What went wrong most for Germany?

The thread title is "What went wrong most for Germany?" not "which regime was more morally corrupt?" Had that been the question, I'd call a tie.

Soviet behavior in Ukraine was so bad that a reasonably kind German occupation could have freed tens of thousand of troops for something else. Trains were diverted from transporting supplies for the troops to shuttling Jews to the ovens. Both of these behaviors were as intrinsic to the nazi ideology as was Stalin's genocidal collectivization of Ukraine. Both of these behaviors were militarily counter-productive.

How would Germany have run WW2 with a hyper-nationalist regime that did not have enslavement of Slavs and genocide of Jews and Gypsies as primary war goals?

rationalise its auto industry
adopt a true competitive tender process for procurement.
terminate all research projects with no direct or immediate wartime benefits
adopt a more discerning policy to protect skilled workers from the draft
introduce proper rationaing from the beginning of the war
instead of opting for short term loot gains from occupied territories, instead opt for more long term integrated . approach, beginning with no one sided fixing of cash rate
abandon the more overtly objectionable racial purity laws, to try and attract a wider level of support from Europe generally.
plan realistically
develop clear and war aims and work consistently towards that

michaelmaltby said:

".... We're not discussing Stalin here."
"... they invaded making Stalin seem like a better choice"
Then why did you introduce the comparison between Stalin and the Nazis?

Nazism is not a moral absolute .... though you clearly think it is.

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I agree or accept that its relevant to compare the economic and military performance of the two regimes and the relative success of each. but the minute we start to manipulate the discussion to begin a discussion on the relative levels of moral bankruptcy of the two systems, we are just having a cheap and nasty attempt to hijack the thread.

As to your last comment, that is so offensive, and laughable actually as to not deserve any further comment from me

"... How would Germany have run WW2 with a hyper-nationalist regime that did not have enslavement of Slavs and genocide of Jews and Gypsies as primary war goals?"

How did the Soviet Union finance an industrialization program through the confiscation and sale of the Ukraine food production, the starvation and enslavement of millions of the rural population?
How did the SU develop its far eastern resource and insustrial base through the enslavement of Estonians, Latvians, Armenians, Tartars not to mention German and Japanese POWs?

And all this with the enthusiatic approval and adoration of like-minded Western observers.

Nazism is not a moral absolute .... though you clearly think it is Parsifal so laugh your head off or be offended.

I did not introduce Stalin or the USSR into a "What Went Wrong ...", Germany thread.

It all went wrong when Adolf came to power because he was not the person to do what he wanted to achieve. To win he needed to take western Europe quickly, but even during the Battle of Britain the UK was producing more single engine fighters than Germany. He needed many more U Boats and surface ships too. In the east he needed more tanks and tracked or motorised transport. He didn't have them because he was a politician and he didn't want the civilian population to realise that they were actually in a war. Germany didn't actually fully mobilise for war until the tide had turned and it was just about to lose.

michaelmaltby said:

"... How would Germany have run WW2 with a hyper-nationalist regime that did not have enslavement of Slavs and genocide of Jews and Gypsies as primary war goals?"

How did the Soviet Union finance an industrialization program through the confiscation and sale of the Ukraine food production, the starvation and enslavement of millions of the rural population?
How did the SU develop its far eastern resource and insustrial base through the enslavement of Estonians, Latvians, Armenians, Tartars not to mention German and Japanese POWs?

And all this with the enthusiatic approval and adoration of like-minded Western observers.

Nazism is not a moral absolute .... though you clearly think it is Parsifal so laugh your head off or be offended.

I did not introduce Stalin or the USSR into a "What Went Wrong ...", Germany thread.

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Probably didn't deal with that as well as was possible, or required.

With regard to point 1, there were many Germans that were hyper nationalists and supported Hitler in 1933. Many wanted revenge for the perceived unfair treatment meted out on Germany after 1918 armistice. But such feelings and aspirations were still within the accepted norms of social and international moral standards.

Hitler wooed many of the Jewish vote in 1933. Many Jews were led to believe that his anti Semitism was just talk prior to his election.

Hitler needed to take a different path from 1933, but it was certainly possible for him to do so. Like so many politicans before and since, he had to abrogate some of his pre-election rhetoric. Certainly possible. He just didn't want to. He didn't see it as rhetoric. He believed his own lies.

As to the Soviet Union, between the wars it was at least as morally bankrupt as the germans, but there were no German or Japanese PoWs, there was no support for the regime from the west (at least none that mattered).

The difference between the soviets and the Nazis was that the soviet system was a true command economy, whereas the nazi system was a series of loosely formed and barely co-operating fiefdoms operating within the german state, with rampant corruption and barely any real co-operation.

I still don't understand your claim that Nazism was a moral absolute. It advocated racial purity, came up with a crackpot idea about "Aryan superiority" and the divine right of the german people to "lead" (ne enslave) the rest of Europe to serve for germany's benefit and with no regard for the rule of law to be applied to these other peoples that saw as their inferiors.

If that is not a moral extreme, you can strip me naked and make me walk backwards to Berlin.

The Germans were caught in a vicious circle. The economy, under the Nazi regime, was geared for a war which had to be inevitable by somewhere around 1940, but at the same time that same economy could not support a protracted war. Just as logistics win battles, economies win wars.
What went wrong for Germany happened long before September 1939 and June 1941.
Militarily and politically for Germany the only chance of a short war in the West was a defeat (virtually impossible) or accommodation (which seemed feasible to Berlin) with the British Empire. This might have prevented the intervention of the United States and, ultimately, in a completely different scenario, ensured an eventual German victory in the East, but not in 1941.
For the British Empire/Commonwealth the exact opposite was true. It's only chance of ultimate victory was a long war, long enough to bring the industrial might, and hopefully developing military potential, of the United States to bear across the Atlantic. It's why the BoB and the often overlooked Italian debacle in North Africa* assume greater importance than they might otherwise do. They ensured that there would be no quick German victory in Europe.

*The Mediterranean is usually overlooked at this time. It is impossible to over estimate its importance to Britain. On August 10th 1940, at a time when many thought an invasion of the Home Islands or Eire was imminent, a decision was taken to reinforce North Africa from Home Forces. There's a clue there.

Cheers

Steve

Without discussing the moral aspect of Hitler's strategy in Eastern and to a lesser extent Western Europe it was an appalling military strategy. When Germany attacked some in the east were welcoming to them, some were ambivalent and some were opposed. Within a very short time all were opposed and many joined partisan groups. People can debate how effective these groups were but they certainly did nothing positive for an occupying army. Similarly much intelligence was sent by resistance groups to the allies at great risk, purely because of their hatred of the occupiers.

pbehn said:

Without discussing the moral aspect of Hitler's strategy in Eastern and to a lesser extent Western Europe it was an appalling military strategy.

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The political and military strategies of Nazi Germany were ideologically driven. This is a redundant argument, these things were a direct outcome of the application of the ideology. If the Nazis and their ideology hadn't come to power in 1932/3, then WW2 as we know it would never have happened. In this sense what went wrong for Germany was the NSDAP's 'machtergreifung'.
Cheers
Steve

No argument there, great post, thank you.

There was a disastrous mixture of arrogance, self-pity and dedication in the German state that created the inferno .... but .... and this is my point ..... it didn't begin with Hitler and the Nazis .... the 30 Years War and War of Spanish War of Succession put a stamp on Germans and the German character that was manifest in Frederick I and Bismark and carried forward. Much of this stemmed from the Protestant Reformation and Catholic France and Spain's efforts to crush and suppress Protestantism.

Shortly after WW2 George Orwell was commenting about the outrages of war and humankind and he said (and I paraphrase): "The German are irredeemable. They think they are civilized."

And of course he was right, they do think they are civilized and they are. But so do the English, the French, the Russians, the Chinese, the Japanese and many smaller ethnic groups .... all think they are civilized. By his definition they are all irredeemable. The critical matter that Orwell did not acknowledge is: what does your civilization include and what does it exclude? Britain, for example, learned early on that The Crown had to accept/include dissent if it wanted funds (Magna Carta) and parliamentary democracy was born.

Germany made the critical mistake in 1933 of not learning from mistakes that it had made before. But .... so did Britain, France although with vastly different consequences.

I rest my case.

Where do we draw a line? The influence of history is pervasive, but other Protestant states managed to shake off the shackles of Catholicism and develop into democracies, the Netherlands being one of the earliest and most successful.

Can we blame the Spanish conquistadors for Allende's suicide in the Palacio de La Moneda? A bit extreme, I admit, but it illustrates a point.

I think the success of National Socialism in Germany, and fascism in other European states had much stronger roots in more recent history, most notably the effective collapse of the established European order caused by WW1. I am always wary of singling out the Germans as being in some way different from other Europeans in this respect. I simply don't believe that to be the case.
For example, Goldenhagen made the argument that German culture suffered from a special type of aggressive and virulent anti-semitism. I don't buy it. Anti-semitism is something that runs deep in all Christian-European culture. It was unscrupulously exploited in Germany for many reasons, beyond the scope of a reply like this. It was then implemented in an aggressive war, but I think it foolish to imagine that, given the right conditions, it might not have happened somewhere else.
You will know the origin, but I often ask people engaged in such debate to look up the origin of the English phrase 'beyond the pale'. It has nothing to do with buckets, sixties rock bands...or Germans

Cheers

Steve

Very thoughful, Steve.

michaelmaltby said:

"... How would Germany have run WW2 with a hyper-nationalist regime that did not have enslavement of Slavs and genocide of Jews and Gypsies as primary war goals?"

How did the Soviet Union finance an industrialization program through the confiscation and sale of the Ukraine food production, the starvation and enslavement of millions of the rural population?
How did the SU develop its far eastern resource and insustrial base through the enslavement of Estonians, Latvians, Armenians, Tartars not to mention German and Japanese POWs?

And all this with the enthusiatic approval and adoration of like-minded Western observers.

Nazism is not a moral absolute .... though you clearly think it is Parsifal so laugh your head off or be offended.

I did not introduce Stalin or the USSR into a "What Went Wrong ...", Germany thread.

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Not relevant who introduced him, but, again, the question was what GERMANY did wrong. One of the things they did wrong was they way German forces treated the people of Ukraine with similar levels of brutality as did Stalin. (numbers? Some 10,000,000 Ukrainians died between 1941 and 1944: see http://www.irekw.internetdsl.pl/ww2/ukr/; some 7 million died due to Stalin's policies between 1929 and 1933, see Ukrainian Famine). Had German troops not been playing out nazi racial policies in Ukraine, it may have had greater agricultural production for the Germans and required fewer occupation troops. Stalin primed the people of Ukraine to accept foreign occupation. The Germans blew their opportunity.

... first link is faulty, SwampYankee. The 2nd link is at odds with Churchill's recollection of his conversation with Stalin who claimed the program cost 10M souls. [The Grand Alliance, Winston Churchill]

".... is NOT a moral absolute"
Not IS a moral absolute, Parsifal.

"... there were no German or Japanese PoWs".
From August, 1939 there WERE Japanese PoWs, thousands as the Japanese Army was crushed at Nomonhan. [Nomomhan, Alvin D. Coox]. This affair had been resolved before M-R Pact was signed.

I'm glad that you have reversed you recusal on this thread, Parsifal.

michaelmaltby said:

... first link is faulty. The 2nd link is at odds with Churchill's recollection of his conversation with Stalin who claimed the program cost 10M souls. [The Grand Alliance, Winston Churchill]

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The semi-colon got appended to the first; try this: World War II in Ukraine
I won't defend the accounting for the second; Stalin may have been exaggerating, Churchill may have misquoted, or the linked article and Stalin were counting different areas or different time periods. Either way, Ukraine lost close to 25% of its population under German occupation and about the same amount under Stalin.

I think the true nature of the Nazis ideology is being overlooked in their actions in the Ukraine and other occupied territories. It was always the intention, overtly expressed in Nazi circles to rape the land and starve, murder or relocate (which amounted to the same thing) the populations of areas like the Ukraine. It wasn't something that just happened subsequent to 'Barbarossa'.
This was part of what has been called (by Tooze I think, haven't checked) 'the grand strategy of racial war'. It was a strategy and mode of warfare that lay at the heart of Nazi ideology. In June 1941, just as the Germans were preparing their onslaught on the Soviet Union plans were also being made far broader programme of racial rearrangement of Poland. This involved not only removing the Polish population of the German annexed territories, but the population of the Government General too. The Germans commenced planning of a genocide against the entire Polish population.
On 21st June 1941 Himmler instructed the Reichs Commissioner for the Security of the German Race (abbreviated RKF in German) to draw up a plan for the demographic reorganisation of the entire Eastern Territories expected to fall into German hands. This became the 'Generalplan Ost', drawn up by the RKF's settlement expert, Professor Konrad Meyer. Believe me, it didn't matter that it condemned millions to death, as long as they were not German. Meyer addressed himself primarily to the majority Slav populations of these territories, the fate of the Jewish populations was already a given, and they only constituted a large minority in Poland and the Ukraine. In Poland Meyer planned to remove 80-85% of the native population. This was to be followed by the expulsion of 64% of the population of the Ukraine and 75% of the White Russian population. You don't need much imagination to work out the consequences of this 'removal'. This is the horrific plan behind the seemingly benign concept of 'Lebensraum' for the German people.
Estimates of how many people this meant, excluding the Jewish minorities, vary even in German documents. The lowest figure is 31 million, a more likely figure is about 45 million. Only people capable of work were of any interest to the Germans, By the end of 1942 the 'physical annihilation' of entire populations, not just Jewish minorities was being discussed.
I would never seek to disrespect the victims of the Jewish Holocaust, nor diminish it in any way, but sometimes it does dominate concepts of the Nazi's repugnant racial ideology and cause the true extent of its implementation, not just in its rabid antisemitism, to be misunderstood and, almost inconceivably, under estimated.

Steve

Hitler being in the box seat, and Nazi extremism was not a necessary precondition for Germany to enter into aggressive war. They had already proven that in 1914, and in many ways, WWII was an extension or continuation of that conflict.


Germany was driven to war in 1914 by undercurrents of its sense of entitlement, coupled with self delusions of the nation's importance and an insane pathological psychosis against anything foreign. The French had possessed the same dangerous mindset in the age of napoleon. Britain and the US had boundless ambition, but were fundamentally different in that they lacked the insane desire to bully their neighbours in quite the same way as Germany.


So what might have happened if hitler had not come to power. The thing that sets hitler apart from any of the other possibilities is his lack of education, his latent antisemitism, his lack of any semblance of a moral compass. There were plenty of right wing radicals far more rational than he that could have easily filled his shoes. Mostly from the army, and mostly drawn from the von seekct school of thinking. Utterly ruthless, militarily brilliant, aggressive, but differing from hitler and his thugs in that all of them possessed, to a greater or lesser extent, some sense of right and wrong. This was the sort of person hitler was assumed to be when the army threw its support behind the corporal.


There were any number of industrialists that had the management skills and industrial savvy to run the country more efficiently than Hitler and his lackeys and still have sufficient aggression embedded into their national outlook to allow a war of expansion to permit Germany superior economic growth.Run a war for profit in other words.


There were any number of conservatives from the dispossessed ruling classes, leftovers of the Kaisers Germany that would have run the country autocratically with the intent of restoring Germany to her "rightful" position of dominance in Europe.


Germany may have continued on its radical trajectory and ended up falling to communist control after 1918. In this situation, almost certainly the aggressors would have been her neighbours and Britain as these nations would fear even more than hitler the social unrest that a communist revolution in Germany, in the middle of Europe as opposed at the edges like the soviet Union and posing a massive risk to the status quo in both Britain and France. A different trajectory to war, admittedly, but an inevitable path just the same.


Any of these outcomes were possible in the unstable climate that existed after 1918. But the unsatisfactory peace that emerged from 1918 left germans feeling dudded resentful and able to foster the misbelief that had been stabbed in the back and could win a further war. Once that point had been reached, germany's trajectory to war was sealed. It did not mean it had to be hitler, it did not mean it had to be the same war as was historically fought, but war was inevitable the moment a negotiated peace was accepted. The only solution to avoid this was unconditional surrender to the allies in 1918.

Britain didn't have to bully her neighbours because she could bully just about everybody else, and had done so for over a hundred years. Germany tried in these simplistic terms to bully her neighbours because she had already largely missed the imperial boat and the space she considered she needed was in Europe,to the east.

As for Hitler, he attracted a certain type of extremist, and some of them were very smart indeed. There was no lack of intelligence in the higher echelons of the NSDAP. They may have been thugs, but they were not stupid thugs, which made them all the more dangerous. Germans love their titles, still do, look at the number of doctors and professors who were commanding various elements of the Einsatzgruppen that swept into Eastern Europe in 1941.

Whatever alternatives there may have been, two or three years of Nazi terror ensured that he and his party came to power, and none of those alternatives could prevent it. Many of them connived in it.

Cheers

Steve

".... The French had possessed the same dangerous mindset in the age of napoleon"
Back up a 100 years, man .... Louis 14!

parsifal said:

...abandon the more overtly objectionable racial purity laws, to try and attract a wider level of support from Europe generally....
develop clear and war aims and work consistently towards that

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These two are inseparable.
The aim of the war was to push the ethnic boundary of the German race 1,000 kilometres to the east. This involved the murder and removal of many of the tens of millions of people who occupied this vast territory. Over a twenty to thirty year period this area would be resettled with about 10 million ethnic Germans.

Dose any of this sound familiar? It does if you substitute west for east and reduce the numbers somewhat. The vision that inspired this German colonial project in the east shared something with the American ideology of the frontier than it did with Teutonic Knights or the Middle Ages. In 1941 Hitler referred on several occasions to the American example, even declaring that the Volga would be Germany's Mississippi. The American 'conquest' of the west was also quoted by Hitler as an example to justify the clearance of the Slavs.

"Here in the East a similar process will repeat itself for a second time, as in the conquest of America....Europe and not America will be the land of unlimited possibilities."

Now, I am not comparing the implementation of Nazi policies in the East with that of the Americans as they pushed into their West, disease not political and military policies had already done most of the damage to the native populations long before the Americans pushed west in numbers, but the Nazis clearly saw parallels, and some justifications, between the two.
Be very careful when characterising one nation or culture as more prone to such radicalisation than another.

As for the Slavs, well, they would survive for a while as worker-slaves, both on the land and building German towns and factories in the new territories, but eventually they would be replaced by Germanic people, as Himmler explained at a meeting of senior SS leader in the summer of 1942.

"If we do not fill our camps with slaves - in this room I mean to say things very firmly and clearly - with worker slaves, who will build our cities, our villages, our farms without regard to any losses, then even after years of war we will not have enough money to be able to equip the settlements in such a manner that real Germanic people can live there and take root in the first generation."

The remnants of Slav race, the majority having already been 'removed', would survive in The Greater German Reich for only as long as it was useful to the Germans.

In Hannah Arendt's famous phrase, "the banality of evil".

The budget for Generalplan Ost was initially set at 40 billion Reichsmarks, but Himmler soon raised this to 67 billion Reichsmarks, more than the combined investment in the entire German economy between 1933 and 1938. It was the raison d'etre of the German war.

Steve