How have historians documented Germany’s part in World War II? Was it considered a complete failure?
—NC
? ? ?
Dear NC,
Well, let’s use the U.S. Army standard for what constitutes success or failure by assessing the outcome of Germany’s efforts against the objectives it was trying to achieve. Those objectives, as espoused by Adolf Hitler, included avenging the Versailles Treaty, extending German hegemony to mastery over all of Europe, permanently extending the German need for Lebensraum to all of Poland—as well as the Sudetenland, Bohemia and Moravia—destroying Soviet communism, reducing Russia to a source of natural resources and slave labor for the Reich, and completely eradicating Jews, Poles and numerous other he considered undesirables from the pace of the earth. By May 1945, none of those objectives had been achieved, German cities lay in ruins, the greatest advances in German military technology were being divvied up between the victorious Allies and Adolf, among others, was kaput. I’d call that failure pretty complete.
Sincerely,
Jon Guttman
Research Director
World History Group
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