Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler

by Robert Gellately

  14. Oleg Rzheshevsky, “Ivan Stepanovich Konev,” in Harold Shukman, ed., Stalin’s Generals (London, 1993), 90–107.

  15. Dmitri Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediya. Politichesky portret J. V. Stalina (Moscow, 1989), vol. 2, part 1, 268-69; 285-86.

  16. John Erickson, The Road to Berlin: Stalin’s War with Germany (New Haven, Conn., 1983), 39.

  17. Amy Knight, Beria: Stalin’s First Lieutenant (Princeton, N.J., 1993), 124-25.

  18. Cited in Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945 (New York, 2006), 157.

  19. McNeal, Stalin sochineniia, vol. 2 (vol. 15), 86-94.

  20. Cited in NYT, Feb. 23, 1943.

  21. Alexander Werth, The Year of Stalingrad (1947; Safety Harbor, Fla., 2001), 370.

  22. NYT, Dec. 20, 1942. Alas, the story was carried on page 23.

  23. A. M. Vasilevsky, Delo vsei zhizni (Moscow, 1983), 288-313.

  24. Walter Warlimont, Im Hauptquartier der deutschen Wehrmacht, 1939-1945 (Frankfurt am Main, 1962), 347-48.

  25. G. K. Zhukov, Vospominaniya i razmyshleniya (Moscow, 1969), 451–53.

  26. Cited in David M. Glantz and Jonathan House, The Battle of Kursk (Lawrence, Kans., 1999), 266.

  27. Calculations based on tables in ibid., 275-76.

  28. Warlimont, Hauptquartier, 348. See also Walter S. Dunn Jr., Kursk: Hitler’s Gamble, 1943 (London, 1997), 188-90.

  29. May 7, 1943, entry, in Tagebücher von Goebbels, part 2, vol. 8, 225.

  30. April 14 and 17 and May 10, 1943, entries, in ibid., 104, 114-15, 261.

  31. The May 8, 1943, speech is summarized in ibid., 233-40.

  32. Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1936-45: Nemesis (New York, 2000), 590.

  33. May 13, 1943, entry, in Tagebücher von Goebbels, part 2, vol. 8, 287-90.

  34. May 14, 1943, entry, in ibid., 293.

  35. March 12 and 15, 1943, in Helmut Heiber and David M. Glantz, eds., Hitler and His Generals: Military Conferences, 1942-1945 (New York, 2002), 104.

  36. July 26, 1943, in ibid., 252.

  37. Dieter Pohl, Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien, 1941–1944 (Munich, 1996), 246-47.

  38. Useful primary material is reprinted in Ber Mark, Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto (New York, 1975).

  39. Raul Hilberg et al., eds., The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow (New York, 1979), 384.

  40. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, rev. ed. (New York, 1985), vol. 2, 503.

  41. Abraham 1. Katsh, ed., Scroll of Agony: The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan (Bloomington, Ind., 1999), 396-97.

  42. Hilberg, Destruction of the European Jews, vol. 2, 507-10.

  43. See Nuremberg docs. NO-1882, NO-2514, NO-2494, as cited in ibid., 510.

  44. Cited in Israel Gutman, Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Boston, 1994), xix.

  45. Ibid., 203.

  46. Cited in ibid., 228-29.

  47. Cited in ibid., 225.

  48. See doc. 1061–PS, in IMT, vol. 26, 628-93, for the full report.

  49. Cited in Peter Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung: Eine Gesamtdarstellung der nationalsozialistischen Judenverfolgung (Munich, 1998), 540.

  50. Pohl, Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien, 248-56.

  51. April 25, 1943, entry, in Tagebücher von Goebbels, part 2, vol. 8, 163.

  52. Pohl, Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien, 256.

  53. See Thomas Sandkühler, “Endlösung” in Galizien: Der Judenmord in Ostpolen und die Rettungsinitiativen von Berthold Beitz, 1941–1944 (Bonn, 1996), 374-87.

  54. See docs. 019-L and 018-L, in IMT, vol. 37, 391–431.

  55. Doc. 019-L, in ibid., 410.

  56. For a description, see Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York, 1992), 133-42.

  57. Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung, 540.

  58. Speer’s alibis about not being at Posen were utterly destroyed by Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer: His Battle with the Truth (New York, 1995), 388-401.

  59. The complete speech is in IMT, vol. 29, 1919-PS, 110–72.

  60. Bradley F. Smith and Agnes F. Peterson, eds., Heinrich Himmler: Geheimreden, 1933 bis 1945 (Frankfurt am Main, 1974), 170. This timetable, recorded in the Posen speech by someone else, was not mentioned in the longer version that survives. See also Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung, 540 n. 31.

  CHAPTER 36: STALIN TAKES THE UPPER HAND

  1. Aug. 8, 1943, letter, in Commission for the Publication of Diplomatic Documents of the USSR, ed., Correspondence Between Stalin, Roosevelt, Truman, Churchill, and Attlee During WWII (Honolulu, 1957), 78-79.

  2. W. Averell Harriman and Elie Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941–1946 (New York, 1975), 157.

  3. Ibid., 536.

  4. David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York, 1999), 619, 631, 645.

  5. Feliks Ivanovich Chuev and Vyacheslav Molotov, Sto sorok besed’s Molo-tovym: iz dnevnika F. Chueva (Moscow, 1991), 73.

  6. U.S. Department of State, The Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 1943 (Washington, D.C., 1961), 482-86.

  7. Cited in Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 677.

  8. Winston Churchill, Closing the Ring (Boston, 1951), 379-80.

  9. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 674-75.

  10. U.S. Department of State, Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 490.

  11. Ibid., 514.

  12. Ibid., 513.

  13. Ibid., 555.

  14. Ibid., 512.

  15. Churchill, Closing the Ring, 362.

  16. U.S. Department of State, Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 594-95.

  17. Cited in Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 678.

  18. Cited in Arieh J. Kochavi, Prelude to Nuremberg: Allied War Crimes Policy and the Question of Punishment (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1998), 36. See also Richard Overy, Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands, 1945 (New York, 2001), 8-9.

  19. Reprinted in Michael R. Marrus, ed., The Nuremberg Trial, 1945-46: A Documentary History (Boston, 1997), 20–22.

  20. Kochavi, Prelude to Nuremberg, 73-74.

  21. U.S. Department of State, Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 554.

  22. Churchill, Closing the Ring, 373-74.

  23. U.S. Department of State, Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 554.

  24. According to Elliott Roosevelt, FDR had used the figure of 49, 500 that evening, as cited in Michael Beschloss, The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman, and the Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1941–1945 (New York, 2002), 27.

  25. Churchill, Closing the Ring, 374.

  26. Cited in Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin (Orlando, Fla., 1990), 79.

  27. Kochavi, Prelude to Nuremberg, 65.

  28. See Gerd R. Ueberschär, “Die sowjetischen Prozesse gegen deutsche Kriegsgefangene, 1943-1952,” in Gerd R. Ueberschär, ed., Der Nationalsozialismus vor Gericht: Die alliierten Prozesse gegen Kriegsverbrecher und Soldaten, 1943-1952 (Frankfurt am Main, 2000), 245.

  29. U.S. Department of State, Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 598-605.

  30. Ibid., 511.

  31. Ibid., 529-30.

  32. Sergo Beria, Beria, My Father: Inside Stalin’s Kremlin (London, 2001), 92.

  33. Ibid., 94.

  34. Cited in Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 684.

  35. See Peter Hoffmann, Stauffenberg: A Family History, 1905-1944 (New York, 1995), 258-77.

  36. July 28, 1944, Meldungen aus dem Reich, vol. 17, 6684.

  37. Norman Davies, Rising ’44: The Battle for Warsaw (New York, 2003), 165.

  38. Cited in ibid., 164.

  39. NYT, Aug. 1, 1944.

  40. U.S. Department of State, Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 600.

  41. Vojtech Mastny, Russia’s Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy, Warfare, and the Politics of Communism, 1941–1945 (New York, 1979), 185.

  42. Letters reprinted in Winston Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy (Bosto
n,1953), 130–31, 134.

  43. Ibid., 144-45.

  44. Alexander Werth, Russia at War, 1941–1945 (New York, 1964), 876-78.

  45. John Erickson, The Road to Berlin: Stalin’s War with Germany (New Haven, Conn., 1983), 285.

  46. Commission for the Publication of Diplomatic Documents of the USSR, Correspondence, 152-57.

  47. G. K. Zhukov, Vospominaniya i razmyshleniya (Moscow, 1969), 585; Richard Wolff, “Rokossovsky,” in Harold Shukman, ed., Stalin’s Generals (London, 1993), 191.

  48. Davies, Rising ’44, 433-34.

  49. 128-USSR, in IMT, vol. 39, 377-80.

  50. Bradley F. Smith and Agnes F. Peterson, eds., Heinrich Himmler: Geheimreden, 1933 bis 1945 (Frankfurt am Main, 1974), 242.

  51. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 145.

  52. Treaty signed on April 21, published the next day in Pravda; see McNeal, Stalin sochineniia, vol. 2 (vol. 15), 184-87.

  53. Cited in Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 738 n. 42.

  54. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 227.

  55. For the follow-up meeting and in general, see Mastny, Russia’s Road to the Cold War, 207-12.

  56. Churchill to Roosevelt, Oct. 22, 1944, in Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 241.

  57. Djilas, Conversations with Stalin, 79.

  58. Ibid., 83-84.

  59. Cited in Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 798.

  60. Harriman to Hopkins, Sept. 10, 1944, in U.S. Department of State, Europe, 1944, vol. 4, (Washington D.C., 1966) 989.

  61. U.S. Department of State, The Conferences at Malta and Yalta, 1945 (Washington, D.C., 1955), 976.

  62. Walter Warlimont, Im Hauptquartier der deutschen Wehrmacht, 1939-1945 (Frankfurt am Main, 1962), 505-24.

  63. U.S. Department of State, Conferences at Malta and Yalta, 578.

  64. Ibid., 589, 590.

  65. Ibid., 669-70, 677-78.

  66. Beria, Beria, My Father, 106.

  67. For a study that emphasizes security concerns over ideological expansionism, see R. Craig Nation, Black Earth, Red Star: A History of Soviet Security Policy, 1917-1991 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1992), 145.

  68. U.S. Department of State, Conferences at Malta and Yalta, 896.

  69. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 154.

  70. U.S. Department of State, Conferences at Malta and Yalta, 620, 630–32.

  71. Cited in Francis L. Loewenheim et al., eds., Roosevelt and Churchill: Their Secret Wartime Correspondence (New York, 1975), 575.

  72. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 156.

  73. Beria, Beria, My Father, 105.

  74. Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (New York, 1970), 227.

  75. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 664-67.

  76. U.S. Department of State, The Conference at Quebec, 1944 (Washington, D.C., 1972), 492-93.

  CHAPTER 37: END OF THE THIRD REICH

  1. Also for what follows, see Walter Warlimont, Im Hauptquartier der deutschen Wehrmacht, 1939-1945 (Frankfurt am Main, 1962), 518-21; for a longer version of the December 12 speech, see Helmut Heiber and David M. Glantz, eds., Hitler and His Generals: Military Conferences, 1942-1945 (New York, 2002), 535.

  2. Text in Heiber and Glantz, Hitler and His Generals, 554-68; also Warlimont, Hauptquartier, 522-24.

  3. Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II (Cambridge, U.K., 1994), 765-71.

  4. Both citations in Winston Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy (Boston, 1953), 281–82.

  5. Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, vol. 4, 2179-85.

  6. Nicolaus von Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant, 1937-45 (Mainz, 1980), 398.

  7. Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, vol. 4, 2195-98.

  8. Marlis G. Steinert, Hitler’s War and the Germans: Public Mood and Attitude During the Second World War (Athens, Ohio, 1977), 293.

  9. Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, vol. 4, 2203-6.

  10. John Erickson, The Road to Berlin: Stalin’s War with Germany (New Haven, Conn., 1983), 449.

  11. Danuta Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle, 1939-1945 (New York, 1990), 801–5.

  12. Cited in Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945 (New York, 2004), 248.

  13. See Johannes Tuchel, ed., Die Inspektion der Konzentrationslager, 1938-1945 (Berlin, 1994), 212-13.

  14. See Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany (Oxford, 2001), 242-52; Sybille Steinbacher, Auschwitz: Geschichte und Nachgeschichte (Munich, 2004), 97-100; Andrzej Strzelecki, “Evacuation, Liquidation, and Liberation of the Camp,” in Danuta Czech et al., Auschwitz: Nazi Death Camp (Oswiecim, 1996), 272ft

  15. Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle, 781–805.

  16. See the classic account of Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity, trans. S. Woolf (London, 1959).

  17. See Yehuda Bauer, Jews for Sale: Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933-1945 (New Haven, Conn., 1994), 239-51.

  18. See David A. Hackett, ed., The Buchenwald Report (Boulder, Colo., 1995), 328-31.

  19. Peter Black, Ernst Kaltenbrunner: Ideological Soldier of the Third Reich (Princeton, N.J., 1984), 250.

  20. See Stanislav Zamecnik, “Kein Häftling darf lebend in die Hände des Feindes fallen: Zur Existenz des Himmler-Befehls vom 14.-18. April 1945,” Dachauer Hefte (1985), 219.

  21. Martin Broszat, “Nationalsozialistische Konzentrationslager,” in Anatomie des SS-Staates, 5th ed. (Munich, 1989), vol. 2, 132.

  22. McNeal, Stalin sochineniia, vol. 2 (vol. 15), 178-82.

  23. See Klaus-Dietmar Henke, Die amerikanische Besetzung Deutschlands (Munich, 1995), 343-77.

  24. Weinberg, World at Arms, 812-13.

  25. Henke, Die amerikanische Besetzung Deutschlands, 400.

  26. See Bernd-A. Rusinek, Gesellschaft in der Katastrophe: Terror, Illegalität, Widerstand Köln, 1944-45 (Essen, 1989), 446.

  27. Erickson, Road to Berlin, 528.

  28. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 440–46.

  29. Commission for the Publication of Diplomatic Documents of the USSR, ed., Correspondence Between Stalin, Roosevelt, Truman, Churchill, and Attlee During WWII (Honolulu, 1957), 198-99.

  30. Ibid., 208.

  31. Francis L. Loewenheim et al., eds., Roosevelt and Churchill: Their Secret Wartime Correspondence (New York, 1975), 704-5.

  32. G. K. Zhukov, Vospominaniya i razmyshleniya (Moscow, 1969), 620–24.

  33. I.S. Konev, Sorokpiatyi (Moscow, 1966), 87-89.

  34. Cited in Erickson, Road to Berlin, 533.

  35. Christian Streit, “The German Army and the Policies of Genocide,” in Gerhard Hirschfeld, ed., The Politics of Genocide: Jews and Soviet Prisoners of War in Nazi Germany (London, 1986), 7.

  36. Christian Streit, Keine Kameraden: Die Wehrmacht und die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen, 1941–1945 (Stuttgart, 1978), 244, 247.

  37. Commission for the Publication of Diplomatic Documents of the USSR, Correspondence, 214.

  38. Zhukov, Vospominaniya, 655.

  39. Antony Beevor, The Fall of Berlin, 1945 (New York, 2002), 424.

  40. Erickson, Road to Berlin, 622.

  41. McNeal, Stalin sochineniia, vol. 2 (vol. 15), 189-94.

  42. Alexander Werth, Russia at War, 1941–1945 (New York, 1964), 964-65.

  43. Norman M. Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949 (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 72.

  44. Cited in Lev Kopelev, To Be Preserved Forever (New York, 1977), 52-53.

  45. See Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945 (New York, 2006), 299-335.

  46. Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin (Orlando, Fla., 1990), 95.

  47. Werth, Russia at War, 966.

  48. Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova, eds., A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army, 1941–1945 (New York, 2005), 341.

  49. Marshal Sladko Kvaternik, in Andreas Hillgruber, ed., Staatsmänner und Diplomaten bei Hitler: VertraulicheAufzeichnungen über Unterredungen mit Vertretern des Auslandes, 1939-1941 (Frankfurt am M
ain, 1967), vol. 1, 609-15.

  50. For sources and literature, see Gellately, Backing Hitler, 230–36.

  51. Albert Speer, Infiltration: How Heinrich Himmler Schemed to Build an SS Industrial Empire (New York, 1981), 238.

  52. See Speer-23, March 15, 1945, in IMT, vol. 41, 420–25; also Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (New York, 1970), 583-84.

  53. Cited in Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 588.

  54. See Speer-25, in IMT, vol. 41, 430–31.

  55. See Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 579.

  56. See Felix Kersten, The Kersten Memoirs, 1940–1945, trans. C. Fitzgibbon and J. Oliver (London, 1956), 264-70; and Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 610–11.

  57. Peter Hoffmann, The History of the German Resistance, 1933-1945 (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), 529-30.

  58. Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, vol. 4, 2223-24.

  59. Reprinted in Heiber and Glantz, Hitler and His Generals, 724-25.

  60. Joachim Fest, Der Untergang: Hitler und das Ende des Dritten Reiches (Berlin, 2002), 105.

  61. Anton Joachimsthaler, Hitlers Ende: Legenden und Dokumente (Berlin, 2004), 185-200, also for what follows. He cites Traudl Junge from earlier evidence that Hitler dictated his will after the marriage, around 2: 00 a.m.

  62. For the timing, see Traudl Junge, Bis zur letzten Stunde: Hitlers Sekretärin erzählt ihr Leben (Munich, 2002), 203.

  63. Reprinted in Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, vol. 4, 2236-39.

  EPILOGUE

  1. Maxim Gorky, Untimely Thoughts: Essays on Revolution, Culture, and the Bolsheviks, 1917-1918 (New Haven, Conn., 1995), 88.

  2. For the widespread attractiveness of the Volksgemeinschaft, see Norbert Frei, 1945 und Wir: Das Dritte Reich im Bewusstein der Deutschen (Munich, 2005), 107-28.

  3. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956 (New York, 1973), vol. 2, 10, citing the statistician 1. A. Kurganov.

  4. J. Otto Pohl, The Stalinist Penal System: A Statistical History of Soviet Repression and Terror, 1930–1953 (London, 1997), 131.

  5. Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History (New York, 2003), 585.

  6. See the remarkable David Remnick, Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire (New York, 1994), 138.