Who set Hitler against Stalin?. Nikolay Starikov

next expounds that a strong France would be the bane of the existence of England and Italy, out of all other countries. The Führer’s logic is plain as daylight. Since these two countries would hate to see the strengthening of France developing its hegemony in Europe thanks to the weakness of Germany rather than its own intrinsic power, these countries become Germany’s friends, if not on purpose. My enemy’s enemy is my friend. Well, maybe not exactly a friend, but certainly not an enemy!

      On the soberest and coldest reflection, it is today primarily these two States, England and Italy, whose most natural self-interests, at least in all essentials, do not oppose the conditions of existence of the German nation, indeed, to a certain degree are identical with them.

      The very word “England” is repeated in the quoted chapter with surprising frequency. Hitler keeps driving home the same idea, under various sauces.

      For Germany, however, the French danger means an obligation to subordinate all considerations of sentiment, and to reach out the hand to those who, threatened as much as we are, will not tolerate and bear France’s drive toward dominion.

      What is Hitler talking about? Could he be trying to make friends with Britain? And that almost a decade before his establishment in power? Exactly. And no buts about it.

      In Europe there can be for Germany in the predictable future only two allies: England and Italy.

      The key to success and proliferation for a weak and beaten Germany is a union with the defeaters that have no more interest in weakening the already weak Germany.

      And then it occurred to me – it is not for German burghers and Hausfraus that Hitler wrote his book. Not for the lads in the Hitlerjugend, not for the burly storm troopers, nor for the “men in black”, the SS. For Hitler, Mein Kampf was a splendid opportunity to address the rulers of the world of that time – England, and bring home his message, which was plain enough. A powerful movement is being born in Germany headed by Hitler. It has not yet gained its full swing, so it asks for help. Like a green sprout reaching for light, the Nazi party is making its way through the political “soil” of Germany. The party needs only two things: money and once more money. And there should be no fears about the party – the Nazi are “good guys”, they pose no threat to the British. The ambitious German politician Adolf Hitler sets up a forceful Anglophile movement and tries to bring it up to political power. The British could as well consider supporting him; for when he mounts the German political Olympus, he is going to enforce politics favoured by the United Kingdom; for there are no discrepancies between his political programme and that of Britain. Hitler needs no other allies.

      …How every one of these points <of the peace treaty of Versailles> could have been burned into the brain and feeling of this nation until, finally, in the heads of sixty million men and women the same sense of shame and the same hate would have become a single fiery sea of flames, out of whose glow a steely will would have risen and a cry forced itself <…>

      The treaty of Versailles indeed drove Germany to the very brink of destruction. The huge reparations due to be paid, famine, cold, poverty, unemployment, suicides… What kind of “cry” did Hitler expect to “force itself” from the souls of the Germans? “Feed us”? “Make us warm”? “Give us jobs”? “Cancel our reparations”? “Rescind the treaty of Versailles”?

      Not at all. Mein Kampf suggests something completely different, being intended for quite a different audience than scholars are inclined to think.

      We want arms once more!

      That is the exact phrase in the book that ends the previous one.

      Will Germany ask for arms from its defeaters to turn them against those who have devastated their Vaterland? Will it attempt to recover its lost territories and overseas colonies? But who will arm Germans against themselves? No need to worry. Hitler gives a ready answer in his book, and very clear one.

      The premise for the winning of lost territories is the intensive advancement and strengthening of the remaining remnant State as well as the unshakable decision <…> to consecrate at the given moment to the service of the liberation and unification of the whole nation <…>: that is, setting aside the interests of the separated regions.

      Hitler is not going to claim back the “separated regions”! Just because an alliance with Britain is Germany’s only chance to recover and regain its bygone grandeur. This goal is worth any sacrifice. The victorious Britain must have no fears to rearm Germany, as long as the arms will be used for quite different purposes, such as conquering new territories for the benefit of both nations.

      National fates are solidly welded together only through a perspective of a common triumph, in the sense of common gains, conquests, in short, a joint expansion of power.

      What “conquests” does Hitler plan to set out on for Germany and England to benefit from? This is the subject of the next chapter (Chapter 14) in Mein Kampf, with a tell-tale title – Eastern Orientation or Eastern Policy. This chapter is the most favoured source of quotation for many Soviet historians. However, it cannot well be understood without the previous chapter; so I must ask for an excuse from my readers for these long quotations. Now this Chapter 14 is extremely important for the understanding of the roots of the Second World War. But to be able to find a reply to what really happened on June 22, 1941, still more important is the direction of thoughts that had formed themselves in the head of the future Führer and Reichschancellor Adolf Hitler before it all began.

      In Chapter 14, Hitler expounds where the Nazi will send the German troops after being armed by the First World War victors.

      The demand for the re-establishment of the frontiers of the year 1914 is political nonsense of such a degree and consequences as to look like a crime.

      Let me remind that Germany’s defeat in the First World War resulted in massive forfeiture of its territories. These territories were grabbed by France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Lithuania. The overseas colonies were re-colonised by the United Kingdom. A demand to return these territories would mean war with the countries that now occupied them. Poland, Czechoslovakia and Lithuania are controlled by the Union Jack, while France is its number-one ally. The British will have no interest in such a war, hence no desire to sponsor it. For this reason, Hitler attempts to dissipate their doubts once and for all. We don’t want back our Alsace and Lorraine, says he, you may rest on it. There are other places of interest – far to the East, far beyond Poland and Lithuania.

      With this, we National Socialists consciously draw a line through the foreign-policy trend of our pre-War period. We take up at the halting place of six hundred years ago. We terminate the endless German drive to the south and west of Europe, and direct our gaze towards the lands in the east. We finally terminate the colonial and trade policy of the pre-War period, and proceed to the territorial policy of the future.

      But if we talk about new soil and territory in Europe today, we can think primarily only of Russia and its vassal border states.

      That’s clear enough, isn’t it? “We draw a line through the foreign-policy trend of our pre-War period” means no expansion of Germany to the territories it strove to occupy before the First World War, namely, China, Africa, and Asia. As it is, those lands are already divided among the English, the French, and other European nations. Even America has an axe to grind on these continents. Hitler won’t go there – he will go to Russia. There is land enough for everybody there; not only for the Germans, but for the British as well!

      Like an experienced clairvoyant, Hitler strives to dispel all the doubts and shilly-shally of the British intelligence services for who he intended his book. An alliance between Germany and Russia is the perennial nightmare for the Anglo-Saxondom. What happens if these two continental powers become friends? In that case, arming Hitler’s Germany might be “cruising for a bruising”, once he starts claiming the world hegemony in a tie with the Soviet Union.

      Such jejune speculations are utterly ruled out in Hitler’s book.

      The former Russia, divested of its German upper stratum,