Cook
Banned
This was inspired by the question asked in this previous thread: https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=298242&highlight=Axis
You are correct; a longer lasting Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was entirely possible. In fact, if not for a single unlikely event, the pact would probably have lasted for at least several more years.
Chapter 1: The making and (un)breaking of a pact.
Prior to Hitler’s accession to power, Germany and the Soviet Union had an extremely close, mutually beneficial trade and defence relationship. Both nations were international pariahs at the end of the First World War, so to overcome their mutual isolation they’d signed the Treaty of Rapallo in 1922, and followed it up with the Treaty of Berlin in 1926. Under these agreements diplomatic and trade links were re-established and each state publicly undertook to remain neutral if the other was ever again at war with a third party; the unstated but obvious potential third parties being the British and French Empires.
In addition to these public guarantees of neutrality, there was a secret military relationship that saw close ties between the two nation’s army general staffs, the joint development of tanks and armoured warfare doctrine and army exercises out of sight in the Russian hinterland. There were also joint military facilities in Russia for the development of poison gases and new airforce fighters and bombers - all banned to the Germans by the Treaty of Versailles. Nor was this a purely one-way street: Stalin’s own brother-in-law, Paval Alliluyev was one of the Red Army officers who travelled to Berlin to work with the Germans. [1]
Nor did this cosy relationship immediately end when Hitler became German Chancellor. Soviet officials assured the German foreign office of continued Soviet friendship despite the change of government, and made no comment when the German Communist Party, the largest in Europe, was liquidated by the Nazis. It was only in late 1933, in the face of continued attacks by the German Ministry of Propaganda on the Soviet Union, that the military relationship between the two states was reluctantly ended and German officers expelled from Russia. Even then the Soviets persisted in efforts to return to the previous cosy relationship with Germany. It was only with the signing of the German-Polish Pact in 1934 that Soviet efforts were abandoned. (The Pact also saw the Soviet General Staff under Marshall Tukhachevsky begin plans to counter an invasion of the Soviet Union by a combined German and Polish army.) [2]
Following the breakdown of relations with Germany, the Soviet Union joined the League of Nations. The rhetoric of global revolution was abandoned, along with the attacks on the British Empire that had been a constant Soviet propaganda theme in the 1920s and the USSR became the foremost proponent of Collective Security in its efforts to form a combined front with the previously demonised bourgeoisie capitalist democracies against the spread of fascism. But Chamberlain’s rebuff of Soviet attempts to be represented at the Munich conference, combined with the half-hearted Anglo-French efforts to negotiate a joint alliance with the Soviet Union during 1939 convinced Stalin that Chamberlain was not serious and would not come to the Russia’s assistance if Hitler attacked them without also attacking the west. [3] Even if the British were seriously willing to go to war against Germany, in mid-1938 they had available to deploy in Europe only ‘two divisions immediately and two more within six months’, hardly much of a help against a Wehrmacht that could already field more than eighty divisions! [4]
Convinced that war in Europe was rapidly becoming inevitable, Stalin decided to abandon Collective Security and reach an understanding with Hitler. Foreign Commissar Maxim Litvinov, the foremost champion of security ties with the democracies and opposition to Hitler, was replaced by Vyacheslav Molotov in May 1939 and discrete diplomatic feelers were put out, signalling to the Germans that the Soviets wanted to improve the relationship with Berlin. That Litvinov’s demotion saw the departure of last remaining senior Jewish member of the Soviet government at a time when Stalin was looking for better relations with the Nazis was no coincidence. [5]
Hitler for his part began thinking about a new relationship with the Soviet Union at about the same time.
Previously his every foreign policy directive had been intended to prevent the spread of Communism, isolate the Soviet Union and exclude them from European affairs. As far as he was concerned at the time, the most beneficial outcome of the Munich Conference wasn’t so much the acquisition of the Sudeten territory and the effective subjugation of Czechoslovakia; it was the complete diplomatic isolation of the Soviet Union. [6] Although prior to coming to power, Hitler had written about his belief that German territorial expansion had to come at the expense of Russia and the new states in the East, this was seen as very much a long term plan rather than an immediate goal, and a goal that was only going to be commenced after accounts with the west were settled. [7] Hitler’s short term plans, as he explained to his inner circle at the Fuhrer Conference on 7 November 1937, was to conquer Czechoslovakia and Austria, and to use their resources to prepare for war against the French and British sometime around 1943-45. Russia is only mentioned in passing, and only to say that they were unlikely to intervene ‘in view of Japan’s attitude’. [8] The 1943-45 timeframe for war with the west was also repeatedly referred to in discussions with the Italians and specifically, although secretly, mentioned in the 1938 Pact of Steel, while again no mention was made for war against the Soviet Union. [9]
From 1934 to 1939, Hitler has sought to use Poland as a barrier to secure Germany’s eastern borders; he sought to draw the Poles away from their ties with France and to bring them into an anti-communist alliance. This strategy was finally ended by foreign minister Ribbentrop’s ham-fisted efforts and Polish determination to stand apart from both the German and Soviet camps. Incensed at the thought of the loss of face resulting from being frustrated by the Poles, he decided that if they would not join him in an alliance then the Poles would have to be devastatingly and overwhelmingly destroyed, in a manner that would thoroughly convince the other states of Europe that they either fell in line behind Germany or else they too would be destroyed. [10]
The problem for him was that the British and French had, at the eleventh hour, decided that their only option was to embrace Collective Security; otherwise they would have to keep feeding small European nations to satisfy Hitler’s ever growing appetite until they finally ran out of others to give him and found themselves on the menu. As Hitler explained to the Third Reich’s inner circle at the Fuhrer conference on the 23 May, 1939, the invasion of Poland could only be undertaken if the British and French did not get involved: Germany was not ready for a major war. More so, under no circumstances must Germany ever be involved again in a two front war. Not only were the British and French strengthening their defence ties with Poland, but they were also trying to build a European wide coalition to block any further German expansion, one that included the Soviet Union and guaranteed the very two front war that every German leader since Frederick the Great had understood would defeat them. [11]
For Hitler, an alliance with Stalin was the solution to all his problems; in a single stroke he would ruin eight months of Anglo-French diplomatic efforts to build a grand alliance against him. He would neutralise the Soviet Union, thereby guaranteeing his eastern front; without the threat to Germany’s east, ‘the worms of Munich’ wouldn’t dare do anything to aid Poland, they would either abandon the Poles to their fate completely, or make some token gesture that risked nothing and achieved less. In the unlikely event that the British and French did insist on a war despite Soviet neutrality, his new alliance with the USSR would solve Germany’s resources problem and prevent the blockade that had starved Germany in the First World War from working a second time. [12]
For Stalin, the alliance promised a degree of security that the Anglo-French alliance never could; rather than being asked to go to war in defence of a string of hostile border-states who didn’t want anything to do with the Soviet Union, he was being offered them on a platter. Moscow would recover all of the territories lost since the start of the First World War. It would also greatly advance the development of the Soviet Union; raw materials which the Soviets had in abundance would be exchanged for manufactured goods that Soviet industry didn’t have the capacity to produce, along with detailed plans and technical advice to improve their industry and infrastructure. [13]
Both men saw the other as ‘someone they could make a deal with’ and both men privately expressed a great deal of admiration for the other. [14] Hitler saw Stalin as 'a man of stature who towered above the democratic figures of the Anglo-Saxon powers.’ [15] For Stalin the mutual admiration ended on 22 June 1941, but for Hitler it continued to grow as the war continued and turned decisively against Germany. [16]
The claim made by Stalin after the June 1941 invasion, and repeated ever since by his apologists, was that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a purely tactical move to buy time to prepare a defence against the inevitable German attack. But this claim does not stand up to close scrutiny; it is apparent from statements made in the days immediately after the German invasion of Poland that Stalin and Molotov did not expect the destruction of Poland to lead to a wider European war; that they, like Hitler, expected the French and British to do nothing. [17]
Nor did the Soviets remain strictly neutral once the world war had commenced, or adhere purely to the terms of the Pact; Soviet support for Germany went well beyond both in a manner that further undermines Stalin’s claim to just be buying time. If Stalin’s aim was to buy time then the more stubborn resistance that the Anglo-French put up the better, but when the western powers refused to accept the new status quo, Soviet propaganda threw all of its weight behind Germany. According to soviet propaganda, it wasn’t Hitler that was responsible for starting the war and for the war continuing, it was the British Empire. [18] Stalin broadcast a statement that “the war is not in defence of democracy, but is in fact an attack upon National-Socialism.” The Communist International directed all affiliated Communists, Socialists and trade unions to oppose continued ‘imperialist war efforts’; in America, Socialists and trade unionists added their voices to the isolationists opposed to aiding the British war effort. [19] In France, where the Communists and Workers International commanded more than a third of the vote, the damage to morale in both industry and the army was considerable and forced Premier Daladier to outlaw the French Communist Party and ban their newspapers. [20] After the Nazis occupied Paris the Communist newspaper proved to be so enthusiastically pro-German that the German military governor of the city allowed it to be printed and sold openly. [21]
The Soviets did not limit their support to propaganda; in October 1939 they also allowed the Germans to establish a floating U-boat replenishment base, Basis Nord: ships were anchored in sheltered waters in the Motovsky Gulf, north of Murmansk, for U-boats to tie up alongside and take on torpedoes, supplies and fuel. At a time when German U-boats had limited range in the North Atlantic, and were restricted to operating out of Kiel and Bremerhaven, Basis Nord greatly extended their potential range. (The Germans conducted such operations in Spanish ports during that nation's 'non-belligerent' period, mostly in Cadiz.) This was a violation of international rules for neutrality and could have led to direct retaliation by the British and French if they had known of it. During the invasion of Norway a fleet tender sortied for Basis Nord to supply the German ships escorting the invasion force to Narvik. Following the German invasion of Norway, Basis Nord became redundant and was abandoned.
On the 10th of May 1940 the Wehrmacht attacked westwards. Within a week they had achieved a decisive strategic breakthrough and in six weeks they had forced the capitulation of France and driven the British from the continent of Europe. As far as Hitler was concerned, the war was over and he had won it. Italian Foreign Minister Count Ciano noted in his diary on June 18th that ‘Hitler is now the gambler who has made a big scoop and would like to get up from the table risking nothing more.’ [22] He took time off to tour the First World War battlefields where he’d served and on the morning of June 23rd made a lighting visit to Paris, spending four hours in the near-deserted city – the only time in his life that he ever visited Paris. Hitler’s thoughts were on the future – the post-war future. On the evening of June 24th, Hitler explained his views to his closest associates:
“The war in the West is over. France has been defeated, and with England I shall reach an understanding very shortly. There will remain our settling of our accounts with the East. But that is a task that opens global problems, such as the relationship with Japan and the balance of power in the Pacific, problems that we may not be able to tackle perhaps for ten years; perhaps I shall have to leave that to my successor. Now we’ll have our hands full, for years, to digest and consolidate what we have achieved in Europe.” [23]
As a first stage to returning Germany to something like a peace-time footing, Hitler ordered the demobilisation of 30 army divisions; a force equal to the entire army that the British were then desperately trying to train and equip. [24] There was so much already to do without considering taking on even more; while the Nazis has been in power since 1933, the National Socialist revolution had really only got rolling in 1938 with the removal of the last remaining Nationalists from government administration. In six months of war the territories controlled by the Nazis (initially within the Third Reich itself and the Protectorates of Bohemia-Moravia and Slovakia, and now including the conquered territories) had gone from containing less than a quarter of a million Jews to having more than three and a half million. These would have to be dealt with, preferably by their forced emigration from Europe. [25] There was also the campaign against the churches, which having only just commenced had been forced to be suspended by the outbreak of war (In fact, while officially it had been suspended, in reality it had been thrown over to the Gauleiters to administer, consequently in some regions it was reduced while in others it was greatly accelerated. Nowhere was it actually suspended) as well as a vast number of other plans to completely revolutionise German society. Germany and occupied Europe would need to be thoroughly reorganised along National Socialist lines, a task that could take years. [26]
On the 19th of July 1940, Hitler made an appeal to Britain for peace in a speech at the Kroll Opera House to the Reichstag and the heads of the Wehrmacht and Nazi party. It wasn’t much of an appeal, but then it wasn’t much of a speech; for the first two hours he explained to the audience that included the heads of the most powerful and successful war machine in the world, how he had singlehandedly planned and executed the most audacious strategy in world history, and they’d been allowed to come along for the ride. The last twenty minutes of his speech consisted of his ‘last appeal to universal reason’. Most of it consisted of personal attacks on Churchill, 'my stomach turns when I see such unscrupulous destroyers of entire peoples and states'. [27] It wasn’t that Hitler’s appeal was insincere, there are far too many eyewitness statements and diary entries from his entourage at around that time to doubt that really did want peace with Britain. It’s just that when it came to the British thought processes, Hitler simply didn’t have a clue; an offer to end the war might have elicited a positive response from members of the British parliament and establishment at the time, but a combination of insulting their prime minister and making veiled threats ‘should he be forced to continue the war’ was guaranteed to do the opposite. Goebbels, the Reich’s ‘propaganda genius’, thought it was a fine speech and a reasonable appeal for peace, but then most of Goebbels’ propaganda was about as subtle as a sledgehammer. [28]
When the British declined to see reason Hitler was at a loss, both as to why they were being so stubborn when he was being so reasonable, and what he could do about it. In the conference on the 23 May 1939, Hitler had expressed the belief that Britain could not be invaded [29] and despite enthusiasm from the heads of the army after the fall of France for invasion he still was not completely convinced. He let planning proceed because he didn’t really see any other workable options that would produce a quick result; he had thought before the war that Britain’s essential shipping could be strangled by a combination of U-boat attacks, fast surface raiders (Schnellbootes) and long range air attacks, but this would be a time consuming process and ran the risk of the Americans getting involved. [30] The Kriegsmarine was definitely not keen on a direct invasion, preferring a combination of attacking the Atlantic shipping lanes and a strategy of cutting off the Mediterranean to British shipping, thereby threatening Britain’s empire. This was also the strategy favoured by Herman Goering.
The problem with the Mediterranean Strategy was that under the Pact of Steel, the Mediterranean fell in Italy’s sphere and the Italian’s had to take the principal role in the region with Germany only responding to requests for assistance from their ally. It also required the support of the Spanish and Vichy French, both of who proved to have far too many demands in return for their support, and to have conflicting and overlapping ambitions.
A single unlikely event changed Hitler’s thinking, and consequently the direction of the war. On the 1st of July 1940 the British ambassador to Russia delivered a message from Winston Churchill to Stalin. It was not an appeal for the Russians to enter the war, simply an attempt to improve relations between the two empires:
‘…from the point of view of systems of government it may be said that they stand for widely differing systems of political thought. But I trust that these facts need not prevent the relations between the two countries in the international sphere from being harmonious and mutually beneficial.
The Soviet Union is alone in a position to judge whether Germany’s present bid for the hegemony of Europe threatens the interests of the Soviet Union, and if so how best those interests can be safeguarded. But I have felt that the crisis through which Europe, and indeed the world, is passing is so grave as to warrant my laying before you frankly the position as it presents itself to the British government.’ [31]
Stalin did not respond, which was’t surprising, but then he did something extremely surprising and completely out of character: he had Molotov inform the Germans of the letter. To describe Stalin and his regime as secretive is like to saying that the surface of the sun can be mildly warm at times; Stalin was the head of one of the most overarching police states of all time. All information was strictly controlled and only ever revealed to those who absolutely needed to be informed, and sometimes not even then. Even when there was no need for secrecy, sheer force of habit and paranoia lead to information being jealously guarded. After the Germans had invaded the Soviet Union and were bearing down on Moscow, it took an appeal from the head of the Red Army directly to the head of the Soviet State’s secret police, Lavrenty Beria, for the NKVD to reveal what they knew about Wehrmacht codes and radio frequencies. [32] Stalin better than anyone how a police state functioned; as a young man he had repeatedly been arrested by the Okhrana, the Tsar’s secret police, and on a number of occasions had served as an informant for them. Later, he controlled the Soviet Union through his own far more efficient and ruthless secret police force, possibly the most all-pervasive in history. He had had entire families thrown into the GULag because a suspect had attempted to contact one member; entire classes at the Red Army’s officer academies had been sent to the GULag because they’d listened to a lecture by a supporter of Marshall Tukhachevsky. [33] In a police state, suspicion was guilt. It made absolutely no sense and was entirely out of character for Stalin to tell Hitler about Churchill’s letter; it would have been far more characteristic for him simply to have buried the message in the Soviet vaults forever, along with millions of other pieces of information, some important, some not.
The news of Churchill’s letter prompted Hitler to draw the conclusion that:
‘Britain’s hope lies in Russia and America. If that hope in Russia is destroyed then it will be destroyed for America too, because elimination of Russia will enormously increase Japan’s power in the Far East.
Something strange has happened in Britain! The British were already completely down. Now they are back on their feet. Intercepted conversations. Russia unpleasantly disturbed by the swift developments in Western Europe.
Russia needs only hint to England that she does not wish to see Germany too strong and the English, like a drowning man, will regain hope that the situation in six to eight months will have completely changed.
But if Russia is smashed, Britain’s last hope will be shattered. Then Germany will be master of Europe and the Balkans.
Decision: In view of these considerations Russia must be liquidated. Spring, 1941. The sooner Russia is smashed, the better.’ [34]
In this Hitler was completely wrong, the British were putting no hopes in Russia at all; the British considered the Soviet Red Army since the 1937 purges to be extremely weak; when in 1939 they were forced to choose between an alliance with Poland and an alliance with the Soviet Union (because it was impossible to have both), they preferred to ally with the former. Later, then the Germans invaded in June 1941, British expectations for the Soviet Union’s defeat varied from between five weeks and three months. A few though the Red Army would collapse in as little as ten days! [35] Churchill’s letter was little more than a fishing expedition, mischief making for which he had ‘not expected a reply and received none.’ [36] Winston Churchill had tried unsuccessfully to destroy the Bolshevik regime in its infancy and had been campaigning against them continuously ever since, for Hitler to imagine that Churchill now saw Stalin as the saviour of the British Empire is truly extraordinary.
Britain’s hopes for survival were pinned on the United States and had been since before France had fallen. [37] In a memorandum to the War Cabinet in May 1940, the British army’s planners had concluded that for Britain to stand any chance of survival they would need the full support of America. [38] At that time only one man in Britain was even thinking beyond survival to how to defeat the Germans, and it did not involve the Russians: ‘I shall drag the United States in’ – Winston Churchill to his son, 18 May 1940. [39] Churchill’s speeches, which he knew were avidly read in America, were in part directed at convincing the Americans that Britain’s fight was their fight also. Aside from the news of Churchill’s letter to Stalin, which had been supplied by the Russians, there was simply nothing else to suggest to Hitler that the British saw Russia in any way as important to their survival.
Hitler’s decision to attack the Soviet Union while the British were still fighting was contrary to what he himself had been saying for twenty years: that Germany should fight only one enemy at a time and at all costs must avoid a two front war. [40] Nor did it find favour with his subordinates; ReichMarshal Goering and Grand Admiral Raeder both favoured a Mediterranean strategy as the means of forcing the British to the negotiating table, [41] General Jodl urged the direct invasion of England, [42] while Foreign Minister Ribbentrop wanted to build on his success with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact by uniting Germany, Russia, Italy and Japan in a pact that would divide the Eurasian-African landmass into specific spheres of influence at the expense of the British Empire. [43] Meanwhile, the Commander-in-Chief of the German Army, Field Marshal Brauchitsch, and Chief of the General Staff, General Halder, thought that ‘it would be better to be on terms of friendship with Russia.’ [44]
Although he issued orders in July to begin the planning and preparation for the invasion of the Soviet Union, including cancelling his earlier order to disband 30 infantry divisions, [45] he allowed his subordinates to continue to pursue the various alternative strategies. That he did this even though they detracted from the Russian invasion option (and in the case of Ribbentrop’s proposed pact, was directly contradictory to the proposed invasion) does not mean that they were not seriously being considered or were just camouflage; Hitler preferred to have his subordinates competing against each other, often operating at cross purposes. The Fuhrer thought that this allowed him greater flexibility; he would let the various plans develop and then at the appropriate time select the most promising one. This also meant that his position was strengthened, because he became the final arbiter of disputes between his subordinates that bordered on the deadly. That this lead to massive amounts of wasted effort went unnoticed by him. (When Albert Speer was appointed Armaments Minister by Hitler, he found no less than four separate departments operating as the ministry with supreme authority over the economy and war production) [46] So preparations continued for the invasion of Russia, along with preparations to invade England, close the Mediterranean, and develop a four-way pact. All of these were strategies to force the British to negotiate. It was only in December 1940 that Hitler finally decided to definitely invade Russia. [47]
If Stalin had followed his natural inclination and not told Molotov to inform the Germans about Churchill’s message, instead keeping it a complete secret, Hitler’s suspicions of Stalin might never have been aroused. Certainly they would not have been aroused as early as mid-1940, when the Pact was proving so beneficial and the Soviets were bending over backwards in their efforts to aid their German comrades.
References: Chapter 1.
1. Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar.
2. Richard Overy, The Road to War.
3. Chris Bellamy, Absolute War.
4. Richard Overy, The Road to War.
5. Ibid.
6. Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis.
7. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf.
8. William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
9. Count Galeazzo Ciano’s diary, 1936 - 1943.
10. Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis.
11. William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
12. Ibid.
13. Chris Bellamy, Absolute War.
14. Ibid
15. Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis.
16. Ibid.
17. Richard Overy, The Road to War.
18. Ibid.
19. Chris Bellamy, Absolute War.
20. William Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France 1940.
21. Ibid.
22. Chester Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe.
23. John Lukacs, The Duel: The eighty-day struggle between Churchill and Hitler.
24. Ibid.
25. Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis.
26. Ibid.
27. John Lukacs, The Duel: The eighty-day struggle between Churchill and Hitler.
28. Ibid.
29. Chester Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe.
30. Ibid.
31. John Lukacs, The Duel: The eighty-day struggle between Churchill and Hitler.
32. Chris Bellamy, Absolute War.
33. Ibid.
34. The diary of General Franz Halder, German Army Chief-of-Staff, 31st July 1940.
35. Chris Bellamy, Absolute War.
36. John Lukacs, The Duel: The eighty-day struggle between Churchill and Hitler.
37. Chiefs of Staff memorandum to the War Cabinet, British Strategy in a Certain Eventuality. May 1940.
38. Ibid.
39. Max Hastings, Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940-45.
40. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf.
41. Chester Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe.
42. David Lampe, The Last Ditch: Britain’s Secret Resistance and the Nazi Invasion Plans.
43. Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis.
44. Ian Kershaw, Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World 1940-1941.
45. Chris Bellamy, Absolute War.
46. Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis.
47. Chris Bellamy, Absolute War.
You are correct; a longer lasting Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was entirely possible. In fact, if not for a single unlikely event, the pact would probably have lasted for at least several more years.
A Longer Lasting Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
Chapter 1: The making and (un)breaking of a pact.
Prior to Hitler’s accession to power, Germany and the Soviet Union had an extremely close, mutually beneficial trade and defence relationship. Both nations were international pariahs at the end of the First World War, so to overcome their mutual isolation they’d signed the Treaty of Rapallo in 1922, and followed it up with the Treaty of Berlin in 1926. Under these agreements diplomatic and trade links were re-established and each state publicly undertook to remain neutral if the other was ever again at war with a third party; the unstated but obvious potential third parties being the British and French Empires.
In addition to these public guarantees of neutrality, there was a secret military relationship that saw close ties between the two nation’s army general staffs, the joint development of tanks and armoured warfare doctrine and army exercises out of sight in the Russian hinterland. There were also joint military facilities in Russia for the development of poison gases and new airforce fighters and bombers - all banned to the Germans by the Treaty of Versailles. Nor was this a purely one-way street: Stalin’s own brother-in-law, Paval Alliluyev was one of the Red Army officers who travelled to Berlin to work with the Germans. [1]
Nor did this cosy relationship immediately end when Hitler became German Chancellor. Soviet officials assured the German foreign office of continued Soviet friendship despite the change of government, and made no comment when the German Communist Party, the largest in Europe, was liquidated by the Nazis. It was only in late 1933, in the face of continued attacks by the German Ministry of Propaganda on the Soviet Union, that the military relationship between the two states was reluctantly ended and German officers expelled from Russia. Even then the Soviets persisted in efforts to return to the previous cosy relationship with Germany. It was only with the signing of the German-Polish Pact in 1934 that Soviet efforts were abandoned. (The Pact also saw the Soviet General Staff under Marshall Tukhachevsky begin plans to counter an invasion of the Soviet Union by a combined German and Polish army.) [2]
Following the breakdown of relations with Germany, the Soviet Union joined the League of Nations. The rhetoric of global revolution was abandoned, along with the attacks on the British Empire that had been a constant Soviet propaganda theme in the 1920s and the USSR became the foremost proponent of Collective Security in its efforts to form a combined front with the previously demonised bourgeoisie capitalist democracies against the spread of fascism. But Chamberlain’s rebuff of Soviet attempts to be represented at the Munich conference, combined with the half-hearted Anglo-French efforts to negotiate a joint alliance with the Soviet Union during 1939 convinced Stalin that Chamberlain was not serious and would not come to the Russia’s assistance if Hitler attacked them without also attacking the west. [3] Even if the British were seriously willing to go to war against Germany, in mid-1938 they had available to deploy in Europe only ‘two divisions immediately and two more within six months’, hardly much of a help against a Wehrmacht that could already field more than eighty divisions! [4]
Convinced that war in Europe was rapidly becoming inevitable, Stalin decided to abandon Collective Security and reach an understanding with Hitler. Foreign Commissar Maxim Litvinov, the foremost champion of security ties with the democracies and opposition to Hitler, was replaced by Vyacheslav Molotov in May 1939 and discrete diplomatic feelers were put out, signalling to the Germans that the Soviets wanted to improve the relationship with Berlin. That Litvinov’s demotion saw the departure of last remaining senior Jewish member of the Soviet government at a time when Stalin was looking for better relations with the Nazis was no coincidence. [5]
Hitler for his part began thinking about a new relationship with the Soviet Union at about the same time.
Previously his every foreign policy directive had been intended to prevent the spread of Communism, isolate the Soviet Union and exclude them from European affairs. As far as he was concerned at the time, the most beneficial outcome of the Munich Conference wasn’t so much the acquisition of the Sudeten territory and the effective subjugation of Czechoslovakia; it was the complete diplomatic isolation of the Soviet Union. [6] Although prior to coming to power, Hitler had written about his belief that German territorial expansion had to come at the expense of Russia and the new states in the East, this was seen as very much a long term plan rather than an immediate goal, and a goal that was only going to be commenced after accounts with the west were settled. [7] Hitler’s short term plans, as he explained to his inner circle at the Fuhrer Conference on 7 November 1937, was to conquer Czechoslovakia and Austria, and to use their resources to prepare for war against the French and British sometime around 1943-45. Russia is only mentioned in passing, and only to say that they were unlikely to intervene ‘in view of Japan’s attitude’. [8] The 1943-45 timeframe for war with the west was also repeatedly referred to in discussions with the Italians and specifically, although secretly, mentioned in the 1938 Pact of Steel, while again no mention was made for war against the Soviet Union. [9]
From 1934 to 1939, Hitler has sought to use Poland as a barrier to secure Germany’s eastern borders; he sought to draw the Poles away from their ties with France and to bring them into an anti-communist alliance. This strategy was finally ended by foreign minister Ribbentrop’s ham-fisted efforts and Polish determination to stand apart from both the German and Soviet camps. Incensed at the thought of the loss of face resulting from being frustrated by the Poles, he decided that if they would not join him in an alliance then the Poles would have to be devastatingly and overwhelmingly destroyed, in a manner that would thoroughly convince the other states of Europe that they either fell in line behind Germany or else they too would be destroyed. [10]
The problem for him was that the British and French had, at the eleventh hour, decided that their only option was to embrace Collective Security; otherwise they would have to keep feeding small European nations to satisfy Hitler’s ever growing appetite until they finally ran out of others to give him and found themselves on the menu. As Hitler explained to the Third Reich’s inner circle at the Fuhrer conference on the 23 May, 1939, the invasion of Poland could only be undertaken if the British and French did not get involved: Germany was not ready for a major war. More so, under no circumstances must Germany ever be involved again in a two front war. Not only were the British and French strengthening their defence ties with Poland, but they were also trying to build a European wide coalition to block any further German expansion, one that included the Soviet Union and guaranteed the very two front war that every German leader since Frederick the Great had understood would defeat them. [11]
For Hitler, an alliance with Stalin was the solution to all his problems; in a single stroke he would ruin eight months of Anglo-French diplomatic efforts to build a grand alliance against him. He would neutralise the Soviet Union, thereby guaranteeing his eastern front; without the threat to Germany’s east, ‘the worms of Munich’ wouldn’t dare do anything to aid Poland, they would either abandon the Poles to their fate completely, or make some token gesture that risked nothing and achieved less. In the unlikely event that the British and French did insist on a war despite Soviet neutrality, his new alliance with the USSR would solve Germany’s resources problem and prevent the blockade that had starved Germany in the First World War from working a second time. [12]
For Stalin, the alliance promised a degree of security that the Anglo-French alliance never could; rather than being asked to go to war in defence of a string of hostile border-states who didn’t want anything to do with the Soviet Union, he was being offered them on a platter. Moscow would recover all of the territories lost since the start of the First World War. It would also greatly advance the development of the Soviet Union; raw materials which the Soviets had in abundance would be exchanged for manufactured goods that Soviet industry didn’t have the capacity to produce, along with detailed plans and technical advice to improve their industry and infrastructure. [13]
Both men saw the other as ‘someone they could make a deal with’ and both men privately expressed a great deal of admiration for the other. [14] Hitler saw Stalin as 'a man of stature who towered above the democratic figures of the Anglo-Saxon powers.’ [15] For Stalin the mutual admiration ended on 22 June 1941, but for Hitler it continued to grow as the war continued and turned decisively against Germany. [16]
The claim made by Stalin after the June 1941 invasion, and repeated ever since by his apologists, was that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a purely tactical move to buy time to prepare a defence against the inevitable German attack. But this claim does not stand up to close scrutiny; it is apparent from statements made in the days immediately after the German invasion of Poland that Stalin and Molotov did not expect the destruction of Poland to lead to a wider European war; that they, like Hitler, expected the French and British to do nothing. [17]
Nor did the Soviets remain strictly neutral once the world war had commenced, or adhere purely to the terms of the Pact; Soviet support for Germany went well beyond both in a manner that further undermines Stalin’s claim to just be buying time. If Stalin’s aim was to buy time then the more stubborn resistance that the Anglo-French put up the better, but when the western powers refused to accept the new status quo, Soviet propaganda threw all of its weight behind Germany. According to soviet propaganda, it wasn’t Hitler that was responsible for starting the war and for the war continuing, it was the British Empire. [18] Stalin broadcast a statement that “the war is not in defence of democracy, but is in fact an attack upon National-Socialism.” The Communist International directed all affiliated Communists, Socialists and trade unions to oppose continued ‘imperialist war efforts’; in America, Socialists and trade unionists added their voices to the isolationists opposed to aiding the British war effort. [19] In France, where the Communists and Workers International commanded more than a third of the vote, the damage to morale in both industry and the army was considerable and forced Premier Daladier to outlaw the French Communist Party and ban their newspapers. [20] After the Nazis occupied Paris the Communist newspaper proved to be so enthusiastically pro-German that the German military governor of the city allowed it to be printed and sold openly. [21]
The Soviets did not limit their support to propaganda; in October 1939 they also allowed the Germans to establish a floating U-boat replenishment base, Basis Nord: ships were anchored in sheltered waters in the Motovsky Gulf, north of Murmansk, for U-boats to tie up alongside and take on torpedoes, supplies and fuel. At a time when German U-boats had limited range in the North Atlantic, and were restricted to operating out of Kiel and Bremerhaven, Basis Nord greatly extended their potential range. (The Germans conducted such operations in Spanish ports during that nation's 'non-belligerent' period, mostly in Cadiz.) This was a violation of international rules for neutrality and could have led to direct retaliation by the British and French if they had known of it. During the invasion of Norway a fleet tender sortied for Basis Nord to supply the German ships escorting the invasion force to Narvik. Following the German invasion of Norway, Basis Nord became redundant and was abandoned.
On the 10th of May 1940 the Wehrmacht attacked westwards. Within a week they had achieved a decisive strategic breakthrough and in six weeks they had forced the capitulation of France and driven the British from the continent of Europe. As far as Hitler was concerned, the war was over and he had won it. Italian Foreign Minister Count Ciano noted in his diary on June 18th that ‘Hitler is now the gambler who has made a big scoop and would like to get up from the table risking nothing more.’ [22] He took time off to tour the First World War battlefields where he’d served and on the morning of June 23rd made a lighting visit to Paris, spending four hours in the near-deserted city – the only time in his life that he ever visited Paris. Hitler’s thoughts were on the future – the post-war future. On the evening of June 24th, Hitler explained his views to his closest associates:
“The war in the West is over. France has been defeated, and with England I shall reach an understanding very shortly. There will remain our settling of our accounts with the East. But that is a task that opens global problems, such as the relationship with Japan and the balance of power in the Pacific, problems that we may not be able to tackle perhaps for ten years; perhaps I shall have to leave that to my successor. Now we’ll have our hands full, for years, to digest and consolidate what we have achieved in Europe.” [23]
As a first stage to returning Germany to something like a peace-time footing, Hitler ordered the demobilisation of 30 army divisions; a force equal to the entire army that the British were then desperately trying to train and equip. [24] There was so much already to do without considering taking on even more; while the Nazis has been in power since 1933, the National Socialist revolution had really only got rolling in 1938 with the removal of the last remaining Nationalists from government administration. In six months of war the territories controlled by the Nazis (initially within the Third Reich itself and the Protectorates of Bohemia-Moravia and Slovakia, and now including the conquered territories) had gone from containing less than a quarter of a million Jews to having more than three and a half million. These would have to be dealt with, preferably by their forced emigration from Europe. [25] There was also the campaign against the churches, which having only just commenced had been forced to be suspended by the outbreak of war (In fact, while officially it had been suspended, in reality it had been thrown over to the Gauleiters to administer, consequently in some regions it was reduced while in others it was greatly accelerated. Nowhere was it actually suspended) as well as a vast number of other plans to completely revolutionise German society. Germany and occupied Europe would need to be thoroughly reorganised along National Socialist lines, a task that could take years. [26]
On the 19th of July 1940, Hitler made an appeal to Britain for peace in a speech at the Kroll Opera House to the Reichstag and the heads of the Wehrmacht and Nazi party. It wasn’t much of an appeal, but then it wasn’t much of a speech; for the first two hours he explained to the audience that included the heads of the most powerful and successful war machine in the world, how he had singlehandedly planned and executed the most audacious strategy in world history, and they’d been allowed to come along for the ride. The last twenty minutes of his speech consisted of his ‘last appeal to universal reason’. Most of it consisted of personal attacks on Churchill, 'my stomach turns when I see such unscrupulous destroyers of entire peoples and states'. [27] It wasn’t that Hitler’s appeal was insincere, there are far too many eyewitness statements and diary entries from his entourage at around that time to doubt that really did want peace with Britain. It’s just that when it came to the British thought processes, Hitler simply didn’t have a clue; an offer to end the war might have elicited a positive response from members of the British parliament and establishment at the time, but a combination of insulting their prime minister and making veiled threats ‘should he be forced to continue the war’ was guaranteed to do the opposite. Goebbels, the Reich’s ‘propaganda genius’, thought it was a fine speech and a reasonable appeal for peace, but then most of Goebbels’ propaganda was about as subtle as a sledgehammer. [28]
When the British declined to see reason Hitler was at a loss, both as to why they were being so stubborn when he was being so reasonable, and what he could do about it. In the conference on the 23 May 1939, Hitler had expressed the belief that Britain could not be invaded [29] and despite enthusiasm from the heads of the army after the fall of France for invasion he still was not completely convinced. He let planning proceed because he didn’t really see any other workable options that would produce a quick result; he had thought before the war that Britain’s essential shipping could be strangled by a combination of U-boat attacks, fast surface raiders (Schnellbootes) and long range air attacks, but this would be a time consuming process and ran the risk of the Americans getting involved. [30] The Kriegsmarine was definitely not keen on a direct invasion, preferring a combination of attacking the Atlantic shipping lanes and a strategy of cutting off the Mediterranean to British shipping, thereby threatening Britain’s empire. This was also the strategy favoured by Herman Goering.
The problem with the Mediterranean Strategy was that under the Pact of Steel, the Mediterranean fell in Italy’s sphere and the Italian’s had to take the principal role in the region with Germany only responding to requests for assistance from their ally. It also required the support of the Spanish and Vichy French, both of who proved to have far too many demands in return for their support, and to have conflicting and overlapping ambitions.
A single unlikely event changed Hitler’s thinking, and consequently the direction of the war. On the 1st of July 1940 the British ambassador to Russia delivered a message from Winston Churchill to Stalin. It was not an appeal for the Russians to enter the war, simply an attempt to improve relations between the two empires:
‘…from the point of view of systems of government it may be said that they stand for widely differing systems of political thought. But I trust that these facts need not prevent the relations between the two countries in the international sphere from being harmonious and mutually beneficial.
The Soviet Union is alone in a position to judge whether Germany’s present bid for the hegemony of Europe threatens the interests of the Soviet Union, and if so how best those interests can be safeguarded. But I have felt that the crisis through which Europe, and indeed the world, is passing is so grave as to warrant my laying before you frankly the position as it presents itself to the British government.’ [31]
Stalin did not respond, which was’t surprising, but then he did something extremely surprising and completely out of character: he had Molotov inform the Germans of the letter. To describe Stalin and his regime as secretive is like to saying that the surface of the sun can be mildly warm at times; Stalin was the head of one of the most overarching police states of all time. All information was strictly controlled and only ever revealed to those who absolutely needed to be informed, and sometimes not even then. Even when there was no need for secrecy, sheer force of habit and paranoia lead to information being jealously guarded. After the Germans had invaded the Soviet Union and were bearing down on Moscow, it took an appeal from the head of the Red Army directly to the head of the Soviet State’s secret police, Lavrenty Beria, for the NKVD to reveal what they knew about Wehrmacht codes and radio frequencies. [32] Stalin better than anyone how a police state functioned; as a young man he had repeatedly been arrested by the Okhrana, the Tsar’s secret police, and on a number of occasions had served as an informant for them. Later, he controlled the Soviet Union through his own far more efficient and ruthless secret police force, possibly the most all-pervasive in history. He had had entire families thrown into the GULag because a suspect had attempted to contact one member; entire classes at the Red Army’s officer academies had been sent to the GULag because they’d listened to a lecture by a supporter of Marshall Tukhachevsky. [33] In a police state, suspicion was guilt. It made absolutely no sense and was entirely out of character for Stalin to tell Hitler about Churchill’s letter; it would have been far more characteristic for him simply to have buried the message in the Soviet vaults forever, along with millions of other pieces of information, some important, some not.
The news of Churchill’s letter prompted Hitler to draw the conclusion that:
‘Britain’s hope lies in Russia and America. If that hope in Russia is destroyed then it will be destroyed for America too, because elimination of Russia will enormously increase Japan’s power in the Far East.
Something strange has happened in Britain! The British were already completely down. Now they are back on their feet. Intercepted conversations. Russia unpleasantly disturbed by the swift developments in Western Europe.
Russia needs only hint to England that she does not wish to see Germany too strong and the English, like a drowning man, will regain hope that the situation in six to eight months will have completely changed.
But if Russia is smashed, Britain’s last hope will be shattered. Then Germany will be master of Europe and the Balkans.
Decision: In view of these considerations Russia must be liquidated. Spring, 1941. The sooner Russia is smashed, the better.’ [34]
In this Hitler was completely wrong, the British were putting no hopes in Russia at all; the British considered the Soviet Red Army since the 1937 purges to be extremely weak; when in 1939 they were forced to choose between an alliance with Poland and an alliance with the Soviet Union (because it was impossible to have both), they preferred to ally with the former. Later, then the Germans invaded in June 1941, British expectations for the Soviet Union’s defeat varied from between five weeks and three months. A few though the Red Army would collapse in as little as ten days! [35] Churchill’s letter was little more than a fishing expedition, mischief making for which he had ‘not expected a reply and received none.’ [36] Winston Churchill had tried unsuccessfully to destroy the Bolshevik regime in its infancy and had been campaigning against them continuously ever since, for Hitler to imagine that Churchill now saw Stalin as the saviour of the British Empire is truly extraordinary.
Britain’s hopes for survival were pinned on the United States and had been since before France had fallen. [37] In a memorandum to the War Cabinet in May 1940, the British army’s planners had concluded that for Britain to stand any chance of survival they would need the full support of America. [38] At that time only one man in Britain was even thinking beyond survival to how to defeat the Germans, and it did not involve the Russians: ‘I shall drag the United States in’ – Winston Churchill to his son, 18 May 1940. [39] Churchill’s speeches, which he knew were avidly read in America, were in part directed at convincing the Americans that Britain’s fight was their fight also. Aside from the news of Churchill’s letter to Stalin, which had been supplied by the Russians, there was simply nothing else to suggest to Hitler that the British saw Russia in any way as important to their survival.
Hitler’s decision to attack the Soviet Union while the British were still fighting was contrary to what he himself had been saying for twenty years: that Germany should fight only one enemy at a time and at all costs must avoid a two front war. [40] Nor did it find favour with his subordinates; ReichMarshal Goering and Grand Admiral Raeder both favoured a Mediterranean strategy as the means of forcing the British to the negotiating table, [41] General Jodl urged the direct invasion of England, [42] while Foreign Minister Ribbentrop wanted to build on his success with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact by uniting Germany, Russia, Italy and Japan in a pact that would divide the Eurasian-African landmass into specific spheres of influence at the expense of the British Empire. [43] Meanwhile, the Commander-in-Chief of the German Army, Field Marshal Brauchitsch, and Chief of the General Staff, General Halder, thought that ‘it would be better to be on terms of friendship with Russia.’ [44]
Although he issued orders in July to begin the planning and preparation for the invasion of the Soviet Union, including cancelling his earlier order to disband 30 infantry divisions, [45] he allowed his subordinates to continue to pursue the various alternative strategies. That he did this even though they detracted from the Russian invasion option (and in the case of Ribbentrop’s proposed pact, was directly contradictory to the proposed invasion) does not mean that they were not seriously being considered or were just camouflage; Hitler preferred to have his subordinates competing against each other, often operating at cross purposes. The Fuhrer thought that this allowed him greater flexibility; he would let the various plans develop and then at the appropriate time select the most promising one. This also meant that his position was strengthened, because he became the final arbiter of disputes between his subordinates that bordered on the deadly. That this lead to massive amounts of wasted effort went unnoticed by him. (When Albert Speer was appointed Armaments Minister by Hitler, he found no less than four separate departments operating as the ministry with supreme authority over the economy and war production) [46] So preparations continued for the invasion of Russia, along with preparations to invade England, close the Mediterranean, and develop a four-way pact. All of these were strategies to force the British to negotiate. It was only in December 1940 that Hitler finally decided to definitely invade Russia. [47]
If Stalin had followed his natural inclination and not told Molotov to inform the Germans about Churchill’s message, instead keeping it a complete secret, Hitler’s suspicions of Stalin might never have been aroused. Certainly they would not have been aroused as early as mid-1940, when the Pact was proving so beneficial and the Soviets were bending over backwards in their efforts to aid their German comrades.
References: Chapter 1.
1. Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar.
2. Richard Overy, The Road to War.
3. Chris Bellamy, Absolute War.
4. Richard Overy, The Road to War.
5. Ibid.
6. Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis.
7. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf.
8. William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
9. Count Galeazzo Ciano’s diary, 1936 - 1943.
10. Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis.
11. William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
12. Ibid.
13. Chris Bellamy, Absolute War.
14. Ibid
15. Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis.
16. Ibid.
17. Richard Overy, The Road to War.
18. Ibid.
19. Chris Bellamy, Absolute War.
20. William Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France 1940.
21. Ibid.
22. Chester Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe.
23. John Lukacs, The Duel: The eighty-day struggle between Churchill and Hitler.
24. Ibid.
25. Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis.
26. Ibid.
27. John Lukacs, The Duel: The eighty-day struggle between Churchill and Hitler.
28. Ibid.
29. Chester Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe.
30. Ibid.
31. John Lukacs, The Duel: The eighty-day struggle between Churchill and Hitler.
32. Chris Bellamy, Absolute War.
33. Ibid.
34. The diary of General Franz Halder, German Army Chief-of-Staff, 31st July 1940.
35. Chris Bellamy, Absolute War.
36. John Lukacs, The Duel: The eighty-day struggle between Churchill and Hitler.
37. Chiefs of Staff memorandum to the War Cabinet, British Strategy in a Certain Eventuality. May 1940.
38. Ibid.
39. Max Hastings, Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940-45.
40. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf.
41. Chester Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe.
42. David Lampe, The Last Ditch: Britain’s Secret Resistance and the Nazi Invasion Plans.
43. Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis.
44. Ian Kershaw, Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World 1940-1941.
45. Chris Bellamy, Absolute War.
46. Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis.
47. Chris Bellamy, Absolute War.
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