Inordinately ambitious, Schorner was also an able leader, but feared as well as admired by his men because of their suspicion that they would pay with their lives for his offensive zeal. It nevertheless brought him rapid advancement in the German Army, which accelerated as prominence allowed him to display his ostentatious Nazism and ready agreement to obey impossible orders—which both commended him to HITLER. By July 1944 he had been appointed to command Army Group North, at the head of which he remained unprotestingly until January 1945, though it had by then been surrounded for several months without reason or hope of rescue. He then moved to the command of Army Group Center in Czechoslovakia, but in the last ten days of the war, following Hitler’s suicide, inherited the title of Commander in Chief, which he had always thought his due.