How Would Hitler Handle the Iraq Mess Today?

The first rule of military defense is to understand your enemy as realistically as possible, including mindset and tactics.  Setting up a blatantly false straw man only invites failure.

      The ISIS Sunni army currently sweeping almost unchecked through Iraq and Syria must be studied without posturing and rhetorical flourish.

       Military history is a good way to practice this technique, including World War II, and the wars in  Korea, Vietnam, and the Middle East. Getting inside the already-established minds of men like Hitler, Stalin, Churchill and Truman can create benchmarks to measure current leaders and tactics against.  If nothing else, knowing what to avoid is just as important as determining what might work.

      In Hitler’s Gulf War: The Fight for Iraq 1941, Barrie James takes us back to the spring of 1941 near Baghdad to a military situation with similarities to US-equipped Iraq right now.  Not in the fight themselves, the Germans and Italians were nevertheless in their military prime back then, as they equipped and trained a large Iraqi army with the weapons of modern warfare.  The British RAF, though few (only 1,500) in number and poorly equipped, pulled off a stunning victory in just 30 days.  Hitler must have learned what military historians later could see more easily about the pitfalls of nation building.

      Historian Niall Ferguson found that Hitler used diplomacy only to negotiate with “fools” like Neville Chamberlain.  Hitler’s way of responding to  a hypothetical crisis was like a benchmark to Ferguson.   Blitzkrieg was more effective than drawn-out wars of attrition to Hitler.  He wanted no part of being a slow-to-awaken industrial giant.

     Hitler was even willing to give what if advice to the British, whose Empire he admired.   When opportunistic demagogues (as seen then) like Ghandi threatened to destabilize the British Empire in India, Hitler knew what to do, according to Ferguson.  “As he explained to Britain’s Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax in 1937, the way to deal with Indian nationalism was simple:  ‘Shoot Gandhi, and if that does not suffice to reduce them to submission, shoot a dozen leading members of Congress; and if that does not suffice, shoot 200 and so on until order is established.’”

      The President and his staff wouldn’t attempt anything like this themselves, but they should be open to knowing that enemies like ISIS aren’t bound by the same rules of engagement.