Nazis Barking Up The Wrong Tree

1. The Barking Dog. Most of us are familiar with the analogy of the dog chasing the cat but barking up the wrong tree. No matter how effective he may be barking and how efficient his ‘barking ‘apparatus’ may be functioning, if he is barking up the wrong tree it is all in vain; the cat has long since escaped and is home free. Sadly, over the years many of us (myself included) may have been guilty of barking up wrong trees on one or more occasions all over the show; they say that to err (miscalculate) is human and to forgive is bliss.

2. The Art & Science of Miscalculation. An interesting case in point is the one involving Adolf Hitler, WW2 head of the Nazi Party and Führer of the Third Reich. This ‘sobriquet’ and all those 'hybrids' derived from it may have been grand in his heyday (1939-1945) but, in the meantime over the decades since WW2, actually have become the laughing stock of the world ever since. An example of Nazi 'ranks' among 'Nazi ranks':

● Führer  (Adolf Hitler)

● Oberstgruppenführer (General)

● Obergruppenführer (LieutenantGeneral)

● Gruppenführer (Major General)

● Brigadeführer (Brigadier General)

● Oberführer (‘No army equivalent’)

● Standartenführer (Colonel)

● Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel)

● Sturmbannführer (Major)

● Hauptsturmführer (Captain)

● Obersturmführer (First Lieutenant)

● Untersturmführer (Second Lieutenant)

● Oberscharführer (Senior Non-commissioned rank)

● Unterscharführer (Equivalent to Sergeant)

● Rottenführer (Equivalent to Corporal).

3. Hitler’s Miscalculation. Wikipedia lists altogether 42 plots (but only 22 actual attempts) on Hitler’s life before and during WW2 since 1932, culminating in the attempt by Claus Von Stauffenberg & Co. on 20 July 1944; it has failed probably due to the fact that, at the last minute, the conference venue was changed away from the Wolf’s Lair’s concrete bunker to an ordinary venue which may have diminished the impact of the blast, leaving Hitler with only a perforated eardrum (which didn’t really matter because he never listened to his generals’ advice anyway). Von Stauffenberg and his fellow conspirators were executed. 

   Hitler’s explanation (i.e. his classic miscalculation) for all these unsuccessful (probably ‘amateurish’) attempts was that his apparent ‘invincibility’ proved a special calling on his life from the ‘Most High’ to lead Germany and the Third Reich out of the ignominious humiliation of the Versailles Treaty following WW1 (1914-1918). 

4. The Hard Fact. What he ought to have known was that, after so many failed attempts on his life by so many top members of his own ‘super race‘, he and his so-called ‘super race’ were not that super after all. The Bible says:

   "Which yet my soul seeketh, but I find not: one man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all those have I not found.  Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions." [Ecclesiastes7:28-29].

Acknowledgements

Keneally, Thomas [1982] Schindler’s Ark. Hemisphere Publishers Ltd.

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