the war in the East was unsurprising. It had followed the gradual erosion of the traditional position of power of the armed forces’ — especially the army’s — leadership since 1933. Milestones on the way had been the Rohm affair of 1934 (when the SA’s leaders had been liquidated, in no small measure to placate the army) and, especially, the Blomberg-Fritsch crisis of 1938. The great victory in the West in 1940 had silenced the doubters, underlining the rapidly growing inferiority complex of the armed forces’ leadership towards Hitler. The subordination of the army to a Leader whose political programme had for long served its own ends had turned inexorably into subservience to a Leader whose high-risk gambles were courting disaster and whose ideological goals were implicating the army in outright criminality.
Not that this can be seen as the imposition of Hitler’s will on a reluctant army. In part, the army leadership’s rapid compliance in translating Hitler’s ideological imperatives into operative decrees was in order to demonstrate its political reliability and avoid losing ground to the SS, as had happened during the Polish campaign.85 But the grounds for the eager compliance went further than this. In the descent into barbarity the experience in Poland had been a vital element. Eighteen months’ involvement in the brutal subjugation of the Poles — even if the worst atrocities were perpetrated by the SS, the sense of disgust at these had been considerable, and a few generals had been bold enough to protest about them — had helped prepare the ground for the readiness to collaborate in the premeditated barbarism of an altogether different order built into ‘Operation Barbarossa’.
As the full barbarity of the Commissar Order became more widely known to officers in the weeks immediately prior to the campaign, there were, here too, honourable exceptions. Leading officers from Army Group ? (to become Army Group Centre), General Hans von Salmuth and Lieutenant-Colonel Henning von Tresckow (later a driving-force in plans to kill Hitler), for example, let it be known confidentially that they would look for ways of persuading their divisional commanders to ignore the order. Tresckow commented: ‘If international law is to be broken, then the Russians, not we, should do it first.’86 As the remark indicates, that the Commissar Order was a breach of international law was plainly recognized.87 Field-Marshal Fedor von Bock, Commander of Army Group Centre, rejected the shooting of partisans and civilian suspects as incompatible with army discipline, and used this as a reason to ignore the implementation of the Commissar Order.88
But, as Warlimont’s post-war comments acknowledged, at least part of the officer corps believed Hitler was right that the Soviet Commissars were ‘criminals’ and should not be treated as ‘soldiers’ in the way that the enemy on the western front had been treated. Colonel-General Georg von Kuchler, Commander of the 18th Army, for instance, told his divisional commanders on 25 April that peace in Europe could only be attained for any length of time through Germany presiding over territory that secured its food-supply, and that of other states. Without a showdown with the Soviet Union, this was unimaginable. In terms scarcely different from those of Hitler himself, he went on: ‘A deep chasm separates us ideologically and racially from Russia. Russia is from the very extent of land it occupies an Asiatic state… The aim has to be, to annihilate the European Russia, to dissolve the Russian European state… The political commissars and GPU people are criminals. These are the people who tyrannize the population… They are to be put on the spot before a field court and sentenced on the basis of the testimony of the inhabitants… This will save us German blood and we will advance faster.’89 Even more categorical was the operational order for Panzer Group 4, issued by Colonel-General Erich Hoepner (who three years later would be executed for his part in the plot to kill Hitler) on 2 May — still before the formulation of the Commissar Order: ‘The war against the Soviet Union is a fundamental sector of the struggle for existence of the German people. It is the old struggle of the Germanic people against Slavdom, the defence of European culture against Moscovite-Asiatic inundation, the repulse of Jewish Bolshevism. This struggle has to have as its aim the smashing of present-day Russia and must consequently be carried out with unprecedented severity. Every military action must in conception and execution be led by the iron will mercilessly and totally to annihilate the enemy. In particular, there is to be no sparing the upholders of the current Russian-Bolshevik system.’90
The complicity of Kuchler, Hoepner, and numerous other generals was built into the way they had been brought up and educated, into the way they thought. The ideological overlap with the Nazi leadership was considerable, and is undeniable. There was support for the creation of an eastern empire. Contempt for Slavs was deeply ingrained. The hatred of Bolshevism was rife throughout the officer corps.91 Antisemitism — though seldom of the outrightly Hitlerian variety — was also widespread. Together, they blended as the ideological yeast whose fermentation now easily converted the generals into accessories to mass murder in the forthcoming eastern campaign.92
V
In the last week of March, three days before he defined the character of ‘Operation Barbarossa’ to his generals, Hitler received some highly unwelcome news with consequences for the planning of the eastern campaign. He was told of the military coup in Belgrade that had toppled the government of Prime Minister Cvetkovic and overthrown the regent, Prince Paul, in favour of his nephew, the seventeen-year-old King Peter II. Only two days earlier, in a lavish ceremony on the morning of 25 March in Hitler’s presence in the palatial surrounds of Schlo? Belvedere in Vienna, Cvetkovic had signed Yugoslavia’s adherence to the Tripartite Pact, finally — following much pressure — committing his country to the side of the Axis. Hitler regarded this as ‘of extreme importance in connection with the future German military operations in Greece’.93 Such an operation would have been risky, he told Ciano, if Yugoslavia’s stance had been questionable, with the lengthy communications line only some twenty kilometres from the Yugoslav border inside Bulgarian territory.94 He was much relieved, therefore, although, he noted, ‘internal relations in Yugoslavia could despite everything develop in more complicated fashion’.95 Whatever his forebodings, Keitel found him a few hours after the signing visibly relieved, ‘happy that no more unpleasant surprises were to be expected in the Balkans’.96 It took less than forty-eight hours to shatter this optimism. The fabric of the Balkan strategy, carefully knitted together over several months, had been torn apart.
This strategy had aimed at binding the Balkan states, already closely interlinked economically with the Reich, ever more tightly to Germany. Keeping the area out of the war would have enabled Germany to gain maximum economic benefit to serve its military interests elsewhere.97 The initial thrust was anti-British, but since Molotov’s visit to Berlin German policy in the Balkans had developed an increasingly anti-Soviet tendency.98
Mussolini’s reckless invasion of Greece the previous October had then brought a major revision of objectives. The threat posed by British military intervention in Greece could not be overlooked. The Soviet Union could not be attacked as long as danger from the south was so self-evident. By 12 November Hitler had issued Directive No. 18, ordering the army to make preparations to occupy from Bulgaria the Greek mainland north of the Aegean should it become necessary, to enable the Luftwaffe to attack any British air-bases threatening the Romanian oil- fields.99 Neither the Luftwaffe nor navy leadership were satisfied with this, and pressed for the occupation of the whole of Greece and the Peloponnese. By the end of November, the Wehrmacht operational staff agreed.100 Hitler’s Directive No.20 of 13 December 1940 for ‘Operation Marita’ still spoke of the occupation of the Aegean north coast, but now held out the possibility of occupying the whole of the Greek mainland, ‘should this be necessary’.101 The intention was to have most of the troops engaged available ‘for new deployment’ as quickly as possible.102
With the directive for ‘Barbarossa’ following a few days later, it was obvious what ‘new deployment’ meant. The timing was tight. Hitler had told Ciano in November that Germany could not intervene in the Balkans before the spring.103 ‘Barbarossa’ was scheduled to begin in May. When unusually bad weather delayed the complex preparations for ‘Marita’, the timing problems became more acute. And once Hitler finally decided in March — following earlier military advice, as we have seen — that the operation had to drive the British from the entire Greek mainland and occupy it, the campaign had to be both longer and more extensive than originally anticipated.104 It was this which caused Hitler, in opposition to the strongly expressed views of the Army High Command, to reduce the size of the force initially earmarked for the southern flank in ‘Barbarossa’.105
In the intervening months, strenuous efforts had been made on the diplomatic front to secure the allegiance
