Now in this lecture, we are going to discuss the relationship between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and why Hitler took the momentous decision on June 22, 1941 to invade the Soviet Union. So, as we discussed in the previous lecture, Germany's position in 1941 was a lot less powerful than it appeared to be. Germany was still the subject and its continental empire of a massive, comprehensive trade embargo - totally illegal trade embargo by the way - by Britain and America. Meanwhile, with lend lease - and something that's gotten inadequate attention from historians, a massive military buildup in America. The military balance of power was shifting towards England. Germany, meanwhile, had done a very, very, very poor job of mobilizing the military industries of the countries that had conquered for the German war effort. The most spectacular example of stupidity were the French aircraft factories where machine tools were taken out, factories were shut down, and frequently machinery just rusted in Germany due to bureaucratic stupidity.
So, the the war of production was turning sharply against Germany. Meanwhile, as we mentioned, the Luftwaffe had been severely damaged in the battle of Britain. While the losses of material were not that great in the invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece, there was an awful lot of wear-and-tear on equipment, and in terms of the paratroop division, that was absolutely decimated at the conquest of Crete. So, the situation of the Germans was a lot less great than it appeared to be.
Meanwhile, the Russians did something that was very unwise, which was to start massing troops on the German border, and moving up their bases to the German borders. The Russians had grabbed virtually everything on their side of the line that Hitler and Stalin had agreed to, and this didn't exactly encourage a whole lot of confidence on the part of the Germans, either. They'd seize Latvia, Estonia and the best Arabian part of Romania, as well as trying to conquer Finland. So all this made Hitler very nervous, and the Germany was also dependent on the Soviet Union for war supplies. In other words, if the Soviet Union woke up one day and stopped supplying war supplies, a good part of German industry might just stop. So, this was a troubling situation.
In the context of all this, a very fateful meeting took place between Russian Foreign Minister Molotov and Hitler in November 1940. This meeting has to go down as one of the biggest disasters in history of international diplomacy. Molotov behaved basically like an automaton in the meeting, listing, reading a series of demands to Hitler, and implied threats. Hitler didn't really go for this, and the meeting left with a huge sense of anger on the part of Hitler towards the Russians, and shortly after that, Hitler began to accelerate plans for the invasion of the Soviet Union.
Now, we need to clear up the number of myths about this whole situation. People say, "Well, why didn't Stalin mobilize his troops?" These people are obviously ignorant of the history of Russian-German military relations. It is a long-standing policy that any attempt by the Russians to mobilize their huge army on the German border would be considered - and was considered by the Germans in World War I - as a declaration of war. So, if Stalin had done the smart thing to mobilize the Russian army, that would've led to war immediately. Second, Stalin was very right to distrust the English, and think that they might try to provoke some kind of incident that would lead to war. This is no excuse for the poor preparations in 1941 when the Germans attacked, but it was not as stupid as it seemed.
On the German side, Hitler was facing the fact that the result of getting into a war in the West - and failing to end that war and the west - was a perhaps a fatal blow to his long-term plans for conquering the European part of the Soviet Union. Because Russia was involved in a huge military build-up, and the Russian army, in 1941, because of Stalin's decision to move it up closer to the border - key sections of a closer to the border - was a very vulnerable position, because their bases were sort of half-deconstructed and half-constructed in terms of moving up the fortifications to the German border. Plus, Germany had a rather unique opportunity to attack that wouldn't come again. At the same time, Stalin just couldn't believe that Hitler would start war. As a result, the Germans did have the opportunity for a surprise attack that probably wouldn't come again.
So, this is the logic why Hitler launched the invasion of the Soviet Union. Overall, it was a huge mistake because until he ended the war in the west, Germany simply did not have the resources to carry out the campaign. It did not. The invasion of the Soviet Union was not a fatal mistake for Germany.The fatal mistake was the declaration of war on the United States in on December 10, 1941. But by invading the Soviet Union, Hitler made Germany's situation a lot more dangerous, and this set the stage for the catastrophes that followed.