Hitler's peace offers to Britain and Barbarossa

[Marcelo Jenisch]

How the German peace offers to Britain can be viewed, if accepted, in conjunction with Barbarossa? Hitler being at war with Britain allowed a "camouflage" for launch Barbarossa, what perhaps would not be the case otherwise.

[LWD]

What peace offers?

[Jabberwocky]

What peace offers?

Depends on which conspiracy theories you believe.

There were certainly offers of peace in 1939 and 1940, although how serious Hitler/Germay was about them - given his history of broken treaties and promises at the time - is up for debate.

There were some peace feelers put out by Germany via Switzerland in early 1941. Hess' 1941 flight to Scotland was for a peace offer, although whether this was official or wishful thinking on his part I dont think will ever be fully resolved. German leadership was fairly fanciful about the attitude of the British, especially considering that they'd spent most of the latter part of 1940 bombing them.

Interestingly, I was looking at some old press clippings from late June 1941 that were speculating that Germany had put out peace feelers to Great Britain, on the provisio that they declared war against the Soviet Union. Similar stories were repeated in November of the same year.

[phylo_roadking]

There were certainly offers of peace in 1939 and 1940, although how serious Hitler/Germay was about them - given his history of broken treaties and promises at the time - is up for debate.

Surely the point is how serious the British felt them to be?

There were some peace feelers put out by Germany via Switzerland in early 1941. Hess' 1941 flight to Scotland was for a peace offer, although whether this was official or wishful thinking on his part I dont think will ever be fully resolved.

Two years ago a (Major) Karlheinz Pintsch, apparently Hess' ADC, said that Hitler had known all about Hess' flight...on a plausible deniability basis if it went wrong - which of course it did