Why did Hitler invade the Soviet Union? Why didn't he focus

>>56619
He thought the Soviets were going to invade him and his only hope was a preemptive strike.

Also he wanted the large recourses of western Russia to help fuel even more devlopment

>>56916
Couldn't he have waited until he dealt with the west? It seems like he misread the situation. USSR wasn't planning to invade and were caught completely unawares.

>>56619
Results of the Russo-Finnish War made Russia look weak, along with Stalin being a retard and killing all of his good generals made invading Russia look appealing.

>>56619
Soviets fucking fumbled the invasion of some hanseatic and nordic nations, and it caused Hitler to make the wrong assumption that the Red Army was a paper tiger.

To be fair, he would've been right if he was facing a defensive war. He made the big fucking mistake of fighting a winter army in their home territory, AND taking the command away from people who actually knew how to properly handle the largest concentration of armed forces in history.

In short, Hitler fucked up hard.

>>56619
Hitler was planning a peace treaty with the Allies (http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4433768,00.html).
He never had really planned for the war, and he had always harbored a hatred for communists.

Perhaps he assumed Churchill would accept and they would unite to crush the Soviets, and perhaps even China.

>>57030
It's a damn wonder that Russia had halfway decent generals leftover even with Stalin's purges.

>>57059
I always wonder how it would have played out if a non-retarded nationalist German came to power instead of Hitler.

>>56619
>"We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down."

Basically he seriously underestimated how stronk was Russia + USA support.

>>57083
Stalin did the right thing, you have to be ever vigilant against bourgeois elements reasserting themselves.

>>56619

Wiping out Communism and the Slavic peoples were one of Hitler's primary goals besides removing the Jews from Germany. Pretty basic history, these is a /pol/-tier question and hopefully dumb threads like this will stay there.

Because Russia was going to come eventually either way, and then they'd be prepared and wouldn't have much room they'd need to conquer.

Russia had to be taken on rather sooner than later, so long as they weren't ready for it. Given that Stalin really was taken by surprise, it sort of worked out as well as it could have. Then an extraordinary winter happened, Hitler derped out on several occassions, and that was it.

>>57152
Why didn't he wait until next spring. Seems like Hitler was just a huge retard that won an election.

>>57083
There's always someone waiting second in line. In fact, breaking up some established structures who may still be thinking it's WW1 again can help, just look at France. A purge may have helped them.

Of course that leaves you with inexperienced commanders, but that's what they had the winter war for.

>>56619
Didn't the west appear pretty much done at that point? I mean he occupied continental Europe, England and the US were all that was left. He probably assumed that since he couldn't get his armies across the English Channel, they couldn't either. Russia seemed like a bigger threat.

>>57029
nobody ever implied that hitler was a smart strategist.

>>57135
>Purging his army in the middle of a world war
Please be b8

>>57178
>Why didn't he wait until next spring.
Because you can't keep an army assembled and ready indefinitly before your opponent knows what's up, and greets you with a nice welcoming gift, or screws up your plans by invading first.

I don't know how accurate or possibly just anecdotal this is, but Stalin apparently only started believing his spies that Hitler was going to invade the day he actually did. Wait another couple months and he's damn well ready.

>>57179
France did have some entrenched generals working against them, but you have to remember that they bore the brunt of the casualties in WW1.

They would've tapped out early even with the best generals in history at the helm. The political and popular will was simply not there -- they were deathly afraid of seeing the same casualty figures they saw in WW1.

>>57215
>bourgeois capitalist coup in the middle of a world war

Sure hope you aren't THIS retarded.

>>57179
Russia's biggest weakness was that it wasn't ready for war when they were invaded. So whereas their tanks were superior, many of them got lost anyway and a tone of aircraft were destroyed on the ground.
>>57215
Purges were in the thirties. During the war the Soviet government promoted success and punished failure.

>>57029
He saw that the Red Army was Weak and he did not want to give it time to recover. Keep in mind that the Purges were still reaking havoc.

He very well could have won too but he focused to much on Stalingrad.

>>57222
erm, so then don't prepare for the eastern war until you're ready??

You a retard or somethin??

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>>57135
>communists are a-okay
>nsdaps who are friendly with all races but enforce racial purity with a state to their own are evil and must be banned.

>>57236
>They would've tapped out early even with the best generals in history at the helm.
Well, without the focus on holding the line where they thought the attack would come, the victory wouldn't have nearly been as simple. Combined with some british reinforcements and the fact that the wehrmacht wasn't THAT strong in '40, it could've been won, before sufficient civilian resistance could form.
>>57265
He was ready, and then got delayed.

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>>57290
>people who want to kill everyone who has more than you and rob you, but are racially blind are a-okay
>nsdaps who will leave you alone to your fate are scum of the earth because they want racial purity and self determination.

>>57029
>Couldn't he have waited until he dealt with the west?
No. Because Germany was never going to defeat Britain.

>>57222
The winter war could've been won if the logistics wasn't dictated by Hitler. He specifically didn't want wintertime equipment (basic shit like COATS AND GLOVES) being supplied to the troops, because it would "send the wrong message" that the invasion would last longer than intended.

Holding off the invasion until spring may have been a better idea actually. Stalin had a complete faith that wehrmacht wouldn't show up in Russian soil even with the massive troop deployment clearly visible across the border. He even accused his spies of "sowing panic and dissent" for reporting that Hitler would do such a thing.

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>>56619
1) Hitler and Stalin both knew that if Germany took over W. Europe then their border would be the next front for the next conflict.

2) The Soviets were bumbling and stumbling toward Poland and Stalin ordered almost all guns emplacements shipped to Soviet Poland where the fortifications to house them hadn't even been built yet.

3) It seemed like Hitler really was going to just steamroll through England.

4) Hitler really hated Commies. Pic related.

>>57093
You mean like Schleicher?

Moderately OK.

>>57135
>implying bourgeois elements were even present
>implying that Stalin didn't purge for the sole reason of eliminating any major Bolshevik that remembered Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution and replacing them with younger new Bolsheviks to ensure Stalin can rewrite Russian history for his own benefit without any other major Bolsheviks to do anything about it

>>57360
Such faith doesn't hold indefinitly. You can't bet on a paranoid lunatic sitting around on his ass in full faith that you're not going to do anything indefinitly. That's just asking to get rekt.

>>57178
You do not invade that region in the spring. Even in 1942, 1943, 1944 the Germans did not attempt a Spring offensive, they tried summer offensives.

The simple reason is that Spring in the Ukraine is awful, full of rain that turns the roads to mud.

>>57322
Wehrmacht wasn't *that* strong in '40, I agree. But the rest of the Europe was still recovering from the first world war, not to mention sticking with completely outdated doctrines.

I don't think France would've held them at bay any longer than they have given the circumstances. The French homefront was a massive factor in them surrendering.

>>57178
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasputitsa
This kills the panzer.

>>57403
Actually, it's kind of funny. A significant reason for the purges seems to have been that Stalin fell for Nazi intelligence like an IDIOT.

here's an American explanation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfoQBTPY7gk

>>56619

There was some small sliver of sense in the Nazi belief that they could beat the Reds, specifically, because they had just rolled over France (widely considered the best army in the world) in a few weeks while the USSR had been bled white by fucking Finland of all places.

With better leadership or more luck... it's still a very unlikely prospect that they win. But I don't think it's impossible; had the Battle of Moscow gone to the Wehrmacht I can juuuust about see a fragmentation of Soviet leadership that swings things.

Hitler stopped with the Western Allies, though, because there was nothing left there for him to try. The Battle of Britain was lost and no way in hell was he ever beating the RN and invading Britain. Even with a successful landing almost every wargame, simulation, extrapolation, etc. has the Nazis cordoned and pushed back. The only possibility is if he ignores the bombing of German cities and doesn't change the Luftwaffe's targets; Britain was in a bad way with the hammering airfields, radar sites, etc. had taken and there may just have been a sliver of a chance for Germany to capitalize on that.

>>57029
Hitler could see the amassing of Soviet forces that indicated an invasion was coming sooner or later. He decided the attack should begin before they had time to better organize their forces. Overall it wasn't that bad of a decision; but it was doomed before it even started. A catch 22 with a Chance of swiftly taking Moscow if they acted immediately. But the chance didn't play out as Hitler needed, and as things drug on, and after the July 20 plots made him paranoid his own general staff were sabotaging the war, and everything went down the tubes faster and faster until it all ended in late April of '45 when he shot himself.

>>56619
>Did the attack make sense?
In hindsight....DUH!

>>57487
Stalin was absolutely paranoid as hell. It also impacted how the allies treated the post-war soviets because of how irrational and fearful Stalin was.

Hell, you could even argue that if it had been someone else in charge of the Soviet Union, WW2 would've ended earlier, and the Cold War would've never happened in the first place.

>>56619
there were many reasons, as have been mentioned already. a much better question is why he decided to divert his forces almost 100 miles to attack stalingrad when moscow was easily within reach, and the answer to that question also gives insight into the first.

Hitler was running out of oil. by the time of the invasion of soviet Russia the allies had pretty firm control of the Mediterranean and thus the supply lines from the eastern european oil fields
the US was self sufficient for oil and so it wasn't even a consideration for us, however Germany had been fighting the war largely off of reserves. when it became clear that the war with Britain was deadlocked Hitler knew he couldn't win by attrition unless he secured a reliable source of oil. and unfortunately for him that meant carving a land route through the soviet union. had Hitler been able to hold Stalingrad through the winter, a reinforce Wehrmacht would have likely marched on Moscow in the spring

>>57569
The cold war was still going to happen eventually. Communism is expansionist as a core part of the ideology, and the west started to position itself against communism even before the russian revolution happened.

>>56619

Oil. One theory anyways.

Germany has shit for oil. They have a decent amount of coal, and attempted to make synthetic oil from it. Literally ran out of gas for his tanks.

And from what I understand the Nazi vs USSR was far more volatile and inevitable.

Personally I don't think Hitler was ever going to beat Stalin. Europe aligning with Hitler vs USSR, maybe.

>>56619
Hitler had no real chance of invading Britain because they had no navy and no way to move and land troops and vehicles.

Churchill's stubbornness made a peace deal with Britain extremely unlikely, so effectively they were at a stalemate.

Hitler hated Slavs and Commies nearly as much as he hated Jews.

Hitler believed that the USSR would invade him eventually (basically true, just not immediately).

Hitler saw the Red army as weak given the purges and their performance against the Finns (not really wrong, it was weaker than it should have been, but it was still a formidable force and was playing defense).

Hitler needed the vast resources of Russia to fuel his army.

Hitler had very little margin for error.

The invasion was delayed due to the incompetence of the Italians, so he launched the invasion in June rather than earlier. Less time to accomplish things before the winter set in.

The winter was unusually bad IIRC.

He delayed the battle of Kursk just so he could try out the new Panthers. More time for the Soviets to prepare their defenses.

The Soviets had very good intelligence, once they started to believe the reports that their agents were sending. They didn't believe reports that the Germans were going to invade, but by the time the crucial battles were being fought, the Soviets had a good idea of what was coming.

Hitler spent too much time trying to finish off Stalingrad.

>>57178
Furthermore a lot of people are missing the fact that Hitler was planning to invade a little earlier than he did, but he had to redirect forces to assist Mussolini in Africa.

>>56619
Hitler could never have invaded UK at any point. This is a fact, unless you want to go full asb and give the german kriegsmarine the entire us navy of 1945, along with the supplies and manpower to man it. If by focus on the west you mean North Africa and the Mediterranean, Italian stupidity and once again supply issues bungled that up. The german/Italian merchant marine was just not enough to supply even the D.A.K, and Rommel had to go about stealing brit supplies for most of his rather miraculous campaign.
It is no secret now that Stalin planned a war with hitler as well, but not in 1941.
Hitler could never have "won" the Second World War, in the sense of total conquest. The best case scenario is a settlement with the remaining powers and an uneasy Cold War, with occupied lands in a continuous state of unrest and revolt

>>57659
Romanian oil fields and the German-soviet economic pact actually helped alleviate this. If anything the eastern front was a net loss of oil for the Germans

Hitler's partnership with the USSR was strictly utilitarian. Hitler and Stalin's distrust for each other was no secret the alliance was mutually beneficial until either side decided it was time to attack. Both the USSR and the Germans knew they were open to attack and it was probably wise for the Germans to make the first move before the USSR could build it's forces. The Germans banked they could seize Moscow in a short amount of time, but were unprepared for harsh weather and heavy resistance; the Russians suffered enormous casualties. If the Germans had not made that decisive move it's likely the USSR would it was a compromising situation and with the entrance of the USA into the war shortly after the German's had stumbled into a fight they couldn't finish. Even if Germany hadn't invaded the USSR I'm willing to bet the USSR would have allied with USA.

>>57178
Because Germans lost momentum even before the winter. Waiting would just give more time to the Soviets to prepare their offensive. Hitler wasn't stupid, he knew that, in order to finish the war the Red Army must be destroyed. They just underestimated the enemy and overestimated their forces.

>>57346
>oh but we have river barges, we just land and Albion surrenders
>what, Royal Navy, not fair

>>58068
Should have just used all his führer mana desu senpai

>>57770
>He delayed the battle of Kursk just so he could try out the new Panthers. More time for the Soviets to prepare their defenses.
To be fair, Pz IVs were not cutting it. They needed something better to get an edge on the T-34.

>>58068
>Albion

My fucking sides are in space. Got damn

>>57209
He was a tremendous diplomat though, surely he could of used that in the situation somehow

>>57770

UK almost surrendered during the Battle of Britain. When Hitler changed focus from RAF command centers to civilian populations, that gave them a breather and the itme they needed to pick themselves back up and commit to the war.

>>56619
>Why did Hitler invade the Soviet Union?
that was like his entire fucking Raison d'etre
>Why didn't he focus on the Western powers first?
Yeah he tired that, and fucking failed in the air campaign over Britain. Then his attention drifted elsewhere like a fucking child with ADD.
>What was he thinking?
"We are ubermenchen, they are untermenschen, ergo we will win". Dumb motherfucker
>Did the attack make sense?
Fuck no, the man was fucking deranged

>>58783
>UK almost surrendered during the Battle of Britain.
>This is what naziboos actually believe
>>56619
>Why didn't he focus on the Western powers first?
If you want a more serious answer, the British Blockade meant that German economy was becoming increasingly dependent on the Soviet Union for raw materials, particularly oil, and Hitler sought to seize those resources rather than continue paying someone he always intended to betray eventually anyway.

>>58650

I don't know about Hitler himself, but his lead diplomat was ''Joachim von Ribbentrop''

> This guy represents all Nazi Germany, and Hitler
> ''When this war is over and we've won, I'll build myself a golden sarcophagus and put all the treaties I've violated inside'' - Joachim v. Ribbentrop

I've paraphrased what he said (also, translated to English) but the original quote was in the ''Apocalypse: Deuxième Guerre mondiale'' series. It's in French though, but has real life footage and interesting commentary,

>>58901
>Apocalypse: Deuxième Guerre mondiale
There is actually a pretty good English version of that.
It's pretty good, I'd recommend it if you don't have the patience for the monumental 20-somehting apart series "The World At War"

>>56619
It was the right decision to invade the USSR right then and there. In fact it probably would've been even better to not bother with Britain in the first place. If Hitler had waited until next year, he would've fallen right into the Soviets plan of delaying the war and rebuilding from the Purges.

>>58896

>tfw I don't even know what a naziboo is lel

If you're accusing me of being biased for Hitler and/or Nazi, I gotta be honest and tell you I'm not. I took a college history class in which we covered WW2 and our teacher showed us when Hitler had been close to winning the war - in the long run, he didn't stand a chance but had a couple of opportunities he blew off. One of the theories my teacher had was that if Mussolini hadn't been allied with Hitler, the war would've dragged on much longer because Hitler wouldn't have had to deal with such a fuckup in N Africa and S France

>>58952

Then and there? Definitely not, they attacked in late summer/early autumn, which meant they got bogged down a lot in the fucking horrible weather + ''road'' conditions. Also, they didn't advance enough to be prepared for the winter and got trucked later on.

>>58923

That looked *really* interesting, I heard about it a little. The only thing bothering me is that it's only available for people in the UK (Ottawanon here), and I've uninstalled Hola for various security reasons while watching through TOR is a little (really) shitty.

>>58783
Nope, that's a myth.

Britain outproduced Germany in aircraft during the BoB. Britain's air strength *grew* throughout the BoB. 'The Few' might have been 'few', but they were still 'more and more' than the Luftwaffe.

>>56619
France fell apart in like a week, and Britain looked like it wasn't going to last long either.
Compare that to WWI, Hitler thought he was unstoppable. When just 20 years ago the Germans couldn't make it much further than Belgium in 4 years, he was able to knock out one of the biggest rivals and secure Western Europe in no time.

He also probably thought Russia was still weak from the famine affecting the Ukraine at the time, and the Civil War.

We laugh about it now, I can understand him think Blitzkrieg could also work on Russia. And they did make it pretty damn far into Russia. And they did kill a fuck ton of Russians.

>>56619
>Why did Hitler invade the Soviet Union?
the fight against what they called "judeo bolsheviks" and slavs was one of the central tenet of nazi ideology
>Why didn't he focus on the Western powers first?
he did, but he had no way of attacking britain
>What was he thinking?
german early war victories coupled with soviet blunders during the winter war led the nazi leadership to severely underestimate the potency of the ussr
>Did the attack make sense?
this is a tough one to answer even with hind sight, chances are the soviet union would have attacked themselves some years down the road... the attack did perhaps make sense given the information the germans thought they had, the ideological backing behind it, and the unprecedented successes of the wehrmacht until that point - except we now know neither of those points had a tangible, solid basis for success

>>59009
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=4bd_1264726972
They're all on there my main man

>>59012

If Britain had the aircraft necessary, then they didn't have the pilots; they really struggled.

> ''Apocalypse: Deuxième Guerre Mondiale'' is where my info is corroborated

I can't find statistics concerning survival rates of new British pilots during the war though, but I think they were pretty low. How could air strength ''grow'' though? Any reliable sources on that?

>>59061

Thanks senpai nice to see some chill anons out here

> inb4 faggot

>>59092

motherfucker there's an autocorrect from ''f.a.m.'' to senpai

>>59054
If you look at deaths as a percentage of each country's military (as in, what percentage of those who served in the armed forces died), Germany lost 30% and the USSR lost 31.1%. The difference in manpower was massive.

>>56619
>Why did Hitler invade the Soviet Union?

Lebensraum and the fact that Soviet Union appeared to be weaker than it was.

>Why didn't he focus on the Western powers first?

He did, but Germany lacked naval and air power to take out UK due to lack of long range fighters and bombers.

>What was he thinking? Did the attack make sense?

Nope. Ideology and delusions did their thing and he attacked anyway.

>>59065
But they did have the pilots. The BoB was a battle of attrition - and in it, the British had the advantage.

Just a snippet from Max Hastings:
>By late August the Luftwaffe believed Fighter Command’s first-line strength had been halved, to 300 aircraft. In reality, however, Dowding still deployed around twice that number: attrition was working to the advantage of the British. Between 8 and 23 August, the RAF lost 204 aircraft, but during that month 476 new fighters were built, and many more repaired. The Luftwaffe lost 397, of which 181 were fighters, while only 313 Bf-109s and Bf-110s were produced by German factories. Fighter Command lost 104 pilots killed in the middle fortnight of August, against 623 Luftwafffe airmen dead or captured.

From summer to fall 1940, the British had built roughly 2500 planes - compared to 1000 German aircraft.

>>56619
Nazism is the anti-virus to the communist virus.
It is what Nazism is designed to do.

Hitler always wanted to invade the USSR from the very beginning (to remove the communist Russian/Jewish leaders)

Does anybody have sources to back up the claims regarding Hitler originally being inspired by Lenin and even styling themselves after the Bolsheviks, but then turning around and decrying communism like Mussolini did? I remember hearing about it and his alleged admiration of the communists in Russia until it suddenly became a hate for the bolsheviks

>>59148
Just to give you an idea about the pilots - RAF started with about 1000 fighter pilots, comp. to 1500 of the LW.

The RAF had indeed lost about 500 kia pillots.

Except they have added roughly two thousand pilots over the course of the BoB. The RAF had basically grown two to three times throughout the war.

All the while the LW had lost about 3500 aircrew (not just fighter pilots obviously, but you can see the lopsided ratio) including about a thousand captured ones.

>>59146
>He did, but Germany lacked naval and air power to take out UK due to lack of long range fighters and bombers.
this as well as the fact that he stated more than once that he did not wish to go to war with the UK seeing as they were closely related to germanic peoples in terms of culture, language and physiology.