The way the Germans fought the war it doesn’t really seem to me that they were trying to win the war. They didn’t have any well defined win conditions. They fought all over Europe. The real enemy was Great Britain and they should have been spending all their energy trying to defeat them. Which they didn’t do.
Going to war with the Soviet Union was just a bad idea. They also are giving Germany 30% of their war material. The thought that the Germans could conquer the Soviet Union quickly seems stupid for many reasons. Stalin is a killer. He came to power by killing, he stayed in power by killing. He’ll throw everything he possibly can at whoever is trying to kill him before you kill him. The Germans should have recognized this. Stalin has been in power since 1924. Plus the Holodomor in the 1930s. The scorched earth leave nothing for the enemy was done against Napoleon. The Germans should have known that. Plus the KV1 tank was immune to anything the Germans had. They knew this. The KV1 tank saw action in the Winter War. So it seems extremely stupid to me that the Germans would try to take on the Russians when they are already fighting in North Africa, and Atlantic.
It also seems like they would have put a lot more effort into securing the Atlantic and starving out Great Britain. If they were able to do that they win the war. That’s actually the key to winning the war. That should have been priority number one and yet it wasn’t.
So I don’t think the Germans were really trying to win the war. It seems like they were just out to pillage, destroy, kill as many people as they possibly could until someone killed them.
What research have you found that supports this theory?
Thanks.
Nazi Germany had some early victories at the start of the war and the Soviet did not impress in the winter war.
The Nazi leadership also thought of the Soviet people as subhumans and probably did think that they could roll over the Soviets as easy as the Dutch,Poles,French, English etc before.
The Nazi leadership is not known for making military sound decisions , they were just thugs who bullied their way into power who thought in their delusion that they could just do it.
You know what I find very annoying about WWII? We analyze the battles to no end. We talk about the technology to no end. We talk about armies and their sizes and their structure. We talk about the tactics. We talk about the people who fought in the war and what they did. That that stuff has been analyzed, re-analyzed then analyzed again and again and again.
Let’s start talking about the politics. Let’s talk about why they are doing what they are doing. When we do that, we get simple answers. Their Thugs. They’re Evil. They want to rule the world. There’s really nothing to it. They’re just bad people. It can all be summed up in one or two lines. It’s completely ignored.
No one really analyzes Hitler went to jail once before and was still able to become Germany’s leader. The Nazi’s leadership is young compared to other world leaders. They invaded Poland knowing full well that would bring war with Great Britain and France. As soon as they invaded Poland they started committing war crimes. After Stalingrad the Axis powers had lost. Yet the war would continue for another two years. After the war if all of Germany High Command will either commit suicide, executed, or go to jail. No matter what option they pick. Germany got split in two and Nazi’s will be forever hated by history. Yet, no one analyzes this stuff. This is all summed up in “Thugs”, “Stupid”, “They’re Just Evil”. No one can find any documentation from the Nazi’s on this stuff. So they either didn’t talk about which is what everyone believes and that’s the answer that everyone wants or it’s been lost to time.
With the worlds politics the way they are today. Democracies are falling. Countries are testing international norms. Countries are testing political norms within their own countries. I can hear a lot of theme’s that are similar to the Nazi’s. It would be really nice to know what the thought process was of the group that took it to the extreme and killed themselves doing it was like. What questions they asked themselves. How did they answer those questions. How did they feel about the world. What didn’t they talk about.
This kind of information would be helpful because we might just be able to avoid going down the path the Nazi’s took. We might be able to improve our societies instead of making them worse and destroying them.
Why do people do the things they do is always hard.
Even when people are still alive they it is not always clear why they do the things they do even for those involved.
The nazi claimed to hate the communists and they did think they were subhumans but they did not have a problem teaming up with the Soviets to divide eastern europe between them.
The crimes of the Nazis did not start with the invasion of Poland.
How they came to power .
What they did to those that did not fit in their ideology.
The euthanasia and eugenics.
And I know that that kind of things did not only happen in Nazi Germany.
The between two wars series are an interesting series to watch for one perspective on how the Nazis came to power .
A good point, I think the Germans wanted to win the war but also made it more difficult for themselves because of their genocidal actions and poor “ubermensch” choices. Partly it was Religious as murdering the “Jews and Athiest” in “Russia” was a goal which detracted from the actual war. The Soviets were very nasty but at least put their POWs to work in stead of the “Las See krepieren” (let them die attitude of the Germans.
Especially in this stage of the war (timeline wise) a lot of people from other Countries were amazed that the Germans kept on fighting and just put Panzerfausts in the hand of their children to fight for Hitler und Holocaust. Makes no sense whatsever. EXCEPT in the sense that German parents believed that they and their children would go to heaven in the war against the Jews. A sizeable number of Germans were brought up with the "The Jews killed Christ myth/Jews started WW1/ blood libel nonsense and worshipping in Churches were Jews were portrayed as sucking on the tits of pigs and Rabbis looking in the arse of pigs.
The hatred against anyone who happened to be a Jew/or converted Jew was evident. The Nazis chanted Rathenau (Jews WW1 Minister) Judensau! So basically it was hate over rational and dying for ab afterlife.
Chew who likes to pull some right arms out of these haters!
As far as I can tell, you don’t really need research to see that, IMHO, Germany was more about pillage and killing vs winning the war.
Lots of people claim that their attack to the Soviet oil fields was an example of them “trying” to win, but the real fact was that they were not at all prepared to use that oil. If they were, by then, they had total control of the Black Sea, so moving it would be pretty easy.
But, some will claim, that the Soviets sabotaged everything. Of course they did. How in the world wasn’t Germany 100% prepared for that? And in the end, they didn’t really try that hard to secure it for a long time.
Then look at the grain fields in Ukraine- again, that should have been a huge boost to the German food economy. But they didn’t do anything to make sure the production was even the same as the pathetic output that Soviet leaders got out of them.
Finally, look at the massive effort in terms of cost and manpower they dedicated to murdering Jews and anyone they hated. Instead of utilizing that resource to war fighting. Add to that the slave treatment to fight a war when not murdering the same people.
I would add the constant “fight until you die” mantra from Hitler, but Stalin did the same thing. Not a shock how many people died when they could have been used in a later battle because of pride.
Sparty has made this point a few times over the years in WAH.