Yep, the "Stab In The Back" nonsense. "We weren't defeated in the field, the Jews and Communists at home were too weak to support us. We were winning, damn it!"
Our war hero on the left.
Silly moustache. He needs to reassess it. or people will laugh at him Maybe a trim.
Its actually quite astounding that the Allies managed to hold on to win. The British Generals were woefully out matched by their counterparts on the Prussian side.
Douglas Haig was, if nothing else, dogmatic and predictable. Almost every assault had the same plan, artillery barrage then firing ceased and the men went over the top in a line at 7:30 am. At the Somme he threw a huge number of infantry at the German lines. Wave after wave, in shoulder to shoulder lines each line, iirc, 20 yards behind each other, AT A WALK in order to maintain the 20 yard separation. German machine gunners were shocked at the British tactics, they mowed the Brits, Aussies, Canadians down in the tens of thousands.
Haig did not like machine guns. Not because they were chewing through his troops, but because if he put too many of them in the hands of his own troops they might lose their offensive spirit. He thought much more highly of mounted cavalry because nothing drove fear into the enemy that the thought "of cold steel", the mounted soldier's sword.
While British staff officers stayed well back of the lines using runners to deliver orders. Orders that were often woefully outdated by the time they got there. Its one thing to order a force to flank right, its quite another if the order to do so gets there when that force consists now only of a handful of men still walking upright.
German staff officers OTOH were up front directing battle in real time.
The Germans tried one massive assault late in the war to try and break the back of the British before the Americans entered the war. The lines held, barely.
The war ended when the Prussian politicians were faced with their population starving and the Americans now throwing in another million men. The Prussian army was still in good shape and was far from beaten. German soldiers and officers could be forgiven if it seemed to them that they had been betrayed by their political leaders.
The little Corporal took advantage of that sentiment a decade later.
As for Herr Hitler's mustache. He trimmed back that cookie duster, from what I understand, after having been gassed and finding that the hair kept his mask from fitting properly.
