In the    last week of April, 1944, in the 244 th  week of World War II, when a fierce and determined Soviet Army was preparing to attack Nazi Germany, from the Arctic to the Black Sea; when across the English Channel, the Allies were amassing the greatest amphibious invasion force in History, to breach his Fortress Europe; Adolf Hitler, the Fuehrer, the Head of the Nazi Party, the Head of the German Government and the Head of the German State, made a pronouncement to German    generals. He told them, in no uncertain terms, that there was only one way to victory, a true, sincere  belief in the reigning Ideology. He told  them, that competence on the battlefield no longer mattered; he told them that Competence could no longer ensure victory; only blind devotion to Nazism could win the day. In military matters, in existential matters, in life and death  matters, placing ideological devotion over competence is madness. Hitler placed ideological  devotion over competence; and lost his war.

Eighty years ago, World War II started. "The statistics of the war are almost mind-numbing. Estimates differ, but up to 70m people died as a direct consequence of the fighting between 1939 and 1945, about two-thirds of them non-combatants, making it in absolute terms the deadliest conflict ever. Nearly one in ten Germans died and 30% of their army. About 15m Chinese perished and 27m Soviets. Squeezed between two totalitarian neighbours, Poland lost 16% of its population, about half of them Jews who were part of Hitler’s final solution. On average, nearly 30,000 people were being killed every day." There would not have been a World War II without Hitler; Stalin did not want World War II, neither did Churchill, nor Roosevelt nor the French nor the Italians. Even the Japanese did not want World War II, the Japanese Empire wanted a war just not World War II. Only Hitler wanted World War II. One man bent the world to his will. Hitler was an amazingly gifted sociopath, no fictio