Replies

Hitler very much believed in total war. Take a look at the activities on the Eastern front. Claiming that Hitler didn't believe in total war, and that as a result the Germans would not build heavy bombers,

The Eastern Front became a locus of total war because (1) Russia was not about to honor the Geneva convention, (2) Russia practiced a scorched earth policy in retreat under the initial attack, especially in the occupied countries of the Baltic States and Ukraine, and (3) the conflict was a death struggle of two opposed ideologies - Naziism and Bolshevism - with concomittant expectations that ideological partisans (Commissars and Waffen SS men) on both sides would be shot on the spot at capture as criminals against humanity.

It obviously does not make sense for Germany to purposefully destroy a country it is attempting to occupy and exploit economically, nor was this the German practice in the attack.

If Hitler really believed in total war, he would have put the German economy on a war footing long before 1944, which was the only year it actually ran as such.

ignores much of the actions the SS and others took in German occupied Europe.

Arresting and detaining or killing ideological dissidents against Naziism hardly seems like a practice of total war. This is much more closely related to Police State population control theories. Total war is the total mobilization of the population and resources of the country in a fight in which every person, animal, and building in the opponents territory becomes a fair target.

Hitler's war was a mainly idealogical war. By "total war" I was meaning a war where there are no limits to what is acceptable to attack. You meant a war where close to 100% of the people are involved in some sort of war enterprise.

Hitler couldn't start doing your meaning of total war right away. He had promised the German people revenge on their enemies for a relatively cheap price. If he had started off demanding full mobilization, the Germans would have never rolled into Poland. The plan was to keep the general populace fat and happy and gradually raise up the mobilization as needed. When the ill conceived eastern front started, the manpower and resources needed for the effort quickly grew.

Yes, the Soviets practiced slash and burn delaying tactics. Which they have been doing since at least the Middle ages. When you have a whole lot of land to retreat and regroup through, that works rather well. (Never start a land war in Asia)

As for purposely destroying a country they were trying to conquer, you realize that the ideology of the Nazis was to do just that don't you? They wanted to populate the Ukraine and other states with Germanic feudal lords. They tried to wipe out any previous history of the indigenous peoples, and would blow up cultural landmarks and infrastructure because it "wasn't Aryan".

Did that make much sense? Nope. If the German army had tried a different tact with the people they might of caused a revolution in the Soviet states! The Germans were first greeted as liberators in the Ukraine, but when they started to try to "Aryanize" the country it only fueled the partisan movement. In fact, Stalin feared the partisans, because he realized that they would probably rise up against him next.