Adolf Hitler was an idiot. And that’s a good 
thing because it led him to make some really bad strategic decisions during World War 
II. If Hitler had been a little smarter, we might very well be living in a messed up 
Nazi-controlled world full of Hitler Youth today. Luckily, that’s not how history played out. 
As we progress through some of Hitler’s worst decisions during World War II, you may 
be surprised to find that it was his ego, the name of an enemy, and his belief in 
the occult that partially cost him the war. Let’s start at the beginning. When 
you’re a genocidal maniac like Hitler, your choice of allies can end up being pretty 
slim. One of the main reasons that Hitler’s Nazi Germany allied itself with Italy was because 
no one else was crazy enough to join him but Benito Mussolini. Most historians argue that 
Italy wasn’t Hitler's first choice for an ally.

or even his second or third choice. But when your 
entire platform is predicated on mass genocide and   ruling the world in your own deranged way, not 
many people can be convinced to get on board. It was Mussolini's authoritarian rule and his 
dislike for the Jewish people that made him the   perfect ally for Hitler. However, allying 
himself with Benito was the first mistake   Hitler would make that would eventually lead 
to him losing World War II. During wartime,   you want strong and independent Allies who 
will have your back when things get tough   and can bring something meaningful to the table. 
Mussolini’s Italy was none of those things.   Time and time again, Germany would have to 
bail out Italian forces as they continually   became pinned down or surrounded by the 
Allies. This would cost Hitler greatly,   as Germany would lose valuable resources and 
men whenever Italy failed in its missions.

Choosing the wrong ally was definitely one 
decision that cost Hitler in the long run. But it would not be the only 
one. The way he handled the North African Campaign starting in 1940 
ended up being a disaster to his cause. World War II started in Europe on September 
1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Axis forces swept across the continent, securing 
strategic positions and decimating anyone who stood in their way. However, the same cannot 
be said about their campaign in North Africa, as it was brought to a grinding 
halt by an unexpected force. The main objective of the North African 
Campaign was to secure the Suez Canal, which would allow Nazi forces to have better 
access to oil coming from the Middle East. The Nazis had some of the best tanks, aircraft, and 
naval vessels in the world, which gave them the upper hand in many battles. However, without 
oil to fuel these vehicles, they were useless.

Originally, Hitler left Italy in charge of securing North Africa while he focused on decimating Western Europe. This was his first mistake. Italy had trouble defeating Allied forces in the region from the beginning, and Hitler had to send men and tanks down to bail them out. The distance between Germany and North Africa meant this would take time, but it had to be done if the Axis powers were going to control the region. Eventually, Hitler decided to send General Erwin Rommel to the region to command the German tank forces in North Africa. His mission was to sweep across the continent from Morocco to the Middle East. Once there, he would be in charge of maintaining control of the vast oil reserves in the region. This was a wise strategic move for Hitler, but the execution was performed poorly. After some initial success, things started to fall apart in North Africa. The main problem was

that Rommel just didn’t have the resources 
or tanks necessary to get the job done. Rommel made it as far as Tobruk in Libya before 
he ran into some issues. He was able to capture the seaport of Tobruk, but once the Nazis 
forces began their advance further east, they were stopped by British general 
Bernard Montgomery at El Alamein. For twelve days Nazi and Italian forces tried 
to break the British line without success. Hitler was furious with the lack of progress in 
North Africa. After a second defeat at El Alamein, Rommel returned to Europe. He complained that he 
should have been left with the tank battalions in North Africa, where he was sure he could 
eventually defeat the Allied forces. However, whether it was Hitler’s direct orders or 
his influence over the Nazi’s military, Rommel was forced to stay in Germany while 
his forces in North Africa were defeated.

The Allies had secretly landed more troops in 
Morocco and Algeria. They charged across the   region and eventually trapped the retreating 
Axis forces. Altogether, around 250,000 German   and Italian troops were captured. This would be 
a definitive turning point in the war to control   North Africa and led to a huge disruption in 
the oil supply that fueled the Nazi war machine. As a side note, Rommel was later accused 
and convicted for playing a role in the 20   July Plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. This 
led to the general being given two options:   execution by the State or death by suicide. On 
October 14, 1944, Rommel bit down on a cyanide   capsule and ended his life and career as a Nazi 
General. There is no clear evidence that Rommel   actually played a role in the assassination 
attempt on Hitler’s life. This may mean that   rather than having a traitor killed, Hitler 
made the mistake of eliminating one of his

best generals, as Rommel is traditionally 
seen as a brilliant commander in the field. And Hitler’s mistakes would keep on coming. The 
United States played a major role in securing victory for Allied forces in Europe. However, one 
of the main reasons that the U.S.A. sent troops to Europe was because Hitler made the mistake 
of declaring war on the United States first. The U.S. was sending supplies and 
resources to the Allies in Europe from very early on in the war. However, they 
had adopted somewhat of an isolationist policy and had no plans of directly 
intervening in Europe until December 11, 1941. That is when Hitler made another 
decision that would cost him the war. Early on in 1941, the United States had not 
sent or had plans to send troops to Europe. Then Pearl Harbor happened. Hitler had no idea 
that the Japanese were going to bomb Pearl Harbor,

but he had hoped from the beginning that Japan 
would pull the U.S. into a war in the Pacific. This would cause them to focus their 
attention on the other side of the world, likely reducing the amount of 
supplies they were sending to Britain. Instead of letting these events play out, Hitler did something really dumb. He started 
attacking American supply ships in the Atlantic and immediately declared war on the U.S. 
Hitler was delusional and thought even if he destroyed American convoys and declared war 
on the country, the U.S. would still be too preoccupied with Japan to retaliate. However, 
nothing could be further from the truth. The United States’ economy was incredibly 
strong and had already begun ramping up wartime production. They had the men, resources, 
and now the motive to fight a war on two fronts. At the time, President Franklin Delano 
Rosevelt was still on the fence about

whether troops should be sent to Europe, or if 
the United States should solely focus on Japan. But Hitler’s decision to declare war on the 
U.S. prematurely made the decision easy for him. America would go to war with Nazi Germany and kick 
their ass. And Hitler only had himself to blame. Just to put it into perspective on how big 
of a mistake this was, every year of the war, the United States constructed twice as many 
planes and war vehicles as Nazi Germany did. The United States also had immense resources 
and a huge labor pool to pull from. With everyone now united under the declaration of 
war against the United States by Adolf Hitler, the whole country put everything they had 
into the war effort to defeat Nazi Germany. In the summer of 1941, Hitler would 
make a decision that would cost him enormous amounts of men, resources, 
and pretty much the war itself. On June 22, the Nazis launched Operation 
Barbarossa. At the beginning of the war,

Hitler was smart enough to have Soviet Russia 
sign a nonaggression pact, which ensured that   they wouldn’t attack Germany from the east. This 
allowed him to focus his attention on western   Europe and defeating Great Britain. However, 
Hitler was not smart enough not to break his   own pact. He launched an invasion into Russia, 
which meant Germany now had to fight countries   to its east and its west, defeating the 
purpose of preventing a two-front war. This decision was a huge mistake and one of 
the critical factors that cost him the war.   At first, Nazi Germany seemed to have 
the upper hand. Stalin was delusional and   thought there was no way Hitler would 
break his promise and invade Russia,   but this was Adolf Hitler we are talking 
about, and he obviously could not be trusted. The Germans amassed forces along 
the Russian border. In fact,   they weren’t even very discrete about it. Hitler 
had always planned to invade the Soviet Union;

he just wanted to wait until all of Europe was 
under his control first. However, with resources   running low and the need for a new source of 
labor, Hitler launched his invasion early. He fully committed to this decision even though 
many of his military advisors warned him that   conquering the Soviet Union and fighting a 
two-front war would be incredibly difficult,   if not impossible. He ignored them and 
launched the offensive into Russia anyways. At the beginning of the invasion, the 
Nazis were winning almost every battle.   Hitler patted himself on the back for a job 
well done and scoffed at anyone who was still   wary of sending troops deep into Russian 
territory. History had shown that trying   to take over Russia never worked 
out well for the invading force. Nazi morale was high as they marched further 
and further into the Soviet Union. The dirt   roads were passable in the summer months, and 
the Nazi uniforms provided enough warmth to stay

relatively comfortable even at night. Hitler 
was so convinced that the war in Russia would be over quickly that he held off on sending 
more supplies and winter gear to the troops who were advancing further into the Soviet 
Union. But as the winter months approached, the weather began to change. The tide 
of the war in Russia was about to shift. Operation Barbarossa was a massive offensive with 
three different attack forces spread out across approximately 1,800 miles of land. As all 
three parts of the German army started to reach their objectives, they were slowed 
down by terrible weather, lack of food, and depletion of resources. The Russian 
people destroyed their own villages, farms, and factories as they retreated further into the 
Soviet Union to get away from the Nazi invasion. Hitler’s original plan had been to resupply 
his troops using Russian resources as they made their way across the country. It was too long 
a distance to constantly be resupplying his forces

from Germany. Plus, the whole point of invading 
the Soviet Union was to secure more resources. However, the Russian people left very little 
of use behind due to their Scorched Earth Policy. When the northern offensive reached Leningrad, 
they thought it would fall as quickly as the rest of Russia, but this was not the case. The 
Germans couldn’t manage to secure Leningrad from the Russians, and resources were 
running dangerously low. On top of that, the Nazi forces in the south also ran into 
trouble. They were stopped dead in their tracks by entrenched Russian soldiers and 
couldn't advance any further. Hitler was furious. He ordered the middle offensive to 
send troops to the north and south, which weakened the middle force while not improving 
the situation in the other regions by much. The slowing down of the German advance 
allowed the Soviets to regroup. Over a million troops and a thousand tanks were 
sent to Moscow to protect the capital. The Nazis

were now stopped on all fronts. They couldn’t 
manage to take Leningrad in the north, and due   to the Soviet reinforcements in the middle of 
the country and the changing of the weather,   capturing Moscow was a lost cause as well. It was becoming more and more clear that 
Hitler’s decision to invade Russia was a   huge mistake. The Germans had not brought enough 
winter supplies due to Hitler’s overconfidence.   He also gravely underestimated the 
resilience of the Russian people,   and how many of them would join in the cause 
to stop Germany from taking their land.   Stalin had a huge population to fuel his 
war machine, and the resources contained   within the Soviet Union’s borders 
allowed them to quickly resupply,   while the Germans struggled to get simple things 
such as food and warm clothes to their troops. While the invasion of Soviet Russia was 
failing, Hitler seemed to lose his mind.   He started blaming everyone else for his bad 
decisions. This led to another huge mistake.

Rather than listening to his generals and advisors who knew more about war than he did, Hitler decided to make himself Commander in Chief of the Nazi Army. He couldn’t believe that his troops hadn’t yet secured Russia. They would have to double their efforts, and anyone who even mentioned the word “retreat” would be executed. Everyone who had been serving on the frontlines of the war knew that trying to subdue Russia and take its capital was a lost cause, but Hitler would hear none of it. He wanted Moscow to fall, and he wanted it bad. So, he put himself in charge of the military to make sure that no one did anything rash like withdraw and come up with a better plan. Hitler was going to take Russia or lose the war trying, which is exactly what he did. He had put himself in an unwinnable position, fighting on two fronts while also bringing

the United States into the fray. And he was 
quickly running out of resources. Things were   about to go from bad to worse, and it all 
had to do with Hitler’s next few decisions. Hitler often let his feelings get in the way of 
making good wartime decisions. And perhaps there   is no better example of this than the Battle of 
Stalingrad, which began in August of 1942 as part   of the Nazi’s southern advance into Russia. This 
city was a manufacturing hub for the Soviets,   which meant it had great strategic importance. 
The Nazis did not necessarily need to secure the   entire city in order to disrupt the Russian supply 
chain. Instead, all they really needed to do was   blockade Stalingrad to make sure nothing got in or 
out. However, Hitler had something else in mind. For Hitler, there was almost nothing 
more important than taking the city   of Stalingrad. Not because of its importance 
but because it was named after Joseph Stalin.

the then leader of the Soviet Union. Hitler believed it would be a huge blow to Russian morale, and a huge boost to his own ego if the Nazis took the city bearing the leader’s name. To be fair, Stalingrad would have provided the Nazis with desperately needed fuel and supplies, but Hitler couldn’t help but let his feelings get involved in this wartime decision. For three months, the Nazis tried to take the city. They were unsuccessful due to Hitler’s obsession with conquering Russia on all fronts rather than focusing his troops on one location. The Nazis had even taken much of the oilfields and resource-rich areas of Ukraine and Crimea, but rather than holding the line and coming up with a better plan, Hitler ordered his troops forward into the meatgrinder of Stalingrad. This was a huge mistake because it left their rear flank vulnerable to counter-attack. Whether Hitler realized this and just didn’t care or he was too focused on taking Stalingrad to notice is up for

debate. Regardless, Soviet generals did notice, 
and they sent a force to attack the rearguard of the Nazi army. The Soviets managed to break 
through the Nazi defenses and surrounded them. This allowed the Soviets to cut off desperately 
needed supplies by capturing military bases and airfields as they tightened their hold on the 
region. Hitler ordered General Friedrich Paulus, who was in charge of the Nazi forces in 
southern Russia, to continue fighting or be court-martialed and let someone else take 
over. Paulus decided to take a third option and save the lives of as many of his men as 
possible by surrendering to the Soviets instead. Due to Hitler’s crazed attempt to take Stalingrad, 
which was done mostly because of its name, the Nazis lost hundreds of thousands of 
men in southern Russia. After Stalingrad, there was no hope of Hitler 
turning the war around. The Nazi forces were now retreating back towards 
Germany. The Soviets captured anything left behind

and wiped out Nazi forces that got in their way. 
By the beginning of 1943, not only had Hitler lost millions of troops and vehicles, but he was losing 
the confidence of his people. The low morale of civilians and military personnel alike would 
cause the Nazi war machine to be less effective. Early footage of Nazi rallies shows huge crowds of 
enthralled people hanging on Hitler’s every word. However, after the Eastern front began to 
collapse and the threat of a Soviet invasion loomed on the horizon, the German people started 
to panic and lose faith in their fearless leader. The final nail in the coffin was the failed 
attempt to invade the Soviet Union and secure Moscow and Stalingrad. This wiped out any 
remaining morale left in the German people. To make matters worse, Winston Churchill and 
Franklin D. Roosevelt had just met in Casablanca and decided it was time to commence bombing 
runs on German soil. This led to death and

destruction at home, which the German people 
had not experienced up to this point. It was   a real eye-opener that their Fuhrer might not be 
able to deliver on all of the promises he made,   and the war might in fact be a total loss. At the end of the summer of 1943, incendiary 
bombs were dropped on Hamburg. The destruction   and fire they caused destroyed practically the 
entire city and killed around 40,000 people.   After the bombing run, approximately 900,000 
Germans were left homeless. The war had now become   very real for the average German citizen. It also 
became clear that many in the military were losing   faith in their Fuhrer. Over 20,000 Nazi troops 
were court-martialed and executed for various   reasons, most of which stemmed from their lack of 
confidence in Adolf Hitler. Without the trust and   enthusiasm of his people and military personnel, 
there was no way that Hitler could win the war.

The only thing worse for Hitler than having the Russians closing in from the east, Italy falling apart in the south, and military supplies running low on all fronts would be if the British and Americans somehow managed to land in France and secure a foothold on mainland Europe. On June 6, 1944, Hitler’s worst fear came to be. On top of being a crazy, egotistical, power-hungry monster, Hitler was also gullible. He allowed the Allies to trick him and his generals into deploying troops at the wrong locations along his Atlantic Wall as D-Day was carried out. The Allies knew they would be landing at Normandy, but they definitely didn’t want Hitler to know that, so they used false radio broadcasts, dummy aircraft, and misinformation to trick Hitler into moving his forces away from the actual landing zones. The plan worked, and when allied forces stormed the beaches, they met much less

resistance than they would have otherwise. There 
is no doubt that the D-Day invasion was a gruesome   and terrible moment in World War II history that 
cost the lives of thousands of allied soldiers,   but it ended up being successful because 
of the allies' ability to trick Hitler.   With Allied troops now on mainland 
Europe, there was nowhere to run.   Nazi forces were recalled back to the Fatherland 
as an invasion of Germany was now imminent. All of the key events mentioned so far were 
not the only reasons Hitler lost the war.   There were also some factors that Hitler handled 
poorly throughout the entire conflict that led   to his demise. These can’t be pinpointed 
to a specific event or battle but instead,   show how a bloodthirsty tyrant can let his 
vision for world domination get in his own way. Perhaps the biggest mistake that Hitler 
made was overextending his forces.   This was such a problem because, throughout 
the war, maintaining supply lines was a

huge problem for the Nazis. They constantly 
found themselves in need of more resources,  the most important of which were fuel and 
food, to supply their vehicles and troops. In the initial months of the war, Axis 
powers secured vast amounts of land across  Europe and North Africa. However, this 
meant that supplies and resources needed  to travel incredibly long distances to 
reach troops. Vehicles and ammunition  that were made in Germany could take 
weeks or months to reach the frontlines.  It may sound crazy, but Nazi Germany even 
had to rely pretty heavily on horses to  transport supplies to some regions due 
to a lack of vehicles and the landscape. This meant that Hitler’s war machine moved quickly 
at first but then came to a grinding halt as  supplies took forever to get to where they needed 
to go. If he was somehow able to quickly move the  resources his troops needed throughout the entire 
war, it is very likely that Hitler could have won.

The German supply line also forced Hitler 
into one of his biggest mistakes in World War II. Nazi forces needed oil, and they needed a 
lot of it. This was the main reason why Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. If he had been able to 
secure oil, steel, and food from any other source, he could have avoided starting a war with 
Russia, which would have meant Germany wouldn’t have needed to fight a war on two fronts. 
Therefore, it was the lack of resources and supply line issues that were the overarching cause 
that led to Adolf Hitler losing World War II. Perhaps the most surprising factor that 
led to Hitler’s defeat wasn’t anything to do with the military or supply chain 
at all. Instead, perhaps his obsession with magic and the occult was a driving 
factor behind some of his worst decisions. The Nazis’ fascination with the occult wasn’t just 
made up to create Indiana Jones movies. Instead,

mysticism played a pretty important role 
in Hitler’s decision-making policies. For example, the Nazis were constantly 
on the search for the Holy Grail as the promise of everlasting life was a huge draw 
for Hitler and his entourage of occultists. Hitler and the rest of the Nazi 
leadership were not Christians, but they still believed certain relics 
were imbued with mystical powers. But the search for mystical relics was only 
one aspect of Hitler’s use of the occult. He actually used pretty strange practices to 
help make some wartime decisions as well. Some accounts report that the Hitler and Nazi 
military leaders frequently used a pendulum and dowsing rod to determine the location 
of Allied warships on maps of the ocean. These devices have no actual 
magical properties or any measurable effect on determining the location 
of an object, including naval vessels. So, any decisions made using these techniques would 
be as good as if Hitler had just closed his eyes

and randomly pointed to an area on a map with his finger to determine where Allied forces were. Other important military decisions were made under the advisement of astrologers, magicians, and tarot card readers. Again, there is no scientific basis that any of these practices can have a positive effect on wartime decisions. Belief in the occult and mysticism definitely played less of a role in Hitler losing World War II than the other factors discussed in this video, but you can’t help but wonder how many of his bad decisions were actually the result of following the advice of psychics or in pursuit of some magical artifact. Now watch “Last 24 Hours of Hitler's Life.” Or check out “Hitler's Actual Plan for Taking Over America.”

Real Reason Hitler Lost World War 2

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