Even at this late hour, Stalin still made it clear that he was not interested in India or any other part of the British Empire. His primary concern was that Hitler should leave the Balkans and Finland strictly alone. No reply to these proposals was ever received from Berlin.
How was the Molotov visit presented to the Soviet people? The Soviet press certainly made a brave effort to show its readers that the Soviet-German Pact was still a good thing, and that relations with the Germans were still correct, if not cordial. And yet, the Soviet newspaper reader, well-trained to read between the lines, must have guessed that things had not gone too well, as he read the following items:
COMRADE V. M. MOLOTOV'S VISIT TO BERLIN, Berlin, November 12
(TASS):
Comrade Molotov was given a festive (torzhestvennaya) reception in Berlin...
[The Russian adjective is somewhere half-way between "festive" and "solemn". It might be translated as " V.I.P..]
Long before the arrival of his train at the Anhalter Bahnhof, there had assembled on the station platform the representatives of various German government organs,
the representatives of the German High Command, the Diplomatic Corps of Berlin,
members of the Soviet Embassy and Trade Delegation and foreign and German
journalists.
The platform was decorated with flowers and evergreens, and the main entrance of
the station with the State flags of Germany and the USSR. All the adjoining streets were crowded with people long before the arrival of the train.
Comrade Molotov was met by Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop; Commander of the
OKW, General Field-Marshal Keitel; the head of the Labour Front, Dr Ley; the
head of the German Police, Herr Himmler; the head of the German Government
Press Office, Dr Dietrich, State Secretary Weizsäcker, Herr Steeg, the Burgomaster of Berlin, and many others.
Herr von Ribbentrop then accompanied Comrade Molotov to his Bellevue
residence. The German press unanimously considers the arrival of Comrade
Molotov as a fact of first-rate political importance.
[ Pravda, November 13, 1940.]
And then:
In the afternoon of November 12 a conversation took place in the new Chancellery
between the Reichskanzler of Germany, Herr Hitler and Comrade Molotov, in the
presence of Ribbentrop and the Deputy Foreign Commissar, V. G. Dekanozov. The
conversation lasted more than two hours.
[ Pravda, November 13, 1940.]
On the following day, according to Pravda, Molotov had further conversations in Berlin, and left in the morning of November 14. The following communiqué was published:
In the course of his visit to Berlin on November 12-13, Foreign Commissar V. M.
Molotov had a conversation with the Reichskanzler, Herr Adolf Hitler and Foreign
Minister Herr von Ribbentrop. The exchange of views took place in an atmosphere
of mutual trust and established mutual comprehension on all the important
questions concerning the USSR and Germany. V. M. Molotov also had a
conversation with Reichsmarschall Goering and another with Herr Hitler's deputy
at the head of the National-Socialist Party, Herr Rudolf Hess.
On November 13, V. M. Molotov had a final conversation with Herr von
Ribbentrop.
[ Pravda, November 15.]
Then there was another story on the "festive atmosphere" in which Molotov was seen off from the Anhalter Bahnhof. After 10 a.m. Ribbentrop had collected Molotov at the
Bellevue Palace to accompany him to the station. Again the station was decorated with flags, flowers and evergreens, and Molotov and Ribbentrop reviewed a guard of honour.
Apart from Ribbentrop, Molotov and his party were seen off by Reichsminister Dr
Lemmers, Himmler, Ley, Dietrich, Weizsäcker; Himmler's deputy, Daluege;
General Thomas representing Keitel [etc.]. Comrade Molotov was also seen off by
members of the Soviet Embassy and Trade Delegation in Berlin, to whom he
warmly said good-bye. Having thanked Herr von Ribbentrop for the reception he
had been given, Comrade Molotov then took leave of the representatives of the
German government who had come to see him off.
[ Pravda, November 15.]
Nothing was revealed at the time about the real nature of the Molotov-Hitler-Ribbentrop talks and although, in the final communiqué, there was that phrase about the "mutual trust", Russian readers had an uneasy feeling that something was not quite right. There was a little too much about the flowers and evergreens at the Anhalter Bahnhof, but no mention of any "friendly atmosphere" in the first report on the Hitler-Molotov meeting, even though it had lasted "more than two hours".
Could something be read into the fact that Keitel had merely sent his deputy to see
Molotov off? And into the fact that Molotov had said good-bye "warmly" to the members of the Russian Embassy, but not to the Germans?
[Perhaps the "warmth" was deliberately omitted in the account of Molotov's leave-taking, since the Germans present included such particularly unsavoury characters as Himmler and Daluege. Curious, too, was the omission of any mention of Molotov's second
meeting with Hitler.]
Needless to say, there was nothing in the Soviet papers about the British air-raid on Berlin, which had forced Ribbentrop and his guest into a shelter, where Molotov had
made one or two caustic remarks. But these were to be quoted in Moscow sub rosa
before long.
On November 18 the Soviet press printed photographs of Molotov and Hitler in the new Chancellery; Molotov had a completely noncommittal expression, and Hitler one of those strained and oily semi-smiles, into which anything could be read. Molotov looked much the same in the photograph with Ribbentrop; but the latter at least tried to look a little more cheerful. It was exactly a month after the publication of these photographs that Hitler finally decided on Plan Barbarossa, i.e. the invasion of the Soviet Union.
Molotov's most unusual manner of talking to Hitler had certainly something to do with it.
Although Hitler had considered an attack on Russia as early as the summer of 1940, his final decision was not taken until after his infuriating meetings with Molotov.
Chapter VIII "1941— IT WILL BE A HAPPY YEAR"
On the face of it, nothing seemed to have changed in Russia as a result of Molotov's November visit to Berlin. And yet, all kinds of strange news items began to appear in the press: for instance, a TASS denial, on November 16, of an American report that Japan had offered the Soviet Union the whole or part of India in exchange for Eastern Siberia—
a curious coincidence, to say the least, so soon after Hitler's mention of India to Molotov.
Then, for two days (November 16-17), Pravda ran, for no apparent reason, two whole pages by André Maurois on "Why France Lost the War", which for all their crypto-Vichyism, were scarcely pro-German. On the next day there was a story about 400,000
Frenchmen being thrown by the Germans out of Lorraine, and there were numerous
reports of "Famine in Paris". There were further suggestions of the Soviet Union not being really sympathetic to the Axis Powers; thus, on November 18, TASS denied a
German story that Hungary had joined the German-Italian-Japan axis "with the approval and encouragement of the Soviet Union". Then, as later, there were frequent accounts of German air-raids on England (Coventry, Manchester, etc.) and of the air blockade of
Britain, shipping losses, and so on.
One of the peculiarities of the Soviet-German Pact was that it provided for no "cultural"
contacts between the two countries, and one of the few manifestations of a heightened Russian interest in German Kultur was Eisenstein's production, on November 22, 1940, of the Walküre at the Bolshoi Theatre. A peculiarity of this Eisenstein production was
his original and unconventional treatment of the Wagner opera—with pantomime effects
introduced, for instance, in Act I to illustrate Siegmund's narrative. Members of the German Embassy who attended the première referred to the "deliberate Jewish tricks"
with which Eisenstein had desecrated the Master's work. But, on the other hand,
Sieglinde was sung by Mme Spiller, who, according to Moscow gossip, was Molotov's
lady-friend —perhaps a subtle compliment to the Germans.
Nothing much happened in December. There were the usual celebrations of Constitution Day, and there were many self-congratulatory articles saying that, in 1938, the Soviet Union had a population of 170 million, in 1939 one of 183 million, and in 1940, one of 193 million, since the Baltic Republics had joined the USSR and Bessarabia and
Northern Bukovina had been freed from "the yoke of the Rumanian boyars".
The elections in the new Karelo-Finnish Republic, and in the Western Ukraine and
Belorussia later in December proved a "dazzling victory of the Stalin Bloc of Communist and Non-Party Candidates". The press also reported that at a Supreme Soviet election meeting at Czernowitz, the candidate, General G. K. Zhu-kov, Commander of the Special Kiev Military District, had declared to his voters: "Under the wise leadership of Comrade Stalin, our country has become the mightiest country in the world"—a statement
strangely contrasting with the much more cautious words General Zhukov was to use
only a few months later.
The press continued to deal in some detail with the situation in Britain, with Churchill's statement that the danger of an invasion was not over, with British victories in the Western Desert and with Italian defeats in Albania. There was also a report of some
particularly powerful new American bombers; altogether, much interest continued to be shown in American aid to Britain. Occasionally, there were also some more explicitly anti-Nazi items like this in Pravda of December 19: "Hungary: All Jews (except 3,500) Deprived of Voting Rights."
New Year 1941 was celebrated in Russia with the usual exuberance and in the customary holiday atmosphere, complete with the giant New Year parties for children, and
celebrations in millions of homes. The editorials in the press tried to sound highly reassuring. On December 31, 1940 Pravda wrote: "We can look back on 1940 with a feeling of deep satisfaction... As Comrade Kalinin said on November 6, our economic
progress resulted in an eleven per cent increase of production... Much was done in 1940
by the Party and the Government to increase the military might of the USSR and the
defensive strength and military preparedness of the people. There have been great
improvements in the training and education of the Army and Navy personnel, and
important work is being done in the military education of the civilian population, and of our young people in particular... In all fields our successes have been stupendous."
And after recalling once again the incorporation of new territories in the Soviet Union, the editorial concluded: " 1941 will be the fourth year of the third Stalinist Five-Year Plan. And as we enter 1941, which will be a year of an even more tremendous
development of our socialist economy, the Soviet people are looking into their future cheerfully and full of confidence."
Ironically, during the next few days, the Soviet press spoke more and more frequently of the possibility of a German invasion of England, largely on the strength of speculation in the British press. Was there here a touch of wishful thinking? Even in February and
March this motif was frequently to be found in the Russian papers.
Since the Molotov visit to Berlin and, even more so, since the middle of January, the Russians had, indeed, more and more cause for uneasiness, but they continued for as long as possible to hope that Germany was still not interested in the East. On January 7 a photograph—obviously old, and dating from September 1940—was published in Pravda showing a crowd of English children in a trench watching an Anglo-German dogfight in the sky. Would Hitler get bogged down in the West?
However, appearances had to be kept up. On January 11, Pravda announced "Another Victory of Soviet Foreign Policy": the signing of the Soviet-German Agreement on the State Frontier between the two countries, a frontier running from the Igorka river to the Baltic, mostly through "former Poland". There was a picture of Molotov and Schulenburg signing the agreement. The publication of the agreement was accompanied by a
communiqué on reciprocal property claims in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and on the repatriation of Germans from these countries; as well as on a new Mikoyan-Schnurre
economic agreement. All was well, Pravda suggested:
The present agreement, based on the Soviet-German agreement of February 11,
1940, covers the period from February 11, 1941 to August 1, 1942 and marks the
next stage in the economic programme approved by the Soviet and German
Governments. It provides for a much larger volume of trade than that provided for during the previous period. The USSR will send industrial raw materials, oil
products and foodstuffs, particularly grain... Germany will send us industrial
equipment. This new economic agreement of January 10, 1941 marks a great step
forward.
The exact volume and nature of this trade was kept dark at the time, and even today it remains one of the more obscure aspects of the last war. There are conflicting views as to the contribution these Russian supplies made to Germany's war economy. Certain
German studies have tended to exaggerate their importance, while the Russians have
tried, on the contrary, to minimise them. More recently Professor Friedensburg of the West German Deutsches Institut für Wirt Schaftsforschung published a detailed study on the subject. According to him, Germany received from the Soviet Union between January 1, 1940 and June 22, 1941 roughly the following deliveries: 1.5 million tons of grain, 100,000 tons of cotton, 2 million tons of petroleum products, 1.5 million tons of timber, 140,000 tons of manganese and 26,000 tons of chromium.
The last two items were of course of great importance to Germany's war industry at the time when the British blockade had deprived it of many of its customary sources of
supply. According to Friedensburg, Russia had not supplied them before the Soviet-
German Pact had come into force. He also claims that the Russians had resold to
Germany copper bought from the United States. On the other hand, the Russians seem to have received fairly little in return. According to the same author, German statistics for that period show a balance of 239 million Reichsmarks in the Russians' favour, while the Russian statistics for 1940 showed a balance of 380 million roubles also in their favour, a sum which the Hitler régime had never paid and which the author asserts the Russians themselves refrained from claiming after the war, suggesting that they found it more convenient to forget about it.
During May and June 1941 when Stalin dreaded more than ever a German attack,
important raw materials such as copper and rubber were being rushed to Germany by
express trains from the East and the Far East to keep Hitler happy in an effort of
"appeasement" that was as frantic as it was futile. A few weeks later this copper, after processing, was used to kill thousands of Russians.
So, on the surface, all seemed well on January 10 when the new economic agreement was signed with Germany—an agreement which covered the period up to August 1, 1942—
by which time the Germans were well on their way to Stalingrad and the Caucasus.
But only three days later a new kind of rot started. Pravda published the following ominous statement: "The foreign press has suggested that we had approved the entry of German troops into Bulgaria. If there are German troops in Bulgaria, they are there
without our consent. We were never consulted." It had now become clear that the Germans had taken no
notice of Molotov's plea that the "Eastern Balkans" were a Soviet sphere of interest. Yet, if the Russians were annoyed they still showed it only by small petulant pinpricks. Thus, for no obvious immediate reason, they attacked Knut Hamsun, calling him a "rotting corpse" who did not share his fellow-Norwegians' hearty dislike for German rule. "And to think that this corpse—rotting alive—used to be a highly popular author in our country'"
[ Pravda. January 25, 1941.]
Hitler's speech of January 30 was duly reported. He said that the outcome of the war had already been settled in 1940; that an all-out U-boat war against England would start in the spring, and that the Americans were "wasting their time". But what struck the Russians most was that there was no mention of the Soviet Union. Moreover, there was that
ominous little phrase at the end: "I have calculated every conceivable possibility." Stalin knew that, by now, his December "proposals" had been ignored by Hitler.
Moscow's nervousness produced strange results. On January 30 there was an ukase of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet appointing Beria, head of the NKVD, "General
Commissar of State Security"; a few days later the People's Commissariat of the Interior (NKVD) was turned into two different commissariats—Interior (NKVD) under L. P.
Beria and Security (NKB) under V. N. Merku-lov.
The phrase "mobilisational preparedness" kept recurring over and over again in propaganda and the press; the ukase of the previous June on labour discipline was being more and more rigidly enforced, "slackers" and absentees in industry being subjected to ruthless punishment; great attention was being given to the training of young people for industry in a network of establishments like railway and FZO (factory) schools with their 600,000 pupils. These young people were intended to become an important labour
reserve in the great national emergency.
In the middle of February, at the 18th All-Union Conference of the Party, long, detailed and rather critical reports were produced by Malenkov on the "Successes and
Shortcomings of Industry and Railways", by N. Voznesensky on the "General Progress of the Economy of the USSR in 1941 ", and so on.
The usual glorification of the "invincible" Red Army, referred to as recently as December 1940 by Zhukov as "the mightiest army in the world", gave way to a more sober and critical assessment. On Red Army Day, February 23, 1941, the same General Zhukov
Russia at war Page 15
