Which is the root of the Catch-22. The Nazis have no means to keep the British from entering a war with them and staying there, and they have no means of delivering a German victory over the USSR. Thus the Nazis are precisely that unenviable combination of too menacing to consider negotiations with and too feckless to actually win.
Yeah. Which means a perfect hell of a total war before they're done, but a pretty inevitable outcome, at the same time.
So long as the Allies will keep fighting, the Nazis are unable to do anything about it. But - and I'm not sure how you would do this when they're regarded as monsters and liars - theoretically that will could fade.
When you look at Goebbels speaking in Sportpalast in front of intoxicated audience with heil, heil cries, feet knocking against the floor, gleamy eyes, you may say that it was the biggest cult ever. It has been proven and done that is is possible to convince a thousnad people to suicide. What works with a thousnd will work with a million or 100 millions given the oportunity. They didn't promise some wonderland in Heaven, but they had Wunderwaffen to count on and Hell in the east, things like that. One thing i have to give it to the Nazis, they believed in what they preached. There was no bigotry in all this.That's the point: you can't do that, precisely because the Nazis act like a Khorne cult more than a regular geopolitical movement. The Nazis were genuinely preparing for a war with all the major geopolitical powers of the world allied against them, and were perfectly willing to be brutal enough to hold the unlikely alliance together. If the Nazis weren't real, they'd seem almost like a plot device in a bad alternate history timeline.
When you look at Goebbels speaking in Sportpalast in front of intoxicated audience with heil, heil cries, feet knocking against the floor, gleamy eyes, you may say that it was the biggest cult ever. It has been proven and done that is is possible to convince a thousnad people to suicide. What works with a thousnd will work with a million or 100 millions given the oportunity. They didn't promise some wonderland in Heaven, but they had Wunderwaffen to count on and Hell in the east, things like that. One thing i have to give it to the Nazis, they believed in what they preached. There was no bigotry in all this.
Who do you mean by the USSR, people of the Soviet Union or the Kremlin. The masses were not in a possition to negotiate anything, most were not much into politics. If Nazis were to replace the rulers than it was out of question. The rulers could not accept it and the people had no say in it, while german propaganda works only in german. Some Ukrainians and Balts saw libertaors in Germans so mayby it could have worked there. Actually, If Germans held on to what they managed to conquer, it could have been their best bet to do something about with their war. They did curve out a big chunk.But sooner or latter it becomes irrelevant unless Germany's aims are something the USSR can accept, and "utter annihilation" isn't one of those things for Russia. Even the Mongols offered better terms, and they had a far greater ability to deliver that on Russians who refused to cooperate than the Nazis.
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Who do you mean by the USSR, people of the Soviet Union or the Kremlin. The masses were not in a possition to negotiate anything, most were not much into politics. If Nazis were to replace the rulers than it was out of question. The rulers could not accept it and the people had no say in it, while german propaganda works only in german. Some Ukrainians and Balts saw libertaors in Germans so mayby it could have worked there. Actually, If Germans held on to what they managed to conquer, it could have been their best bet to do something about with their war. They did curve out a big chunk.
but most of the people they came to contol in that short period were not aware of that. They didn't read into the Nazis politics. They responded to what was happening in front of their eyes. The Germans knew they would be caught in a dilemma and they had woked out procuders before they banged into the Soviet Union. They didnt realy have the option to keep people pacified without using killing squads. As soon they came in, they would have partisans in the back. The one way to keep partisans pacified is to retaliate against locals. It had nothing to do with the politics of ideological Vernichtung.
The best bet for a German victory is to have something happen to Stalin.
If there is a bigger push for Moscow and Stalin is deposed or killed then I think the Germans could get their territorial demands. Hitler talks a big game about annihilating the Slavs but if there was a Soviet leadership offering all the territory West of the Urals as a settlement I think he'd take the offer.
There were several Soviet attempts to offer peace IOTL, the Nazis never accepted them. The Nazis wanted both the territory and the total destruction of Soviet citizenry, the two goals were to them one and the same, indivisible. There was no Nazi gap between the intentions to starve Soviet cities to death and the wars of Soviet fronts and Nazi army groups.
Who do you mean by the USSR, people of the Soviet Union or the Kremlin. The masses were not in a possition to negotiate anything, most were not much into politics. If Nazis were to replace the rulers than it was out of question. The rulers could not accept it and the people had no say in it, while german propaganda works only in german. Some Ukrainians and Balts saw libertaors in Germans so mayby it could have worked there. Actually, If Germans held on to what they managed to conquer, it could have been their best bet to do something about with their war. They did curve out a big chunk.
No one knows what Nazis really wanted. They themselves didn't know what they were doing or what they wanted, which is a moot point for their opponents since what mattered was what Nazid could do, and not what they wanted. I am not sure if they decided to starve Leningrad because they wanted to kill off citizens or they encircled it because they could not break in. The Nazis were shit scared to fight when odds were risky. Later they would have no choice.
To my knowledge none of those peace attempts offered the classic Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan border that Hitler was after.
No one knows what Nazis really wanted. They themselves didn't know what they were doing or what they wanted, which is a moot point for their opponents since what mattered was what Nazid could do, and not what they wanted. I am not sure if they decided to starve Leningrad because they wanted to kill off citizens or they encircled it because they could not break in. The Nazis were shit scared to fight when odds were risky. Later they would have no choice.
What they could and would do: All Slavs must be dead, or slaves, whichever.
What they wanted: BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!
At least, that's the only explanation that makes their policies of mass slaughter for the sake of slaughter make sense for any definition of "making sense". No polity with normal geopolitical aims would have made extermination an end.
And no Soviet government ever will offer such a thing, especially with the knowledge of just what the Nazis were doing.
The Nazis weren't pushed into genocide begging not to do it, they were calmly planning murder on an inhuman scale. Their whole goal is actually very straightforward: they wanted to do to Slavs what had been done to Native Americans, influenced in this regard in no small part by Hitler's being a fanboy of Cowboys and Indians novels (no joke). The Nazi goal again is a simple one: Germany gains an empire in the east, the Slavs are mostly killed and their blond, blue-eyed survivors permanent chattels.
Are you claiming the Nazis didn't want the Holocaust?
With Stalin dead and every population centre west of the Urals occupied or laid siege I dont think they'd have much choice.
Are you suggesting genocide was the only war aim? That Germany would not have stopped until they had taken Vladivostok and killed every Slav inbetween? Come on now lets be realistic.
There were basic plans made for the conquest of the Soviet Union and it involved everything West of the Urals absorbed into the Greater German Reich. The rump state left East of the Urals was ideally to be used as a bogeyman to present an everlasting threat to the Reich.
Read: 'Germany Turns Eastwards' - Michael Burleigh
It's brilliant for getting you into the mindset for how the Germans saw the Eastern Front.
I am being realistic. Genocide was the war goal, and on a scale that defies the imagination. Absorbed into the Reich meant that anywhere from 30 to 75 million people were going to be slaughtered in an industrial scale of murder that would have no equal in human history. Are you denying that Generalplan Ost, the Commissar Order, and the Hunger Plan existed?
The way I see it i'm presenting to you the position that Germany was looking to conquer European Russia. Killing or enslaving all the Slavs there? Absolutely. I'm suggesting they achieve this by taking out Stalin and Moscow.
You are saying: They wanted Genocide and nothing else, no strategic goals or territorial claims. They would not stop until EVERY.SINGLE.SLAV.IS. DEAD therefore there can never be any surrender by a Soviet government.
And I respectfully disagree.