Page 319 - The Chief Culprit

264 y e Chief Culprit

of ammunition, fuel, and produce to the front was drastically reduced. [An] early winter
suddenly replaced an unusually rainy autumn. When the ground froze in November, many
cannon and vehicles were left right there on the spot, where they had gotten stuck in the mud
several weeks earlier.” 1
e combined power of Nazi and Communist propaganda turned out to be so strong
that the Hitler legend about the frost and winter, the lack of roads, and the vast open spaces
was repeated by people who were wise and far removed from Goebbels’s propaganda. It is no
surprise that to the question about the reasons for Hitler’s defeat, today’s German schoolchil-
dren answer in unison: winter, frost, and open spaces.
I will pretend to agree that if it weren’t for winter, frost, and vast open spaces, Hitler
would have crushed the Red Army and taken the Soviet Union. But if Britain was not an is-
land, and protected by the English Channel from Hitler’s tanks, Hitler would have strangled
England as well. And if the African desert wasn’t hot and full of sand, if there was a tunnel
under the Mediterranean Sea to supply German troops with fuel and ammunition, Hitler
would have kicked the British out of Libya and Egypt, and taken Africa. And if America was
not across the ocean but in Europe, right under Hitler’s nose, and if America was a small
country, the size of Belgium, Hitler could have crushed America, too. And if the Antarctic
had a climate like France, Hitler could have turned it into resorts for his generals, with palm
trees and beaches.
When we are told of tanks getting stuck in the mud, we should remember their specific
power and their specific pressure on the ground. e best German tank of 1941, the T-IIIA,
had a specific pressure of 0.94 kilograms per square centimeter of support surface. Of course
it sank in the mud! Its specific power was only 13.9 horsepower per ton of weight. e rest of
the German models were even weaker. ese tanks were designed by people who simply did
not understand the nature of war. ese tanks could not compete with the Soviet tanks, and
yet we are told that the mud was to blame.
In February 1940, the Red Army broke through the impenetrable Mannerheim Line.
At the same time, the German army was simply refusing to fight in France. German generals,
by blaming the weather in France, sabotaged orders to invade issued by the High Command.
“Here, luckily, nature intervened and forced the postponement of the set date, which be-
tween the fall of 1939 and the end of January 1940 changed fifteen times.” e order to
2
start the invasion was postponed many times even after January 1940. German generals were
unprepared to fight in France even in April.
In 1941, Hitler fought near Moscow. Here there was no Arctic frost like in Finland, no
deep snow, no swamps. e topography around Moscow was an invader’s dream: there were
no rocky rivers and no steep shores. Soviet defenses near Moscow did not compare to the
Mannerheim Line. But Hitler got stuck. We are told: the Red Army could not fight, and that
is why breaking through the Mannerheim Line took so much time. Nobody remembers the
frost, snow, and impassable terrain in Finland. But the German army got stuck at Moscow’s
gate only because the winter had prevented it.
On August 10, 1941, Colonel General Halder wrote in his journal: “ e exhausted
German infantry will be unable to oppose with decisive attack measures the enemy’s ef-
forts. . . . At the current moment, our troops are heavily exhausted and experience heavy
losses.” On the following day, Halder wrote: “ e troops are exhausted. What we are now
3
undertaking is the last and questionable attempt to avert a transition to a war of attrition.