When a leader overplays hand

At what point does a leader overplay his or her hand? Michael Blumenthal, a Jew who fled Hitler’s Germany as a boy and later became secretary of the US treasury under President Jimmy Carter, tackles this question in his fascinating book, From Exile to Washington: A Memoir of Leadership in the Twentieth Century.

Unravelling the missteps that led to history’s most extensive human calamity, Blumenthal describes a situation of great relevance for present-day South Africa.

Hitler began to habitually violate agreements and treaty obligations, yet no one dared to challenge him because he was initially popular. This absence of restraints inflated his ego and fed his sense of infallibility, writes Blumenthal. Those around him failed to grasp the danger he posed.

In the mid-1930s he ordered his troops, at two hours notice and against the advice of his generals, to occupy the Rhineland – a designated no military zone. Amazingly, not even France or England moved to stop him.

That was a watershed moment, says Blumenthal, the best chance to stop him – and do so with ease. But no one did.

The disastrous consequence of failing to curtail Hitler’s appetite for conquest was that his image as a tactician soared and he became triumphantly “gleeful”. He systematically began decimating civil liberties and undertook a diabolical programme to exterminate Jews and other minority groups.

Still there was no challenge. His supporters were busy being enriched by the Nazi party’s entanglement with arms merchants and other dark operators in big business. They showed no concern about the brutality manifesting under their noses.

By the time 1939 arrived Hitler was, to all intents and purposes, riding high. He had survived crisis after crisis, succeeding bizarrely in each misadventure in extending his reach. He had just managed to dismember Czechoslovakia and his self-confident soldiers were everywhere, buoyant in their uniforms. Hitler seemed unstoppable.

But, writes Blumenthal, at that point any faith in Hitler and optimism about Germany’s future was misplaced. “In time it would become clear that, against all appearances to the contrary, Hitler’s brutal seizure of Czechoslovakia had not gone down well ... it was not another in his long string of successful territorial expansions, a fait accompli accepted by a feckless West.”

Hitler had again, against the advice of his own generals and diplomats, invaded someone else. This time the effect was to cause “the scales to fall from the eyes” of other European leaders. In short, Hitler had finally overplayed his hand and set course for the deadliest conflict in history.

Up to 80 million people were killed because one flawed, initially tactically cautious man bought into the myth of his own greatness and was given free rein to pursue his ambitions. The world’s biggest war was therefore, the culmination of a series of moral breaches, increasing in scale of greed, delusion and callous recklessness. And finally these brought Hitler down, along with a chunk of the world’s population.

The question of when it is that a leader overplays his hand could be directed to the president of this country. And the lesson of history – of the need for people to say “no further” before it is too late – to its citizens.