More News from the Gröfez

The name Gröfaz, says Professor Craig in his well-written history of modern Germany, “is ugly enough to belong to some mythical monster, some twisted goblin embodying evil.” It was the anagram of the title “Greatest Fieldmarshall of All Times,” which an adulating Chief of Staff bestowed on his Führer, an anagram used less reverentially by those officers who considered Hitler’s strategy ruinous.

The army, for which Hitler had done so much, conspired against him, and the German people, to whom he wanted to give mastery over the world, went into his war without enthusiasm or conviction. Diligent research in diaries, vigilante reports, and morale-building instructions to the Nazi propagandists reveal th...