Thread:Cyrannian/@comment-25890179-20180111235940/@comment-1017052-20180116205257

You kind of have a few good points here. I cannot say much about Japan, but I see a few problems with your thesis insofar as it comes to the Germans.

About racial prejudice against the Slavs. You said yourself that Hitler wanted living space for the German people, and also sought to emulate British success at making settler colonies like Canada and Australia. Obviously, to get Slavic territories, you'd have to get rid of those who already lived there: the Slavs. And to justify displacing the Slavs, you'd have to brand them as inferior. The whole Nazi plan for getting Lebensrum could not be realised without racial prejudice.

That being said, Nazi anti-Slavic prejudice was actually not as publicised as their antisemitism. True, Hitler did had a massive anti-Slavic prejudice even back in Mein Kampf - he did talk a lot about how Austria could do so much more if not for these damn Slavs getting in the way. But, say, Generalplan Ost that detailed Slavic genocide did not become public until later in the war. In fact, the Nazis did have plenty of Slavic collaborators, such as the Ustase, the ROA and the UPA, and Hitler actually tried to portray himself as a liberator of the Slavic people. He did not waste alliances: he made them, but they did not help him.

Why didn't Slavic nationalism help the Nazis against the USSR? Because the USSR also used nationalism. Stalin in general was pragmatic and rather skeptical about communist internationalism, and his propaganda at the time drummed up Russian patriotism a lot - just watch Alexander Nevsky. Imagery of Russian history was used a lot in Soviet media at the time: the idea was that the Red Army was not fighting just for communism and the liberation of the workers, it was fighting for the Motherland.

To sum up: no, the Nazis could not be not racist to the Slavs, yes, the Nazis did try hiding their true intentions and recruiting Slav allies but it did not help them, and no, the Nazis could not just use Slavic nationalism to get all the Slavs to their side, because the opposing side also had nationalism.

As for why Hitler could not be replaced by another supreme commander. Keep in mind that a power-hungry dictator was generally concerned the most about keeping his power, which sometimes could lead to irrational decisions. Stalin, for example, executed his best generals before the war out of fear of a coup, and repressed Marshal Zhukov for his popularity after the Great Patriotic War. Hitler here was no different. The military structure of Nazi Germany was built in such a way that it would prevent any attempts to overthrow Hitler (I mean, it had multiple intelligence agencies competing with each other). That's why nobody could just shoot him and take over - there was an attempt in 1944, and it, well, failed.

Now, attacking during winter; waiting during the war is a big danger. Hitler was in a hurry to start the war because by 1939 the German economy, based on loans, would have collapsed without it, and his entire strategy was based on quick warfare. It may seem like a blunder to us now, but back in 1941, who could really know? Perhaps if Germany waited out the winter, the USSR would have had time to form a defense and retaliate. You should also keep in mind that Hitler faced an unexpected slowdown in Southeast Europe because of Italy failing to conquer the Balkans and Yugoslavia's military coup bringing it back into the war, so he could not afford any more time to be lost.

All in all, the blunders of the Nazi Germany that you speak of came from its very nature. It could not have acted otherwise.

By the way, I doubt that Stalin was actively planning to invade Germany - considering how inept he was when Hitler first attacked and how unprepared the country was at the time, to think that he had an army ready to invade is a bit of a stretch to me.