Thousand Year Riech Essay Research Paper The — страница 3

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elaborated on his strategic plans, which had been ripening for some time in his mind. The operation was viewed only worth the men and material, to Hitler, if its aim was to shatter the Soviet nation in one great blow, Wiping out the very power to exist Russia! That is our goal! (War In, p.143) Hitler had personally decided on two main thrusts eastward. One in the south to Kiev and on the Dnieper River, to be led by the vocally opposed Von Runstedt, with the aid of Guderian, Germany s premier tank commander. The second in the North up through the Baltic States, Leningrad and then toward Moscow. The attack he proposed would begin in May 1941 and would take five months to carry through, essentially before the onset of the Russian winter. The Nazi warlord stressed that the Red Army

must be broken through both north and south of the Pripet Marshes, surrounded and annihilated, As in Poland Moscow, he told Halder, was not important. The important thing was to destroy the life-force of Russia. (The Rise, p. 810) Hitler also later decided on the Finnish and Romanian troops to in the campaign, which raised the number of allotted divisions for the campaign to between 120 and 130. Such was Hitler s grandiose plan, completed just before Christmas on 1940, and so well prepared, in his personal view, that no essential changes would be made to it. Ironically, the plans, of such genius, seal the fate of Hitler and the Third Reich, to burn in flames on the horrible Eastern Front war of attrition. In Hitler s mind were there any thoughts of Charles the XII of Sweden and

of Napoleon Bonaparte, who after so many glorious conquests not unlike his own, had met disaster in the vast depths of the Russian steppes. By now however the one-time Vienna waif regarded himself as the greatest conqueror the world had ever seen. Egomania, the fatal disease of all conquerors was taking hold. (The Rise, p.812) Von Runstedt s question was postponed again in the New Year, as Hitler turned his attention to the Balkans where growing popular dissension in Yugoslavia had deposed the appointed puppet Nazi from power in the capital. Hitler responded brashly, and spontaneously by laughing a full invasion as an example to those who refused to abide to the Reich s wishes. This invasion of Yugoslavia began in conjunction with the German military aid of the Italian front in

Greece to destroy the combined English and Greek forces. This prelude to Barbarossa was seen by the Fuhrer as a necessary use of men and material as it destroyed the English hope of landing troops on allied territory in Greece as had been accomplished with great effect at Salonika in the Great War. With his southern flank now secure in the Balkans Hitler turned to his generals for the new date of the invasion. The campaign officially delayed the start of the assault by two months, which some historians credit as a major error. Still, the German General Staff contends that the invasion would have proved near impossible by the ill-prepared German Army two months earlier. Despite all the earlier delays, the date is fixed, June 22. 1941, allowing for the rearmament and recuperation

of equipment and men involved in the Balkans fighting. Here, Hitler s strategy, unclear from the beginning, tended to weigh heavily on the occupation or destruction of Leningrad as the main objective, His critics remained those within the army who believed differently, in particular Von Runstedt, Guderian and other leaders of the new tank school. Moscow they contested, represented the largest center of concentration industrial production at Russia s disposal, it was the political center of the nation and linked major Russian centers to the other parts of the nation as well as serving as the communications hub of the backwards Soviet Russia. It is this decisive conflict in strategy, which sows the seeds of destruction of the German Wehrmacht. With the planning now well under way,

German planes consistently violated Russian airspace providing valuable reconnaissance for the coming invasion, as tanks, supplies and men began to assemble in their start off points in Poland, East Prussia and Romania. Here the German Wehrmacht s key element of advantage lay in Stalin s na ve attitude to numerous and reliable sources regarding the inevitably approaching German invasion of Soviet Russia: surprise. Stalin remained duped until the end. The morning of the invasion as German troops poured across the borders, Russian resource trains from the Ukraine were still naively en route to their receiving areas in their new enemy s homeland. Most stunning are the events on the night of June 18. 1941. A court martial suspect in the Wehrmacht defects to the Russians in the