Lecture 24
To what extent did diplomacy during the war play a role in the war’s outcome?
Diplomacy made a very bold impact on the outcome of the war, not only did it shape the outcome of the war but it had reasons of starting the war itself. The wars outcome was mainly influenced by the mistakes that nations had made prior to the start of the war. Most nations suffered from a chain reaction of negative events to their societies ever since prior to the war ever even starting. Why? War is never beneficial to anyone and is very expensive for a country to participate in such a battle. But diplomacy was a big issue. Diplomacy is capable of either keeping the people of a nation at peace or at keeping these people at total war, as we do see in this time-period.
Many issues that lead to the outcome of the war started from things like the Anschluss which was an annexation of Austria by Hitler into the German Reich. Many conferences were called upon ranging up from the Casablanca conference in 1943 up till 1945 in the Yalta conference which generalized the favors and deals that were wanted and made during and after the war. Events during the war for example the Munich agreement changed the way people viewed Germany and other nations and this cause hidden alliances.
Selfish decisions were starting to be made, for example the biggest contributor for this type of issue was Stalin. Stalin was a part of the big three, including Roosevelt and Churchill.
But shortly after their first few meetings Roosevelt and Churchill were replaced by Truman and
Attlee, this gave an upper hand for Stalin, where he could change the promises he had made with
the other two now that he was the only constant in the Big Three. The plan was to use British side and some force to take out Germany out. Stalin however was preparing his own defenses and had his own plans for taking over Germany himself and tok all of possibilities of Germany attacking the Eastern Front.
The time soon came when Germany tried to take over the city of Kursk with their regular technique of trying to surround the first line of troops and cutting them off from their supplies.
The soviet forces however were able to escape from this, and moved to the Eastern side which was completely safe from any type of German invasion. The Soviet troops really had the upperhand on the Germans in this region. The extreme cold winters caused many of the German troops to die of the cold and also sicknesses, the Soviets did not even fire at the Germans, instead they retreated back into the Eastern side destroying all available food and shelters so the Germans would starve and freeze to death.
Diplomatic decisions like these of Stalin and Hitler, were very bold to the way the war ended, if it was not for Stalin’s background plans, Germany would have had it very easily.
2. Analyze the military, economic, and political reasons for Germany’s loss in World War 2.
Germany’s loss during World War 2 was almost completely centered around how Hitler led his troops and the political decisions he made using the military power he had built continuously from the moment he had come to leadership and the way this effected Germany
economically due to the expensive war and reinforcements to the troops that were made. There were many boosts in economy for Germany as much as there were downfalls. Germany was a scientific research leader at that time and brought many new technologies, mostly based on automobiles, tanks, weapons, and armory. These advances brought power to Germany and gave
Hitler a lot of confidence in his invasions.
