Posted on 06/22/2003 10:09:56 AM PDT by SAMWolf
On June 22,1941, German troops invaded the USSR, thus beginning one of the most violent and devastating wars ever. The German army (Wehrmacht) had begun planning this invasion in July 1940, under the code name Otto, then Fritz, and finally Barbarossa. In planning the invasion, the Wehrmacht basically had the choice of two strategies: the first was to wage a war of attrition, while the second was to win by military annihilation in the tradition of Napoleon. In choosing, the Germans would have been wise to consider the consequences the latter strategy had in the invasion of Russia for Napoleon. However, the Germans and their Nazi leaders felt that defeating the Soviet Union would be fairly easy, and thus chose the strategy of military annihilation. One reason for this is that the Nazis had been stressing such traditional German concepts as Lebensraum (living space) and Drang nach Osten (push to the East), as well as promoting racism and anti-Semitism. All four concepts "justified" a war of annihilation.
The reasons Germany undertook such an invasion are simple. First, in the 1930s the Nazis had made the "struggle" against Bolshevism a "central theme in domestic and foreign policy." Thus a war against Bolshevik Russia was merely the logical outcome of this belief. Secondly, Germany was still at war with Britain, and Hitler believed that if the Soviet Union could be defeated quickly, the British would be more willing to accept peace terms. Moreover, the Germans had had great success and felt that the USSR. would be "one more lightening victory, particularly fought against the inferior races of the East. Author Alan Bullock gives a much more practical explanation. He states that, "Hitler invaded Russia for the simple but sufficient reason that he had always meant to establish the foundations of his thousand-year Reich by the annexation of the territory between the Vistula and the Urals." These reasons justified, at least in the minds of the Nazi and Wehrmacht leadership, tactics which are today still considered barbaric and immoral.
In the end, the Germans were defeated in Russia, which bore the brunt of German aggression in World War II. It is generally accepted that the German army had the bulk of its troops, as well as its best troops in the East. For these reasons, many consider it Communist Russia who really "won" the Second World War. If the Soviet Union would have fallen quickly, Britain really might have sued for peace with Germany, for the United States had not yet entered the war (and would not for six months after Barbarossa was underway). Thus, the reasons Germany did not achieve victory in Russia are of great importance. One reason is of course, the determination of people of the Soviet Union; another is the problem of fighting a war on two fronts. However, the biggest problem for Germany in the East was the Germans themselves. Germany lost the war in the Soviet Union through bad military planning, much of which was the result of Nazi ideology. The Germans failed to fully exploit the discontent with Stalin and Communism amongst the indigenous population, and even diminished what support they (the Germans) did have since they were convinced they could achieve victory through annihilating the enemy.
One reason the invasion failed is that Hitler himself got too involved in the decision making (especially for one whose military experience consisted of running messages as a corporal). The Army High Command considered the capture of Moscow essential. Former General Wladyslaw Anders, of the Polish army who fought both Soviet and German troops between 1939 and 1945, states categorically that the capture of Moscow, which was the center of railway and communications networks, and of Soviet authority, would have made the Red Army tactic of retreating into the interior "impracticable." Despite this, Hitler did not heed their advice, and put Moscow on a level of secondary importance. Hitler, extremely overconfident, felt the German army could defeat the USSR. in two or three months, and therefore did not adequately prepare for a winter campaign. As Bullock notes:
From early November the Germans were fighting in sub-zero temperatures, intensified by a bitter wind, the few hours of daylight and the long nights, and fighting in an unfamiliar land against an enemy inured to the conditions, warmly clothed and equipped for winter operations.
Here it is easy to see that not only was Hitler's military strategy faulty, but his planning (or lack of it) forced the army to endure conditions which were extreme, to say the least.
True it would be unfeasible for the German Imperial army to take all Russia but Russian morale was gone. Too many charges with sticks against German machine guns with no success wore down their morale.
Germany had basically won in the West too. Unfortunately Wilson intervened and as a result the greatest civilization on the European continent since the Roman Empire was defeated and Versailles was imposed. The commies were left in power with a nullified Brest Litosk treaty. The Weimar state was almost guaranteed to be a wreck and Hitler's rise became possible, the Arabs and all sorts of other turd world states got independence from their more efficient colonial rulers as a result of the self determination precedent.
America fought WWI on the wrong side. The world would be harmoniously divided up between Britain( yes I think the British empire would have done better if the Kaiser won), America, and the United States if Germany won. Wer'd also be much farther ahead technologically.
Some of the most evil people ever spawned.
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The Russians I hope you refer to. My mother’s story, not in line with much of history.
She was born in Lithuania, 1932, she is still living. The Russian German pact prior to the war gave half Lithuania to the Soviets....hundreds of thousands were disappearing, sent to Soviet Gulags... she stayed up nights watching for the Soviet secret police to come to her farm.....when suddenly one day the German Army pulled up to her farm, they took half of their livestock and paid them in money....they were the “ Saviors”,flash forward to 1944 when the advanced Soviets rolled up- they stayed in the barn, raping, then hung 3 nuns by their necks from the rafters....her family left ( fled) the next morning, ended up in Dresden in February, survived the bombings, ended up in an Austrian Refugee camp, then made their way to America in 1946. The Soviets were far, far worse than the Germans.....argue away, but I went back with her in 1993 when the Soviets pulled out of Lithuania and the hatred for the Soviets was still there.
I’m not trying to diminish what Hitler and the Nazi’s did, just wanted to show that Stalin wasn’t much better and I have no doubt that if Stalin had conquered the countries Hitler did, he would have also perpetrated mass murder on the populations.
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50 percent of Lithuania was deported to Siberia by Stalin and the communists. Reference my post above- my mother’s story.....Stalin was far, far worse than Hitler, at least in the Baltic countries.
My comment was on the list Phil had posted, Pol Pot, Stalin, etc. We have a similar story. My husband’s mother born in Germany in 1930, bombed out of Cologne, my husband’s father born in Warsaw in 1927, fought as a teenager in the Warsaw uprising of 44 and like the other survivors, taken prisoner, freed by the British. Recruited by the Americans to patrol the American sector of Germany, met my mother-in-law and emigrated to the USA in 1949. Lots of horror stories they can also tell of the Russians.
Thank you for sharing your story.
True. Thanks.
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