Despite the slow progress in the southern sector, senior German political and military leaders exulted in their triumph. “On the whole, then,” Halder recorded in his diary on 3 July, “it may be said even now that the objective to shatter the bulk of the Russian army this side of the Dvina and Dnieper has been accomplished…. East of the Dvina and Dnieper we [will] encounter nothing more than partial forces, not strong enough to hinder realization of German operational plans.” The army chief of staff then declared, “It is thus probably no overstatement to say that the Russian campaign has been won in the space of two weeks” (emphasis added). He went on to add a note of caution: “Of course, this does not yet mean that it is closed. The sheer geographical vastness of the country and the stubbornness of the resistance, which is carried on with all means, will claim our efforts for many more weeks to come.” Still, Halder seemed confident: “Once we are across the Dvina and Dnieper, it will be less a question of smashing enemy armies than of denying the enemy possession of his production centers and so prevent his raising a new army with the aid of his gigantic industrial potential and his inexhaustible manpower resources.” The next day, Hitler put the matter more succinctly: “I constantly try to put myself in the situation of the enemy. He [Stalin] has practically lost the war already. It is good that we have destroyed the Russian tank and air forces at the outset. The Russians can no longer replace them.”25
Although these evaluations were based on incorrect assumptions, as would soon become evident, they nonetheless resulted in a series of far-reaching decisions whose significance for the shape and outcome of the war cannot be overstated. Even before the invasion, on 11 June, Hitler had issued Directive No. 32, “Preparations for the Period after Barbarossa,” which anticipated only a relatively small force in Russia in the winter of 1941–1942. Then, on 14 July, he ordered a reorientation in armaments production to favor the Luftwaffe and navy, a clear indication that he expected the imminent end of the war in the east and, unlike the year before, aimed to be prepared for the next showdown, that with the Anglo-American powers. The immense surface and air fleets envisioned by the Führer, fueled by the oil from the Caucasus, would enable Germany to fight the anticipated war for world supremacy against America. In conversations with the Japanese ambassador, Hitler even talked grandiosely of a common war with Japan against the United States. In the present, however, this decision meant that, while the Soviets made good their staggering tank losses and with better models, German tank production declined throughout the remainder of 1941.26
Similar optimism, with ominous implications for the people of the newly occupied eastern territories, pervaded the Führer’s seemingly endless monologues. In early July, he talked of the beauty of the Crimea, of spreading the prosperity to be created through this conquest of Lebensraum to the German masses, of spreading the area of German settlement eastward even beyond the Urals. He related his hatred of the Bolsheviks, his plans to eradicate Leningrad and Moscow, his contempt for the Slavic peoples, who would simply be put to hard work under German control, and his admiration for Stalin’s brutality. His model for domination and exploitation, he mentioned on numerous occasions, was British India. To Hitler, the raj represented not just an example of how a small country could control a large area, but power and prosperity, the means by which Great Britain had become a world power. Through ruthless economic exploitation and harsh rule, the vast expanse of European Russia would be the key to a large, integrated economic area that would provide prosperity and economic security for the Greater German Reich. “The struggle for hegemony in the world will be decided in favor of Europe by the possession of the Russian space,” he declared to his entourage. “It will make Europe into an impregnable fortress, the most blockade-proof place on Earth.” The United States could then “get lost, as far as we are concerned.”27
His consistent social Darwinism, in fact, provided all the justification Hitler needed for his actions. In order to secure the existence of the Volk, all measures were acceptable: might made right. Indeed, a culturally superior people denied adequate living space had an obligation to take what it needed; that was, after all, the law of nature. Nor would the struggle ever end; for Hitler, only two options existed: fight and win or die. Shaped profoundly by his own experience of war, Hitler saw in it the essence of human activity. “What meeting a man means for a girl,” Jochmann recalled him revealing, “war meant for him.” Living meant killing: “Coming into being, existing, and passing away, there’s always a killing. Everything that is born must later die.”28
Less well-known but no less important to Hitler were his ideas on a new social order, which perhaps could be termed racialist modernism. The other formative experience of his life, his resentment that his “talents” had been left unrecognized by a class-bound society, smoldered constantly. Much of the appeal of National Socialism in the 1930s, in fact, was based on Hitler’s promise to build a new society that would reward talent. He thus advocated free education for all talented young people, regardless of social or class origin, the improvement of working conditions in factories, the provision of holidays for workers, the creation of a cheap automobile the average worker could afford, and the construction of suitable housing for working families. He was fascinated as well with modern technology and the way in which it could improve the quality of life of a people. In a sense, Hitler sought to create a modern, classless, mobile society that rewarded talent and provided security, but one that substituted racial for class distinctions. The fault line in the National Socialist Volksgemeinschaft was clear: those classified as Aryans would enjoy the benefits of the new social order and prosperity to be created out of exploitation of the east; those outside the community, depending on their racial status, could expect victimization, enslavement, or death.29
Barbarossa, as Adam Tooze has stressed, thus marked a significant departure: it was not only the most massive military campaign in history, but it also unleashed an unprecedented campaign of genocidal violence, of which the Holocaust remains the best-known example. This Judeocide, however, was not an isolated act of murder; rather, it formed part of a deliberate, comprehensive plan of exploitation, a utopian scheme of racial reorganization and demographic engineering of vast proportions. The Nazis had attempted, and failed, in 1939–1940 amid appalling brutality to carry off a smaller resettlement scheme in Poland and had seen the inflated hopes of the Madagascar Plan come to naught because of the intransigence of the British, but, if anything, these failures only intensified their enthusiasm for population transfer and resettlement. Why not? The presumed quick victory in the east would bring millions more Jews under Nazi control, and it conjured visions not only of solving the Jewish question but also of reordering the racial composition of Eastern Europe. At the same time, vast areas would be opened to German colonization. Best of all, it could be accomplished entirely under German control. In the short term, German administrators of the conquered eastern territories would ruthlessly exploit the food resources of the area to ensure, as Hitler emphasized repeatedly, that in this war it would not be Germans who starved. Complementing this would be the long-term project of racial engineering that would open the eastern lands to German colonization and development, as the ethnic boundary of Germany was to be pushed to the Ural Mountains. In the process, tens of millions of Slavic inhabitants (and Jews) would be killed, either through deliberate starvation or as a result of forcible emigration.30