Church of God, New World Ministries

Hitler’s Seven Fatal Blunders

World famous historians clearly recognize that Hitler could have won World War II! The world’s great military analysts have openly admitted that it took a “miracle” to save England from “certain defeat.” They shudder when they realize how perilously close Adolf Hitler came to winning the war.

These analysts prove that Hitler had everything in his favor, the military power, the air force, and the brilliant generals. He guided Germany from victory to victory until all Europe lay prostrate at his feet. There was nothing to stop him. His enemies were unusually peace-loving people and were unprepared for war.

You are alive today only because the Creator God caused Hitler to make an incredible blunder each time he had “certain victory” within his grasp.

There is a mighty important reason why God kept Hitler from conquering the world in 1940. But before we explain why, let’s notice the seven fatal blunders which Hitler made.

At daybreak, Sept. 1, 1939, Hitler made his first major blunder. He ordered the German panzer division to storm across the Polish frontier and to converge on Warsaw from the north, the south, and the west. German warplanes savagely bombed Polish troop columns and the fleeting masses of helpless people. Death and destruction screamed down from the skies. Thousands died!

Yet what Hitler believed to be an overwhelming victory proved to be in the end, his first major blunder. Hitler hoped Britain and France would not dare to go to war over Poland. But Britain and France, shocked at the savage and unprovoked attack upon Poland, dared to declare war on Germany. Thus, begun the bitter resistance to Hitler, which eventually led to his defeat. Hitler’s first fatal blunder was to start World War II.

The battle fronts remained strangely quiet until the spring of 1940. France and Britain gained time to plan a defense. But it was already too late!

At dawn, May 10, 1940, the German Blitzkrieg struck France. Superbly trained Nazi soldiers smashed through the “impassable” Ardennes Forest, north of the Maginot Line, and quickly overran the nine divisions which defended this sector.

The French and British were astonished at the power of German Blitzkrieg. Fighter planes and Stuka dive bombers came screaming out of the skies bombing, strafing spreading flame and terror everywhere. Tanks by the thousands broke through the defending French Army, smashed their way toward the English Channel. Self-propelled, rapid-firing cannons rolled forty miles an hour across French countryside.

Even the infantry moved with incredible speed as millions of men on “motorized wheels” raced forward at breath-taking speed, capturing vital installations, command posts, even whole divisions who had not yet been issued guns and ammunition by their slow-moving French commanders.

General Guderian’s swift-moving panzer divisions reached the English Channel only ten days after having stormed across the French frontier. This successful drive to the sea established a German wedge between the British Army in Belgium and the French forces still fighting in southern France.

The Belgians and the Dutch hastily surrendered to the advancing Germans. The British’s Expeditionary Force suddenly found itself in an alarmingly dangerous position. A German Army stood between them and their Allies, the French.

The British desperately tried to escape impending doom by breaking through the German wedge, intending to join what remained of the French Army in the South. They could not! The Germans held, they were too strong. The British found themselves in immediate peril of being surrounded and trapped. They discovered that German forces were between them and the coast. Death or captivity, or both was imminent.

Hitler had ‘certain victory” within his grasp. He was now in a position to annihilate the remaining Allied forces. His Armies were fast closing a ring of steel around the beleaguered British Expeditionary Force. Von Rundstedt’s panzer forces were racing southward out of Belgium, while Guderian’s tanks were pushing northward to meet him, thus they planned to trap the British Army and destroy it while it was still 25 miles from the coast.

Advance patrols of these two German Armies were only nine miles apart. The jaws of the trap they were about to spring upon the British were closing at frightening speed. Guderian’s and Von Rundstedt’s panzer armies were closer to Dunkirk than were the British. There was absolutely nothing to stop this pincer movement from closing tight the “gap” and surrounding the British Army. This “ring of German steel” would then have cut off the badly battered British Army from the Port of Dunkirk and would have made it impossible for them to escape across the Channel to England. The position of the British Expeditionary Force was helpless.

Then Hitler suddenly made his second major blunder. Hitler issued the most amazing order ever recorded in all military history. He ordered Guderian to stop their fast-succeeding drive to surround the helpless British Army. The British troop escaped into Dunkirk under the silent muzzles of the German guns.

Hitler’s order read: “Dunkirk is to be left to the Luftwaffe” (Guderian, The Panzer Leader, p. 439).

Then God intervened: The English Channel became as smooth as glass. Fog closed in. Battleships, destroyers, cruisers, ocean liners, motor boats, row boats, rafts, anything that would float, moved across the English Channel under the protective cover of dense fog. This “Miracle of Dunkirk” Hitler did not order!

The German Chiefs of Staff watched in helpless fury as the Royal Navy and “swarms of miserable little boats” began evacuating the cream of the British Army to England.

Brauchitsch wept, “The bad weather has grounded the Luftwaffe and we must now stand by and watch countless thousands of the enemy get away to England right under our noses.”

Von Rundstedt complained, “My hands were tied by direct orders from Hitler himself. While the English were clambering into ships off the beaches, I was kept useless outside the port, unable to move. I sat outside the town, watching the English escape, while my tanks and infantry were prohibited from moving” (Shulman Defeat in the West, pp. 42-43).

In all of history has there ever been the equal of this incredible blunder? If Hitler had not made this blunder the entire British Army would have fallen. Hitler and Japan could then have been free to attack the United States itself.

General Halder wrote a letter on July 19, 1947, to William L. Shirer, revealing that Goering talked Hitler into stopping the fast-moving German Army. Goering wanted the German Air Force, the Luftwaffe to destroy the British Expeditionary Force and thereby receive the credit for victory in the eyes of the German people.

Goering emphasized to Hitler that if the great victory in battle were to be claimed exclusively by the German Army generals, some of whom were not Nazi party members, the prestige of the Fuehrer in the German homeland would be damaged beyond repair. (William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p. 733.)

The Luftwaffe miserably failed! God used vanity and fear to cause Hitler to make this incredible blunder. “This assembly shall know the Lord saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the Lord’s (I Sam. 17:47). What happened in the weather at Dunkirk was a divine miracle.

Hitler could still have won the World, if he had not made an even greater blunder – his third! The British were still at Hitler’s mercy. They had sent every division they had across the English Channel in a desperate gamble to help France stop the German Blitzkrieg.

France had collapsed. The British fled the continent. They left all their military equipment on the beaches of Dunkirk. They had gambled all to help save France, and had lost. All the English had left to fight an invasion force was a hundred tanks, and two or three poorly equipped divisions, a mere handful of men. (Shulman, Defeat in The West, p. 50.)

The German Intelligence Service declared that the German Army could land and keep supplied 45 divisions in the initial landing on the coast of England. They also believe that they could supply an additional 65 divisions as soon as air superiority was established. The Germans would have had more than thirty to one superiority in men and equipment. Defenseless England could not have withstood such a power. Even the stubborn British could not have stopped the belching “fire and brimstone” from cannon’s mouths with pitchforks and clubs.

Prime Minister Churchill said that “in 1940 and invading force of perhaps 150,000 picked men might have created mortal havoc in our midst” (Secret Session Speeches, London, 1945, p. 52.)

At the dizzy heights of success, terrifying fear again entered the German picture. The German High Command decided that they must destroy the British Air Force before they dared risk the invasion of England

The Luftwaffe began the operation to wipe out the R.A.F. by bombing the airfields, the aircraft factories, the twelve radar outposts, and the seven “sector control centers.” Goering didn’t realize how vital these radar outposts were to the British’s defenses. He soon stopped attacks on them.

The sector centers were another very important key to the defense of England. They worked hand in hand with the radar outposts. By September six of the seven all-important sector stations were knocked out. The entire communication system was on the very verge of destruction. This was Britain’s darkest hour. “The scales,” as Churchill later wrote, “had tilted against our fighter command, there was much anxiety.” Another week or two of this and Britain’s fast dwindling Air Force would have disappeared! Conquest of England would have been a certainly! Disaster for Britain was imminent. A miracle was needed to save Britain!

Winston Churchill said of that hour, “The odds were great, our margins small; the stakes infinite.”

In a desperate move he decided to strike back at Germany. He sent a fleet of British bombers over Berlin in the night of August 28, killing ten German civilians and wounding 29 others. The Nazi leaders were furious. Headlines blared – “Cowardly British Attack!” “British Air Pirates Over Berlin!” Hitler ordered his air force to retaliate by wiping out London to “get even.” “They’ll pay for the bombing of Berlin,” screamed Hitler! And this was Hitler’s third fatal blunder.

What did the British gain? Time! Time to rebuild their battered air force. This third blunder caused Hitler to postpone the planned invasion of England until the spring of 1941. He threw away a never-to-be-repeated chance to knock Britain out of the war. Do you see that, as in days of old,” our God whom we serve is able to deliver us”? (Dan. 3:17).

Hitler still could have won the war if it had not been for blunder number four. The Germans General Staff planned to capture the Mediterranean area and cut the “British life line” and starve out the Island of Britain. Three army groups were to be used in this offensive. The first group, led by Field Marshal von Rundstedt, was (with Spanish assistance) to capture Gibraltar. “The attack on Gibraltar had been so fully prepared,” said Goering, enthusiastically, “that it could not have failed” (Shulman, Defeat of The West, pp. 57-59).

The second group, under Field Marshal von Bock, was to move through Italy into Tripolitania (Northern Africa) The third army group, under Field Marshal List, was to drive through Greece and the Balkans to capture the Dardanelles and Ankara, Turkey, then it was to continue on to the Suez canal and capture the Near East oil fields (Shulman, Defeat in the West, pp. 57-59).

But Hitler had other ideas! Hitler rejected the General Staff’s carefully made plans to conquer the Mediterranean. He decided that the he would knock out Russia first. He expected to defeat Russia in about ten weeks and then he believed that the British – “who were already whipped” would give up and surrender.

“Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel said, ‘Instead of attacking Russian we should have strangled the British Empire by closing the Mediterranean. The first step in the operation would have been the conquest of Gibraltar .That was another great opportunity we missed.”

Guderian said: “The presence of four to six panzer divisions in North Africa would have given us such overwhelming superiority that any British reinforcements would inevitably have arrived too late.” Guderian also stated that “the weakness of the British in Egypt at that time was known to us. The defenses of (the island of) Malta against air attack were inadequate” (Guderian, The Panzer Leader).

Again Hitler made the wrong decision. He decided to attack Russia first, and let the Italians, who were far weaker than he thought, conquer Africa and the Mediterranean.

Hitler had expected to be free to conquer Russia and then to smash England before the Americans could make themselves felt in Europe. Hitler said, “The upstart Americans, their position rendered hopeless would be taken care of.” It was not a question, then, of whether Hitler intended to destroy the United States, but a question of when the mortal blow would be struck.

Hitler’s fantastic conceit, his belief in absolute German superiority, caused him to vastly underestimate the strength of Russia and especially the United States. The Fuehrer and his henchmen were too arrogant to comprehend the great potential economic and military strength of the United States. This utter miscomprehension of American power was Hitler’s fifth fatal blunder. Even so, Hitler would have won the Battle of Russia if God had not led him to make two more colossal blunders.

Let the “fact of history” speak for themselves. The German Blitzkrieg struck Russia at 3 o’clock in the morning, on June 22, 1941.Stalin’s Red Army was taken by surprise. The Nazi’s overran the border at most places before the Russians could organize a defense. In fact, 3, 800,000 prisoners were taken by the Germans in the first few weeks of the campaign (Shirer,pp. 952-3). Hundreds of Soviet planes were destroyed on the ground by this sudden surprise attack. The Nazi success was astonishing (Halder’s Diary).

The Russian people often welcomed the German troops, who they thought were going to liberate them from the communists. Even whole divisions of the Red Army deserted to the Nazis. The Germans were so confident of victory, that when an 800,000 man Ukrainian Army surrendered to them, and even pleaded to be allowed to fight against the hated communists, Hitler refused to let them fight. The S.S. troops placed this willing, ready-made army inside a barbed-wire enclosure, without food and shelter. The overconfident Nazis left their would-be-friends out in the cold rain and snow to die. Even the Nazis’ own records confess that the “Soviet prisoners were deliberately starved and left out in the open in the terrible winter of 1941-42” (Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, III, pp. 126-30, Nuremberg Document 081-ps).

The Nazi attitude toward anybody other than a German was revealed by Goering, who said in 1941, “This year between 20 and 30 million persons will die of hunger in Russia. Certain nations must be decimated. In the camps for Russian prisoners they have begun to eat each other” (Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, pp. 464-65).

Hitler himself said, “The war against Russia will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness” (Halder’s affidavit, Nov. 22, 1945, at Nuremberg Trial, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, VIII, pp. 645-46).

God used Hitler’s racial theory that the Aryan German was superior to any other race, to cause him to make the atrocious blunders that turned friends into enemies. Had Hitler promised to free the people of Russia from their communist oppressor, the entire Russian nation would have fought for their German Liberators, instead of against them. Competent observers recognize that the communist regime would have then collapsed and the Red Army disintegrated in a few weeks (Shirer, p. 939-40).

Dr. Otto Brautigram, a German career diplomat, dared to pinpoint the Nazi mistakes in Russia, when he wrote on October 25, 1942, a bitter confidential report to his superiors. He said, “The population greeted us with joy as liberators and placed themselves at our disposal.” He declared that the Germans turned the Russians against them by the barbaric treatment of Soviet prisoners of war, and the “shanghaiing” of Russian men and women for salve labor.

He went on to say: “Our policy has forced both Bolshevists and Russian nationalists into a common front against us.”

The savagery of the Nazi occupation made it crystal clear to the Russian people that the invading army of “Christian” Europe was not going to “save” them from the communists. When they discovered that it was far better to live under communism than to die by brutal torture under Nazism, they began fighting to the death. This was Hitler’s sixth fatal blunder.

Nevertheless, in spite of growing Russian resistance, Hitler could have captured Moscow by early fall. His General Staff desperately wanted to capture the all-important transportation and industrial hub of central Russia before winter set in. But Hitler’s vanity again caused him to believe that he was so superior to other men, that he could ignore the advice of his General Staff and make all military decisions himself. This was his 7th major blunder.

Here is what happened as a result. Contrary to the urgent advice of all his generals, Hitler, on August 22, 1941, ordered the advance on Moscow stopped. He pulled his panzer division from the Moscow front and sent them back 275 miles toward Germany, so he could launch an attack on the city of Kiev in the Ukraine.

When his generals protested, he arrogantly answered: “My generals know nothing of the economic aspects of war.” Hitler said that Germany needed the food supply of the Ukraine more than the capture of Moscow.

The battle for Kiev was over by mid-October. Hitler ordered his tired panzer troops to begin the long trip back to the Moscow front. For some reason – was God looking down from Heaven? The Russian winter rains came one month early, arriving in mid-October instead of the usual mid-November. The Russian mud period, called the Rasputitza, was far worse than the Germans had expected. Mud and mire stalled the heavy tanks and artillery. Many teams of horses were needed to drag each weapon forward. The miserable infantryman slithered in the mud and slime. Then suddenly, about the 20th of November, the full fury of the bitterest coldest Russian winter in a hundred years closed down over the German Army. Clothed only in their summer uniforms, the Nazi troops were forced to fight in 30 below zero weather. Hitler refused to send his troops winter clothing because he had decided that the war was all but over.

Frostbite caused more casualties than did the Russians. The German boots were too tight to permit the wearing of more than one pair of socks. Many soldiers lost their feet. To make matters worse, the heavy artillery and tanks that were stuck in the mud were now firmly anchored in the frozen ground. Many of them were literally torn to pieces while being yanked out of the now solidly frozen “mud.”

Von Brauchitsch, as Commander in Chief, became very alarmed. He begged Hitler to withdraw the army to a defensive line where the troops could be sheltered for the winter. Hitler refused. He had staked his reputation on the capture of Moscow, and he insisted that his armies fulfill the promise that he had made.

The big offensive against Moscow began December 2, 1941. But four days later the Russian general Marshal Zhukov, struck the Germans a stunning surprise. He launched a surprise counteroffensive. The Russian attack almost overwhelmed the Germans. It was only the fanatical bravery of the German fighter that saved the Nazi Army from complete disaster.

Hitler explained away his failure to capture Moscow by saying that his generals were cowardly and incompetent.

Goering and Goebbels began a huge propaganda campaign in the press and radio to extol Hitler as the greatest military genius of all time. This thunderous praise convinced Hitler that he was another Alexander or Napoleon. From then on he thought that he was always right.

In spite of defeat after defeat, Hitler’s self-confidence grew and grew. He developed such a “puffed-up” opinion of himself that he believed that all the advice of his “stupid” General Staff was quite trivial and unimportant. Thus, he rendered helpless the only body of men who could have won the war for him, the world’s most brilliant generals, his generals. Again this was his 7th and fatal blunder.

Had Hitler followed the advice of his generals, had Hitler taken the readymade armies of Russia and used them, instead of murdering them in cold blood, he could easily have won the Battle of Russia. Then Britain would have fallen, Japan would have invaded Alaska and the West Coast of the United States. Germany would have invaded Greenland and Northern Canada. The unprepared Untied States would indeed have been in mortal danger.

The strongest possible kind of evidence for example of what Hitler did to Poland and Russia proves that if Hitler had won World War II, he would have taken the people of the United States and Britain captive, worked the healthy and strong to death in forced labor camps, and, of course, killed the weak, the young, and the old, whether by brutally clubbing them to death, whether by execution before firing squads, or by deliberate starvation, or by any other means, however foul. This is exactly what happened to nearly 6,000,000 Jews and an estimated 40 million Poles, Russians and others.

Now do you understand that an Almighty Divine Power, greater than all nations of the earth, kept Hitler from winning World War II?

It may shock many of you to realize that God kept Hitler from winning World War II because (at that time) He planned to have the “The World Tomorrow” broadcast give you the opportunity to believe in the Gospel of the Kingdom of God! And a chance to have a part in the work of spreading that gospel as a final witness to all nations, including Germany. God Almighty is working out His purpose here below! We are entering the very ‘crisis at the close “of the 6000 year period that God has allowed for working out that purpose. Now in constantly accelerating swiftness, events will speed up, and mankind is going to be forced, by the supernatural power of God, to learn the supreme lesson of the ages, that God’s laws and ways were set in motion for our good, and that the Eternal is Ruler over all.

God reveals in the 30th chapter of Jeremiah, the 10th chapter of Isaiah, and many other places, that unless the United States and Great Britain repent and turn to Him, He will send us into captivity.

He also reveals in Rev. 3:10 and in Luke 21:36 that if you are faithful you can escape these frightening catastrophes soon to plunge the whole world into World War III. No plague need come near you.

It is as certain as the rising of the sun that unless we repent and turn to God and get back of this work of spreading the warning to our people to call upon God in real heart-rendering prayer for Divine deliverance, that our beloved United States and the British Commonwealth of Nations are soon to be crushed in defeat.

The astounding union of a German-dominated United States of Europe and a great Church (the Roman Catholic Church) as its head is the next thing prophesied to occur!

Read your newspapers, reach such news magazines as U.S. News and World Report, watch the news on television and on the internet and think of these things you are hearing and reading.

The German General von Stiiplnagel said in 1944 that “no defeat is final. Defeats are simply lessons to be learned in preparation for the next and greater attack.”

Your immediate future is of your own choosing. You can take this lightly, or you may heed the warning. Remember! When God says: “Watch and pray that you may escape” (Luke 21:36, there is a reason. God allows you to make the decision. But He commands you to choose life, “that both you and thy seed may live” (Deut. 30:19). Make no mistake, World War III is coming, if we do not repent God will not intervene this time to save us from the terrible crucible of WAR! It will not be a pleasant scene.

 
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