HITLER

Hitler | Public Domain Photo

The Nazi blitzkrieg into Russia had moved five hundred miles in seven weeks and was only a hundred miles from Moscow by the beginning of August. The same Allied military minds were still holding to their estimate that Russia would be defeated by October, but in fact the German attack had been slowed substantially by the end of July. Hitler had been second-guessing the tactics of his generals on the battlefield, and that was beginning to show. A failure in Russia would mean the German army would be bogged down on a two-thousand-mile front in winter while the homeland would be under air attack from British air forces, then heavily supplemented by US aircraft. Had the invasion of Russia taken place on the original date of May 15 the German army presumably would have penetrated deeper into Russia before the weather closed in and other events occurred. The Battle of Moscow could have had a different outcome.

Former corporal Adolf Hitler, decorated for his valorous service on the front lines of the Great War, believed he knew more about waging war than the German generals. His successes as an infantryman, terrorist, diplomatic bully, and military victor in early 1940 had made him supremely confident. In reality, he was out of his depth. He already had failed to easily capture the British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk in May, 1940, and failed again a few months later in the Battle of Britain despite superior air power. Understanding the enormous potential of a comprehensive geopolitical aggregation, such as creating a Quadripartite Entente to include Russia in the Tripartite Pact, was beyond his narrow perspectives and destroyed by his hatreds. His invasion of Russia turned a potentially powerful ally into a deadly enemy that would sap the strength of his army. While Germany was still powerful, the misjudgments in 1940 and the failure to conquer Russia in 1941 were taking a toll. Largely unrecognized at the time, the odds were beginning to shift away from Hitler.