A Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler's Decision Making as Commander in Chief

This study is an attempt to analyze Hitler's decision making during World War II. Based on detailed historical sources, we specifically analyzed Hitler's decision-making failures and investigated the possible causes for these failures following theories on cognition, motivation, and action regulation. Failures such as underestimation of an opponent and overestimation of one's own capabilities, the displacement of responsibility for failures on scapegoats, the substitution of easily solvable problems for difficult ones, methodism in decision making, and lack of self-reflection are discussed and detailed examples are provided. These failures ultimately functioned to maintain Hitler's self-confidence. We integrate the failures into a model that explains the origins of Hitler's decision making. Although Hitler's behavior could certainly be judged as “evil,” the analysis goes further and thus can help leaders learn from these failures.