Lame Cherry: War is a Political Act

There is not any cause for surrender in any point of any war regardless of the military situation.

If I were to mention the Bavarian, General Franz Halder, you would be puzzled by the name, but in Halder there is the essence of all that was German in the comprehension that wars were not as the Americans who lost Vietnam deliberately a failure of politicians, but wars were the reality of political movements in action.

There is a great deal to be understood about what war is and what a political animal war is, in it is the enforcement of the wolf's fang when the growling political rhetoric does not achieve thee intended result.
War is the police state fining you for not wearing seat belts when the threat of the action does not cow the public into submission.

The question of when the last war had to be seen as lost makes no sense. A war is a political act and can be militarily hopeless for the longest time while it still offers political chances. Such chances can even come up unexpectedly, as the Seven Years War, 1756 - 1763, proved. So the correct answer remains: "A war is only lost when one gives up".
Naturally a German Soldier can not give such an answer to a foreigner, however, without putting that man-eating German militarism on trial again.

General Franz Halder
Oberkommando des Heeres

The Oberkommando des Heeres is translated as OKH as the German High Command of the Army, which was different from the OKW which was the Oberkammando der Wehrmacht which was the High Command of the Armed Forces.

General Haler was a most interesting Soldier as to bring reality to the Hitler Mystique which is a myth that Hitler made everyone tremble and he would shoot anyone who challenged him. Halder was a Soldier to Germany and that was at the heart of every German, in here was duty, here was honor, and here was Germany which was above all and through all.

On 23 November 1939, Goerdeler met with Halder to ask him to reconsider his attitude. Halder gave Goerdeler the following reasons why he wanted nothing to do with any plot to overthrow Hitler:

That the men who staged the November Revolution and signed the armistice that took Germany out of a losing war were hated all over the Reich as the "November Criminals". General Erich Ludendorff had launched the Kaiserschlacht in March 1918, which led directly to Germany's defeat in November 1918. This should have hurt Ludendorff's reputation, yet most people in Germany still considered Ludendorff one of Germany's greatest heroes. So even if Hitler were to launch an invasion of France that signally failed, most people would still support him, and unless Hitler was discredited, which seemed unlikely, anyone who acted against him to end the war would be considered a "new November Criminal". Therefore, the Army could do nothing.

That Hitler was a great leader, and there was nobody to replace him.

That most of the younger officers in the Army were extreme National Socialists who would not join a putsch.

That Hitler deserved "a last chance to deliver the German people from the slavery of English capitalism".

Finally, that "one does not rebel when face to face with the enemy".

Despite all of Goerdeler's best efforts, Halder would not change his mind.
While Halder opposed Hitler’s expanded war plans, like all officers he had taken a personal loyalty oath to Hitler. Thus, he felt unable to take direct action against the Führer. At one point, Halder thought the situation to be so desperate that he considered shooting Hitler himself.Helmuth Groscurth noted in his diary that "Amid tears, Halder had said for weeks that he had a pistol in his pocket every time he went to Hitler in order to possibly gun him down.

One did not simply or in complexity violate Germany. Anything of that was treason.

One must understand Halder's rule, as in his rules, as he disagreed with Hitler often, and was finally removed by Hitler as Halder was warning of Stalingrad and reports that Stalin had 1.8 million Bolshevik's to throw into that battle.
Once again Halder was challenging Hitler, and he survived. To Halder, Hitler was a component of Germany and not the entire nation. One could challenge a component, but not the German Nation.

During the summer of 1942, Halder told Hitler that he was underestimating the number of Soviet military units. Hitler argued that the Red Army was nearly broken. However, Halder had recently read a book about Stalin's defeat of Anton Denikin between the Don bend and what was then Tsaritsyn during the Russian Civil War. That battle resulted in Tsaritsyn being renamed Stalingrad. Halder was convinced the German Sixth Army was in the same position that Denikin was back then. Furthermore, Hitler did not like Halder's objections to sending General von Manstein’s 11th Army (then finishing the siege of Sevastopol, at the other end of the front) to assist in the attack against Leningrad. Halder also thought that an attack into the Caucasus was ill-advised. Finally, because of Halder’s disagreement with Hitler’s conduct of the war, Hitler concluded that the general no longer possessed an aggressive war mentality. The final straw came after Halder learned of an intelligence report showing Stalin could muster as many as 1.5 million men north of Stalingrad and west of the Volga. He told Hitler that the situation along the Don was a disaster waiting to happen if Stalin turned that force loose on Stalingrad. In response, Hitler gave a speech announcing that he intended to find a replacement for Halder. Halder walked out stating "I am leaving", and was retired into the "Führer Reserve" on 24 September 1942.
Halder was replaced by Kurt Zeitzler on the same day.

This all returns to the Halder creed of warfare, as one fought until there was not an army to fight. This was not Hitler's Scorched Earth or other excuses for German actions in the last years of the war, because this was about that 7 Years War, which was the First World War, of this world, a war fought in America as the French and Indian War. It was there that the Prussians fought on against all odds,and won. It was by that war, allied with England that the English and Germans prevailed to divide the world and take America as their possession from the Dutch alliance. This was the war which set the stage for 1776 in America, where another Anglo Saxon son, named George Washington would fight, lose, refuse to give up, and in the end become the Father of a Nation.

As long as there is the political solution of a military in the field one never surrenders. As was constructed in this scenario, Hitler and his staff never gave up, but worked out a final solution where German uranium and industry would be handed over to America for the war against Japan, the stealth exile and inclusion of the German Reich in the Americas, and the German wealth poured back into the United States and Europe to socialize the world as the Reich had fought for.

History is a mistress which will play for any keyboard a lie to soothe the victors of the prostrate condition of the vanquished. The Germans simply moved the political battlefield to the corporate and intelligence battlefield and obtained all of their objectives by the workings of the munitions of democracy.