Hitler had to gamble everything on the defeat of France. If Britain could be kept from gaining a foothold on the Continent until this were achieved, Hitler was certain that the British would have to sue for peace. Getting Britain out of the war through isolation after a German defeat of France was Hitler’s only overall war-strategy as the abnormally icy winter of 1940 gradually gave way to spring.10 Ranged against Germany at some point, Hitler was aware, would be the might of the USA. Currently dominated by isolationism, and likely to be preoccupied by the forthcoming presidential elections in the autumn, its early involvement in a European conflict could be discounted. But as long as Britain stayed in the war, the participation — at the very least by benevolent neutrality — of the USA, with its immense economic power, could not be ruled out. And that was a factor that was out of Germany’s reach. It was all the more reason, objectively as well as simply in Hitler’s manic obsession with time, to eliminate Britain from the war without delay.11
The East was at this point at the back of Hitler’s mind — though not out of it. Mussolini had written to Hitler at the beginning of January, exhorting him not to relinquish his long-standing principles of anti-Bolshevism (and antisemitism) for tactical purposes.12 In his reply, sent over two months later, Hitler claimed, somewhat disingenuously, that Stalin had transformed Bolshevism into ‘a Russian-national state ideology and economic idea’, which Germany had no interest in combating.13 Privately, he was saying something different. Bolshevism, he commented over lunch on 12 January, was the form of ‘state organization’ that matched the Slavs. He likened Stalin to a modern Ivan the Terrible, who had done away with the traditional ruling class and replaced it with Slavs. That was good for Germany. ‘Rather a weak partner as neighbour than an alliance treaty, however good,’ he cynically added.14 In his memorandum the previous October he had already remarked that Soviet neutrality could be reckoned with at present, but that no treaty or agreement could guarantee it in the future. ‘In eight months, a year, let alone a few years this could all be different,’ he had said.15 ‘If all treaties concluded were held to,’ he told Goebbels, ‘mankind would no longer exist today.’16 Hitler presumed that the Russians would break the non-aggression pact when it suited them to do so. For the time being they were militarily weak — a condition enhanced by Stalin’s inexplicable purges; they were preoccupied with their own affairs in the Baltic, especially the troublesome Finnish war; and they posed, therefore, no danger from the East. They could be dealt with at a later stage. Their current disposition provided still further evidence for Hitler that his attack on the West, and the elimination of Britain from the war, could not wait.
There was a certain logic in the presumption that, following a defeat of France and the offer of ‘reasonable’ terms, Britain would bow to the inevitable in its own self-interest. There continued to be strong lobbies in Britain that thought along those lines. There was nothing inexorable about Britain’s decision to ‘go it alone’ in the summer of 1940. But that decision, when it came, would vitiate the one strategy Hitler had. In his assumption that immediate self-interest was the only maxim of war and peace, he crassly underestimated the resilience and idealism that had arisen in Britain following the march into Prague in 1939 and which, in summer 1940, the new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was able to evoke among the British people. The ‘duel’ between Hitler and his arch-enemy Churchill would dominate the summer. Its outcome would in many ways determine the further course of the war.17
Hitler was in 1940–41 at the zenith of his power. But despite his spectacular triumph over France, he could not bring the war in the West to the conclusion he wanted. His inability to do this would shape the rest of the war. The decision to open the war in the East with the war in the West unfinished would take away from Germany what room for manoeuvre remained. And by the winter of 1941 it would become plain just how catastrophic that decision had been.18
