Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler

by Robert Gellately

  Stalin was surprised at the outcry in the West, where sympathy for the hopelessly outgunned Poles was matched by condemnation of the Soviets who waited in the distance as the Germans annihilated the Home Army. The survivors surrendered on October 2, 48 and just over a week later, Hitler ordered the complete destruction of the city.49

  Himmler’s remarks on September 21 to regional commanders show his genocidal thinking toward the Poles:

  I said: “Mein Führer, the time is disagreeable. Seen historically, however, it is a blessing that the Poles are doing it. We’ll get through the five, six weeks. But by then Warsaw, the capital, the head, the intelligence of this former 16-17 million Polish people will be extinguished—this people that has blocked the east for us for seven hundred years and has always stood in our way…. The Polish problem will historically no longer be a big problem for our children and for all who come after us, nor indeed for us.”50

  Churchill was pained to record the casualty figures, which counted 15,000 out of the 40,000 men and women in the Polish Home Army. The city’s population of 1 million lost another 200,000. German losses were significant, with around 10,000 killed, 7,000 missing in action, and another 9,000 wounded.51 The conclusion to this tragic tale came on April 21, 1945, when Stalin took time away from the battle for Berlin to sign a “treaty of friendship” with the Communist government in Poland. It was publicized the next day, on Lenin’s birthday, and so achieved the Leninist dream that had been stopped before the gates of Warsaw in the early 1920s.52

  DIVIDING THE SPOILS

  The Red Army waited outside for the sixty-six days of the Warsaw uprising, but everywhere else the Allies moved ahead. The Americans and British swept through France and Belgium and were heading for the Rhine. The Soviets took Romania and Bulgaria, and threatened Germany on a long front from north to south. The United States drove back the Japanese and landed on Okinawa in preparation for the final assault on Japan itself.

  Some American insiders were convinced Stalin intended Communism for all of Germany and much more. For Churchill, the behavior of the Red Army at Warsaw rekindled his long-standing phobias, and he became alarmed about the danger of the “Red Army spreading like a cancer from one country to another.”53 It was in this context that Churchill flew to Moscow on October 9. He went alone, as Roosevelt was not up to such a trip.

  Churchill had been a staunch anti-Communist all his life, but the war had forced him to put aside his moral scruples. He now thought the moment auspicious to settle some major issues of what postwar Europe would look like, and, no doubt hoping to rescue the best he could under the circumstances, he scribbled on a scrap of paper the following allocation of postwar spheres of influence:

  Romania

  Russia 90%

  The others 10%

  Greece

  Great Britain 90%

  (in accord with U.S.A.)

  Russia 10%

  Yugoslavia 50–50%

  Hungary 50–50%

  Bulgaria

  Russia 75%

  The others 25%

  Stalin looked quickly at the numbers and took out his famous blue pencil to mark agreement. Churchill recalled: “It was all settled in no more time than it takes to set down.”54 In fact there was no real chance he could make even those figures stick. What was Britain to do about its share of influence in Yugoslavia or Hungary, Romania or Bulgaria? The numbers were tossed back and forth in the days that followed, but without reaching agreement. Harriman, who was present for the United States, suggested the figures were meant only as a rough guide.55 It finally occured to Churchill he might be helping to consign millions to Communist rule. Becoming concerned about what he had done, he suggested the ungodly piece of statesmanship might be considered cynical and proposed they burn the paper. Stalin was not about to agree.

  He had long since made up his mind that territory liberated by the Red Army would be dominated by the USSR in the name of Communism. Not only were the Western Allies disinclined to challenge this vision of the future; militarily they were not in a position to do much. Therefore, whether Churchill or FDR agreed, Stalin knew perfectly well he had a free hand in the east and told Churchill he had plans for the complete reshuffling of Europe.

  Somewhat unexpectedly at the meeting, “Uncle Joe,” or just U.J., as Churchill called him in letters to FDR, came out in favor of war crimes trials for the major Nazi leaders. His view now was that “there must be no executions without trial; otherwise the world would say we were afraid to try them.” He also said that if there were no trials, there could be no executions. Thus, the way was finally cleared for what would become the trials of the major war criminals at Nuremberg.56

  At the meeting with Churchill and thereafter, Stalin grew more arrogant, even among his own cronies. The coarse side of his character got the upper hand. He conducted business not in the bureaucratic style for which he was known but in late-night drinking parties where he gratuitously humiliated even loyal followers. Behind the drunken joviality was the bloody dictator, who was as prepared to have someone shot as to order another round of toasts. His jokes became crude. When the Yugoslavian Milovan Djilas, a visitor awestruck in the presence of the great man, said soberly that the resistance in his country did not take prisoners, in retaliation for the actions of the Germans who had routinely killed all Yugoslav prisoners, Stalin laughed and told a tasteless joke.57

  Djilas was still entranced on the morning after the all-night fest, as he left for home. Stalin and Molotov gave him a send-off, and Djilas remembered his thoughts at that moment, which suggest the persistent fantasy of Communist world conquest:

  The car bore me away into the morning and to a not yet awakened Moscow, bathed in the blue haze of June and the dew. There came back to me the feeling I had had when I set foot on Russian soil: The world is not so big after all when viewed from this land. And perhaps not unconquerable—with Stalin, with the ideas that were supposed finally to have revealed to man the truth about society and about himself.

  It was a beautiful dream—in the reality of war. It never even occurred to me to determine which of these was the more real, just as I would not be able today to determine which, the dream or the reality, failed more in living up to its promises. Men live in dreams and realities.58

  YALTA AND THE OPPORTUNITY TO EXPAND COMMUNISM

  The Big Three held another conference at Yalta, in the Soviet Crimea, to iron out difficulties and plan the postwar settlement. Although Roosevelt’s health was deteriorating, he made the long trip. He had delivered his fourth inaugural address as president on January 20, 1945, in what was the shortest such speech in American history. His main point: “We can gain no lasting peace if we approach it with suspicion and mistrust—or with fear.”59 But his own diplomats and advisers were talking of their worries that the USSR might become a bully. Harriman wrote in September 1944 of his concerns that the Soviets were interpreting America’s “generous attitude toward them as a sign of weakness and acceptance of their policies.”60

  The Yalta Conference met from February 4 to 11 and confirmed what the Big Three had more or less already agreed upon. Of greatest immediate importance was the treatment to be accorded Germany and what was to happen to Eastern Europe, especially Poland. Stalin was given latitude in the discussions because the Soviets had sacrificed so much and because his allies wanted his help in the war against Japan. A decision was also made to form the United Nations, and a conference was called to open in San Francisco on April 25, 1945.61

  The Allies agreed to divide Germany into three zones, with France possibly given a fourth zone. Stalin was at the height of his powers and said at the first plenary session that the Red Army was twenty miles or so into Germany. Besides liberating Ukraine and the Baltic States, the Soviets had already swept through Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and East Prussia.

  The Allies in the west had not yet done so well. They had to fend off a German counterattack in the Ardennes at the Battle of the Bulge in December and had
still not crossed the Rhine into Germany. Hitler put great stock in this surprise counterstroke but had to keep delaying it because of supply shortages. The Americans brought up reinforcements, and the outcome, which was never in doubt, was sealed within a few weeks.62 Despite that impressive victory and the heavy losses the Allies sustained, FDR and Churchill could hardly emphasize their sacrifices in comparison to the Soviets’, and they kept trying to ingratiate themselves to the assertive Stalin. The Soviet leader had the additional advantage of numerical superiority in troops on the ground, more than double those of the Allies and more than triple the forces the Germans had.63

  Stalin said the three powers that liberated Europe would play the dominant role in the future. He talked about preserving the peace, but he had no intention of having his actions “submitted to the judgment of the small powers.” Churchill waxed poetic on the topic: “The eagle should permit the small birds to sing and care not wherefore they sang.” This point was completely lost on Stalin, who saw a golden opportunity to continue the Leninist legacy of spreading Communism: how far west he might go remained to be seen.64

  Stalin was even more hard-hearted about Poland. At the February 6 plenary meeting, he said it was to be made a kind of buffer zone for the USSR. Having been liberated by the Red Army, the country was not going to be permitted to have opposition forces. A Communist government was going to be in place, and there was nothing further to be said. Stalin’s method was to be ostentatiously generous on issues that did not matter to him but unyielding when it counted. FDR said lamely that the Lublin Communists represented at best “a small portion of the Polish people.”65

  Churchill was prepared for compromises in return for an independent Poland. Stalin pretended but he told Beria later he had “not moved one inch.”66 The notion of forcing early elections in Poland, put forward by FDR, was a dead letter without backing from Western armies. What was at stake at Yalta for Stalin, as throughout the latter part of the war, was to achieve Communist ideological aims and improved national security.67

  FDR got Stalin to agree to go to war with Japan by offering concessions in the Far East. Stalin wanted the territory lost to Japan in 1904, which included part of Sakhalin and adjacent islands; Port Arthur and Dairen; and the rights to operate major railroads in Manchuria. Although Chinese sovereignty would supposedly be untouched, obviously these concessions infringed on it. Finally, the Kurile Islands were to be handed over to the USSR. The deal would make it possible for the USSR to spread its ideas and influence eastward.68 Churchill was right that the Soviets “undoubtedly had great ambitions in the East,” but FDR decided the priority was to get Soviet help against Japan.69

  The Soviets would demand reparations from Germany, both in kind—that is, factories, rolling stock, and so on—and monetary compensation (the figure of ten billion dollars was mentioned). These measures were to be spread over a period of ten years or so. German heavy industry would be cut by 80 percent, but all military-oriented industry would be confiscated. Churchill recalled what happened when the Allies tried to collect reparations after the First World War and worried about the specter of eighty million starving Germans. FDR said they should not try “to kill the people.” These reservations left Stalin unimpressed.70 He was more inclined toward solutions like that proposed by U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau at the Quebec Conference in September 1944.

  Morgenthau had presented a plan for what was in effect the pastoralization of Germany. The country would be stripped of its war-making abilities and reduced to a land of shepherds. Churchill was initially outraged at the idea: “I am all for disarming Germany but we ought not to prevent her living decently…. You cannot indict a whole nation…. Kill the criminals, but don’t carry on the business for years.”71

  At the Quebec conference, Churchill and FDR agreed “to consider” the Morgenthau plan.72 Once the U.S. president returned to Washington, the prudent secretaries Cordell Hull and Henry Stimson (who were not at Quebec) prevailed, and FDR backed away from such a draconian approach. Stalin brought a similar proposal at Yalta, and it was only with difficulty that FDR and Churchill managed to avoid making such a commitment.

  FDR told Stalin the American people would not let him keep forces in Europe much longer—a fateful revelation as far as Stalin was concerned. Beria’s son said that thenceforth Stalin “took account of what Roosevelt had said in all his subsequent plans.”73

  President Roosevelt kept one major piece of news to himself. The Americans were developing the atomic bomb. Although the Germans had knowledge of how the bomb could be made, Albert Speer had canceled its development in the autumn of 1942 because Germany could not spare the enormous resources required and could not afford to wait for the lengthy development process to be completed. Hitler would certainly have used such a weapon against Britain, but in Speer’s view the führer could not quite imagine an atomic bomb.74

  The American Manhattan Project was a monumental undertaking that included establishing a vast industrial complex and new infrastructure of roads, bridges, and dams. All of this was needed to produce, sometimes one spec at a time, the material to make the U-235 radioactive pellets. The project had manufactured enough material to make one bomb by mid-1945.75 FDR and Churchill spoke about it in September 1944 at Quebec and agreed under all circumstances to keep the Soviets in the dark.76

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  END OF THE THIRD REICH

  Hitler spoke to his commanders on December 11 and 12, 1944, and tried to fire them up for the counterattack into the Ardennes region against the Americans. He said a war to stop the complete unification of Germany had been in the cards since the middle of the nineteenth century. It had been carried on again in the First World War, and was still under way. The country was being “fought so fiercely,” he said, because there was an “ideological possibility of unifying all the German tribes.” That was why the war was on and why the enemies were “supported by international Jewry.”1

  The Americans could not be allowed to think they would ever surrender. There could be no defeatism—which he saw as fatal in the First World War. He underlined the contradictions in the Allied camp, with an “ultra-Marxist” state (the USSR), a “dying empire” (Britain), and a “colony [the United States] waiting to claim its inheritance.” Believing it only a matter of time before the coalition dissolved, he planned a surprise counterattack on the Americans. After delays caused by various shortages, the assault was finally launched on December 16, but despite initial successes, it ground to a halt in ten days when the Americans brought up large-scale reserves.

  Sensing this was his last chance—and a faint one at that—Hitler wanted to restart the counterattack. On December 28 he again addressed the commanders and surveyed the situation with an optimistic tone. He thought the German people “breathed more freely” once they saw the Wehrmacht on the offensive. That mood could not be “allowed to turn into lethargy again.” He said, “There are no better people than our Germans.” All they needed was a victory and they would come forward and “make every sacrifice which is humanly possible.”

  The other side of the coin was that the nation had to win this battle or it would be annihilated. “A victory for our enemies must undoubtedly lead to Bolshevism in Europe. Everyone must and will understand what this Bolshevization would mean for Germany. This is not a question of a change in the state, as in the past…. But this concerns the existence of the essence itself. Essences are either preserved or eliminated. Preservation is our aim. The elimination would destroy a race like this, possibly forever.” Here was another all-or-nothing alternative: “Germany will either save itself or—if it loses this war—perish.”2

  The attackers had the advantage of surprise, committed heavily against the Americans, but found the going tough. The Germans suffered between eighty and a hundred thousand casualties, losing as well most of their tanks and much of what was left of the air force. In the two phases of the battle, running from December 16 to January 2 and again from January 3
to 28, the Americans had around eighty thousand killed, wounded, and missing. That made the Battle of the Bulge the deadliest they fought in northwest Europe. The Allies, however, rushed in new troops from hundreds of thousands gathering in the west. They had overwhelming superiority in supplies and munitions and above all in the air. The route to Germany now stretched out before them.3

  Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery, never one to offer praise lightly, pointed to the main reason for the Allied victory: “The Battle of the Ardennes was won primarily by the staunch fighting qualities of the American soldier.” It was an Anglo-American effort, Churchill said in a speech to Parliament, but “the United States troops have done almost all the fighting, and have suffered almost all the losses.”4

  The Battle of the Bulge helped the Soviets, because Hitler had to draw away divisions from the east. The door was opened to the Red Army, which was preparing for a great offensive and already talking about taking Berlin.

  Despite the German military setback, from which there was no possible recovery, Hitler mustered the energy for a New Year’s Day broadcast. He conveyed anything but a defeatist attitude. He swore there would be no repeat of November 9, 1918. As long as he was leader, there would be no letting down the troops. He gave the impression that superhuman effort from the people could still succeed, but their backs were against the wall.

  There would be no “miracle weapons” to come to the rescue. There had been rumors and whispers for years about such weapons, but Hitler did not even mention them. He would not raise false hopes, and he bet that humans, not machines, were the key to victory.

  In his New Year’s address he once again pointed the accusing finger at the Jews, whom he charged with bringing about the war. They were his obsession, and he blamed the supposed “Jewish-international world enemy” for everything that went wrong. He swore “the Jew” would “not only fail in this effort to destroy Europe and exterminate its people, but would bring about his own destruction.” This renewed threat to take vengeance on them, as in all the others he made in public or in private for years on end, was still phrased in the future tense. Yet he was making the threat when the mass murder of the Jews had already resulted in the deaths of millions. Why would he not take responsibility? The simple answer is more apt here. Hitler was shifting the responsibility for the Nazi extermination of the Jewish people onto the Jews themselves; he was making the case, utterly groundless and cowardly though it was, that the victims were themselves to blame for their own destruction. Hitler cut a pathetic figure, thrashing helplessly away in anguish, bitterness, and narcissistic despair, as the Third Reich was going up in smoke.