In February, 2022, I thought authoritarian dictatorships had all the momentum.
The United States and its allies had withdrawn from Afghanistan after two decades of trying to build a viable country, only for the barbarians we removed from power back in the presidential palace. We were barely one year on from a literal (though half-assed) attempted coup meant to overturn the results of the last Presidential election, and the previous President of the United States was cheering it on.
Britain had withdrawn from the European Union, and extremist protest parties were on the rise all over the continent. Even here in peaceable Canada, a conspiracy-addled “convoy” had taken over the nation’s capital, which in turn led to the government raising eyebrows in its own right by imposing the Emergencies Act.
Democracies appeared more divided than at any time in my own memory, while Russia looked set to crush Ukraine and redraw the map of Europe. I wondered who would be next.
What a difference eight months makes.
For Vladmir Putin, the invasion and partial annexation of Ukraine has turned into a humiliating quagmire. By some measures, Russia has suffered more combat deaths than the United States in Vietnam. And the Americans were in ‘Nam for eight years.
Putin’s country is isolated on the world stage to the point where Russian credit cards won’t work outside of its borders, and his subjects are fleeing in the hundreds of thousands rather than risk their lives to satisfy his fantasies of restoring an empire. I was going to say he has only himself to blame, but that’s not quite accurate: his yes-men and officials and generals too cowed or compromised to stand up to him share in much of the responsibility.
Then again, who put them there in the first place?
When things go wrong in liberal democratic countries, it’s tempting to look at overseas dictatorships and see places that can actually get things done. (I’m not a Thomas Friedman hater - his book From Beirut to Jerusalem is essential for anyone trying to understand the Middle East - but I’ll never let him live down his fantasies about being “China for a Day,” especially when the CCP’s economic and demographic schemes are finally catching up to them.) But systems in which you can get jailed or killed for telling the great leader he is mistaken inevitably fail.
Of course, nothing is written in stone. Putin could turn this thing around come winter, when Europe will really start missing its Russian oil and gas supplies. But he very much reminds me of another infamous dictator who lost his war, and brought ruin upon his country, in no small part because of his own meddling and incompetence.
What’s especially startling is that it came after an astonishing run of good luck that briefly made him de factor emperor of almost the entire European continent.
Lucky Hitler’s Big Mistakes1 - now there’s an attention-grabbing title for you - by Paul Ballard-Whyte portrays Hitler’s political and military career as something like that Super Bowl in which the Falcons were beating New England 28-3 well into the second half, only to suffer an historic collapse.
Actually, the analogy works better if, in the middle of the third quarter, Falcons owner Arthur Blank started calling the plays himself, made the team play without pads and helmets, and eventually pulled Matt Ryan so he could take over as quarterback.2
Of course, you wouldn’t be you if anything that ever happened to you or any of your ancestors had happened just slightly differently. And that very much applied to the most infamous tyrant of the twentieth century, who went on a truly remarkable winning streak after taking over the fledgling German Workers Party (the “National Socialist” part would come later, along with endless online debates over whether the Nazis were a socialist political party).
Hitler likely wouldn’t have survived the Beer Hall Putsch in the first place had he been standing just a few inches to either side, or if the policeman shooting at him had marginally better aim. He was fortunate enough to be imprisoned alongside Rudolf Hess, who was perfectly happy to write down his rambling diatribes and turn it into Mein Kampf, which sold in the millions despite being completely unreadable. The Great Depression, and Germany’s resulting economic collapse, came about just as the NSDAP, a party which could only succeed if Germans were hurting and disaffected, was losing steam.
Conservatives thought they could control him. Left-wingers fought among themselves instead of teaming up to stop him. Other countries, still scarred from losses incurred in The Great War, tried to appease him. Even the Soviet Communists, the Nazis’ ultimate ideological enemies, made a deal with him to carve up Eastern Europe between themselves. After the fall of France, Nazi Germany looked unstoppable.
And that was as good as it would ever get for Hitler, and he only had himself to blame. In history’s most notorious example of believing one’s own hype, Der Fuhrer decided he knew better than his generals and started micromanaging military campaigns, battlefield logistics and even the very design of tanks and other key military equipment.
Hitler emphasized the building of giant surface warships instead of murderously effective U-boats, allowed trapped British troops to pull off an incredible escape at Dunkirk, passed on game-changing weapons (like jet-powered fighter planes) that could have turned the tide of the war until it was too late, and wasted time on vanity projects (like jet-powered bombers) that wouldn’t have made the slightest difference.
And, of course, there was the invasion of the Soviet Union in mid-1941. Operation Barbarossa was probably doomed to fail even with the best planning and execution, but Hitler’s meddling - combined with an officer class too cowed to stand up to him - guaranteed spectacular failure.
Ballard-Whyte argues that the Nazis had a real shot at taking Moscow, which would have been a stunning psychological blow to the Soviets, until Hitler changed his mind and sent his forces elsewhere. He also submits that the Germans could have bypassed Stalingrad altogether en route to the oil fields of the Caucasus region, but the dictator’s ego wouldn’t allow him to pass on an opportunity to seize a city named after his greatest enemy.
After Stalingrad, well, we all know what happened. Hitler didn’t stick around long enough to find out.
A book combining the story of Hitler’s rise and fall with tales of repeated failure at the highest levels should hit all of my pleasure centers.3 Unfortunately, like many of the military campaigns described therein, Lucky Hitler's Big Mistakes falls down in its execution.
The author is certainly no Hitler apologist, but he does come across as believing the Nazis could have won the war had a few things gone differently. He argues that the Germans could have crossed the Channel and invaded Britain after the fall of France, while they had the momentum, but this isn’t the kind of undertaking you can plan for on the fly, especially when the Royal Navy is still lurking. Ballard-Whyte even portrays Barbarossa as theoretically winnable, contrary to a long history of armies invading Russia and freezing to death.
Worse, the book is clumsily written and run through with grammatical errors (which admittedly could be fixed by the time it’s actually published). I don’t know much about the publisher, Pen & Sword Books, but the project really has an air of “self-published” about it. Most egregiously, Ballard-Whyte refers to Ukraine as “the Ukraine,” a faux pas you’d think anyone outside of the Putin camp would know well enough to avoid in 2022.
That said, books about WW2 are like pizza - even when they’re not very good, they’re still good. Unless David Irving is involved. Or certain other people who so desperately need to log off for a while.
Insert your own Detroit Lions joke here.
When you get to my age, you either become a WW2 guy or a Civil War guy. There are no exceptions to this rule.