Eastern Front Prelude #0.11 Hitler’s decision to go to War

Last time we spoke about the planning for Operation Barbarossa. In 1940, as Europe faced the aftermath of the swift German Blitzkrieg, Stalin realized the imminent threat to the Soviet Union. Following the Winter War with Finland, he restructured the Red Army, appointing General Zhukov as Chief of the General Staff. Zhukov's remarkable military background shaped his strategies for upcoming conflicts. However, despite receiving numerous warnings about a German invasion, Stalin hesitated, believing the alarms to be fabrications. As tensions escalated, the Soviet military was still underprepared, facing critical shortages of equipment and personnel. On June 22, 1941, the Germans launched their attack, exploiting the Red Army's disorganization and lack of readiness. Stalin, desperate to fortify defenses, rushed military production but was starkly unprepared for the rapid devastation that ensued. This catastrophic failure would haunt the Soviet Union as they struggled to adapt and respond to the unexpected German onslaught in the early days of Operation Barbarossa.

This episode is Prelude #11 Hitler’s decision to go to War

Well hello there, welcome to the Easter Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

In the last episode we examined how Hitler began WW2 against western europe and the planning behind Operation Barbarossa. Today we are going to dive into Hitler’s ultimate decision for war against the Soviet Union.

In December of 1940, a pivotal moment in World War II unfolded when Adolf Hitler signed War Directive Twenty-One. Hitler’s war directives were a sort of executive order that he signed and published as a means of putting his priorities into action by the regime’s various mechanisms. Throughout the war, he would sign 74 of them, the last ones devolving to little more than his ideological rants and attempts to intervene in the smallest tactical decisions. You know Hitler sandbagging his own generals and such. This critical order called for the German Army and Air Force to begin preparations for a bold and aggressive invasion of the Soviet Union. Hitler recognized that this operation would likely need to occur before Germany could conclusively defeat Britain, underscoring the urgency and precariousness of the Nazi strategy. War Directive Twenty-One provided a rough outline for the invasion, revealing Hitler’s expansive ambitions. The planned advance was to stretch from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south, encapsulating a massive swath of territory. The directive's strategic vision targeted the annihilation of the majority of the Red Army, alongside a crucial goal, capturing the strategic city of Leningrad.

Interestingly, this initial draft revealed that any push toward Moscow was envisioned as a subsequent objective, to be contemplated only after achieving the first goals of the campaign. Hitler’s strategy highlighted an astonishing military undertaking: he stipulated that the German forces would not advance beyond a delineation he had in mind, spanning roughly from Arkhangelsk in the north to the Volga River in the south. This indicated a monumental task, covering a staggering 2,000 kilometers from the starting point of the German forces. To put this in perspective, the German front was already vast, measuring 1,400 kilometers wide, but by the end of the planned campaign, it was expected to expand to over 2,100 kilometers. War Directive Twenty-One proposed a campaign unparalleled in military history, setting the stage for what would be the most ambitious military operation ever executed. 

Ambitions aside, the planning for the invasion highlighted significant issues within the Wehrmacht from the very beginning. A critical source of tension was the stark contrast in strategic vision between Adolf Hitler and his generals at the Oberkommando des Heeres or “OKH”, the German Army High Command. It was subordinated to OKW or “Ober Kommando der Wehrmacht”. OKW was the German Military’s unified military high command. Hitler rarely followed the chain of command and regularly consulted with OKH staff without first talking to OKW and vice versa. Being someone who suffers the life of bureaucracy, working for what is essentially the federal government