HE ROSE FROM HUMBLE ORIGINS to supreme power, tried and failed to conquer the world, and killed millions. Yet even today some refuse to take Adolf Hitler seriously. The man called the Führer is still a caricature in many histories of World War II: a carpet-chewing madman frothing at the mouth, a jumped-up corporal issuing inane orders to his polished, professional commanders, a bumbling amateur who lost a war that Germany could have won.
Respected scholar Stephen G. Fritz is having none of it in The First Soldier. While offering zero justification for anything Hitler said, planned, or did, Fritz demolishes the “Hitler was an idiot” school of World War II history. Hitler had many strengths as a military commander, Fritz notes: openness to new ideas (especially those of mechanized warfare, as in the 1940 campaign), strength of will, and a concept of strategy that ranged well above that of his commanders.
