INTERVIEW / JONATHAN DIMBLEBY
“When I was reading the detail of people’s experiences, on both sides, I recoiled in horror”
ROB ATTAR: The subtitle of your book is How Hitler Lost the War. Is it fair to say that these six months were the decisive episode of the entire conflict?
JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: When you look at what happened in Barbarossa and see how the situation was by the end of the year, it is inconceivable that Hitler could have prevailed against the Soviet Union. The Wehrmacht was very effective and efficient but it did not have sustainable resources to last a long struggle. Conversely, the Red Army was very weak at the start – not in terms of numbers but in terms of efficiency, readiness and capability. But by the end of the year, although it had suffered hugely and disproportionately, the Soviet Union was relatively stronger. And that gap was going to grow. Hitler, in my view – and I am not alone in this – lost the war in 1941.
How far back does the story begin? Can we see the origins of Barbarossa in the 1920s when Hitler was writing Mein Kampf?
I started the book thinking that I might be able to just go back a little way, to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. But then I found myself going back further and further out of curiosity, to understand it better. And I think that you have to start with the First World War in terms of the
