Hegseth Fires Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George

Move reminiscent of dismissal of Germany Army Chief of Staff Franz Halder in 1942

News of Pete Hegseth firing Army Chief of Staff, General Randy George, reminded me of Hitler firing German Army Chief of Staff, Franz Halder, in 1942.

Halder reminds me of the Athenian general, Nicias, who passionately cautioned against the disastrous Sicilian expedition in 415 BC, but then—against his better judgment—agreed to lead it after it became a fait accompli.

Halder knew there was a high probability that invading the Soviet Union would end in disaster, but—against his better judgement—he agreed to lead it anyway. However, in 1942, when Hitler insisted on seizing the southern Caucasus oil fields in Baku, Grozny, and Maikop, General Halder told him the army was stretched too thin and that the campaign was doomed to fail.

At this point, Hitler fired Halder, proclaiming that he was a “defeatist.” A year later, Halder was vindicated when Army Group A was forced into a humiliating retreat from the Southern Caucasus.

Hitler infamously spoke of how easy it would be to conquer the Soviet Union. As he put it:

We only need to kick in the door, and the whole rotten building will collapse.

Ironically, Hitler believed that Stalin’s notorious purge of the Red Army senior command in the late 1930s—most notably, the gifted General Mikhail Tukhachevsky—would greatly work to Germany’s advantage.

Later, when it became evident the German invasion of the Soviet Union was a truly fatal mistake for the National Socialist regime and all of Germany, Hitler blamed the failure on the generals, thundering that he should have—just like Stalin—purged the entire senior command before embarking on his Russian adventure. He raged that if he had assumed command from the outset instead of relying on “so-called experts,” he would have certainly prevailed.

General Randy George

Athenian General Nicias

German Army Chief of Staff Franz Halder