DU Historians, etc.: Why did Hitler invade Russia...

[Smarmie Doofus]

when he did?

If he was worried that Washington was looking to provoke an incident in the Atlantic to justify entering the war on the side of England... it makes sense that he would try to maintain the non-aggression pact with the Soviets.

Was there a precipitating event or events? Was there "provocation"? What was the nature of Molotov's mission to Berlin, shortly before the invasion? Did Stalin want the war as well? For what purpose?

How much of it involved hostility between competing ideologies/ philosophies and how much much involved economic or geo-political interests?

[JuniorPlankton]

1. It was a "preventive strike"

Soviet Union was getting ready to attack Germany in weeks, if not days.

[shoelace414]

2. from my understanding

but there's no way to tell for sure.

they both knew they were going to attack each other eventually. but neither was really ready. it was too late in the season for Hitler to attack.. and Stalin was stalling.. err.. he wasn't ready either. both knew the other wasn't ready. so Hitler attacked, since Stalin wasn't expecting it.

[Smarmie Doofus]

5. According to something I just read online....

Stalin *was* expecting it. The entire military bureaucracy was expecting it; everyone except for the soldiers in the field.

Sorry... lost the website , so no link. The site did not fill me with confidence... as far as reliability goes.

[The Magistrate]

58. The Site, Sir, Was Unreliable And Foolish

Stalin did not expect to be invaded that summer. He treated all warnings of same as sabotage devised by the English secret services designed to draw him into a fight with Hitler and pull the capitalists' chestnuts out of the fire. The reasons he believed this are various; one of the most important, perhaps, being confidence in his own superior ruthlessness, which led him to believe he was certqainly out-smarting Hitler in the accord they signed in 1939.

[LisaL]

76. Stalin wasn't expecting it. It took a long time to even convince him

the war had started, he refused to believe it.

[ceile]

7. off topic

It's Christine!!!:woohoo:

[shoelace414]

10. moooooooooooooooooooooooose

"Stop calling me that"

[PATRICK]

45. Timing plus the anti-Communist crusade

which drove Nazi ideology before they decided to settle the WWI grudge match against France first. Stalin made it too tempting by his devastating and dumb leadership. Had Hitler been able at all to go in as even a temporarily benign liberator it might have worked. The stalemate with sea protected Britain, the constant belief(right up to the last days in the bunker) that you could settle with the West be becoming their attack dog against the Russky commies.

The only one who did not see the inevitable and imminent signs was of course Stalin, who feared and should have received a bullet in the head when the invasion walked through Stalin's denial of reality. Bush and Bin Laden and other goons are sort of well matched for these kinds of unstoppable fiascoes so long as immense forces dance to their tune.

And they already had the example of a smarter general, Napoleon, who made the same mistake. Stalin trusted old history while Hitler trusted the new technology and power.

I don't know if Hitler thought about the more logical necessity of cleaning up one front while he had the best chance so long as the other was as quiet as it ever was going to get. In a sense he had little choice. He available real allies was a piss poor lot, the more fascist of which(Italy and Japan) were more trouble than they were worth. he should never have gone to war past the Sudetenland, then done his thing
with Russia maybe. Stalin thought he was smart making Hitler provoke a war with Poland and getting some goodies while tying down Germany against the West. That probably looked good on paper too.

[SteppingRazor]

3. Also don't forget political pressure...

Nazism specifically, and fascism in general, is virulently anti-communism. How long, then, could a Nazi leader be allowed to keep up a treaty with communists? It would be almost like having a treaty with Israel.

[K-W]

30. Which is ironic

Considering that Stalin and Hitler had essentially the same political philosophy.

[Junkdrawer]

4. I'm not an historian, but Germany had no oil and his first targets were..

North Africa and the Balkans. I'm guessing he went in search of Oil.

[Smarmie Doofus]

11. Apparently, US oil companies ( esp. Shell and Esso) were....

aiding and abetting the German war effort by supplying via outlets in Rumania ( there's a Life Mag pic from 1940 online of an Esso truck being filled for shipping back to the Reich)and Spain at least up to the US declaration of War.

Wasn't there an embargo in effect by this time?

[The Magistrate]

62. No U.S. Embargo, Sir

Could have effected the Rumanian oil fields. The government there was thoroughly fascist and enthusiastically allied with the Nazis.

[Smarmie Doofus]

71. But what about American- owned companies like Shell?

[The Magistrate]

72. If Recollection Serves, Sir

That is in origin an Anglo-Dutch firm.

One of the elements of a fascist state is state control of business assets: in effect, everything is nationalized but profits in such a state. Rumanian oil was made available by decision of the Romanian government, and in exchange for weapons, and promise of territories it covetted in the future. No private owner, domestic or foreign, would have had the slightest say.

Texaco (Texas Oil Company) was essential to Franco; its owner had agreed to supply the feul needs of the Nationaloists at the start of their rising against the Spanish Second Republic, and did so because of its owner's personal anti-Communist views. That company certainly continued to supply Nationalist Spain, and probably some of that oil did reach the Reich, mostly in the form of at-sea refueling for submarines and commerce raiders.

Oil was one of the major raw materials provided by the Soviets to the Nazis under the Hitler-Stalin pact, along with copper and molybdium and tungsten, essential for machine tools and armor-piercing rounds. Though it is customary to make great play in some circles of U.S. collaboration with the Nazi war effort in the early days of it, this was not a major element in the situation. It provided some profit for those who had invested in Germany, but that is a seperate question.

[Smarmie Doofus]

82. Re. your last paragraph: so the Nazi-Soviet pact....

was much more than a "non agression" pact, as it is typically referred to. It involved trade as well.

Was there tension between the two re. oil, etc leading up to the invasion?

And what was the nature of Molotov's mission to Berlin shortly before the invasion?

[rndmprsn]

16. yep, his first "oil" capture were the ploesti oil fields in romania

we later bombed them.

[libnnc]

6. and Hitler thought that the Russian people were

inferior to Germans. He wanted to use the slavic people for labor.

[LSK]

22. and their land should be used by the German people n/t

[kevsand]

8. Because it was there.

As well as all of the above reasons, in varying degrees. As to his timing, well, he was basically an idiot militarily. I don't think the generals wanted to go at that particular point, but Hitler thought they'd be done by Christmas or some similar sort of nonsense.

[LSK]

32. Hitler invaded too late in the year, June I believe

He would have left earlier, but he got mad at Yugoslavia and spent the spring invading them.

His armies got within eyesight of Moscow before the winter got them in trouble.

[bill]

47. kind of...

German armour couldn't maneuver off the roads until the steppe had dried out sufficiently, which was June.

[blindpig]

55. Yugoslavia

The German campaign in the Balkans was necessitated by Mussolini's stupidity. The Italians had occupied Albania as a League of Nations mandate. Old duce bag saw the Germans hogging all the glory and decided to get his share in Greece but the Greeks proved to be tougher than hobo shit and threw the Italians back with help from the Brits. Yugoslavia was unstable, a questionable allie and seemed to be an easy mark so Hitler marched through to bail out the Italians and prevent a British bridgehead in the "soft underbelly of Europe".

Without that diversion of forces the Germans might have gotten to Moscow before General Winter got to them.

[LisaL]

78. June 22.

[KittyWampus]

34. Like Bush/NeoCons Refusing To Listen To Generals Who've Studies

and learned from History (ancient and recent).

[politick]

9. Unrelated, but

has anyone ever read this stuff about the Nazis developing high-tech, UFO-like aircraft? Apparently, von Braun was the head of the program (later head of NASA) and they had several prototypes up and running. The could takeoff without a runway and reach speeds of 2400 mph... Crazy stuff. Then there's Operation Highjump, in which the US sent several thousand troops to Antarctica just after WWII and never explained exactly why -- but we know the Nazis were heavily involved in that barren continent during the buildup to WWII.

This is all new to me, and I'd like to hear what some of you more knowledgable historians think of the varacity of these reports. A good place to look is here: www.violations.org.uk Part IV - Secrets of the Third Reich.

Is this just crazy?

[NewJeffCT]

25. I don't know about UFOs

But, supposedly the Nazis/Germans did develop a really powerful fighter plane that flew a good 100mph faster than anything else out there at the time. For some reason, the Germans never flew more than a handful of them... but, supposedly they were ass-kicking enough that - if enough were in the air - they could have created a blanket over Germany to protect it from Allied bombers & allowed Germany to build up (or rebuild) their industrial base while virtually completely protected.

Maybe the UFO thing is somebody taking that idea a little too far?

[politick]

31. Well

I'd seen little things here and there about it before I found this violations site. Not that they were actual UFOs but that they were shaped like flying saucers and used some kind of vortex propulsion system. The idea is that the US got wind of this and sped up the push to stop Hitler before they could come online. Then they secreted a bunch of Nazis to the US (Operation Paperclip) and tried to develop the technology here. Around this time (1947-ish), incidentally, is when people started reporting seeing UFOs in broad numbers around military bases. So some speculate that those were actually American prototypes of the Nazi design and that's why the military was so mum about it all.

[damntexdem]

38. Apparently those German jets ...

had very short fuel ranges. Basically, they could shoot up, shooting all the way, through an Allied bomber formation, then do some more shooting on the way back down; but then they had to return to the airfield. They were also very fragile, many breaking up on landing. And their fuel was very caustic, burning the skin off any pilot unfortunate enough to be in the plane when a fuel line broke.

Yeah, they were way ahead of the Allies, but it was still new, non-debugged tech.

Now, had they survived a few more years, they might have had: effective military jets; rockets that could reach the U.S.; and A-bombs. Thank goodness, they were stopped when they were.

[politick]

41. Scary

Where did you get that info from? I'm fascinated ny this sort of unknown history of WWII. All the occult obsessions, too, are so intriguing. It's like a true portrait of madness...

And have you ever heard of Operation Highjump?

[ScottNYY]

12. If i remember correctly

Hi all been lurking for a while.

The invasion started on the same day that Napoleon's did some 100+ years before. He wanted to do want Napoleon could not.

Even though Hitler signed a non-aggression treaty, he knew eventually he would have to fight.

The soviets were in the middle of Stalin's five year plans, which was building more infrastructure and technology. The longer he waited the more difficult the invasion would become.

[NewJeffCT]

27. welcome to DU!

I think I've heard support for your story.

Getting involved in a land war in Asia is the classic blunder, after all. (only slightly better known than never getting involved with a Sicilian when Death is on the line!)

[politick]

36. What's that line from Prizzi's Honor?

Something about how Sicilians love two things: their money and their children... and then some funny punchline.

Man am I bombing here...

[NewJeffCT]

40. not quite prizzi's honor

The Princess Bride.

[politick]

43. Hmm

Do you recall the line? I thought I rememberd Angelica Huston saying it in Prizzi's Honor...

Perhaps it was Wallace Shawn, though

[politick]

46. Right, right

"Death is on the line" from Princess Bride. But I'm wondering about that other one...

[arendt]

13. "Lebensraum"

The Nazis really believed their race-based BS.
They thought the Slavs were inferior. They wanted
to wipe them out and put Germans in the lands. They
needed "living room" (Lebensraum). Its all their
in Hitler's speeches.

Yes, it was nuts to start a two-front war. After WW1,
the German General Staff was terrified of such a
war, but they caved in to the Nazi nutcases.

As for the "surprise" factor, Stalin was totally
surprised, in spite of every intelligence service
in the non-Nazi world warning him repeatedly.
Stalin wanted to play nice with Hitler, and there
were even train-loads of grain en route to Germany
the day Hitler invaded.

The strategic and tactical surprise was complete.

arendt

[politick]

15. Wow

I think it's clear that Hitler was a nutjob, but, wow. When you really think about the delusions of grandeur, the psychopathy, the extreme fear and hatred, and that it could overtake an entire nation in modern times... Hmm.

[damntexdem]

28. Sure a good thing that couldn't happen here, ...

or anywhere nowadays. Right? ;-)

[Smarmie Doofus]

83. Outside of Nazi ideology....

was there a general conception that Germany was particularly overpopulated?

Also... an interesting POV below... I think it's #50... that the Soviets weren't surprised , so much as making tactical maneuvers. Scorched earth retreat, etc.

[MN ChimpH8R]

14. Imperialism

Hitler believed the Slavic peoples were inferior to "Aryan" Germans. The Nazi ideology was premised on conquest of huge areas of Slav-settled (and Jewish-settled) territory, the enslavement and extermination of the population and re-populating the seized lands with Germans to build a Germanic superstate/empire. Lebensraum or "living space" was Hitler's term for it.

Stalin trusted Hitler to a degree, and assumed that the attack would come much later than it did. Also, being a paranoid wack-job, he had decimated the Soviet officer corps with purges, which is what allowed Germany to roll nearly all the way to Moscow before being stopped.

[watrwefitinfor]

50. A little different perspective from the older histories

I don't mean to be argumentative, but I believe there is much being written here with little to no investigation.


"Stalin trusted Hitler to a degree, and assumed that the attack would come much later than it did. Also, being a paranoid whack-job, he had decimated the Soviet officer corps with purges, which is what allowed Germany to roll nearly all the way to Moscow before being stopped."


Then how explain why the Russian leadership had pulled so much of the infrastructure out of the path of the German army? Moving and re-establishing as much of their manufacturing base as possible east of the Urals BEFORE Hitler invaded? The Russians had been preparing for some time for the expected invasion by Hitler. Why are so many here saying they were unprepared? Of course I'm sure they HOPED the expected invasion would come as late as possible, giving them more time to prepare. And I'm sure they HOPED Roosevelt would go ahead with D Day as he was expected to do instead of waiting around until after Russia turned the tide back toward Germany.

I believe I have also read about some of the Russian generals who were purged in that time period, and how their ideas of standing and fighting the advancing German armies would have meant the utter destruction of Russia's army. (It was probably more complex than just that, of course.) The strategy that won out (and won the day - though only after horrible losses for Russia) was to pull as much infrastructure as possible out of the path of the expected invasion. Then when invasion came to employ the scorched earth policy that had the same ultimate result for Hitler as for Napoleon. It had less to do with invading too late, than with having planned on living off the land, then finding nothing to live on. Hitler made horrible decisions regarding his supply lines. So by the time they reached Stalingrad the German soldiers were in rags and tatters, starving and freezing, and running out of petrol and armaments. They were defeated by the Russia army, the Russian people, the Russian winter - all part of the strategy of the Russian leadership. This is what stopped them short of Moscow.

It is difficult for me to see how that makes the Russian policy somehow inferior or makes Stalin a "whack job". It looks rather brilliant to me. And heroic.

I read a great deal about all this in years past - some in "The Rise & Fall of the Third Reich" some elsewhere - numerous sources. There are good histories out there. Try to find one written before/without the Cold War bias of later times.

There is also an old movie "The Battle of Stalingrad". Compelling, and also a good historical source.

Wat

[Smarmie Doofus]

81. "When all think alike, no one is thinking very much.".....

Interesting perspective.

[enid602]

17. Iran

Will Iran be our Russia?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

18. Hubris combined with a monumental ignorance of history.

Hitler was a true believer in his own ideology and saw himself as a sort of German Messiah with a mission. His basic belief system was that Germany (and, the world) needed to be saved from the Bolshevik/Jewish menace.

The earlier victories against the west convinced him that his ideas, usually counter to those of his generals, were correct and that he was a military genius.

He had a grand vision of what the world should be. Much like the PNACr's of today who saw the invasion of Iraq as an easy victory resulting in a transformation of the Middle East into a sort of happy consumer society with the trappings of "democracy".

Both have been proven wrong but like the Nazis of today the PNACrs still cling to the notion that their distorted vision is "workable".

[damntexdem]

33. Move along, now! Nothing to see here! No parallels at all!

And no one is supposed to apply the "N" word, or even "F" word, to today's politics.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

37. Whoops! I forgot, stating the obvious ist verboten! :)

[Smarmie Doofus]

56. "happy consumer society with the trappings of 'democracy'"...

...nicely phrased.

[JHBowden]

19. Oil in the Caucasus

That also explains why Hitler drove south through Russia and stubbornly refused to retreat.

[LSK]

20. several reasons

1st because he felt that land belonged to the German people

2nd Russia's oil fields would help Hitlers goal of making Germany completely independent.

3rd because he probably didnt trust Stalin.

4th He probably felt over confident that it would be an easy kill and if he didnt start the invasion so late, he probably would have taken Moscow.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

21. Like the current leader of the United States of America....

HE WAS OUT OF HIS FUCKING MIND!

(See Napoleon)

[AzDar]

23. Hitler's judgment was also greatly impaired by the daily injections

administered by his personal physician (Dr. Feelgood).. Dr. Morell,IIRC.
Anyhoo, they were believed to contain (among other things) significant amounts of amphetamine.
So Hitler was probably juiced on speed, when he said.. "Russia, why not??"
Good thing for the Allies, actually. The war would have continued for a much longer period of time had Hitler not launched Operation Barbarossa, which of course, opened up another Front.

[damntexdem]

24. To get to the other side.

Hey, c'mon: born backstabbers just get itchy knife hands.

And if Stalin wanted the war when it happened, he sure wasn't prepared for it.

[Taverner]

26. Keep in mind Hitler's rise to power

was based on scapegoating the communists, not the Jews (at least at first.) He went after the Jews shortly after taking power, but his early rise was based in Red fear.

[Smarmie Doofus]

59. Hmmm... how did the Nazis reconcile that ....

with the German-Soviet Non-Agression pact prior to the Poland invasion?

i.e. What did they tell their people? What was the public rationale?

[The Magistrate]

66. With Some Difficulty, Sir

It was presented as several things. Recourse was had to the idea that hostility to Capitalism, viewed as a decadent and Jewish system, was a potential glue for such an alliance. The utility of a supply of various raw materials needed for war that was gained by the past was emphasized, and the wisdom of securing the rear of an effort against the west. It was also suggested as an open secret that it was simply a temporary measure to make it easier to later assail the soviets, and so reflected admirably the ruthless cunning of the Feuhrer, and illustrated the foolish weakness of the Communist untermenschen....

[KittyWampus]

29. Are You Writing A Term Paper? :-D

:)

[libnnc]

35. If you are, the "Lebensraum" post is very important...

that's pretty much it in a nut shell.

[Smarmie Doofus]

61. No... just trying to see historical parallels to what's happening now.

If, indeed, there are any parallels.

[McCamy Taylor]

39. In the end, ideologues are all morons like * and Co. that is why.

For real. They let themselves get hyped up by their own goose stepping propaganda, thinking that they are unstoppable war machines and that if they need it, they can just go take it. They probably thought that "white" races in Russia would hurry to embrace the Nazi cause or some bullshit like that.

Morons, utter morons.

[davepc]

42. It's all there in Mein Kampf

http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/

Last two chapters of Volume 2, specifically.

FYI, the link for that came straight off of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mein_Kampf

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

49. Lebensraum

Room for the exploding German population within a small geographical space and the extremely unfavourable situation of the Reich from the viewpoint of military geography and Germany's limited resources of food and raw materials. Kind of an uber Manifest Destiny.

[supernova]

44. Improving upon Napoleon

Hitler was also fond of studying Napoleon and thought he could improve upon Napoleon's ill-fated 1812 invasion of Russia.

[RDANGELO]

48. Hitler was irrational

All of the generals were against because they feared it would lead to a two front war which is exactly what happened. If he had not invaded, it still might have happened ,but at least they would have been in the defense on their own soil. The Nazis never recovered from all the troops they lost in the Russian winter.

[Chicago Democrat]

51. Same reason Bush invaded Iraq...

It was always the plan. The question was when. Mein Kampf lays out the plan for the 'living space'.

[Kraklen]

52. I know nothing about it.

But wasn't the whole thing planned out well in advance on a time table?

I mean, the logical thing to do would have been to finish of Britain, right?

I thought they just abandoned that because it was taking too long.

[Smarmie Doofus]

65. But there's a lot of evidence that Roosevelt was trying.....

to provoke an incident in the Atlantic by supplying Britain by sea. Hitler, et al, were fully aware of this and were loathe to provoke the US.

According to some interpretaions... the Japanese supplied the necessary provocation w. Pearl Harbor, which brought Germany into a war with the US automatically.

There may be something to the "taking too long" part.

[Kraklen]

79. But if Hitler was so worried about the U.S....

wouldn't he have finished off Great Britain to minimize the threat?

The U.S. was only able to do its part in defeating Germany because they were able to station on the Isles.

With an invasion of GB, the U.S. would only be able to harass German from Greenland or something.

[JHB]

53. In addition to some of the other things already cited...

...let's not forget that only a few years before Stalin had conducted one of his purges of the top military leadership. If you're going to attack, it might as well be while the other side's institutional memory is still "lobotomized".

[Johonny]

54. Why?

a) By this point Hitler only got information from "yes" men. Who basically told him the US (lead by Republicans in Congress whom were taking Nazi bribes) would not get involved in the war.

b)Hitler did not believe that England could land troops on the western front thus there was no worry of a two front battle.

c) Hitler thought the British were done.

d) Hitler need the land in Russia for several reasons. One Germany could not produce enough food and needed the farm lands of the Ukraine and two Hitler needed the oil fields.

e) Hitler hated Stalin because Stalin basically black mailed him out of land in order to get a one front war with France.

f) Hitler thought the Russian were an inferior race.


The real questions are why did Hitler waste time attacking Yugoslavia just before starting the Russian invasion, the wasted two weeks cost him dearly. Why didn't he support his North African Campaign more. Since it would have opened the door to the more easily conquered middle east oil fields. Why didn't he get Japan to attack Russia in the east forcing Russian into a hopeless two front war. And why didn't he have an effective long range bomber.

[Smarmie Doofus]

67. How much oil are you talking?

I mean... any sense of what percentage of the world's then- known reserves?

[Johonny]

74. Well

USSR was # 2 oil producer throughout the cold war. The thing to remember is Hitler had a land locked mentality. He had trouble focusing on counrties not tied to him by borders.

Oil was important, but the food was almost as important. Germany could make synthetic oil from coal, but they had no means to feed it's country without the food from Poland and the Ukraine.

[Hubert Flottz]

57. Hitler needed the same oil fields Bush is after now!

There is black Gold in the Caspian Basin!

[K-W]

60. And there isn't black gold in Germany.

Germany knew that if it didn't get a hold of oil the war would be over. Russia and the US had plenty of oil.

[Hubert Flottz]

69. The US don't have enough oil now!

So the US and the UK Invaded Afghanistan to build pipelines to the huge deposits of crude oil and natural gas in the Caspian Basin. We invaded the Balkan Peninsula for the same reason, and the pipeline there is finished now, built by KB&R/Halliburton. The pipelines across the Balkan Peninsula pipe crude oil from the Caspian Basin countries to the Adriatic Sea where it is loaded on western bound tankers. Rumbo wants to pull the troops out of Western Europe now and place them in the countries near the Caspian Sea oil and gas fields.

The big western oil companies have known about the Oil under Southern USSR since the 1920s, and so did Hitler...

[Nevernose]

63. France and England were almost an afterthought

A way to prevent a potentially annoying attack from the rear. His real target was Russia/Eastern Europe and killing all the non-"Aryans" there. As far as the contemporary germans were concerned, the real World War Two was about the Eastern Front.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

64. He was trying to "liberate" Russia. n/t

[progdonkey]

68. Holocaust

The Lebensraum issue and Nazi hatred of "Jewish Bolshevism" (even though by that time Stalin had purged most of the Bolsheviks from the military) is certainly correct as far as the reason why Hitler invaded Russia at all. As to why he invaded when he did, an author I read theorized that Hitler's invasion of Russia was largely due to a desire to keep the Holocaust going. The theory goes that Hitler had two choices after his conquest of continental Europe: invade England, or invade Russia.

His generals wanted to invade England, which at the time would've been largely a push-over, as the Germans would have had the entire European continent to launch attacks, and the Americans hadn't yet officially entered the European theater (and the ships delivering material aid to the British could be easily blockaded, as the entire German Navy would be focusing on this one little island), so the British would've been largely isolated and sitting ducks. His generals also were students of history and knew that invading Russia would be unbelievably arduous at best, and with a western front open unbelievably stupid by any measure. The thinking goes that attacking England first would've shortened the War considerably, and Hitler would have been able to consolidate the resources from western Europe and prepare fully for an all-out, full-frontal assault on Russia.

Attacking Russia first, on the other hand, would add years to the War, allowing Hitler to keep an ostensibly "legitimate" reason to continue rounding up Jews and other "saboteurs," whereas a victory over England would've shortened the war, and those Germans (and possible coup-plotting military officers) who had been willing to give up their freedoms during wartime would become increasingly restless and start questioning why Hitler was still exerting dictatorial powers and keeping enemies of the State in work camps (or at least, why he wasn't lessening his powers now that the only immediate enemy left was Russia). An extension of the war by invading Russia would have the positive result of allowing Hitler to more easily maintain dictatorial/wartime-emergency powers and continue the Holocaust, while having absolutely no negative results (after all, how could those subhuman Slavs and Jewish Bolshevisks stand up to the mighty German War Machine?).

That's the theory as I remember it, at least.

Also, Hitler and the other Nazi True-believers had a distinct sensse of being surrounded on all sides by the Enemy. Perhaps opening a second front had the psychological effect of validating their paranoid fantasies.

[Smarmie Doofus]

70. All interesting stuff. How did the Nazi's "SELL" it though...

... to their own people? What sort of terminology was used? There must have been some sort of bogus rationale. One day you are "peacefully coexisting" neighbors and the next the tanks are rolling.

Did the propaganda involve... for example... saving German-speaking people in the USSR, "preemption" of a dangerous threat, crushing atheistic Communism? Was there a Tonkin Gulf - like incident?

[The Magistrate]

73. At The Time Of the Invasion, Sir

Several of those means were employed. Crushing atheistic Communism was employed; the thing was presented as a pre-emptive act against a contemplated Soviet invasion of Germany through its eastern conquests. Some small play was made of rescuing "volksgennosen" in the Soviet Union, but it was a minor element.

[LisaL]

77. They already told Germans they were superior to any other

race or nationality. So, it wouldn't be hard to convince them that Master race needs more space to breed and multiply.

[LisaL]

75. Stalin didn't want the war.

In fact, he was in complete denial when Hitler attacked Russia, it took a while to convince him the war was actually taking place.

[leftofthedial]

80. lebensraum

caucusus oil

strategic territorial gains to secure all of Europe

preventive confrontation with another totalitarian imperial power