What if Hitler had captured Moscow?

Añadido: 2026-06-04

[00:00:00]Even though Hitler didn't attack the USSR until 1941, after he'd already conquered pretty much all of continental Europe, the Soviet Union had always been at the very top of his list. Communists were his number one enemy. Operation Barbar Roa kicked off in June of 41, and while it ultimately failed, there was a moment when it came terrifyingly close to succeeding. If Germany had managed to take Moscow in late 1941, the entire war could have gone in a completely different direction for the Soviet Union. So, in this video, we're going to talk about what would have happened if Hitler had actually taken Moscow. Let's start with Hitler's military plans for the Soviet Union. As I mentioned, conquering the USSR was one of the core priorities of the Third Reich way back in his book Minecomf written in 1924 to25. Hitler made it very clear that Soviet territories needed to be seized and colonized by Germans. When he came to power, those plans didn't change one bit. But the political reality in Europe did push him into a temporary alliance with the USSR in 1939 when the non-aggression pact was signed. Both Hitler and Stalin knew perfectly well that this partnership had an expiration date. The actual invasion plan started taking shape in 1940, right after France fell. Hitler had knocked out the biggest player on the continent, quickly dealt with the smaller countries, and was trying to either bring Britain over to his side or conquer it outright, though that never worked out for him, getting back to the USSR.

[00:01:47]The invasion date kept getting pushed back. It was originally set for May of 41, but finally launched in June.

[00:01:55]Hitler, true to form, was banking on a Blitzkrieg victory. German generals initially thought they could crush Stalin in just four weeks, though they later revised that to a more realistic four to five months. It's worth pointing out that both Hitler and his commanders massively underestimated the Soviet Union.

[00:02:16]Hitler genuinely believed that once the war started, barely anyone would fight for the Soviets and the country would just collapse into anarchy. This underestimation came from a few things.

[00:02:30]The purges of top military leadership in 1938, the Tukvky affair being the big one, the Spanish Civil War, where the pro-fascist forces won and Sovietbacked Republicans lost. And most importantly, the Winter War against Finland. The Soviets did win that one, but their casualties were several times higher than Finland's. All of this convinced German leadership that a quick, clean victory over the USSR was totally achievable. And honestly, they came incredibly close to pulling it off at the Battle of Moscow. So, let's get to the main question. What would have happened if the Germans had actually taken the city? Taking Moscow was the centerpiece of Hitler's plan, and it would have essentially meant the end of the USSR in this war. Moscow wasn't just the capital in a symbolic sense. It was the strategic heart of the country.

[00:03:35]Losing it would almost certainly have led to the complete collapse of the Soviet Union. Sure, there would have been continued resistance, but it's hard to imagine the USSR holding on for long.

[00:03:48]Under plan Barbarosa, German forces would have pushed deeper into Soviet territory and forced a surrender. The plan was to occupy the entire European part of the USSR up to the Eural Mountains and push all the Slavic people into what they called Asian Russia.

[00:04:07]So what would have become of the USSR?

[00:04:11]The territory was set to be divided into five Reich commisseriats, each headed by a Germanapp appointed elite. The exact borders weren't really a major concern for the Nazis since the whole point was to colonize the land and push out the native population, but we'll get to that. On the resource side of things, to keep fighting Britain and the US, Hitler expected America to enter the war in 42, the Third Reich needed an enormous amount of raw materials, and the Soviet lands were supposed to provide exactly that. The most prized asset was the fertile agricultural land in the western USSR, basically Ukraine and Bellarus. The plan was to use that land to feed the German army and civilian population. And to make that happen, the Nazis developed one of the most inhumane policies imaginable, literally called the hunger plan. Under it, all food resources would be stripped from local populations.

[00:05:12]Every last bit of agricultural produce shipped out of the region. The local people would be left with the bare minimum calories to survive. In practice, this was already being partially implemented in occupied territories. In 1941, Soviet PS were given a ration of 900 kilo calories per day, while Jews received just 420, essentially a slow death sentence. In Poland, it was even more brutal. 699 calories for Poles and just 184 for Jews. The plan was never fully enforced everywhere simply because there weren't enough people to monitor it all.

[00:05:55]It was really only implemented fully in the ghettos where movement was tightly controlled. As for other resources, oil was the big one, specifically the oil fields in the Caucasuses. Germany was constantly running low on fuel, and Romania was basically its only real supplier at the time. Capturing the USSR would have solved that problem overnight. And beyond food and oil, the Soviet Union had countless other resources the Germans would have put to use in their future wars. Now, let's get to the most important and most disturbing part. What would have happened to the people living there? As most people know, Hitler's view of Slavic people was deeply hostile and the general plan Ost called for mass displacement and extermination of the Soviet population. Part of that was the hunger plan we already talked about. It wasn't just about redirecting resources to Germany. It was also a tool for getting rid of what the Nazis considered unnecessary people. According to these plans, only about 14 million Slavs would be allowed to remain in the European part of the former USSR, kept alive to serve as laborers for the Germans. The full plan was supposed to be carried out over 30 years. Germans would colonize the land and essentially become the land owners with the remaining Slavic population in complete servitude. As for everyone else, there were a few different fates on the table. Some would be deported to Asian Russia, where the Nazis had no interest in settling because the land was largely inhospitable. The majority, though, were simply slated for extermination by various means. Starvation, mass shootings, you name it. Up to 80% of all Slavic people were to be eliminated. The third option was Germanization, a selective process applied to groups deemed to have Aryan blood or be carriers of European culture. The Baltic peoples were the prime candidates for this given their cultural proximity to Germans. Some Russians, Ukrainians, and Bellarusians might also have qualified.

[00:08:16]As for the rest of the world, Hitler's ambitions didn't stop at Europe. His vision of a new order covered pretty much every continent. After defeating the USSR, he planned to push into British India and seize the Middle East.

[00:08:32]Africa was on the list, too, though he didn't plan to actually settle Germans there. Much of the Mediterranean was earmarked for Italy. Japan would get East Asia and Oceanania. Though some of Hitler's generals saw Japan as a temporary ally that didn't quite fit the racial purity doctrine. Honestly, Hitler's plans for the rest of the world could fill an entire video on its own.

[00:09:00]So to wrap things up, empa.

[00:09:04]If Moscow had fallen, the USSR would most likely have lost the Second World War. The conquered lands would have fueled Germany's rise to even greater power. The local population would have been systematically exterminated and the territory of the Soviet Union would have been resettled by Germans.