Boots strike concrete. A chair scrapes back. The room tightens on the map table. Pins tremble as a fist lands beside them. A corporal’s voice cuts through men who have studied war their entire lives. One field marshall’s jaw clenches. Another stares at the floor as if the tiles could swallow him. A pencil snaps in a staff officer’s hand.
Too loud. Then silence. Outside, the phone line keeps ringing. Inside, no one moves to answer because to speak is to be marked. To object is to be replaced. And every man here knows the price of being right. The corporal leans in, fingerstabbing the front line. And the greatest military minds in Germany do what they have done before, swallow the truth, and nod.
But tonight, one of them is about to test the limit. And the room is about to find out what obedience really costs. This is the story of how Adolf Hitler, a man who never rose above the rank of corporal in the First World War, commanded absolute obedience from field marshals, generals, and strategists who had spent decades mastering the art of warfare.
Men like Eric von Mannstein, widely considered one of the finest operational minds of the 20th century. Men like Hines Gderion, the father of armored warfare. Men like Ger von Runstead, the aristocratic Prussian whose military lineage stretched back generations. These were not fools. They were not cowards. And yet time after time they bent to a man whose formal military education consisted of four years in the trenches and an iron cross.
Why? How does a corporal silence field marshals? How does a failed artist override the professional judgment of men who had studied Clausvitz and Maltka since childhood? The answer lies not in a single moment, but in a series of choices. Some made in fear, some in ambition, some in genuine belief, and many in the cold arithmetic of survival.
To understand how Hitler controlled Germany’s greatest military minds, we must travel back before the war began to a moment when the German officer corps still believed it could manage the upstart chancellor. At the Wolf Shanser in December 1941, the air is stale with paper and sweat.
A courier from the OKW slides a leather folder onto the table. Red wax seal unbroken stamped Guheim. General Oburst Alfred Yodel flips it open with a practice thumb. Beside him, General Feld Marshall Wilhelm Kitle adjusts his pans, eyes skimming the casualty columns without blinking. General Hines Gdderian stands rigid, forearm pressed to the table’s edge, knuckles widening near a ruler and a grease pencil.
General Feld Marshall Eric Fonstein says nothing, only watches the pins. The arrows, the shrinking space on the map. The field phone crackles. An agitant whispers. Mine furer. Adolf Hitler steps in, cap low, coat button tight, and the room rises as one body. He doesn’t sit. He points. No retreat. The words land like a stamp on a death warrant.
But this scene did not emerge from nowhere. The roots of military subservience stretched back nearly a decade to a warm August day in 1934. President Paul Fon Hindenburg had just died. Within hours, Hitler moved with breathtaking speed. He merged the offices of Chancellor and President, declaring himself furer and Reich Chancellor.
And then came the master stroke, the oath. Every soldier in the German armed forces was required to swear personal allegiance not to the nation, not to the constitution, but to Adolf Hitler himself. The words were specific and binding. I swear by God this sacred oath that I shall render unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler, the furer of the German Reich, supreme commander of the armed forces, and that I shall at all times be prepared as a brave soldier to give my life for this oath.
For the traditional Prussian officer, an oath was not a formality. It was a sacred bond. Breaking it meant dishonor, disgrace, and the destruction of everything a man’s family had built across generations. Hitler understood this. He weaponized honor itself. The officer corps in 1934 believed they could control Hitler. They had helped bring him to power, seeing in him a useful tool to restore German military strength and overturn the hated treaty of Versailles.
General Verer von Bloomberg, the minister of war, assured his colleagues that the army would remain the pillar of the state. General Vereronfr, commander of the army, maintained a patrician disdain for the Austrian corporal’s lack of breeding. These men thought they were playing Hitler. They did not realize that Hitler was already several moves ahead.
What no one anticipated was how quickly the ground would shift beneath their feet. In January 1938, Bloomberg married a woman named Margaretta Grun. It seemed a minor social matter until police files revealed that Grun had a past as a prostitute and had posed for explicit photographs. The scandal was devastating.
Bloomberg resigned in disgrace, but worse was to come. Frri, next in line for power, suddenly found himself accused of homosexuality based on fabricated evidence provided by the Gestapo. The charges were eventually proven false, but by then Fritz had been forced out. In one swift stroke, Hitler had removed the two most senior military leaders in Germany.
He abolished the position of war minister entirely and created the Ober commando dem with himself as supreme commander. The man he placed in charge of this new organization was Wilhelm Kitle, a general known less for his strategic brilliance than for his willingness to say yes. Officers behind his back called him lackel, a pun combining his name with the German word for lackey.
The Bloomberg Fritz affair taught the officer corps a brutal lesson. Opposition was not merely career ending. It was personally dangerous. The Gestapo had files on everyone. Loyalty was now the currency of survival. And yet, even as the walls closed in, many officers still believed they could influence Hitler through professional competence.
If they delivered victories, surely he would listen to their advice. This belief would prove tragically naive. Consider the case of Eric Fon Mannstein. By any measure, Mannstein was a genius of operational warfare. His plan for the invasion of France in 1940, the famous sickle cut through the Arden, was one of the most audacious and successful military operations in history.
Hitler embraced it, overriding the more cautious approach favored by the army high command. France fell in 6 weeks. The Vermacht stood triumphant on the English Channel. And here lies the first great irony of Hitler’s relationship with his generals. His early gambles paid off spectacularly. The Rhineland in 1936, Austria in 1938, Czechoslovakia in 1939, Poland, France.
Each time the generals counseledled caution, warned of disaster, predicted catastrophe. Each time Hitler ignored them and won. Success is the most persuasive argument. By the summer of 1940, Hitler had built a track record that made his judgment seem almost mystical. The generals had been wrong. The corporal had been right.
But there was a problem. Victory masked a fundamental dysfunction in German command. Hitler’s successes were not the product of superior strategy. They were the product of surprise, aggression, and the weaknesses of his opponents. France was poorly led. Poland was overwhelmed. Britain was unprepared. These were not repeatable conditions.
And yet Hitler drew from them a dangerous conclusion. His intuition was superior to the professional judgment of his generals. He began to micromanage. He began to dismiss expertise as defeatism. He began to see disagreement as disloyalty. The men around him adapted. Some like Kitle and Yodel became pure yes men translating Hitler’s whims into orders without question.
Others like Mannstein and Gdderion still tried to argue, still tried to shape decisions, but increasingly found their advice ignored or rejected. Back in the bunker at Wulf Shansa, Kitle’s hand hovers over a signature block. Yodel wets his lips then closes them again. Gderion glances at Mannstein.
One quick look, a silent question, and Mannstein gives the smallest shake of the head. Hitler’s finger drags a new line across the front hard enough to tear the paper. You will hold. Somewhere behind them, a Clark’s stamp hits a document through channels. Too fast, too final. The eastern front was where the system broke down completely.
Operation Barbar Roa, launched in June 1941, was the largest military operation in history. 3 million German soldiers poured into the Soviet Union along a front stretching nearly 2,000 m. The initial success was staggering. In the first weeks, the Vermacht encircled and destroyed entire Soviet armies. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war filled makeshift camps.
The road to Moscow seemed open. But then came the first great divergence between Hitler and his generals. The army high command led by France Halder wanted to drive straight for Moscow, the political and logistical heart of the Soviet Union. Hitler disagreed. He diverted forces south toward Ukraine and north toward Leningrad.
The argument consumed weeks, time that could not be recovered. When the advance on Moscow finally resumed in October, the autumn rains had begun. Mud swallowed tanks. Supply lines stretched to breaking. And then came the Russian winter. The Vermacht had not prepared for a winter campaign. Lubricants froze in gun breaches.
Engines refused to start. Frostbite claimed more casualties than enemy fire. The Soviet counteroffensive in December 1941 threatened to turn retreat into route. It was in this moment that Hitler issued his infamous halt order, forbidding any withdrawal. Generals who had spent their careers studying the art of maneuver were ordered to stand in place and die.
Some believed the order was insane. Gdderion flew to Hitler’s headquarters to argue in person. The confrontation was explosive. Gderion presented the facts. His Panza forces were frozen, exhausted, outnumbered. Retreat to defensible positions was the only sensible course. Hitler dismissed him. Gderrion was relieved of command within weeks.
He would not return to active duty for over a year. And yet, here is the terrible complexity. The halt order may have worked. The Soviet offensive, overextended and undersupplied, eventually stalled. The German line held. Hitler claimed vindication. Once again, he had ignored his generals and survived.
Once again, his conviction had outlasted their expertise. The lesson he drew was catastrophic. Willpower could overcome any obstacle. Retreat was never necessary. His generals simply lacked the nerve to see his vision through. This belief would haunt every subsequent decision. The men who remained learned to survive in this environment.
Mannstein, commanding Army Group South, achieved remarkable operational successes even as the strategic situation deteriorated. His recapture of Karkov in early 1943 was a masterpiece of mobile defense. But when he requested freedom to conduct operations as he saw fit, Hitler refused. When he proposed strategic withdrawals to shorten the line and concentrate forces, Hitler rejected them.
When he argued for a unified command in the east with himself as commander, Hitler dismissed the suggestion. [clears throat] Mannstein kept fighting. He kept obeying. He kept hoping that one more victory would finally earn him the authority to conduct the war properly. It never did. Why did Mannstein stay? Why did he continue to serve a leader who routinely overrode his professional judgment? The answers are layered.
There was the oath, of course, that sacred bond that Prussian officers took with deadly seriousness. There was also duty to his soldiers. Mannstein believed that if he left, someone less competent would take his place, and more men would die as a result. There was the hope, never quite extinguished, that Hitler might yet be persuaded.
There was the knowledge that open defiance meant not just dismissal, but possible arrest, possibly execution, certainly disgrace for his family. And there was perhaps a measure of selfdeception. The belief that by staying, by continuing to fight, he was serving Germany even if he could not serve it as he wished.
This psychological trap held many of the generals. They separated the regime from the nation. They told themselves they were soldiers, not politicians. They convinced themselves that their job was to win battles, not to question policy. This compartmentalization allowed them to function even as the war turned criminal.
The mass executions behind the lines, the starvation of prisoners of war, the complicity with genocide. These horrors occurred within the orbit of military operations. And yet the generals maintained a fiction of separation. They were professionals. They followed orders. They did not ask questions that might have uncomfortable answers.
From the doorway, a second courier appears, breathless, holding another sealed folder. This one marked for a single name. Runstead, delivered by hand only. Kitle’s eyes flick to the envelope, then away. Yodel’s pen freezes midnotation. Runstet is not here tonight. He is in the west. But something in that envelope has crossed half a continent for his eyes alone.
Mannstein notes how quickly the agitant moves to intercept it. He notes how Hitler does not notice or pretends not to. In this headquarters, what you see and what you acknowledge are not always the same thing. Gerd Fon Runstead represented another archetype of German generalship. The aristocratic professional who considered politics beneath his dignity.
At 70 years old when the war began, Runstead was the senior field commander in the Vermacht. A man whose bearing and pedigree exemplified the old Prussian military tradition. He thought Hitler was a vulgar upstart. He made no secret of his contempt in private. And yet he served. He commanded the invasion of Poland. He led army groups south into Ukraine.
He presided over the western front as Germany’s enemies gathered for the final blow. When asked after the war why he had continued to obey, Runstead gave an answer that captured the paralysis of the entire officer corps. What else could I have done? This was not mere excusem. It reflected a genuine inability to conceive of alternatives.
The German military tradition emphasized obedience above all. Independent political judgment by officers was considered dangerous. A violation of the proper relationship between civilian authority and military command. The VHimar Republic’s instability had only reinforced this conviction. The officer corps had watched civilian politicians fail, and they had concluded that soldiers should stay out of politics.
By the time they realized that Hitler was not a normal civilian leader, that the normal rules did not apply, they had already taken the oath. They were already complicit. They were already trapped. But not everyone remained passive. As the war progressed and the chances of victory dimmed, a small group of officers began to contemplate the unthinkable, removing Hitler by force.
The resistance within the military was never large. It was concentrated among a handful of staff officers, many of them from old aristocratic families who viewed the Nazi regime as a stain on German honor. Names like Henning vontresco, Klaus von Stalenberg and Ludvig Beck circulated in whispered conversations.
They planned, they plotted, they tried multiple times to assassinate Hitler and seize control of the government. And multiple times they failed. Bombs malfunctioned. Opportunities slipped away. The Gestapo closed in. The conspiracy faced an impossible challenge. Most of the senior generals knew something was brewing. Some were sympathetic, but few were willing to commit.
Mannstein was approached and declined. Gderrion was sounded out and demurred. Runstead made clear he would not participate. These men might despise Hitler in private, but they would not act against him in public. The reasons varied. Some feared failure and the certain reprisals that would follow. Some genuinely believed that removing Hitler would lead to chaos and Germany’s destruction.
Some could not overcome the weight of their oath, the sense that breaking it would destroy everything they had spent their lives building. And some, it must be said, still believed victory was possible, that Hitler’s will might yet carry them through. The hour grows late at Wulf Shansza. Outside, wind rattles against the reinforced windows.
Inside, Hitler has moved to a side room. The generals cluster in small groups, voices low. Gderion stands alone near the map, tracing a line from Smolinsk to Moscow with his eyes. Mannstein approaches. They do not look at each other directly. You were about to speak earlier, Mannstein says quietly. Gderion’s jaw tightens.
I was about to be replaced earlier. A pause. He won’t listen. You know that. Mannstein nods once. I know, but someone must be here when he needs to hear it anyway. Gderrion turns now, looks at Mannstein fully, and when he refuses, when the front collapses because of orders that make no sense, what then? Mannstein has no answer. Neither of them does, but they will be back tomorrow.
They will stand at the same table. They will make the same arguments. They will lose the same way. And they will return the day after that. Because leaving means someone worse takes their place. Because staying means they might save some fraction of what remains. Because they are soldiers and soldiers obey and no one has shown them another way to be.
The battle of Kursk in July 1943 marked a turning point in more ways than one. Hitler insisted on the offensive despite his generals reservations about timing and objectives. The Soviet defenses were the deepest and most formidable ever constructed. German losses were severe. The strategic initiative passed permanently to the Red Army.
But the aftermath was even more telling than the battle itself. Mannstein requested permission to conduct flexible defense operations, to give ground where necessary, to strike the Soviets when they overextended, to trade space for time. Hitler refused. Every yard of ground was to be held. No withdrawal without his personal approval.
The result was predictable. German forces were pinned in place, ground down by superior numbers, unable to maneuver as they had been trained. The eastern front became a slow motion catastrophe, one that competent general ship might have delayed but could not have prevented given the strategic realities. Mannstein’s relationship with Hitler reached its breaking point in March 1944.
In a meeting at the Burghoff, Hitler’s mountain retreat, Mannstein argued forcefully for changes in command structure and operational freedom. Hitler listened, then dismissed him with honors, the Knight’s Cross, with oak leaves and swords, a personal letter of thanks, and permanent removal from command. The message was clear.
You could disagree quietly and survive. You could disagree loudly and be retired. You could not disagree and win. Mannstein spent the rest of the war in comfortable obscurity. Called back occasionally for ceremonial functions, never again trusted with troops. He had tested the limit and found it immovable. Gudderion’s path was different, but arrived at the same destination.
Recalled to duty in 1943 as Inspector General of armored troops, he threw himself into rebuilding the Panza forces. When the conspiracy against Hitler exploded into the open on July 20th, 1944, Gudderion was appointed to the Court of Honor that expelled suspected officers from the military so they could be tried by civilian courts.
He later claimed he had no choice. That refusal would have meant his own death, perhaps, but he also demonstrated a capacity for accommodation that preserved his position while others went to the gallows. When the Eastern front finally collapsed in early 1945, Gderion clashed repeatedly with Hitler over strategy. The arguments were furious.
Gderrion shouted. Hitler screamed. Witnesses feared violence. In March 1945, Hitler sent Gdderion on indefinite medical leave. It was the end. Germany had weeks left to live. The July 20th plot itself deserves special attention because [clears throat] it reveals what might have been and what actually was. Colonel Klaus von Stalenberg, a decorated staff officer who had been severely wounded in North Africa, placed a briefcase bomb under the conference table at the wolf’s lair.
The explosion killed four people but left Hitler alive, shielded by the heavy oak table leg. Within hours, the conspiracy collapsed. The plotters in Berlin hesitated, lost control of the communications networks, and were overwhelmed by loyalist forces. The reprisals were savage. Thousands were arrested. Hundreds were executed. The methods of execution were deliberately barbaric, slow strangulation by piano wire, filmed for Hitler’s viewing pleasure. The message was unmistakable.
Disobedience meant death, not just for you, but for your family, your friends, anyone connected to you. The failure of July 20th sealed the fate of the German officer Corps. Those who had harbored doubts now knew the price of action. Those who had remained loyal felt vindicated in their caution, and Hitler, more paranoid than ever, tightened his grip on military operations to an absurd degree.
He personally approved the movement of individual battalions. He forbred retreats from positions that existed only on outdated maps. He promoted Nazi loyalists over professional soldiers. The final months of the war were a masterclass in military dysfunction as Germany’s remaining forces were squandered in futile stands and counterattacks that existed only in Hitler’s imagination.
At a headquarters that no longer exists, in a country that no longer exists, a general whose name is now synonymous with strategic brilliance stands before a map of a front that is already lost. He has spent 3 hours arguing for permission to move a division 20 km. Permission has been denied. The division will remain in place.
It will be encircled within a week. The general knows this. The corporal who denied permission does not or does not care. The general straightens his uniform, collects his papers, and walks out into the cold. His car is waiting. He will drive to another headquarters, make another argument, lose another division. This is what obedience looks like at the end.
Not dramatic confrontations, not heroic resistance, but the slow grinding down of possibility until nothing remains but the next order, the next refusal, the next disaster. How do we judge these men? The question has occupied historians for generations. The generals claimed after the war that they were soldiers, not politicians, that they had done their professional duty, that the crimes of the regime were not their responsibility.
The Nuremberg trials took a harsher view. Kitle and Yodel were hanged as war criminals. Others escaped justice through legal technicalities, the need for their expertise during the Cold War, or simple luck. Mannstein served four years in British custody before being released. Gderion wrote his memoirs and died in bed.
Runstead was tried but never sentenced due to poor health. The great reckoning, if it came at all, came unevenly. But the military question remains separate from the moral one. Why did these technically brilliant men allow themselves to be commanded by someone so clearly their inferior in military education? Several factors converged.
First, the oath itself created a psychological and cultural barrier that most officers found impossible to cross. Second, Hitler’s early successes established a track record that made his judgment seem validated by events. Third, the Gestapo and the SS created a climate of fear that made descent dangerous.
Fourth, the structure of German command with its multiple overlapping hierarchies and competing power centers made coordinated resistance extraordinarily difficult. Fifth, the very professionalism that defined the officer core became a prison. The belief that soldiers should obey, that politics was not their sphere, that their job was to execute orders, not question them.
There was also something more subtle at work. Hitler was not merely a dictator issuing commands. He was a master of manipulation, capable of charm, flattery, and apparent reasonleness when it suited his purposes. In private meetings, he could seem open to advice, willing to listen, almost colleial. Generals left these sessions convinced they had made their point, only to discover later that nothing had changed.
Hitler had a genius for making people feel heard while ignoring everything they said. He also had an unairring instinct for the weaknesses of those around him. Ambitious men found their ambitions rewarded. Fearful men found their fears confirmed. Honorable men found their honor turned into a weapon against them.
Each general was handled according to his particular vulnerabilities. The institutional context matters as well. The German military had spent the interwar years rebuilding from the humiliation of Versailles. Hitler gave them what they wanted. Rearmament, expansion, restoration of national pride. He attended their war games, consulted their experts, funded their programs.
By the time it became clear what kind of leader he truly was, the officer corps was already deeply invested in his success. To turn against Hitler meant admitting that everything they had built was compromised, that the victories they had won served a criminal cause, that their professional achievements were stained by association.
Most men cannot make that admission. Most men prefer to believe that the next victory will redeem the last compromise. The final factor was the most practical. There was no alternative center of power. In a functioning state, military leaders who disagreed with civilian leadership could resign, could appeal to other institutions, could seek support from political allies.
In Nazi Germany, all alternative institutions had been destroyed or subordinated. The churches were cowed. The judiciary was controlled. The press was propaganda. The SS answered only to Hitler. A general who stepped out of line faced not a political battle but annihilation. The courage required to resist was not merely personal but existential.
A willingness to accept destruction for oneself and one’s family with no guarantee that the sacrifice would accomplish anything. Few human beings possess such courage. We should not be surprised that few German generals did. What then are the lessons? first that institutional safeguards matter more than individual virtue.
The German officer Corps contained many men of personal honor and professional excellence. It did not matter. Without independent institutions to check executive power, without clear lines of accountability, without protected spaces for disscent, individual conscience proved insufficient. Second, that early capitulation leads to later catastrophe.
Each time the generals accommodated Hitler in the 1930s, they made the next accommodation easier and the final reckoning harder. The moment to resist was at the beginning when the costs were lowest. By the time the costs of obedience became unbearable, the costs of resistance had become unthinkable. Third, that the language of duty and honor can become a trap.
The generals told themselves they were serving Germany, upholding their oath, maintaining professional standards. These were not lies exactly, but they were not the whole truth either. The language of virtue allowed them to avoid confronting the nature of the regime they served. In the end, the generals obeyed because they were human with all the weakness and selfdeception that humanity implies.
They obeyed because the system gave them no good options. They obeyed because they had been trained to obey. They obeyed because disobedience meant death. They obeyed because they convinced themselves that obedience was itself a form of virtue. And they obeyed because somewhere beneath all the rationalizations, they wanted to keep their positions, their privileges, their sense of identity as soldiers.
The corporal won not through military genius but through political mastery. the creation of a system in which obedience was the only possible choice for men who wish to remain what they had always been. The last scene at Wulf Shanza plays out as all the others have. Hitler issues his orders. The generals nod. The maps are updated with arrows pointing in directions that no longer correspond to reality. Kitle signs the documents.
Yodel drafts the memoranda. Mannstein watches in silence, calculating how many men will die for this particular decision, adding the number to a ledger he keeps in his mind. A ledger that grows heavier with each passing day. Gderrion is already gone, dismissed for the crime of honesty. Runstead sits in his headquarters in the west, waiting for an invasion he cannot repel with orders he cannot change.
And somewhere in the Reich Chancellery, a cler files another report marked Gayheim to be opened in 50 years by historians who will ask the same question we ask now. Why did they obey? The answer is not comfortable. The answer is that they were us in circumstances we are fortunate never to have faced. The answer is that systems of power can corrupt even the brilliant, even the honorable, even those who know better.
The answer is that obedience once begun creates its own momentum. Until stopping seems more dangerous than continuing. The answer is that evil rarely announces itself as evil. It arrives disguised as duty, as necessity, as the only practical choice. The German generals of the Second World War left behind a complicated legacy.
Their operational achievements remain studied in militarymies around the world. Their failures of moral courage remain studied as well as a warning of what can happen when professional excellence is divorced from ethical judgment. When institutional loyalty replaces individual conscience, when the immediate pressures of survival overwhelm the longerterm demands of honor. They were not monsters.
Most of them were not ideologues. They were professionals who found themselves serving a monstrous cause and lacked the courage or the opportunity to break free. History has not judged them kindly. History should not. But history should also remember how easy it was to become them. How the path from honorable soldier to complicit servant was paved with small steps, each one seemingly justifiable in the moment until the destination became inescapable.
The boots have stopped striking concrete. The chairs have been pushed back. The room at Wulf Shanza is empty now, preserved as a museum, a reminder of decisions made and lives lost. The pins on the map table have been removed. The red wax seals have crumbled to dust. But the question remains as urgent now as it was then.
When the orders come that should not be obeyed, what will you do? When the system demands compliance and conscience demands refusal, which voice will you hear? The generals had their answer. It was the wrong one. We remember them not to condemn, but to learn, to recognize the warning signs, to build the institutions that make resistance possible, to cultivate the courage that makes resistance real.
Because somewhere in some room we cannot yet see, another map is being spread on another table. And someone is being asked to nod along to orders that make no sense, to sign documents that should not be signed, to obey a voice that should not command. What they do in that moment will depend on what they learned from moments like this one.
That is why we tell these stories. That is why we must never forget. The Third Reich is gone. Its generals are buried. But the dynamics that produced them, the cult of personality, the weaponization of loyalty, the erosion of institutional checks, the normalization of the unacceptable. These are not unique to one time or place.
They are recurring patterns in human history appearing whenever power becomes concentrated and accountability becomes diffuse. The story of Hitler and his generals is not merely a historical curiosity. It is a case study in how civilized, educated, professional people can become instruments of catastrophe. It is a reminder that no society is immune.
That no institution is automatically safe. That eternal vigilance is not a slogan but a necessity. The men who stood at those map tables believed they were serving their country. They discovered too late that they were serving its destruction. May we learn from their failure before we are forced to repeat it.
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