in some practice, German grand strategy was hindered by the unswerving commitment
to achievement of world dominance for a racially pure German state. Such a vision (one
hesitates to say aim) must trigger ever-greater opposition. It should be noted that in both
world wars, despite the radical differences in German regimes, Germany signally failed
to assemble an impressive, let alone war-winning, coalition. Nazi ideology, though the
essential motor for the strategic enterprise of world war, certainly was diplomatically
unhelpful.
Some historians and a host of popular commentators favour an approach to the expla-
nation of defeat that emphasizes Nazi Germany’s moral deficit as a weakness that derived
from the attitudes encouraged by the quasi-religion of Nazism (Overy, 1995: ch. 9). One
knows what they mean, and there is some merit in this view. Germany’s misbehaviour
was so abominable that it convinced the country’s enemies that they had no practical or
ethical choice other than to wage the war to a military conclusion. Germany’s crimes
were so extreme and extensive that it must either win the war or go down to complete
destruction. It is true that German crimes in the East – crimes that were sanctioned, even
encouraged, by the racist ideology – had dire strategic consequences. Crimes against the
civilian populace and POWs denied Germany local allies among the occupied population
that almost certainly would have sufficed to enable victory over the Soviet Union. But
those crimes should not be regarded as German mistakes; rather, they were the inevitable
product of the character of the Nazi regime and its army. Germany’s Nazified armed
forces behaved as their nature commanded.
The leading problem with the moral deficit explanation is that it is too moralistic and
insufficiently strategic. Causes that one deems morally atrocious do not usually fail for
reason of divine, or natural, justice. Had Hitler and his generals directed their war more
competently, the Third Reich’s moral failings would not have registered in the strategic
history of the period. One must acknowledge that it is all too easy to succumb to an undue
subjectivity in moral judgement. Without for one moment softening one’s disgust at
German crimes, it is necessary to recognize that for millions of Germans in the early
1940s, Nazism propelled them with a moral imperative to conquer and to do so without
pity for civilian victims.
The third approach to explaining Germany’s defeat points to the incompetence with
which the war was directed, politically, strategically and operationally. The implicit
assumption here is that Germany might have won had its magnificent armed forces been
led more intelligently. In other words, what Germany lacked was a strategy worthy of
the name. It certainly had a political vision, the creation of a world-dominant racially
pure super-state. It also had a clear policy: to wage a succession of wars to achieve that
great goal. And it developed a fighting machine second to none in its tactical skills. But
somehow, between tactics and policy, in the regions of grand strategy, military strategy
and operations, the Germans’ grip was uncertain. There is not much to be gained in
playing the ‘what if ’ game that publishers have found to be so profitable in recent years.
However, Germany may, and one must emphasize ‘may’, have had a narrow window for
victory in 1941. This thesis requires one to credit two propositions. First, it can be argued
that Moscow could have been taken in the late summer or early autumn of 1941, had it
been assigned overriding priority as an invasion objective. Second, the argument requires
one to agree that the fall of Moscow would have set in train the definitive unravelling of
the Soviet Union. There is no way of knowing for sure whether either of these would have
150 War, peace and international relations