We can use Hitler's invasion of the USSR to help us understand and comprehend how to do social science and history. First off, we need to note that there are facts: fact Hitler invaded the USSR in 1941. That is not an opinion. It is a fact and no amount of bs can change the fact of when Hitler invaded the USSR.
Social scientists and historians don't stop at the facts. We want to try to understand, for instance why Hitler invaded the USSR. There are five valid empirical strategies by which we can try to answer the question why Hitler invaded the USSR: the economic approach, the approach that emphasises politics, the approach that emphasises culture, the approach that emphasises demography, and the approach that emphasis geography. All five of these empirical interpretive strategies are what Max Weber called ideal types. What he meant by that is that we can isolate them for analytical purposes but in the real world some or all of them interact and impact human life and human society often at the same time.
So let's use these approaches to ask why Hitler invaded the USSR. Demographic argument: Hitler and the Nazis believed that they were the superior race and that Slavs and others, the Russians are Slavs, were inferior. Hitler, it can be argued, believed the war would be over quickly because Germans and Nordics were the superior race, a superior race that inferior Slavs could not resist. Take note here of the fact that the belief in racial inferiority or superiority is cultural, it is, in other words, a belief. It is not a fact. Beliefs, as such, we can conclude from this, can impact behaviour and culture and demography interacted to help produce Nazi culture and ideology.
Geographic argument: the USSR was close to Germany and it lay on a plain between the Netherlands and the USSR. This geographical fact, the plain between the Netherlands and Russia, promoted wars in that part of Europe again and again over the centuries.
Political argument: Germany and the USSR were great powers. As Great powers there were tensions between the two as there always are between great powers. Cf. the tensions between the US and USSR after WWII. Note that here one can add in the cultural tensions, such as the Nazi hatred of Communism, which they regarded as inherently Jewish.
Economic argument: Germany did not have much oil. The USSR did. Hitler, was thus, out to conquer the oil fields near Baku so he could pursue a war effort in which oil was essential.
Cultural argument: As I noted, the Nazis believed that there were superior races, like the Nordic race, and inferior races, like the Slavs and Blacks. No group was more inferior or more deviant in Nazi culture and ideology than Jews. Given this, one can compellingly argue that Hitler invaded the USSR and Eastern Europe because that is where the Jews geographically were and that he attacked the USSR because he intended to bring the final solution to bear on the Jewish question once and for all in the areas of Europe where most of Europes Jews were. And that is why he invaded the USSR despite having a treaty with that nation.
As I said, there can be multiple factors at work in human social life. Economics is always at work. Politics is generally at work. Demography is often a factor. Geography is often a factor. Culture is always a factor. I tend to emphasise cultural factors in my work while remaining cognisant of the fact the economics, politics, demography, and geography are also generally impactful as well. Why? Because while Hitler's army was being surrounded in the USSR he used the trains to send Jews and others to the death camps.
By the way, there is one empirical argument that I think has little or no validity, the one which suggests that Hitler was out for world domination. Hitler was actually out to get lebensraum, living space, in Poland. He was out to dominate Europe. And more than anything else he was out to eliminate the Jews, decadents, and the disabled, with the Jews being Nazi enemy number one. This means that the notion that is so prominent in Western demagoguery and discourse these days, the Hitler as James Bond villain out to take over the world ideology, isn't a useful metaphor or analogy to apply to other supposed megalomaniacal Hitler's who have followed in the master's footsteps.
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