John Mearsheimer: belief

Transcript context

…That’s possible. Fortunately, we’re not going to run the experiment again, but one could argue that, had they concentrated as the generals wanted to do, in going straight from Moscow, that they would’ve won. I mean, what Hitler wanted to do is, he wanted to go into the Ukraine. I mean, Hitler thought that the main Axis… There were three Axes. The northern Axis went towards Leningrad, the central Axis of course, went to Moscow, and then the Southern Axis, Army Group South, headed towards Ukraine and deep into the caucuses. And Hitler believed that that should have been the main Axis. And in fact, in 1942, the Soviets, excuse me, the Germans go back on the offensive in 1942. This is Operation Blue, and the main Axis in ’42 is deep into the Ukraine and into the caucuses, and that fails. But one could argue that, had they done that in ’41, had they not gone to Moscow, had they gone, had they concentrated on going deep into Ukraine and into the caucuses, they could have knocked the Soviets out that way. I’m not sure that in the end I believe that. I think in the end the Soviets would’ve won no matter what, but I’m not a hundred percent sure of that. Sometimes, maybe you can educate me, but sometimes they say, just like with Napoleon, winter defeated Hitler in Russia. I think not often enough people tell the story of the soldiers and the motivation and how hard they fight. So it turns out that Ukrainians and Russians are not easy to conquer. They’re the kinds of people that don’t roll over and fight bravely. There seems to be a difference in certain peoples, in how they see war, how they approach war, how proud they are to fight for their country, to die for their country, these kinds of things. So I think Battle of Stalingrad tells, at least to me, a story of extremely brave fighting on the Soviet side, and that, it’s a component of war too. It’s not just structural, it’s not just military strategy, it’s also the humans involved, but maybe that’s a romantic notion of war.…

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