"Without consideration of traditions and prejudices, Germany must find the courage to gather our people and their strength for an advance along the road that will lead this people from its present restricted living space to new land and soil, and hence also free it from the danger of vanishing from the earth or of serving others as a slave nation. The National Socialist Movement must strive to eliminate the disproportion between our population and our area - viewing this latter as a source of food as well as a basis for power politics - between our historical past and the hopelessness of our present impotence."
- Adolf Hitler
Mein Kampf, 1925
Hitler's invasion of Russia steers Germany toward a "nuclear solution"
"We have only to kick in the front door and the whole rotten Russian edifice will come tumbling down." |
On June 22, 1941, Germany launched "Operation Barbarossa" invading Russia. Hitler wrongly believed that he would quickly subdue the Soviets due to his "Blitzkrieg" successes in Europe and the Russian's failure against Finland in 1940.
"In 1942, German industry was already stretched to the limit, the German Army had suffered serious reverses in Russia in the winter of 1941-42, and the enemy air superiority was beginning to make itself felt." |
Hitler's Secret Science, 2010
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Albert Speer became Germany's Minister of Armaments and War Production in February 1942. Speer wanted new weapons because of Germany's failure in Russia.
"I met regularly for lunch with General Friedrich Fromm..... In the course of one of these meetings, at the end of April 1942, he remarked that our only chance of winning the war lay in developing a weapon with totally new effects. He said he had contacts with a group of scientists who were on the track of a weapon which could annihilate whole cities, perhaps throw the Island of England out of the fight. Fromm proposed that we pay a joint visit to these men."
- Albert Speer
Inside the Third Reich, 1970