The Churchill Series – Dec. 11, 2006

(One of a series of weekday posts on the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

In response to a reader’s request, today and tomorrow’s posts will look at the question of why Hitler choose to invade Russia before he had “finished” with Britain. Most of you know historians disagree on the answer(s) to that question. So within the limits of my knowledge and the “space” of the posts, I’d be foolish to suggest that I’m offering you the answer(s).

Instead, let’s look together at some of what a great historian, Winston S. Churchill, offered as his answer(s) to the question. Today we’ll focus on some of what he saw as logistical and strategic reasons for Hitler’s decision to turn away from Britain and invade Russia. Tomorrow, well look at what Churchill and many other historians cite as a powerful psychological force influencing Hitler: his deep hatred of Bolsheviks and Slavs.

In Their Finest Hour, volume II of his WW II history, Churchill provides a very good summary of logistical and strategic factors the caused Hitler, in the late Summer and Fall of 1940, to turn his attention from West to East, and begin planning for an invasion of Russia in the Spring of 1941, with Britain to be finished off after Russia was defeated:

… Without the command of the sea or the air, it had been deemed impossible to move German armies across the Channel. Winter with its storms had closed upon the scene. …

There must be many months’ delay before “Sea Lion” [, the German invasion plan,] could be revived, and with every week that passed, the growth, ripening, and equipment of the British home armies required a larger “Sea Lion,” with aggravated difficulties of transportation. Even three-quarters of a million men with all their furnishings would not be enough in April or May, 1941.

What chance was there of finding by then the shipping, the barges, the special landing craft necessary for so vast an over sea stroke? How could they have assembled under ever-increasing British air-power? Meanwhile, this air-power, fed by busy factories in Britain and the United States and by immense training schemes for pilots in the Dominions centered in Canada would perhaps in a year or so make the British Air Force superior in numbers, as it was already in quality, to that of Germany.

Can we wonder, then, that Hitler, once convinced that Goering’s hopes and boasts had been broken, should turn his eyes to the East? Like Napoleon in 1804, he recoiled from the assault of the island until at least the Eastern danger was no more. He must, he now felt, at all costs settle with Russia before staking everything on the invasion of Britain. (pgs. 576-577)

From my readings I judge that putting aside the question of whether Hitler should have finished with Britain first, his decision to invade Russia was in any case his worst military decision of the war. What do you think?