https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2025/03/18/why-did-hitler-go-to-stalingrad/
With the western world overwhelmed by Star Wars syndrome, it is impossible to avoid people who compare whatever the latest thing is, to the failed Austrian painter. It has been pointed out elsewhere that the people who make this comparison’s actions are at odds with their words. More worryingly perhaps, very few could tell you anything about why the Second World War unfolded in the way that it did. Most – including the King of England – wrongly believe that the Second World War was a crusade to save Europe’s Jews. None, I suspect, could describe the type and nature of the Polish regime that Britain and France went to war over (it was an antisemitic military junta, since you ask). And all recoil in horror at any suggestion that Hitler had a motive (albeit a perverse one) behind his actions, since this would detract from the narrative of evil for evil’s sake.

If there is a similarity between Germany in the interwar years and the contemporary west, it is not in the challenger parties, but in the failure of the elite to respond appropriately to the harsh economic conditions. Notably, the SPD – the party of the centre-left (equivalent to the UK Labour Party or the left of the US Democrat Party) – sold out to ruling interests, entering coalitions with economic conservatives to force through policies which further impoverished the majority. The failure of the left at this point being to argue that Hitler-fascism was no different to the social-fascism of the ruling parties. Either way, the prevailing depression, and the failure of the elite to deal with it, allowed the National Socialist German Workers’ Party to gather mass support in the early 1930s, even as the political left failed to develop a credible alternative… that much, at least, is similar.

Whether the Nazi leadership fully understood the energetic curse underpinning Europe’s economic woes is unclear – although they seemed to have had a better grasp than Europe’s leaders (then and now). The curse was that a Europe with abundant reserves of coal had almost no oil. So that, after “peak coal” (really the peak of coal-powered coal production) in the mid-1920s, European economies were particularly vulnerable to decline. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, a US economy which had boomed on the back of arms sales during the First World War, enjoyed the “roaring twenties,” during which the foundations of an oil-powered economy were laid. Comparatively, Germany would have been in relative decline even if its economy hadn’t slumped during the interwar years.

The growth of American power may have confirmed Hitler’s economic outlook based on the “shrinking markets” theory. This was the belief that industrial economies grew to greatness by exporting goods to more agrarian states which lacked the means to produce them. The flaw in this, however, was that as those agrarian economies developed, they would gain the ability to produce those industrial goods domestically. In this way, the market for industrial exports would shrink, slowly strangling the original industrial economies.

The theory was wrong, since it turns out that different states can specialise in particular export goods and services in a mutually-beneficial system of international trade. The point, however, is that this theory informed Nazi policy both before and during the Second World War. That is, in the early-1930s, they sought to turn Germany into an autarchic economy. However, despite alliances with Hungary and Romania – the two European oil producers – only by accessing the oil and mineral riches of the Soviet Union could Germany hope to match the industrial potential of the USA. As Rainer Zitelmann at The National Interest explains:

“Hitler adhered to a theory that was also advocated by Marxist theorists such as Rosa Luxemburg and Nicholai Bukharin, the ‘shrinking markets’ theory. Hitler considered the path that German companies had adopted, which had made them dependent on exports, to be a major mistake. In Hitler’s opinion, sales markets would continue to shrink as a result of the industrialization of former agrarian countries. Therefore, focusing on exports would lead to a dead end; only Lebensraum in the East could solve Germany’s problems.

“Is this not proof that World War II was waged in the interests of capitalism? On the contrary. Hitler, after all, firmly rejected what he called the strategy of the ‘economically peaceful conquest of the world.’ In his opinion, the German economy’s strong dependence on exports was a dangerous misjudgment. Hitler wanted to make Germany autarky, independent of the world economy by conquering new ‘Lebensraum in the East.’”

The role of Perfidious Albion in the unfolding events is brushed under the carpet. However, it is clear that the dying British Empire’s elites feared a German economic revival almost as much as they feared the growth of American power. So that, throughout the interwar years, they sought to engineer a conflict between Germany and the Soviet Union in the hope of collapsing both. This, it seems, underlay the Anglo-French guarantee of Poland against German attack. Far from intending to deter a German invasion, it seemed that the British wanted to provoke one – wrongly, as it turned out, hoping to recreate the economic blockade of November 1918.

Having failed to respond to the German reoccupation of the Rhineland – where French troops were within striking distance – and having sold out Austria and Czechoslovakia, only an idiot would have imagined an Anglo-French intervention on behalf of Poland. Rather, safe – as they imagined it – behind an impregnable Maginot Line, the beefed-up air and naval forces of both countries could conduct a close blockade of Germany to crash its economy in a matter of weeks. But then, with just a week to go before the invasion of Poland, Germany signed a de facto alliance with the Soviet Union – at a stroke rendering any Anglo-French blockade irrelevant. The Anglo-French elites had once again blundered into a war which they had no clue how to wage.

Ironically, but in no way knowingly, the Anglo-French declaration of war probably saved the day. Hitler had no interest in Western Europe, which had few resources and little in the way of industrial potential which Germany didn’t already possess. Nevertheless, he couldn’t turn east while his western borders were vulnerable to invasion. And so, in the winter of 1939, German forces were equipped to carry out a series of combined forces operations which drove the allies out of continental Europe. By July 1940, only Britain remained in the war – Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, and France having been defeated in just six weeks. And despite the post-war elevation of the Battle of Britain to a feat of survival (undermined by the transfer of tank divisions to North Africa) the Germans had no detailed plan for invading Britain and no material reason to do so. Indeed, it is during this period that the Germans made several peace overtures which (given the state of knowledge at the time) would not have been unreasonable to accept.

The peace feelers were not, of course, entirely benevolent. Indeed, Hitler’s reason for making them provided good reason for rejecting them. In the winter of 1940-41, German forces had been transferred east – ostensibly to move them out of range of RAF bombing attacks, but actually to prepare for the invasion of the Soviet Union. Why? Quite simply because under the de facto alliance, it was the Soviet Union rather than Germany which had benefited most both from industrial development and territorial gains.

Among the “what if’s” of history is the question of Mussolini’s ill-fated invasion of Greece in the winter of 1940-41. It seems to have been carried out for egoist reasons – Mussolini and Italy wanting to demonstrate their great power status by attacking a “weaker” neighbour. Except, as it turned out, the Greeks were anything but weak, quickly routing the Italian forces. In the process, the Greek advance upset the delicate balance of Balkan alliances that the Germans had negotiated in the Balkans… notably with Yugoslavia, whose people saw Greek success as reason to overthrow the government and renege on the alliance with Germany. The result was that the German invasion of the Soviet Union had to be delayed while German forces overran Yugoslavia and Greece.

Since the German armies would falter in the heavy snows before Moscow in November 1941, we can only wonder if an earlier start to the campaign might have resulted in success. Maybe. But any examination of the logistics suggests otherwise. In the post war narrative, it was madman Hitler’s refusal to issue winter clothing which led to the defeat. In the real world, the wider gauge Russian rail system (which was just narrow enough to prevent the laying of an inside rail) was an absolute fetter on supply. Georg Thomas, head of logistics for the German army, had warned that there were insufficient supplies to go much beyond Smolensk (the city from which the final drive toward Moscow was launched). So that, as winter drew near, the armies could receive two of either food, ammunition or clothing, but not all three – Goebbels’ propaganda effort to encourage the donation of fur coats was irrelevant, since there was no way of getting them to the front.

Importantly, at this stage of the war, the “madman Hitler” of 1944-45 was absent. Planning and conduct of the war were in the hands of the generals, who insisted on going to Moscow and Leningrad (because that was where the road and rail routes led) despite the oil and mineral riches being in the south… which is why Hitler famously quipped that “my generals don’t understand warfare.” Indeed, between 1941 and mid-1943, it was Stalin who exhibited much of the insanity displayed by Hitler in the latter years of the war… suggesting, perhaps, that there may have been some material reason for the change.

The German defeat before Moscow in December 1941 was a close-run thing. Forewarned of the Japanese attack on the USA, Red Army units had been transferred to Moscow from the Far East, providing just enough force to defeat the exhausted Germans. It should have been a limited counteroffensive, but Stalin, against the advice of the military leaders, ordered an all-out offensive which resulted only in defeat in the mud of the spring thaw… the worst defeat coming in April when a southern attack ran headlong into the first stage of the German drive to Stalingrad.

Why did Hitler go to Stalingrad? Mostly as a secondary objective to secure the flank of the main drive to secure the Maikop and Grozny oil fields. These had been Hitler’s objective all along. Oil from the Ploesti fields in Romania had been insufficient even for Germany’s peacetime needs. And even the addition of expensive synthetic oil provided a limited shelf-life to Germany’s mobile formations. Only by seizing the Caucasian oil fields could Germany hope to power the tank and air forces needed not just to win the war, but to hold onto, and extend, those gains in years to come.

Notably, it was on the understanding that these oil deposits would be secured, that German designers began work on the superheavy tanks and leading-edge aeroplanes which were at odds with German needs by the final years of the war. One can only wonder what effect they might have had if, in 1944, the Germans had the Caucasian oil to fuel them.

In addition to securing the flanks, the capture of Stalingrad – and securing the left bank of the Volga to the Caspian Sea – disrupted the Soviet Union’s oil barges, bringing oil from the Caucasus and Persia. So that, if successful, not only would Germany secure its own oil supplies, but it would also remove most of the Soviet Union’s supply – leaving them dependent on less developed fields in Siberia and on US exports via Vladivostok or Murmansk.

It was always about oil, and it was always a gamble. From the start, German planners knew they had limited fuel for the combined operations warfare needed to rapidly defeat the Red Army. But it backfired almost immediately, when the German military failed to destroy the Red Army in the frontier battles of June and July 1941. The drive into the Caucasus in the spring of 1942 was the final throw of the dice. It could only be achieved by going on the defensive across the rest of the front, and – foolishly as it turned out – using allied armies – Italian, Hungarian, and Romanian – to guard the flanks of sixth army along the length of the Don bend.

The stakes were high too. Capture the oil, and cut off the oil to the Soviet Union, and Germany would have won the war. Fail, and the combined force of Soviet and American oil-powered forces would inevitably crush a German army which would be forced back to horses and carts.

The Germans managed to reach Maikop. But the Soviet demolition of the facilities was so effective that operations only restarted in the weeks before Stalingrad was surrounded. A few thousand tons of oil were transported back for refining, but never enough to have any impact on the battle. And by January 1943, with the Red Army closing on the key city of Rostov-on-Don – thus cutting off the armies in the Caucasus – a general withdrawal was ordered. Only a small detachment would remain in the Taman Peninsula (opposite the Crimea) in the hope of launching another dash for the oil in future.

It wasn’t to be. In the offensives in February and March 1943, the Red Army cleared the industrial and mineral rich regions of eastern Ukraine before unsuccessfully driving toward the Dnepr… the German counteroffensive creating the Kursk salient and setting up the huge tank battles of early July 1943. Battles which also mark the apparent personality swap between Hitler and Stalin. Where Hitler was copying the early Stalin in interfering in military operations and sacking, and sometimes shooting, commanders, Stalin had begun to give his generals a freer hand in planning and executing battles. Allowing Marshals Zhukov and Vasilevski to plan and fight a defensive battle around Kursk was an early example of this. Deferring to Rokossovsky’s unconventional plan for a two-pronged offensive into Belorussia (which resulted in the destruction of the German army group centre and the neutering of much of army group north) the following summer was much closer to the way Hitler had allowed the army to plan the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.

By the time the American, Canadian, and British forces landed in northern France in June 1944, they were all motorised. Nine in ten of the Germans facing them in contrast, were entirely dependent upon horses. So that, while the lines on the map moved very little in the six weeks that followed, the process of attrition gradually wore away the German ability to fight. As Anand Toprani explains, in the course of the war, the USA provided six out of every seven barrels of oil consumed. Venezuela, the Soviet Union, and Persia produced much of what remained. Romanian and synthetic oil had barely met Germany’s pre-war needs, and was woefully inadequate for the war they had unleashed. With the failure to secure the Caucasian oil, Germany was doomed… all that remained was for the allies to apply the full weight of oil powered forces.

It should go without saying that none of this detracts from the brutality of the Nazi regime. A racial collective which regarded its (eastern) opponents as sub-human, and the Jews as an implacable enemy to be exterminated, unleashed horrors across central and eastern Europe. Nor was the Nazi party unique in this. The army planning for the invasion of the Soviet Union included the requirement to commandeer the food stocks in Ukraine, which they knew would result in the deaths by starvation of millions of civilians. The industrialised slaughter of millions of Jews and other “undesirables” was all the more horrific for its precision and efficiency – the things which distinguish what was done from the more routine genocides which had occurred previously and which have sadly been carried out more recently.

Nevertheless, the “madman Hitler” trope which fills contemporary Star Wars syndrome narratives was an invention of the defeated German generals in the aftermath of the Second World War. Most notably, Chief of Staff Franz Halder (who the Americans wrongly believed could teach them how to fight the Red Army) secured American publishers for a book in which he absolved himself and his colleagues for the failure of Barbarossa and blamed every military setback and defeat on a supposedly raving Hitler. This, in turn, suited a western narrative in which most of what happened between 1939 and 1941 is overlooked, the acts of (Nazi, but not Soviet) pure evil highlighted, and the western allies in general and America in particular are portrayed as knights in shining armour riding to the rescue of the oppressed peoples of Europe… only in this way could we hide the fact that the liberal western system which continued in the decades following the war was implemented by force.

The narrative has allowed us to dismiss every leader the American empire has decided to remove (mostly in the same pursuit of oil) as “the new Hitler.” That is, as the raving madman caricature who is denied any interests of his own, and who is so bent on evil (remember weapons of mass destruction?) that any level of western violence is justified to bring about his destruction. And for decades, the western elites could get away with it because of the unchallenged power of an oil-rich United States… today, not so much.