T14 - The ‘Race War’: 1941-1945

Bosworth and Maiolo: How do Bosworth and Maiolo frame the Second World War conceptually, and which theorist anchors their interpretation?

The editors open by invoking Carl von Clausewitz’s dictum that war is “politics by violent means,” arguing that 1939–45 was fundamentally an ideological war, despite its unprecedented scale and savagery. Unlike earlier conflicts driven by religion, dynastic rivalry, or imperial competition, the Second World War was shaped by competing ideological systems—fascism, communism, and liberal democracy—that determined its origins, conduct, and consequences.

Bosworth and Maiolo: How does the volume connect the First World War to the ideological conflicts of the Second World War?

The First World War, which began as a traditional Balkan crisis in 1914, escalated into industrial total war, destroying empires and radicalising politics. The collapse of imperial orders blurred domestic and international politics and produced fascism, rooted in the cultural trauma of 1914–18, and a hardened communism, shaped by the Russian Revolution (1917) and subsequent civil war. These ideological legacies defined interwar instability.

Bosworth and Maiolo: How do the editors explain the rise of fascist and communist expansionism in the interwar period?

During the 1920s–30s, fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union pursued expansionist revolutionary projects. Soviet power was embodied in the Five-Year Plans, while Fascism and National Socialism mobilised society through paramilitarism, racial ideology, and mass politics. Though Tokyo, Rome, and Berlin lacked a coherent shared vision of global order, they aligned through hostility to liberalism, socialism, and communism.

Bosworth and Maiolo: How did Britain, France, and the United States differ ideologically from the Axis powers?

The Western Allies, though divided over Versailles and the League of Nations, broadly shared commitments to individual liberty, market economics, and anti-collectivism. However, their deep aversion to Bolshevism complicated responses to fascist aggression, even as the USSR promoted Popular Front anti-fascist cooperation in the early 1930s.

Bosworth and Maiolo: What role did the Great Depression play in escalating global ideological conflict?

The Great Depression (from 1929) undermined confidence in liberal capitalism, accelerating the rise of authoritarian and ethnic-nationalist regimes across Europe. By the late 1930s, dictatorships, command economies, and autarchic imperial visions appeared ascendant, reinforcing beliefs—especially in fascist and Soviet regimes—that capitalism was collapsing.

Bosworth and Maiolo: Why did fears of “totalitarian war” intensify after 1936?

From 1936 onward, rapid rearmament raised fears that modern war required total economic and social mobilisation, threatening individual liberty. Fascist and Soviet regimes embraced total mobilisation, interpreting crisis as proof of capitalism’s failure. Western democracies feared that survival might require abandoning liberal freedoms.

Bosworth and Maiolo: How does the volume interpret the wartime alliance between the Western Allies and the USSR?

After the war’s turning point in 1941, ideological differences were temporarily subordinated to defeat fascism. Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin formed the Grand Alliance, cooperating militarily while negotiating post-war institutions such as the United Nations and frameworks for economic reconstruction. Ideological conflict, however, re-emerged rapidly after 1945.

Bosworth and Maiolo: What does Part I of the volume argue about Axis war aims and genocide?

The Axis powers fought wars of conquest and racial revolution, lacking coherent post-war visions beyond empire. Nazi ideology transformed pre-war antisemitism into industrialised genocide, the “Final Solution”, conceptually framed by Raphael Lemkin’s term “genocide.” Total war thus fused ideology with mass murder.

Bosworth and Maiolo: How does the volume assess Allied war aims and post-war planning?

Allied leaders combined strategic necessity with ideological negotiation over international law, economic stability, and global governance. Plans included war crimes trials, the United Nations, and post-war trade and monetary reconstruction. Historians debate how far revelations of Nazi atrocities shaped early human rights frameworks.

Bosworth and Maiolo: Why does Part II argue that diplomacy failed in the interwar and wartime periods?

Modern diplomacy, rooted in the Concert of Europe, was discredited by 1914 and further undermined by secret treaties and ideological universalism. Wilson’s liberalism and Lenin’s communism both assumed global ideological convergence, making compromise impossible. The Depression deepened the divide between status-quo powers and revisionist states.

Bosworth and Maiolo: How did alliance politics differ between the Axis and the Grand Alliance?

The Grand Alliance, despite deep mistrust, coordinated resources effectively. By contrast, the Axis fought parallel regional wars, lacking genuine strategic unity. Historians Norman Goda and David Reynolds emphasise the Axis’s structural incoherence versus Allied cohesion.

Bosworth and Maiolo: How does the volume treat neutrality during the war?

Neutrality was morally and strategically compromised. Britain and France violated Scandinavian neutrality; Finland shifted from resisting the USSR to fighting alongside Germany; Spain remained neutral despite ideological sympathy for the Axis. Klas Åmark (Sweden) and Paul Preston (Spain) show neutrality required constant moral compromise.

Bosworth and Maiolo: What does Part III argue about occupation and “population politics”?

Axis occupation subjected tens of millions to brutal rule shaped by racial ideology. Drawing on Eric Weitz, the volume situates wartime deportation, forced labour, ethnic cleansing, and genocide within longer trends of population transfer, legitimised by earlier settlements from Vienna (1815) to Lausanne (1923).

Bosworth and Maiolo: How are resistance movements portrayed in the volume?

Resistance was often violent, factional, and ideological, sometimes degenerating into civil wars, as in Greece and Yugoslavia. Resistance movements could be as ruthless as occupiers, driven by local vendettas and ideological conflict rather than unified national liberation.

Bosworth and Maiolo: How does the volume compare Soviet and Western Allied occupations?

The USSR imposed communist regimes, beginning with the Baltic states in 1940, while Britain and the USA framed occupations as liberations restoring democracy and markets. Both sides acted pragmatically: the Allies supported communist partisans, while the USSR refused to aid the Polish Home Army during the Warsaw Uprising.

Bosworth and Maiolo: What role did empire play in the Second World War?

The British Empire was crucial to Britain’s survival, while France’s empire fragmented after 1940. Colonial populations suffered famine, displacement, and repression, even as millions served in imperial armies. Wartime strain exposed the hollowness of the empire’s “civilising mission”, accelerating decolonisation after 1945.

Bosworth and Maiolo: Why has the Second World War been remembered as a uniquely “good war”?

The editors argue memory rests on ideology: Nazism is remembered as absolute evil, making its defeat morally necessary. This interpretation is reinforced by historians such as Ian Kershaw, and reflected in cultural works like Studs Terkel’s The Good War (1984) and Angus Calder’s The People’s War (1969).

Bosworth and Maiolo: How does the volume challenge the traditional start date of the war (1 September 1939)?

The editors argue this date obscures deeper origins. Alternatives include the Spanish Civil War (July 1936) as a transnational ideological conflict, or Japan’s invasion of Manchuria (1931). The Marco Polo Bridge Incident (1937) and the Sino-Japanese War further globalised conflict.

Bosworth and Maiolo: When does the volume argue the war became fully global and decisive?

By 1940–41, Axis alignment through the Anti-Comintern Pact (1936) and Tripartite Pact (1940) linked Europe and Asia. By early 1942, with Germany deep in the USSR, Japan ascendant after Pearl Harbor (December 1941), and the entry of both the USA and USSR, Axis defeat became likely.

Bosworth and Maiolo: How does the volume broaden WWII historiography beyond Europe and military history?

Scholars such as Nick Stargardt (Germany), William Hitchcock (Western Europe), Davide Rodogno (Italian occupation), Gregor Kranjc (Yugoslavia and Greece), Mark Edele (USSR), and Margherita Zanasi (East Asia) reveal how ideology, occupation, collaboration, empire, and memory shaped everyday life and post-war politics. The war’s legacy remains contested, from foibe remembrance in Italy to debates in Ukraine, Asia, and Africa, underscoring WWII as a global, ideological, and civilisational rupture, not just a 1939–45 conflict.

Edele: How does Mark Edele frame the end of the Second World War in Europe and Asia, and what key dates structure his narrative?

Mark Edele situates the end of the Second World War around a sequence of decisive military and political moments. Adolf Hitler committed suicide on 30 April 1945, during the Red Army’s final assault on Berlin, which continued until 2 May 1945. Germany formally surrendered during the night of 8–9 May 1945, ending the most destructive land war in history. In Asia, Japan’s war effort collapsed later: its surrender followed the destruction of its war economy, the neutralisation of its navy and air force by US control of sea and air, and sustained bombing from June 1944. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima (6 August 1945) and Nagasaki (9 August 1945), combined with the Soviet invasion of Manchuria on 9 August, pushed Japan to capitulate on 2 September 1945.

Edele: What was the human and material cost of victory for the Soviet Union, according to Edele?

Edele stresses the catastrophic scale of Soviet losses. The USSR suffered between 25 and 27 million deaths, approximately 12 percent of its prewar population, making it by far the most heavily affected belligerent. A Soviet government commission recorded the destruction of 1,710 towns and cities, the burning of over 70,000 villages, the ruin of 6 million buildings, and the obliteration of tens of thousands of industrial plants and collective farms. These losses were compounded by a devastating famine in 1946–47, which killed an additional 1–1.5 million people. Violence also persisted in newly annexed western borderlands until brutal deportations in 1949.

Edele: What are the two major polemics about the Soviet war effort that Edele identifies?

Edele identifies two central and interconnected debates. The first concerns the extent of the Soviet contribution to Allied victory, particularly whether Nazi Germany was defeated primarily by the Red Army or by Anglo-American air and sea power. The second debate contrasts East European and Russian memory, asking whether the Soviet war was a liberation from Nazism or a totalitarian conquest that replaced one form of domination with another. Edele argues that these disputes are inseparable from how wartime alliances themselves are interpreted and demonstrate that “history” and “memory” cannot be disentangled.

Edele: How did early Cold War narratives initially treat the Soviet contribution to victory?

In the immediate postwar years, even Western adversaries acknowledged the Soviet role. In 1946, Winston Churchill publicly praised the “valiant Russian people” and even recognised Stalin’s leadership, despite simultaneously warning of the emerging “iron curtain.” However, this recognition soon faded as Cold War tensions intensified and new narratives emerged that minimised the Red Army’s contribution.

Edele: How did defeated German generals influence Western interpretations of the Eastern Front?

Edele shows that from the late 1940s, defeated German generals, rehabilitated through consultancy work for the US Army, reshaped Western understandings of the war. They argued that Germany had not been defeated by the Red Army but rather by Hitler’s strategic blunders, harsh weather, or overwhelming numbers of “Russian hordes.” These self-exculpatory narratives helped diminish recognition of Soviet military effectiveness while absolving the Wehrmacht of responsibility.

Edele: How did the Soviet Union construct its own memory of the war under Stalin?

The Soviet state constructed a powerful heroic cult around the Great Patriotic War, presenting victory as proof of socialist superiority and Stalin’s leadership. This narrative suppressed discussion of Soviet crimes, including mass repression, collaboration, and catastrophic early failures. Victory became central to Soviet legitimacy, while suffering was reframed as noble sacrifice rather than the product of policy decisions.

Edele: What impact did Khrushchev’s Secret Speech of 1956 have on Soviet historiography?

Nikita Khrushchev’s Secret Speech in 1956 marked a turning point by accusing Stalin of catastrophic wartime failures and crimes. This allowed limited critical reassessment of the war. However, boundaries remained strict: Alexander Nekrich’s study of the disastrous Soviet unpreparedness in 1941, published in 1965, was swiftly banned, and Nekrich himself was exiled, demonstrating the continued sensitivity of wartime critique.

Edele: Which Western historians helped restore recognition of the Soviet war effort from the 1960s onward?

Edele highlights journalists and historians who re-centred Soviet sacrifice. Alexander Werth’s Russia at War (1964) and Harrison Salisbury’s study of Leningrad (1969) foregrounded civilian suffering and endurance. These were followed by John Erickson’s authoritative military histories of the Eastern Front, published in 1975 and 1983, which firmly established the centrality of Soviet ground operations to Germany’s defeat.

Edele: How did debates over Japan’s surrender complicate narratives of Allied victory?

Historians remain divided over Japan’s surrender. One group prioritises the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; another emphasises the combined or “twin shocks” of atomic bombing and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria on 9 August 1945; a third argues that the Soviet attack alone was decisive. Even Emperor Hirohito’s shifting explanations complicate retrospective interpretations, reinforcing Edele’s point about the instability of wartime memory.

Edele: How did Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost transform the historiography of Stalin’s war?

Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost in the late 1980s exposed the “dark side” of the Soviet war effort, including the Nazi–Soviet Pact of 1939, invasions of Poland and Finland, annexations of the Baltics and Bessarabia, repression within the Red Army, blocking detachments, and massive avoidable casualties. This enabled a counter-myth portraying Soviet soldiers as victims of a criminal regime rather than heroic agents of liberation.

Edele: How did post-1991 East European states reinterpret the Soviet war experience?

After 1991, states such as Poland, the Baltic countries, and Ukraine advanced the “bloodlands” interpretation, presenting their wartime experience as one of dual Nazi and Soviet occupation. In contrast, Putin-era Russia reintegrated Soviet victory into a longer nationalist narrative. These opposing memories hardened into law through “memory laws”, restricting how historians could write about the war.

Edele: What statistical consensus emerged in the West about Soviet losses by the 2000s?

By the early 2000s, professional historians broadly agreed on the disproportionate Soviet sacrifice. As summarised by the Washington Post, for every American killed fighting Hitler, approximately eighty Soviet soldiers died, reinforcing the centrality of the Eastern Front to Allied victory.

Edele: What is Phillips Payson O’Brien’s revisionist argument, and why does Edele criticise it?

Phillips Payson O’Brien, in How the War Was Won (2015), argued that air and sea power, rather than the Red Army, defeated Germany and Japan. Edele criticises this thesis for relying solely on British and US archives, ignoring Russian and German sources, and misrepresenting the Eastern Front. Despite bombing, German industrial output rose in 1944, and decisive losses occurred primarily in land warfare against the USSR.

Edele: What evidence does Edele present to demonstrate the Red Army’s decisive role against Germany?

Edele notes that 75 percent of German equipment losses occurred on the Eastern Front. Between 1944 and 1945, German armoured vehicles facing the USSR declined from over 8,000 to about 1,400, primarily due to Soviet ground offensives, not bombing. Unlike Japan, Germany did not surrender under air attack; Hitler capitulated only when Soviet troops reached Berlin.

Edele: How does Edele differentiate between the war against Germany and the war against Japan?

Edele argues that O’Brien’s air-and-sea power thesis applies more convincingly to Japan, whose economy and military collapsed under blockade and bombing. In contrast, Germany’s defeat was a land war, in which the Red Army bore the primary burden, making generalised claims about Allied power misleading.

Edele: What role did Anglo-American operations play in shaping the Eastern Front?

While rejecting airpower determinism, Edele acknowledges important Allied effects. After June 1943, the Anglo-American air war forced Germany to divert fighters away from the USSR. Earlier, British successes in the Mediterranean (1941), the Italian invasion (September 1943), and D-Day (June 1944) relieved pressure on the Red Army. Adam Tooze shows that bombing reduced German production, lowering the machines available for the Soviet–German struggle.

Edele: How did Lend-Lease aid affect Soviet military capability?

Lend-Lease filled critical Soviet shortages. During the Battle of Moscow (late 1941), 30–40 percent of Soviet heavy tanks were British, delivered via the dangerous Arctic route to Arkhangelsk and Murmansk. Later, American supplies—especially Studebaker trucks, food, radios, aircraft, and machinery—enhanced Soviet mobility and allowed domestic industry to focus on tanks, artillery, and shells. About half of all Lend-Lease reached the USSR via the Pacific, enabled by the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact (April 1941).

Edele: Why does Edele argue that the USSR never truly fought Germany alone?

Edele stresses the war’s global context. One historian describes the Wehrmacht as “by far the best fighting force of the Second World War.” In 1944, the Red Army fielded 11.2 million troops, barely matching Germany’s 12.4 million. Japan also remained a threat: by mid-1938, 24 of 34 Japanese divisions were tied down in China, with eight in Manchuria, and even in 1945 the Kwantung Army numbered 700,000. Chinese resistance, ongoing since 1937, was therefore crucial in preventing a Soviet two-front war.

Edele: How does Edele assess the moral nature of the Soviet war?

Edele argues that the Soviet war was indisputably defensive, given Hitler’s genocidal plans against Jews, Russians, Ukrainians, and others. The liberation of Auschwitz on 27 January 1945 and the survival of 157,000–375,000 Polish Jews on Soviet soil demonstrate moments of genuine liberation. However, these achievements coexisted with systemic criminality, including mass deportations—from Koreans in 1937 to large-scale removals in 1949—arrests, killings, and Gulag sentences. In places like Estonia, Soviet rule killed more civilians than Nazi occupation.

Edele: What is Edele’s concluding argument about Soviet victory and Western responsibility?

Edele concludes that denying the Soviet role implies that Allied bombing alone would have defeated Germany, rendering Soviet sacrifice unnecessary and portraying Western leaders as “appeasers of Stalin.” Accepting the consensus—that Hitler could not have been defeated without the Red Army—casts Western support for Stalin, including Lend-Lease and diplomatic concessions, as tragic but necessary lesser evils. Under this interpretation, the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe appears not as Western failure but as an unavoidable outcome of the real military and economic balance of the 1940s.

Harrison: How does Mark Harrison define “the economy” in his analysis of the Second World War, and why is this definition important?

Mark Harrison defines the wartime “economy” broadly, extending beyond GDP to include physical resources, human capital, institutions, and technological capacity. This expansive definition is crucial because it allows historians to explain not only wartime outcomes but also long-term post-1945 economic trajectories. Economic performance depended not simply on output but on the ability to mobilise labour, maintain institutions under stress, integrate technology into production, and sustain economic coordination during prolonged war.

Harrison: How does Harrison periodise the Second World War economically, and how does Richard Overy’s interpretation support this framework?

Harrison argues the war had two economic phases. Until late 1941 or early 1942, military and qualitative factors outweighed economic size, allowing Germany and Japan to achieve spectacular victories despite clear economic inferiority. Richard Overy famously observed that “no rational man in early 1942” would have predicted Allied victory. From 1942 onward, however, the conflict became a global war of attrition, in which the Allies’ overwhelming advantages in GDP, population, and territory proved decisive.

Harrison: What do the 1938 figures in Table 1.1 reveal about the prewar balance between the Allied and Axis powers?

Table 1.1 shows that in 1938 the Anglo-French alliance and their empires controlled nearly 700 million people and 47.6 million km², compared with the Axis powers’ 260 million people and just over 6 million km². This gave the Allies a 2.7:1 population advantage and a 7.5:1 territorial advantage. GDP differences were narrower: over $1,000 billion for the Allies versus $750 billion for the Axis (1.4:1). However, per-capita GDP favoured the Axis ($2,900 vs. $1,500), reflecting the Allies’ inclusion of large, low-income colonial regions.

Harrison: How did Axis expansion in 1940–42 appear to change the economic balance, and why did Axis expectations prove false?

Axis conquests temporarily narrowed the gap. Using 1938 prices, Allied population advantages fell to 1.9:1, and GDP advantages to roughly 1.3:1 (or 1.1:1 excluding China). Axis planners assumed conquered territories could be exploited at prewar productivity while Allied mobilisation would falter. In reality, occupied economies collapsed, while Allied economies expanded. This miscalculation marked a critical turning point after 1942, when Allied growth accelerated and Axis economies stagnated or declined.

Harrison: What does Table 1.3 show about the changing Allied–Axis GDP ratio during the war?

Table 1.3 demonstrates dramatic shifts. The Allied–Axis GDP ratio stood at 2.4:1 in 1938, fell to 2:1 in 1941 after the fall of France and Soviet territorial losses, then rose sharply from 1942 onward. US GDP nearly doubled by 1944, the USSR stabilised after catastrophic declines in 1941–42, Italy defected in 1943, and French GDP contracted under occupation. By 1944, the Allied GDP advantage reached 3.3:1, as German and Japanese economies entered collapse. The Eastern Front was exceptional because Germany temporarily benefited from much higher per-capita GDP, despite the USSR’s larger population.

Harrison: How did Allied access to neutral trade, manpower, and munitions production shape the outcome of the war?

Allied naval supremacy secured access to neutral economies totalling far more than those available to Germany. Neutrals accessible to the Axis represented only 70 million people and $150 billion GDP, barely half the Allied figure. By 1944, the five great powers mobilised over 43 million soldiers, two-thirds Allied. Industrial output was even more skewed: between 1942 and 1944, the Allies produced nearly 50 million small arms, 2 million guns and mortars, over 200,000 tanks, 400,000 aircraft, and almost 9,000 major naval vessels, outproducing the Axis by ratios of at least 5:2, rising to 5:1 in tanks and warships and 15:1 in machine pistols.

Harrison: How does Harrison link per-capita development to economic resilience during wartime mobilisation?

Harrison argues that per-capita GDP strongly shaped whether economies collapsed under mobilisation. Historically, poor economies—Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Germany in 1914–18—tended to fail. In WWII, China’s economy disintegrated after the Japanese invasion of 1937, despite its population size. The USSR, however, was a striking exception: despite low income levels, it mobilised faster and more extensively than any other power, defying the historical pattern.

Harrison: What do mobilisation figures in Table 1.8 reveal about Soviet exceptionalism during the war?

Table 1.8 shows that Germany devoted nearly 25% of GNP to war by 1939, rising to about 75% by 1944; Japan reached similar levels only in 1944; Italy never achieved even Axis prewar mobilisation levels. By contrast, the USSR shifted 44% of GNP to military uses between 1940 and 1942, far exceeding the maximum two-year mobilisation shifts of Italy (15%), Germany (29%), Britain (38%), and the USA (31–32%). Ultimately, the USSR devoted around three-fifths of national income to the war effort—slightly below German and Japanese peaks but achieved earlier and sustained longer, with Allied assistance.

Harrison: Why does Harrison argue that Britain’s wartime success demonstrates the primacy of development over size or autarky?

Britain was smaller than Japan in population and territory, smaller than Germany in GDP, and heavily dependent on imported food and fuel. Yet its highly industrialised, commercially integrated economy enabled full mobilisation without collapse. Efficient administration, transport, and rationing supported expanded domestic food production, while Britain could draw on global resources more effectively than the Axis could exploit conquered agrarian regions. German occupation further revealed that industrialised north-western Europe yielded 30–40% of wartime output, whereas poor eastern Europe provided far less than Nazi planners expected.

Harrison: What long-term postwar economic lessons does Harrison draw from the Second World War?

Harrison identifies three major postwar lessons. First, the war discredited autarky, encouraging reintegration into the global economy through institutions like the IMF, IBRD, and GATT. Second, severe losses of physical and human capital—especially in Germany, Japan, and the USSR—spurred postwar investment under what Barry Eichengreen calls the “postwar settlement.” Third, wartime disruption reshaped growth trajectories: Nick Crafts and Terry Mills show clear wartime trend breaks in Austria, Finland, France, Germany, and Japan, while the US and Britain experienced smoother continuity. Despite the phrase “the winners lost the peace,” slower growth in Britain and America reflected their prewar wealth, whereas defeated states grew faster because they had further to recover; only the USSR remained poor despite victory.

Tooze: What is Adam Tooze’s core argument about Hitler’s strategic logic between 1939 and 1941?

Tooze argues that Hitler’s decisions from Poland (1939) to France (1940) and Barbarossa (22 June 1941) followed a coherent strategic logic shaped by global economics. Germany was the most highly mobilised society in Western Europe, yet by 1939 had reached the limits of peacetime mobilisation. Hitler recognised that once American rearmament accelerated after 1938, the combined economic power of Britain, France, and the USA would become overwhelming. Berlin assumed from 1938 onward that the United States would align with the Western powers. Hitler therefore believed Germany had to act quickly, retain the initiative, and overturn the global balance of power before US industrial output made victory impossible.

Tooze: How does Tooze integrate Nazi racial ideology into this strategic-economic logic?

Tooze stresses that military calculations were inseparable from racial ideology. Hitler interpreted Western resistance not as geopolitics but as a Jewish conspiracy, linking Roosevelt and Churchill as agents of “world Jewry.” From the Sudeten crisis (1938) onward, the war in the West was framed as one imposed by Jews. This reinforced Hitler’s belief that destroying Bolshevism and conquering Lebensraum were both strategically necessary and racially mandated, making Barbarossa simultaneously an economic gamble and an ideological war of annihilation.

Tooze: Why does Tooze describe the invasion of the USSR on 22 June 1941 as a qualitative escalation of violence?

Barbarossa marked the unleashing of genocidal colonial warfare. The Holocaust in Eastern Europe was embedded in a broader project involving the annihilation or displacement of tens of millions of Slavs, deliberate mass starvation, and the seizure of land to sustain a German Grossraum. Tooze shows that genocide was not an improvisation but central to war planning, merging economic necessity, colonial ambition, and racial ideology.

Tooze: How did Nazi population policy develop in Poland after 1939?

In occupied Poland, Himmler, Heydrich, and the SS implemented population displacement, forced labour, and racial classification through the Volksliste. These early programmes failed: hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans lacked land, expulsions stalled, and economic chaos followed. However, the apparent success of early victories revived SS ambitions, making Eastern Europe the primary laboratory for radical demographic engineering.

Tooze: What was Generalplan Ost, and what scale of transformation did it envision?

Drafted in mid-1941, Generalplan Ost envisioned the removal of up to 45 million Slavs, the depopulation of entire regions, and the settlement of at least 10 million Germans. It aimed to reshape Eastern Europe through mass murder, deportation, and colonisation. The Zamość experiment (1942)—involving deportations, child abductions, and killings—revealed both the radical intent and the practical difficulties of implementation.

Tooze: How does Tooze characterise the colonial-modernising vision behind Generalplan Ost?

Tooze emphasises that Nazi colonisation was framed as modern and rational, not medieval. Hitler repeatedly cited the American frontier, claiming the Volga would become Germany’s Mississippi. Plans envisaged family farms (Hufen) of at least 20 hectares, optimal population densities, and SS estates in poorer regions, modelling settlement on areas like Bavaria or Hanover. Genocide was justified as a means of engineering prosperity.

Tooze: What was the Hunger Plan, and how did it differ from the SS’s racial programmes?

The Hunger Plan, devised in spring 1941, was an openly discussed programme of mass starvation coordinated by the Wehrmacht, state ministries, and Nazi leadership. Unlike the clandestine Final Solution, it was widely circulated in official instructions. It aimed to divert Soviet food to Germany, killing tens of millions, justified by memories of 1914–18 starvation and Germany’s dependence on Ukraine’s grain.

Tooze: What role did Herbert Backe play in shaping the Hunger Plan?

Herbert Backe, State Secretary in the Agriculture Ministry and a racial ideologue linked to Darré and Heydrich, argued that Ukraine could feed Germany only if the urban population of western Russia—tens of millions—was starved. He rejected conventional economic assessments, insisting that rapid Soviet urbanisation since 1928 created a “surplus population” that could be eliminated.

Tooze: How was the Hunger Plan institutionalised in May 1941?

At the state secretaries’ meeting of 2 May 1941, all major ministries agreed that the Wehrmacht must be fed from Russia, that millions would die, and that oilseeds and grain extraction took priority. Georg Thomas, the Wehrmacht’s economic planner, recorded that starvation was unavoidable. Backe estimated 20–30 million “surplus” people, a figure repeated by Himmler and later by Göring, who told Ciano this was central to occupation policy.

Tooze: How did the Hunger Plan translate into military practice?

The OKW “Green Book” ordered the cutting off of Soviet urban and industrial centres from food supplies. Any attempt to feed civilians was forbidden. Russians were explicitly designated “useless eaters”, and officials were told that alleviating suffering would undermine the German war effort.

Tooze: What role did the Einsatzgruppen play after June 1941?

Following the invasion, Einsatzgruppen, aided by local auxiliaries and later Waffen-SS and police units, conducted mass shootings of Jews. Einsatzgruppe A alone killed over 270,000 people by spring 1942. By late 1942, an additional 360,000 had been murdered in Ukraine and Belorussia, and roughly 500,000 Jews were killed in Galicia through shootings, gas vans, and forced labour.

Tooze: Why were Soviet POWs the largest group of victims of starvation?

Of 3.3 million Soviet POWs captured in 1941, Germany denied Geneva Convention protections. By December 1941, only 1.1 million remained alive. Of the 2.25 million dead, around 600,000 were shot under the Kommissarbefehl, while the rest died from starvation and exposure. Between December 1941 and February 1942, another 600,000 perished, making this the single largest crime committed by the regime up to that point.

Tooze: Why did the starvation of entire Soviet cities largely fail?

Shutting off cities like Minsk or Kiev required manpower the Wehrmacht lacked. Officials feared political fallout and needed labour. Limited food distribution, black markets, and civilian flight prevented total starvation. Even German troops suffered: in Belorussia, Wehrmacht units went hungry for days in winter 1941–42.

Tooze: How does Tooze interpret the Siege of Leningrad within the Hunger Plan?

Encircled in October 1941, Leningrad’s 2.5 million civilians were deliberately denied food. By December 1941, nearly 4,000 people per day were dying. Best estimates suggest 653,000 deaths in the first eleven months, rising to around 700,000 by the end of the siege, fulfilling the Hunger Plan’s logic even without full implementation.

Tooze: Why did Germany turn to forced foreign labour after 1941?

By late 1941, Germany had exhausted its pool of military-age men. Losses averaged nearly 60,000 dead per month on the Eastern Front. Teenage cohorts were insufficient, and conscripting 200,000 armaments workers in early 1942 undermined production. Mobilising women further would yield at most one million workers, far below requirements.

Tooze: What was Fritz Sauckel’s labour programme, and how extensive was it?

Appointed in March 1942, Fritz Sauckel organised one of history’s largest forced-labour programmes. Between early 1942 and mid-1943, 2.8 million foreign workers were deported to Germany. By late 1944, up to 7.9 million foreigners—over 20% of the workforce—laboured in the Reich, with more than one-third of armaments workers being non-German.

Tooze: How did Nazi racial ideology undermine Germany’s labour strategy?

A: Even as labour shortages worsened, the regime murdered millions who could have worked. The Holocaust destroyed 2.4 million potential workers in Poland alone; roughly half of 1.95 million Soviet POW labourers later employed in Germany died. Concentration-camp labour was lethal. This contradiction revealed the irreconcilable tension between genocidal ideology and economic necessity.

Tooze: What is Tooze’s overarching conclusion about Nazi economic policy and genocide?

Tooze rejects the idea of chaotic irrationality. Instead, he argues Nazi policy followed a coherent but monstrous calculus, fusing racial ideology with the economics of scarcity, especially food. Decisions over who lived and died were shaped not only by hatred but by calculations of grain supply, labour productivity, and war survival—making genocide integral, not incidental, to the Nazi war economy.

Goldman and Filtzer: What scale of agricultural devastation did the Soviet Union suffer following the German invasion in 1941, according to Goldman and Filtzer?

The German occupation of key agricultural regions in 1941 destroyed 38 percent of Soviet prewar grain production, 84 percent of sugar output, and 38 percent of cattle stocks. As a result, processed food production collapsed, falling by 58 percent between 1940 and 1942. This catastrophic loss formed the structural backdrop to the Soviet home-front food crisis analysed by Goldman and Filtzer, forcing the state to reorganise food distribution under conditions far worse than those faced in 1917.

Goldman and Filtzer: How did the Soviet state respond immediately to the food crisis created by invasion, evacuation, and transport collapse in summer 1941?

Within three weeks of the German invasion on 22 June 1941, the Soviet state introduced urban rationing for waged workers and residents. Millions of evacuees—often housed in barracks without kitchens—could not cook privately, prompting a shift toward communal canteens. Unlike other belligerent states, the USSR effectively halted most commercial food sales because shortages were so extreme, making rationing the dominant mode of survival.

Goldman and Filtzer: Why did rationing gain popular acceptance despite severe hunger, and how does this compare to 1917?

Goldman and Filtzer argue that rationing was broadly supported because it stabilised food distribution, ended rampant speculation, and guaranteed minimum bread entitlements, even as hunger rivalled or exceeded 1917 levels. Rooted in earlier experiences of War Communism and the NEP, rationing expanded rapidly between July and November 1941, eventually ensuring at least bread and sugar supplies in all towns.

Goldman and Filtzer: How extensive was the wartime rationing bureaucracy, and what does this reveal about Soviet state capacity?

By 1946, the rationing system comprised over 3,100 ration card bureaus, employing more than 14,000 staff, alongside 400,000 additional workers distributing cards. Goldman and Filtzer emphasise that this vast bureaucracy demonstrates the Soviet state’s extraordinary administrative reach, even under wartime collapse, and challenges interpretations that portray the wartime state as purely chaotic or coercive.

Goldman and Filtzer: How were rations differentiated by labour and social status, and what were the caloric consequences?

Rations were strictly hierarchical. Category I defence workers received the highest entitlements—up to 2,015 calories per day—while children received as little as 944 calories. No category could survive on rations alone. Further stratification occurred through “O” stamps for defence factories, Stakhanovite bonuses, and special allowances for officials, while evacuees, refugees, and prisoners frequently fell outside entitlement systems altogether.

Goldman and Filtzer: To what extent did central state stocks sustain the population, and how did harvest failures worsen conditions?

By 1942, central state stocks supplied nearly 80 percent of all calories consumed, but harvests continued to deteriorate. The 1944 grain harvest reached only 49 percent of its 1940 level, sugar beets fell to 30 percent, and meat availability to 55 percent. These declines drove widespread malnutrition, scurvy, and starvation, peaking in 1943, with improvement only beginning in mid-1944.

Goldman and Filtzer: What role did private garden plots and collective farm markets play in survival?

Private garden plots and collective farm markets became essential supplements, especially for protein, milk, and eggs absent from rations. By 1944, half of all urban residents and over 90 percent of industrial workers cultivated plots. Potatoes became the essential staple. Markets, though nominally “free,” were integrated into state policy and subject to price volatility, barter, and speculation.

Goldman and Filtzer: How did the Soviet state intervene to improve communal dining during the crisis of 1942–43?

Following investigations into mass malnutrition, the state mandated improved canteen standards in late 1943, requiring minimum menus and encouraging diversification, particularly where enterprises ran subsidiary farms. Reinforced diets (UDP) were introduced for the starving, expanding rapidly in Moscow, though shortages meant outcomes were uneven; at factories like Penza No. 50, one-third of workers still starved.

Goldman and Filtzer: What were ORSy, and how did they reshape wartime provisioning?

From early 1942, the state established ORSy (Departments of Workers’ Supply) in major industries. By war’s end, 7,720 ORSy supplied nearly half of the rationed population, overseeing 30,000 subsidiary farms, piggeries, gardens, and workshops. ORSy compensated for failing central stocks and became a crucial pillar of survival, particularly in Siberia.

Goldman and Filtzer: How did the Soviet state address vitamin deficiency and starvation through scientific and improvised methods?

Goldman and Filtzer highlight widespread foraging and substitution campaigns. Canteens gathered wild greens; scientists produced pine-needle vitamin extracts; bakeries made flourless breads from potatoes and grains. By 1944, more than 4.3 billion doses of vitamins A, B, and C had been distributed nationwide, combining scientific expertise with folk knowledge.

Goldman and Filtzer: How do Goldman and Filtzer characterise popular morale and support for the war effort?

Despite catastrophic losses and hunger, most civilians remained loyal. The authors describe a shared wartime culture expressed through newspapers, radio, posters, poetry, song, and collective action. Participation in production drives, civil defence, women’s brigades, and opolchenie militias fostered a “levée en masse” spirit that sustained mobilisation.

Goldman and Filtzer: What historiographical debates exist over civilian loyalty, and how do the authors position themselves?

Historians debate whether support stemmed from patriotism, coercion, or self-interest. Goldman and Filtzer reject simplistic explanations, arguing loyalty emerged from a mix of socialist identification, hatred of fascism, personal loss, and belief in a just cause, even among populations previously alienated by collectivisation or repression.

Goldman and Filtzer: How was Soviet propaganda organised institutionally during the war?

Propaganda was coordinated by the Agitation-Propaganda Department (Agitprop) under the Central Committee and the Organizational-Instructional Department, which trained instructors for factories, schools, and collective farms. The most common form was besedy (conversations) covering politics, military aims, and production, alongside bottom-up initiatives by artists, writers, and workers.

Goldman and Filtzer: How and why did the tone of propaganda change over time?

After early shock and retreat in 1941, propaganda became more emotional and candid, increasingly emphasising Nazi atrocities and revenge. By April 1945, as the Red Army entered Germany, messaging shifted back toward a class-based framework, distinguishing Nazi leaders from ordinary Germans and attempting to restrain uncontrolled vengeance.

Goldman and Filtzer: What impact did Molotov’s broadcast on 22 June 1941 have on popular mobilisation?

Molotov’s radio address declared the justice of the Soviet cause and promised victory, triggering mass volunteering, including women, and a surge in Party membership applications. Despite lingering anti-Soviet sentiment, the speech helped rally the population after the shock created by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, which had fostered false security.

Goldman and Filtzer: How did cultural production bolster morale during the darkest months of 1941–42?

Songs and literature played a central role. Works such as “Sacred War,” Konstantin Simonov’s Wait for Me, and heroic narratives of Panfilov’s Men, Zoia Kosmodemianskaia, and Nikolai Gastello resonated deeply, articulating despair, sacrifice, and resolve during retreats and shortages.

Goldman and Filtzer: How did reports of Nazi atrocities reshape popular attitudes after liberation of occupied territories?

As the Red Army liberated territories in 1941–42, evidence of mass killings was systematically collected. Journalists like Ilya Ehrenburg, Vasily Grossman, and Simonov publicised atrocities, transforming abstract ideology into concrete moral outrage and intensifying hatred of the enemy, reinforcing commitment to total war.

Goldman and Filtzer: What role did Stalin’s May 1, 1942 order and July 28, 1942 Order No. 227 play in mobilisation?

The May Day Order framed the USSR as “a single and undivided military camp,” urging extra labour for the front. Order No. 227 (“Not One Step Back”), issued 28 July 1942, prohibited retreats, introduced blocking detachments and penal battalions, and acknowledged catastrophic losses while insisting the Red Army now possessed the material means to win.

Goldman and Filtzer: How did coercion and deportation shape the wartime home front?

Nearly 3.3 million people from 61 national groups—including ethnic Germans, Crimean Tatars, Chechens, and Ingush—were deported during the war. Goldman and Filtzer note that these measures targeted suspected collaborators but also generated resentment, foreshadowing postwar anti-cosmopolitan and anti-Semitic campaigns.

Goldman and Filtzer: What do letters and complaints reveal about popular expectations of the Soviet state during the war?

Letters show that citizens accepted extreme sacrifice but demanded egalitarianism and accountability. The case of Zhalkova, an engineer from Ivanovo, who denounced corrupt officials after her husband’s death, illustrates popular anger at bureaucratic privilege. Her complaint resulted in a party reprimand, demonstrating that citizen activism could compel state response even during total war.

Stahel: What did Hitler’s Directive 21 stipulate, and why was the timetable for Barbarossa disrupted?

Hitler’s Directive 21, issued in December 1940, required that preparations for war against the Soviet Union be completed by 15 May 1941. However, events in south-eastern Europe forced a major alteration of this timetable. Stahel argues that German intervention in the Balkans was not merely a reaction to the Yugoslav coup of March 1941, but part of a broader strategic effort to secure Germany’s southern flank and restore Axis dominance before invading the USSR.

Stahel: Why was the Balkans strategically vital to Germany before Barbarossa?

Since October 1940, Mussolini’s failed invasion of Greece had drawn in British forces and raised Hitler’s fear of a renewed “Salonika front” or British air attacks on Romania’s oil fields, which were critical to the German war effort. Economically, the region supplied 50 percent of Germany’s cereals and livestock, 45 percent of bauxite, 90 percent of tin, 40 percent of lead, and 10 percent of copper, making Axis control essential for sustaining a long war.

Stahel: How did Operation Marita affect preparations for the invasion of the Soviet Union?

Planning for Operation Marita (the invasion of Greece) began in November 1940, though Hitler warned Mussolini that intervention could not occur until spring. The campaign forced Germany to divert nine divisions and two corps headquarters away from the Barbarossa build-up. Stahel notes that this delayed the invasion by roughly four weeks, even if figures like Franz Halder later claimed that spring floods would have imposed delays regardless.

Stahel: What long-term military costs did the Balkan campaigns impose on Germany?

While divisions fighting in Yugoslavia returned quickly, those engaged in Greece suffered severe mechanical attrition. The 2nd and 5th Panzer Divisions and the 60th Motorised Division required major refitting and did not reach the eastern front until after the invasion began, with the panzer divisions only entering combat in October 1941. Germany also permanently lost the 12th Army to occupation duties, weakening Army Group South, which already advanced more slowly than other formations.

Stahel: Why did the Balkan occupation further weaken Germany’s strategic position?

Occupation triggered intense guerrilla warfare in both Yugoslavia and Greece, draining manpower and resources. The airborne assault on Crete in May 1941 was especially costly: 220 transport aircraft were destroyed, and the elite 7th Parachute Division was devastated. As a result, Hitler abandoned large-scale airborne operations, eliminating a capability that had previously underpinned German operational success.

Stahel: When was the final launch date for Barbarossa set, and what strategic disputes remained unresolved?

On 30 April 1941, Hitler fixed 22 June 1941 as the invasion date. Yet even then, German commanders remained divided over fundamental issues, particularly the deployment of panzer forces. Stahel highlights renewed disputes between Paulus, Guderian, and Hoth over whether panzer groups should operate independently or remain tied to infantry support, reflecting unresolved doctrinal tensions at the highest level.

Stahel: How did internal disagreements among German generals undermine planning for Barbarossa?

In February 1941, Hermann Hoth warned that infantry would clog roads, while Heinz Guderian resisted attaching infantry to Panzer Group 2. Fedor von Bock opposed dense reserve concentrations near the border, recalling logistical chaos at Wesel in 1940. Only on 12 June 1941 was a compromise reached, giving Guderian temporary command of XII Corps for the Brest-Litovsk assault. Bock blamed Halder and Brauchitsch for confused, last-minute decision-making.

Stahel: How did German intelligence assessments misjudge Soviet strength in spring 1941?

German intelligence was dangerously complacent. In April 1941, Colonel Kinzel estimated the Red Army at 170 divisions, but dismissed them as poorly equipped. Colonel Hans Krebs, returning from Moscow on 5 May 1941, claimed the USSR would avoid war and that its officer corps was “decidedly bad,” insisting it would take twenty years to recover from the purges. Colonel Heusinger later admitted these estimates were “completely false.”

Stahel: Why does Stahel argue that the German General Staff failed in its professional role?

Stahel contends that by 1940–41 the General Staff had lost its capacity for critical challenge. Earlier warnings—such as Guderian’s 1937 recognition of Soviet industrial modernisation—were ignored. Careerism and fear of appearing defeatist prevented officers from confronting Hitler’s assumptions, a failure reflected in War Directive No. 32, which projected operations into Turkey and the Middle East before Barbarossa had even begun.

Stahel: What occurred at the final planning conference on 14 June 1941, and why was it significant?

At the 14 June 1941 conference at the Reich Chancellery, army commanders outlined their opening operations while Hitler largely listened. Only later did he emphasise the ideological nature of the war and assert that decisive fighting would end within six weeks. His intention to divert forces from Army Group Centre toward Leningrad and the south alarmed Halder and Brauchitsch, but neither openly objected, deepening strategic incoherence.

Stahel: How widespread was optimism about Barbarossa among Axis and Allied observers?

Optimism was near universal. Britain’s Joint Intelligence Committee believed Germany would reach Moscow within six weeks; Stimson and Marshall predicted victory within one to three months; Japanese intelligence foresaw only weeks of fighting. Goebbels wrote on 16 June 1941 that Bolshevism would collapse “like a house of cards,” while Göring and Himmler dismissed Soviet strength outright.

Stahel: How did Hitler’s private anxieties contrast with public confidence?

Unlike his entourage, Hitler showed visible anxiety. In a letter to Mussolini, he spoke of “months of anxious deliberation,” calling Barbarossa “the hardest decision of my life,” later admitting the uncertainty “took me by the throat.” Nevertheless, on 22 June 1941, Germany launched a war that would ultimately consume four-fifths of all German fighting forces and stretch across 2,768 kilometres.