It could have—and had it, that almost certainly would have been the end of Hitler, after which history might have taken quite a different and brighter turn than it did, for the dictator could never have survived such a fiasco. Hitler himself admitted as much. “A retreat on our part,” he conceded later, “would have spelled collapse.”25 It was Hitler’s iron nerves alone, which now, as during many crises that lay ahead, saved the situation and, confounding the reluctant generals, brought success. But it was no easy moment for him.
