Hitler's Soviet delusion

Every Russian soldier has to be shot dead twice, and even then he has to be pushed to make him fall.

— Frederick the Great

The effect of climate in Russia is to make things impassable in the mud of spring and autumn, unbearable in the heat of summer and impossible in the depths of winter. Climate in Russia is a series of natural disasters.

— General von Greiffenburg, Chief of Staff to 12th Army

I am refraining from publishing big maps of Russia. The huge areas involved can only frighten our people.

— Joseph Goebbels

The economic foundation of Operation Barbarossa remains one of the most tenuous in military history.

— David Stahel, Kiev 1941

Although the combined Wehrmacht and Waffen SS numbers totaled approximately 7 million in 1941 (of which about 3 million were in the East), there were virtually no reserves… Beyond those divisions, no more than 321,000 men on active duty were available as trained replacements. This pool was exhausted within the first few months of the Soviet war, after which there were no additional replacements until the following year.

By contrast, in addition to the 5 million Soviet servicemen on duty when the Germans attacked, there were 14 million trained reservists.

— David Glantz & Jonathan House, When Titans Clashed

[I]t stands out more and more clearly that we underestimated the Russian colossus… At the start of the war we reckoned with 200 enemy divisions. Now we already count 360.

— General Franz Halder, in his diary 11 Aug 1941

Even Hitler allegedly remarked that, had he known that Heinz Guderian’s prewar figures for Soviet tank strength were so accurate, he might not have started the war.

— David Glantz & Jonathan House, When Titans Clashed

The first communists were Adam and Eve. They had no clothes to wear, had to steal apples for food, could not escape from the place in which they lived and still they thought that they were in paradise.

— Joke by German soldier

“We have to win this war. We must not lose our courage. If others win the war, and if they do to us only a fraction of what we have done in the occupied territories, there won’t be a single German left in a few weeks.” It became so quiet in that carriage that one could have heard a pin drop.

— Antony Beevor, Berlin: The