Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

pompous, long-winded statements. He let Ribbentrop’s initial comments, that Britain was already defeated, pass without comment. And he made little response to the German Foreign Minister’s strong hints in the opening exchanges that the Soviet Union should direct her territorial interests towards the Persian Gulf, the Middle East, and India (plainly indicated, but not mentioned by name). But when Hitler joined the talks for the afternoon session, and provided his usual grand sweep of strategic interests, Molotov unleashed a hail of precise questions about Finland, the Balkans, the Tripartite Pact, and the proposed spheres of influence in Asia, catching the German leader off guard. Hitler was visibly discomfited, and sought a convenient adjournment.

Molotov had not finished. He began the next day where he had left off the previous afternoon. He did not respond to Hitler’s suggestion to look to the south, and to the spoils of the British Empire. He was more interested, he said, in matters of more obvious European significance. He pressed Hitler on German interests in Finland, which he saw as contravening the 1939 Pact, and on the border guarantee given to Romania and the military mission sent there. Molotov asked how Germany would react were the Soviet Union to act in the same way towards Bulgaria. Hitler could only reply, unconvincingly, that he would have to consult Mussolini. Molotov indicated Soviet interest in Turkey, giving security in the Dardanelles and an outlet to the Aegean.

Symbolizing the fiasco of the two-day negotiations, the closing banquet in the Soviet Embassy ended in disarray under the wail of air-raid sirens. In his private bunker, Ribbentrop — showing once more his unerring instinct for clumsiness — pulled a draft agreement from his pocket and made one last vain attempt to persuade Molotov to concur in a four-power division of a large proportion of the globe. Molotov coldly reasserted Soviet interest in the Balkans and the Baltic, not the Indian Ocean.²⁹³ The questions that interested the Soviet Union, went on Molotov, somewhat more expansively than during the actual negotiations, were not only Turkey and Bulgaria, and the fate of Romania and Hungary, but also Axis intentions in Yugoslavia, Greece, and Poland. The Soviet government also wanted to know about the German stance on Swedish neutrality. Then there was the question of outlets to the Baltic.²⁹⁴ Later in the month, Molotov told the German Ambassador in Moscow, Graf von der Schulenburg, that Soviet terms for agreeing to a four-power pact included the withdrawal of German troops from Finland, recognition of Bulgaria as within the Russian sphere of influence, the granting of bases in Turkey, acceptance of Soviet expansion towards the Persian Gulf, and the cession by Japan of southern Sakhalin.²⁹⁵

Molotov listed these terms on 26 November.²⁹⁶ Hitler did not need to wait so long. He viewed the talks in Berlin, he had told his army adjutant Major Engel before Molotov came to the Reich capital, as a test of whether Germany and the Soviet Union would stand ‘back to back or breast to breast’.²⁹⁷ The results of the ‘test’ were now plain, in Hitler’s eyes. The two-day negotiations with Molotov had sufficed to show that irreconcilable territorial interests of Germany and the Soviet Union meant inevitable clashes in the near future. Hitler told Engel that he had in any case expected nothing from Molotov’s visit. ‘The talks had shown where the Russian plans were heading. M[olotov] had let the cat out of the bag. He (F[uhrer]) was really relieved. It would not even remain a marriage of convenience. Letting the Russians into Europe meant the end of central Europe. The Balkans and Finland were also dangerous flanks.’²⁹⁸

Hitler’s conviction, hardening since the summer, was confirmed: the strike against the Soviet Union had to take place in 1941. Some time in the autumn, probably following Molotov’s visit, he sent his adjutants to search out a suitable location for field headquarters in the east. They recommended a spot in East Prussia, near Rastenburg, and he gave Todt orders to begin construction and have the headquarters completed by April.²⁹⁹ On 3 December he congratulated Field-Marshal Fedor von Bock on his sixtieth birthday and told him that the ‘Eastern Question is becoming acute’. He spoke of rumoured links between Russia and America, and Russia and England. To await developments was dangerous. But if the Russians were eliminated from the equation, British hopes of defeating Germany on the Continent would vanish, and Japanese freedom from worries about a Soviet attack from the rear meant American intervention would be made more difficult.³⁰⁰

Two days later, on 5 December, he reviewed the objectives of the planned attack on the Soviet Union with Brauchitsch and Halder. Soviet ambitions in the Balkans, he declared, were a source of potential problems for the Axis. ‘The decision concerning hegemony in Europe will come in the battle against Russia,’ he added. ‘The Russian is inferior. The army lacks leadership.’ The German advantage in terms of leadership, materiel, and troops would be at its greatest in the spring. ‘When the Russian army is battered once,’ continued Hitler, in his crass underestimation of Soviet forces, ‘the final disaster is unavoidable.’ The aim of the campaign, he stated, was the ‘crushing of Russian manpower’. The key strikes were to be on the northern and southern flanks. Moscow, he commented, was ‘of no great importance’. Preparations for the campaign were to be advanced in full force. The operation was expected to take place at the end of May.³⁰¹ Halder reported Hitler’s thoughts to a meeting of military leaders on 13 December. The campaign, he told them, would involve the launching of 130–140 divisions against the Soviet Union by spring 1941.³⁰² There was no indication that Brauchitsch, Halder, or their subordinate commanders raised objections to Hitler’s analysis. On 17 December Hitler summarized his strategy for Jodl by emphasizing ‘that we must solve all continental European problems in 1941 since the USA would be in a position to intervene from 1942 onwards’.³⁰³

The following day, 18 December 1940, Hitler’s war directive No.21 began: ‘The German Wehrmacht must be prepared, also before the ending of the war against England, to crush (niederzuwerfen) Soviet Russia in a rapid campaign.’³⁰⁴

The operation had been code-named ‘Otto’ by the General Staff. It had been referred to as ‘Fritz’ by the Wehrmacht operational staff, and the draft directive No.21 laid before Jodl on 12 December had carried that name. When Jodl presented it to him five days later, Hitler changed the code-name to the more imperious ‘Barbarossa’ — an allusion to the mighty twelfth-century emperor, ruler of Germany’s first Reich, who had dominated central Europe and led a crusade against the Infidel.³⁰⁵ Hitler was now ready to plan his own crusade, against Bolshevism.

On 8–9 January 1941 Hitler held discussions at the Berghof with his military leaders. On the reasons for deciding to attack the Soviet Union, Hitler reiterated arguments he had been deploying since the previous summer. Partly, the argument rested on an understanding of Soviet intentions, sharpened since Molotov’s visit. Stalin was shrewd, said Hitler, and would increasingly exploit Germany’s difficulties. But the crux of his case was, as ever, the need to pull away what he saw as a vital prop to British interests. ‘The possibility of a Russian intervention in the war was sustaining the English,’ he went on. ‘They would only give up the contest if this last continental hope were demolished.’ He did not think ‘the English were crazy (sinnlos toll). If they saw no further chance of winning the war, they would stop fighting, since losing it would mean they no longer had the power to hold together the Empire. Were they able to hold out, could put together forty to fifty divisions, and the USA and Russia were to help them, a very difficult situation for Germany would arise. That must not happen. Up to now he had acted on the principle of always smashing the most important enemy positions to advance a step. Therefore Russia must now be smashed. Either the English would then give in, or Germany would continue the fight against England in more favourable circumstances. The smashing of Russia would also allow Japan to turn with all its might against the USA,’ hindering American intervention. He pointed to further advantages for Germany. The army in the east could be substantially reduced in size, allowing greater deployment of the armaments industry for the navy and Luftwaffe. ‘Germany would then be unassailable. The gigantic territory of Russia contained immeasurable riches. Germany had to dominate it economically and politically, though not annex it. It would then preside over all possibilities of waging the struggle against continents in future. It could then not be defeated by anyone. If the operation were carried through,’ Hitler concluded, ‘Europe would hold its breath.’³⁰⁶ If the generals listening had any reservations, they did not voice them.³⁰⁷

A little over a month later, Hitler added one further revealing argument — characteristically underlining the psychological aspect of mobilization. ‘A conflict is inevitable. Once England is finished, he would not be able to rouse the German people to a fight against Russia; consequently Russia would have to be disposed of first.’³⁰⁸

During 1940 the twin obsessions of Hitler — ‘removing the Jews’, and ‘Lebensraum’ — had come gradually into sharp focus. The development was scarcely accidental. But it had, even so, been in many respects an indirect process. The radicalization of anti-Jewish policy had largely been pushed along by the leadership of the Security Police, for the most part without specific involvement of Hitler (though certainly with his approval), until in Poland genocidal mentalities in near-genocidal conditions had acquired their own momentum.