The assumption was clearly that the Communist regime was weaker and that the initial blow struck by the Wehrmacht would be far more dramatic. The racist assumptions built into this axiom of German planning are obvious. It was not, however, devoid of all rationality. Expressed most succinctly in terms of per capita GDP, there was a major developmental difference between Germany and the Soviet Union. According to the best modern estimates, German per capita GDP was two and a half times that in the Soviet Union in 1940. On this basis there was good reason to think that the huge quantitative
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