Page:Observations On The Collapse Of The Hitler Regime In Germany And The Weak Points Of The Stalin Regime In The Soviet Union.pdf/3

 in occupied countries. The longer the war lasted and the more defeat followed defeat, "the more intransigent and the less amenable he became to influence from outside." (I am citing someone who was interned with Hitler at the Landsberg fortress and remained close to him until the end.)

Hitler's decisions were equally disastrous whether he achieved success or suffered defeat. Victory in France, which persuaded Hitler that he would never fail, was the immediate cause of the war which he unleashed against the Soviet Union. The defeats he later suffered on all fronts did not bring him to reason. On the contrary, they only heightened his stubbornessstubbornness [sic], his brutality and his complete neglect of the suffering of the German people. Hitler was so absolutely convinced of his infallibility, and he so deeply believed in his intuition that he could never be persuaded to revise his decisions and to adapt himself to the existing political and military possibilities. Out of the steady fear that other nations might consider any concession on his part a sign of weakness, he desperately stuck to demands once made or decisions once taken even if they meant great danger and sacrifice of human life. He overcame internal resistance both by brutal force and by his unusual gift for oratory, with which he forced men under his hypnotic spell. For example, there are many known cases in which some of his highest generals came to him determined to vent their bitterness and to tell him the truth. But they never had a chance. Before the generals could open their mouths, Hitler, with his power of speech, had hypnotized them so that they left him with the honest conviction that he had a better grasp of the situation than they themselves. "He again managed to talk them into drunken stupor" was a comment frequently made by an eye and ear witness.

Although the fact is obvious that the collapse of the Hitler regime in Germany was the result of a lost war, which was generated out of Nazi-ideology, the question still remains unanswered whether a totalitarian regime can also run aground without a military defeat. As regards Germany, that question will never be settled convincingly. All conjectures as to whether and to whet extent certain tendencies, which were unfavorable to the stability of the Nazi regime and which begun to appear from the first, would have further developed in the course of time belong in the realm of hypotheses.

However, the foregoing statement, that even the worst and most criminal regime is able to subsist as long as it maintains adequate security organs and does not suffer a decisive military defeat, does not impair the fact that every totalitarian regime is bound to decompose because of its weak points and deficiencies. As regards Germany, the main weakness of the Nazi-regime was that it would have been in a position to fulfill the promises through which it came into power only after a successful war. Hence, if the Nazi regime had avoided war, it would have abandoned the only means of fulfilling those promises. Thus, the regime would have lost the material and mental foundation of its existence. As a result, a severe economic crisis and a loss of confidence would have arisen in Germany, and