Hitler and His Generals: Military Conferences, 1942-1945 (review)

At the beginning of September 1942, Adolf Hitler ordered that two stenographers record every one of his military briefings, in part because he distrusted his generals, and in part, he said, so that there would be a clear historical record of his decisions. By the end of the war, the transcripts of these conferences ran to more than 103,000 pages. Unfortunately for history—and contrary to Hitler's clear wishes—at the end of the war the transcripts and notes were burned. Only a fraction survived, and these form the basis for this work. This is not really a new publication; Helmut Heiber's original German version came out in 1962, and only a few additional fragments have turned up since then. This is, however, the first time that these records have been easily available to English speakers.

The book is more than the collection of transcripts. There is an introduction by Gerhard Weinberg and a preface by Heiber, which together give the story of the creation, discovery, preservation, and significance of the records. There are maps of the major campaigns and battles. Between the entries, brief summaries of the major developments in the war provide continuity, and more than 360 pages of notes expand on the participants' remarks. There is also a list of the participants, with their ranks and positions, as well as a bibliography of relevant works printed before 1958, and a name index. These additional features make the book much more useful than it would be otherwise, for without them, the transcripts' fragmentary nature would leave little sense of the context within which Hitler and his subordinates operated at any given moment.

Relatively few entries reveal much of broad significance by themselves. The transcript for 31 July 1944 is one exception, as Weinberg points out; here Hitler reveals his views on the catastrophic situation on the eastern front ("the narrowing of the area [we hold] isn't always a disadvantage," p. 445), on the 20 July coup attempt ("a symptom . . . of an inner blood poisoning," p. 446), and on various strategic possibilities, including a counteroffensive in the west. And the work as a whole does confirm some impressions about the roles of the various personalities. Hitler and his generals did indeed spend much of their time talking about endless minutiae and dictating detailed orders, sometimes down to battalion level, and the impressions that they shared of foreign cultures are tragi-comical. One has to wade through a great deal of mind-numbingly detailed material to find the gems, however. The main point to bear in mind is that, its dramatic title notwithstanding, this is a reference work and—through no fault of the editors—a regrettably incomplete one. One can mine it for information, one can gain or confirm some impressions, but one cannot trace the war smoothly from 1942 to 1945, nor answer many tantalizing questions. This book is of some use to specialists, but probably not a good buy for the average reader.