Who set Hitler against Stalin?. Nikolay Starikov

trade agreements with Berlin, providing Germany with vital products, including petroleum, wheat, and other commodities of strategic importance. While at war with Britain, Germany was greatly affected by the naval blockade thwarting the incoming and outgoing shipment of commodities necessary for military production chains. In such dire straits, Germany was much relieved by its continuing good relations with the Soviet Union, which purchased goods and materials required by Germany on the global market and then transported them safe and sound to the very borders of the otherwise blockaded country[6].

      These shipments could not be sunk or otherwise destroyed by British submarines and aircraft. We must therefore make one simple conclusion: It makes no sense for any country attacking a global superpower with which you have a non-aggression pact, and which supplies you with vitals, not your enemy! Why should one multiply one’s enemies, depleting one’s friends, or, to put it more precisely, one’s benignly neutral partners?

      Why did Adolf Hitler attack the Soviet Union, although he had admitted that a war on two fronts would bring Germany to its ruin?

      Here historians play their last trump. By routing the USSR, they explain, Hitler was hoping to coerce Britain into a peace agreement. All would be well, but does the shortest way from Berlin to London really lie through Moscow? Clearly not. There would be a far shorter one, by crossing the English Channel from the occupied France. One would not, in reality, lose oneself in the devious expanses of Russia with the view to ending up in England. This is utterly preposterous. What sort of “Hitler’s hopes” are they talking about?

      The sheer inconsistency of such and other statements cannot but strike the eye of today’s attentive reader. But it was as conspicuous even before the USSR was attacked. For example, it was plain to Count Galeazzo Ciano, Foreign Minister of Fascist Italy from 1936 until 1943. Not only was he an Italian minister, but he married to the daughter of Mussolini – he was a member of the family. As we know, Italy was not a mere observer in the Second World War; it declared war to the USSR after Germany. Now here is an extract from Count Ciano’s personal diary.

      Numerous sources point to the fact that the operation against Russia will begin shortly. The idea of war against Russia is in itself quite popular, for the defeat of Bolshevism must belong among the most important events in the history of human civilisation. However, this war doesn’t appeal to me as a symptom, for it has no adequate and convincing reason underlying it. A popular explanation of this war is that it will take place for no better reason than an attempt to find a way out of a difficult situation that has emerged against all odds[7].

      Such evidence is abundant. Funny to think, everyone at present is quite confident about the reason of Hitler’s aggression against Russia. Go ask anyone, ask yourself, and you will hear that hackneyed explanation of Hitler’s move. Wherefore all that clarity and unambiguity? Our contemporaries have read tons of books of the Second World War, and have got thoroughly imbued with this notion. But the contemporaries of the war itself, many of them being top-notch and highly competent politicians, found the idea of Germany attacking the USSR not just surprising, but completely off-the-wall. Why so? Because they hadn’t had the notion of no other possibility for Hitler than to attack the USSR pounded into their heads for sixty years, as we do now! As a result, those who lived in the 1940-ies considered that sort of “way out” rather a “way in” for the Reich into inferno; whereas we consider it the only possible solution for the Nazi.

      Besides, many of the Third Reich’s élite were strongly against the ruinous move against the Soviets, to include the Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop who would end his life on the gallows at Nuremberg.

      Russia is no potential ally of the English. England can expect nothing good from Russia. Hope in Russia is not postponing England’s collapse. With Russia we do not destroy any English hopes. <…> A German attack on Russia would only give the British new moral strength. It would be interpreted there as German uncertainty as to the success of our fight against England. We would thereby not only be admitting that the war was going to last a long time yet, but we might actually prolong it in this way, instead of shortening it[8].

      Why on earth did Germany’s leader commit what even his diplomats saw as the worst of all possible blunders? Such questions are not quite so naïve as may at first appear. Why, some 130 years before Hitler’s time, the same “route to London” was chosen by Napoleon. His catastrophic failure that had its roots in 1812 was a prominent and awful lesson to consider for militarists in all countries who were thinking of a war against the Russians. And Hitler remembered well that lesson. Still, he was about to walk twice into the same water. Why? What drives Britain’s biggest enemies to take such odd steps? Different in their nationalities, different in their slogans and their forces, these men take the same old path over and over again – the path they know to be a blind-alley!

      Why do they go for Moscow and not for London?

      Instead of disembarking in England, Napoleon’s 600-thousand-strong army wades knee-deep in Russian snow blizzards. Could they have at least tried to disembark in England? Even if some 200 thousand had gone down to Davy Jones in the English Channel, the remaining troops would have surely pounded the British Isles into a stair carpet leading right up to the great Emperor’s feet. But the Russian campaign went all wrong.

      However, what Hitler does is still more ridiculous. Routing France in summer 1940, he proceeds to attack Britain from the air. That rather brief series of air combats went down in history as the “Battle of Britain”, which was of course won by the British. You know why? Because the Germans had not employed all their air forces to win it – they used them sparingly, to be more precise. That the German Luftwaffe incurred heavier losses than the British air forces during the “Battle of Britain” is a well-known fact. This was the reason, as we will read in history books, why Germany almost completely ceased its air attacks of England. So Britain stood out.

      The reason why Hitler spared his aviation is also given in books. He did that, you will read, because he wanted to spare his fighters and bombers for the future Russian campaign. So they could not use them right now against the British. They could not bomb British air facilities, cities and sea ports; they could not destroy British fighters in the air and British troops on the ground. The Luftwaffe should be economised on, otherwise there won’t be enough planes and pilots for the Russian campaign – not enough to defeat Russia. And why defeat Russia? To able to defeat Britain afterwards, to be sure[9].

      Churchill’s memoirs reflect the same nonsense:

      Hitler’s plan for the invasion of Russia soon brought us much-needed respite in the air. For this new enterprise the German Air Force had to be re-deployed in strength, and thus from May onwards the scale of air attack against our shipping fell[10].

      But another page in the same book expresses the opposite view:

      He wishes to destroy the Russian power because he hopes that if he succeeds in this he will be able to bring back the main strength of his Army and Air Force from the East and hurl it upon this Island, which he knows he must conquer or suffer the penalty of his crimes. His invasion of Russia is no more than a prelude to an attempted invasion of the British Isles[11].

      One can’t but admit that Hitler chooses a very singular way of invading Britain: without winning it over from the start, he goes on to attack the Soviet Union, only to resume his campaign against Britain sometime in the future!

      He would probably have done better to use all his forces against Britain from the first, without any such “cunning” plans. Why attack the Soviet Union just to return to the Channel having already no able fleet to neutralise the British one? Such questions do not normally go down well with historians.

      As we know, all anti-British adventures and campaigns of all sorts meet the same end. Some three years after Napoleon’s Russian campaign, the great French

6

For example, 100% of crude rubber was imported by the Reich via the USSR. Other materials were imported using the same scheme (those which the war-torn Germany was not able to purchase directly).

7

Jacobsen, G.-A. 1939–1945. The Second World War. M., 1995. P. 153.

8

Joachim von Ribbentrop. Memorandum by the State Secretary in the German Foreign Office (Weizsäcker).

The English translation is quoted from the public-domain materials available at ibiblio: The Public’s Library and Digital Archive: http://www.ibiblio.org/ (Translator’s note).

9

For example, we can read these lines in the war diary left by the German General Franz Halder: “Adequate air forces for a siege of Britain will not be available until the Eastern campaign is substantially concluded and the Air Force is refitted and enlarged”. (Entry of September 13, 1941). Quoted by: War journal of Franz Halder, V. VII // Combined Arms Research Library Digital Library, http://goo.gl/J1VLQw

10

Churchill, W. The Second World War. V.1. P. 23.

11

Ibid. P. 174.