In June 1941, Germany invaded the Soivet Union. The expectation was that the Red Army and Soviet government would quickly collapse and surrender. Official plans were that by wintertime, all of the German forces except 15 occupation divisions could be withdrawn.
Now obviously things didn’t go according to plan. But if they had, the Germans must have already been working on their next set of plans. What were they? Assuming the Soviets had surrendered, and the Germans occupied all of European Russia (we’ll throw in Egypt as well) I can see a few possiblities.
1 - Move on into the Middle East and India. The army is already in the area and this would secure more oil supplies as well as conquering British territory.
2 - Move into western Africa. One book I’ve read says Hitler had long term plans for occupying this area in order to secure bases for the naval war against Britain and an eventual move against the Americas.
3 - Mop up Europe. Occupy the remaining neutrals like Switzerland, Sweden, Turkey, Spain, etc.
4 - Invade England. Build up a fleet or convince the Italians and Vichy French to use theirs. Dig up the Seelowe plans.
5 - Continue to attack the UK by air and via submarine blockade until they call it quits.
The reason I ask this in General Questions not Great Debates is because I don’t want to discuss what the Germans could have or should have done. I’m looking for information on what their actual plans were at the time.
I think Hitler’s plans were pretty well described in Mein Kampf. He wanted to:
Unify all German speaking people in one nation.
Restore the “Aryan race” to what he assumed was its previous exalted state by removing contaminating elements.
Get living room for the German population in the Slavic regions to the east.
I agree that those were Hitler’s long term political plans. But I’m looking more for the OKW’s short term military plans here.
Hitler’s ultimate goals were a good deal more ambitious than the ones cited above fromMein Kampf.
Prior to the adoption of the “Final Solution”, the Nazis envisioned exiling the world’s Jewish population to the island of Madagascar.
The Soviet Union was to be given to the SS for administration, with Himmler as dictator. A pact was signed with Japan dividing the United States, with Germany to control everything east of the Mississippi and Japan to have the rest.
In short, when they sang about “Today Europe, Tomorrow the World”, they weren’t speaking figuratively. At the same time, there does not seem to have been a coherant, detailed plan about how all of this was to be accomplished. Rather, there seemed to be an assumption that eventually nations around the world would capitulate after victory in Europe, having decided that it was futile to resist such incredibly cool guys.
But I think you gave those in your OP. The assumption, at least Hitler’s, was that the USSR would not be able to stop the army from taking Moscow at which point the USSR would give up.
I would like to hear more about the sources for information about the proposed division of the world as described above.
OKW didn’t have plans for all this. These invasions, including Poland and France, were carried out, in large part, over the military’s objections. So there was no overarching strategy.
Also, Hitler genuinely hoped he could make peace with the British, which would preclude a move into the Middle East. And North Africe would likely have been taken by Italy – Mussolini had tried, but was frustrated by the British. Would have been interesting to see, had the Germans and British made peace, how they both would have reacted to Italian moves west and southward from Libya.