“I believe, as a general rule, Governments achieve the reverse of their stated objectives. I hesitate to call it a unique universal law and there may also be other formulations.” This masterly formulation by Walrus is by and large true, I think.
I kept thinking of familiar predicaments, the Iraq Invasion of 2003, the Vietnam War, the Great Depression of 1932, etc., but one figure and one country seem to be to embody the dictum of Walrus, and that would be Germany and its leader, Adolph Hitler.
The 1919 peace agreement at Versailles saddled Germany with the blame for the war, wrecked its economy, humiliated its citizens, and formed the festering resentment that for years sat in the national soul. The British maintained its economic blockade of Germany for a year after the armistice, causing the deaths of thousands of Germans by starvation. A more generous policy would have been the best course, but Germany’s foreign opponents were greedy, cruel, exploitative, and oppressive and enjoyed inflicting pain on their defeated enemy.
Hitler, when he came to power, promised to end unemployment, restore the currency, rearm, and mass produce cars. He vowed to build the autobahns and reclaim territories lost by the Treaty. The means to achieve these goals was to be military conquest. He would wage a war that would violate all standards of civilized warfare and would be waged in the most inhumane fashion possible.He put himself at the head of the most violent and unscrupulous section of the people. His personality, backed by force, was to control the nation’s conceptions, institutions and laws. Ideology was to play a part - Christianity was abolished and there was to be a return to the Norse legends and tales of former Aryan glory. Germany was to turn Europe into a slave state.
How Hitler expected to win any war is a mystery, for Germany had no heavy bomber fleet, nor had it mastered the means of mass production the way Russia had and which proved one of the keys to the Soviet’s victory.
Hitler’s Mind
That Hitler was a formidable personality is beyond dispute. He was the ruthless force that drove the war. The historian Jacob Burckhardt once said that there are times “when the forces of history are concentrated into one man who is obeyed by the world.” Hitler embodies that description. How did such a personality come about? Historians are still guessing.
Napoleon advised that one quality required for any successful leader was to have the ability to “fixer des objects longtemps san etre fatigue.”
The mind must study objects for a long time without getting tired. Unfortunately, Hitler shunned serious, comprehensive intellectual effort and was largely ignorant of foreign cultures and their military affairs. He tended to reject any information that did not fit in or endorse his inaccurate prejudices and preconceptions, and instead, relied on the will to win. Will, he said, was able “to overcome all obstacles.” As a result, Hitler possessed an “appetite for gigantic follies,” in the words of historian Max Hastings.
In fact, Hitler lacked focus and resolution. Gen. Guderian talks of him as having a very strong will, but under stress, Hitler hesitated, prevaricated, postponed, and often reversed himself – his mind muddied the understanding and perception of events rather than clarifying them. Gen. Student called him “a man of many brain waves.” And those he had: he relied very much on instinct and intuition, but these gifts operated erratically. Some of those brainwaves were disastrous, like the invasion of Russia or his thrust into Antwerp in Dec. of 1944, which destroyed his mobile reserves and shortened his war. In many cases, Hitler ruled by tantrum, not logic. A character whose essential feature is an ability to be unyielding is a very difficult character to confront. Hitler was extremely dogmatic. “I alone know what is to be done,” said Napoleon. This reminds one of Wellington’s “I know my own business best.”
Unfortunately, dictators often do not often revise their brain waves. Hitler didn’t endure defeats or setbacks with courage, but instead, he was peevish, pettily vindictive, always blaming or punishing everyone else for what was essentially his fault. He dealt with differing opinions by sacking the people who made them. This all shows a certain mental denseness and severe lack of steady moral courage.
It is very easy to appear strong when everything is running in your favor, but that is not real strength only the illusion of it. In such a case, success is dangerous. It can stimulate and unveil weaknesses as well as strengths. The weaknesses will remain hidden until a disaster brings them to light. All the things you hadn’t through or prepared for, will, soon come to light and will come to plague you. When their failures are perceived, then your prized strength doesn’t seem so strong. Prestige that is questioned is no longer prestige.
Another weakness: Hitler led from the rear. He was the opposite of the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo, who was everywhere at once, getting horses shot out from under him, showing up when the needs were greatest. Hitler was more like President Lyndon Johnston, sitting at his White House desk, trying to pick out targets for air attacks in Hanoi.
The wonderfully gifted general Heinz Guderian said that Hitler was a man of strong will. It is my view that Gen. Guderian, whose memory I much respect, did not distinguish clearly between strength of resolution and mere stubbornness. The last occurs when the will crowds out the judgment, when the intent to have your way stifles any criticism of it, when the desire to achieve a pet aim cripples any ability to test its means and its chances of success – that was Hitler. He was always braying about “it is my unalterable will” to do such and such, yet, his mind was subject to whim. He vacillated, postponed, put off. What he strong in him was his tyranny, the intimidation produced by his total power over his subordinates.
Clearly, however, Hitler was a fright to deal with. His mind has no balance. Habitually, his mind was pretty to shifting and unpredictable emphasis, relying instead on “instinct,” or “intuition.” I had a long, drunken interview with former Nazi head of Germany’s air defense, Adolph Galland, who described Hitler’s rages and his flightiness to me. Hitler, he said, had a photographic memory like Napoleon, but his flypaper mind was distracted by small details and lacked any sound strategic sense. Galland told me of listening as Hitler discussed a German plan for a new naval destroyer, and Galland then related that Hitler knew the specifications of the plan down to the tiniest bolt head. But his mastery of detail clogged his capacity for disinterested thought. Once Germany had begun flying one of its first jet, the ME-260, it was much, much faster than the American P-51 fighters, but they could stay in the air for only six minutes. Hitler, ignoring plane’s limitations, wanted to turn them into fighter bombers which of course would slow them. Galland defied Hitler’s orders and flew the planes as fighters. Galland made clear that Hitler basically governed by tantrum. He was hard to withstand when he lost his temper. Gen. Halder once recorded that Hitler. Confronted with the fact that the Soviets would manufacture 1200 a month, “Hitler flew with clenched fists and foam at the corners of his mouth at the one who was reading this statement and forbid such idiotic nonsense.” Galland had his own stories of Hitler’s fury, his red face, his bulging eyes, spraying spit at people he was reprimanding.
Hitler’s mistakes in strategy were grievous. He was too vainglorious to be a good analyst. He almost botched the 1940 victory over France by being timid; he should have encircled the British and French at Dunkirk and destroyed the allied forces there, but he didn’t. He should have taken Gibraltar or Suez because of the strategic value of the Mediterranean, but did neither. He botched the taking Moscow. He had guessed that Normandy would be the site of the Allied invasion of 1944, but changed his mind. His mind was, in spite of its vehement force, vacillating, uncertain and muddled, his attention always divided between competing aims. When he finally made up his mind, it was often too late. Yet of all his errors, his invasion of Russia was the mistake that caused him to lose the war. (That a declaring war on America without having thought it out. )In case of Russia, as in the others, he listened to his prejudices and pre-conceived ideas and neglected his caution and common sense.
The Case of Russia.
Hitler indulged in his first vague desires to conquer Russia in July of 1940. As a military leader is seems strange that Hitler despised the collection of intelligence which he described as an “airy nothing.” He didn’t understand the elements that made the state of Russia function. Hitler simply lacked the knowledge of the country and its peoples and the nature of its leadership – factors that would prove key to the success any effort to conquer it. Hitler thought that it’s military was weak and its economy was backward, ignoring the fact that Russia had mastered the techniques of mass production which Germany had not.
France and Russian Campaigns.
Hitler had almost lost the victory in France by being timid, and he lost the victory in Russian because he didn’t listen to his panzer leaders such as Gen. Hoth and Gen. Guderian, men who were relentless and tireless in getting the Panzers across the Meuse and hitting the Franco-British flank.
(The only U.S. commander who waged blitzkrieg was Gen. Patton.)
Hitler’s plan, authored by Gen. Manstein, of suddenly attacking Holland and Belgium, both neutrals, was superb. Hitler was brilliant in keeping open the Albert Canals, and as the British and French forces, moved into Belgium to confront him, they left their right flank exposed to the Panzer thrust across the Meuse and into the French heartland. The French were vulnerable because there was a gap in the western part of the Maginot Line. But Hitler ordered a pause that kept the British forces and French forces from being wiped out at Dunkirk as noted earlier. It was a huge blunder.
In the case of Russia, Hitler first believed that the methods used in France could be repeated in that country. This ignored a great deal. Generals von Bock and Guderian wanted to use the panzers to drive as far and quickly as possible towards Moscow, enveloping key Soviet forces, and then let the infantry catch up, just as they had done in France. The more orthodox theory demanded the use of both in executing huge envelopments. Thanks to Hitler, orthodoxy won out.
It was a poorly conceived strategy and a proved to be a disaster. First of all, Russia was a place of vast spaces and bad weather. It was a very backward, primitive country with its little thatch roofed wooden houses and seemingly endless spaces. There were no electric systems, and no systems of communication. The Russian people had no medical care. They ignored hardship, pain, hunger, fatigue much better than the Germans did because they were infinitely more primitive. The Russian soldier was insensitive to poverty, hunger, fatigue pain, etc. Where Germans at home had sewing machines, fine furniture, excellent china and elegant bed linens, the Soviet had none of these.
It should be remembered that the German victories in the West were mainly due to networks of roads there. Russia had no networks of roads. Russian roads were scanty dog tracks. Any rain turned these dirt roads into canals of mud. That is what helped to defeat the Germans. They had wheeled vehicles but they were meant for road use, not cross country. They had no off road capability. There were sparse communications in Russia. There were few bridges in Russia that only a few could carry heavy loads such as tanks. There were few railroads, and they were not in a European gauge. The Russian gauge was broader.
Tanks have to move off the road to be useful in battle. There is no war of maneuver if tanks stay on the roads. German tanks could go cross-country, France proved that, but the German supply vehicles were confined to the road. Many of them were not tracked, and much of the German equipment was horse-drawn so their use was cumbersome and inadequate in a place like Russia. In addition, Russia had almost endless manpower reserves. At they could mobilize with incredible speed once attacked. That was the factor that helped defeat German efforts.
The German Army was ignorant about Russian armor and didn’t appreciate the fighting caliber of the Soviet T-34 and KVI tanks until they appeared on the battlefield. German planners ignored the possibility of Soviet troops being transferred from Siberia to the new battle front. The Germans underestimated Soviet air power.
A major flaw occurred before the battle when Hitler began to dilute his forces. One historian, Liddell Hart said that a division of tanks used to have 165 tanks, but as Hitler created new divisions, they had half the tanks as before. Historian, Ronald Lewin said that the Panzer division of 1940 with its 300 tanks had shrunk to 200. Another key point -- the order of battle for Operation Barbarossa was not much larger than the German force of the summer of 1940 – about 4,198 tanks versus the earlier 3,420 tanks. The obsolete Marks I and 2 had been reduced, but 1,156 Marks tanks still remained, 772 of them of Czech origin. That did not bode well.
Targeting Moscow
Where was the German strike to come? Another issue was targeting Moscow. Stalin was certain that Hitler would strike at Moscow. When Walther von Brauchitsche, Commander in Chief of the Army, supported a direct thrust at Moscow, Hitler replied that, "Only ossified brains could think of such an idea.” Yet his other generals did. The staffs of the OKW and the OKH had assigned General Eric Marks to come up with a plan that defined the operation’s objective. Marks made clear that the main centers of the Soviet war economy lay down in the Ukraine, around Leningrad and in the Moscow region. But then he drew a fateful conclusion: “Of these areas, Moscow contains the economic, political and spiritual center of the More about this.USSR. Its capture would destroy the coordination of the Russian state.” Gen. Halder said that the success of the campaign depended on what happened at Mosow and generals like von Bock and Guderian wanted to take Moscow because he believed it would dislocate Russian commanders, and that its capture would result in countrywide paralysis. The Soviet empire radiated from Moscow. It was the strategic center of the country, they said.
What was Hitler’s response to his military? He secretly ordered Gen. Jodl, to do a study and Jodl passed the responsibility on to Baron von Lossberg. Lossberg said that the target should be, not Moscow, but Smolensk, about 200 miles to the west. Hitler’s thought on all of this lazy, desultory, tardy and reluctant. Moscow is of no great importance, he said.
Gen. Warlimont said with icy disdain, “With a stroke of a pen, a new concept of the campaign against Russia was substituted for what which OKH had worked out as a result of months of painstaking examination and cross-checking from all angles by the best military brains available.”
Instead, Hitler struck the Caucasus. Perhaps he was thinking of the Kaiser’s 1918 offensive which had headed for the south because of its oil wheat lands etc. But once again Hitler couldn’t make up his mind. He first headed for Leningrad, and then Moscow, but then he suddenly wheeled his forces and had them head south to capture the black earth regions of the south and the Crimea. He felt the Crimea would be an unsinkable aircraft carrier that Russians would use to attack the Romanian oilfields. Hitler wanted to take Leningrad in the north to protect his supply line from Sweden. He jeered at his commanders, saying that they knew nothing of the economic factors of war. In any case, he ignored Moscow, and decided to go for the Ukraine. He obtained a huge victory in Kiel, taking several hundred thousands of prisoners, but the victory had little strategic impact. As Guderian later wrote, "Kiev was certainly a brilliant tactical success, but the question of whether it had a significant strategic importance still remains open. Everything now depended on our ability to achieve expected results before the winter and even before autumn rains.”
The Battle of Kiev set the German blitzkrieg against Moscow even further behind schedule. By July 4, Hitler proclaimed that the war was won, but it wasn’t won by any means as Stalingrad would prove a year and a half later.
As the battle went on, the rains in July and August also wasted time and stalled the advance. The tanks were bogged down and couldn’t advance and resupplies of troops and food ammunition were very slow to come up. There were scenes of blobs of German tanks sitting stalled in the rain in vast Russian fields early in the campaign. There was a 19-day interval where Guderian was stalled, and Liddell Hart said that Hitler wasted two critical months deciding whether he should go to Moscow or the Ukraine. He chose the latter. It should be noted that all four original commanders of Barbarossa – Brauchitsche, Leeb, Rundstedt, and Bock were all gone by September. Guderian would soon follow. Bock was perhaps the general that was the most eager to capture Moscow.
Hitler underestimated Russian numbers of tanks. Gen. Halder said that they thought Russia had only 200 tanks, but already the Germans had indentified 360. Hitler told Guderian that if he had believed that the number of tanks cited in Guderian’s 1937 book, he wouldn’t have started this war. During the Stalingrad battle someone gave him an estimate of the growing number of Russian tanks, and Hitler dismissed it haughtily he only believed what he wanted to believe. In any case, it was too late now.
Hitler had been so confident of a quick victory that his men were only issued summer uniforms. The last attempt to take Moscow ended in October, and the winter stalled any fresh efforts. Gen. Guderian made note of some of the effects of the Russian winter on his armor – “Ice was causing a lot of trouble since the calks for the tanks had not yet arrived. The cold made the telescopic sights useless; the salve which was supposed to prevent this had not yet arrived. In order to start the engines of the tanks, fires had to be lit beneath them; fuel was freezing on occasions and the oil became viscous.”
Also were freezing were the German troops.
Orthodoxy had failed. After the Battle of Stalingrad, the Germans were now certain to lose.
Two Final Nails in Hitler’s Coffin
Hitler underestimated America’s industrial strength and the quality of its troops. There is no reason why Hitler made the fatal decision to declare war on America except Hitler’s careless arrogance and his contempt for Roosevelt and America’s combat capability. My hand to hand combat instructor, Sgt. Boomer, used top tell me that the person most likely to kill you in a bar fight was a person you had underestimated. I have remembered that all my life.
Hitler entirely misjudged America’s industrial productivity. For example, America did not build the best tanks, they were inferior to the tanks Germany built, but America could flood the battlefield with them. According to an historian I read, inn May 1940, President Roosevelt stunned his nation by calling for the production of 185,000 combat planes, 120,000 tanks, 55,000 anti-aircraft guns and 18 million tons of merchant shipping, within two years. Hitler was reassured by his top advisors that this was impossible, and just an example of American propaganda. It wasn’t. In 1939, total aircraft production for the US military had been less than 3,000 planes annually. But by the end of the war, US factories produced 300,000 planes. By 1944 the US had produced two-thirds of the Allied military equipment used in the war, and was bringing massive military forces into play in North and South America, the Caribbean, the Atlantic, Western Europe and the Pacific.
Both Russia and the United States were masters of the techniques of mass production, which Germany never employed. It made all the difference.
This patronizing and ill-informed attitude towards enemy states reminds me of W. Did Bush every take a trip outside the USA before he became a politician? --bks
Posted by: bks | 28 September 2014 at 12:11 PM
Mr. Sale,
Thank you for this insightful piece. I would add to this the fateful decision by Mussolini to demand passage into Greece in late October of 1940. http://www.ultimatehistoryproject.com/oxi-day.html OCHI (ΌΧΙ) Day, October 28, 1940 marks the beginning of Greek resistance to Italian and later German invasions. The link above contains a few notable quotes that I will add: ‘At 5:30 a.m., before the ultimatum had even expired, the Italian army poured over the Greek-Albanian border into the mountainous Pindos region of Northern Greece. There they met fierce and unexpected resistance.
‘Within six months, Ioannis Metaxas would be dead; his successor, Alexandros Koryzis would commit suicide; Mussolini would be humiliated; and the Germans would raise the swastika over the Acropolis.
‘Despite Greece’s ultimate fall to Axis powers, Metaxas’ response resulted in a fatal diversion and delay for the Axis powers in general and the German army specifically. British military historian Sir John Keegan describes the Battle of Greece as “decisive in determining the future course of the Second World War.”’
The Greek response in the Pindus Mountains in NW Greece was formidable in harsh winter conditions: ‘Mussolini’s advisors had assured him that the invasion of Greece would take no more than two weeks. The Italian experience in Albania must have made this seem very plausible: like Albania, Greece was a small country with a correspondingly small army.
‘The difference lay in the territory: Italian forces entered Greece through the steep Pindos Mountains. This was rough, wild terrain made worse by the onset of winter. As Italian troops moved southward towards the city of Ioanina, Greek troops took to the heights, bombarding the Italians from above.
‘The rough roads and deep snow made it difficult to supply the troops, while bad weather and continuous cloud cover prohibited the Italians from using their superior air power.
‘Meanwhile, the women of the local villages, accustomed to the territory, carried supplies and munitions on their backs to the Greek troops.
‘Argiris Balatsos recorded his encounter with several of these women in his diary:
‘"7 November 1940. ... I met women who were carrying ammunition. One was 88 years old. Another one told me that she had locked the kid in the shed, so that she could come to help the army. During the night, I saw an old woman taking care of the two kids, while their mother was baking bread for the army under the candle light.”’
Ultimately, six months later, Germany entered Greece. Several observations from the period are as follows: ‘Despite their ultimate defeat, the Greeks had fought long and hard. For six months they occupied the Italian army, preventing them from advancing. In the end, the Germans were forced to delay the invasion of Russia in order to subdue the Greeks when the Italians failed in their efforts. This delay proved fatal for the Germans, extending their campaign against the USSR into the brutal winter.
‘Hitler’s Chief of Staff, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel admitted during the Nuremberg Trials:
“…the unbelievably strong resistance of the Greeks delayed by two or more vital months the German attack against Russia; if we did not have this long delay, the outcome of the war would have been different in the Eastern Front and the war in general.”
‘Churchill paid homage to the Greek resistance by claiming, “…until now we would say that the Greeks fight like heroes. From now on we will say that heroes fight like Greeks.”’
The toll in Greece is as follows: ’ The country was devastated by war and occupation, and its economy and infrastructure lay in ruins. Greece suffered more than 400,000 casualties during the occupation, and the country's Jewish community was almost completely exterminated in the Holocaust. By 1946, however, a vicious civil war erupted between the British and American-sponsored conservative government and leftist guerrillas, which would last until 1949.’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_Greece_during_World_War_II)
With this as background, the emergence of the Golden Dawn Party in Greece is a shock to every Greek of my acquaintance, given the party’s avowed Nazi platform, salute and adoration of Hitler and his ideology.
Posted by: Haralambos | 28 September 2014 at 01:27 PM
"Hitler was a man of strong will. It is my view that Gen. Guderian, whose memory I much respect, did not distinguish clearly between strength of resolution and mere stubbornness. The last occurs when the will crowds out the judgment, when the intent to have your way stifles any criticism of it, when the desire to achieve a pet aim cripples any ability to test its means and its chances of success – that was Hitler."
Remind anyone of the Zionist, neocon and R2P crowd? To them negotiation is anathema...unless its to negotiate the opponent's unconditional and total surrender.
Posted by: JohnH | 28 September 2014 at 03:39 PM
I've been reading WWII history off and on since my junior high school days 60 years ago, when I stumbled upon Samuel Eliot Morrison's 15 or so volume of the US Navy's official role in the affair in the school library. As my interests matured over the years beyond the guts and glory stuff that appeals to the testosterone-soaked teenager, I found myself considering some of the higher level issues that Mr. Sale addresses in this post. One that he mentions that I don't think has received the attention it deserves is Hitler's impulsive, unilateral declaration of war on the USA several days after Pearl Harbor. At a minimum he should have demanded that Japan declare war on the USSR, thereby confronting Stalin with a second front. But better yet might have been to not make the declaration at all, and thus not cut the ground completely out from under the America First and German American Bund movements which had theretofore fought President Roosevelt tooth and nail opposing his agenda of rearmament and surreptitious supply of material support to Germany's European adversaries. Without Hitlers war declaration FDR would have found it much more difficult, and perhaps impossible, to send anywhere near the amount of material support to Britain and the USSR which was so critical to their war efforts. Not to mention the "Europe First" strategy which even Admiral King, the Pacific War's most strident advocate, bought into.
The pulled punches surrounding Dunkirk, which as I recall are generally regarded as driven by Hitler's fantasy that the Brits were really racial allies, also give rise to plenty of room for alternative history speculations. If the Germans had captured the British expeditionary force and the French units that in reality escaped their grasp, it would have been politically imperative that the Churchill government withdraw most of the Mediterranean fleet back home ASAP. The British would thus not have had the forces in place to attack the Vichy French Fleet in Oran in July, 1940, and the Italian fleet at Taranto four months later. The Mediterranean would then have been an Axis lake making Britain's position in the Eastern end of that sea untenable. Germany could then have rolled up most of the Middle East and with it Britain's access to its oil.
Posted by: ex-PFC Chuck | 28 September 2014 at 04:52 PM
I think it was Lloyd George who said he wanted to squeeze Germany till the pips squeaked. It was only Keynes who fought against this idea in Great Britain. Herbert Hoover who saw the facts on the ground in Germany may have pushed back on the punish Germany factions.
Posted by: dilbert dogbert | 28 September 2014 at 08:18 PM
1.
“I believe, as a general rule, Governments achieve the reverse of their stated objectives. I hesitate to call it a unique universal law and there may also be other formulations.” This masterly formulation by Walrus is by and large true, I think.”
I could tell it the other way: Many times the sum of unintended consequences of Govt action is so big that the final result is opposite to the one expected. But generally agree.
2 “How Hitler expected to win any war is a mystery, for Germany had no heavy bomber fleet
He simply believed in superior German industry’s potential, and mostly was right, as History told us.
3 “nor had it mastered the means of mass production the way Russia had and which proved one of the keys to the Soviet’s victory.”
Sorry but Germany was the first European country which understood the role of mass production. Famous VW Beetle was Ferdinand Porsche’s 30’s design and Ford’s mounting tape idea copying.
The same way was used to produce for example Schmeisser light machine gun (german design, but general idea partially copied from American Tommy gun.) Soviet “pepesha” was 99% copy of Tommy gun
Russian mass production of T-34 tanks etc. was result of evacuating all the strategic industry from European part beyond Ural Mts. line, and lack of time. Soviet Union hadn’t mass production before 1942. As the need is mother of creativity, Soviets started to use what they had ready to use. Many of Soviet tanks used improved tractor engines etc. and Soviets begun to produce tanks using mounting tapes, because it was faster.
4 “Hitler had almost lost the victory in France by being timid, and he lost the victory in Russian because he didn’t listen to his panzer leaders”
Hitler lost in Russia mostly because of his deep disdain to Slavic nations. He could easily defeat Stalin if he could treat Slavic people lived in conquered by Germans part of Soviet Union the same way he treated French or Dutch.
Stalin ordered to withdrawing Soviet army “to burn all to the naked ground” (old Russian tactics used during Napoleon’s invasion), and they did it, didn’t care about common people living there. The big hunger was the first result of it.
People had enough of Bolsheviks and in the first days of German invasion they thought Germans were liberators to them, especially Eastern Ukraine remembered well “Holodomor”, artificial famine created by Soviets in 30’s, when a few millions died from starvation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
General Andrey Vlasov cooperation with Germans was another one result of this Stalin’s policy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Vlasov
Hitler didn’t understand it and didn’t use this sentiment against Bolsheviks for easier defeating Stalin, more, his troops behaved the same way like Soviet troops, so people understood fast Germans were occupants, not liberators.
Posted by: Piotr, Poland | 29 September 2014 at 06:43 AM
I believe your statement is mistaken. I am including notes on the Soviet economy.
When World War II began, the Soviet Union was the world’s third largest economy. By 1941, that economy was near collapse. One third of the Soviet rail network was lost, along 40 percent of its generating capacity, while the lifeblood of its industry – coal, steel, and iron ore -- had been reduced by three quarters, taken by German forces.
According to Richard Overy, an outstanding analyst of the war, the Soviet Union had been a centrally planned economy, but its initial defeats in 1941 unraveled the Soviet program. But by 1944, the Soviets were again operating a centrally planned economy, and Overy noted that Russia had “repaired the fractured the web of industry, transport and resources so that by 1942, (the Soviets) produced more weapons than the year before…more weapons than the enemy.” Plus the Soviet weapons were superior in quality to the German ones. This scholar also says that in 1943, the gap between Soviet and German production “widened further” in favor of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was producing three aircraft or every two German aircraft produced. It produced double the number of tanks produced by Germany. “The Soviet Union operated a command economy, directed by the state and centrally planned,” Overy said, pointing out that Russia’s centrally planned economy operated unimpeded by the pressures of the free market, and workers were, of course, brutalized: for example, being tardy or not showing up for work could end with the state shooting or imprisoning workers.
Overy’s views on this are shared by every historian of the war I have read including John Keegan, Max Hastings, Wilmont, Gatzke, Porter and White. (In fact, C. Jones Porter authored a superb account, Moscow in World War II that reaches the same conclusions at the rest.) These same sources make clear that the German wartime economy was by far inferior to the Soviets, chiefly because the Germans were used to a production system of technical sophistication and were reluctant to embrace the techniques of mass production as the Soviets and Americans did. Hitler issued in 1941 an edict calling for “Simplification and Increased Efficiency in Armaments Production” that had little effect on German industrial leaders.
Under the driving leadership of Albert Speer, the German industrial leaders then pledged to deliver the sort of production totals enjoyed by America and the Soviet Union, but the German military continued to disrupt long production runs and defy standardization. The German military regarded Speer as an “inexperienced intruder” and resisted him at every step. This is indeed very odd. Germany possessed a wealth of resources, skilled entrepreneurs, industrialists, a skilled work force, technical genius -- all at the disposal of a brutal authoritarian system that killed or imprisoned dissenters. But as Overy points out, the German economy fell between two stools – it was not capitalist enough to recruit private enterprise as America did, and it wasn’t enough of a command economy to coerce the German military dissenters who often stifled Germans industries attempts at improvement.
On the T-34.
I noticed one reader said that the Soviet T-34 tank was not American in design. In fact, it was. It was designed by the American inventor J. Walter Christie, who in 1931 designed an armored vehicle known as the T-3, which, tracks removed, could travel over 60 miles per hour. Although his design “revolutionized tank warfare” according to one account, it potential was ignored by the American military. The Russians locked onto it. They purchased several 10 ton T-3, relatively light tanks, and incorporated them into their own designs, ending in the BT Medium Tank. In 1938, the BT group was replaced by the A-20 which eventually became the legendary T-34.
Another source would be Lewin's Hitler's Mistake, the chapter on The Culture of Procurement.
thank you for taking an interest.
Posted by: richard sale | 29 September 2014 at 09:06 AM
I have heard this argument before. It is not correct. In an e-mail, an attorney said, “It is absolutely fundamental that the Soviet economy was (before and after the war) wildly inefficient, esp. given (that) the vast resources in the Soviet Union. Germany was (sic) far more efficient in industrial production and military effectiveness.”
Not at all. When World War II began, the Soviet Union was the world’s third largest economy. By 1941, that economy was near collapse. One third of the Soviet rail network was lost, along 40 percent of its generating capacity, while the lifeblood of its industry – coal, steel, and iron ore -- had been reduced by three quarters, taken by German forces.
According to Richard Overy, an outstanding analyst of the war, the Soviet Union had been a centrally planned economy, but its initial defeats in 1941 unraveled the Soviet program. But by 1944, the Soviets were again operating a centrally planned economy, and Overy noted that Russia had “repaired the fractured the web of industry, transport and resources so that by 1942, (the Soviets) produced more weapons than the year before…more weapons than the enemy.” Plus the Soviet weapons were superior in quality to the German ones. This scholar also says that in 1943, the gap between Soviet and German production “widened further” in favor of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was producing three aircraft or every two German aircraft produced. It produced double the number of tanks produced by Germany. “The Soviet Union operated a command economy, directed by the state and centrally planned,” Overy said, pointing out that Russia’s centrally planned economy operated unimpeded by the pressures of the free market, and workers were, of course, brutalized: for example, being tardy or not showing up for work could end with the state shooting or imprisoning workers.
Overy’s views on this are shared by every historian of the war I have read including John Keegan, Max Hastings, Wilmont, Gatzke, Porter and White. (In fact, C. Jones Porter authored a superb account, Moscow in World War II that reaches the same conclusions at the rest.) These same sources make clear that the German wartime economy was by far inferior to the Soviets, chiefly because the Germans were used to a production system of technical sophistication and were reluctant to embrace the techniques of mass production as the Soviets and Americans did. Hitler issued in 1941 an edict calling for “Simplification and Increased Efficiency in Armaments Production” that had little effect on German industrial leaders.
Under the driving leadership of Albert Speer, the German industrial leaders then pledged to deliver the sort of production totals enjoyed by America and the Soviet Union, but the German military continued to disrupt long production runs and defy standardization. The German military regarded Speer as an “inexperienced intruder” and resisted him at every step. This is indeed very odd. Germany possessed a wealth of resources, skilled entrepreneurs, industrialists, a skilled work force, technical genius -- all at the disposal of a brutal authoritarian system that killed or imprisoned dissenters. But as Overy points out, the German economy fell between two stools – it was not capitalist enough to recruit private enterprise as America did, and it wasn’t enough of a command economy to coerce the German military dissenters who often stifled Germans industries attempts at improvement.
On the T-34.
I noticed one reader said that the Soviet T-34 tank was not American in design. In fact, it was. It was designed by the American inventor J. Walter Christie, who in 1931 designed an armored vehicle known as the T-3, which, tracks removed, could travel over 60 miles per hour. Although his design “revolutionized tank warfare” according to one account, it potential was ignored by the American military. The Russians locked onto it. They purchased several 10 ton T-3, relatively light tanks, and incorporated them into their own designs, ending in the BT Medium Tank. In 1938, the BT group was replaced by the A-20 which eventually became the legendary T-34.
Posted by: richard sale | 29 September 2014 at 10:37 AM
I believe that Walrus' Axiom is demonstrably false.
The governments I am subject to, claim that they want to provide infrastructure, healthcare, education, essential services, etc. etc.
They also do, in fact, a credible job of providing infrastructure, education, fire services, police services, health care, water, sewage, etc. etc.
Posted by: AEL | 29 September 2014 at 03:15 PM
Richard! Another wonderful and insightful post. Is there a good history of the involvement of Americans in /soviet tank design and production in the 30's,how, when, why, how who?
And the story of why German and Soviet tanks were so superior to American and British tanks in WWII?
My favorite short book on war production by all sides in ?WWII is by Alan Millward.
Posted by: William R. Cumming | 29 September 2014 at 07:59 PM
CORRECTION:
Alan Milward!
Works
The German Economy at War (1965)
The New Order and the French Economy (1970)
War, Economy and Society (1979)
The Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1945-51 (1987)
War, Economy and Society, 1939-45 (Pelican History of World Economics in 20th Century) (1987)
The European Rescue of the Nation-State (1992)
The Frontier of National Sovereignty: History and Theory, 1945-92 with Ruggero Ranieri and Frances M.B. Lynch (1994)
Britain's Place in the World: Import Controls 1945-60 (Routledge Explorations in Economic History) with George Brennan (1996)
The European Rescue of the Nation State (1999)
Politics and Economics in the History of the European Union (The Graz Schumpeter Lectures) (2005)
The Rise and Fall of a National Strategy: The UK and The European Community: Volume 1 (2012)
The Economic Development of Continental Europe 1780-1870 (Routledge Revivals) with S. B. Saul (2012)
The Development of the Economies of Continental Europe 1850-1914 (Routledge Revivals) with S B Saul (2012)
Politics and Economics in the History of the European Union (The Graz Schumpeter Lectures) (2012)[5]
Posted by: William R. Cumming | 29 September 2014 at 08:07 PM
AEL,
I think these guys say it best:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9foi342LXQE
Posted by: Fred | 29 September 2014 at 11:35 PM
To Richard Sale
to further support your argument on inefficient German production, Hitler was convinced that mistake during WWI wad total war mobilization leading to domestic discontent. He was quite adamant at times that domestic production not fall too low. Germany waited too long to mobilize and organize economy for industrial war. The lack of utilizing women in factories just another example of keeping civilian life close to 'normal' for as long as possible.
Posted by: Mark G | 30 September 2014 at 12:01 AM
Thank you for that post Mr Sale. Hope you won't mind me disagreeing with a number of your statements though. There's still a lot to be said and researched about Hitler himself and the war in general.
I'm sure you have historians backing your positions on most of the arguments you bring forward, but this evidence is by no means shared by everyone. I don't want to get into a detailed list of the points I disagree with you, but there are a few. In biref, what I find most disturbing about your analysis, is that it is a view of things in hindsight, which is always much easier thant predictive analysis when events unfold on the ground.
Reading your article makes one actually wonder how a man (Hitler) who committed so many mistakes and had so many flaws (as a military leader) who actually have pulled it off to conquer most of Europe, leave a blood-trail of about 50 million victims (victims of Genocide not included), and resist an alliance of the world's leading powers for about 6 years of so.
Finally just a few comments as a side note, the victory in France was never compromised by Hitler's hesitation. It only prevented total annihilation of French-British forces in the pocket of Dunkirk, but after Guderian's break-through in the Ardennes, the collapse of the French lines and the absence of any strategic reserve on the French side, it was clear that campaign was won for the Germans. So saying, Hitler botched it, would be a bit of an exageration as he was the one advocating and even enjoining his generals to come up with a "blitz-krieg" type of warfare for the westernfront. He hesitated after the total break down of the French army, probably for fear of overstretching his lines and compromising what looked already as an outstanding success. Your criticism in that regard is inappopriate (again from a military point of view). What you could argue of course, is that he led british forces escape that proved vital in the continuance of the british war effort. So maybe from that perspective, this had wide ranging effects in that it allowed the UK to keep a fighting force that was to be used elsewhere afterwards and ultimately contributed to the UK not being invaded and forcing Hitler to start the invasion of the Soviet Union, without after come to a peace agreement in the WEst, something he always wanted to avoid (so so-called "Zwei-Fronten-Krieg" like in WWI).
Also, with regard to Operation Barbarossa, you forget to mention one event that proved to have a huge impact on the campaign of summer 1941: initially the plan of the OKW was to launch operations against the USSR early in May 1941. However, Hitler's Wehrmach had to come to the rescue of the Italians' in the Balkans (in their war against Greece) and defeating Greece delayed the plan for a crucial period of 5 weeks. The advance of the GErman infantry and tank divisions thus started to slow down as early as october 1941, due to weather conditions and bad roads (as you mention), the whole offensive coming basically to a standstill in december already, a date when the OKW had anticipated to have conquered Moscow already. After that came the Russian winter counter-offensive, which effectively marks the first turning point in the war on the continent. But the Balkans' campaign is crucial in that regard.
The facts you mention, regarding Hitler imposing hiw views on the top generals in many battles, is absolutely right, but you fail to put forward a couple of reasons which played an important role in this: first of all, Hitler's personality. He was convinced to be protected by "divine providence" ("vorsehung" in German), which had kept him safe from numerous attempts at killing him, as early as 1939 at the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich, and his success in the campaign of 1940, which nobody considered possible in the OKW and in the German population in general, gave him an impression of invincibility and infaillability (combined with his racialist views about Slavic "Untermenschen") that led to catastrophic decisions from a strategic and tactical point of view.
Another aspect, not mentioned enough, that can also explain his hesitation and contradictory decision-making, is the fact that he was under heavy medication, taking more and more drugs that clouded his judgement as the war went on. Reading the book about the numerous psychotropic durgs he used on a daily basis, can certainly explain in part his lack of rationale thinking.
finally, I would mention as a anecdote, but still interesting fact, that his favourite song was a song by Sarah Leander: "Ich weiss es wird einmal ein Wunder und dann werden tausend Märchen war" (I know some day a wonder will happen, and then a thousand legends will come true), showing belief and faith in own's destiny was more important to me to objective and rationale facts.
Posted by: Patrick Bahzad | 30 September 2014 at 07:14 AM
Aopologies for typos and errors in my message ... Pressed the "post" button too early. Hope most of my comment can be read and understood though. PB
Posted by: Patrick Bahzad | 30 September 2014 at 08:39 AM
Just to add a footnote on how even some Americans viewed mass production: I had it from my father (who spent WWII as an engineer at Consolidated Vultee, building B-24's), that part of Lindbergh's argument for the US staying out of the war was that the rate at which the Germans built airplanes was higher than anything he had seen in the US. And indeed, the US had a ways to go: when Ford designed their Willow Run plant to mass-produce B-24's, they first had to spend a few months redrafting all the mechanical drawings to automotive rather than aviation standards--the latter were a lot sloppier.
Posted by: DCA | 30 September 2014 at 03:57 PM
Mr. Sale wrote:
"Hitler, when he came to power, promised to end unemployment, restore the currency, rearm, and mass produce cars. He vowed to build the autobahns and reclaim territories lost by the Treaty.
The means to achieve these goals was to be military conquest. He would wage a war that would violate all standards of civilized warfare and would be waged in the most inhumane fashion possible."
---
The goals mentioned in the first sentence were achieved by the Germans in the years between 1933 and 1939, before "military conquest" began. That is, they were all achieved by nonviolent, non-military means.
As well, how can it follow logically that Hitler intended to achieve these goals "through military conquest" when "Germany had no heavy bomber fleet" ?
Given that the US and British had already decided that the next war would be an air war that would target the adversary's means of industrial/military production as well as working-class civilian producers, and that very early on the US had set up facilities to annihilate those civilians, including their infant children [see http://lcweb2.loc.gov/master/pnp/habshaer/ut/ut0500/ut0568/data/ut0568data.pdf p. 16] through what historian H. Stuart Hughes called "terror weapons," the "first use of weapons of mass destruction in history" [Commentary Reader, Norman Podhoretz, ed; p. 162] ; is it completely accurate to write that "[Hitler] would wage a war that would violate all standards of civilized warfare and would be waged in the most inhumane fashion possible"?
= = = =
Mr. Sales explained that the US became an industrial, mass-production juggernaut, far out-stripping Hitler's expectations or capacity;
"Both Russia and the United States were masters of the techniques of mass production, which Germany never employed. It made all the difference."
- - - -
To which it might be added that US and British pilots carried out the plan conceived by Churchill around 1919 and endorsed by FDR at least as early as 1939 to use air power to penetrate the adversary's homeland and destroy its war-making capacity to the extent that 75% of German civilian and industrial infrastructure was reduced to rubble and as many as 600,000 German civilians incinerated or asphyxiated in the Allied firebombing campaigns, while the US industrial front, spread over many cities in the heartland, were untouched [see Jörg Friedrich, "The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945" ). Geography is destiny.
As you stated, Mr. Sales, NSDAP had not planned for "military conquest" by building heavy bombers, but as Friedrich and the US Department of the Interior report, the US had made and used such plans even before the outbreak of a shooting war. Is it not possible to conjecture that NSDAP labor camps were used in part to shelter some of the 7 million German civilians who were "de-housed" ("Bomber" Harris's term) by Allied firebombing as well as a belated effort to catch up to US military-industrial production capacity?
= = = = =
Sales wrote:
"Christianity was abolished and there was to be a return to the Norse legends and tales of former Aryan glory. "
- - - - -
In "Mein Kampf," Hitler assessed as mistaken Bismark's actions in dividing German Protestants against Catholics; he thought such tactics divided the nation against itself when it needed to be unified. Thus, he argued that both Protestants and Catholics should have equal standing. Indeed, as R. H. S. Stolfi argues in "Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny," Hitler was romantically informed by his love of opera and the Norse legends and thought those tales could be the unifying element of German culture (much as Kennan argued that Russian literature unifies Russian culture, and the Persian epic "Shahnameh" unifies Iranian culture, Islam notwithstanding).
That "Christianity was abolished" seems to be contraindicated by Susannah Heschel's claims in "The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany." Heschel argued that Christianity was very much alive in Germany in the Nazi era, but that it sought to remove Hebrew influences from expressions of Christianity. Heschel claims that Nazis endorsed this interpretation of Christianity.
= = = = = =
Sales wrote:
"Germany was to turn Europe into a slave state."
- - - - - -
In "Freedom Betrayed" Herbert Hoover argues repeatedly that, after having met with Hitler and Goering and numerous European diplomats, Hoover was convinced that Germany had no intentions of targeting Western Europe; Hitler's animus was directed eastward. If the French and British remained uninvolved, Germany would not involve them. One line of argument holds that Hitler did not vanquish the British at Dunkirk because he actually believed that an alliance or at least friendship with the British better served German interests.
Further, Hoover tried to convince western Europeans that they were in no position to tangle with Germany and would only suffer great harm if they did. Had Hitler been given freedom to battle Russia to their mutual exhaustion, the Continent would experience "a century of peace." As Pat Buchanan argues, the British R2P Poland was inexplicable and, ultimately, betrayed, but it did strike the flint to a hot war that Germany did not seek and Churchill was not able to douse without US and Russian assistance.
Posted by: Croesus | 30 September 2014 at 05:39 PM
I respect you talking the time to express your views. Few do that.
As for history it is always written in hindsight and its conclusions are always provisional -- subject to new information.
Thank you all for your comments.
Richard Sale
Posted by: richard sale | 30 September 2014 at 05:48 PM
Croesus,
You write, "... and that very early on the US had set up facilities to annihilate those civilians, including their infant children [see http://lcweb2.loc.gov/master/pnp/habshaer/ut/ut0500/ut0568/data/ut0568data.pdf p. 16] through what historian H. Stuart Hughes called "terror weapons," the "first use of weapons of mass destruction in history" [Commentary Reader, Norman Podhoretz, ed; p. 162]"
The facilities you say the US "set up very early in the war" were not built until 1943, almost half-way through for the US. Podwhoreitz is also wrong in that Japan first firebombed cities in China in 1939 and Germany firebombed London, Coventry and other English cities during the Blitz. Harris and LeMay thought they could win the war through the air by demoralizing the populace into surrender.
Buchanan,like Hoover, would like to have seen us stay out of the war in Germany so they and the USSR could destroy one another. To think it would create a century of peace is a pretty little thought but who knows what really would have happened. Anyway they both ignore the fact that Hitler declared war on us first.
Even if Hitler had only sought the elimination of the Sviet Union and world Jewrey and other unworthies, like the Slavs, France and Britain would at the least been economic slaves to Germany. But there is every reason to believe he wouldn't have stopped there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Order_%28Nazism%29
Posted by: optimax | 01 October 2014 at 01:47 AM
AEL,
I think Walrus was thinking of foreign policy not items of a domestic agenda.
Richard Sale
Posted by: richard sale | 01 October 2014 at 10:00 AM
William,
I would to me a good service if you would select five or six of the above books which really stood out.
Thank you for all generous praise of my efforts.
Richard Sale
Posted by: richard sale | 01 October 2014 at 10:02 AM
Thank you very much.
Hitler also had Parkinsons disease, but there was a strain of hysteria in his thinking from his earliest days on politics.
Richard
Posted by: richard sale | 01 October 2014 at 10:04 AM
Your post makes so many points that is difficult to attend to all of them.
On Hoover. He totally mismanaged the Depreesoin and its effects and tried to accommodate Hitler.
The Allies waged a horrible air campaign that killed hundreds and thousands of German civilians. My uncle, who was a gunner in a B-17, took part in the fire bombing of Hamburg, Cologne and bombed Berlin twice. He received a Distinguished Flying Cross for a heroic action aboard his plane, but he always told me that he was a war criminal.
Hitler and conquered countries. Whatever the faults of the Allies, and they are grievous ones, our forces did not force our captives, military and civilian, to work to death. Hitler's goal of conquest was to rule by slavery. His program was designed to be inhuman.
Richard Sale
Posted by: richard sale | 01 October 2014 at 10:15 AM
l think you are spot on.
Richard Sale
Posted by: richard sale | 01 October 2014 at 05:51 PM