During World War II, Hitler made many mistakes and lost many battles. I would say that Hitler is a man who plays poker. In 1940, when England was within his reach, Hitler allowed the English army to reconstitute itself. The decision to bomb populations rather than strategic, military, industrial objectives is a huge mistake. A mistake for which he will pay dearly during the Allied landings. In 1942, making many bad decisions against the Red Army, Hitler threw his divisions into the hell of the Russian winter. The German armies are not equipped for cold weather, so the poor guys are chattering their teeth. Hitler loses nearly a million soldiers. This is the real turning point of the Second World War. Hitler lost the war in the East. In 1944, he launched an unnecessary offensive in the Ardennes. These generals do not believe in this counter-offensive. It was an offensive that could only work on paper. Solely responsible for this massacre, Hitler exhausted his last strength and opened the doors to Germany. To the allied armies. In early 1942, Nazi Germany reached a breaking point. The Führer made many bad strategic decisions. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler declared war on the United States. This decision taken without seeking the opinion of his staff carries with it the seeds of future defeat. In Russia, Operation Barbarossa desired by Hitler did not allow the Reich to defeat the Russian ogre. On the contrary, the counter-offensive of Stalin's divisions pushes back the German armies and condemns them to face the terrible General Winter. For Hitler, it is time to choose between the strategic withdrawal that his generals want and the headlong flight that his madness dictates. The oil supplied by Germany or Romania is no longer enough to supply the Panzer divisions. So as a result, Hitler also began to consider the conquest of the Caucasian oil fields , particularly in the South of Russia. Taking oil from the Caucas, Baku, Maïkope and others, etc., was to meet a double objective. Already, deprive the Red Army of its ability to wage war. Second, to provide strategic reserves for Germany, to resolve the immense problem that the blockade posed to this country. An Anglo-Saxon blockade which was almost airtight. And so Hitler thought he would achieve this double objective through the blue plan, Fall Blau, launched on June 28, 1942 in the East. This blue plan looks very attractive on paper. But in practice, Hitler was not aware of the state of the roads after the thaw and especially of the considerable distances to reach the Caucasus. Baku, its capital, is almost 3,000 kilometers away. Hitler also neglects the wear and tear of men, materials and supply difficulties. Still prey to its prejudiced ratios, the fury persists in underestimating the Russian adversary. The first weeks are rather in his favor. Conquest is quite easy. Except that on July 23, 1942, a rather astonishing order fell. Hitler decides to divide his armies in two. A first army will actually go towards the Caucasus and the sixth army of General Von Paulus is responsible for taking Stalingrad. Hitler has his troops follow two divergent axes. This is therefore the harmful principle of division of forces. The general staff is frightened by this improvisation. But no one had the slightest influence on Hitler's strategic decisions. It was an exhausted and poorly supplied Sixth Army which had to seize Stalingrad. It is commanded by General Friedrich Paulus. The capture of Stalingrad was very important to Hitler. There is a first fairly obvious reason, which is that it is called Stalingrad, so it is political. We are going to take the city which bears the name of Stalin. Stalingrad is a symbol for both Hitler and Stalin, obviously, because Stalingrad is a large industrial city named after the Soviet dictator. And Hitler obviously understood that taking Stalingrad, from a symbolic point of view, would effectively be a disavowal of the Soviet dictator. Taking Stalingrad means cutting communications on the Volga. And that is still important because we are in 1942, the American contribution is beginning to seriously intervene. He arrives via Iran, the Caspian and goes up the Volga. So, therefore, if Stalingrad falls, the Volga route is cut off. American supplies no longer go north. On the 23rd, when the Germans of Paulus, Sixth Army, arrived there, the same evening, a bombardment was launched. A bombing will result in Stalingrad being transformed into ruin. The order to destroy everything that can be destroyed is an order that is completely ideologically consistent. That is to say, these people are inferior, they have the presumption to resist us. We're going to reduce them to nothing, basically. What Paulus perhaps does not realize is the immense difficulty of urban combat. It is well known that ruins are great for defense. When you are in a destroyed city, weapons work differently. The weapons that are actually useful change. Where a tank was very useful in the open, it is no longer so in a city because on every street corner, it can be destroyed by someone with a little determination, whether with a bazooka or with a Molotov cocktail, etc. So the fight changes its nature. It would have been better to surround the city of Stalingrad and not have the German army enter it. German soldiers were not used to going on urban guerrilla warfare in a demolished city. And so, they already had a lot of difficulty tactically in adapting to this type of combat. And the Soviets, for their part, put incredible forces in front. They had huge losses, but they absolutely wanted to hold on. So it was terrible. For almost two months, Paulus will increase his attacks against an enemy who fiercely defends every neighborhood, every building, every floor and every cellar. They will not reach the Volga. There is one area they will never be able to take. So the Soviet troops crossed the river and there were always reinforcements arriving hour by hour. There is a Soviet regiment that is being demolished, there is another regiment that is constantly arriving. Sometimes it's dramatic because they arrive at the front without a rifle. So, they are obliged, we tell them, take the rifle of the dead who are in front of you to attack. The Red Army will leave tens of thousands of men there. The commissioners of the NKVD, the ancestor of the KGB, will be merciless. Any soldier or troop who wants to retreat is shot on the spot. We will cite the figure of 13,000 soldiers killed by the NKVD commissars. So, it's not nothing. When the snow arrived in October 1941, the Germans again did not have the necessary equipment to face the winter. Without significant reinforcement, not trained in poorly supplied urban guerrilla warfare , the morale of the Wehrmacht troops collapsed. Paulus realized through aerial reconnaissance as early as October that on his northern flank and on his southeastern flank, there were strong Soviet concentrations taking place. He is worried because in these two places, his flanks are covered by two Romanian armies which are very poorly equipped for war in general and for winter in particular. He asks him for permission to make an effort to be able to pick up, because otherwise, he will find himself in this which the Germans call a “Kessel”, that is to say a cauldron. Hitler will say “Niet!” We are not going backwards. We are not going backwards. It’s a strategy of stepping back to better re-attack. It is a military strategy that is as old as time. And if we don't back down, we'll get eaten. If we retreat, we regain our strength and we can attack again. We don't teach that to corporals, what? On October 14, 1942, Hitler, the little corporal, issued operational order number 1 which prohibited Paulus from retreating. His troops must stay in Stalingrad and win the battle at all costs. A month later, the Red Army launched a very large-scale offensive on two fronts around the city. Stalin launches his counter-offensive. He does not launch on Stalingrad itself, where there is the heart of the German forces, but he will study the German system. And to the north and south of Stalingrad there are Italian and Romanian troops. And the Russians will attack these Italian and Romanian troops who are of less military value and who will give in more quickly and who will allow the encirclement of Stalingrad. When on November 23, 1942, the Red Army closed the two pincers of its pincers, Paulus' Sixth Army was trapped. A German army surrounded, that had never happened. And so Hitler orders Field Marshal von Manstein, temporarily without command, to mount an operation to clear Stalingrad from the South. Von Manstein warns Hitler that he will only be able to establish a corridor to supply Paulus and possibly allow him to flee. To do this, Von Manstein's troops are heading straight for the Russian system. But the Red Army, seeing the maneuver, counterattacked. Von Manstein is forced to retreat or risk being surrounded in his turn. Paulus' army must now stand alone, deprived of food, fuel and ammunition. To supply this sixth army, this sixth army, roughly, that's around 250, 260,000 men. A minimum of 500 tonnes per day is required. And Göring responds once again. “Kein problem, Manführer, 500 tons, you want 500? Isn't that 600? No ? Okay, 500, fine. Me, my Junkers 52, they are going there. » Now, there, the snow and the cold are falling. The Junkers 52, with the wrong gasoline, when started, the engine does not start, it does not heat up. And then, he can bring 100 tons. There are 400 missing. So, after eight days, 3,200 are missing. The result of the races is that the Sixth Army, in the true sense of the term, will starve. She will starve, since it will still be necessary to give a certain priority to ammunition. On January 10, 1943, the Red Army launched a final assault intended to definitively reduce the Stalingrad pocket. Fifteen days later, when the Russians cut the German forces in two, Hitler reaffirmed the order to Paulus that his troops must neither retreat nor surrender. Hitler ultimately named von Paulus marshal at the end of January, believing that von Paulus was going to commit suicide and not surrender, because a German marshal does not surrender, and von Paulus will surrender. Von Paulus surrenders, but does not formally order his men to surrender. So it lasts another 48 hours, but it's ruined. Finally, on the morning of February 2, 1943, the red flag flew over Stalingrad. It marks the first major defeat of the German army and its supreme leader, Adolf Hitler. Von Paulus' problem is that he was very obedient to Hitler. That's why he kept his job. But on the other hand, by remaining extremely obedient to Hitler, he allowed the Soviets to take hundreds of thousands of prisoners. So perhaps he should have thought of his troops before thinking of his loyalty to Hitler. I believe that a feature of this war in Russia, every war is a humanity, but this one is particularly so. The Germans have been terrible and the Russians are returning the favor. Which means that of the 91,000 prisoners of Stalingrad, there will be less than 5,000 who will return to their country. They will either be liquidated outright or starve to death in prison camps. Since the start of Operation Barbarossa, the Germans have lost a million men killed, wounded or missing. Opposite, the Red Army lost twice as many, but its reserves of men are seven times greater than those of the Wehrmacht. Since 1939-1940, we had a rather conquering army in victory. There, we really have a turning point, a shift and this shift will continue to take place in North Africa from the year 43. While Hitler suffered his first setback on the Russian front, the Americans, in response to his declaration of war, entered the conflict. Allied with the English, they have just established a foothold in North Africa. The President of the United States welcomes the British Prime Minister. The dramatic situation of the moment brought them together. During the spring of 1942, at the height of German domination, the Allies agreed on the need to open a second front so demanded by Stalin to relieve the USSR. This operation, called Torch, should allow a landing on the coasts of North Africa. The Anglo-Americans will thus have a platform to land in Europe. To do this, they must defeat the elite troops of the Afrika Corps which occupies Libya. The Afrika Korps is an elite army. The Afrika Korps is not at all negligible. It is commanded by Rommel, a general very popular with German public opinion. Marshal Rommel's Afrika Korps will now have a new enemy on its back. While they already had the English, they were in the process of retreating. They will now have the power of the allies who will prepare a landing, Operation Torch in November 1942 on the coasts of North Africa. On November 8, 1942, Operation Torch, which involved 100,000 soldiers, was launched from 200 warships. Three groups are tasked with establishing nine bridgeheads along nearly 1,500 kilometers of coastline. The confrontation against the troops of General Rommel, allied with the Italians, began without delay. Rommel was defeated at El Alamein. El Alamein, a battle the English could not lose. They couldn't lose for two reasons. The first, that they were at least two, or even three to one. Second, they were ready from their base. While Rommel, his base, was far away. It was Tripoli, a little Benghazi and further away, Tunisia. So he was beaten. From that moment on, the Italian and German Axis forces still in Libya and Tunisia were fought in the east by the British Eighth Army which was advancing in Libya and in the west by the British. Saxons associated with the French. They are surrounded more and more. And in the end, Rommel signals to Hitler the need to repatriate the troops one way or another, or at least to stop the fighting. And there, in North Africa, Hitler will make the same mistake as at Stalingrad. Once again, he persisted and forced his army to hold its positions until the last man. It would have been preferable to leave North Africa and retreat to Italy rather than trying to resist at all costs, rather than even sending reinforcements as Hitler did in Tunisia. Thousands of young German soldiers who have just landed will find themselves needlessly sacrificed. The only thing is that Rommel is recalled by Hitler, because Rommel is a very popular figure in Germany, one of the best German generals, and therefore it would have been catastrophic if Rommel had been taken prisoner. Little by little, the vice tightens. The material superiority of the allies is overwhelming. These artillery barrages inflict significant losses on enemy troops. But the Afrika Korps persists in its suicidal counter-offensives. The Tunisian mountains will be a coffin for a majority of German soldiers. Those who were ordered to fight in Tunisia fought to the end, they fought to the end. When Tunisia capitulated around May 8, 43, there were 130,000 Germans who found themselves prisoners in Tunisia. This is a major mistake. It was a major error which resulted in a terrible defeat and a very considerable number of prisoners, not only Italians, but also Germans. I tend to think that the Tunisian disaster, the Axis disaster in Tunisia is probably worse in terms of strategy and in terms of military power than what is happening at Stalingrad. It is symbolically less strong. It is less known today, but it is a disaster that is probably worse for the Axis weapons than what happened at Stalingrad. They lose so many troops. The axis lost as many troops, if not more, in Tunisia than it lost at Stalingrad. In May 1943, on the Russian front, the situation was no better. Everywhere, the Germans have retreated. Hitler wants to regain the initiative after his failures in front of Moscow and Stalingrad. It is in Kursk that the opportunity to counterattack will present itself for the German General Staff. Created on the front line during the Soviet offensive of spring 1943, it is a pocket 150 kilometers deep. The Soviets formed in the German system what we call, depending on whether you look at it, a salient or a retractant, that is to say a big bump. This salient has significant defensive weaknesses. Hitler had the idea of breaking through with a major armored offensive. In order to surround the Soviet armies that were in this pocket and have a victory. Hitler's real objective is to continue communicating, because after Stalingrad, all his allies, including Mussolini, told him “We must make peace with Stalin. Now we can’t hold on any longer.” So Hitler's political objective was to restore confidence in his European allies. And so, he wants to show the power of the German army, in particular with new Panzer equipment, the brand new Panther tanks, medium tanks, powerful tanks and especially the most powerful Tiger that he has had for several months, a giant tank destroyer , and the Fords. It's true that the Tiger and Panther were excellent tanks. The Germans have an excellent armored past. It doesn't happen as quickly as they think. That is the problem. Because it’s not enough to say “Yakafokon.” all this is happening very far from the German industrial centers where these tanks are produced, where these weapons are produced and it takes time to transport them. These are things that everyone forgets, but they have to be put on trains. These trains must be able to progress, despite the Soviet partisans who are starting to become very effective, despite the Soviet air force. And so, all of this takes time. General von Manstein favors a rapid attack. He wants to surprise and destroy an enemy exhausted by the last months of combat. Hitler is of the opposite opinion. We must wait until the arrival of the new tanks, supposedly invincible. They're delaying, it's going to happen, but if we lose a month or two while we're in the middle of the tundra, it's deadly. We lost several weeks. In the meantime, the Soviet generals who were there were well aware that there was an offensive which was being prepared on the German side. They are informed by the English of all the Germans' axes of attack. From the day the plan was planned by the German general staff, the English deciphered Enigma and shared part of this information with the Russians. So the Russians know exactly how the Germans are going to attack, where they are going to attack and with what kind of force they are going to attack. They had time to prepare the ground with a defense in depth with mines, with a whole range of anti-tank systems, artillery, etc. They grew stronger during this time. And so it is true that Hitler launched the offensive on July 5, 1943, too late again. July 5, 1943, Operation Citadel was launched. The forces present are considerable. Two million Russian soldiers face 900,000 Germans. Even more impressive, 2700 German tanks will face nearly 5000 Soviet tanks, made up of a majority of T34s. These are “basic” tanks, not at all sophisticated, but resistant and very well served by Soviet tankers. There are T34s, there are thousands of them, there they go, there they go, there they go. And the poor big Panther and Tiger who arrive, they died before arriving. The Battle of Kursk is going to be the biggest tank battle of the Second World War and it is going to be the graveyard of tanks. The northern offensive will very quickly come across impenetrable Soviet defenses and they will break their teeth, they will be forced to retreat. Towards the South, the defenses will be broken down, the Soviet defenses, but very quickly, the German troops cannot hold. They no longer have enough men, they are losing a lot of equipment and the Soviets are getting stronger every day. German armored units fight almost one against two. And so, very quickly, despite the value of these German armored units , the combat turned to the advantage of the Soviets. There won't be much maneuvering. We're going to kill each other at point blank range. It’s going to be in a sense, if you like, a verdun of tanks. The defeat at Kursk is a new demonstration of Hitler's incapacity to lead his armies. In 50 days of combat, the Wehrmacht lost half of its troops. Whether or not the German army took this salient would not have changed the war. It would have been better on the German side to retreat and make a line of defense, let's say, on the former border of the Soviet Union, to do something solid than to lead these permanent retreat fights, losing thousands trucks and armored vehicles that could no longer be driven. There they suffered terrible losses in material and men. This is a major event because after Kursk, the Germans will no longer have any initiative on the Eastern Front. They lost so many men and equipment at Kursk that they will no longer be able, after Kursk, to carry out a large-scale operation on the Eastern Front. Stalingrad, he lost 260,000 men and then a setback in prestige. Finally, the Wehrmacht was still there. While in Kursk, Hitler lost the war in the East. In 1944, the Germans were now retreating on all fronts. Furthermore, Hitler believed in the possibility of an Allied landing. He's on the defensive. Hitler thinks that the landing will take place around a port in France and therefore he favored a possible landing zone rather in the north of France. In addition, it is there, between Calais and Dover, where the part of the Channel is the shortest, we have around thirty kilometers, while between Cherbourg and Caen, there are around 120 kilometers. . So the Allies are not going to be crazy. If they leave England, they will leave Dover. Hitler thinks that the allied American armies will land in Pas de Calais. To do this, it places the Panzer Division, very well armed, in Lille and in the Northern region, opposite the Pas de Calais, basically. This blindness to the location will be a major strategic error since for a long time, this 15th German army will be used to defend the coasts against an invader who will never come. To mislead Hitler, the allies will multiply fictitious operations. There were major bombings in the north of France, shortly before the Normandy landings, to make one believe. There were double agents in England who sent messages to the German command, saying that the landing would take place in Nord Pas-de-Calais or on the Belgian coast, with information containing some true and some false aspects. . Hitler fell into the trap. Convinced that an Allied landing would take place in the north of France, he concentrated as many troops as possible there. When Operation Overlord began on June 6, 1944, the first Allied assault waves did not land in Pas-de-Calais, but 300 kilometers further down, along the Normandy coast, precisely where the German positions were less well established. defended. Faced with the seriousness of the situation, the German General Staff must urgently redeploy its Panzer divisions in front of the Allied troops. We must call Hitler. Only he can give the order. June 6, 1944, unbelievably, Hitler went to bed at 4:00 a.m. and he must not be woken up. On the morning of June 6, we were not allowed to wake him. Von Rundstedt, who is the commander of the Western Front, insists, but he is told “no, no.” Under any circumstances. “But yes, but we must relax the divisions that are…” “No, no, no.” The hours pass. The Allied assault waves follow one another at a sustained pace. He will wake up until 10:00 a.m., operations are already extremely busy. You have to make decisions right away. Everything is blocked. Hitler is the only one who has the hand to move the Panzer divisions. In France, there are 10 Panzer divisions. It is the weapon that can make the difference against the allies during the landing. The 10 Panzer divisions are what the allies fear the most. If they are engaged on the Normandy front, the landing becomes a much more complicated and much more uncertain affair. Informed of the Allied landing, Hitler refused to change his mind and persisted in believing that the Allies were trying to manipulate him. He said, “That’s not true. It's not true. It's a hoax. So I keep my Panzer divisions.” He believed that it was a diversion, that the landing would very soon take place in the North and not in Normandy, that it was a secondary operation. At midday, Hitler still had not reacted. Meanwhile, the allies seize the beaches one by one. Rundstedt gives the order to start, they leave. The Grand Chancellery calls back saying “Zurück”, U-turn, there is no question. And meanwhile, the partisans, our FFI, are blowing up the bridges. And when Hitler really realizes that he has to go, the trains are forced to go down to Montargis, Sens to go back up, because there is no longer a bridge over the Seine. And yes. Hitler will retain seven Panzer divisions in Nord-Pas-de-Calais and will only send three to Normandy. 70% of its tanks will remain in tears while the fighting takes place in Normandy. This will allow the allies to strengthen this bridgehead every day and ensure the liberation of France and Europe. If Hitler had not slept that morning and if he had agreed to listen to these generals, these marshals whose job it is, he would have given the order. Within 48 hours, the Panzer divisions were in front of Omaha Beach, perhaps the allies would have left, they would have reboarded. It's political fiction. However... The deterioration of the military climate is accelerating. Some dignitaries believe the time has come to make Hitler pay. They blame him for his mistakes which cost the German army so much. In Nazi Germany, there was resistance. There is German resistance to Hitler in Nazi Germany, including in the army, from people who in 1939-1940 believed in Hitler. This is why on July 20, 1944, putschists launched Operation Valkyrie. The actors in the attack of July 20, 1944 were partly senior officers and general officers of the Wehrmacht who had a very lucid vision of what was happening in the East, who knew that in a very short time, the war is lost and that the decision to continue the war must therefore be stopped by killing the head of the armies and in this case the head of state. For this, the conspirators have an ideal man who regularly approaches the fury, Colonel Stauffenberg. He is an impressive character who bears serious aftereffects of the North African campaign. When he arrived in East Prussia that day for a staff meeting, his bag was stuffed with explosives. The attack cannot fail. The attack in the Wolf's lair, in July 1944, was an attack that narrowly failed. When the meeting begins, around twenty Wehrmacht dignitaries surround Hitler. Stauffenberg is late. It's bad luck. In the sense that von Stauffenberg's bomb was placed in the wrong place. Stauffenberg joins the group during a general's briefing. Because of his deafness and at his request, he is placed at the right hand of the fury. For him, it's the ideal place to put the trapped towel. The attack failed for a purely reason of being poorly positioned under the table. Pretending a phone call, Stauffenberg quickly slips away. One of the officers, this bag bothered him, he moved it and put it against a wooden pillar of one of the tables on which the conference was held. The explosion completely blew up the building, but the conspirators failed in their assassination attempt. The attack caused only three victims and miraculously spared Hitler. The dictator escaped with an injury to his right hand and slight burns all over his body. Someone said, “The hand of the devil protected Hitler.” And it's true, he should have died that day. The same day, in East Prussia, Mussolini arrives. He is greeted by Hitler, wearing his right arm in a sling. Miraculously, the fury is thirsty for revenge. And so, there was a very considerable purge as a result of that, because most of the members of the German army, the commanders of the German army who were closely and even remotely involved, and even sometimes from very far away in this attack, are shot and eliminated. Rommel will be forced to commit suicide, von Kluge, one of the great bosses of the German army at the time, committed suicide. Some of the plotters will be hanged on mouthpieces. The films will be viewed by Hitler, who will show his personal staff as a warning. His revenge is terrible. In total, 5,000 people were liquidated, a purge which decimated the military staff. Hitler no longer has confidence in his army. In this process, it is the SS which will gain in power. Himmler now is number two next to Hitler, because Hitler, in fact, entrusts the SS with this restoration of order. And that will have dramatic consequences on the state of the front since more than ever, from the summer of 1944, the slogan will be an ideological slogan. One must keep. To hold for a question of honor, to hold for a question of sacrifice if we never manage to keep the position and to hold in the hope that as Hitler promised and as he continues to promise, the war will experience a turnaround thanks to the famous miraculous weapons whose production and entry into service are expected. But miraculous weapons like the flying bombs that Hitler clings to desperately will not save him. Hitler, from there, will develop both a pathos in private which will manifest itself by fits of tears or otherwise by the opposite, by attacks of terrible rage. Hitler, physically, is diminished, but psychologically is also diminished. He is a man who is increasingly under siege in his head. He is a very tired and prematurely aged man. He is a man who is barely 55 years old, but when you see the images, you see an 80 year old man. Hitler's mental and physical state deteriorated throughout the conflict as he suffered defeats. At the very beginning of the war, 1939, he surprised Keitel by frolicking like a kid on the carcasses of a Polish armored train. At the end of the war, we see him in a 1945 film, his last appearance in front of Hitlerjugends, we see a hunched man with a scarred face, with his left hand behind his back because he was trembling convulsive. In fact, Hitler was a man with Parkinson's disease. He was an insomniac. With the anti-poison pick-me-ups and others that Doctor Morel administered to him, he was a virtual drug addict. He was therefore a man who was incapable, from the middle of the conflict, of having the physical and intellectual resources to lead this war. He receives injections regularly, he is on medication, he is physically and mentally exhausted. No one dares to contradict him anymore. And around him, there are only generals who are executors and who no longer dare to contradict him anything. On the Western Front, in December 1944, the Allied forces were in Holland, Luxembourg, Sarbreuc, Brussels, Enverse, Strasbourg. All the officers have their eyes trained on the Rhine. The most optimistic even hope that the war will be over by Christmas. It is forgotten, the rage which animates a Hitler more and more cut off from reality. Hitler said to himself "I can try one last poker move" and he will launch a counter-offensive, the Ardennes counter-offensive, which will start on December 16, 1944. He charges Marshal Von Rundstedt with the offensive. But Von Rundstedt doesn't believe it. He doesn't believe it to the point that he doesn't go to the staff meeting that Hitler calls with all the generals involved in the operation. These generals do not believe in this counter-offensive. They are convinced that we are indeed heading towards catastrophe. They clearly see the air superiority of the Allies on the Western Front, but Hitler tells himself that this operation must absolutely be attempted to cut the Allied forces in two. The idea is to attack and counter-attack in the Ardennes, to reach the Meuse, to then reach the port of Envers, which is a very important port for supplying the allied forces. And having succeeded in this, to propose a negotiation to the Anglo-Saxon allies. He wanted to weaken the British and American armies, make a compromise peace with the Anglo-Saxons, so that he could then turn against whom? Against the Soviets, against the communists, against the Bolsheviks. It was a gamble, but above all it was a major strategic error. It was an offensive that could only work on paper. If the surprise effect is guaranteed, the General Staff considers that Hitler's ambitions are excessive, taking into account the numbers involved. In 44 years, it still has the same number of divisions. The Panzer divisions, instead of having 120 or 150 tanks, they only have 12. They have 10% of their strength. But for him, they always put the plaque on the map such division, such division, such division. It's this regiment, this regiment, this regiment. To attack in the Ardennes, Hitler must strip the Eastern Front. The maneuver is suicidal, but once again, no one contradicts the fury. The only condition for the German offensive to have a chance of success and for German armor to break through is that they must have the Allied fighter pinned to the ground. And for the Allied hunt to be grounded, there must be bad weather. On December 16, 1944, the weather was favorable for the start of Operation Wacht am Rhein. When the Battle of the Bulge began, the American high command was stunned by the scale of the assault. At first, it still succeeded quite well. They still manage to upset the American armed forces, particularly those who are on this front. They are at rest because the American generals had considered that the Ardennes were truly impregnable, that the cats could not pass through there. Again the same error as in 1940. Overwhelmed in many sectors, the American GIs surrendered by the hundreds to the Germans. But the Wehrmacht's dazzling offensive quickly stalled. The goals were completely exaggerated. In no case was the German army in the west capable of breaking through the front as far as Antwerp. Choosing to attack in terrible weather, thus depending on the weather, is madness. Even more so if we consider that this weather is terrible for the Allies, but it is also terrible for the Germans who will therefore have to fight in terrible conditions. The two armies clash in negative temperatures which are often around -20°C. The terrain being made either snowy or muddy, the latest tanks such as the 70 ton tanks being too heavy. The offensive was slowed down by traffic jams, because the know-how demonstrated by the German army in 1940, where it was able to manage these traffic jams, no longer exists. On December 22, 1944, just six days after the start of the offensive, the German armies began to run out of ammunition and especially fuel. The Wehrmacht high command underestimates fuel requirements by five. Fuel will run out. Fuel is already lacking, that is to say that when the attack is launched, there is only half of the fuel necessary to achieve the objectives assigned to the German forces. The other half will have to be conquered from the Allies, which is still a completely incredible bet. From December 23, the weather begins to clear up. Allied aviation can finally take off. As soon as the first rays of sunlight appeared, the entire Allied fleet took to the air and pinned all the German armored vehicles to the ground. As soon as the sun returns, the P-47s and Mustangs descend on the Wehrmacht and that's it. It's a massacre. The Anglo-American air force specifically attacked the supply trucks and there were only trails of trucks in flames and the Germans were forced to give in by abandoning their equipment also in the face of Patton's counterattack from the South and a British counter-attack which is also announced from the North against German troops composed either of very motivated elite units, but above all of more and more Volkgrenadiers, that is to say inexperienced kids, a bit terrified, poorly dressed and no longer able to progress like their 40-year-old elders. The Battle of the Ardennes began in mid-December 1944. It ended on January 31, 1945. At that time, the Germans returned to their line of defense. departure, but they lost between 80,000 and 100,000 soldiers in this madness. They have lost a very significant number of planes, they have lost armored vehicles, they have lost fuel and their morale is obviously in free fall. These are all elements that will be sorely lacking to oppose the Soviets who, at that moment, are attacking in the East. During the Battle of the Bulge, the Russians still advanced 500 km. It would have been better to have put the resources he was able to use in the East, because for the German people, the danger was especially in the East. Afterwards, the German atrocities towards those they called the "untermenschen", you know, the sub-humans, the villages burned, the women raped, the men and children killed, etc., it was in the logic of things. The revenge, the Russian hatred was terrible. So, consequently, if he had reasoned a little in favor of his people, it was especially necessary to defend themselves in the east. Instead of capitulating, consumed by dementia, the Führer will take his people hostage and plunge them with him into their final fall. Assailed on all fronts, the Reich, imagined by Hitler, is living its last moments. The one who once dominated Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals, now has only imaginary armies to defend itself. Meanwhile, the Anglo-Americans took the war to the heart of Germany, with Berlin as their ultimate objective. The Soviets are working hard. Stalin wants to arrive in Berlin before the Americans and the English. He succeeds. Berlin is effectively taken by the Soviets alone. At the end of April 1945, the Reich, which was to last 1,000 years, collapsed. In military matters, as with the entire history of the Third Reich, we are dependent today on what the Nazis said about themselves and what the Nazis said about Hitler. In military matters, for example, they made him out to be a brilliant military leader, someone who had invented modern mobile warfare , who had invented mechanization, etc. We realize that when tested by the facts, quite the opposite happened. He is not a man from 1940, he remains a man from 1914. There, we see concretely that what was said about Hitler, a brilliant war leader, is false. I would say that Hitler is a man who tries poker moves and that at the beginning, the fact that he neglects the tactical-strategic dimension, the nature of the terrain, the logistical problems, all these negligences do not make up for it. not warlord Hitler. And then, one day, all of its warlike conditions, all of the conditions in which the warlike phenomenon must develop, catch up with Hitler, war leader. And from there, these bets are systematically lost. Ultimately, his ultimate strategy is suicide. Suicide of the German people, suicide of those close to them in this sordid bunker crushed by Soviet artillery. And so he is a finished and desperate man who has used all these tricks, who shoots himself in the temple after having poisoned his mistress.
