaching lunacy:The best indication that Hitler had syphilis is his own writing, namely, Mein Kampf.
If this is the best indication heaven help medicine!

Incidentally in the 1930s and 1940s the Wasserman test was the only test available. It was reliable, but even if it failed the visible symptoms of secondary syphilis didn't magically not appear. If you had syphilis it was patently obvious that you had it, the Wasserman test was carried out at the primary stage.

Peter

 

Zoya

I have just taken a look at the site you referred to and waded through the entire diatribe. This is history gone mad, I quote the entire paragraph devoted to Hitler, highlighting in red particular absurdities and and underlining unproven assumptions:If indeed, Hitler had syphilis, the final solution finds its source not in the German people or the Catholic Church, but in Hitler’s diseased brain. Like Nietzsche’s writings attacking God, the final solution becomes the symptom of a syphilitic brain enjoying a brief moment of deluded grandeur and clarity before slipping forever into dementia paralytica. Mein Kampf, according to Anwyl-Davies, “expressed Hitler’s need for vicious revenge.” The Final Solution, analogous to Nietzsche’s final assault on God, simply proposed a way of implementing that need for revenge in a way that was completely consistent with the state of mind produced by the onset of tertiary syphilis: “It would not be enough for such a revenge to be aimed at the single member of Jewish society who had infected him: the entire race had to be persecuted in castigation.” That’s Anwyl-Davies formulation of the biological dynamic behind the Holocaust, and Anwyl-Davies felt that Hitler had syphilis. Hitler’s anti-Semitism, in other words, finds its source not in congenital anti-Semitism but in syphilis, and syphilis, in turn, finds its source in moral decadence, specifically prostitution. The fact that Jews were heavily involved in both prostitution and pornography returned to haunt them in a way that no one could have suspected at the time, and in a way that no one has been allowed to articulate ever since.

The Internet is a wonderful instrument, but it does have dangers. This is a particularly good example of rubbish posing as scholarship.

Peter

 

As I can't come up with a reasonable argument against your posts, I'll leave it at that then!

 

Zoya

Just a final last word. If Hitler had syphilis it would follow that Eva Braun was also syphilitic. One would then have to explain how she managed to appear fit and healthy.

Best wishes,

Peter

 

Zoya

Just a final last word. If Hitler had syphilis it would follow that Eva Braun was also syphilitic. One would then have to explain how she managed to appear fit and healthy.

Best wishes,

Peter
There are those who believe that Hitler and Eva did not have a 'normal' sexual relationship.

I was going to leave it there, too, but it is interesting to note that this was a focus of the The Royal College Of Psychiatrists Annual Meeting in Edinburgh in 2007:

An encounter with a Jewish prostitute in Vienna in 1908 may have given Hitler neuro-syphilis and provided the 'deadly logic and blueprint for the Holocaust' as well as giving him a reason to attempt to eliminate the mentally retarded, according to evidence presented at the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

That theory supported by 'ample circumstantial evidence though no final proof', according to a team led by Dr Bassem Habeeb, a psychiatrist at Hollins Park Hospital Warrington, in a paper presented to the Royal College of Psychiatrists' annual meeting in Edinburgh.

There has been speculation that Hitler had the infection since his personal doctor, Theo Morrell expressed his own suspicion in his private diary. But the theory has never been rigorously examined, say the researchers.


I guess this question will continue to be debated, but cannot be answered with any certainty. I am certainly interested in the psychopathology of Hitler, because my field is psychotherapy. I also want to make it clear that any belief that Hitler may have been suffering from syphilis is in no way an attempt to suggest he was not morally responsible for his actions. Neither is suggesting the possibility that he may have contracted syphilis fom a Jewish prostitute an attempt to minimise or over-simplify the holocaust. But, it could be said that this, if it were true, could have been one trigger for the many defence mechanisms which Hitler exhibited in his attitude towards the Jews (remembering also that there was also some uncertainty as to his own Aryan purity), for example Distortion, Delusional Projection, Projection, Displacement and Reaction Formation to name a few.

I hope I have made myself clear!

Best wishes to you too!
Zoya x

 

Trust a bunch of psychiatrists! They always of course know better than anyone else. What encounter with a Jewish prostitute in 1908?

Hitler arrived in Vienna for the second time on 14 February 1908 and on 22 February he was joined by his close friend Kubizek. At that date both were working on a Wagnerian-style opera Wieland the Smith, with which Hitler hoped to achieve world fame. He neither drank nor smoked and never went in taverns. He was obsessive about his health to the point of hypochondria.

Indeed, the only witness to his time in Vienna in 1908 is August Kubizek, known to Hitler as Kustl - Reinhold Hanisch is a later witness. This is what Professor Ian Kershaw, in his massive two-volume biography saysApart from his distant admiration for Stephanie in Linz, Kubizek knew of Hitler having no relations with any woman during the three years of their acquaintance in both Linz and Vienna. This would not alter during his remaining years in the Austrian capital. None of the accounts of Hitler's time in the Men's Home gives a hint of any woman in his life. When his circle of acquaintances got round to discussing women - and doubtless, their own former girlfriends and sexual experiences - the best Hitler could come up with was a veiled reference to Stephanie, who had been his 'first love' - though 'she never knew it, because he never told her'. The impression left with Reinhold Hanisch was that 'Hitler had very little respect for the female sex, but very austere ideas about relations between men and women. He often said that, if men only wanted to, they could adopt a strictly moral way of living.' This was entirely in line with the moral code preached by the Schönerer pan-Germans. Celibacy until the twenty-fifth year, the code advocated, was healthy, advantageous to strength of will, and the basis of physical or mental high achievement. The cultivation of corresponding dietary habits was advised. Eating meat and drinking alcohol - seen as stimulants to sexual activity - were to be avoided. And upholding the strength and purity of the Germanic race meant keeping free of moral decadence and danger of infection which accompanied consorting with prostitutes, who should be left to clients of 'inferior races'. Here was justification enough for Hitler's chaste lifestyle and prudish morals. But, in any case, certainly in the time in Vienna after he parted company with Kubizek, Hitler was no 'catch' for women. Hitler 1889-1936, page 44
This is not a matter for debate, there is no evidence whatsoever that he had syphilis, and trying to prove that he had it from what he wrote in Mein Kampf is just plain silly.

I have the 1939 edition of Mein Kampf. In 567 pages of text Hitler refers to syphilis in pages 209-216 in a rant about it being a scourge polluting the purity of the race. Syphilis was a dreadful disease in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it aroused fears much like AIDS does today. It was also then far more virulent than it is now, having mutated since penicillin was discovered.

Peter