Operation Barbarossa: The Invasion That Doomed Nazi Germany | How The Nazis Lost | War Stories

When you're the Aryan master race, friends don't come naturally. People outside the room can hear the fists pounding on the table and voices raised. There's a great degree of mistrust there. However, when a world war looms, allies become essential. We won't attack you if you get involved in a war. Hitler hadn't thought through the relationship particularly well. With only dictators and despots to choose from, the risks are high. I suppose there's a phrase, beggars can't be choosers. And the end results. It's just enormous disasters, unprecedented disasters. Dysfunction at almost every level. November 1918. Germany had just lost the war. She was about to sign a deeply humiliating and financially crippling treaty. And she had no friends. But this was just how she liked it. Or at least, the right-wing opportunists did. By placing the burden of guilt entirely on an embarrassed Germany. And by imposing impossibly harsh reparation payments. The West unwittingly created the ideal conditions for populist politics and demagoguery to prosper. Unrest, resentment and anger simmered in a desperate and disillusioned public. And Hitler played them like a violin. Ruthlessly capitalising on the massive national shock Germany had been experiencing since defeat. He fomented a xenophobic hatred of outsiders. While encouraging the classic victim-hero complex on a grand scale. And guess who was putting his hand up for the hero role? With the rise of National Socialism and Hitler's coming to power in the early 30s. All the elements were in place for another massive global conflict. Hitler was a politician driven by ideology. And that ideology was ultimately confrontational. And demanded a great deal from other countries in terms of having to sacrifice economic power or maybe even territory. And Hitler wasn't afraid of confrontation. Even if the other countries were. As a result of that, his ideology was based upon military power. And ultimately, military confrontation if required. And so in a sense, what Hitler was asking for was not going to be given without a fight. As World War II loomed, the closest friendships Germany could claim were nothing more than uncomfortable, uneasy alliances. Yet they needed allies. Or at least short-term sham friendships. Their choices were limited. On the available list was an international pariah to the east in Russia. But a communist state was hardly a natural fit with fascist Germany. There was a like-minded predator in fascist Italy. And a hyper-militaristic Japan. With friends like those who needed enemies. On September the 27th, 1940, Italian Foreign Minister Count Galliazzo Ciano, Il Duce's son-in-law, arrived in Berlin from Rome. At 1pm in the Reich Chancellery, it was announced that Japan, Germany and Italy had signed a military alliance directed against the United States. The Axis powers aligned in a pact with the devil. But all these relationships were doomed from the start. Tenuous and disinterested at best. Toxic and sabotaging at worst. Germany's choice of strange bedfellows would come back to haunt them. And they would ultimately pay a high price for those decisions. Dawn. June 22nd, 1941. Bombers are attacking Russian cities from Leningrad to Sevastopol. It marked the start of the largest military operation in the history of the world. Operation Barbarossa. It was also to become the bloodiest. But Russia and Germany were supposedly bound by a non-aggression pact. So how did it come to this? Welcome to a world of deceit and double-dealing between wartime friends. Following the footsteps of the Essex Dogs with Dan Jones, we'll discover the history of archery with Ray Mears. We've built up an extensive library of history programs. Hundreds of hours of documentaries, exclusive original films, interviews and ad-free podcasts made for proper history fans. Sign up now for a free trial and War Stories fans get 50% off their first three months. Just be sure to use the code WARSTORIES at checkout. Germany and Russia had been building a secret tryst since the early 20s. Since they first began making eyes at each other, they were always going to make strange bedfellows. Since any military development had been prohibited by the Treaty of Versailles, Germany needed a place to begin rearming out of the prying eyes of the West. Soviet Russia was the perfect spot. In the early 1930s there is actual military cooperation between the Soviets and the Germans. We have German officers going secretly to the Soviet Union and there they're subverting the constraints of the Treaty of Versailles and they are testing weaponry, aircraft and tanks that Germany is not allowed to have. The benefit for the Soviets is they're getting the virtue of this learning curve, they're getting the insight into how German staff work and they are also taking photos of some of the pieces of equipment that the Germans are developing in those spaces. Implacable ideological enemies. Neither side was ever comfortable with the relationship. But it was the Germans who did best out of the deal. It accounts for the fact that when Hitler rearms after taking power in 1933, he already has the basis for the reconfiguration of the Wehrmacht, the German armed forces, into tank divisions, infantry divisions, he already has the basis for a big air force, the Luftwaffe. He's got the shape of the Kriegsmarine, the Nazi navy worked out. It's also good for the Russians. The Russians are poised to become what they are in 1949, the biggest mechanized military in the world, thanks in large part to the training and technology transfers given them by the Germans in the 1920s and 1930s. The Soviets might have secured a bigger advantage from their relationship had Stalin not set out on a murderous purge of the Red Army leadership in 1937. With the world lurching towards war, it was a policy of utter madness. Stalin basically kills off almost every marshal in the Soviet army, kills off almost every army commander, corps commander, divisional commander, kills eight of nine admirals, because he fears that they've become tainted by this collaboration with the Germans. What he was left with was nothing but incompetence at the top of his military. It is shitting himself in the foot, but such is the mammoth weight of the Soviet Union in terms of manpower and industrial resources, and its ability to replace these people with often less capable commanders, but good enough that they survive. Stalin was under no apprehension as to Hitler's intentions. After all, he was a man after his own heart. He'd already walked into Austria, and those areas of Czechoslovakia, known as the Sudetenland, inhabited predominantly by German speakers. Having been unable to reach an agreement with Britain and France against Nazi Germany, with whom he'd been playing footsie behind Hitler's back, Stalin was left dangerously exposed. The problem for the Soviets is, they see what happens to Czechoslovakia, and they start to realise those western powers have walked away from their eastern ally, they've left them in the lurch, and therefore, if we're interested in security, we cannot rely on those western powers. And this starts to change the idea for Stalin, who's looking always to buy time. By early 1939, he faced the daunting prospect of having to resist German expansion into the east all alone. For his part, Hitler needed a pact with Russia so he could invade Poland unopposed, after which he could deal with Britain and France to the west. Importantly, he wouldn't have to worry about fighting the Russians at the same time in the east. But Hitler was always going to betray Russia, and Stalin knew it. On May the 3rd, 1939, foreign ministers Molotov and Ribbentrop, with Stalin gravely looking on, signed a non-aggression pact between Russia and Germany. How they all kept a straight face remains one of the great achievements of totalitarian international diplomacy. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is going to buy the Soviet army more time to build weaponry, and it's also going to give the Soviet Union the opportunity to watch Germany fight against other capitalist powers and hopefully wear each other down over years. For Hitler, the idea is very simple. This is a tactical manoeuvre. This is going to allow him to have a free hand to fight in Poland. Germany promptly put Poland to the sword, and unfortunately for Stalin, then conquered much of Western Europe easily. The inevitable eventually rolled around. Nazi Germany attacked Russia without warning in Operation Barbarossa. By June 1941, the agreement between Germany and Soviet Russia was dead and buried. Did Hitler betray Stalin? It's hard to summon any sympathy for either of these two brutes, you know? I think they both knew what they were getting into by signing this pact with each other. So they were both playing a very cynical game. It's just that Hitler broke the agreement first. Hitler had stabbed his partner in the back. Who in their right mind would ever trust the Nazis again? As the self-proclaimed master race, there was no room for Germany to foster any genuine or lasting international friendships. However, expedience ruled, and the most natural match for the Nazis was their fellow fascist European power, Italy. The partnership between the two powers was to prove an unmitigated disaster, as reflected through the prism of the personal relations between Hitler and Mussolini. You can make a case that both of them were supreme narcissists. Now what happens if you put the two of them together? Do you have atomic fission or nuclear explosion in psychological terms? What you really have is the stronger narcissist will win out in the end. And if you look at Mussolini, he was a far more complex figure than Hitler, and prone to obvious depression. Since 1925, the Italian people had been laboring under a fascist regime ruled over by Benito Mussolini, or Il Duce. Italian fascism was regarded as the original and the best, and very much the elder brother of Nazism. In 1922, when Mussolini led thousands of fascists and supporters into the Italian capital, in his defining march on Rome, Hitler was hooked. Well, Hitler's an early and ardent admirer of Mussolini. Mussolini is first on the scene. He launches his fascist party before Hitler's Nazi party. He executes the March on Rome in 1922, and insinuates himself into the Italian government, appointed prime minister by the Italian king. He immediately embarks on the fascistization of Italy, with big public buildings, parades, fascist monuments. Hitler is in awe of this. Hitler at the time was sort of in love with Mussolini, and he emulates Mussolini. Over the coming years, the two despots continue to cozy up, with Mussolini even providing some financial support to the rising Nazi party. It's no surprise that, in private, Mussolini thought very little of Hitler. In fact, he considered him a socially awkward galloping boar. And, of course, as Mussolini had more than enough money, and more than a touch of egomania about him, he maintained that Hitler's rise to the top was far less glorious than his own. He was the father of fascism. Hitler merely a progeny to his genius. And when Hitler came to power in 1933, Mussolini was quick to bask in reflected glory, claiming victory for himself and his own fascist ideology. This fascist thing was really starting to catch on. The first actual meeting between them in Venice in 1934 went very poorly. Hitler is completely upstaged by Mussolini, who arrives in fascist uniform and looks, you know, very martial and severe, and Hitler shows up in sort of a baggy overcoat and a fedora hat. He hasn't adopted the Nazi uniform yet. And they're particularly exercised over the issue of Austria. Mussolini says, look, you know, hands off Austria. It must remain independent. And Hitler and Mussolini get into this, like, raging argument. People outside the room can hear, you know, the fists pounding on the table and voices raised. They pretend to be good friends, but they're beginning to drift apart strategically. The meeting served as confirmation for both that neither man cared at all for the other. Hitler and Mussolini were not natural friends or colleagues, but Germany required the Italian military machine to do its bidding, if you like, by proxy in North Africa, for example. And, of course, Italy was only too willing to do that. Italy also recognised that for Mussolini to develop his own foreign policy aims, he needed the backing of a big military machine, a nation that was more progressed, more aggressive and more feared than his own. By 1936, Mussolini was talking it up, declaring that Nazi Germany and fascist Italy shared a common destiny and that the relationship between the two was the axis around which Europe would evolve. On March the 3rd, 1938, the weirdness continued when Hitler arrived in Rome with enough pomp and ceremony to please any dictator. It was a wildly over-the-top welcome, including a whole new train station constructed just for the Nazis' arrival and a new road for Hitler to be driven along via Adolf Hitler. However, the King and the Vatican were decidedly cool towards him and despite all the pageantry, Mussolini refused Hitler's offer of military alliance. The Italians were hedging their bets. Finally, the two reluctant friends came together and signed the Pact of Steel in 1939, formalising the alliance with military provisions. Joined together by mutual self-interest, the two strong men of fascism view the results of their long struggle for dominance in Europe with unconcealed satisfaction. But Mussolini had already comprehensively failed Hitler with his never-ending vacillation and maddening uncertainty. His army was completely unprepared for war, underfunded, poorly equipped, with poor leadership and training to match. It didn't help that on the eve of war, Mussolini fired his chief of staff, with the dictator arrogantly taking on the role of micromanaging the military himself. On top of this, Italy was on the brink of bankruptcy. By any measure, a failing partnership. And the war had not even begun. Italy was a relatively weak country in terms of its economy, its society and its military state as well. Mussolini was desperately trying to raise the standard of living in Italy, was doing that very slowly, but like many nations and many leaders in history, they looked outside their own borders for a sense of power and gain that would perhaps unite the country around the leader and so provide great internal benefit. And that's where, of course, Hitler and Germany's aims came into play. When war finally arrived in September 1939, Italy did not support its ally from the start. Instead, Mussolini made the heroic decision to remain on the sidelines. Mussolini very much wanted to see the way in which the wind was blowing. He was an opportunist like Hitler and didn't want to attach himself to a nation that could possibly, due to its grandiose aims and the variety of nations against him, eventually be defeated. And he didn't want to go down with that particular sinking ship. And then when it becomes very clear in the French campaign that Germany is going to succeed, Germany is going to conquer France, remarkable as that may seem, Mussolini is an opportunist like so many of these guys and sees the opportunity to be at that peace table and to get a sliver of France, a part of France that he's always wanted. As soon as Hitler becomes increasingly successful, he decides it's an opportunity to show his colours. Finally, Mussolini declares war on the Allies. La dichiarazione di guerra è già stata consegnata agli ambassadori d'Italia e di Francia. And straightaway made a mess of things. So Mussolini has announced that he is going to join the war, but he hasn't considered that 40% of his merchant navy is on the high seas or in foreign ports and will immediately be impounded. That will all be lost to the Italians. It was not a great start for the Italians, and it didn't stop there. One of the problems that the Italians have is that they're not made aware that the declaration of war on the Allies is coming. So Mussolini is not just fighting on the Italian-French border, there is now a new border between Italian-occupied Libya and the British possessions in Egypt. And one of the first manoeuvres that takes place sees British forces instituting a short raid into Italian positions. So a large number of Italian prisoners take place in the initial days of this war, partly because those men don't know they're at war. To add to this, Hitler was keeping all his war plans secret from his Allies, under the guise that it would spoil the surprise. Mussolini was not at all happy about his obvious relegation to junior partner in the affair. Childlessly contrived a way to pay Hitler back, as he openly put it. Mussolini had wanted Romania, but Hitler had already moved in. But if he couldn't have Romania, in a typically bratty fit of jealousy, he ordered his troops to strike out through Albania to try for Greece instead, without informing the Germans, of course. That would show him. You know, the Italians, who are vaunted as a great power, send, you know, 200,000 troops into Greece to fight 60,000 Greeks, and they're roundly defeated. They're not only, like, destroyed on the battlefield, but they're chased back into Albania, which they've conquered in 1939, and the Greeks help themselves to a third of Albania. What ensured Hitler was a debacle. The man in Rome shouts encouragement to his troops, proclaims his early victory to the world, and then Greece turns his armies upside down and throws them back at it. Ruth Goldberg in the New York Times... Germany was forced to rush to Italy's rescue, sending in troops to drive out the British and Greek forces. Hitler decided to dispatch one of his most respected gun commanders, Albert Kesselring, to take control in the Mediterranean. There's a great degree of mistrust there. There is not a common sense of commitment to this war. When Mussolini takes the decision to invade Greece, he doesn't tell Hitler. When Hitler takes the decision to invade the Soviet Union, he doesn't tell Mussolini. Now, if you had any kind of common cause, if you had any kind of common alliance, you'd be setting similar objectives, and you'd be working toward those objectives. So when we talk about to what extent is there cooperation, at the most basic level, that cooperation is failing. Meanwhile, things were going south in North Africa for the Italians. In North Africa, they invade Egypt, hoping to take the Suez Canal and destroy British power in the Mediterranean, with over 200,000 troops facing about 40,000 British troops. And they're roundly beaten by the British. And this is the occasion for Anthony Eden's famous quip that never in the history of warfare has so much been surrendered by so many to so few. So they're really a liability. Hitler then decided General Rommel was to be dispatched in an effort to bring some order to the North African theatre. The whole thing proved a massive distraction. As well as a drain on German resources, the Nazis were wondering what on earth they'd gotten themselves into with the Italians. The fact that Italy couldn't do that job on its own and eventually required increasing German resources was, of course, a great disadvantage to Adolf Hitler and Germany, because just at the time he was invading the Soviet Union and that campaign was developing, he was having to devote more resources. Unfortunately, the Italians didn't have enough strength, enough power, enough capability to win those battles themselves. And so the Germans find themselves drawn into theatres of war that were secondary to them in order to prop up their weak ally. Support for the war effort continued to crumble as officials realised that they were staring at the catastrophic failure of the fascist regime. Overall, we can see it as a failed relationship. But when defeat looked as though it was on the cards for the alliance, certainly in Sicily, that's when the Italian people really realised that Mussolini had led the nation astray. The Allies quickly took Sicily. Now they were ready to move into Europe proper. That invasion, therefore, made the Italian people think, if it's Sicily now, it's going to be the Italian mainland next, pushing into what Churchill called the soft underbelly of Europe. President Roosevelt warns Italy, quit the war now, and urges Italy to revolt against Il Duce. Mussolini came to the reluctant conclusion that the jig was up. The fall of Sicily was the final straw. Mussolini was arrested and imprisoned. With Mussolini banished to the sidelines and the fascist government deposed, his former chief of staff, General Pietro Badoglio, quickly negotiated a surrender to the Allies, allowing the Americans to land in southern Italy. Turns out, the US was the friend they needed all along. Hitler, meanwhile, sprang into action, launching the occupation of Italy. He ordered a daring rescue of Mussolini from his isolated mountain Erie. Benito Mussolini, fallen star of fascism, is liberated by Hitler's parachutists, shown in these captured German films. But despite the dramatic rescue, Mussolini was doomed. He'd now been reduced to leading a puppet German state in the north of Italy. On October the 14th, 1943, Italy's new leader, General Pietro Badoglio, declares war on Germany, throwing in his lot with the Allies and plunging the country into civil war. Italian troops finally cooperated with the Allies to drive the Germans out of Rome. Italy was at last feeling the winds of change, from tyranny to freedom. ...enforcers received the surrender of German troops in Milan. The city controlled by Italian partisans, the Nazis held out in a hotel... In April 1945, with the Allies on his doorstep and partisans on the warpath, Mussolini fled, disguised in a German uniform, trying for the Swiss border. But all that publicity he had craved backfired, his trademark bald head and deeply set jaw giving him away. He was recognized by partisans just a few miles from the border. He was so close to making it to freedom. Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, were shot to death before a firing squad near Lake Como. Together with other executed fascists, his body was hung out in the town square to be publicly humiliated and degraded. When word of this reached Hitler in his Berlin bunker, and with the Russians bearing down on him, he is said to have made a vow, this will never happen to me. Days later, he was dead by his own hand. Hitler's old frenemy had succeeded in one final and fatal influence. Fascist Italy had failed spectacularly, socially, militarily and ideologically, and helped drag their German allies down with them. Through the 1930s, Japanese militaristic goals became more extreme as the drumbeat of fanatic nationalism grew louder. The grand plan for Japan to establish a major Asian empire was driving them further from the West and into the orbit of like-minded Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. Although self-serving and completely independent of Nazi thinking, Hitler could hear the call. He now saw Japan as a power he could do business with. Well, the Anti-Common-Turn Pact was a pact signed by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1936, reflecting the fact that Hitler wanted an ideological document, not a mere military alliance, but an ideological document committing Germany and Japan against the threat of Bolshevism, against Soviet communism. And the Japanese were willing to sign up for this because at the time they were involved in a seven- or eight-year border war with the Soviet Union over who would control the disputed regions of Manchuria and Mongolia. Germany and Japan had, if you like, mutual interests when it comes to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was a huge nation with great potential capability and there is no way that the Germans could ever foresee themselves advancing across tens of thousands of miles. If Japan could attack in the East, put pressure on the Soviet Union in areas that Germany couldn't get to physically, there was a greater opportunity for Germany to bring the Soviet Union to its knees. But events were about to dictate that once again Hitler could not rely on his friends, and they could not rely on him, and the ramifications were to decide the fate of nations. Japanese expansion into Northeast China, bordering Soviet territory, had led to growing tensions. In fact, there have been border clashes, serious border clashes, with thousands of casualties in 1938 and 1939. This is undeclared war between Japan and the Soviet Union, and those contests are won hands down by the Soviet Union. This also then convinces enough people in the Japanese military that a northern strategy is not a good idea, and that in an ongoing war against China, this is the principal war that Japan is fighting. The Japanese had discovered the hard way that the Soviets were superior in numbers as well as in armaments, especially tanks. Meanwhile, an impatient Hitler, tired of waiting for Japan to commit to anything to do with the Soviet Union, signed the very temporary Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Russia as his insurance policy, without telling Japan or Italy. Japan was utterly outraged. They saw this as a complete abandonment of the German-Japanese anti-comintern pact of 1936, when they had resolved to fight together against the menace of Bolshevism. And now you have Hitler saying that he will take no position in a Soviet war elsewhere, that he will not aggress against the Soviet Union. Thus basically setting the Japanese up for failure if the Soviets decide to sort of push this campaign in Mongolia and Manchuria. This is a classic example of Hitler's failure to grasp foreign affairs. And he lost out badly. In April 1941, Japan followed the Germans' lead and signed their own non-aggression pact with the Soviets. Now it was Hitler's turn to be angry. He knew he had a big problem. Hitler often felt betrayed when foreign affairs didn't develop in the way that he had anticipated. He felt that many nations had let him down, not thinking that, of course, they have their own pressures and influences, and they weren't always thinking about what is best for Germany. But there's little doubt that with Japan and the Soviet Union coming together to agree that they wouldn't fight each other, that massively undermined his ability to do what was an absolutely central part of his ideological philosophy, which was to crush the Soviet Union. With the Japanese refusal to play, this gave the Russians some breathing room. They could now be confident the Japanese would not come at them from the east. This allowed them to divert massive numbers of troops to the main game, the Battle of Moscow in September 1941. This was enough to prevent the advance of Germany, and it saved Russia from utter defeat. From here on, Japan and Germany would essentially be allied on paper only. The two powers would be in reality fighting two separate wars. In Tokyo, Premier Tojo made it official. The imperial re-script declaring war has just been promulgated. Hitler had provided himself with so much to do in Europe and in North Africa that he couldn't think outside the realms of Europe. As far as he was concerned, the Japanese were in their theatre of operations, he was in his, and eventually the two might be able to cooperate more significantly together, but that wouldn't happen until the Soviet Union was brought to its knees. Like all Hitler's dealings, it was a relationship characterised by mistrust, resentment and petty jealousies on either side, rather than any sense of shared values or objectives. German alliances are characterised by dysfunction. We see that in the way in which Hitler engages with his allies. He never gets together. There's no supreme command to bring together ideas. There's no free flow of information. He deals with the fellow dictators one-on-one and he can often play them off against each other. That's very much how he constructs his alliances, such as they are. And Hitler did this beautifully with his other European allies. Apart from her so-called best friends, Germany kept strategic company with a number of smaller powers, mainly in East Central Europe, whom Hitler hoped would help him construct a strategic corridor to the east. One of the big points in the Eastern Front is the participation of the Romanians, which are one of the most important powers, and the Hungarians. But the Romanians and the Hungarians have a tremendous degree of antipathy between them. And Hitler's always able to talk about the post-war settlement. And he's always able to talk about whoever serves best in their contribution to the common war effort might just be the one who gets what they want in their own rivalries. In the end, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Croatia and Yugoslavia all joined the Axis powers, either willingly or very reluctantly. They signed for many different reasons. Economic dependence on Germany, protection from the Soviets or just outright fear of the Nazis. But it was a trade-off. Germany was the major power in the area. The small estates provided their natural resources in exchange for Nazi military protection. This proved a drain on Hitler's troops and supplies, which could have been better employed elsewhere. The failings of these smaller partnerships became evident during the crucial Battle of Stalingrad in 1942. By August 23, the Germans were in the suburbs fighting the Russians amongst the rubble. It was then Stalin issued his infamous order, not one step back. He was never going to give up the city that bore his name. To make his point, there were squads stationed just behind his troops to shoot deserters. Meanwhile, Hitler desperately countered by ordering more and more men into the battle. Way more than they could afford. As the fighting reached fever pitch, the Russians came up with their masterstroke. They proposed a massive double encirclement of the entire German 6th Army. Another disastrous failure of Hitler's alliances was about to play out. Germany always had to look at how it used troops from other countries, because they never quite matched the professionalism and the capability of their own homegrown troops. And as a result of that, they were often used as what we'd call lines of communication troops, those that weren't necessarily doing the fighting, but were doing the supporting of the fighting, or they were used to hold the flanks. And, of course, the Soviets knew that. They recognised that there were certain weaknesses within this broader German alliance that they were fighting, and that they could exploit them. On the snowy, foggy morning of November the 19th, the Soviets struck. 1.2 million Soviet soldiers drove into the weakly guarded flanks. A two-pronged pincer attack, led by Soviet tanks, smashed right into the hapless Hungarians, Germans, Romanians, and Italians. They folded quickly, and the entire German army was surrounded. It was now a freezing, living hell for the German soldiers. But Hitler demanded they fight to the last, condemning them to almost certain death. With supplies cut off, it was hopeless. January the 31st, 1943, Field Marshal Paulus disobeyed Hitler, and surrendered, together with the remaining 91,000 skeletal troops. Only 6% of these would survive. The total Axis losses, Germans, Romanians, Italians, and Hungarians, are estimated to have been 800,000. It was the psychological turning point of the war. As German prisoners shuffled out of Stalingrad, an old Russian colonel was heard to yell, this is how Berlin is going to look. It became clear, in most people's minds, Stalingrad signified that Germany was going to lose the war. The Nazis had suffered not only its first major defeat, but one that essentially paved the way for the collapse of the Third Reich. It was a failure of leadership, a failure of planning, and a failure of partnership and alliance. At the heart of the Nazi credo was an utterly misguided belief in their own superiority, which meant them incapable of mutual trust, and of forging alliances that could be anything other than self-serving. But Germany, Italy, and Japan all failed each other and their people. And so, they failed to win the war.