little difficulty. When the Italian forces of
Benito Mussolini were defeated by the
British in North Africa, Gen. Erwin Rommel
was dispatched with the nucleus of what be-
came the famous Afrika Korps. But in June
1941 Hitler committed his biggest military
blunder of the war. Against the advice of his
senior military advisers, he gambled every-
thing on an invasion of the Soviet Union. This
became a colossal struggle, waged along a
1,000-mile front, that consumed the lives of
tens of millions of soldiers and civilians. Ini-
tial Russian losses were staggering; the
vaunted Red Army yielded territory but never
broke. When Hitler refused to allow his forces
to fall back and consolidate for the winter,
Russian divisions staged a surprise offensive
outside Moscow, sweeping the invaders back
100 miles. This was the first serious defeat
sustained by the Wehrmacht, and the veneer
of German invincibility had acquired its first
cracks. Hitler was so enraged by this reversal
that he sacked all of his most experienced
commanders and appointed newer, more
compliant ones. By usurping control of the
strategy-making process, thereafter he di-
rected the war effort personally.
Shortly after, Hitler made another blunder
with unforeseen military consequences. In
December 1941, Japanese air units attacked
the U.S. Navy installation at Pearl Harbor,
dragging the previously neutral United States
into the fray. Hitler then congratulated Japan
on its subsequent conquests and casually de-
clared war on America. Germany was now at
war with the world. And as a sign of growing
detachment from reality, he began turning
more to astrology than military advice when
making major decisions.
In addition to waging a war of overaggres-
sion, Hitler also carried out threats he first es-
poused in Mein Kampf.Having embraced the
notion of a racially pure (Aryan) nation, the
Führer turned his hatred of Jews into a policy
of mass extermination. His specially trained
political army, the dreaded SS (Schutz-
staffeln,or protection squads), commenced
operating death camps through Eastern Eu-
rope. Jews, gypsies, and dissenting Christians
were all deported from occupied countries,
used as forced labor, and then murdered en
masse in gas chambers. An estimated 6 mil-
lion Jews and 7 million Christians, whom the
Nazis regarded as either subhuman or simply
undesirable, perished as a result of Germany’s
final solution. This deed, reviled in history as
the Holocaust, is universally acknowledged as
among the blackest events ever recorded.
Man’s inhumanity toward man was never pur-
sued with more vigor, single-minded determi-
nation, and clinical detachment. It was a mon-
strous manifestation of hatred and genocide.
The Third Reich’s days were numbered.
Commencing in late 1942, Allied forces under
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower landed in North
Africa, and within six months they forced the
surrender of German forces under Hans-Jur-
gen Arnim. Another large Germany army also
perished in the snows of Stalingrad as the Rus-
sian steamroller continued gaining strength.
The following year witnessed the invasion and
collapse of Italy, and a major Soviet victory at
Kursk enabled the Red Army to assume the of-
fensive. In June 1944, combined British and
American forces under Gen. Omar N. Bradley
successfully stormed the beaches of Nor-
mandy, and Russian forces destroyed more
than 100 German divisions at the Battle of Ko-
rsun. Overhead, fleets of heavy bombers under
Gens. Ira C. Eaker, Carl A. Spaatz, and James
H. Doolittle were pounding German industry
and cities into ashes. Nazi Germany began
buckling under the assault, and on July 20,
1944, dissident elements within the army
hatched a bomb plot against Hitler to spare
the nation further agony. It failed—and re-
sulted in the deaths of hundreds of military of-
ficers, including General Rommel. But Hitler’s
empire was collapsing around him, and he em-
barked on a desperate ploy to stave off defeat.
He authorized the development of numerous
superweapons such as jet fighters, pilotless
bombs, and guided missiles. This arsenal rep-
resented new technology that was years aheadHITLER, ADOLF