Comments by "Андрей Борцов" (@Mentol_) on "[Barbarossa] Just a Stupid Idea or not? An Analysis" video.
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February 3, 1933. Berlin. The statements of the Reich Chancellor Hitler, set out before the commanders-in-chief of the ground forces and naval forces during the visit of the infantry general Baron Hammerstein-Eckvoda at his apartment.
The sole aim of general policy: the regaining of political power. The whole State administration must be geared to this end (all departments!).
1. Domestic policy: Complete reversal of the present domestic political situation in Germany. Refusal to tolerate any attitude contrary to this aim (pacifism!). Those who will not be converted must be broken. Extermination of Marxism root and branch. Adjustment of youth and of the whole people to the idea that only a struggle can save us and that everything else must be subordinated to this idea. (Realized in the millions of the Nazi movement. It will grow.) Training of youth and strengthening of the will to fight with all means. Death penalty for high treason. Tightest authoritarian State leadership. Removal of the cancer of Democracy!
2. Foreign policy: Battle against Versailles. Equality of rights in Geneva; but useless if people do not have the will to fight. Concern for allies.
3. Economics: The farmer must be saved! Settlement policy! Further increase of exports useless. The capacity of the world is limited and production is forced up everywhere. The only possibility of re-employing part of the army of unemployed lies in settlement. But time is needed and radical improvement not to be expected since living space too small for German people.
4. Building up of the armed forces: Most important prerequisite for achieving the goal of regaining political power. National Service must be reintroduced. But beforehand the State leadership must ensure that the men subject to military service are not, even before their entry, poisoned by pacifism, Marxism, Bolshevism or do not fall victim to this poison after their service.
How should political power be used when it has been gained? That is impossible to say yet. Perhaps fighting for new export possibilities, perhaps—and probably better—the conquest of new living space in the east and its ruthless Germanization. Certain that only through political power and struggle can the present economic circumstances be changed. The only things that can happen now—settlement—stopgap measures.
Armed forces most important and most Socialist institution of the State. They must stay unpolitical and impartial. The internal struggle not their affair but that of the Nazi organizations. As opposed to Italy no fusion of Army and SA intended—most dangerous time is during the reconstruction of the Army. It will show whether or not France has statesmen: if so, she will not leave us time but will attack us (presumably with eastern satellites).
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Source of English translation: Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham, eds., Nazism, 1919-1945, Vol. 3: Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination. Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2001, pp. 20-21.
Source of original German text: Handwritten notes by General Lieutenant Liebmann. Munich, Archive of the Institute for Contemporary History, No. 167/51, fol. 39; reprinted in Thilo Vogelsang, Dokumentation: „Neue Dokumente zur Geschichte der Reichswehr 1930-1933“, Vierteljahreshefte fur Zeitgeschichte 2 (1954), Heft 4, pp. 434-35.
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1). Sources of oil in Germany (1940).
- domestic production in Germany - 720 thousand tons.
- domestic production in Austria - 354 thousand tons,
- extraction in Poland - 124 thousand tons,
- production of synthetic fuel - 2500 thousand tons of oil equivalent,
- imports from Romania - 1147 thousand tons,
- imports from the USSR - 658 thousand tons.
2). Japan could not attack the USSR because it signed an agreement on neutrality with it in April 1941. This was the result of differences between Germany and Japan after the conclusion of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Japan considered this to be a betrayal of the ideas of the anti-Comintern pact and the old government withdrew to the resignation. The new concluded an agreement with the USSR and sent its aggression to the south.
3). The percentage of imported cars in the Red Army:
22.6.41 - 0%
1.1.42 - 0,1%
1.1.43 - 5.4%
1.1.44 - 19%
1,1,45 - 30,4%
1.5.45 - 32.8%
4). In the counter-offensive near Moscow, 400,000 siberian soldiers out of 1.25 million total, that is, less than half, participated.
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