ORIGINAL: MengJiao
I know that's the old view. But new and very fashionable evidence has come to light. Hitler was very worried about the USA. I know it sounds a bit nutty, but apparently he was. I first heard of that nutty thing about the US in a West German Army staff study so I wasn't as surprised as I might have been to find it in Tooze.
As for German industrial capacity. Yes, it could barely get an army going in 1940 and according to Tooze it was already running as hard as it could. Not Surprisingly Todt killed himself in 1942 when it became clear that things weren't working so well.
The deal with Britain is perhaps the oddest. Hitler apparently thought it was clear to everybody that the USA was the real enemy of the British Empire and he assumed the British could see that. Hence his expectation that the British Empire would at least sit out WWII rather like the French. Thus the attack on Russia was relatively rational and not as ideological as it seems since (according to Tooze) he had to get hold of most of the Russian economy so as to eventually face the USA.
It's hard to see how he was wrong about that. The Russian economy may have been mismanaged, but it had a lot more potential than the German economy which would have been very very lucky to reach merely Russian levels of mismanagement. Had the Nazis secured most of the Russian economy and held onto it into say 1944, they would have been in much better shape than they were in the 1944 we know where the badly managed Russian economy plus lend-lease was doing a lot better than the really amazingly very badly managed German economy was doing.
According to Tooze, Speer did nothing of any substance,but was pretty good at public relations. And as for Todt, he showed his assessment of the situation by killing himself.
New and fashionable does not necessarily mean credible.
I thought that Todt died in an air crash.
Speer seems to have been well regarded and German production figures increased during his time, despite Hitler's habit of splitting responsibilities, giving Goering responsibility for the unfolding 5 year plan, dooming production to departmental conflicts.
If Hitler was so afraid of the USA, why did he declare war in 1941, when he did not have to and the Japanese had earlier not declared war on Soviet Russia in support of Germany. Surely, if he feared the US, his best move was to do nothing and allow the US to become heavily involved in the Pacific, he would then have a freer hand in Europe.
His stated reason for attacking Russia, apart from his long held wish for Lebensraum in the East, was that Russia was 'England's' last hope. This at a time when the US had no way of projecting power into any of Hitler's areas of action. It is not necessary to believe what people say, unless their actions match, Hitler showed no fear of the US in his actions. If Tooze is correct, then Hitler's actions become totally inexplicable.
Hitler could have been in no doubt that Britain did not intend to sit on the sidelines, Churchill had made that crystal clear in actions such as, the British intent to destroy any elements of the French Fleet that did not sail into British control, or into internment.
Germany industry was out-performing Russian production for a good part of the war, however, 500,000 lend-lease trucks and jeeps mobilised the Russian army, allowing Russian production to concentrate on large quantities of basic, but very capable, AFVs and support weapons.
It is difficult to see much rationally in anything that Hitler did, which is why it's nice to have WiTE to try things another way. [:)]
