What was going to be Hitler's next plan after taking Russia?
Upvote:4
Hitler's aims are outlined in Hillgruber, Andreas, Germany and the Two World Wars, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1981, pages 50-51. Not only did he want to control all Europe and have a vast strategic base in Eastern Europe, he also wanted to colonise parts of Africa and have a strong Atlantic fleet. His dream was that in the generation after his death, Germany would defeat the USA and become the main world power.
Upvote:10
Hitler's goal was a pure Aryan Germany that stretched from the Rhine in the west to the Dvina-Dnieper rivers in the east. With the purification of this greater Germany complete the plains of Poland, Ukraine and Belarus would be repopulated with German farmers that would breed like rabbits (as they had between the wars) an make the Third Reich a thousand-year power, just like in the campaign posters.
This was what Hitler meant by lebensraum. He seems to have truly believed that the Soviet Union would collapse once Nazi Germany had occupied these territories, much as Tsarist Russia had collapsed in 1917 when about half that territory had been occupied. I see the unclear goals and execution of the 1942 offensive by Germany as a symptomatic of this conviction - that it was sufficient to just hit them hard one more time to get the knock-out.
If the Soviet Union had collapsed according to this scenario, then it is hard to imagine the Western Allies ever successfully mounting an amphibious invasion of either France or Italy. Available troops to defend the Atlantic Wall and Mediterranean would have been tripled to quadrupled - imagine the carnage on Omaha Beach and then in the bocage in front of Gold-Juno-Sword and Utah with four times as many German defenders, and no collapse of Army Group Centre.
So with a treaty in hand that established those modified borders, and granted access to oil from the Caucasus, Hitler would have actually been satisfied with the victory. There was no next victim planned.
Note here (figure 1 b) the dramatic difference between German and French birth rates between the wars. Although birth rates in both countries had collapsed during the First World War, German birth rate recovered faster than the French, and steadily ran at nearly double the French birth rate. This information was known to planners around Europe and significantly affected military planning through the 1920's and '30's. The knowledge that they simply wouldn't have the soldiers to fight Germany successfully again was a major determinant in the French decision to build and rely on the Maginot Line for defense against Germany; and also most likely affected both French and British decision makers in Munich in 1938.
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