IB Contemporary World History Mr. Blackmon Operation Barbarossa My attempt to describe the war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union 1941-1945 in a few pages is laughable in its inadequacy. The attempt, however inadequate my time, scholarship, and ability to convey human experience may be, must be made. The war is the largest, bloodiest, most savage war fought in human history. Fundamentally, Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany were defeated in Russia, not in North Africa, Italy, or France. The result of that war shaped the map of Europe for 40 years. The experience of that war profoundly shaped Soviet foreign policy during that time period. The real heroes of what the Russians call The Great Patriotic War are the people of the Soviet Union. The Russian peoples were faced with a race war of annihilation. They responded to terrible privation, suffering, and misery with epic courage, endurance, tenacity, and determination. I. Origins of the War A. Once Adolf Hitler became Führer, there was no question whether he would attack Russia, but merely of when. 1. This section will discuss Hitler's fundamental motivation, which are ideological rather than economic or political. The next section will take up the question of timing: why did he attack Russia when he did? B . Lebensraum 1. Hitler was quite open about his desire for "living space" in the east. All of the following quotations are from Mein Kampf, written while in Landsberg prison and published in 1925. Please bear in mind the date at which Hitler wrote this. Then compare his ideas with what he actually did. 2."One blood demands one Reich. Only when the Reich borders include the very last German, but can no longer guarantee his daily bread, will the moral right to acquire foreign soil arise from the distress of our own people. Their sword will become our plow, and from the tears of war the daily bread of future generations will grow." (Hitler 3) 3. "What form must the life of the German nation assume in the tangible future . ?" (131) 4. "Germany has an annual increase in population of nearly nine hundred thousand souls. The difficulty of feeding this army of new citizens must grow greater from year to year and ultimately end in catastrophe, unless ways and means are found to forestall the danger of starvation and misery in time." (Hitler 131) 5. ". anyone who wants to secure the existence of the German people by a self- limitation of its reproduction is robbing it of its future." (Hitler 133) 6. "Without doubt the productivity of the soil can be increased up to a certain limit. But only up to a certain limit. " (Hitler 133) 7. ". only those races are stricken with such suffering [hunger] which no longer possess the force and strength to secure for themselves the necessary territories in IB Contemporary World History Mr. Blackmon Operation Barbarossa Page 2 this world. For . there are . immense areas of unused [sic] soil, only waiting for the men to till them. But . Nature as such has not reserved this soil for the future possession of any particular nation or race; on the contrary, this soil exists for the people which possesses the force to take it and the industry to cultivate it." (Hitler 134) 8."No one can doubt that this world will some day be exposed to the severest struggles for the existence of mankind. In the end, only the urge for self- preservation can conquer." (Hitler 135) 9. "The acquisition of new soil for the settlement of the excess population possesses an infinite number of advantages. the possibility of preserving a healthy peasant class as a foundation for a whole nation can never be valued highly enough. Many of our present-day sufferings are only the consequence of the unhealthy relationship between rural and city population." (Hitler 138) 10. "It must be said that such a territorial policy cannot be fulfilled in the Cameroons, but today almost exclusively in Europe. .If this earth really has room for all to live in, let us be given the soil we need for our livelihood. True, they will not willingly do this. But then the law of self-preservation goes into effect; and what is refused to amicable methods, it is up to the fist to take." (Hitler 138-9) 11. "For Germany, consequently, the only possibility for carrying out a healthy territorial policy lay in the acquisition of new land in Europe itself." (Hitler 139) 12. "The talk about the 'peaceful economic' conquest of the world was possibly the greatest nonsense which has ever been exalted to be a guiding principle of state policy." (Hitler 143) 13. "Never yet has a state been founded by peaceful economic means, but always and exclusively by the instincts of preservation of the species. " (Hitler 153) 14. "Here ["the relation of Germany to Russia"] perhaps we are dealing with the most decisive concern of all German foreign affairs. ." (Hitler 641) 15. "The foreign policy of the folkish state must safeguard the existence on this planet of the race embodied in the state, by creating a healthy, viable natural relation between the nation's population and growth on the one hand and the quantity and quality of its soil on the other hand." (Hitler 643) [italics have not been added; they are Hitler's] 16. "Only an adequately large space on this earth assures a nation of freedom of existence." (Hitler 643) 17. ". in addition to its importance as a direct source of a people's food, another significance, that is, a military and political one, must be attributed to the area of a state." (Hitler 643) 18. "If the National Socialist movement really wants to be consecrated by history with a great mission for our nation, it . must find the courage to gather our people and their strength for an advance along the road that will lead this people from its present restricted living space to new land and soil, and hence also free it from the danger of vanishing from the earth or of serving others as a slave nation." (Hitler 645-6) 19. "The National Socialist movement must strive to eliminate the disproportion between our population and our area--viewing this latter as a source of food as well as a basis IB Contemporary World History Mr. Blackmon Operation Barbarossa Page 3 for power politics. And in this it must remain aware that we, as guardians of the highest humanity on this earth, are bound by the highest obligation, and the more it strives to bring the German people to racial awareness, . the more it will be able to meet this obligation." (Hitler 646) 20. "The demand for restoration of the frontiers of 1914 is a political absurdity of such proportions and consequences as to make it seem a crime. Quite aside from the fact that the Reich's frontiers in 1914 were anything but logical. For in reality they were neither complete in the sense of embracing the people of German nationality, nor sensible with regard to geo-military expediency. They were not the result of a considered political action, but momentary frontiers in a political struggle that was by no means concluded; partly, in fact, they were the results of chance." (Hitler 649) 21. "Today it is not princes and princes' mistresses who haggle and bargain over state borders; it is the inexorable Jew who struggles for his domination over the nations." (Hitler 651) 22. "we National Socialists must hold unflinchingly to our aim in foreign policy, namely, to secure for the German people the land and soil to which they are entitled on this earth." (Hitler 652) 23. "The soil on which some day German generations of peasants can beget powerful sons will sanction the investment of the sons of today, and will some day acquit the responsible statesmen of blood-guilt and sacrifice of the people, even if they are persecuted by their contemporaries." (Hitler 652) 24. "State boundaries are made by man and changed by man." (Hitler 653) 25. "Much as all of us today recognize the necessity of a reckoning with France, it would remain ineffectual in the long run if it represented the whole of our aim in foreign policy. It can and will achieve meaning only if it offers the rear cover for an enlargement of our people's living space in Europe. For it is not in colonial acquisitions that we must see the solution of this problem, but exclusively in the acquisition of a territory for settlement, which will enhance the area of the mother country, and hence not only keep the new settlers in the most intimate community with the land of their origin, but secure for the total area those advantages which lie in its unified magnitude." (Hitler 653) (emphasis added) 26. "The right to possess soil can become a duty if without extension of its soil a great nation seems doomed to destruction. And most especially when not some little nigger nation or other is involved, but the Germanic mother of life, which has given the present-day world its cultural picture. Germany will either be a world power or there will be no Germany." (Hitler 654) 27. "And so we National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath the foreign policy of our pre-War period. We take up where we broke off six hundred years ago." [the Drang nach Osten, a surge of colonization eastwards against Slavic peoples and other groups, like the Prus--who gave Prussia their name--who were exterminated. The drive was ultimately blunted by Alexander Nevsky's victory over the Teutonic Knights.