Reply #8: Being very nit-picky and not really on topic [View All]

and probably also wrong but I'm not sure whether Hitler's invaison of Russia can be regarded as folly, it was the way he did it that was wrong. Reading about Stalin's colectivisation of agriculture gives one an easy political plan for invading Russia (R. Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow).

Stalin killed many millions of his inhabitants, twice, without any comeback, because he controled the country. Hitler's mistake was trying to kill the inhabitants before he controled the country.

From JFC Fuller's 'The Conduct of War 1789-1967(?)':

Vis-a-vis Russia, Hitler's problem was one of time: could he defeat and establish his Lebensraum before the United States intervened in the war ? If he could not , then of a certainty the Western negative front (quiet ??? legin) would once again become a positive front, and he would be caught between two fronts, the thing he dreaded most. The solution lay in the correct choice of the Russian strategical centre of gravity, and reference to Clausewitz would have told him where it lay. Had not the latter pointed out that Russia could only be subdued 'by effects of internal dissension' ? Later, had not Theodor Mommsen compared the Russian Empire with a dust-bin held together by the rusty hoop of Tsardom; an latter still had not Lenin declared: "Nowhere in the world is there such oppression of the majority of the country's population as there is in Russia: the Great Russians form only 43 per cent of the population, i.e. less than half; the rest have no rights as belonging to other nationalities. Out of 170m of the population of Russia, about 100m are oppressed and without rights".

In 1941, Stalin's oppression was incalculably worse than any Tsar's, and the Ukrainians, White Russians, Balts, Cossacks, Caucasians; and many others had not forgotten the horrors of his ten years of collectivisation (1929-1938), during which some 10m people had been massacred, transported and starved to death. In 1941, in the Ukraine, White Russia and the Baltic States alone, some 40m people were yearning for liberation; therefore, in order to disintegrate the colossus, all Hitler had to do was to cross the Russian frontier as a liberator and terminate collectivisation. It would have won over to him, not only the minorities, but it would also have dissolved Stalin's armies, because they so largely consisted of collectivised serfs. This is why Stalin dreaded a German invasion, and he did not believe that the Germans would be so foolish as to conduct the war 'with arms alone'.

"Had the Germans", writes Reitlinger, "brought with them to Russia something like President Wilson's Fourteen Points of 1918, Russia would have disintegrated just as Germany had done then". And following the argument, he adds, "Hitler need never have diverted his armies from Moscow in order to secure the Ukraine, since the Ukrainians would have offered it to him". Instead he proclaimed the inhabitants of the USSR to be Untermenschen (sub humans), and decided on a war of extermination.

The invasion was launched on 22nd June 1941, and in the battles up to 26th September, when the great battle of Kiev ended, no less than 1.5m prisoners were captured, and by Christmas nearly another million were in the bag. The reason for these great numbers is given by General Anders: "Many soldiers", he writes, "seeing the war as an opportunity for a change of order in Russia, wished for German victory and therefore surrendered in great masses ... many high Soviet officers went over to the enemy offering to fight against the Soviets".

Everywhere the Germans were welcomed as liberators by the common people: the Ukrainians looked upon Hitler as the 'saviour of Europe', and the White Russians were eager to fight on the German side. Guderian tells us that "women came out of their villages on to the very battlefield bringing wooden platters of bread and butter and eggs and, in my case at least, refused to let me move on before I had eaten". And at Rostov, writes Erich Kern, "all over the city there were people waiting on the streets ready to cheer and welcome us in ... Never before had I seen such a sudden transformation. Of Bolshevism, there was no more. The enemy had gone ... Wherever we went we met laughing and waving people ... The Soviet Empire was creaking at the joints".

Then came Himmler and his infamous Security Service .........