WWII and Total War Packet, pg. 146-149

1. Why did Hitler assume that his airforce could defeat Britain alone?
   Hitler assumed that his airforce could defeat Britain because he was arrogant after the Battle of France; he was able to defeat France so quickly. He also assumed that Britain wouldn't have an airforce to oppose the Luftwaffe.
   
2. What factor, in your opinion, was the most important in Britain's victory in the Battle of Britain?
   Britain had a new warning system: the radar. Despite the fact that Britain's fighter planes were outnumbered, the RAF could locate the incoming enemy and not waste aircraft.
   
3. Why did Hitler invade into the Balkans and why was this significant?
   In September 1940, Mussolini sent an Italian colony of Libya to Egypt; another Italian army invaded Greece from Albania. Both offensives failed, which pulled Hitler into North Africa and the Balkans. This caused the British troops in North Africa to move to the fighting in Greece, which weakened the British in North Africa.
   
4. What were Hitler's motives for attacking the USSR?
   Hitler's motives were more ideological; although he wanted to invade the USSR to achieve Lebensraum, his main focus was to destroy what he viewed as inferior to Germany. The Soviet Union was full of communists, and Hitler saw communism as a destructive force to German culture and society.
   
5. What factors slowed the initial blitzkrieg of Russia?
   Britain refused to accept peace from Germany, which frustrated Hitler and caused him to postpone his plans for invading Russia. He decided to leave Britain undefeated (since he assumed it was not strong enough to open a second front) so that he could invade Britain (which he assumed would be weak and easy to invade).

Pregnant With War

What did Keegan mean when he said, "For the truth of twentieth-century European civilization was that the world it dominated was pregnant with war"?

The conditions in Europe seemed to fit very well for militarization: there was a multiplication of force, populations skyrocketed, and censuses were organized to make recruiting for soldiers easier. Many regiments were formed by conscripts and ex-conscripts, which was the first instance of demographic change. With the increased knowledge of hygiene, mortality rates decreased. With a better organization system on citizens, censuses were able to target individuals for recruitment very easily. Even from the nineteenth century, Keegan reveals that Engels wished for a more organized system for the class of workers when he says, “As an old and increasingly dispirited ideologue, [Engels] sought to persuade himself that the proletariat, by then the captive of Europe’s conscription laws, would liberate itself by subverting the states’ armies from within” (Keegan 12).

WWII Timeline: 1939 - 1941

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