Were those orders made contrary to the reccomendation of his generals, or because of their reccomendation?I dunno, Hitler made plenty of good decisions in addition to the bad. The "stand fast" order in winter 1941 probably saved the Wehrmacht, the decision to attack Kiev in autumn 1941 cleared Army Group Center's flank and made Typhoon possible, the decision to attack south in 1942 completely circumvented the massive Soviet defenses around Moscow and wrong-footed Stalin and the stavka, the decision to delay Zitadelle gave it a much better chance of success, and so on, and so forth...
Most of them were erroneously referred to as poor decisions after the fact by generals writing in memoirs. Take that how you will.Were those orders made contrary to the reccomendation of his generals, or because of their reccomendation?
In addition, it was Hitler's bumbling as the war progressed, not the Italians, and certainly not the Austrians, that cost Germany the war.
I remember writing a paper once claiming the Italians were the only Axis power with any hope of winning the war.
That was fun.
I'm afraid not, that was a computer ago.
Basically the short of it (and it was a short paper) was that Italy was the only one with actually attainable goals. At a maximum: Nice, Greece, Corsica, Malta, the Ethiopian-Libyan Corridor, the end of British Occupation of Egypt, and possibly the occupation of Gibraltar by either Spain or Portugal.
They would certainly have settled for Malta, The Ethiopian-Libyan Corridor and the End of the Occupation in Egypt, and possibly concessions in Greece and Yugoslavia.
It is conceivable therefor, that with a better military and/or sufficient luck, the British could come to terms with such a loss.
On the other hand, the Germans and Japanese had goals so outrageous in the case of the Germans, or so ill-defined as in the case of the Japanese, that there was no hope of the allies conceding to such, and no hope of victory.
I dunno, Hitler made plenty of good decisions in addition to the bad. The "stand fast" order in winter 1941 probably saved the Wehrmacht, the decision to attack Kiev in autumn 1941 cleared Army Group Center's flank and made Typhoon possible
Israeli military, without a shadow of doubt.
I don't think you can really draw a parallel between the asymetrical warfare of the American Revolution and the more famous episodes of asymetrical warfare. Outside of a very few and very small battles, all the battles were still fought in the traditional line of battle. American troops may have fought in a looser formation, and made greater use of the rifle then the british, but they still were set-piece battles. We only began to win battles regularly after Washington/Baron Von Steuben managed to drill our troops in how to fight in a line of battle.Id say it was worthy of note because it introduced asymmetrical warfare to the modern world. Asymmetrical warfare has been a serious game changer since then, just look at Vietnam, American operations in Somalia, and both the American and Russian invasions of Afghanistan.
Yet somehow this unremarkable force of conscripts managed to kick the butts of pretty much all Middle Eastern countries that together totally outnumber it.