ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the problems of technology and strategic doctrine, and examines how these were to be squared with particular national aims, power, and geo-strategic conditions. In the Second World War, the controversies of the interwar period regarding both national policy and strategic doctrine were dramatically viewed as struggles between prescience and folly. Total mobilization and a cohesive Volksgemeinscahft were deemed essential. Indeed, the total mobilization and Volksgemeinschaft were regarded as essential but insufficient to cope with Germany’s political-strategic dilemmas. The Soviet case offers instructive comparison and contrast to the German, because the Soviet Union’s strategic conditions were in many ways similar to, but in many–very different from, those of Germany. Although the Soviet economy and society–and consequently the armed forces as well–were still half-backward, these forces had at their disposal huge fleets of aircraft and land vehicles.
