This here started as a discussion between RexDart, SuaSponte and myself in this thread (which you will need to read before you will be able to follow the debate in here).
What we are trying to debate is therefore:
Did Hitler give up the idea on winning the war in late December 1941 to turn his focus completely on the Holocaust while also ensuring the destruction of Germany and the Germans as a part of inevitable defeat in the war?
As a part of that, did Hitler declare war on the US in December 1945 as a way of bringing total destruction upon Germany? If he didn’t, why did he?
Was the war on the Eastern Front mainly waged as a war of conquest, annihilation or as a means to get resources to supply the Western Front?
And finally, did Hitler intend to create a greater ‘Germanic’ state that included Europe, or was his goal simply to destroy all things that did not fit his warped definition of ‘race’ and ‘German-ness’ for the benefit of the same?
NOTE TO ALL POSTERS THAT WISH TO TAKE PART:
Some rules: No marginalizing the Holocaust. No revisionism. No name-calling along lines you should be able to work out for yourself. One single instance of that and I consider Godwin invoked and will humbly request that the administration closes down the thread immediately.
Well if he thought that controlling nearly all of Europe and a third of Russia was defeat, then he is very pessimistic. Although in the sense of very late 1942-1945 I think in his mind defeat was certain, this would also explain his ’ hold ground at no cost’ orders which defied belief, with the German army fighting for it’s life and german civilians concerned (no offence intended) with what was happening to their ‘boys’ on the front, peoples minds would be shifted from what was happening to dissapearing people in their neigbourhoods. He could then concertrate on the issue of the Jewish question.
It could also point out that he would not retreat because possibly in his mind the ‘camps’ that were built would be eventually found out and with space, the prying eyes of the world would not be able to know what was going on. It was not until the end of the war remember that the Holocaust was widspread knowledge.
But who would build an Empire to ‘excact their revenge’ on an enitre race of people?
(Please don’t take this thread the wrong way, I mean no disrespect to the dopers on this boards or those who belong to the Jewish faith)
These rules should apply to all Great Debates!
(what do you mean by revisionism, i.e. saying the holocaust didn’t exist? Cuz it could be read as don’t draw conclusions from history that differ from accepted norms.)
With ‘revisionism’ I mean the nasty kind you mention, denying the Holocaust. My main reason to post the NB was for the stray visitor that would stumble in here and think that this was a ‘great’ opportunity to spread nastiness that unfortunately abounds in topics regarding the specific evil here to be examined.
I think Hitler declared war on the US after the attack at Pearl Harbor because it would give him the opportunity to stop things like the Murmansk convoy and the aid going from the US to the UK and Soviet Union. I think he also felt that the US wasn’t really ready for war, especially a two front one, and that most of their efforts would be against the Japanese. He might have also hoped that the Japanese would respond by declaring war on the Soviet Union and attacking Siberia. I don’t think he did it to be self-destructive or anything like that.
According to Kershaw (Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis, Penguin, 2000, p442), his immediate reaction to Pearl Harbor was quite the opposite: “We can’t lose the war at all. We now have an ally which has never been conquered in 3,000 years.”
Furthermore, it’s my understanding of Hitler’s thinking that, far from regarding the destruction of the Jews as a distraction from the war or something that might be carried out as an alternative to victory, it was part of the war effort. This derived, to some degree, from his obsession with the supposed “stab in the back” in WWI. Believing that the Jews had betrayed Germany before, he rationalised them as an “enemy within” who were acting against a German victory and who had to be killed to prevent the defeat of the Reich. This doesn’t explain his hatred, but does give a context for the timing of his action against them - he believed that the action against them couldn’t wait until after the war, even if Germany was to win. In his mind, anything else was running too big a risk.
Kershaw’s take on the declaration strikes me as plausible within his portrayal of Hitler’s thinking as primarily that of a propagandist: with the crisis in front of Moscow, he needed something upbeat for his speech to the Reichstag and declaring war on the U.S. could serve as that. Since he appears to have believed that the Americans would be tied up indefinately (and indeed defeated) in the Pacific, it didn’t even look like a move that brought any costs.
It was my understanding that Hitler became more and more irrational as the war progressed. He had stopped listening to his generals and by the end, he was still planning the defense of Berlin by divisions that existed only on maps.
What largely started this debate, and what I believe still remains at the heart of all these questions, is the motivations and interests of each of the war’s parties.
Sparc seems convinced (correct me if I’ve misread you) that when the tide turned on the Eastern front, Hitler gave up on winning the war. Sparc then mentioned a couple interests that Hitler did have after that point. One interest was the holocaust, and all related ethnic cleansing operations. The other was:
Why he would want Germany to suffer total destruction has never been adequately explained, at least as I could understand it, since Sparc mentioned it.
One thing we do know for certain is Stalin’s motivations. It is well documented that 1930’s ComIntern policy was designed to lead to revolutions and/or sympathetic leftist parties developing in Europe, regardless of the fitness of those states in terms of the dialectic, the purpose being solely to provide Russia with a territorial buffer. He achieved just that, of course, after the war.
Hitler knew that was Stalin’s motivation, he’d capitalized on it in the Poland conflict. Faced with a failed offensive on the Eastern front, against a party that never wanted to fight in the first place, it would have been easy to halt the war against Russia. A few concessions on Hitler’s part could easily have been spin doctored in such a way that his image wasn’t damaged with the public. One might be tempted to argue that Stalin wouldn’t trust Hitler again. Trust isn’t necessary. Stalin knew he had the Germans on the run, that Hitler would never be able to conquer Russia. If Hitler had approached Stalin at that point with a plan to withdraw to the Danzig line, Stalin could have gotten his buffer and gotten back on his Five Year Plans, safely out of the conflict.
This, I believe, may be the limited arena in which the holocaust might have played a part in Hitler’s war strategy. A treaty at that point would have meant abandoning the ethnic-cleansing activity in Poland, which was just under way at that time. Perhaps a slow retreat was preferrable for that reason.
Still, economic interests were at work. While murder is certainly the most notable aim of the holocaust, there were others. Cheap labor is one of those. Who can forget the ominious look of the sign above one of the “labor” camps reading “arbeit macht frei” (work brings freedom.) Whether this avenue was fully exploited by Hitler is a topic I don’t know well enough to make an assertion. Additionally, the elimination of people brought the seizure of any wealth they had and surely inspired a certain amount of fear in the population that may have made the countryside less likely to rebel.
All I’m contending is that Hitler had the same motivations for war as all conquerers had before him. If he could bleed Poland dry of resources on his way out, and that might help him on another front, then he would do so. It’s the murderous way that he carried that through which brings attention.
As for declaring war on the US, I think Captain Amazing did a pretty good job of giving a reasonable explanation.
In Mein Kampf Hitler stated his goals clearly. He wanted all German speaking people collected under one nation - Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer. I’ve probably got the case endings all wrong but you get the idea. Another goal was to provide these German speaking people with enough territory to enable them to live luxuriously. He plainly stated that the place to get this “living space” was in the east at the expense of the Slavic people there.
His first moves were all in accord with that plan. First the occupation of the Rhineland which he considered as German territory stolen away in WWI. Next the unification of Germany and Austria. Then the incorporation of the German speaking people in Czeckoslovakia followed by the dismemberment of that country. And his first large scale military action was the invasion of Poland which is east and Slavic.
I’m convinced that those who say Hitler thought that England and France would do nothing are right. They hadn’t done anything up to now, England was militarily feeble and I think Hitler was convinced that France had no stomach for anohter war so soon after their terrible losses in WWI. So the declaration of war by those two countries probably came as a surprise. The war in the west was a distraction that didn’t last long. There was the “phony war” during the winter of 1939-40 and then a series of rapid victories in the west that secured his rear, leaving Hitler free to move east against the USSR. This was done in June of 1941 after he thought he had essentially knocked England out of any effective action by air bombardment.
Why did he declare war on the US? According to William L. Shirer in The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich Hitler had made a promise to Japan just before his USSR invasion that he would join in in case of a Japanese war with the US. Hitler had no respect whatever for the US military capability. Why should he? We had an army of 160,000; WWI armored vehicles and no coherent armored doctrine for using them, our best airplanes, the Curtis P-40 fighter, the Gruman F4F, and the B-17 bomber were not particularly good, few in number and were no danger to him anyway since they couldn’t reach Germany from any of our bases.
And he was irritated with us because we were increasing material support to Britain and even escorting convoys halfway across the Atlantic. He no doubt thought that we would be so occupied in the Pacific that we would be ineffective in the Atlantic and war would give his submarines license to sink our ships at will.
After dealing with the USSR, he could turn and offer Britain and us peace which we, at least, would take because we wouldn’t want to fight two enemies at once, one of whom had just conquered everything in sight. Without US support he doubtless thought that Britain would also be anxious to sign a peace treaty.
The idea that he had decided the war was lost in December of 1941 seems ludicrous to me. He had no enemies who could touch him in the west and he had won great victories and destroyed whole Soviet armies in the east with the greatest of ease. His advance hadn’t been slowed much by anything but winter which was used to build up his army for the great summer offensive that would finish the job. Or so it must have seemed at the time.
The Holocaust was a logical development from Hitler’s racial ideas as stated, again in Mein Kampf. As far as he was concerned the great danger to the greater Aryan Civilization that he envisaged was intermarriage with “lesser races.” How better to eliminate that danger than to eliminate the “lesser races?” It is my firm opinion that anyone who wants to figure out why Hitler did anything they should read Mein Kampf. It’s all laid out in there, although I defy anyone to read it through in one piece. I’ve had a copy for 10 years and haven’t read all of it yet. But if you wade through the horrible writing style, his plans are clear. “Kill all the ‘lesser races,’ make slaves of the Slavs and the united Aryans will rule enough territory in the east to live in ease forever and ever.”
By the way, the link didn’t work for me so I don’t know what has gone before. If someone else has covered the essentials of this post, I’m sorry about that.
I think Sua and Captain Amazing, have already dealt with the Balkan situation in the other thread. I shall focus on some smaller points that we have so far dropped between chairs, after which I will address the issue of Hitler being capable of wanting the ultimate destruction of Germany. I shall have to get back to the events of December 1941 and the last question later, since I am still a little pressed for time.
Sua already replied by informing you that Hitler’s anti-Semitism is well documented since before WW I. I will only add that it is sometimes argued that his hatred for the Jews was more a part of his personal cultural heritage than a German phenomena, since anti-Semitism was a more spread nastiness in the Austro-Hungarian sphere than in Germany where the situation of the Jews consistently ameliorated from Bismarck up until the disastrous events of the early 30s. I add this because it might be relevant later on in the discussion.
Slight nitpick: It was a bit more, the NSDAP took 37.3% in the 1932 election as you can see here. In the 1933 election they hoped for absolute majority but got ‘only’ a relative majority of 43.2%, as you can see here. By that time Hitler was already Reichskansler. After the election they grab the opportunity afforded through the vacuum created as the Weimar Republic collapses, they add some spice to it (van der Lubbe etc.) and take power by enacting the ‘Ermächtigungsgesetz’ or ‘emergency measures’ on March 24th 1933. This has some relevance here as it shows that Hitler was in fact put in power more or less according to the democratic parliamentary rules. However, once in power he assumed absolute power and ousted whatever opposition there was left.
To the issue of Hitler’s sacrifice of Germany. Why would he do it? That question pops up at every fact that one considers regarding this man. Let’s try to understand.
One of the cornerstones of his philosophy is “Weltmacht oder Untergang” or “World Domination or Annihilation”. He speaks incessantly and obsessively of ‘the natural and inevitable struggle for domination of the human races’. Worse even, in his extra evil form of eugenics he is convinced that in the end there can be only one ‘race’ left standing. He is not convinced, he even doubts at times that it is his beloved ‘German race’ that will be that one. Further he repeats over and over that “the weaker race must succumb to the stronger and ultimately be destroyed”. Which he Sic! applies to his own ‘German race’ as well. From 1924 and on he often used this doubt in discourse and propaganda to motivate ‘the struggle’. In other words; if they aren’t up to winning they deserve to be destroyed.
By late 1944 or early 1945 it is uncontestable that he has given up and decided that Germany must be destroyed. I think you will be hard pressed to find contemporary historians of serious reputation that disagree with that. The evidence is overwhelming. The fact that he orders the Ardennes Counter Offensive to start in the face of obvious defeat, he even fires most of the Wermacht Central Command over it. The fact that he tries to order the German’s along the western border on a death march to the central lands when he finds out they are receiving the invading Allied forces as liberators. Finally on March 25th and 26th 1945 he actually issues the order to the SA/SS and Albert Speer to blow up whatever is left standing of the German cities and destroy the scarce remaining food stores. Speer manages to dodge the order while the SA/SS start firing on their own people and blowing up their cities. I’ll be happy to provide cites for all that, but right now I would like to concentrate on the events of 1941 and 1942 which are still a little less obvious and hence good ground for debate.
I will later try to argue that this was not only on his mind in December 1941, but pretty much settled.
I am afraid I didn’t find an English cite with the quote in question on it.
This is from the protocol of the discussions that evening with the ‘foreign ministers’ of Denmark and Yugoslavia. I only bring it in to show that the concept of possible defeat and the consequences of such defeat along the lines of his weltanschauung is on his mind at this time.
Although this in no way provides an answer to my OP I think that this shows how the man was at least capable of what I accuse him of.
They did exploit the concentration camp victims for labor, but only as a middle step. First of all people were worked to death, hence work became a means for murder putting the final irony in those terrible words on the KZ gates. I’m afraid that no matter how much you would like to rationalize it RexDart, the atrocious and irrefutable fact is that there was no other reason for this heinous crime than the warped belief in the inherent superiority of one over the other and paranoid delusion of one to believe in the other’s corruption because of their origin and religion.
Now, the facts around December 1941 are contestable, and I want to get back to that, but I must work a little more and then get some kip. Before I go I’ll only note shortly that;
While Captain Amazing’s note on the strategic grounds for a declaration of war are interesting, I think one has to remember that the German Wolfpacks are not yet defeated at this time. Pearl Harbor draws force and focus away from the Atlantic, making for that if this was the argument it was a strategic error. It is indicative that the German military command opposed the declaration of war pretty much across the board.
And bonzer brings in Kershaw and Hitler’s exclamation of December 8, which is the best counter argument presented so far. I shall later present a view of this in the light of other things he said during those days.
I hate to do this, but that’s all I have time for at the moment.
Isn’t uncontestable a little strong? I don’t see how you support this by merely claiming that the “contemporary historians of serious repute” don’t contest it - serious repute is a qualifier using a value judgement and others might disagree about their repute. Any cites?
Historian John Toland (Battle; Story of the Bulge) would certainly disagree that Hitler ordered the Ardennes offensive to begin in the face of what he knew was “certain defeat.” In fact, Toland claims that, based on his studies, Hitler’s plan was that his panzers could drive through thinly held US lines because of the surprise factor, capture Antwerp, split the British from the US forces at which point the alliance would fall apart. Crazy? Sure it is, but not to Hitler.
Your whole paragraph deals with late 1944 and early 1945. What does that have to do with Hitler’s state of mind in December of 1941 when the situation was vastly different?
Well, the decision to declare war on the US might have been a strategic error, but like David Simmons says, we couldn’t really hurt Germany at the time, and we were, he thought, going to be too tied up with Japan to hurt Germany in the near future, but the declaration of war let him take legitimate action against American convoys… The Germans just didn’t think we were a major threat. What was it that Goering said about American industry? “The United States isn’t dangerous because it doesn’t have a war economy. All Americans can do is build toasters and refrigerators”?
I don’t see the evidence that, at the end of 1941, Hitler was planning for his country’s destruction. He had no reason to. Germany was doing pretty well, having conquered or allied with almost all of continental Europe. In the Soviet Union, Leningrad was besieged, the German army was about 30 km outside of Moscow, and about 1.5 million square kilometers of the Soviet Union was occupied by Germany.
Maybe I am opening a few too many fronts at the same time. I’ll try to cut down on the digressions.
For the first part. As I stated by late 1944 or early 1945 it is uncontestable. I am fully aware that there is some solid argument for that Hitler in his delusion thought that he could actually breach the allied front in the Battle of the Bulge. There is on the other hand some evidence that this was not in his interest. Whether he decided that the War was lost before or after the Bulge is indeed contestable. That is as you point out in your last sentence an altogether other discussion though, and rather a complex one in itself – to boot I am being even more provocative in suggesting that he decided this even earlier i.e. late 1941 or early 1942. I bring the events of 1944 and 1945 in as evidence that Hitler at least at one point evidently did take the decision that Germany was to be destroyed, since this in itself was questioned early on. For a an overall argument along these lines I’ll refer, once again to ‘Defying Hitler’ by Sebastian Haffner, whose argument I am incidentally largely basing my line of argument on. For the specifics of 1945; even Kershaw agrees that by this time he has decided for the obliteration of Germany as much as for he has for himself.
Both Kershaw and Haffner give detailed accounts on the events of March 25 and 26 1945 .
Specifically this argues against a declaration of war on strategic grounds alone. Even if the Nazis openly defied America as a non-contender they were well aware that a US involvement on the European theatre was exactly what they didn’t want. We should remember that the experiences from the previous war were still fresh in memory at this time. To invite to this only in order to be able to openly attack American convoys is indeed self-destructive. As a matter of fact, after December 7 it might be argued that there is no need since the US must, and does focus as much strength as she has on the Pacific. Kershaw’s argument that Hitler needed a war with the US for propaganda reasons is more compelling in that case.
It is also evident that the popular argument that the Tripartite Pact forced him into a declaration of war is not necessarily correct. As a matter of fact Hitler drives through a separate agreement to strengthen the Tripartite Act in order to secure the commitment of his allies on December 11 1941, the very day he declares war on the US.
Mussolini opposed this agreement and in the days leading up to the declaration of war he tries to reason Hitler out of it. It is also significant that this agreement was driven through by Hitler, not the Japanese as one would expect if it was the Axis pact that forced Hitler into war.
Hence the two simplest explanations for the invitation to join the war do not hold up to closer scrutiny IMHO.
Sheesh! Tripartite Pact of course and strike some missed edits like double fors and so on. I should probably tell you all that I am dyslexic. Hence I am sorry if my posts are sometimes a gruelling read, but it is somewhat of a struggle for me to proof them (blessed be the powers of modern word processing though).
I will repeat, this has no bearing on Hitler’s reasons for declaring war on the US in December of 1941. The original point was that Hitler, in effect, “threw the fight” because he had decided as early as 1941 that Germany would lose and he would then prefer destruction. I’m not sure this is a Great Debate, which is supposed to be about ongoing, current affairs.
I don’t believe that what “the Nazis” were or were not aware of matters. Hitler was the controlling element and he disdained the US military in particular and our society in general. Remember, Hitler didn’t believe that the US entry into WWI was the cause of the German defeat. It was “the Jews” wasn’t it?
Let me go through this one more time. Hitler’s main battle was on the eastern front with the USSR. Any strengthening of Britain at his rear would be danger and a distraction that he couldn’t afford. The US was increasing its direct miltary aid to Britain and was protecting convoys for part of the way across the Atlantic. Direct, submarine attacks on the US escorts and merchant ships would greatly hamper such material support and lessen the threat to his rear. Any such attack would be an act of war anyway so why not just go ahead and declare war? The US had only a small and relatively weak naval presence in the Atlantic and it couldn’t be reinforced because The US fleet (in Hitler’s mind) had been virtually destroyed at Pearl Harbor. The US Army was a military nonentity. Everything in December of 1941 looked like it was coming up roses for Hitler so it is a collossal stretch to claim that even then he assumed Germany would be destroyed and declared war on the US to assure that that would happen.
Why does is follow that because the Tripartite Pact was strengthened that it wasn’t among the reasons that Hitler declared war on the US?
How does Mussolini opposing the Pact support the claim that Hitler declared war on the US to insure the destruction of Germany?
It seems to me that Hitler declared war on the US for what to him were good reasons. I might get a copy of Haffner’s book although this whole question is hypothetical and not of any great importance today except as an illustration of a postmodern mishmash.
Hitler didnt think the war was lost until very late on. Im pretty sure that the German economy didnt even go onto an all-out war footing until 1943.
Nazism aim is to ensure the supremacy of the Aryan Race by destroying the Jewish Enemy and gaining Lebensraum in the East.
Hitler totally underestimated the US. Declaration of war was a gesture.
Basically Hitler saw the other Western Europeans and Scandinavians as fellow Aryans - but tainted and misled by Jewish influences. So in the long run a blond blue eyed Frrenchman or Brit or Norwegian would be part of the Aryan Utopia.
Maybe I misunderstood the forum subtitle then… IMHO this is one of the “great questions of our time” as it touches upon the how and why of a huge tragedy (maybe the ‘hugest’ humanity ever knew) which many people are still impacted by in everyday life, especially here in Europe and even more so here in Germany. But then again; who am I to say – maybe we should just stop then, or?
