General Zod
Banned
The bulk of all European strategic thinking in the 1930s was anti communist . It was only after Munich that this began to change.
Actually, after Hitler's betrayal of Munich and the invasion of Czechia in 1939. European public opinion was mostly happy with the result of mMnich.
But Hitler hated the Jews more than he hated the commies so after Munich he made it his mission to defeat the Anglo American threat to German race.
Actually, he thought of his main mission to build the Lebenstraum and destroy the Jewish-Bolshevik menace, which he thought of one and the same, since he was persuaded that the Soviet ruling elite was a puppet of the Jewish conspiracy. Attacking Russia accomplished both. He thought of Britain as a worthwhile possible "Aryan" ally, and was quite reluctant to wage war on the British Empire. As of the USA, he wavered between respecting and despising their strength, according to whether he focused more on the "Aryan" i.e. racist and imperialistic or "Jewish" i.e. democratic aspects of US society (too bad for him he swung the wrong side on December 11, 1941). Anyway, he pictured the USA as the likelt opponent for the next generation of the Reich, somewhere in the 1970s or 1980s.
A reversal at the time of Sudatenland crises could have left enough of a mark to slow Hitlers slide to abandoning the long term strategic build up to total war, infavor of limited eastern war earlier.
Political victory disease. He did not acknowledge that even British committment to appeasement had limits, and since he still had to submit Poland, total conquest of Bohemia-Moravia instead of gradual satellization was not worth alienating the British over Poland. He gambled on the British repeating the Munich strategy, and that would have worked only if his word had not lost any credibility after the betrayal of Munich.
BTW the horrors of the extent of the Holocaust was not really understood until later in the war.
Indeed. Especially because neither the Final Solution neither the butchering of Slavs did really took wing until 1942-43. Mistreatment of Poles in the early phases of the war does not really remotely compare. Word somewhat spread in 1943-44, but full knowledge was not available until 1945, with the Allied troops in the death camps. One thing that slowed acknowledgement is that anti-semitism did not really became taboo in the West until the full extent of the Holocaust was known, and another that the Allies had tarnished their credibility on this kind of charges when their propaganda blew the somewhat harsh treatement of Belgians by the Germans in WWI to truly ridiculous proportions.
LL was significant later in the war but by then the Soviets were well on their way. Overall its be credited contributing 10% to the Soviet war effort. Its main impact seems to have allowed Stalin to balance his books by mid 1942 and not go bankrupt. The main dynamic of WW -II Eastern Front would have remained. As long as Hitler was incharge they would lose.
10% ? Ridiculous. The vast majority of Red Army trucks were from the Americans, and American foodstuffs kept the Russians fed until they recovered Ukraine. Just because the vast majority of Soviet tanks were homebuilt, it does not mean you can win a total war with them alone. And you can not wage a war very well if you go bankrupt.