Why did Hitler attack The Soviet Union so early? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to finish up the war with The UK before attacking them as to not create a two-front war?

by AvailableWrongdoer
andriah_blashkovich

Not really, because that was not a viable option.

Tooze's Wages of Destruction tackles this issue/question well, giving us some nice numbers (that I'll have to check up with the book when I'm back home and edit the post), but let's tackle the context first.

Common misinterpretations of the situation in Europe in 1941. are usually based around a few common misconceptions :

  • That the acquisition of French territory after 1940. Compiegne provided Germany with a massive economical boost
  • That Germany could 'win' the Battle of Britain
  • That Germany could follow that up with an invasion of brittish isles (I believe everything related to Operation Seeloewe is in our FAQ)
  • That America hasn't entered the war, ergo they weren't a threat to Germany yet
  • That the Soviet Union in the 1941. was a stable behemoth

French economy fallacy

The idea that the acquisition of French territory in 1940. somehow provided Germany with the means able to multiply their war production is a false one - France, whilst having a number of well developed refining and production facilities, together with the industrial know how, lacked the same thing that the German native soil did - strategic raw resources. 'Why didn't Hitler consolidate France and the Lowlands?' - there was nothing to consolidate. A brand new advanced working vehicle factory is worth nothing if you can't supply it with necessary materials. With the war in effect, Britain's navy quickly set up a naval blockade on all available fronts, severely limiting Germany's ability to importraw materials. Its main strategical trade partners were Sweden, infamous for its supposed neutrality whilst supplying Germany with iron ore, Yugoslavia, exporting most of its excess grain to Germany, Romania and its Ploesti oil fields, and ironically, USSR, in terms of all resources mentioned above. The only thing France contributed economy wise to the German Reich was in terms of the little raw foreign currency and gold that could be pillaged from it. In every other aspect, it was more of a drain. Tooze mentions that if we set the consumption of petrol in second half of 1939 France to 100%, the consumption for second half of 1940 was 8% - with milk going bad on farms with no petrol or alternative infrastructure to pick it up for processing.

Battle of Britain, Seeloewe and USA

USA hasn't entered the war since 7th December 1941., but has worked tirelessly to supply its future allies. USA's foreign relations towards Germany kept plummeting, culminating with the Kristalnacht in 1938., followed by Hitler's Reichstag speech on 30th January 1939. that defined the Roosevelt administration as a 'puppet of the international Jewry'. Ever since the war in Europe started, the US utilized its massive production capabilities to supply both Britain and France with military hardware via Cash and Carry and later Lend-Lease programmes - large focus here being on military airplanes. So whereas the US weren't de iure in the war at the Battle of Britain, much of its industrial production capacity was already helping the Allied war effort. As such, it was only a matter of time when will the threat of Germany override the US' isolationist's policy, with US stepping into the war, de facto. This would drag Germany into a lengthy war of attrition, which OKW saw as a repeat situation of the World War I and was aware that they couldn't compete with the joint British + US industrial production in the long run, leading to an inevitable defeat.

Apropos waging a successful strategic bombing campaign, that requires dedicated strategic bombers, that Germany never developed, due to adhering to a close air support doctrine - without getting into the political and ideological backstabbings and shenanigans of Goering, Udet and Milch here, german bombers simply weren't designed for the intended strategic bombing tasks.

Operation Seeloewe had some decent mention in our subreddit already, this Q&A with answers from /u/bendertheoffender22, /u/Venmar and /u/thefourthmaninaboat , seems to be the most popular. Basically, so I don't go into details too much, the threat of Germany managing to pull off a successful (or for that matter, any kind of) invasion of British isles amounts to null, and it's something OKW must've been aware of, even through the naivete of just putting that plan on the desk.

Soviet Union in 1941.

We've already mentioned that Soviet Union was an important trade partner for Germany. A common question here is 'why didn't Hitler just tuck that Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in and extend it into a fully fledged alliance with the soviets?' Because of two reasons : a) ideologically, this didn't adhere to the Nazi policy for the Ost. Nazis thought slavic people are not their equals, and those territories are there to be conquered; that's the main plan, while the war with Britain is just a side-effect of the Polish gamble gone wrong. b) the Soviets made it pretty clear in their past dealings with Germany (Von Seeckt, trade deals with IG Farben) that they don't want to be a submissive partner in the Germany - Soviet relationship, but a dominant one. This was also deemed unacceptable.

Let's turn the clocks back 2 years. 1939; after a series of purges of his officer corps, Stalin engages with Finland in the Talvisota / Winter War, where the outnumbered and outgunned Finns seriously bloody the Red Army's nose. At this point, the Red Army is the laughing stock of the civilized world, seen as a numerous, yet inefficient unit with no clear order of battle, inexperienced, politically suitable officers just waiting for someone to come in and kick the rotten door down so they can surrender. Somewhat akin to what happened in 1940 with the 'unbeatable' French Army.

Summary

So put yourself in OKW / Hitler's shoes in 1941. You are engaged in a prolonged attrition war with the Britain that you can't win with your current industrial output. It's only a matter of time before US throws itself into the war and you find yourself back in 1917. And we know how that ended. Meanwhile, you're importing a large amount of your raw resources like grain from Ukraine, oil from the Caspian Sea, from your eastern neighbour that :

A) makes it pretty clear that he wants to be the major player, with you as his puppet in any kind of an alliance

B) has all those aforementioned resources

C) currently has a non-aggression pact with you

D) has a seemingly inefficient and demoralized army that's just waiting to surrender

E) conveniently owns the territory that you ideologically intended to utilize as Lebensraum 10 years ago in that book you wrote

Kind of like Manstein's drive through the Ardennes, the Operation Barbarossa was a big gamble. In the war against France, that gamble paid off. In the war against USSR, it didn't. But at the time, in that context, Germany simply didn't have any decent alternatives besides invading the Soviet Union, quickly blitzkrieging it and utilizing those territorial and materiel gains in a protracted war of attrition against the Allies.