Hitler's mistakes /

One of Britain's leading military historians has used published sources to produce a provocative study analyzing where Hitler went wrong. Many of the dictator's blunders resulted from the principal flaw in his personality-his total self-centeredness and lack of friends or genuinely ``warm human relationships.'' This ``lifeless and empty core of his inner being,'' Lewin writes, produced ``the continentwide wilderness'' of Nazi-ruled Europe. From that lack of humanity flowed Hitler's major mistakes: the failure to learn the lessons of history about previous empires; persecution of the Jews, which cost Germany inestimable energy, ingenuity, and intellectual achievement; production of ``a society without a structure'' based solely on force; disinterest in science, which robbed Germany of the technology necessary for ultimate military victory; and lack of a vision for a world war. The dictator's notorious miscalculations and strategic errors during WW II are assiduously chronicled. Despite publisher claims, the book does not answer the ``inevitable question''; given Hitler's incompetence, why did it take the Allies so long to defeat him? Bibliography and footnotes. College, university, and public libraries.-D.M. McKale, Clemson University

Reviewers are not often called on to defend the character or the military accomplishments of Adolf Hitler, but Lewin's one-sided blackwash is so insistent that one almost feels drawn to do so. Even setting aside the monstrous immorality of Hitler's strategy, no one will dispute that the invasion of Russia and the declaration of war on the U.S. were mistakes of the worst sort, or that Hitler's ``grotesque overconfidence'' led to an earlier victory for the Allies than would otherwise have been possible. Lewin all but argues, however, that the Nazi leader did everything wrong and that he had no character at all. For example, the author does not acknowledge even a modicum of strategic logic behind the Ardennes offensive. But it must be said that the very forcefulness of Lewin's opinion and of his writing style makes this short study compelling to read. The late author wrote Ultra Goes to War and numerous biographies of British military leaders. (February 18) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Studies of Hitler's military blunders are not uncommon, but this slim book by one of England's premier military biographers discards traditional views of his personality and talents. Lewin performs a clinical and rigorous assessment of Hitler's failure to observe the classic rules of warfare, and concludes that the man was intellectually shallow rather than a diabolical military genius. The book is erudite and stimulating, and in passing Lewin challenges many of the conventional American views of the war. Not a substitute for traditional biographies, but highly recommended to public and academic libraries. Raymond L. Puffer, U.S. Air Force History Prog . , Los Angeles (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A psychohistory of Hitler reconstructed from his innumerable blunders on the battlefield, in foreign policy, in the planning and ordering of domestic affairs, in his terrible relations with his generals, and in his inability to foresee what underpinnings his envisioned ""Thousand Year Reich"" would need. Lewin, a British historian, says Hitler's obsession to be rid of what he conceived to be a conspiracy by ""international Jewry"" to rule the world through commerce and the banking system, committed the dictator to nothing less than the necessity to conquer the world. His major failing, says Lewin, was that he did not have the faintest notion of how much military might, administrative skill and planning such an audacious venture would require: "". . .For Hitler to have assumed that his Aryan overlords could have sustained hegemony on the scale he envisaged long enough for it to develop into anything worth the name of Empire was a radical failure of historical imagination. He was doomed before the first of his Panzer divisions moved."" Under Hitler, vaunted German efficiency became only a memory, a myth, as error compounded error. For much of the war, according to Lewis, the German government operated in a fashion near to chaos. Domestic policies were largely made according to Hitler's whims, with little thought to future consequences. For instance, Hitler believed women should be at home, making and raising babies, and he forced many thousands out of the professions and offices. But when the fighting on the Russian front bled his army white and his generals begged for replacements, Hitler refused to allow women to replace men in jobs on the home front. Lewin estimates that such a move could have freed three million men for the army. Lewin is a man of strong opinions and prejudices, which gives his history a tangy flavor and keeps his original analyses lively. Great for ""what-if"" hypothesizers. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.