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Research on the Gain and Loss of German’s Geostrategy in World War Ⅱ

Author: XuLiang
Tutor: XiaJiTing
School: Shandong Normal University
Course: World History
Keywords: Geostrategic Heart Edge Buffer zone Sea Power Land Rights National self-determination Two fronts
CLC: K516
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2011
Downloads: 275
Quote: 0
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Abstract

Before World War II in 1939, the geopolitical situation in Europe provided the opportunity for Hitler to launch World War II. After the World War I, with the collapse of the four empires, Ottoman, Habsburg, Romanov and Hohenzollern, a number of small countries emerged between the major powers of Europe according to "national self-determination" principle. These small countries became the buffer zone between France, Germany and Russia, which eased the great pressure on Germany from the surrounding large countries. The emerging small countries around Germany didn’t dare to ally with Britain and France for fear of Germany, which is conducive for Germany’s expansion.Germany launched the world war aiming to win the world domination. So Germany took two strategic steps: The first step was to win Europe’s "marginal zone ", which was the interface between land area and sea area. The "marginal zone" was composed by a coastal land and the sea area close to the land. There were two aspects, sea and land, so it was necessary to confront two forces from the two areas. In the conflicting world, the confrontation between the dominator of sea and the dominator of land determined that the "marginal zone" inevitably became the area that they fought for. Germany captured the "marginal zone" of Western Europe in order to beat the strong sea power Britain. The second step was the attack on the "the heart area" of Eurasian continent, which was a concept of geopolitics meaning the strong land power Russia according to the geographical features.In modern geo-strategic situation in Europe, Britain and Russia in the edge of Europe had greater geographical advantages than France and Germany in the central area. From the strategic situation, the countries in the edge could avoid fighting on the two fronts and concentrate on one direction, while it was often difficult to avoid the two fronts and concentrate on one direction for the countries in the middle.In order to defeat the two main rivals, Britain and Russia, Germany had to avoid fighting on the two fronts. As Poland had formed a military alliance with Britain and France, Germany had to annihilate Poland in order to achieve the first strategic step. Next, Germany launched an offensive on the Western Front, making a series of brilliant victories, but Germany did not make Britain into submission. In this case, German rashly attacked the Soviet Union, and finally put itself in a predicament of fighting on the two fronts. Germany repeated the mistakes of World War I.The fundamental reason Germany failed to beat Britain was losing the mastery of the sea. Although Germany was close to North Sea and Baltic Sea and had geographical conditions for development of the Navy, it located in central Europe and among France, Russia and other leading powers. So the surrounding strategic environment was very bad. For survive, Germany had to develop the army using the main force, in order to resist the invasion of big powers and to protect national security. At the same time, Germany could take offensive posture and preemptive measures to win the so-called "living space”. But Germany’s economic power was limited after all, so giving priority to the development of the land army inevitably limited the development of the Navy. Therefore, the German naval force was relatively weak comparing with the British Navy which was developed preferentially. This made Germany lose the mastery of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean sea. Britain blockaded the sea by virtue of the mastery of the seas so that Germany could not get some strategic materials needed from overseas. At the same time, Britain continuously got the materials supply from expansive British colonies and the United States, which boosted up the confidence of British to resist German invasion.For the Soviet Union, Hitler could not destroy it either. In the Soviet-German War, Germany had made remarkable victory and Hitler thought that the Soviet Union would be collapsed. Unexpectedly, the Soviet Union did not collapse, and the resistance force became stronger. What was the reason? It was mainly due to the material assistance provided by Britain and America who controlled the sea. So the Soviet Union could stabilize the situation early in the war and carried on long-term war.

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