The following discussion is based on the work presented at the international history conference held in Bellagio, Italy, June 10-14, 1991. The conference was in a way consolidation of the German Historikerstreit which started with the rebuttals of Jürgen Habermas to pro-Nazi revisionism of Ernst Nolte (whose contribution was the revival of the not so original idea that Nazi genocidal policies were only a necessary copying of those committed by the Soviet regime - an idea that is a good example of the general confusion of cause and effect in the study of the Second World War).

The materials presented at the conference were published in the journal Soviet Union (The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review, 1991, Vol. 18, nos. 1-3) and in a separate issue Operation Barbarossa (1993, Charles Schlacks, Jr., Publisher) edited by Joseph L. Wieczynski from which I present extensive summaries and a lot of excerpts to serve as raw material for discussion.

Weinberg, Gerhard L. “German Diplomacy Toward the Soviet Union.” Operation Barbarossa (1993, Charles Schlacks, Jr., Publisher) ed. Joseph L. Wieczynski

I. Hitler’s general aims that required an invasion of USSR.

Hitler believed that a return to 1914 frontiers would not provide sufficient land for the German people. Therefore, he wanted to acquire much more land since a war, or even several, would have to be fought anyway. Naturally, Hitler turned his attention eastward for more land. Eastern Europe was to provide Germany with the land, while its previous “inhabitants would be expelled or exterminated - their appropriate punishment for being inferior.” (Weinberg 310)
Only huge chunks of Soviet territory with abundant resources would be sufficient for Germany when it had to face the United States.
Hitler was highly optimistic about a war against USSR since after the rise of communists to power “all those of real ability in Russia had been eliminated and replaced by inferior beings.” (Weinberg 311) In Hitler’s view, the state in which “hapless” Slavs were ruled by “incompetent” Jews could be defeated pretty easily. Added to that was the comfortable fact that “the theme of anti-Communist crusading could be added to the German store of propaganda weapons.” (Weinberg 311)
The main prerequisite of the war against USSR was security in the Western Europe. To achieve that Germany had to defeat France and Britain, Poland was not considered much of a threat. In the few years before these plans were implemented Hitler’s mind did not change at all. As soon as he became the chancellor of Germany, he made it clear to the generals that the armed forces would be rebuilt and subsequently used “‘for the conquest and ruthless Germanization of new living space in the East.’” (Weinberg 312)

II. Hitler’s policy toward USSR in 1933-39.

“There is a curious irony in the fact that the first major diplomatic action of the new regime Hitler installed in Germany was the extension, approved by the cabinet on April 4 and ratified on May 5, 1933, of the Berlin Treaty of 1926 with the Soviet Union.” (Weinberg 312) Today enough evidence exists to understand the simple logic behind Hitler’s diplomatic moves. His main goal was capture of Lebensraum from the USSR. In order to attack USSR, he needed to secure his rear in the Western Europe first. To attack France and Britain, however, he needed to secure his eastern flank first. So, essentially, Hitler improved his relations with Stalin only to temporarily free his forces for the war in the west. Once victory in the west was achieved, the invasion of USSR was bound to follow shortly.

The German armed forces were rebuilt keeping in mind that the hardest war would be fought against the Western powers.
“Single-engine dive-bombers would be appropriate for France; two-engine dive-bombers were believed appropriate for England. By 1937, specifications for the "New York Bomber" showed what was next.” (Weinberg 312)
Nothing, however, was built specifically for the war against USSR since such war would be nearly a walkover. After all, Germany had won on the Eastern front in the First World War, and since then Russia only got weaker.
After Czechoslovakia was taken, Germany was almost ready to strike westwards. But before that he needed to fully secure his eastern borders. Hungary and Lithuania would not present any trouble, while Poland still was not willing to give up Danzig (Gdansk). Therefore, Hitler was willing to attack Poland first, even if that immediately meant a war against France and Britain.
Since Hitler wanted to fully concentrate against the Western powers first, he was willing to make temporary concessions to USSR. Stalin satisfied Hitler by assuring him that no blockade and no second front would threaten Germany. At the same time, Hitler also pressured Japan to engage Westerners even though the Japanese themselves preferred to face the Soviet Union before starting a major war against France and Britain, behind which was the USA. (Weinberg 314)
Once France was conquered, Britain would provide only minor resistance, while the USA would probably still remain neutral. In any case, the new German weapons would be built specifically for the eventual conquest of the USA.
At the same time, Hitler’s alliance was as strong as ever.
“Mussolini had decided to enter the war lest Italy be overlooked in the distribution of booty, and Franco was ready, even eager, to join in, provided he was assured of the colonial gains to which he considered Spain entitled.11
11. The thesis that Franco really did intend to enter the war and in fact preferred to do so if only his colonial conditions were met, is fully supported by the recent works of D. Smyth, Diplomacy and Strategy of Survival: British Policy and Franco's Spain, 1940-41 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press), and Norman J. Goda, "Germany and Northwest Africa in the Second World War: Politics and Strategy of Global Hegemony," PhD Diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1991.” (Weinberg 315)

Stalin’s Appeasement.

“Stalin clearly wanted a new form of alignment with Germany and repeatedly attempted to obtain it, at times trying to do so through the economic elites which, as an orthodox Marxist-Leninist, he imagined were running Germany.7 Those elites might well have been very much interested in better relations with the Soviet Union, especially in the economic field, but they had practically no influence on the formation and direction, as distinct from the implementation, of German policy.” (Weinberg 313)
In Hitler’s view USSR could not do much else for Germany since it had already done a lot by that time. Hitler and his assistants were already thankful to Stalin for crippling the Red Army (40,000 officers executed during the Great Purges), and even declining “Romanian offers of an avenue for aid to Czechoslovakia” which Stalin sort of promised to protect with the Red Air Force. (Weinberg 313) In 1939 Stalin openly negotiated with the Western Powers, and Hitler (eager to invade Poland and France) was willing to made better offers to him. In late 1940 Stalin tried the same tactic again, however, this time unsuccessfully.
“Every attempt on the part of Stalin to obtain German approval for the Soviet Union to join the Tripartite Pact of Germany, Italy, and Japan was rebuffed by Berlin; frequently there was not even an answer.” (Weinberg 320)
Even huge economic aid (stopped only after Germans invaded) did not change Hitler’s mind. Stalin appears to have perceived “that a clearly implied willingness to join Germany in war with Britain and the United States would influence Berlin.” (Weinberg 320) None of this had any effects on the Germans, simply because they had already made up their minds about the invasion of the USSR. Germany was already in a non-aggression pact with USSR, any further efforts would only waste time since they would quickly be undone when the attack would begin.
“The Russians were now treated to the exact procedure which Germany had followed toward Britain and France in 1936 and 1937 when those countries had proposed a series of substitutes for the Locarno Treaty Germany had broken; no answer is itself a reply of sorts. As the State Secretary in the German Foreign Ministry put it, the German regime was moving on a one-way street against Russia.21" (Weinberg 321)

III. Hitler’s final decision to invade USSR.

Once the war in the west was declared over, Hitler expected the war against the USSR to start earlier and last shorter than previously thought.
Germany’s main obstacle on the Western flank, however, remained to be Britain. Hitler had his own ideas about Britain as well.
“In 1925 Hitler had correctly analyzed the likelihood of England's fighting through to the end any war she might enter regardless of the state of her armaments at the beginning. In 1939, the British government itself had told Hitler that "It would be a dangerous illusion to think that, if war once starts, it will come to an early end even if a success on any one of the several fronts on which it will be engaged should have been secured." 12 The reference then had been to a possible German victory over Poland, but there was no reason to suppose that a Churchill would weaken a Chamberlain's warning.” (Weinberg 316) After the quick initial victories, Hitler changed his attitude towards the British will to resist. Hitler believed that the British would not be able to fight tenaciously for themselves since they have always relied on others before. Britain was expected to fold soon after the battle for France.
“If the English should fail to draw the obvious conclusion from their hopeless position, a good hard knock on the head would bring them to their senses; and if their skulls proved too thick to register the facts properly, an invading army would quickly terminate the struggle. The arrest lists for the United Kingdom, at least, had already been compiled.” (Weinberg 316) Even after Britain showed its will to fight, the idea of a major land invasion was not considered seriously. Even if it was, however, that would not matter much since Germany was never capable of such an operation.
In his mind, Hitler explained Britain’s will to continue fighting by the future possibility of a strong alliance between Britain and somebody else. The two potential allies of Britain could only be the USSR and the USA. Hitler’s conclusion was simple and obvious: USSR was to be conquered fast to undermine any British hopes. Knocking out the USSR would also free the hands of Japan, which could then tie the hands of the USA. Finally, vast Soviet resources would enable Germany to adequately prepare for the war against the United States. (Weinberg 317)

Hitler’s logic was based on two main assumptions:
1). USSR could be conquered fast. Germany was victorious in the WW1, USSR got only weaker while Germany got much stronger in the last decade.
2). A war in the Pacific would sufficiently drain American resources so that the country would not be able to aid its allies in Europe. Today we know that American officials were, in fact, worried about such a situation in 1940-1942.
In Hitler’s mind, the key to world power was in defeating not Britain but the USSR. “There one could walk, or, better still, one could let the soldiers walk and come riding behind in a staff car.” (Weinberg 318)
Hitler was eager to attack USSR as soon as possible after the conquest of Western Europe, however taking a break for the upcoming winter and then renewing the offensive was considered to be not such a good idea, so the operation was set for spring 1941.

IV. Operation Barbarossa and the causes of its failure.

Once the preparation of the invasion was under way, certain Soviet responses only strengthened Hitler’s determination to attack. Transfer of major forces and the change of policy towards Finland and Romania would definitely lead to some Soviet responses.
“These two countries had both suffered from Soviet aggression; and although Germany had been responsible for facilitating and even encouraging that aggression, she now hoped to profit from the resentment aroused by it to recruit the two countries as allies on the flanks of the attack on Russia and as bases for her own operations. Early in August 1940, therefore, Germany reversed her policy toward Finland. By August 18, an arms delivery agreement had been worked out with Finnish Marshal Mannerheim; military transit agreements followed on September 12 and 22; and staff conversations for joint military operations against the Soviet Union were inaugurated in December. Finland had been assigned to the Soviet sphere by the secret protocol to the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 23, 1939, and up to August 1940 the Germans had scrupulously observed their promise. Not surprisingly, the sudden German violation of the agreement brought strong Soviet protests.
Similarly, at the same conference of July 31, 1940, in which Hitler announced his determination to attack Russia, he had also decided to guarantee Romania. The guarantee of Romania was quickly followed by a German occupation of that country, simultaneously providing a base for future German operations and closing the door to Soviet expansion into the Balkans. The Russian government was, of course, perturbed by these moves, but their protests only confirmed Hitler in his intention to destroy that troublesome power once and for all.” (Weinberg 318)
The will to invade the USSR was also strengthened by various advantageous prospects. The Nazis had already made plans for their campaign of racial genocide.
“The extermination of so-called undesirables could begin already with the prisoners of war. Commissars, other Communists, intellectuals, Jews, men with Asiatic feature (whatever that meant) were to be killed on capture. Afterwards, special slaughter commandos attached to the armies would kill off some groups in the occupied territories, while still later mass settlement and resettlement programs would turn the demographic map of Eastern Europe upside down.” (Weinberg 318) The Nazis also made plans for a major campaign of looting USSR agricultural and industrial resources. Millions of the locals were to be starved and used as slave labor, while Germany would be properly supplied with everything necessary. Expectations of the loot were so high that the Soviet scorched-earth policy succeeded greatly in straining Germany’s economy.
The fear of high military losses also was not strong enough to deter Hitler from attacking.
“Hitler estimated that the campaign would cost no more men than were required to operate the synthetics industries that would then no longer be needed. We secure some insight into Hitler's thinking from the fact that the difference between a German worker and a German casualty was assumed not to matter.” (Weinberg 320) “The German victories were stupendous, the booty huge, the prisoners numberless; but the war continued along an ever lengthening front. Did this not imply something else: that if the Germans did not win in six weeks, they would not win at all? What would have happened to David if Goliath had not toppled after the first hit from the sling? This was an aspect of the 'few weeks war' concept which none at the top and few at the bottom of the German military hierarchy had pondered.” (Weinberg 321)
The entire Axis invading force eventually turned out to be too small, and, most importantly, lacking sufficient reserves.

When it comes to the famous Kiev-Moscow controversy, Weinberg cites a study that shows the impossibility of further advance by the whole Army Group Centre in August 1941.
23. K. A. F. Schiller, Logistik im Russlandfeldzug: Die Rolls der Eisenbahn bei Planung, Vorbereitung und Durchfuhrung des Angriffs aufdie Sowjetunion biszurKrise vor Moskau im Winter 1941/42 (Frankfurt/M: Lang, 1987).
Wehrmacht was stopped by the end of 1941, and “that halt was administered by the Red Army.”
“Too frequently people have been misled by stories about the winter. Contrary to the fairy tales in some German memoirs, there is a winter in Russia every year, not just when there are invaders around, so the Germans could hardly assert surprise. And it gets about as cold and the snow is about as deep for the Russians as for the Germans, or anyone else for that matter. It had been precisely the anticipation that an attack on Russia launched still in the fall of 1940 would have had to be interrupted by the winter which had led Hitler to accept the view of his military advisors that the attack had best be postponed until the early summer of 1941 so that it could be completed in one campaign season. Although the December counter-offensive of the Red Army did not result in a total German rout, the defeat inflicted on the Germans was such that the latter were thereafter unable to launch an offensive on more than one limited sector of the front at any one time; a certain recipe for defeat if the alliance against Germany held together.” (Weinberg 322)

Conclusion.

“The two dictators who dealt with and faced each other in peace and in war appear to have been in some ways equally blinded by their own ideological preconceptions. Hitler did not merely preach the most preposterous racial nonsense, he actually believed in it and founded policies on that belief. The supposed need for living space motivated a policy that required war; the assumption of Slavic racial inferiority conditioned preposterously erroneous military plans and preparations.”
“If National Socialism was indeed primarily the tool of the monopoly capitalist elite of Germany in the struggle for markets and investments, and not an independent movement looking toward agricultural expansionist settlement, then Soviet policy based on that erroneous analysis becomes much easier to understand. The approaches to such people as Hjalmar Schacht in the 1930s and the belief that it would be wise to turn Germany against the imagined rivals for markets and investments and raw materials in 1939; the willingness to assist Germany in its war against Britain and France; the unwillingness to believe that a Germany which had open to her the former colonial possessions and markets of the capitalist countries she had defeated with Soviet help would thereafter turn East to seize farmland; all these perceptions of Stalin can be understood more readily if one is prepared to see him as equally misled by ideology as Hitler.”

In 1927 Stalin first opposed the relatively moderate five-year plans as too harsh on the Soviet people, then turned around and promoted even harsher measures for a rapid (not necessarily balanced and efficient) industrialization using the war scare to prove disloyalty of the moderates. In 1941 there was plenty of diverse evidence of an impending German attack that failed to convince Stalin. The intelligence accurately predicted the planned date of the German invasion to be 15 May 1941. The date was pushed back, however, by the unforeseen German invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece. Several other such reports were discredited by Stalin as provocation or bluff when nothing happened on the predicted dates.
Finally, Stalin gravely misunderstood Hitler to be too rational of a politician to start a new war before ending the one against Britain. Stalin could not imagine that Hitler’s racist ideology had always inclined him to attack the USSR, and that in 1940 Hitler actually believed that the war in the east would be quick and would discourage Britain to continue the struggle. What Stalin also could not predict was that helping Hitler to conquer Europe put the USSR at danger of facing the Fascists all alone if Stalin’s personal convictions about his “brother-tyrant” were to turn out to be wrong. Stalin risked too much, more than he had the right to, in trusting a largely unknown to him dictator the integrity of his state and his foreign influence.
“In the spring of 1939, President Roosevelt had tried to caution Hitler against attacking a long list of countries, most of which Hitler subsequently invaded; the German dictator responded by making fun of the president. He might have done better to pay attention. In the summer of 1939 Roosevelt, who did not share the general belief in the strength of the French army, had tried to warn Stalin of the danger of siding with a Germany which, once it dominated Central and Western Europe, would be a mortal threat to both Russia and America.24 That warning, conveyed through both the Soviet Ambassador in Washington and the American Ambassador in Moscow, had been ignored by Stalin. As we look back on the great disaster of World War II, it would be well to examine closely the extent to which policies based on basic misconceptions contributed to the terrible suffering that war brought to so many people.” (Weinberg 323-324)