Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler

by Robert Gellately

  NEW KIND OF WAR ON THE HORIZON

  The Munich conference of late September 1938 involved the prime ministers of Britain and France, along with Mussolini and Hitler. It was a great victory for Hitler. “General Bloodless,” as Germans fondly nicknamed him, continued to win without a fight. The peaceful outcome of the conference left him dissatisfied, however, as he wanted a short war with Czechoslovakia to parade as a conquering hero. Sir Nevile Henderson, the British ambassador to Germany and a participant at Munich, shrewdly observed that the moment Hitler signed the agreement he regretted it. Hitler believed that he had accepted less than he could easily have taken.

  Henderson was of the opinion that Hitler saw himself not as an ordinary politician but as someone who listened to an otherworldly voice. Henderson capitalized “Voice” and said of Hitler that “his Voice had told him that there would be no general war, or that, even if there were, there could be no more propitious moment for it than that October; and for once he had been obliged to disregard that Voice and to listen to counsels of prudence.”18

  At Munich, Hitler promised to guarantee the independence of what remained of Czechoslovakia. On September 30, after a separate meeting with the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, he grudgingly signed a resolution that the two peoples would never go to war against each other. Chamberlain waved this document to the crowds on his return to Britain, but Hitler attached no importance to it whatsoever.19

  Only three weeks later, he issued directives to the army to prepare a surprise attack on what remained of Czechoslovakia.20 In a short campaign on March 14–15, 1939, he crushed his smaller opponent.

  Before the dust had settled, he demanded the return of Danzig, which had been lost to Poland in the Versailles Treaty. Thus he began to lay the groundwork for the coming war against Poland—which was merely a stepping-stone to the conflict he wanted with the Soviet Union. On March 23, he simply annexed the Memel territory from Lithuania, another challenge to which Britain and France failed to respond.

  Hitler long held antipathies toward the Polish people, and conquering that country was part of gaining lebensraum in the east. In a communication to Walther von Brauchitsch, commander in chief of the army, on March 25, he said the issue would be solved when political conditions were right; Poland “ought to be beaten down, so that it will not need to be taken into account as a political factor for the next decades.”21

  Only after Hitler’s high-handed conquest of the remainder of Czechoslovakia and the threatening sounds he began to make toward Poland did Western democracies finally realize that he could not be appeased. Chamberlain, with the unanimous agreement of the House of Commons and the staunch support of the public, had finally had enough. On March 31, he announced that the government “had undertaken an obligation of mutual assistance to Poland in the event of any aggression which might endanger the independence of that country.” The French followed suit, so that, as Henderson observed, “war would be the inevitable outcome of the next aggression by Germany.”22

  Threatening Hitler with dire consequences, however, was completely meaningless. Far from being deterred, he was disgusted and in angry reaction had war directives drawn up by the military. He issued these orders on April 11 for preparation of Operation White, a surprise attack on Poland that was to begin anytime after September 1. There would be no declaration of war, and he hoped a swift victory might not lead to anything more than a local action.23

  On May 23, when Hitler addressed senior military leaders, he knew a general war was a distinct possibility. He wanted to conquer Poland, not only to take lebensraum, but also because he saw it as having too little substance to act as a bulwark against Bolshevism. He reckoned it would be difficult to avoid war with England and a repetition of the easy victories was unlikely. In case matters would get that far, he wanted to be prepared for England, and his aim was as “always” to bring that country “to its knees.”24

  The SS also were drawn into the plans for operations against Poland. The SD Main Office created a new office, SD II P (Poland), on May 22 to assemble intelligence on everything “of an ideological-political, cultural, propagandistic, and economic nature.” It was also to collect “complete” accounts of the Jews in Poland. This information was to be given to the still to be formed Einsatzgruppen (action groups). On July 5, Heydrich held a first central conference of key police and intelligence officials as part of the preparation. Initially there were to be four, but eventually there were five Einsatzgruppen of about five hundred men each, divided in turn into smaller Einsatzkommandos of a hundred or so. Led by experienced SD officers, the groups were composed of members mostly from the Gestapo; the Kripo (Criminal Police), and the SD. Another twenty-four thousand from the SS Death’s Head Units were available by the time of the Polish campaign, comprising men trained by Theodor Eicke to run concentration camps.25

  Guidelines for the security police (that is, the Gestapo and Kripo) and SD to cooperate with the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW) were established on July 31, 1939. The task of the Einsatzgruppen was “combating of all elements hostile to the Reich and Germany in enemy territory behind the fighting troops.” The decision was made for an “initial sweep” to pick up ten thousand “enemies,” with double that number arrested in a second round. They were not to be shot out of hand, but sent to concentration camps, so the agreement did not amount to a deal between Heydrich and the OKW for mass executions or deportations. It would soon become clear, however, particularly with respect to Jews and Poles, that the SS leadership had no intention of keeping to these rules and did everything in its power to get around them from the first day of the war.26

  In mid-August, Heydrich held meetings with the leaders of the Einsatzgruppen at Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. They were given a free hand to shoot people from a long list, including those who had supposedly persecuted the German minority in Poland, the intelligentsia, the resistance, “partisans,” and Jews. Heydrich told a colleague in July 1940 that prior to the war against Poland, he was given an “extraordinarily extreme” order by Hitler. He was instructed to “liquidate” various circles of the Polish leadership “that went into the thousands.” Before the war began, the names of enemies were compiled with the cooperation of German military intelligence.27

  Already from early 1939 special “schooling pamphlets” that were regularly sent to the troops of the Wehrmacht told them what to expect. The aims of the regime were said to include: “(1) the elimination of all aftereffects of Jewish influence, above all in the economy and on spiritual life; (2) the struggle against world Jewry, which seeks to set all the people of the world against Germany.” This enemy was to be fought “as we struggle against a poisonous parasite; we hit him not only as an enemy of our people but as a plague on all peoples.” There was an abundance of such material, and it no doubt helped to persuade many in the armed forces that the Jews were the deadly enemies of the “master race.” It should be noted that these ideological and expressly anti-Semitic messages were conveyed by the High Command of the Armed Forces, not the SS. There appears to have been a consensus on this matter; at least there is no evidence that officers raised any objections.28

  On August 22, Hitler revealed his attitudes about the coming war at a meeting with about fifty leaders of the armed forces at the Berghof, his mountain retreat. Notes of what was said were offered in evidence at the Nuremberg trials in 1945–46. Army Chief of Staff General Franz Halder also made entries in his diary for the day.

  Hitler made the decision about Poland in the spring. In his view, there were compelling reasons for doing so: he was getting on in years and felt the pressure of time; and the German people backed him—and “no one will ever again have the confidence of the whole German people as I have.” Mussolini’s support was also decisive. “If anything happens to him, Italy’s loyalty to the alliance will no longer be certain.” There were uniquely favorable conditions as well. Britain was unprepared for a land war, while France had declined as a military pow
er. British and French leaders were “no masters, no men of action” and could not live up to the promises they had recently made.

  Hitler’s initial plan was to have a short war in the west (France) before going east; he changed his mind because the relationship with Poland had become “intolerable.” Even if Britain and France kept their word to Poland, the war would not last long, as they did not have the military force to back up their commitments and were hoping Russia might do their fighting for them. Hitler proudly announced he had just come to terms with Stalin. “Our enemies are small-fry; I saw them in Munich.”29

  The cryptic notes show how firmly he held to the “lessons” of the First World War: “The nation collapsed in 1918 because the spiritual prerequisites were insufficient.” Now Germany needed internal unity and firm leadership. “Crises,” he said, “are due solely to leaders having lost their nerve.”

  The war aims he enunciated were unprecedented:

  Destruction [Vernichtung] of Poland the priority. The aim is the elimination [Beseitigung] of active forces, not to reach a definite line. Also if war breaks out in the west, the destruction of Poland remains the priority. In view of the season, a quick victory…. Close your hearts to pity. Act brutally. Eighty million people must obtain what is their right. Their existence must be made secure. The stronger has the right. The greatest harshness…. Every newly awakening Polish active force is to be destroyed again immediately. Continuous demolition…. The complete demolition of Poland is the military goal. Speed is the main thing. Pursuit to the point of complete annihilation [völlige Vernichtung].30

  Nicolaus von Below, Hitler’s adjutant, recorded that although some generals had doubts about such matters as the likely response of the United States, they posed no questions and did not offer counterarguments. Because Hitler, to everyone’s surprise, had secured the nonaggression treaty with Stalin, the leaders of the armed forces were speechless.31

  Another of the note takers quoted Hitler saying “Genghis Khan had sent millions of women and children to their deaths, and did so consciously and with a happy heart. History sees in him only the great founder of states.” He had already issued orders to the SS Death’s Head Units “mercilessly and without pity to send every man, woman, and child of Polish ethnicity and language to their deaths…. Poland will be depopulated and resettled with Germans…. Be hard, spare nothing, act faster and more brutally than the others.” When Western Europeans heard about the horrors, they would “shake with fear. That’s the most humane way of war.”32

  STALIN, HITLER, AND THE NAZI-SOVIET PACT

  Stalin’s address to the plenary session of the Party congress on March 10, 1939, said the three democracies seemed to be encouraging Hitler to start war on the Bolsheviks, and everything will be all right.33 He warned that the USSR should not be underestimated but admitted it was going to take ten to fifteen years “to catch up economically with the advanced capitalist countries.” That point was duly noted by Germany’s ambassador to the Soviet Union.34

  Hitler was not to be stopped with veiled threats, and even as Stalin was speaking in Moscow, Hitler seized Memel and the rest of Czechoslovakia. Stalin ordered his foreign minister, Maxim Litvinov, to inform the German ambassador of the displeasure of the Soviet government.35

  In May 1939, Stalin had removed Litvinov, who was Jewish, as the commissar of foreign affairs and replaced him with Vyacheslav Molotov, who later recalled Stalin telling him to “purge the ministry of Jews,” suggesting a turnabout on official anti-Semitism. Molotov said he was happy to comply.36 For Hitler this move indicated Stalin’s interest in talking, but all the while Stalin kept trying to form a triple alliance with Britain and France and resisted German entreaties. The Soviets were circumspect, but their suspicions grew with the dilatory approach Britain adopted to negotiations in 1939, which dragged on from April 15 into mid-August.

  Britain and France sent a military delegation to Moscow to negotiate, but Stalin was infuriated that the officers were of low rank and traveled by ship instead of by plane. The Soviet secret police chief, Beria, prepared a dossier on each of the negotiators, and as soon as Stalin read the files, he remarked: “These people are not serious. These people can’t have the proper authority. London and Paris are playing poker again.”37

  At the meetings the USSR said it was prepared to put up 120 infantry divisions in the event of war with Germany, and the British and French would have to contribute at least 86. In fact, the British army was completely unprepared and had—by Hitler’s estimates, which were not far off the mark—something like 3 divisions it could deploy in Europe. For Stalin the British admissions made the negotiations a joke. Even if the French had more men, they had nothing like as many as the Soviets thought necessary. If war came, the Soviets would be left facing the military wrath of Germany more or less on their own.

  Stalin had had enough of these vacillations, so that when the German ambassador in Moscow conveyed his government’s wish to improve relations on August 15, Molotov answered within two days that a nonaggression pact might be useful. On August 18, Hitler wrote Stalin to request that his foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, fly to Moscow immediately for talks. He was willing to negotiate spheres of influence, but emphasized the urgency in view of the fact that “an early outbreak of open German-Polish conflict is probable.”38

  Hitler sent his acceptance of the pact two days later and expressed his willingness to sign Stalin’s supplementary protocol—with demands in it he had not even seen. Stalin underlined the phrase in Hitler’s telegram that said “a crisis may arise any day.” Hitler urged Stalin to meet with Ribbentrop as soon as possible and assured him his minister would have “the fullest powers to draw up and sign the nonaggression pact as well as the protocol.”

  Before Stalin had the fateful meeting, he read everything his minions could assemble for him about and by Hitler. He underlined passages about Germany’s “eternal ambitions” in the east and Hitler’s attitude toward Russia. Stalin was playing for time and also following his longstanding view that it was preferable for a war to begin among the Western powers. He could then, at the right moment, intervene to tip the balance.

  He was wary enough of Hitler and recognized how easily he had been able to wipe out the Communist and Socialist movements in Germany. Later he mentioned how Hitler “took the people with him” into the war, a dictator with the citizens behind him, making him all the more dangerous.39

  On August 23, Stalin and Molotov met with Ribbentrop and repeated their view that the British wanted to foment war between the Soviet Union and Germany as a way to maintain their own empire. At the end of a long evening there were toasts all round, ending with Stalin giving “a guarantee on his word of honor that the Soviet Union would not betray its partner.”40

  The nonaggression treaty was a conspiracy to wage war on Poland. The “secret additional protocol,” added at Stalin’s urging, assigned each country a “sphere of interest” in the event that a “territorial and political transformation” should take place in Poland. In plain English that meant Germany would take the western part of Poland and the Soviet Union the eastern part. Stalin wanted the Soviet sphere to include Finland and the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), all the way to Bessarabia in the far south.41

  Hitler needed the pact with Stalin so as not to worry about his rear if the British and French called his bluff. For Stalin the agreement was of monumental importance. It opened a new chapter in his career and revealed that his ambitions had moved beyond the Soviet Union. His “program” from the mid-1920s was being extended, from building Socialism in one country to breaking out of capitalist encirclement and now even seeking ways to expand the Soviet Union and spread Communism. Stalin later told the British ambassador Sir Stafford Cripps that he had signed the pact with Hitler because both of them sought “to destroy the old balance of power that existed in Europe,” whereas Britain and France were trying to maintain it.42

  The change of direction was a shock
to Communists everywhere, and it took a few days for Stalin to work out a new “line.” On September 7 he met with Molotov, Zhdanov, and Georgi Dimitrov, the head of the Comintern. He observed that it would “not be bad” if Germany and the capitalist countries were weakened: “Hitler, without understanding it or desiring it, is shaking and undermining the capitalist system.” Stalin said the pact was “helping Germany,” but next time the USSR might support the other side.43

  The new Communist position went as follows: until the war it was right to see a difference between democratic and Fascist regimes, but now that the war was on, the old distinction no longer made any sense. Communist parties the world over were told that they were witnessing a war among imperialist powers and that there was a possibility, if Communists played their cards right, to make progress toward the destruction of the slave-based system of imperialism once and for all. They could step in when a country—Poland, for example—was suffering the agonies of defeat and turn it into a Soviet republic. Poland was now described as a “Fascist state that enslaves Ukrainians, Byelorussians, and other Slavs;” if it fell, the world would have “one less bourgeois Fascist state. Would it be so bad if we, through the destruction of Poland, extended the Socialist system to new territories and populations?”

  The Comintern promptly issued a worldwide directive to the faithful. Instead of being against Germany, Communists in countries engaging the “Fascists” had to take an antiwar stand. Even in neutral countries like the United States, Communists were instructed to come out against intervention. The activists in France, England, Belgium, and America in particular were told they “must immediately correct their political line.”