Barbarossa Revisited
The National Interest asked for some thoughts on how Germany might have fought more effectively on the Eastern Front during World War II. Borrowing liberally from what better analysts have written, I offered up the following…
In recent historiography on the war, the question has become less “how did the Soviets survive?” and more “how did the Germans do so well?” Huge Soviet advantages in manpower, combined with the devastation inflicted by the Combined Bomber Offensive over Germany and the material support of the Western Allies, rendered German prospects exceedingly difficult. And yet the Germans entered the war with great optimism, and many believed at the time that the Wehrmacht came within a hair’s breadth of defeating the USSR for good. How might the Germans have won the war?