HITLER’S GREATEST MISTAKE?
On 3 January 1942 Adolf Hitler took time off from managing the defence of the embattled eastern front to receive a visitor at his East Prussian headquarters, the Wolfsschanze. The Japanese envoy, General Oshima, was paying him his second house call in less than three weeks. Such a small gap between two visits was unprecedented and could only be justified by the need to keep Germany’s ally abreast of new and unforeseen developments.
In this case, the dictator briefed his guest on how the German army in Russia had been faring since Army Group Centre under Fedor von Bock had terminated its unsuccessful operation against Moscow on 4 December 1941. The Germans had then quickly gone on the defensive when they found themselves on the receiving end of a Soviet counteroffensive that had begun on 6 December. By the end of the year, Army Group Centre’s position was verging on the desperate. Hitler, no doubt aware that rumours about these developments had been reaching the Japanese embassy, set out to reassure his guest that things were well in hand.
Only a change in the weather had stalled the German advance on Moscow, Hitler explained, and there were very few cases of serious frostbite requiring the amputation of limbs – a depiction of events wildly at variance with the reality on the ground.
Inevitably, the United States, the new belligerent
