not share General Thomas' anxiety over the danger of a world war, especially since he had now got the Soviet Union on his side" (consequent the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact). Not only was Thomas worried about an attack provoking the British and French but so were Generals von Brauchitsch, Colonel-General Halder, and Quartermaster General von Stülpnagel, yet Hitler refused to countenance any delays or reluctance from his military staff about his plans and more earnestly pushed forward the attack despite their sound arguments otherwise. During the planning phase of Operation Barbarossa, General Thomas' pragmatic and realistic nature once again gripped him as he thought a full-scale war with the Soviet Union should be delayed until the logistical concerns were remedied. Along said lines, Thomas informed Colonel-General Franz Halder, then Chief of the OKH General Staff, that the attack on the Soviet Union would experience logistical delays due to the fact that Russian railways were of a different gauge than German ones. Thomas also warned Halder of the insufficiency of German transport vehicle tires for the task ahead of them, and most significantly, Thomas revealed to Halder that they (the Germans) only had two months worth of fuel oil and petrol to support the advancing assault. Inexplicably, Halder did not convey this information to Hitler and when Thomas attempted to do this himself, General Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel stepped in and prevented the report from going any further. Reassurances soon made their way to General Thomas when no less than Reichsminister Hermann Göring told him not to worry about using up Germany's resources since "they would soon be masters of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands", likewise adding that they would plunder all the available resources in the "captured territories". In November 1942, Thomas resigned from the Defence Economy and Armament Office. Albert Speer and his Armament Ministry, meanwhile, had taken over almost all the expertise relating to armament issues. Of note, during the autumn of 1943 (Paulus surrendered at Stalingrad in January 1943), Hitler asked for a projection over the progress the Germans might expect to make in the near term. Chief of the Operations Staff for the OKW, Colonel-General Alfred Jodl submitted the report to Hitler as commanded, but Hitler became irate when the estimates were given to him, reflecting back sardonically on earlier calculations made by General Thomas who "rated the Soviet war potential as high." As a result of the