But there was no chance at all that Germany would conquer all of the Soviet Union in one step.
According to most of the historical analyses I’ve read, Germany certainly might have defeated the USSR conclusively—if they hadn’t made mistakes like the 6th Army not retreating from Stalingrad, and if they had succeeded in conquering Murmansk, and if the USA had not started to provide huge amounts of aid to the USSR. They did have a lot of luck—more than might be expected—but it certainly wasn’t impossible for them to have a bit more luck and win outright.
Of course they would have benefited from preparing good fallback positions somewhere in the Ukraine which they could hold if the Red Army started to push them back. But they never had the spare time or resources for it. Of course hindsight is 20⁄20; today we can say they should have diverted resources from the Atlantic Wall which failed to prevent D-Day.
On what do you base your statement that they had no chance a priori of ultimately defeating the USSR? Sure, they didn’t have the manpower to actually conquer and hold all the vast territories of Russia, but that wasn’t necessary to defeat the Red Army conclusively.
Especially while fighting inefficiently, also fighting in the west and distracting themselves with other things.
The Western Front didn’t exist until the Germans were completely defeated in the East. It simply wasn’t relevant. (Battle of Kursk was in August 1943. Allied invasion of Italy was in September 1943 and of Normandy in June 1944.)
As for distractions, apart from the tradeoff we’re discussing and similar decisions (which I think were at least in principle rational), what else do you mean? Certainly there were many mistakes made, inefficiencies, etc. but nobody’s perfect.
But since the nazis kept talking and thinking about the propaganda in 2) as their reason for their actions in 1) they felt that they had an urgent need to continue with the genocide. Even when that hurt their original goals.
I’m sorry, I lost you. The original goals included finding a “final solution to the Jewish problem”. Even if ghettos could have worked in the longer term, once it was clear that they risked losing e.g. Poland to the Red Army, they switched to extermination. That way no matter what happened to the Nazi regime, the Jews could not hurt the German people in the future. How does this hurt their original goals?
According to most of the historical analyses I’ve read, Germany certainly might have defeated the USSR conclusively—if they hadn’t made mistakes like the 6th Army not retreating from Stalingrad, and if they had succeeded in conquering Murmansk, and if the USA had not started to provide huge amounts of aid to the USSR. They did have a lot of luck—more than might be expected—but it certainly wasn’t impossible for them to have a bit more luck and win outright.
Of course they would have benefited from preparing good fallback positions somewhere in the Ukraine which they could hold if the Red Army started to push them back. But they never had the spare time or resources for it. Of course hindsight is 20⁄20; today we can say they should have diverted resources from the Atlantic Wall which failed to prevent D-Day.
On what do you base your statement that they had no chance a priori of ultimately defeating the USSR? Sure, they didn’t have the manpower to actually conquer and hold all the vast territories of Russia, but that wasn’t necessary to defeat the Red Army conclusively.
The Western Front didn’t exist until the Germans were completely defeated in the East. It simply wasn’t relevant. (Battle of Kursk was in August 1943. Allied invasion of Italy was in September 1943 and of Normandy in June 1944.)
As for distractions, apart from the tradeoff we’re discussing and similar decisions (which I think were at least in principle rational), what else do you mean? Certainly there were many mistakes made, inefficiencies, etc. but nobody’s perfect.
I’m sorry, I lost you. The original goals included finding a “final solution to the Jewish problem”. Even if ghettos could have worked in the longer term, once it was clear that they risked losing e.g. Poland to the Red Army, they switched to extermination. That way no matter what happened to the Nazi regime, the Jews could not hurt the German people in the future. How does this hurt their original goals?