Hitler's Strategy

Here, with full documentary evidence, is the unfolding of the problem which kept all the world awake in the long years of war, the story of Hitler's own lonely intentions; what he thought he was achieving in invading Norway, in preparing for (and never implementing) the invasion of England, in making a partner of Mussolini, in seeking to win Franco, and Gibraltar, in attacking Russia. It is a drama of gradually increasing inevitability of defeat for an overriding man whose fatality was himself. The book depends for its existence upon the capture of the complete naval archives. Other documents and authorities are freely used and referred to, but these naval records alone show well the internal difficulties when a supreme leader has to deal with experts. The final decisions were Hitler's. Sometimes his experts urged courses of action differing from those he advocated-Admiral Raeder's independent views led finally to his displacement by Doenitz in 1943 - but for Hitler it seems, as he was constituted, there was little real choice. He could not profit by his mistakes, he could only believe that in spite of them his major purposes must prevail. By the end of 1942, says Mr Hinsley, Germany's defeat was certain. The war was lost. The choice was then between surrender or the continuation of a lost struggle, and for Hitler surrender was out of the question. Two of the striking qualities of the book deserve particular mention, first that Hitler the man is incidentally but understandingly revealed, and second that history so recent and so disturbing can be so quietly treated.