Nazi Policy on the Eastern Front

There’s been a lot of discussion in the last decade on how effective Nazi strategy really was. History books still promote the myth of the Polish cavalry charging German tanks, and that is all that the story is; a myth and nothing more. The Polish army did an excellent job at fighting the Germans, and according to this book, they really did a job on the Germans when they entered Warsaw. They fired on the German troops from windows and rooftops. The Germans only won the battle by shelling the city with artillery.

In the chapter The Purpose of the Russian Campaign, we see how Germany’s food situation was nowhere near as strong as Hitler claimed. Common sense would tell us that Germany’s farms could never feed a huge expeditionary army, and getting the food all the way to the Eastern Front would drain the railroads. But according to this book, Germany’s farms couldn’t even support the natives! One of the reasons for the invasion of Ukraine was to steal the food; it would feed the German hordes pushing into Asia and weaken the Soviet state. But did Hitler’s economists remember what happened when the French army invaded Russia? Did they wonder what would happen if the farmers burned their fields and retreated? Stalin did in fact evacuate thousands from Crimea, Latvia, and Lithuania, not to mention the factories that he ordered dismantled and hauled into Siberia. Hitler’s army invaded a food desert.

In France the German army had no better success. Sure, they pushed into the country with minimal resistance, but what did they expect to do once they were in there? The French resistance did an excellent job at killing German officers, and the Dutch resistance poisoned the German food stores. With the army pinned down in Stalingrad, trapped in Italy, and wasting its air power over Britain, how would the German troops in France be resupplied? According to this book, Hitler invaded France partly to plunder the artwork. We know that Herman Goering loved art, and we know that he looted museums all over Europe, of that there’s no doubt. But if Hitler wanted the valuables for the money, that wouldn’t work either. He’d flood the market with art and antiques and the price would go down. Furthermore, if the Jews of Europe had all their money confiscated, that means there were less people available to buy them. With all the gold being looted (including from the Death Camp victims’ teeth) the price would have gone down to nothing.

In short order, Hitler’s policies caused prices to plummet, then skyrocket. How would the people have been fed if all the farm workers were fighting a war? How would they have imported food if they were at war with the world? What use would gold have been if there was a surplus? You can’t eat gold, and farms can’t produce when there’s nobody to plow, plant, and harvest.

Sometimes I wonder if Hitler and his cronies were truant on the day their class learned about Napoleon.