Day of Empire_ How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--And Why They Fall - Amy Chua [143]
For example, entire SS units were dedicated to guarding prisoners at Nazi concentration camps. Precious materials like marble, sandstone, and polished nickel were ghoulishly lavished on the construction of crematoria and gas chambers. Trains were devoted to shuttling Jews to their deaths even as the Germans were scrambling to move troops. In the winter of 1942, with German soldiers surrounded at the pivotal battle of Stalingrad, Heinrich Himmler, commander of the SS, personally intervened to divert desperately needed trains in order to kill more Jews. Himmler pleaded to the head of railroads: “I know very well how taxing the situation is for the railroads and what demands are constantly made of you. Just the same, I must make this request of you: Help me get more trains.” Even in their darkest hour, the Nazis chose racial hatred over military success.7
Moreover, by murdering millions of conquered subjects and hundreds of thousands of German citizens, the Nazis deprived themselves of incalculable manpower and human capital. As already mentioned, Germany lost an array of brilliant scientists, including Albert Einstein, Theodore von Karman, Eugene Wigner, Leo Szilard, Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, and Lise Meitner, many of whom went on to play an integral role in the construction of the world's first atomic bomb, which the United States used to win the war. Who knows how many other great minds were lost?
Everything in Nazi Germany was filtered through the lens of German racial superiority. Almost comically, the Nazi scientist Bruno Thuring attacked Albert Einstein's theory of relativity for its contradiction of the “Nordic's instinctual understanding of the meaning of energy.” Nazi rejection of “Jewish” science also led Germany to fall behind in the development of radar, a technology that proved pivotal to the Allies’ success in the Battle of Britain. Meanwhile, the Nazis’ confidence in their own scientific supremacy blinded them to the possibility that the Allies might have cracked their codes—another decisive mistake.8
“EXPELLED OR EXTERMINATED, NOT ASSIMILATED”
When German troops first entered the western frontiers of the Soviet Union, they were often hailed as liberators, especially by Ukrainians and the Baltic peoples, who had long been terrorized by Soviet domination. Even in Russia, some high-ranking German officials felt that “if Hitler played his cards shrewdly, treating the population with consideration and promising relief from Bolshevik practices…the Russian people could be won over.”
Nowhere was this truer than in Ukraine, where Nazi ideology was popular and many longed for independence from the Soviet Union. But instead of enlisting Ukrainian brigades to fight against the Soviets, the German army was followed directly by SS death squads charged with subjugating, enslaving, and killing the local population. In addition to almost wiping out Ukraine's Jewish population, the Nazis slaughtered an estimated five million non-Jewish Ukrainians.9
Unlike Genghis Khan, Hitler was not interested in enlisting the superior talents of conquered nations. Unlike the Romans, Hitler was not interested in incorporating their populations. Instead, he was interested in incorporating their land. For Hitler, international relations was “fundamentally a struggle for space” in which “the stronger won, took the space, proliferated on that space, and then fought for additional space.” This struggle for German “living space,” or Lebensraum, became the core of Nazi foreign policy. In Mein Kampf and numerous speeches, Hitler broadcast his intention to achieve Lebensraum through “conquest of additional land areas whose native population would be expelled or exterminated, not assimilated.” According to Hitler, world peace would come about only “when one power, the racially best one, has attained complete and uncontested supremacy.”
It did not take long for Hitler to demonstrate that Lebensraum was not just rhetoric.