Hoth mainly served in various staff positions in World War I, and after the conflict's conclusion continued to do so in the armed forces of the newly formed Weimar Republic.

Like several other Reichswehr officers such as Heinz Guderian and Georg-Hans Reinhardt, Hoth hoped that a Nazi-led government would allow him to push through his ideas in regards to greater motorization and armoured warfare.

[28] In the aftermath of the takeover, however, Hoth (by then promoted to Oberst) clashed with Nazi Party officials when he criticised the murder of Communists and Social Democrats in Braunschweig, resulting in his transfer to Lübeck.

[29] According to his own account, Hoth studied the ideology of the Nazi Party in some depth over the next years; historian Johannes Hürter regarded this as quite unusual for higher-ranking German officers, most of whom believed that they could remain apolitical.

[42] Initially confined to the bridgeheads due to the resistance organized by the 102nd Fortress Division,[43] the XV Motorised Corps broke through and was pushing into the French 9th Army's left flank by 14/15 May.

[44] French counter-attacks near Maubeuge on 18 May temporarily threatened Hoth's advance, but ultimately failed to stop the XV Motorised Corps,[45] allowing it to capture Cambrai.

[46] In the Battle of Dunkirk, Hoth's corps broke through the British Expeditionary Force's defensive line at La Bassée Canal on 27 May,[47] thus assisting in encircling the French 1st Army under René Prioux at Lille.

[50][51] The German units, including XV Motorised Corps, exploited the breakthrough to occupy Rouen[52] and encircle a large Allied force at Saint-Valery-en-Caux, capturing about 10,000 British soldiers.

[62] From a moral and ideological standpoint, Hoth believed that Russia had been overtaken by "Jewish Bolshevism", causing the country to turn away from its European heritage, transforming it into an expansionist, Asiatic, and despotic state as well as setting it on an unavoidable collision course with Germany.

[84] Hoth's force and the 9th Army successfully captured two bridges across the Dnieper east of Kholm-Zhirkovsky and were just 60 kilometres (37 mi) from Vyazma, close to achieving another encirclement, when they were stopped by counter-attacks ordered by General Ivan Konev on 3 October.

Even though the appointment as 17th Army head was a promotion, Hoth unsuccessfully asked to remain with the 3rd Panzer Group; Fedor von Bock also expressed his opposition, not wanting to lose an "outstanding armoured commander".

The document began with a relatively lengthy discussion of history, decrying Jewish influence on Europe, before extolling recent German victories as part of a mission to "save European culture from Asiatic barbarism" and promising the impending collapse and complete "annihilation" of the Soviet Union, an "enslaved and joyless country".

[98] Finally, he gave the following directive to troops under his command:[99] Every sign of active or passive resistance or any sort of machinations on the part of Jewish-Bolshevik agitators are to be immediately and pitilessly exterminated ...

Their extermination is a dictate of our own survival.Hürter argued that this order reflected that Hoth was fully aware of the ongoing Holocaust, and evidently urged his troops to kill Jews not just due to their alleged support for anti-German elements, but also to prevent them from taking revenge in the future.

[105] In his diaries, Hoth expressed his belief that leniency was the main reason for resistance in the rear areas; accordingly the German security forces should exterminate any opposition without mercy.

[130] This reorganization was received poorly by the 4th Panzer Army, as its members had expected to be used in the pursuit of Soviet forces over open terrain into the Caucasus instead of having to take part in urban warfare.

[135] By mid-September, the 4th Panzer Army attacked Stalingrad's concrete grain elevator; despite greatly outnumbering the defenders, the Germans only captured the location after an extended battle on 21 September.

[142] As the Soviet troops advanced and threatened to encircle the 6th Army, Hitler ordered it to "stand firm" with Hoth being assigned to assist Paulus in keeping the railway lines open.

[157] Exhaustion of both the Wehrmacht and the Red Army coupled with the loss of mobility due to the onset of the spring rasputitsa resulted in the cessation of operations for both sides by mid-March.

[152] Despite this, both Hoth as well as Werner Kempf, commander of the eponymous army detachment, decided not to prepare for obstacle breaching at Kursk, assuming that the German engineers would remove Soviet minefields without much difficulty.

[161] When Operation Citadel started, Hoth's divisions, reinforced by the II SS Panzer Corps under Paul Hausser, penetrated several Soviet defensive lines, before being brought to a halt in the Battle of Prokhorovka.

[21] Forczyk argued that the German failures in the battle of the Dnieper had resulted from both Hitler's interferences in tactical matters as well as the inability of the Wehrmacht commanders, including Hoth, to anticipate Soviet actions.

[185] The International Military Tribunal gave the following verdict against Hoth:[184] His testimony tends to show that his subordinates should have cathoderay-tubes in their brains, enabling them to grasp the ideas that resulted from his honourable character.

In his view, accounts of the conflict should not focus on defeats and instead maintain a "heroic image" of the Wehrmacht in order to protect the ability of the Bundeswehr to motivate potential officers to enlist.

[196] In addition, Hoth, Fritz Bayerlein, and several ex-SS officers worked closely with Paul Carell, assisting him to write a book titled Unternehmen Barbarossa (published 1963).

[203] Reviewer Raymond L. Garthoff argued that the English translation of Unternehmen Barbarossa, called Hitler Moves East: 1941-1943, was a "first-class military historical narrative", though exhibited a pro-Wehrmacht bias and tended to "skip over more reprehensible German accomplishments".

[204] Michael Parrish was more critical, characterizing the book as an attempt "to glorify the German Army, and heap blame on that most convenient of all scapegoats, Adolf Hitler", while also suffering from factual errors and deliberate omissions.

Their first post-war meeting was organized by their common acquaintance, Friedrich Foertsch,[201] and de Maizière discovered that they shared the belief that tank units should form the core of the West German military.

[198] Researcher Linden Lyons, translator of Panzer Operations, argued that Hoth "was undoubtedly one of the most brilliant tank commanders of the Second World War, yet this is overshadowed by his strong enthusiasm for the expansionist and racist ideology of Nazism".

[210] For instance, Hoth documented Hitler's speech to his high-ranking officers before Operation Barbarossa in much more detail than any other source, outlining German strategic and ideological aims.