The output of large parts of the German war economy was, if not quite in crisis, then certainly lagging by the autumn of 1941. It had reached a point where it was struggling to meet the current demands of the field army in Russia fighting in Russia, let alone those raised by the planned large-scale expansion of the Luftwaffe. Against such a backdrop, the idea of escalating the war by dragging another great power into it gives legitimacy to the view put forward by some historians that Hitler was seeking his self-immolation.

A close examination of the sources, however, indicates that Hitler had reached the conclusion that far from having hit a glass ceiling the German economy still possessed considerable slack which could be mobilised by rationalising designs and optimising the allocation of labour and raw materials. As a precedent, he could point to the months of January-April 1940 where a last-minute spurt in productivity had provided much of the ammunition and tanks needed for the campaign in the West. It goes without saying that this forecast mistakenly assumed a marked decrease in the intensity of the fighting in Russia on account of the fall of the Donbass industrial area.