Thông tin tài liệu
Hitler, Adolf (1889–1945) wrong right from the start Rather than stand aside as he predicted, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later Hitler was flabbergasted He had not expected that the West would fight for Poland Still, Hitler’s armies overran Poland and then, far more surprisingly, conquered France and the Low Countries and thus gained for him control of continental Europe Time to correct errors of planning and strategy was bought for Hitler, the OKW, and the German war economy by the brilliant operational successes of FALL WEISS (1939) and FALL GELB (1940) Hitler and the killers of the SS instead used that time to launch the first death squads eastward: the SS Einsatzgruppen commenced “extermination” of the Jews of Europe, and of Roma, Communists, homosexuals, or anyone else they deemed socially undesirable Yet, Britain still stood unbowed offshore Along with its Empire, it set out to choke off the German economy via naval blockade and to hammer the German homeland from the air The British were determined not merely on survival but on final victory, and readied for a protracted war for which Germany was unprepared Hitler was right to differ from his top military advisers in believing that Britain, not France, was the main enemy in the west That was why he struck at Denmark, Norway, and the Low Countries as well as France in 1940: to deny Britain access to the Atlantic coastline and prepare air bases from which the Luftwaffe would cross the Channel to destroy the island empire from the air Stymied by the Channel and by Royal Navy and RAF strength and Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe weakness, his basic need to force Britain to seek terms caused him to turn his legions eastward: Hitler determined to invade the Soviet Union in good measure to knock out Britain’s last potential continental ally, and thereby force London to accept Berlin’s domination of the continent He said as much at the time in his “table talk.” He confirmed that was his “grand strategy” in his final “Testament,” dictated before he killed himself amidst the ruin of all his strategies and plans It is key to note that he was enthusiastically supported in the military turn to the east by nearly all his top military advisers For two years Hitler let his generals lead the Wehrmacht to triumph upon triumph, while he provided general strategic direction and timing Yet, neither moral nor strategic distance between Hitler and most of his generals should be exaggerated, as most surviving German commanders did after the war in mendacious memoirs and oral histories In Hitler’s grand strategic idea of breaking the Soviet Union to bring Britain to heel, and in operational planning for the invasion of the Russias, Hitler’s generals were almost all in enthusiastic accord with their Führer Increasing war production and the growing killing power fielded by Great Britain was supported by mid-1941 by thinly veiled American hostility, active USN involvement in the war at sea, and Roosevelt’s preparations for a possible antiGerman war by the United States Those facts alone threatened to overturn Hitler’s first victories, to frustrate his grand strategic concept and schedule for conquest, to block Germany’s economic absorption of conquered territory, and to prohibit further expansion In invading the Soviet Union, Hitler therefore made an all-ornothing gamble to force the British to terms By then, it was not a wholly irrational decision, given the geostrategic situation he had created around Germany Still 517
Ngày đăng: 26/10/2022, 09:37
Xem thêm:
