Schizophrenia

Like a beaten boxer reeling toward a knockout the German Army had seen the blow coming. It was powerless to parry it. The punch struck hard from the Mediterranean, and the southern coast of France became a new front to be fought by an army already presenting a strange study in military schizophrenia.

The Germans had violated almost every cardinal doctrine of their cherished idols--Clausewitz, Schlieffen, Frederick the Great--and they were paying a fearful price. But for the present, as if unaware of their grotesque lurchings, they fought on.

Their fighting no longer showed brilliance, resourcefulness, cohesive planning or even much sense. Their resistance now chiefly had the values of stubbornness and desperation. They fought because fighting and obedience to orders were bred in their blood & bones.

In northern France they faced a crushing defeat, tried to stave it off by witless, expensive gambits without hope of success. In Italy, where the battle stood temporarily in stalemate, they had latterly shown no tactic but to retreat, fight, retreat again. On the Eastern Front they fought as if salvation depended only on spending everything they had left.

Somewhere close at hand in this strange split-personality career was physical disintegration. The attack from the Mediterranean was another complication thrown in by the Allies to bring it on.

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