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There are many things about World War II that have been debated, and I have firm opinions on some of these. This is my attempt to answer certain questions, of greater and lesser importance.
Why did the Germans commit such atrocities?
Most countries went to war to conquer various territories, or to stop the aggressors. Japan wanted to establish a sphere of Japanese dominance in the Far East. Italy wanted to recreate sections of the old Roman Empire, and gain military glory. Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria all wanted small territories on their borders. The Allies, and Finland, mostly wanted to be safe from aggression. In all of these cases, soldiers committed atrocities to further the war effort, or out of anger, or as a matter of convenience, or the hundred and one other reasons to wantonly kill, maim, rob, torture, and rape enemies. Japan was particularly bad, as was (to a lesser extent) the Soviet Union, but there never was a policy of atrocities.
Germany, on the other hand, went to war to be able to commit atrocities. The original German goal was to conquer the agricultural areas of Poland and the Ukraine, kill off the occupants, and resettle with Germans. Another German goal was to kill off the weak and undesirable, with the largest result being the killing of several million Jews. As the war drew to an end, the killing of Jews took priority over fighting the war, and trains were diverted from military purposes to transporting Jews to the death camps. This makes no sense from a military point of view, and only makes sense as the last acts of an extremely evil regime trying to make some last marks on the world before the end.
There is another notable difference, in postwar attitudes. After the war, Germany admitted to atrocities, and tried to atone for them. Other countries more or less hushed their atrocities up. Japan is an egregious example: Japanese government officials have done their best to present Japan as a largely innocent victim in World War II, denying their aggressive role and horrifying atrocities. I find it much easier to forgive people who admit their deeds and ask for forgiveness, rather than those who will do almost anything to hush up and pretend they never did anything wrong.
Was Hitler a diplomatic genius?
Some people have claimed that Hitler was a great diplomat, and pointed to his pre-WWII successes. He certainly was a moving orator and a superb party organizer, and he did succeed in taking over Germany without ever getting more than about 40% of the vote. He was not particularly good as a diplomat.
Hitler's diplomacy was founded on expedience and audacity, and this indeed worked well until World War II started. Had he been competent at diplomacy, he would have changed his policies when called for, but he never did, not even when he had aligned most of the world against him.
After he came to power, he expanded the Army, reoccupied the Rheinland, and threw off most of the Versailles accord restrictions. This made the Western powers somewhat nervous. He used the principle of nation- states to annex Austria, and then used that principle to gain the Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia. To get that without fighting, he promised no more territorial expansion, a promise he broke the next year. After taking the rest of Czechoslovakia, he was surprised when the British and French refused to let him conquer Poland without war in the West. He pressured other countries into alliance, and only really succeeded with Romania and Hungary (although getting those two countries to agree with each other was a feat). Bulgaria and Finland joined him in a limited fashion, Spain and Turkey refused all blandishments, and Yugoslavia turned against him. Finally, he attacked the Soviet Union and declared war on the United States, to complete the foundations of the ruin of Fascism.
Hitler was not flexible, for he followed one approach whether it was working or not. He was not successful, for he piled one undefeatable foe on another. He was successful early on, because his approach was suited for the conditions; he did not change his approach, and failed in the end.
No. He had some grasp of tactics, and virtually none of strategy.
His virtues as a commander-in-chief were that he could frequently tell a good idea from a bad one, and that he could hold to an overall objective. His faults were manifold.
Hitler's effects on the military were minor for the first few years of the war, and probably favored the German cause. He was a drag on the blitzkriegs, but nobody, including Guderian, knew whether they were too daring. He mismanaged the Battle of Britain, but nobody on the German side knew what they were doing anyway. He adopted the von Manstein plan of attacking France, which was dramatically successful. He ordered the Panzer III tanks to carry the long 50mm gun, and the fact that this order was not obeyed made things more difficult for the German Panzertruppen.
I don't know what effect he had on the drafting of the plans to attack the Soviet Union. The plans had no clear objective, and I don't know that anybody in the process had a good idea as to how to defeat the Soviet Union. He stuck to the objective of destroying the Red Army throughout the initial stages, which was probably the right thing to do.
Hitler's generals started to feel defeated early in 1941, when they supervised the destruction of the prewar Red Army, only to find that the Soviet Union was still fighting hard. The generals then started to propose operations they considered feasible, but which would still lose the war in the long run. Hitler would consider operations that could conceivably win the war, regardless of feasibility. This led to a breach between Hitler his generals.
The result was that Hitler chose the operations and how they were to be conducted, and the generals executed his orders. Since Hitler distrusted most of his generals, he ordered impossible tasks. Since the generals did not, or would not, commit to the near-impossible as the only possibility of victory, they persisted in recommending plans that Hitler, quite rightly, found unacceptable. The result was that the German Army was commanded by men who had no confidence in what they were doing, and was ordered to perform the extravagantly improbable in nonsensical ways. Since the generals did not understand, or did not care about, the overall situation, Hitler could not trust their judgement, and restricted their ability to use that judgement.
Hitler was not at all a good strategist. He was not content to simply demand results, but wanted events to follow his plans. Rather than retreat from a city and prepare to surround and retake it, he would insist that it be held against any attack. He also assumed that all German military formations were at their assigned strength, regardless of how battered they actually were. He had been a corporal in World War I, and kept his corporal's-eye view of the war.
He could not be everywhere at once, nor was he interested in going to the front, so he issued edicts to limit the freedom of his subordinates. The generals constantly wanted to retreat to more defensible positions, so he constantly ordered no retreats. Hitler considered that allowing the generals to retreat at their own judgement was a greater problem than having sections of the army destroyed because they could not retreat.
He was frequently irrational, but there is a chilling thread of reason through his actions in the second half of the war. He was not interested in the difference between losing slowly and losing fast, so he was only interested in operations that could win the war. He gave the slaughter of the Jews and Gypsies and other undesirables a higher priority than running the war, so that the Holocaust would succeed even if Germany fell. Only a desperate man would have let Army Group Courland be cut off to provide a safe training ground for the new crop of U-boats in the hope of victory in the West. Only an incredibly evil man would have given the Holocaust priority over the war effort. Hitler was that man.
Did Hitler come to power democratically?
Hitler rose from a private citizen and criminal to ruler of Germany by a whole host of methods of varying legality. He used the Nazi party to become politically powerful. Some of what the Nazis did was perfectly legal electioneering, and some was street violence. In the early 30s, the Nazis gained about 40% of the seats in the Reichstag (German parliament) in elections, and my best guess is that that was all they were ever going to get. It's my best guess because there were no more elections until Hitler was dead and a new Germany had been rebuilt.
Having the largest single party, Hitler was able to make enough trouble to become Chancellor, a very high political office. His enemies hoped he would fail miserably. Unfortunately for them, Germany, and the world, he took action. He had various members of the Reichstag illegally arrested, and after an arsenous attack on the Reichstag itself (likely performed by Nazis) got a motion through the remaining panicked members of the Reichstag to allow him to rule by decree, suspending the constitution. That gave Hitler all the governmental power he wanted.
Would it have been a good idea for Britain and France to ally with Stalin?Josef Stalin was unquestionably one of the most evil men of the Twentieth Century. Nevertheless, Britain and France should have tried to ally with him in 1939.
Britain and France needed allies against Nazi Germany. It's pointless to argue whether Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, militarist Japan, Communist China, or some other was the most evil regime of the century. All were thoroughly evil. However, some were more dangerous than others, and those were the ones that needed to be guarded against.
The borders of the Soviet Union were pretty much set at the end of the Russo-Polish War of 1920, and they remained unchanged until 1939, after Stalin negotiated the carving up of Eastern Europe with Hitler. After the war (and the massive border changes), there were a few relatively minor adjustments, and then the borders again were unchanged until the fall of the Soviet Union. Clearly, the Soviets were not interested in military expansion. Whether they thought it immoral or unnecessary or too risky is immaterial here. They were uncomfortable neighbors, but not threatening.
Nazi Germany, however, was rabidly expansionist.
Stalin was afraid of Germany, with good reason. He didn't trust Britain and France, either, as he thought (also with good reason) that they'd like nothing better than letting Germany and the Soviet Union slug it out, perhaps helping Germany if necessary to stop Communist expansion. He wanted to form an alliance for collective security with Britain and France. However, when Britain and France refused to negotiate seriously, he went to a less preferable plan of allying with Germany and grabbing as much extra territory as he could to serve as a buffer.
Suppose that Britain and France had decided to seek an alliance. How would things have turned out?
There is a possibility that such an alliance would have deterred Hitler, and therefore there would not have been a WWII, and the borders of Eastern Europe would have been largely unchanged, and the governments would have remained pretty much as they were. This would be a big win over what actually happened.
Personally, I don't think Hitler was going to be deterred. Suppose that he attacked Poland. Then, there would have been four powers at war with Germany: Poland, the Soviet Union, Britain, and France. The Poles really feared for their independence if they allowed Soviet help, but they seemed to be willing to let the Red Army in when actually invaded, when they thought the Soviets might be coming to help them. Suppose that war broke out, the Polish Army was battered, and the Red Army was hanging in there. Then what?
Germany would be fighting a two-front war. Once the French were mobilized, which happened after Poland was doomed but before the Soviets could be defeated, the French could launch an offensive, knowing that the Germans were going to be tied up in the East. The battlefield would be Poland, which is bad for Poland. Germany would not occupy Poland, at least not for very long, and that's good for Poland. The next question is whether Poland would fall under Soviet domination.
Poland would be at least in a much better position. Stalin would be counting on the West to help him, and would not want to offend them unnecessarily. (Historically, as things worked out, the Western Allies needed the Soviet Union more than the Soviets needed the Western Allies.) Therefore, he would refrain from overtly subverting the Polish government. It is likely, if this happened, that Poland would remain independent and with its previous government.
Of course, that wouldn't be necessary to assure that Poland came out of WWII better than historically. Historically, Poland was conquered by Germany and occupied for five years, with the Polish population being slaughtered and Polish culture destroyed. After this, Poland was occupied by the Soviet Union, relatively much more gentle than the Germans (Polish population went up, rather than down), but still highly undesirable. It's difficult to see how Poland could have done worse.
With a British-French-Soviet alliance in 1939, Poland would be fought over, but would likely not remain under German occupation for long, nor would the Germans be able to settle in and murder the Poles methodically. Even if Poland wound up under Soviet domination, Poland would still be better off than historically.
Therefore, it seems to me that Britain and France should have tried to form an alliance with the Soviet Union against Germany in the summer of 1939, and that the failure to do so caused an immense amount of additional suffering.
All contents of these pages Copyright 1997, 1998, 2005 by David H. Thornley.