Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

decrypting of German military intelligence cyphers, the British cabinet was aware that Hitler would strike against the Soviet Union during the second half of the month.²²⁶ The British had also been tipped off, indirectly, through a leak passed on via Dahlems, by no less a person than Goring — concerned, as He? was, to avoid a two-front war.²²⁷ Anxious to wean the Soviet Union away from Germany, Churchill was among a number of those who had let Stalin know as early as April to expect a German attack.²²⁸

The aim of Eden, Cadogan, and Lord Beaverbrook was now to exploit He?’s capture by sowing further doubts in Stalin’s mind about whether Britain was about to strike a deal with Hitler, based upon peace proposals advanced by the former Deputy Fuhrer, while at the same time, through warnings of German intentions, leaving the door open to a rapprochement between Britain and the Soviet Union. The threat of a compromise peace, it was reasoned, might strengthen Moscow’s fears of isolation to the extent that the Red Army could launch a preventive attack on the Wehrmacht. At the same time, supplying Stalin with information about German plans could encourage him to seek contact with Britain. Either way, British interests would be well served. Stalin was, therefore, sent deliberately conflicting signals of British intentions. Under the pressure they were attempting subtly to exert, the British Secret Service envisaged a third — the most likely — reaction by Stalin: adopting a wait-and- see stance.²²⁹

Predictably, Stalin indeed followed the third option. He brushed away warnings, confident that Hitler would not risk a two-front war. He?’s defection bolstered this confidence, since Stalin presumed the Deputy Fuhrer had been commissioned by Hitler to put out peace feelers, and that only a few weeks remained available if an attack were to be launched. The silence from London about He? together with rumours that Britain might be ready to pull out of the war, aligned with the warnings of an imminent attack by Hitler on Russia, further reinforced the presumption of a serious split within the British government. From Stalin’s point of view, this meant the likelihood of delay, thereby hindering agreement with Germany, and blocking the chances of a German attack while there was still time that year.²³⁰

However, Stalin tried to keep his options open — just in case. On the day that the capture of He? was announced in London, 13 May, Stalin had four additional armies moved into the western border area of the Soviet Union. A further twenty-five divisions followed early in June, when rumours of Berlin and London agreeing a separate peace were rife.²³¹ By the time ‘Barbarossa’ came to be launched, large Russian tank divisions were ranged in forward positions in an arc around Bialystok and Lemberg. They were intended to be in a position to convert readily into an attack-force should, against Stalin’s expectations, a separate peace be speedily agreed between Britain and Germany.²³²

Stalin had seen in He?’s flight to Britain a rationality, as part of Hitler’s planned strategy, which was not there. He had been encouraged in this by British policy. What the Soviet dictator could not contemplate was, unfortunately for him and his country, the real position: that Hitler had had nothing to do with the absurd He? adventure; that he had no desire at this point to enter into negotiations with Britain; and that he was fixated upon a ‘war of annihilation’ to destroy the Soviet Union, aimed at leaving Britain then with no choice but to seek terms.

VII

By the middle of May, after a week preoccupied by the He? affair, Hitler could begin to turn his attention back to this imminent showdown. The directive he signed on 23 May, supporting the pro-Axis regime in Iraq (which had come to power following a military coup at the beginning of April, had refused to allow British troop movements in the country, and had sent Iraqi troops to surround a British air-base) had little more than nominal significance. A small number of German aeroplanes, carrying troops, had already flown to Iraq in mid-May. They could do little to help the weak Iraqi army fend off the invading British relief forces, which ultimately re-established a pro-British administration. In any case, Hitler’s directive made plain that a decision on any German attempt to undermine the British position in the eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf would only follow ‘Barbarossa’.²³³

The end of what had been a troubled month for Hitler brought further gloom to the Berghof with the news on 27 May of the loss of the powerful battleship Bismarck, sunk in the Atlantic after a fierce battle with British warships and planes. Some 2,300 sailors went down with the ship.²³⁴ Hitler did not brood on the human loss. His fury was directed at the naval leadership for unnecessarily exposing the vessel to enemy attack — a huge risk, he had thought, for potentially little gain.²³⁵

Meanwhile, the ideological preparations for ‘Barbarossa’ were now rapidly taking concrete shape. Hitler needed to do nothing more in this regard. He had laid down the guidelines in March. These sufficed, we saw earlier, for the High Commands of the Wehrmacht and the Army to convert them in May and early June into the series of orders to liquidate the Soviet Political Commissars and offer a ‘shooting licence’²³⁶ against the Russian civilian population outside the jurisdiction of military courts for German soldiers.²³⁷ It was during May, too, that Heydrich assembled the four Einsatzgruppen (‘task groups’) which would accompany the army into the Soviet Union. Each of the Einsatzgruppen comprised between 600 and 1,000 men (drawn largely from varying branches of the police organization, augmented by the Waffen-SS) and was divided into four or five Einsatzkommandos (‘task forces’) or Sonderkommandos (‘special forces’).²³⁸ The middle-ranking commanders for the most part had an educated background. Highly qualified academics, civil servants, lawyers, a Protestant pastor, and even an opera singer, were among them.²³⁹ The top leadership was drawn almost exclusively from the Security Police and SD.²⁴⁰ Like the leaders of the Reich Security Head Office, they were in the main well-educated men, of the generation, just too young to have fought in the First World War, that had sucked in volkisch ideals in German universities during the 1920s.²⁴¹ During the second half of May, the 3,000 or so men selected for the Einsatzgruppen gathered in Pretzsch, north-east of Leipzig, where the Border Police School served as their base for the ideological training that would last until the launch of ‘Barbarossa’.²⁴² Heydrich addressed them on a number of occasions. He avoided narrow precision in describing their target-groups when they entered the Soviet Union. But his meaning was, nevertheless, plain. He mentioned that Jewry was the source of Bolshevism in the East and had to be eradicated in accordance with the Fuhrer’s aims. And he told them that Communist functionaries and activists, Jews, Gypsies, saboteurs, and agents endangered the security of the troops and were to be executed forthwith.²⁴³ By 22 June the genocidal whirlwind was ready to blow.

‘Operation Barbarossa rolls on further,’ recorded Goebbels in his diary on 31 May. ‘Now the first big wave of camouflage goes into action. The entire state and military apparatus is being mobilized. Only a few people are informed about the true background.’ Apart from Goebbels and Ribbentrop, ministers of government departments were kept in the dark. Goebbels’s own ministry had to play up the theme of invasion of Britain. Fourteen army divisions were to be moved westwards to give some semblance of reality to the charade.²⁴⁴

As part of the subterfuge that action was to be expected in the West while preparations for ‘Barbarossa’ were moving into top gear, Hitler hurriedly arranged another meeting with Mussolini on the Brenner Pass for 2 June.²⁴⁵ It was little wonder that the Duce could not understand the reason for the hastily devised talks.²⁴⁶ Hitler’s closest Axis partner was unwittingly playing his part in an elaborate game of bluff.

Hitler did not mention a word of ‘Barbarossa’ to his Italian friends. He claimed on the return journey to have dropped a hint.²⁴⁷ But, if so, it completely passed Mussolini by. The two dictators talked alone for almost two hours, before being joined by their Foreign Ministers. Hitler had wept, Mussolini reported, when he spoke about He?.²⁴⁸ If so, he was weeping about the political damage the former Deputy Fuhrer had done. There were no personal lamentations for the loss of one of his most loyal devotees over so many years.²⁴⁹ Ciano and Ribbentrop were meanwhile reviewing relations with a number of countries and the general state of the war. ‘Rumours in circulation on the beginning of operations against Russia in the near future,’ remarked Ribbentrop, ‘are to be considered devoid of foundation, at least excessively premature.’ He conveyed the impression that the German build-up of troops was solely in response to the Soviet military