So Hitler's position in 1940/1941 is not a good position ruined by foolish decisions, but in fact a deceptively weak position that is almost certainly doomed, leading to insane gambles that only make it worse.

The catastrophic mistake was having a war, a result of the worse mistake of being a Nazi.

But that's very literally looking at a plan which requires Nazis to not butcher their way through disfavored ethnic groups - it is a plan that could only have worked if Hitler had not been a Nazi and if he hadn't been a Nazi he wouldn't have started the war in the first place.

The basic calculus wasn't fatal instantly, but it had to be fatal *eventually* the question was simply how.

His only lever to end the blockade was a U-Boat campaign, something that would very obviously eventually bring the USA into the war, as it had in 1917 and was doing again in '40 and '41.

Going to war with Britain had meant severing Germany from basically all global commerce except on land via the USSR.

Bombing London functionally guaranteed that British resistance would be implacable and Hitler had functionally zero chance of breaking the British blockade any time soon.

Wichtig fand ich diese Sätze:
»Adenauer hat die Nationalsozialisten unterschätzt, er verkannte den rassenideologischen & revolutionären Anspruch dieser Partei … Er musste lernen, dass die Feinde der Demokratie die demokr. Spielregeln nicht honorieren.«

Müssen wir das jedesmal wieder neu lernen?