December 18, 1940. Hitler's fatal decision.

 Among the significant events that occurred was this:

Hitler issues Führer Directive 21 for the invasion of Soviet Russia, codenamed Operation Barbarossa. The goal: "The German Wehrmacht must be prepared to crush Soviet Russia in a quick campaign."

Day 475 December 18, 1940

On the same day, Hitler delivered a speech to German officers at the Sportspalast.

In December, 1940, France was a defeated state and Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium had all been occupied by Germany, along with the Western half of Poland.  The British had been forced off the continent some six months earlier.

Still, the United Kingdom had not surrendered and contrary to the way its tended to be recalled, in part due to British propaganda aimed at the United States, British industrial production in some areas, including the now super critical category of aircraft production, exceeded that of Germany's.  Italy, joining the war with Germany after German victory had seemed assured, had already shown that its army, the best of which was spent in the Spanish Civil War, was now obsolete and ineffectual, leading the Germans to rescue them in Greece. At the very time that this issue was ordered, the British in North Africa were steadily advancing against the Italians.

HE 111 over London, September 1940.

This is not to suggest that things were pleasant for the British by any means.  The German bombing campaign was going on at that very moment.  But here too the weaknesses of the German military were already evident.  Germany had failed to develop heavy bombers prior to the war and frankly didn't have the industrial capacity to do that and develop the other new arms that its military required.  In contrast the British were now fielding the Halifax, developed just before the war and which went into production in November of this year, and were one month away from fielding the Lancaster.  The Short Stirling was also already an adopted bomber.  In the United States the B17 had been in service for some years.

British Valentine tank in North Africa.

Even in mechanization the British were actually much better situated than they tended to be portrayed as in later years.  The British army in 1940 was 100% mechanized in terms of transportation, the only army then committed in the war, or which had been in the war to date, which could make that claim.  The German army was ironically, as it would turn out, near its peak in terms of the same even though it still heavily relied on horses for transportation.  Reliance on horses was to grow from this point on for the Germans, not decline.  British military truck designs were excellent and much better than the German ones.  British armor has been portrayed as lacking but in reality at this point in the war it was more or less on par with German armor and the British were already working on the Churchill which would prove to be one of the best tanks of the war.

Moreover, the German conquests meant that it was now occupying a swath of territory inhabited by a hostile native population.  In none of the regions occupied by the Germans in December 1940 was their presence in any fashion welcome and client governments created by them outside of Poland, which they outright governed without pretense, enjoyed no local support whatsoever.  In Poland they were busy committing atrocities against the Poles.  The only exceptions of any kind was in regard to France, much of which they did not occupy at this point as it was under the administration of the unpopular Vichy government.

Taking watch on a British destroyer.

All this meant that German manpower was already heavily committed even without active combat going on in Europe and the problematic efforts of the Italians threatened to divert even more German manpower.  The German population at the time, including those areas incorporated into the Reich prior to the war, stood at about 80,000,000 in contrast to the United Kingdom's 47,000,000, but the British could reach back to populations in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand for very loyal support, as well as to populations in India, South Africa and elsewhere around the globe.  Additionally, even in 1940 nearly all of the German industrial base was within bomber range of the United Kingdom while Commonwealth resources were completely beyond the reach of the Germans.  

This latter fact would commit the Germans for the second time to a U boot war against the United Kingdom which in part demonstrates that in December, 1940 they were tactically and strategically the stymied. The resort to U boots was made for the second time in less that thirty years for the exact same reason it had been in World War One, the hope of materially and literally starving the British out of the war.  But the Germans themselves were effectively blockaded as well.  Added to their effort at this point in the war was the air effort which Herman Goering promised would succeed, of course.

But it hadn't succeeded yet and that should have caused the Germans pause.  In December 1940 the United States was not yet in the war and the British were not yet defeated.  The British were incapable of landing on the continent and staying, but the Germans were incapable of landing on Britain at all.  The two nations were capable of hitting each other from the air, but in very short order the British effort would be backed by British heavy bombers which were coming into production and which did not have a tactical role otherwise, whereas all of the German aircraft being used against Britain were tactical aircraft that could ill afford to be lost and which the Germans would need to support their ground troops anywhere they went.

Which, on this day, was about to be the Soviet Union.