Adolf Hitler according to his WWI regiment

A loner, an object of ridicule and a 'rear-area pig'

I found it in the WW2Talk forum (Von Pop and Za Rodinu were there).

From the Daily Mail:

And more.

Yes, it´s out of topic, but I think this is the place for this post.

 

Efestos;
An unathletic artiste-probably not the best soldierly material. Did Hitler's superiors ever entrust him with weapons? I wouldn't! Still he must have done something to have won that Iron Cross. Does the book deal with the gassing? Hitler's own intell chief Canaris believed that Der Fuhrer had been insane since that event. Did Canaris talk to some of Hitler's WWI comrades to have come to this conclusion? It can never be known for certain, but it is probable.
JeffinMNUSA

 

This was a very smart post Sir. AFIK. I think that he stood between a bullet and his superior officer, was shot in the arm. Too bad the fire was not more to the center. Well or not he and his preclare wisdom finally made a great contribution to the allied war effort.
I think I will not order the book (even one day I'll have to start reading the original in english of the books I like) It looks like a cash maker.

 

Interesting comments.

 

Hitler was a remarkable politician, beyond that.....

 

IMHO - Till he invaded Poland!!!! In theory he had no chance to win the war, and even winning his beloved Germany would have become something like a USSR's protectorade.
Well if he wanted the Danzing Corridor he shouldn't have promised NO more territorial claims in the Munich agreement...
May be his merit was just the weakness of character of his opponents.

 

I think rather than concentrating on Hitler and WW1 it is far more important to concentrate on WW1 and what it did to Hitler and the other soldiers like him. I am a great believer that WW2 happened because of....trenches. The 'kommaradie' partnership of men sitting together working hard for their nation with each other overcoming all human constraints is what essentially Hitler and many ordinary Germans based their politics on and how he and they wanted to run the German Reich.

 

i am particularly interested in the idea that he actually delivered letters behind the lines as the story of him being a brave runner is regularly told.

maybe the fact that he didn't prove himself in ww1 led him to try and compensate through military conquest in ww2? interesting...

but then, as someone said, he must have done something to receive the iron cross.

this could just be a cash cow, being contraversial for the sake of it.

 

He was far from "unathletic", his best grades in school were gymnastics, running, and art. And BTW, he was an excellent pistol shot.

He would "show-off" on occasion by drawing a Walther .32 PPK out of his right front pants pocket and shooting whatever someone pointed out.

When you see photos of him using a giant "Sherlock Holmes" type glass, it was because he was far-sighted and had trouble focusing under arms length. My own Father has the same problem, and has had all his life.

That isn't an eye "flaw" for shooting, but it is for reading maps, newsprint, or books. Hitler won six total medals in WW1. Only four of them did he wear all his life, as he felt the other two were awarded for little reason other than surviving the war.

 

I wonder if he had any lasting affects with his eyes from the mustard gas attack he went through? Or was that just temporary blindness and nothing more?

 

There were suspicions that his "blindness" was not a physical effect, but a perhaps a psychological one as he realized the "cause was lost", as he had been gassed at least once in the past and returned to the lines.

 

Clint;
Running and gymnastics? Surprising! He looks so wooden in the newsreels. But then again, he had by then settled into a sedentary politician's lifestyle by that time. AND he was having health problems...
JeffinMNUSA

 

WW2 started because of WW1. Plus the dreaded defence pact....Bloody pacts get everyone involved! Whether you have anything to do with it or not!
Australia Boer War Pact with Britain
Australia WW1 Pact with Britain
Australia WW2 Pact with Britain - who had a pact with France and Poland
Australia Korea Pact with the US
Australia Vietnam Pact with the US
Australia GW1 Pact with the US
Australia GW2 Pact with the US...You can imagine i'm not a fan of defence pacts.
US pacts with South Korea and Taiwan may well get them into a war...and guess who has a defence pact with the US? Pack up your kit bags fellas, the US is sending us back to Asia.
And Hitler was a little man of above average intelligence who had an inferiority complex which manifested itself by vilifiying anything he feared. A pathetic, over inflated fool. He destroyed the great country of Germany and then blamed its magnificent people for the loss because of their lack of committment and cowardice!!! This is not an evil genious people, this is a paranoid, meglomaniac with delusions of grandeur.

 

Without the loss of the Great War and the "patch-work" Treaty of Versailles that none of the signatory countries could agree to, Adolf Hitler would have faded into obscurity.

His closest Party associates were all professional men in some field, and most likely would have made their way in the world without National Socialism.

But Adolf was different. He was unemployable before the war. The trenches gave him a sence of PURPOSE that nothing else ever had. A German victory in the Great War may well have resulted in a European peace that was more post Franco-Prussian, (ie...exchange of reparations money and strips of territory/colonys). As A.J.P. Taylor pointed out, the Great War manufactured it's purpose(s) as the war ground on. German victory would, most certainly, have left Adolf Hitler as a contented veteran, farting in a soft armchair on a Bavarian pension, turning out the occasional watercolour to supplement his income.

But it did'nt. Instead, we got an entire generation of German veterans with a grudge to pass on, and pass it on they did.

Think of it. German victory 1918 = no WW2, no holocaust, no nuclear device.....what a different world we would live in.

Adolf was very much a product of his times. Had he been among the fallen, another disaffected German veteran would, most likely, have taken his place, whipping up the people with what it most wanted to hear, like any good politician can.

Heinz Linge states quite clearly that Hitler was "an expert shot". His knowledge of small arms was superior to most contemporaries.

 

As for Wilhelm Canaris, I wouldn't believe anything he said. Canaris's doubledealings put a significant log into the intelligence machine of the Third Reich. Hitler wasn't the only national leader that would have put Canaris on trial for the way he managed his intel.

I would have choked him! (Why, you little........!!!!!)

 

The Struggle between Islamic Fundementalism and the West was born in the Cold War, The Cold war was born in the ashes of WWII, WWII was born from the ashes of WWI, WWI was born from the wars in the Balkans and Prussia's wars to become greeater Germany, and so on. History is a linked chain.

 

I think Adolf Hitler knew he was about to begin a new war by invading Poland on September 1st 1939.

 

I'd put it several hundred years earlier than that.

 

While there has been contention between Christianity and Islam for centuries, Islamic Fundamentalism in politics didn't really show up until relatively recently (early 20th Century).


I would suggest those who are interested to find a book called A History of the Middle East by Peter Mansfield. It doesn’t cover the last few years (post First Gulf War), but it gives a very decent concept of when and why Islamic radicalism came to the fore.

Before the disolution of the Ottoman Empire, the different ethnic, and religious groups lived in relative peace and harmony, it was after that time-frame when Islamic Fundamentalism seemed to morph into the political arena.

When you think of all the different ethnic groups, religions, and sects of given religions in this area, and try to understand how in the world they will ever come to terms and try to get along, it is mind boggling.