A. Yes, the most direct evidence we have of such an intention is contained in his speech of September 12, 1936 at Nuremberg, when he said: “If the Ural mountains with their immeasurable wealth of raw materials, Siberia with its rich forests, and the Ukraine with its immense grain fields, were lying within Germany, this country under National Socialist leadership would be swimming in wealth. We would produce so much that every single German would have more than enough to live on.”
This does not sound as though he intended to stop short of anything, but the fact still remains that unless he believes he can make peace with the West (and he cannot have much hope for that after the Roosevelt-Churchill proclamations of peace terms), his most advantageous solution of the war would be compromise, with Stalin or some other Russian leader as his Gauleiter.
Q. Wouldn’t Hitler obtain more supplies if he took them than if he trusted to the Soviets to deliver them, even if they promised to do so after having been conquered?
A. Not for a very long time, probably several years. If Hitler, completely defeating the Red Army, were to try to replace the Soviet system with something of his own devising, imagine the chaos! There are several million employees of the Soviet bureaucracy. Suppose they all sabotaged as the Czarist bureaucracy sabotaged the Bolsheviks when they seized power. It took the Bolsheviks five years to work back up from starvation in 1918 to the level of subsistence in 1923.
Suppose the scorched-earth policy is extended to the oil fields of the Caucasus. Really determined skilled effort can make an oil field unproductive for a year or more. To pursue the Red forces into the Urals and beyond and then to hold down the whole country would be a task which would absorb the energies of even the German war machine. There would thus be bargaining points on both sides.
Hitler could say to Stalin: “I can utterly destroy you and your system if I choose.” Stalin could say to Hitler: “Yes, but I can make your conquest futile as far as supplies are concerned, and if you try to destroy me and my system I will starve you and tire you until you are too weak to win in the West.” Stalin’s argument might well run that by making a compromise peace he could save something, including his own job, from the wreck; then by waiting patiently for the victory of the Allies which he probably foresees in the long run, he would win back everything, just as the Bolsheviks did after they had deserted the Allies in the first World War.
Hitler, on the other hand, knows that without Stalin’s help he cannot begin to obtain the materials he needs from Russia in time to serve his necessity. Douglas Miller points out that in the two summers of 1917 and 1918 when the Germans occupied the Ukraine, they got only 43,000 small carloads of grain, which scarcely paid the costs of occupation. Only with Stalin as his Gauleiter can Hitler make his Russian investment pay economically during the critical next two years.
Q. What would be the effect of such a compromise peace between Germany and Russia on the United States and Great Britain?
A. It would be a disaster even worse than the signing of the original Soviet-German pact in August 1939.
Q. Why worse? It would be just about the same, wouldn’t it?