I recommend looking for examples to the “nodding donkey”/”lackey” Wilhelm Keitel and the “lapdog” Ernst Bush—both thought of rather poorly by their colleagues in the Wehrmacht, as evidenced by their nicknames. One good quote I can’t find was a series of remarks by Busch while he was presiding over the destruction of Army Group Centre, the most severe German defeat of WWII (“destruction” is the word ubiquitously associated with the debacle, there are over 300,000 hits for “destruction of army group centre/center” combined—which is still far fewer than the number of soldiers the Germans lost in the series of battles).
In many cases where Hitler gave orders and those orders led to military disaster, there were debates among officers between those arguing that following the orders will/would lead to success and those arguing it will/would lead to failure, and these are cited in German memoirs and other sources. Towards the end of the war, there was ever less plausible uncertainty through which one could believe the orders sound, even in the inherently uncertain environment of war. Busch was mostly trying to rationalize what he was told aloud, according to the recollection of the witnessing officer...I don’t remember where I read this. But anyone who has read about Operation Bagration might want to jog their memory.
I recommend looking for examples to the “nodding donkey”/”lackey” Wilhelm Keitel and the “lapdog” Ernst Bush—both thought of rather poorly by their colleagues in the Wehrmacht, as evidenced by their nicknames. One good quote I can’t find was a series of remarks by Busch while he was presiding over the destruction of Army Group Centre, the most severe German defeat of WWII (“destruction” is the word ubiquitously associated with the debacle, there are over 300,000 hits for “destruction of army group centre/center” combined—which is still far fewer than the number of soldiers the Germans lost in the series of battles).
In many cases where Hitler gave orders and those orders led to military disaster, there were debates among officers between those arguing that following the orders will/would lead to success and those arguing it will/would lead to failure, and these are cited in German memoirs and other sources. Towards the end of the war, there was ever less plausible uncertainty through which one could believe the orders sound, even in the inherently uncertain environment of war. Busch was mostly trying to rationalize what he was told aloud, according to the recollection of the witnessing officer...I don’t remember where I read this. But anyone who has read about Operation Bagration might want to jog their memory.