German war production without war with West

[stona]

Hitler is not reading a script in that meeting. Nobody who was present has ever suggested that. He may have had notes, but that would not be his usual style.

Of interest to this thread, bearing in mind that this was a pitch to the Finns, is not the justification for early set backs (our weapons don't work in winter, the Italians are a great misfortune etc) but Hitler's attitude to Molotov and the USSR.

Hitler is clear that he would have liked to attack the USSR in 1940 after meeting with Molotov as he suspected that the Soviets intended to attack Romania leaving Germany helpless in 1941. He argues that this is why he played for time in 1940, as he moved his forces East. Hitler clearly states that no attack on the USSR was possible before the "spring of 1941" and that Romanian oil was of paramount importance to Germany. The potential loss of Romania and subsequent lack of oil he describes as "my big worry/concern."

It is absolutely clear, from his own mouth, that at least from 1940 Hitler was planning for, and intended to, attack the USSR. At no point during this monologue does he even mention Britain. He does mention the "bloody fighting" in the desert which is dividing his forces. This of course was caused by British and Commonwealth forces.

Cheers
Steve

 

[pattle]

Parsifal. I thought that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was basically a carve up of Eastern Europe between Russia and Germany and to the best of my knowledge both sides mostly kept to the terms of this carve up. Stalin don't forget had a grievance with the West for their involvement in Russia after the First World War, the West had sent an army to Russia to fight against the Bolsheviks.

 

[stona]

Stalin don't forget had a grievance with the West for their involvement in Russia after the First World War,

True, though diplomatic relations were restored in 1924.

Cheers

Steve

 

[bbear]

I didn't mean to imply a written script or notes. But it does appear to be rehearsed, learned, non-spontaneous.

In any commercial dealings I've had with 'partners', often suppliers who like to call themselves partners, there is a clash of interests so interpersonal trust is vital. I'd expect a proposal about an important matter to be openly labelled as such, and put formally to all representatives. If you make use of personal contact to 'sound out' the reaction, you are asking for a confidence to be borne. That's not a thing you do with junior staff present as in this case. For Pete's sake it was in a car, anyone might hear - and did.

For the same reason you never 'schmooze' a true partner, never abuse casual contact - it's disrespectful.

And if you are going to schmooze - at least do it well. Any one who dominates the conversation to put an argument under cover of casual talk is duplicitous and hasn't mastered the brief sufficiently to deal with an open exchange.

All in all if any suppliers rep treated me that way i'd know straight off to disbelieve everything they said and not touch with ten-foot pole. But I'm only a ham so I must be wrong.

 

[stona]

I don't think that it's a matter of right or wrong

I do think it's a bit risky to apply our norms to a personality as dysfunctional as Hitler's. The monologue he inflicted on Mannerheim is pretty typical of the sort of ramblings he inflicted on his acolytes, as recorded (in shorthand) in his table talks.

Here's his plan for Russia and the Baltic states.

"We'll take the southern part of the Ukraine, especially the Crimea, and make it an exclusively German colony. There'll be no harm in pushing out the population that's there now. The
German colonist will be the soldier-peasant, and for that I'll take professional soldiers, whatever their line may have been previously. In this way we shall dispose, moreover, of a body of courageous N.C.O.'s, whenever we need them. In future we shall have a standing army of a million and a half to two million men. With the discharge of soldiers after twelve years of service, we shall have thirty to forty thousand men to do what we like with every year. For those of them who are sons of peasants, the Reich will put at their disposal a completely equipped farm. The soil costs us nothing, we have only the house to build. The peasant's son will already have paid for it by his twelve years' service. During the last two years he will already be equipping himself for agriculture. One single condition will be imposed upon him: that he may not marry a townswoman, but a countrywoman who, as far as possible, will not have begun to live in a town with him. These soldier-peasants will be given arms, so that at the slightest danger they can be at their posts when we summon them. That's how the ancient Austria used to keep its Eastern peoples under control. By the same token, the soldier-peasant will make a perfect school teacher. The N.C.O. is an ideal teacher for the little country boy. In any case, this N.C.O. will make a better teacher than our present teacher will make an officer !
Thus we shall again find in the countryside the blessing of numerous families. Whereas the present law of rural inheritance dispossesses the younger sons, in future every peasant's son will be sure of having his patch of ground. And thirty to forty thousand peasants a year — that's enormous !
In the Baltic States, we'll be able to accept as colonists some Dutch, some Norwegians — and even, by individual arrangement, some Swedes."

That reeks of ideology rather than practical opportunism to me! So does this, which is self explanatory.

"The reason why I'm not worrying about the struggle on the Eastern Front is that everything that happens there is developing in the way that I've always thought desirable. At the out break of the first World War, many people thought we ought to look towards the mineral riches of the West, the raw materials of the colonies, and the gold. For my part, I always thought that having the sun in the East was the essential thing for us, and to-day I have no reason to modify my point of view."

Racial ideology.

"We must no longer allow Germans to emigrate to America. On the contrary, we must attract the Norwegians, the Swedes, the Danes and the Dutch into our Eastern territories. They'll become members of the German Reich. Our duty is methodically to pursue a racial policy. We're compelled to do so, if only to combat the degeneration which is beginning to threaten us by reason of unions that in a way are consanguineous.
As for the Swiss, we can use them, at the best, as hotelkeepers."

He had views on Britain and the USA too, displaying his usual fine grasp of foreign affairs.

"England and America will one day have a war with one another, which will be waged with the greatest hatred imaginable. One of the two countries will have to disappear."

In fact the USA won without a fight

I would suggest that a racist ideology was the foundation on which Nazism was built and informed Hitler's actions throughout the life of the national socialist government in Germany and WW2.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Tante Ju]

Its historic romanticism, a mix of viking nobility of the Rus and german settlers of the middle ages, dipped into a sauce of the Aryan Man's Burden.

 

[stona]

Its historic romanticism, a mix of viking nobility of the Rus and german settlers of the middle ages, dipped into a sauce of the Aryan Man's Burden.

It's an ideology built on racist mumbo-jumbo. But given that it comes from the mouth of the man who controlled Germany and her armed forces, it is extremely dangerous mumbo-jumbo, and a lot of people (not just Germans) bought into it.
There are a substantial number of young people today, in Europe and elsewhere, who buy into this sort of nonsense. We should know better.
Cheers
Steve

 

[bbear]

"I don't think that it's a matter of right or wrong

I do think it's a bit risky to apply our norms to a personality as dysfunctional as Hitler's. " Thanks for that, steve - I take it seriously.

We may also be at risk of being off topic.

So bearing in mind: Nazi ideology, Hitlers diplomatic (lack of) finesse and leadership style, Russian winter, Stalingrad, logistics and everything else: What would be the effect on German production of a peace in the West concluded in March 1941? (just an offer you understand

 

[stona]

Just been reading a bit more of Hitler's table talk. I haven't ploughed through it all for several years.

Here's what he said on 17th September 1941.

"Last year I needed great spiritual strength to take the decision to attack Bolshevism.
I had to foresee that Stalin might pass over to the attack in the course of 1941. It was therefore necessary to get started without delay, in order not to be forestalled — and that wasn't possible before June."

There in a nut shell are both the ideological and pragmatic reasons why the USSR had just been invaded. The talk concluded by a nice elucidation of the driving ideology.

"The struggle for the hegemony of the world will be decided in favour of Europe by the possession of the Russian space. Thus Europe will be an impregnable fortress, safe from all threat of blockade. All this opens up economic vistas which, one may think, will incline the most liberal of the Western democrats towards the New Order."

And

"It's not a mere chance that the inventor of anarchism was a Russian. Unless other peoples, beginning with the Vikings, had imported some rudiments of organisation into Russian
humanity, the Russians would still be living like rabbits. One cannot change rabbits into bees or ants. These insects have the faculty of living in a state of society — but rabbits haven't."

Ideology. A little later.

"It's absurd to try to suppose that the frontier between the two separate worlds of Europe and Asia is marked by a chain of not very high mountains — and the long chain of the Urals is no more than that. One might just as well decree that the frontier is marked by one of the great Russian rivers. No, geographically Asia penetrates into Europe without any sharp break.
The real frontier is the one that separates the Germanic world from the Slav world. It's our duty to place it where we want it to be."

"It's inconceivable that a higher people should painfully exist on a soil too narrow for it, whilst amorphous masses, which contribute nothing to civilisation, occupy infinite tracts of a
soil that is one of the richest in the world. We painfully wrest a few metres from the sea, we torment ourselves cultivating marshes — and in the Ukraine an inexhaustibly fertile soil, with a thickness, in places, often metres of humus, lies waiting for us."


Cheers

Steve

 

[parsifal]

I suspect that Hitler wrote to Mussolini exactly what Mussolini wanted to read. Comments like those need to be taken in the context of Italy's position vis a vis the British in the Mediterranean.

Theres no evidence to suggest that Hitler was not making honest comments to Mussolini either. And plenty of circumstantial evidence to say that he was being up front. if he was trying to win over or sooth the italians by that letter, it was a terrible miscalculation. many in the italian leadership never forgave the germans for their duplicity and disingenuous treatment of the italians (even Mussolini was insulted by it, though he was so beholden to hitler by then that his displeasure counted for nothing really) over the russian invasion. From Italy's POV it was a disaster on many levels, not least because it completely jeapardised their oil and grain imports from the Soviets.

None of the Nazi leadership had a very good grasp of foreign affairs. I don't believe that Hitler or any of his panjandrum had the faintest inkling of the real relationship between Britain and the USSR in the late 1930s.

This is also completely irelevant. Nazi decisions were seldom based on hard facts. hitler repeatedly and disastrously would rely on his "intuition" and "instincts" to guide his decisions about a whole range of issues. What was important isnt what was true, or what Hitler knew. It was what he believed, even if (as was often the case) such beliefs bordered on the delusional

I'd also like to see some evidence that Britain was working for this alliance with the USSR.

Why. its completely irrelevant what they were actually working on, or how successful they were. After the Soviet betrayal in 1939, relations between Britain and Russia were icy, to say the least. Thats not the issue. the issue was how hitler, and his cronies perceived the continued British resistance, and why they remained so intransigent and defiant. Hitlers letter to Mussolini provides a lot of evidence as to what hitler was thinking, and whilst that may be an inconvenient truth for those of us who choose to believe that Hitler was following some grand strategic plan, its a bit hard to try and subvert what many perceive of irefutable evidence to the contrary.

Despite the frozen relationship, Britain gave repeated warnings to the russians of the impending invasion, as far as british intelligence knew about it, and without compromising ULTRA. Stalin, like all the warnings he received, ignored these pieces of advice. There was no formal entente with the Russians until June 1942, but in reality the first British aid convoys started from september 1941 from memory. this is not the actions of a Britain indifferent to making some kind of collective security arrangement with the russians. if they didnt care, they wouldnt have bothered talking to them at all. but they did, and Hitler must have known at least some of those goings on i am sure. Being the paranoid delusional man that he was, what sort of conspiracy thinking would the following have on Hitler

1) Absolute defiance and intransigence by the British
2) Long term economic destruction frombombing and the blockade
3) Deep suspicion of a possible Soviet-British entente.

Hitler knew he had to deal with either Britain or russia to dominate Europe. He convinced himself that he couldnt control the British, was disdainful of the Soviets, and saw German strength in its land capability. these are the factors that drove hom toward an attack on the Russians, not some long term grand scheme that he had had since 1919.

We need to take a look at Soviet relations in the interwar year to gain some understanding as to why this notion that hitler "always wanted to attack the Soviets" is the total crock that it is.

The young Soviet Union struggled with foreign relations, being the first communist-run country in the world. The old great powers were not pleased to see the established world order rocked by an ideology claiming to be the harbinger of a world revolution. Indeed, many had actively opposed the very establishment of Soviet rule by meddling in the Russian Civil War. Slowly the international community had to accept, however, that the Soviet Union was there to stay. By 1933, France, Germany, Great Britain and Japan, along with many other countries had recognized the Soviet government and established diplomatic ties. On November 16, 1933, even the United States joined the list. Thus, by the 1930s, Soviet Russia was not quite the international pariah that it had been. And one of its earliest friends had been, you guessed it, germany, including the Nazis

In the immediate post war period after Versaille, the main enemy of the Soviets was in fact France. Franco-Soviet relations were initially hostile because the USSR officially opposed the World War I peace settlement of 1919 that France emphatically championed. While the Soviet Union was interested in conquering territories in Eastern Europe, France was determined to protect the fledgling nations there. This led to a rosy German–Soviet relationship in the 1920s. However, Adolf Hitler's foreign policy centered on a massive seizure of Eastern European though not directly or overtly Russian lands for Germany's own ends, and this caused a natural souring of Soviet-German relations. When Hitler pulled out of the World Disarmament Conference in Geneva in 1933, the threat hit home to both the USSR and France. Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov reversed Soviet policy regarding the Paris Peace Settlement, leading to a Franco-Soviet rapprochement. In May 1935, the USSR concluded pacts of mutual assistance with France and Czechoslovakia; the Comintern was also instructed to form a united front with leftist parties against the forces of Fascism. The pact was undermined, however, by strong ideological hostility to the Soviet Union and the Comintern's new front in France, Poland's refusal to permit the Red Army on its soil, France's defensive military strategy, and a continuing Soviet interest in patching up relations with Germany all left the Soviets quite isolated. Germany under Hitler were keen to also seek rapprochment with the Soviets, as Hitlers immediate aims were not overtly aggressive toward the Soviets. He had other fish to fry....

The Soviet Union also supplied military aid to the Republicans in Spain, but held back somewhat, mostly to retain a reasonable relationship with the germans. Its support of the government also gave the Republicans a Communist taint in the eyes of anti-Bolsheviks in the UK and France, weakening the calls for Anglo-French intervention in the war.

Hitler actually feared the Soviets at this time, and in his own version of containment the Nazi government promulgated an Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan and later Italy and various Eastern European countries (such as Hungary), ostensibly to suppress Communist activity but more realistically to forge an alliance against the USSR. This shows the clear intent of the germans to forge a mass alliance against the Soviets,but Germany's own aggression and transgressiopns completely destroyed that idea beyond the abject german lackey states of eastern europe

When Nazi Germany entered Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union's agreement with Czechoslovakia failed to amount to anything because of Poland and Romania's refusals to permit a Soviet intervention. Things were not going too well for the Russians in foreign relations, not least because getting into bed with the Russians was distinctly unheathy for their partners. Despite this on April 17, 1939, Stalin suggested a revived military alliance with the UK and France. The Anglo-French military mission sent in August, however, failed to impress Soviet officials; it was sent by a slow ocean-going ship and consisted of low-ranking officers who gave only vague details about their militaries.

However, this is all evidence that alliance between the west (which by late 1940 was reduced to just Britain and her empire) was a possibility if the right circumstances existed. this had to be known to the Germans, and given their experiences in WWI had to have been a significant influence in their decision to liquidate the USSR. However if such risk no longer existed because of a British capitulation, there is every reason to suggest the Germans would demoobilise (as they did partially after France) and not get into another or further wars for the time being.

 

[stona]

So the British and Soviets were not working on any kind of anti-Nazi alliance by your own admission.
Why should we imagine that Hitler thought they were. There is absolutely zero evidence in any off the German documents issued around "Barbarossa" or in anything Hitler said at the time or thereafter that eliminating the USSR as a potential ally of Britain informed his decision to attack the USSR in any meaningful way. It may have been a beneficial side effect of that decision, had things turned out differently, but was not an ideological or even military consideration at the time. Britain comes up more often than just about any other single topic in the table talk, but never in that context.

Incidentally the views expressed to Mussolini are very different to his private view of Italy's capabilities. A state he thought only "half fascist."

His position regarding Britain was always equivocal and also driven by his ideology. You cannot understand Hitler if you are not prepared to take a rather unpleasant trip into his mind.

"It's a queer business, how England slipped into the war. The man who managed it was Churchill, that puppet of the Jewry that pulls the strings. Next to him, the bumptious Eden, a money-grubbing clown; the Jew who was Minister for War, Hore-Belisha; then the Eminence grise of the Foreign Office — and after that some other Jews and business men. With these last, it often happens that the size of their fortune is in inverse ratio to the size of their brains. Before the war even began, somebody managed to persuade them it would last at least three years, and would therefore be a good investment for them. The people, which has the privilege of possessing such a government, was not asked for its opinion."

"We must persist in our assertion that we are waging war, not on the British people, but on the small clique who rule them."

Hitler seriously believed that the loss of Singapore to the Japanese might make the British seek peace with him as a rather convoluted means of saving India.

The idea that Hitler's aggression in the East was not driven by ideological imperatives is as much nonsense as to imagine that the same ideology did not colour his attitude to the British.

Cheers

Steve

 

[parsifal]

So the British and Soviets were not working on any kind of anti-Nazi alliance by your own admission.
Why should we imagine that Hitler thought they were.

Because thats what he said he believed was happening

There is absolutely zero evidence in any off the German documents issued around "Barbarossa" or in anything Hitler said at the time or thereafter that eliminating the USSR as a potential ally of Britain informed his decision to attack the USSR in any meaningful way. It may have been a beneficial side effect of that decision, had things turned out differently, but was not an ideological or even military consideration at the time. Britain comes up more often than just about any other single topic in the table talk, but never in that context.

That is just plain wrong. Ive already mentioned the letter to Mussolini. I know i have seen statements from other authors mentioning conversations to that very end

The statements you have quoted regarding Hitlers view of the British was said when. if you have a look, you will find it occurred after the British refusals to surrender. It actually very neatly buttresses the notion of his "realization" that the British were hanging onto some hope some belief that somebody or some country(s) would come to their aid. From that point it was a short walk for Hitler to conclude he had to remove that hope. as he said to mussolini, "we cant do anything about the US, but we can get rid of the Russians!" A precise fit to his bitter comments about the British leadership.

The idea that Hitler's aggression in the East was not driven by ideological imperatives is as much nonsense as to imagine that the same ideology did not colour his attitude to the British.

This conveniently ignores the rapprochement that occurred between Hitler and the Soviets, and the natural gravitation of Germany and Russia in the interwar period as two pariah states. They worked closely together. And hitler worked the opportunities rather than working to any dogma. He had a natural distaste of the Russians, similar to the British distaste of Japan in their alliance with the Japanese. still worke in both cases, and just because you dont like someone, doesnt mean you are going to attack them. What turned Hitler East did involve his prejudices to a minor extent, but more than that, it was his frustration with the British,, which you have so accurately documented, plus what he perceivfed as Russian betrayals in day to day dealings. Remove the British, and at least 50% of the reason for attacking the Soviets in the first place is gone. Moreover, the actions of the Germans immediately following the fall of france reveals what they wanted to do. They started to demobilise the army, in the belief it was all over. They started to return to a peacetime economic base. this is not the actions of a country gearing up for an ideological struggle with a country with the largest army in the world. Its the mark of a country whose leadership believes that they have won, its over, and they can all go home now. How do you think Hitler is going to react when robbed of that "victory". Not very rationally I can tell you.
And his opinions on the loss of Singapore just reveal his character as Hitler the gambler. He believed that the fall of Singapore might force a peace settleent, in the same vein a believing his terror weapons would force a change of fortunes in the west, or that the 262 should be used as a bomber, or that in 1945 there were two armies pushing east to relieve berlin and turn the whole war in the east around, from utter derfeat to victory at the last second. These are all crackpot ideas that very strongly buttress the notion that Britain was the key to his invasion of the SU

 

[bobbysocks]

i dont know. i think you are trying to put rational thoughts into the mind of an irrational man. sure there was a method to his madness but he still was mad. i believe he would have attacked the soviet union no matter if there was a BoB or not. from what i recall he hated communists as much as he hated certain ethnic groups and saw them as a serious threat. the fact that he worked with them was typical hitler strategy.....give me that and i will ask for no more ( repeat 5 or 6 times ). he was a pathological liar and conniver. if he had no designs on the ussr he would have kept them as allies or encouraged them to remain neutral when he found himself in a war with the west. stalin could have made money like a bandit selling him oil and other raw materials. of all the theories thrown around in this forum the notion that hitler would not have attacked the ussr if he had been able to broker some sort of peace with the uk is the hardest one i have found to swallow because i believe he thought with the fall of france he would be able to work a deal with the uk. i believe he would have been perfectly happy not fighting britian and would have persued his goals in the east. he made comments to galland that he didnt want a war with the uk....then again, like i said he was a compusive liar...so???

 

[bob44]

Hitler knew he had to deal with either Britain or russia to dominate Europe. He convinced himself that he couldnt control the British, was disdainful of the Soviets, and saw German strength in its land capability. these are the factors that drove hom toward an attack on the Russians, not some long term grand scheme that he had had since 1919.

We need to take a look at Soviet relations in the interwar year to gain some understanding as to why this notion that hitler "always wanted to attack the Soviets" is the total crock that it is.

This is incredible.
And does rewrite an important piece of history as we have come to know it.
Very interesting. And I do not buy it.

 

[DonL]

Parsifal,

please can you explain why Heydrich got the personal order from Hitler to manipulate the german secret service dossier of Marshal Tuchatschewski at 1936 and also this maipulated dossier with a bunch of lies about Tuchatschewski was sended above the CSSR goverment to Stalin?

How is this possible if Hitler has no intention to weakening the UDSSR and in this case the Red Army?

 

[stona]

I've had enough of this now.
I will just say that if you want to believe that Hitler attacked the USSR to deprive Britain of an ally that's fine. Me, I'll go with what he, the OKW and every other contemporary account says. His primary strategic objective was to secure Germany's oil supply for the future. Other resources were secondary.
His ideological motivation which cannot be overestimated was to draw the border between "civilised" Germanic Europe and its culture and a barbaric Asia and its savage hordes where he wanted it, creating room for the Germanic races which were unable to expand in their current territories. He had a vision of a perpetual war on this frontier which would serve to keep the Germanised European races strong.
Hitler's attitude towards the British from 1933 until 1945 was amazingly consistent for a man possessed of what we might kindly call an erratic personality. In his words the British were a "small branch" or "twig" (depending on translator) of the Germanic tree.
Cheers
Steve

 

[parsifal]

I've had enough of this now.

i notice you do that a lot......particualry when you are not agreed with. Get over yourself

I will just say that if you want to believe that Hitler attacked the USSR to deprive Britain of an ally that's fine. Me, I'll go with what he, the OKW and every other contemporary account says.

No. They dont, not all of them. And the contemporary accounts are anything but consistent. There weree occasions when he did say things like "Okay, now the west is neutralized, I can get on with the really important tasak of subduing the Russians. other times he overrulled administrative objections to exceed the treaty obligations he had to sweeten the Russians. And other times he spoke openly of the need to isolate the English.

This is what Nagorski (reproduced in Wiki) had to say on the matter

"The Soviet Union and Germany signed a non-aggression pact in August 1939, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, shortly before the German invasion of Poland that triggered the Second World War, which was followed by the Soviet invasion of that country. A secret protocol to the pact outlined an agreement between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union on the division of the border states between their respective "spheres of influence". The Soviet Union and Germany would split Poland if an invasion were to occur, and Latvia, Estonia and Finland were defined as falling within the German sphere of influence.

The pact surprised the world because of the parties' mutual hostility and their conflicting ideologies. Ideolgy at that stage however was of little or no significance. both sides were driven by expedience. As a result of the pact, Germany and the Soviet Union had strong diplomatic relations and an important economic relationship. The countries entered a trade pact in 1940, in which the Soviets received German military and industrial equipment in exchange for raw materials, such as oil or wheat, to help Germany circumvent a British blockade. The relations were so good between the countries that the terms of the econimic relationship were exceeded.

Despite the parties' ongoing relations, each side remained suspicious of the other's intentions, which for the germans increased greatky after the Soviet occupation of the Baltic States. After Germany entered the Axis Pact with Japan and Italy, it began negotiations about a potential Soviet entry into the pact and possible entry into the war. After two days of negotiations in Berlin from 12–14 November, Germany presented a proposed written agreement for a Soviet entry into the Axis. The Soviet Union offered a written counterproposal agreement on 25 November 1940, to which Germany did not respond. Russian procrastination raised hitlers suspicions of British duplicity. As both sides began colliding with each other in Eastern Europe, conflict appeared more likely, although they signed a border and commercial agreement addressing several open issues in January 1941. Germany broke the pact by starting Operation Barbarossa; a decision that led to Germany losing the war.

The situation in Europe by May/June 1941, at the end of the Balkans Campaign and immediately before Operation BarbarossaJoseph Stalin's reputation contributed both to the Nazis' justification of their assault and their faith in success. In the late 1930s, many competent and experienced military officers were killed in the Great Purge, leaving the Red Army weakened and leaderless. The Nazis often emphasized the Soviet regime's brutality when targeting the Slavs with propaganda. German propaganda claimed the Red Army was preparing to attack them, and their own invasion was thus presented as a pre-emptive strike [my note; there is actually some truth to that as recent ex-soviet archives are revealing].

In the summer of 1940, when German raw materials crises and a potential collision with the Soviet Union over territory in the Balkans arose, an eventual invasion of the Soviet Union looked increasingly like Hitler's only solution. While no concrete plans were yet made, Hitler told one of his generals in June that the victories in western Europe "finally freed his hands for his important real task: the showdown with Bolshevism", although German generals told Hitler that occupying Western Russia would create "more of a drain than a relief for Germany's economic situation." The Führer anticipated additional benefits. (These benefits can be sumarised as follows):

1) When the Soviet Union was defeated, the labor shortage in German industry could be relieved by demobilization of many soldiers.
2) Ukraine would be a reliable source of agricultural products.
3) Having the Soviet Union as a source of forced labor under German rule would vastly improve Germany's geostrategic position.
4) Defeat of the Soviet Union would further isolate the Allies, especially the United Kingdom.[my emphasis]
5) The German economy needed more oil - controlling the Baku Oilfields would achieve this; as Albert Speer, the German Minister for Armaments and War Production, later said in his post-war interrogation, "the need for oil certainly was a prime motive" in the decision to invade.

Nowhere do i see any mention of ideology.......though ideology was the accelarant that sped the confict up

His primary strategic objective was to secure Germany's oil supply for the future.

No, it was one of them

Other resources were secondary.

According to Nagorski, it was perhaps theleast important reason

His ideological motivation which cannot be overestimated was to draw the border between "civilised" Germanic Europe and its culture and a barbaric Asia and its savage hordes where he wanted it,

That is a popular reason often cited, but not in any of his stated reasons for invasion. It is part of Mein Kampf, but there was so much water under the bridge between Mein Kampf and 22 June 1941, as to render its contents largely irrelevant. In between the two, the USSR very nearly joined the Axis

creating room for the Germanic races which were unable to expand in their current territories. He had a vision of a perpetual war on this frontier which would serve to keep the Germanised European races strong.

blah blah blah. this was the grind milled out of Mein Kampf. It was not what he said in the lead up to invasion. He again said it after war broke out, no doubt to gee up the troops and scare the bejeezuz out of the Russians

Hitler's attitude towards the British from 1933 until 1945 was amazingly consistent for a man possessed of what we might kindly call an erratic personality. In his words the British were a "small branch" or "twig" (depending on translator) of the Germanic tree.

I disagree. Hitler expected the british to fold after the fall of france, and wanted the even expecte the British to join him in alliance. he was perturbed when they didnt, and whipped himself into a frenzy when they did not seek teerms for surrender. From there it was all downhill in the British-German relations.

By comparison, in 1933-5 relations between the two countries, Churchill excepted, were quite cordial. "Hitler was a man we could do busines with, and such.....

 

[stona]

Blimey.

I can't be arsed to deal with all this, I think we should agree to differ.

The oil supply thing features not just in his monologue with Mannerheim, but in several table talks and other instructions, including Fuhrer conferences relevant to Barbarossa and various memoirs and essays written post war by Wermacht commanders.

The Asian hordes thing was not quoted from Mein Kamf but from a table talk in 1941. He expressed the same views from Mein Kamf until the end of the war. Nazism was a racist ideology based on this sort of nonsense, not a political system.

Attitude to the British? Read the table talks. I have an edition edited by Hugh Trevor Roper but it must be readily available.

Cheers

Steve

 

[parsifal]

Parsifal,

please can you explain why Heydrich got the personal order from Hitler to manipulate the german secret service dossier of Marshal Tuchatschewski at 1936 and also this maipulated dossier with a bunch of lies about Tuchatschewski was sended above the CSSR goverment to Stalin?

How is this possible if Hitler has no intention to weakening the UDSSR and in this case the Red Army?

Because it is by no means clear or consistent. If it was an ideological issue, it would have consistency. Nelrich Ulrich and Freeze wrote in 1997 on Page 95 of their paper


For example....


"In the mid-1930s, the Soviet Union made repeated efforts to reestablish closer contacts with Germany. The Soviets chiefly sought to repay debts from earlier trade with raw materials, while Germany sought to rearm, and the countries signed a credit agreement in 1935."

The facts are that German Soviet relations see sawed throughout the 1920's and 30's from close to icy, to less close, then very close and finally to eventual war. There was no rythm or reason to any of this.....it was driven by expediency from both sides. The ideologoes of both sides made rapprochement for both sides more difficult, but it did not dictate or make certainb they were going to war at any stage. Six months before Barbarossa, both sides were seriously considering making war as allies, six months later and they were at each others throats.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

I see this is starting to go down the drain. Play nice. The offending parties will go the way of the dodo bird. None of you are immune, and enough warnings have been given over the years, that you should know how to behave. Don't ignore...