On May 7 Schulenburg hopefully reported that Stalin had taken over the chairmanship of the Council of People’s Commissars in place of Molotov, and had thereby become head of the Government of the Soviet Union. “… I am convinced that Stalin will use his new position in order to take part personally in the maintenance and development of good relations between the Soviets and Germany.”
The German Naval Attaché, reporting from Moscow, expressed the same point in these words: “Stalin is the pivot of German-Soviet collaboration.” Examples of Russian appeasement of Germany increased. On May 3 Russia had officially recognised the pro-German Government of Rashid Ali in Iraq. On May 7 the diplomatic representatives of Belgium and Norway were expelled from Russia. Even the Yugoslav Minister was flung out. At the beginning of June the Greek Legation was banished from Moscow. As General Thomas, the head of the economic section of the German War Ministry, later wrote in his paper on the war economy of the Reich: “The Russians executed their deliveries up to the eve of the attack, and in the last days the transport of rubber from the Far East was expedited by express trains.”
We had not of course full information about the Moscow moods, but the German purpose seemed plain and comprehensible. On May 16 I had cabled to General Smuts: “It looks as if Hitler is massing against Russia. A ceaseless movement of troops, armoured forces, and aircraft northwards from the Balkans and eastwards from France and Germany is in progress.” Stalin must have tried very hard to preserve his illusions about Hitler’s policy. After another month of intense German troop movement and deployment Schulenburg could telegraph to the German Foreign Office on June 13:
People’s Commissar Molotov has just given me the following text of a Tass dispatch which will be broadcast to-night and published in the papers to-morrow:
Even before the return of the English Ambassador Cripps to London, but especially since his return, there have been widespread rumours of an impending war between the U.S.S.R. and Germany in the English and foreign Press.…
Despite the obvious absurdity of these rumours, responsible circles in Moscow have thought it necessary to state that they are a clumsy propaganda manœuvre of the forces arrayed against the Soviet Union and Germany, which are interested in a spread and intensification of the war.
Hitler had every right to be content with the success of his measures of deception and concealment, and with his victim’s state of mind.
Molotov’s final fatuity is worth recording. On June 22, at 1.17 a.m., Schulenberg telegraphed once more to the German Foreign Office:
Molotov summoned me to his office this evening at 9.30 p.m. After he had mentioned the alleged repeated border violations by German aircraft … Molotov stated as follows:
There were a number of indications that the German Government was dissatisfied with the Soviet Government. Rumours were even current that a war was impending between Germany and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Government was unable to understand the reasons for Germany’s dissatisfaction.… He would appreciate it if I could tell him what had brought about the present situation in German-Soviet Russian relations.
I replied that I could not answer his question, as I lacked the pertinent information; that I would however transmit his communication to Berlin.
But the hour had now struck. At 4 a.m. on this same June 22, 1941, Ribbentrop delivered a formal declaration of war to the Russian Ambassador in Berlin. At daybreak Schulenburg presented himself to Molotov in the Kremlin. The latter listened in silence to the statement read by the German Ambassador, and then commented, “It is war. Your aircraft have just bombarded some ten open villages. Do you believe that we deserved that?”*
In the face of the Tass broadcast it had been vain for us to add to the various warnings which Eden had given to the Soviet Ambassador in London, or for me to make a renewed personal effort to arouse Stalin to his peril. Even more precise information had been constantly sent to the Soviet Government by the United States. Nothing that any of us could do pierced the purblind prejudice and fixed ideas which Stalin had raised between himself and the terrible truth. Although on German estimates 186 Russian divisions were massed behind the Soviet boundaries, of which 119 faced the German front, the Russian armies to a large extent were taken by surprise. The Germans found no signs of offensive preparations in the forward zone, and the Russian covering troops were swiftly overpowered. Something like the disaster which had befallen the Polish Air Force on September 1, 1939, was now to be repeated on a far larger scale on the Russian airfields, and many hundreds of Russian planes were caught at daybreak and destroyed before they could get into the air. Thus the ravings of hatred against Britain and the United States which the Soviet propaganda machine cast upon the midnight air were overwhelmed at dawn by the German cannonade. The wicked are not always clever, nor are dictators always right.
It is impossible to complete this account without referring to a terrible decision of policy adopted by Hitler towards his new foes, and enforced under all the pressure of the mortal struggle in vast barren or ruined lands and winter horrors. Verbal orders were given by him at a conference on June 14, 1941, which to a large extent governed the conduct of the German Army towards the Russian troops and people, and led to many ruthless and barbarous deeds. According to the Nuremberg documents, General Halder testified:
Prior to the attack on Russia the Fuehrer called a conference of all the commanders and persons connected with the Supreme Command on the question of the forthcoming attack on Russia. I cannot recall the exact date of this conference.… At this conference the Fuehrer stated that the methods used in the war against the Russians would have to be different from those used against the West.… He said that the struggle between Russia and Germany was a Russian struggle. He stated that since the Russians were not signatories of the Hague Convention the treatment of their prisoners of war did not have to follow the Articles of the Convention.… He [also] said that the so-called Commissars should not be considered prisoners of war.*
And according to Keitel:
Hitler’s main theme was that this was the decisive battle between the two ideologies, and that this fact made it impossible to use in this war [with Russia] methods, as we soldiers knew them, which were considered to be the only correct ones under international law.†
On the evening of Friday, June 20, I drove down to Chequers alone. I knew that the German onslaught upon Russia was a matter of days, or it might be hours. I had arranged to deliver a broadcast on Saturday night dealing with this event. It would of course have to be in guarded terms. Moreover, at this time the Soviet Government, at once haughty and purblind, regarded every warning we gave as a mere attempt of beaten men to drag others into ruin. As the result of my reflections in the car I put off the broadcast till Sunday night, when I thought all would be clear. Thus Saturday passed with its usual toil.
When I awoke on the morning of Sunday, the 22nd, the news was brought to me of Hitler’s invasion of Russia. This changed conviction into certainty. I had not the slightest doubt where our duty and our policy lay. Nor indeed what to say. There only remained the task of composing it. I asked that notice should immediately be given that I would broadcast at 9 o’clock that night. Presently General Dill, who had hastened down from London, came into my bedroom with detailed news. The Germans had invaded Russia on an enormous front, had surprised a large portion of the Soviet Air Force grounded on the airfields, and seemed to be driving forward with great rapidity and violence. The Chief of the Imperial General Staff added, “I suppose they will be rounded up in hordes.”
I spent the day composing my statement. There was not time to consult the War Cabinet, nor was it necessary. I knew that we all felt the same on this issue. Mr. Eden, Lord Beaverbrook, and Sir Stafford Cripps—he had left Moscow on the 10th—were also with me during the day. In the course of my broadcast I said:
“The Nazi régime is indistinguishable from the worst features of Communism. It is devoid of all theme and principle except appetite and racial
domination. It excels all forms of human wickedness in the efficiency of its cruelty and ferocious aggression. No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I have for the last twenty-five years. I will unsay no word that I have spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding. The past, with its crimes, its follies, and its tragedies, flashes away. I see the Russian soldiers standing on the threshold of their native land, guarding the fields which their fathers have tilled from time immemorial. I see them guarding their homes where mothers and wives pray—ah, yes, for there are times when all pray—for the safety of their loved ones, the return of the bread-winner, of their champion, of their protector. I see the ten thousand villages of Russia where the means of existence is wrung so hardly from the soil, but where there are still primordial human joys, where maidens laugh and children play. I see advancing upon all this in hideous onslaught the Nazi war machine, with its clanking, heel-clicking, dandified Prussian officers, its crafty expert agents fresh from the cowing and tying down of a dozen countries. I see also the dull, drilled, docile, brutish masses of the Hun soldiery plodding on like a swarm of crawling locusts. I see the German bombers and fighters in the sky, still smarting from many a British whipping, delighted to find what they believe is an easier and a safer prey.
“Behind all this glare, behind all this storm, I see that small group of villainous men who plan, organise, and launch this cataract of horrors upon mankind.…
“I have to declare the decision of His Majesty’s Government—and I feel sure it is a decision in which the great Dominions will in due course concur—for we must speak out now at once, without a day’s delay. I have to make the declaration, but can you doubt what our policy will be? We have but one aim and one single, irrevocable purpose. We are resolved to destroy Hitler and every vestige of the Nazi régime. From this nothing will turn us—nothing. We will never parley, we will never negotiate with Hitler or any of his gang. We shall fight him by land, we shall fight him by sea, we shall fight him in the air, until, with God’s help, we have rid the earth of his shadow and liberated its peoples from his yoke. Any man or state who fights on against Nazidom will have our aid. Any man or state who marches with Hitler is our foe.… That is our policy and that is our declaration. It follows therefore that we shall give whatever help we can to Russia and the Russian people. We shall appeal to all our friends and allies in every part of the world to take the same course and pursue it, as we shall, faithfully and steadfastly to the end.…
“This is no class war, but a war in which the whole British Empire and Commonwealth of Nations is engaged, without distinction of race, creed, or party. It is not for me to speak of the action of the United States, but this I will say: if Hitler imagines that his attack on Soviet Russia will cause the slightest divergence of aims or slackening of effort in the great democracies who are resolved upon his doom, he is woefully mistaken. On the contrary, we shall be fortified and encouraged in our efforts to rescue mankind from his tyranny. We shall be strengthened and not weakened in determination and in resources.
“This is no time to moralise on the follies of countries and Governments which have allowed themselves to be struck down one by one, when by united action they could have saved themselves and saved the world from this catastrophe. But when I spoke a few minutes ago of Hitler’s blood-lust and the hateful appetites which have impelled or lured him on his Russian adventure I said there was one deeper motive behind his outrage. He wishes to destroy the Russian power because he hopes that if he succeeds in this he will be able to bring back the main strength of his Army and Air Force from the East and hurl it upon this Island, which he knows he must conquer or suffer the penalty of his crimes. His invasion of Russia is no more than a prelude to an attempted invasion of the British Isles. He hopes, no doubt, that all this may be accomplished before the winter comes, and that he can overwhelm Great Britain before the Fleet and air-power of the United States may intervene. He hopes that he may once again repeat, upon a greater scale than ever before, that process of destroying his enemies one by one by which he has so long thrived and prospered, and that then the scene will be clear for the final act, without which all his conquests would be in vain—namely, the subjugation of the Western Hemisphere to his will and to his system.
“The Russian danger is therefore our danger, and the danger of the United States, just as the cause of any Russian fighting for his hearth and home is the cause of free men and free peoples in every quarter of the globe. Let us learn the lessons already taught by such cruel experience. Let us redouble our exertions, and strike with united strength while life and power remain.”
BOOK III
THE GRAND ALLIANCE
Sunday, December 7, 1941, and Onwards
“No American will think it wrong of me if I proclaim that to have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy.”
THE GERMAN ATTACK ON RUSSIA
CHAPTER I
OUR SOVIET ALLY
THE entry of Russia into the war was welcome but not immediately helpful to us. The German armies were so strong that it seemed that for many months they could maintain the invasion threat against England while at the same time plunging into Russia. Almost all responsible military opinion held that the Russian armies would soon be defeated and largely destroyed. The fact that the Soviet Air Force was allowed by its Government to be surprised on its landing grounds and that the Russian military preparations were far from being complete gave them a bad start. Frightful injuries were sustained by the Russian armies. In spite of heroic resistance, competent despotic war direction, total disregard of human life, and the opening of a ruthless guerrilla warfare in the rear of the German advance, a general retirement took place on the whole twelve-hundred-mile Russian front south of Leningrad for about four or five hundred miles. The strength of the Soviet Government, the fortitude of the Russian people, their immeasurable reserves of manpower, the vast size of their country, the rigours of the Russian winter, were the factors which ultimately ruined Hitler’s armies. But none of these made themselves apparent in 1941. President Roosevelt was considered very bold when he proclaimed in September that the Russian front would hold and that Moscow would not be taken. The glorious strength and patriotism of the Russian people vindicated this opinion.
Even in August 1942, after my visit to Moscow and the conferences there, General Brooke, who had accompanied me, adhered to the opinion that the Caucasus Mountains would be traversed and the basin of the Caspian dominated by German forces, and we prepared accordingly on the largest possible scale for a defensive campaign in Syria and Persia. Throughout I took a more sanguine view than my military advisers of the Russian powers of resistance. I rested with confidence upon Stalin’s assurance, given to me at Moscow, that he would hold the line of the Caucasus and that the Germans would not reach the Caspian in any strength. But we were vouchsafed so little information about Soviet resources and intentions that all opinions either way were hardly more than guesses.
It is true that the Russian entry into the war diverted the German air attack from Great Britain and diminished the threat of invasion. It gave us important relief in the Mediterranean. On the other hand, it imposed upon us most heavy sacrifices and drains. At last we were beginning to be well equipped. At last our munitions factories were pouring out their supplies of every kind. Our armies in Egypt and Libya were in heavy action and clamouring for the latest weapons, above all tanks and aeroplanes. The British armies at home were eagerly awaiting the longpromised modern equipment which in all its ever-widening complications was flowing at last towards them. At this moment we were compelled to make very large diversions of our weapons and vital supplies of all kinds, including rubber and oil. On us fell the burden of organising the convoys of British and still more of United States supplies and carrying them to Murmansk and Archangel through all the dangers and rigours of the Arctic passage. All the American supplies were a deduction from what had in fact been, or was to
be, successfully ferried across the Atlantic for ourselves. In order to make this immense diversion and to forgo the growing flood of American aid without crippling our campaign in the Western Desert, we had to cramp all preparations which prudence urged for the defence of the Malay peninsula and our Eastern Empire and possessions against the evergrowing menace of Japan.
Without in the slightest degree challenging the conclusion which history will affirm that the Russian resistance broke the power of the German armies and inflicted mortal injury upon the life-energies of the German nation, it is right to make it clear that for more than a year after Russia was involved in the war she presented herself to our minds as a burden and not as a help. None the less we rejoiced to have this mighty nation in the battle with us, and we all felt that even if the Soviet armies were driven back to the Ural Mountains Russia would still exert an immense and, if she persevered in the war, an ultimately decisive force.
Up to the moment when the Soviet Government was set upon by Hitler they seemed to care for no one but themselves. Afterwards this mood naturally became more marked. Hitherto they had watched with stony composure the destruction of the front in France in 1940, and our vain efforts in 1941 to create a front in the Balkans. They had given important economic aid to Nazi Germany and had helped them in many minor ways. Now, having been deceived and taken by surprise, they were themselves under the flaming German sword. Their first impulse and lasting policy was to demand all possible succour from Great Britain and her Empire, the possible partition of which between Stalin and Hitler had for the last eight months beguiled Soviet minds from the progress of German concentration in the East. They did not hesitate to appeal in urgent and strident terms to harassed and struggling Britain to send them the munitions of which her armies were so short. They urged the United States to divert to them the largest quantities of the supplies on which we were counting, and, above all, even in the summer of 1941 they clamoured for British landings in Europe, regardless of risk and cost, to establish a second front. The British Communists, who had hitherto done their worst, which was not much, in our factories, and had denounced “the capitalist and imperialist war”, turned about again overnight and began to scrawl the slogan “Second Front Now” upon the walls and hoardings.
The Second World War Page 60
