World War II, and especially in the war on the Eastern Front, Nazi ideology contributed
positively to morale and fighting spirit. For another example, one may claim that as the
end neared in 1944 and 1945 in the East, German soldiers fought with the determination
of desperation for hearth and home. They knew that they had no real choice, in the
historical context of a surging enemy who would exact revenge for the crimes committed
by Germans in Russia. Nevertheless, the German military system, especially its rigorous
training and its flexible and adaptive approach to command in battle, manifestly produced
a superior combat performance to that achieved by any other belligerent. However, as
this was so, one must ask: why did Germany lose?
Why did Germany lose?
There is more to war than warfare. Hitler’s Reich proved superb at the latter but grossly
incompetent at the former. Germany suffered from a strategy deficit. Neither world war
was waged with strategic competence. Means and ends were never calculated, at least
not beyond the mid-1930s. Hitler’s experience of succeeding against the odds with a
poor hand of assets persuaded him that some mystical force was with him and that his
destiny, intuition or luck would not fail him. The completeness of the German catastrophe
of 1945 can blind one to the probable fact that the outcome of the war was by no means
preordained. Germany did not lose the war because it was misgoverned by an immoral
leader whose beliefs and purposes were an affront to civilized values. Many such men
have prospered through the centuries (although, admittedly, Hitler was an extreme
example of a malignant actor, one rendered truly threatening to all of humanity by his
command of a great power).
Explanations for Germany’s defeat have been well aired over the past sixty years. Most
contain some merit, but the more popular among them are seriously flawed. There are
three species of explanation, with each concentrating on one aspect of Nazi Germany:
the country’s resources deficit; the nature of the Nazi regime and the character of its
leader; and its strategic and military errors.
First, it is easy to argue that Germany was simply out-resourced. It waged total war
against the world’s mightiest economies, and strategic history delivered its inevitable
verdict. In a long, bloody war of attrition, the larger belligerent wins. This view is not to
be dismissed, but there are two principal problems with it. First, it undervalues the extent
of the German Empire of 1942–3. In those years the Third Reich was a true superpower.
Indeed, one could argue that in 1942 the war was Germany’s to lose. Second, resources
have to be mobilized and translated into fighting power. By chalking up rapid military
victories, Germany might well have ambushed adverse resources and their implications
for long-term defeat. If Germany could have beaten Russia in 1941 or 1942, it would not
have much mattered what Russian, British or American tank and aircraft production rates
would have been, had those countries still been in the fight in 1944 or 1945.
The second approach to the explanation of defeat is somewhat, though not entirely,
moral. It holds that Nazi ideology was a fatal weakness. Since it was ideology that
drove Hitler’s war-making, and his vision that was in command of policy, there was
nothing that Germany could do to correct its ideological flaws, short of regime change.
Plainly, an ideology that mandated the violent pursuit of a territorially vastly expanded
uniracial Germanic superstate must have little appeal abroad. In principle, and perhaps
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