Postwar German generals often attributed bad decisions to Hitler and claimed successful ones as their own despite his interference. Hitler's crimes and absence made those accounts difficult and unattractive to challenge. His strategy is still judged poor, while the generals' portrayal of themselves as consistently wiser professionals also deserves scrutiny. Responsibility for strategic failure was more widely shared. The example shows why historians must consider a memoirist's incentives and the silence of unavailable or discredited participants.
Notable Point · 1:06:28-1:08:14
Reading generals' postwar blame claims critically
German generals' accounts of Hitler illustrate how postwar memoirs can shift every failure upward while preserving the authors' reputations.