Good Lord IL, sometimes I just don’t know if you’re this dumb, honestly, of if you’re being willfully obtuse. I mean, you quoted a kid who wrote a piece while he was a sophomore in college. The fact that he’s in his mid-20s now doesn’t change the fact that you quoted the writings of a 19 year old.
I know you don’t like me, because I’m one of the ones who got your position on these boards reduced from moderator or liaison or whatever it was to just another poster, but please try to check your emotions when you type.
Honestly, I never excluded that Hitler saw a benefit in securing his Eastern Flank and knocking out a potential UK ally. Of course those would be operational benefits.
My point is that the invasion of the Soviet Union was the entire point of Hitler’s war, to secure lands for German expansion on the Eurasian plains (I know you discount Mein Kampf because “things changed in 1940”, even though you don’t say how they changed, and despite the fact that Hitler executed all the major ideas he raised in Mein Kampf, but for some reason, not what he wrote about the Soviets, according to you).
Let me put it another way: What, in your mind, was the strategic objective of Hitler invading Poland? Was it just simply to secure Poland, but he was forced into a fight by the Western democracies, and once committed to that fight, he had to defeat the Soviets in order to bring the UK to the peace table? Is that how you see it? That Hitler would have been happy with just the 2/3rds of Poland he conquered, and being recognized as the most powerful leader in Europe? Is that it? If not, what was Hitler’s grand strategic vision for World War II?
Blah Blah Blah…just skip over the fact that Hitlers and his generals own words describe the situation just like i did. Concentrate on some 19 year old whom you have no idea about his age and is much smarter than you, then deliberately skip over dozens of quoted sources. You don’t have a freaking point, you asked for me to back up my post and i did that multiple times. I could care less what you posted, im not making any arguments about anything you said. Rather you don’t believe that Hitler considered in late 1940 the prospects of how to defeat England by removing the only remaining and potential major player. This was a consideration made with the situation of late 1940. Hitler does not consult a book written around 1923 for every decision he made since 1939. That is a most ridiculous statement.
As far as your new proposed arguments since confronting the previous ones meet with disaster, I could care less because i didn’t post anything about Poland. You see this is what you do when i showed you that i was 100% correct… you create new arguments to deflect the failure so you don’t look bad. Well you do.
Here is your argument:
> The analysis that the USSR needed to be destroyed so as to deny the UK an ally is ridiculous
Then you write a typical flip flop:
Honestly, I never excluded that Hitler saw a benefit in securing his Eastern Flank and knocking out a potential UK ally.
Here are replies from primary sources which prove that wrong… ( including a speech from Hitler)
From General Von Bock:
“There are said to be contacts between Russia and America; a Russia-England link is therefore also likely. To wait for the outcome of such a development is dangerous. But if the Russians were eliminated, England would have no hope left of defeating us on the continent, especially since an effective intervention by America would be complicated by Japan, which would keep our rear free.”
From General Halder:
“Britains hope lies in Russia and the United States. If Russia drops out of the picture, America, too, is lost for Britain, because elimination of Russia would tremendously increase Japans power in the Far East.”
http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/articles/turningeast.aspx
Hitlers intuition told him that Britains only hope would be a falling out between him and Stalin and time was on both the British and the Soviet sides. They would become stronger and their combined power would be too much for Germany to overcome. The time was now to take from Britain her last hope, the Soviet Union. As late as one week before the invasion of the USSR the Fuehrer spoke at the Reich Chancellery to his top generals.
Present was General Field-Marshall von Bock who writes:
“The more he had thought about the decision to attack Russia during the months, the more determined he became. Russia posed a grave threat to Germanys back and we now have to have our back free; as soon as she is cast down, England will have no ally left to win over the continent, and Germany can only be beaten on the continent. England will see all this, and it is to be assumed that it will then abandon the hopeless struggle. The Fuehrer hopes that this will come to pass in the first months after the end of the eastern operation”
"On the contrary. England will be all the less ready for peace, for it will be able to pin its hopes on the Russian partner. Indeed, this hope must naturally even grow with the progress in preparedness of the Russian armed forces. And behind this is the mass delivery of war material from America which they hope to get in 1942."
A speech from Hitler:
“The situation in England itself is bad; the provision of food and raw materials is growing steadily more difficult. The martial spirit to make war, after all, lives only on hopes. These hopes are based solely on two assumptions: Russia and America. We have no chance of eliminating America. But it does lie in our power to exclude Russia. The elimination of Russia means, at the same time, a tremendous relief for Japan in East Asia, and thereby the possibility of a much stronger threat to American activities through Japanese intervention.”
Just like i said all along. Thanks. One of the points of Hitler’s decision to attack USSR in 1941 was among other things to deny a potential major ally on the European continent. The reasoning is rightfully or not that following a collapse of the Soviets, the British Empire would come to terms since no other player could help her.
And i asked you before to not reply to my posts.
I understand you see now that facts destroyed your argument yet again.