Posted on 06/13/2005 3:48:10 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
It was an enourmously stressful time, knowing that the same incompetent corrupt administration might continue on unchecked.
Hitler was NOT too weak to conquer the Soviet Union. Hitler just did some heavy miscalculations, one of which was to assume that Stalin wouldn't send millions as cannon fodder in Stalingrad; and he he had too huge an ego to let his generals handle the operation. Hitler was very smart as far as managing lower level combat, but he knew little about total army movements and macrostrategy.
Hitler had no plan of engaging the USA into it. Hell, he didn't even want to engage Britain in it. Britain engaged in it herself in defense of Poland. Hitler had always dreamt of an alliance with Britain (read about Ribbentropp's activities in England and read Mein Kampf) and didn't care much about overseas colonies, accepting the British empire as part of global culture.
I would love to see some evidence that Hitler wanted to drag the USA into a war. Sounds very far fetched to me.
And this is coming from a Sephardi Jew, not a Nazi apologist.
"Hitler had always dreamt of an alliance with Britain (read about Ribbentropp's activities in England and read Mein Kampf) and didn't care much about overseas colonies, accepting the British empire as part of global culture. "
You are right on - few realize that Hitler rose to power as an anticommunist , stemming from the hundreds of thousands of mennonites and fundamental germans that were killed in the famine genocides of 1921 and 1932. His cult creed also demanded "Livingspace" that lay to the east (not the west).
The French and British were also stronger, but that didn't save them. Hitler made the fatal mistake of settling for economic goals in the Ukraine in August of 1941, rather than directing an attack on Moscow from Smolensk to finish off the Soviet State apparatus in the original campaign timetable of 3 months, and only then turning south to create a line of control from Arkangelsk to Astrakhan. Moscow was the nerve center of Soviet telephony, railroads, roads (such as they were) and other means of communication and control. A rump Soviet state might have survived beyond the Urals after this fall of Moscow, but it would have had little power without the manpower of the Russian heartland.
Bingo. Had Hitler allowed his Generals to run Barbarossa, the whole thing WAS winnable - albeit at a cost far, far greater than the Germans had initially thought (having underestimated the number of Russian divisions by - what - half???)
Of course, the thing that (besides Hitler's micromanagement) guaranteed the failure of Barbarossa was the (mostly) Serbian coup-de-tat in Yugoslavia in March 1941, which repudiated the recently signed pact with Hitler, and drove him to delay Barbarossa by a crucial month while he exacted "Operation Retribution" - the conquest of Yugoslavia.
That month made the difference between the Panzers rolling into Moscow in October/November - instead of freezing to a standstill at the outskirts of Moscow in late December 1941.
"A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron."
Joseph Stalin
Birds of feather...
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