Fall of France Made Holocaust in the USSR Inevitab

Theoretically, Stalin could have prevented the Holocaust if he had pre-empted Hitler and attacked German army before the latter invaded the USSR. That could have happened had France not fell to German onslaught in the summer of 1940 (exactly one year prior to commencement of Operation Barbarossa).

In this case, Hitler would have had neither time nor resources to pre-empt Soviet attack on his armed forces. Fall of France gave him both – and made the Holocaust in the USSR (“Holocaust by Bullets”) inevitable.

The latter became inevitable due to key National-Socialist dogma of the existential racial war between Jewish and Aryan races. Embodied correspondingly in “Judeo-Bolshevist” USSR and National-Socialist Third Reich.

Due to existential racial nature of that war (the first was true while the second was not), the outbreak of the “hot” war between the two would have immediately made Nazis snap – and commence the total annihilation of Jews under German control.

Wehrmacht pre-empted the Red Army because it was a far superior military machine… in fact, superior to every army on the planet. And, of course, Fall of France gave Hitler time and other resources to use these advantages to the fullest extent possible. Consequently, Fall of France became a major step on the Road to Holocaust (first in the Soviet Union and subsequently in Europe).

Was the Fall of France inevitable? The answer is a resounding “Yes”. There were many reasons for this catastrophic disaster but the primary one was that Germany passionately wanted to fight – and France did not (neither military nor civilians nor the French government). Subconsciously, even occupation by Germany for them was better than devastation caused by war on the French soil.

There were other reasons, of course. British and French intelligence failed miserably – and when it didn’t, political and military leadership did not utilize it properly in their decision-making.

German military doctrine of “blitzkrieg” turned out to be far superior to the French doctrine that for all practical purposes got stuck in the times of the First Great War. German system of command and control was far more flexible and gave far more decision-making power to low-level commanders – an absolute must in a fast-moving, heavily motorized war.

In Wehrmacht, there was a far better synergy between infantry, tanks, artillery and air force… oh, and they had their famous Stukas (dive bombers). In addition, German soldiers, NCOs, officers and generals were simply much better.