12 Years Without Mercy

On September 1, 1939, for Hitler and the high command of the Third Reich the questions were still unanswered: what would be the reaction of England and France? What decision would American President Roosevelt take? While waiting for an answer to these questions, the Führer went to the opera house where the parliamentary meetings were taking place. From the rostrum, with a vibrant voice, he announced that, given the intransigence of the Polish position, he had ordered the army to invade Poland. He ended by saying that we will be chivalrous in battle, so that women and children will not be targeted. However, one of the first operations of the Luftwaffe in the bombing of Warsaw was to destroy the hospital for mentally handicapped children that was in the city.

Operation Sea Lion, the intended but never carried out amphibious landing on the British Isles, was one of the great strategic errors of the Third Reich. The lack of interest of the German General Staff was compounded by an endless series of failures by its intelligence services, while the British benefited from having managed to decipher the Enigma code. In reality, Hitler was very wary of facing the British and this led him to not accept Ridder's plan to invade the United Kingdom in early July 1940, giving rise to the Battle of Britain, one of the crucial moments of the Second World War.

Contrary to what many people believe, Hitler was a terrible strategist, his experience on the battlefield was limited to the months he fought in the First World War where he obtained the rank of corporal, greedy and self-conscious, he hid his lack of ability by belittling career soldiers who, in some cases, secretly harshly criticized his way of directing the war, considering it lacking military logic, impulsive and that of an amateur.

The enormous tragedy that represented the Second World War did not prevent some of the characters who formed part of the enemy army from feeling a certain admiration for them. One of the most representative cases was the devotion of the Allies for Marshal Rommel. The British gave him the nickname of the Desert Fox as a sign of respect and fascination for his worth as a soldier. Winston Churchill had more than one upset in the House of Commons when he referred to the German soldier as the great general. Rommel, for his part, reciprocated the English praise by showing his esteem for the one he called my friend Montgomery, of whom he had a photograph hanging in his office.