Re: Nazis without Hitler

In article <479B6AC8.56CC9795@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Dave Smith <adavid.smith@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
David Thornley wrote:

Not going to war with the Soviet Union would have meant forfeiting
much of Hitler's war aims, which were to conquer large parts of the
Soviet Union as part of the expansion of the Aryan race. Delaying
going to war with the Soviet Union would have been dangerous, as
the Soviets were increasing their military capabilities fairly
fast.

It is my understanding that Hitler believed that the British would come to
accept that they would be better off joinging forces with Germany and
turning on a mutual threat, the Soviet Union.

It could have been; Hitler had a lot of delusional beliefs. However,
this was out of his control. Hitler had no way to force the British
to agree with this.

As long as Hitler couldn't force a peace on Britain, and couldn't
defeat Britain, and had reason to fear Britain, he wasn't able to
chew what he had bitten off.

Even if the Soviets did have
time to prepare for war, Hitler could have seen advantages to delaying that
conflict until he made peace with Britain,

British assistance would not have been all that helpful against the
Soviet Union. The war would primarily be by land, where the Soviets
were strong and the British relatively weak.

not to be. The British were not prepared to make peace at that time.

Right. Hitler had no way to compel Britain to make peace.

A more rational person would have realized the folly of attacking Russia
when he was still at war with Britian and its allies.

In which case Hitler would have the possibility of never attacking
the Soviet Union. Historically, Hitler did say that one reason for
attacking the Soviet Union was to remove a potential British ally,
and bring the British closer to wanting to deal.

When Operation
Barbarossa was launched, the gains made by the Germans must have reinforced
their belief that they would have an easy victory because they made such a
rapid advance.

In WWI, Germany with some less powerful allies fought Russia, Britain,
and France, and defeated Russia without concentrating fully on Russia.
In 1941, France was subjugated, and there were legitimate reasons
to suspect that the Soviet Union might be weaker than the Russian
Empire was.

Attacking the Soviet Union in 1941 was not an obviously stupid
move. There were reasons to expect success, and reasons to think
success would be a good thing.

Then they hit a brickwall, and it was all down hill for Nazi
Germany from there.

Not really; it was mostly downhill after the Soviet counteroffensive
started around Stalingrad.

The US was already in a shooting war with Germany, and had been
since September 1941. Roosevelt could manipulate this into a
full-scale war pretty much on his own schedule.

In a very small way compared to what was going on between the germans and
the British.

For how long?

Roosevelt wanted war with Germany, and had gotten US and German forces
shooting at each other. It doesn't matter that this was on a smaller
scale. What matters is what was likely to happen. Roosevelt could have
found reasons for an actual declaration of war on his own schedule.

From September 1941 on, Hitler had no way to make peace with the US,
and a larger war could start pretty much any time.

No, he bit off more than he could chew when he didn't back down
from the British ultimatum. Britain didn't look like a danger
at the time, but Britain was a long-term danger.

I won't dispute that he underestimated Britain's resolve to stop German
expansion.

Yup. What is potentially more important here is that he had no way
to force a peace.

point, been able to chew as much as he had bit off. Hitler must have been
fairly confident at the time that he could keep Britain at bay before he
turned his sights on Russia...... or he was completely irrational, and
there is plent of evidence of that.

Hitler wasn't completely irrational, at least not until much later.
Hitler was confident that he could defeat the Soviet Union and then
turn to face Britain. There were reasons to think this might be the
case.

It was wrong, of course, but that was by no means obvious at the time.

If Hitler had avoided fighting the British as much as possible,
he might have been in much better shape. In the invasion of

US involvement in the Atlantic certainly gave Hitler justification to
declare war on the US. Perhaps he would have been well advised to let them
get away with firing on the odd raider rather than declaring war and facing
them on European soil and in the sky over Europe.

You don't seem to be understanding what I am saying about the US.

US escorting of convoys was an annoyance, but not a danger to Germany.
It represented a big potential change in the Battle of the Atlantic.

What was dangerous was that the US could go from there to full-scale
warfare. Historically, it happened after the Japanese attacked, and
Germany declared war. The timing didn't have to go that way; it was
quite a few months afterwards before the US could do anything
offensive against Germany. All Roosevelt had to do was find a good
occasion to declare war over quite a few months, and Germany was
in deep trouble.


--
David H. Thornley | If you want my opinion, ask.
david@xxxxxxxxxxxx | If you don't, flee.
http://www.thornley.net/~thornley/david/ | O-

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