Hitler feared a Soviet attack on Scandinavia

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David Thompson
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#16

Post by David Thompson » 20 Dec 2002, 09:38

And part 2:
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Roberto
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#17

Post by Roberto » 20 Dec 2002, 14:46

michael mills wrote:Roberto quoted from Shirer and Overy concerning Molotov's visit to Berlin in November 1940. The main theme of those quotes was that the German attack on the Soviet Union was already decided, and the talks between Molotov and Hitler/Ribbentrop were just a diversion. In particular, reference is made to Hitler's directive number 18, of 12 November (the day of Molotov's arrival), indicating that preparations in the East were to continue.
The passage referred to is the following:
William Shirer ([i]The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich[I], New York 1960, page 795 and following) wrote:[…] So that the armed services should not rest on their laurels after the great victories of the summer, Hitler issued on November 12, 1940, a comprehensive top-secret directive outlining military tasks all over Europe and beyond. We shall come back to some of them. What concerns us here is that portion dealing with the Soviet Union.

Political discussions have been initiated with the aim of clarifying Russia’s attitude for the time being. Irrespective of the results of these discussions, all preparations for the East which have already been verbally ordered will be continued. [emphasis mine] Instructions on this will follow, as soon as the general outline of the Army’s operation plans have been submitted to, and approved by, me.[…]

michael mills wrote:Roberto concludes from that that Molotov's visit was not decisive for the move toward war; Germany would have attacked, no matter what the outcome of the talks.
Roberto wrote:I’ll assume that Tasca was unaware of evidence that there was a lot more behind Hitler’s decision and the Molotov visit was the final push at most:[…]
michael mills wrote:This is what Tasca writes on the subject (p. 171):
Let’s not forget who Mr. Tasca was:
walterkaschner wrote:For Michael Mills:

Mr. Mills, do you have any further information as to the author of your source, Angelo Tasca? From what little biographical information I've been able to find on him, he would seem to have been a very interesting fellow. Apparently (and I don't know if this is correct or not) he was one of the original founders of the Italian Communist Party, fled from Mussolini to Moscow, was then expelled from the Party as a Trotskyite, fled to Paris, swung politically increasingly toward the Right and ended up as a fervent Pétainiste during the German occupation of France. I've become fascinated by the flip-flop from Left to Right that one sees not infrequently during the decades 20s, 30s and 40s - and in the US even a bit later. I wonder if anyone has done a thorough study of these types - (I'm familiar with Eric Hoffer's study of "True Believers").

Regards, Kaschner
michael mills wrote:
On 12th November, 1940, probably a few hours before Molotov's arrival in Berlin, Hitler issued directive number 18, signed by Jodl, which dealt with the military situation. The idea of invading Britain was provisionally abandoned, but all the operations enumerated in the directive were intended to be the opening phase of a large-scale manoeuvre to isolate her. The most important objectives were: to capture Gibraltar, obtain a foothold in Morocco, and thus "chase Britain out of the western Mediterranean". France, in the meantime, might perhaps be persuaded to support Germany in the struggle. In the eastern Mediterranean the British were to be trapped between the German drive towards Greece and the Italian push in Egypt. The Axis air forces were given the job of hunting the British fleet from its lairs.

The document also explained that the movement of the German forces eastwards was to cintinue while the Reich Government tried to discover and clarify the present attitude of Russia [Tasca's emphasis]. This was precisely what Hitler was up to in his talks with Molotov, for the first of their interviews was during the afternoon of the same day.

Hitler had been most disappointed and annoyed at the result of the conversations. On 13th November he told Goering that Russia's demands must be rejected and that he would not tolerate her ambitions in southern Europe. Keitel later explained that these demands "alarmed the Fuehrer. Molotov was considering making war on Finland a second time so as to oocupy the whole country, and he was also thinking of expanding in the direction of the Balkans and the Dardanelles. The Fuehrer saw in these schemes the beginning of a great encircling movement against Germany. Just then he was receiving reports on the tremendous expansion of the Soviet war industries, and this worried him a great deal" [my emphasis]. Molotov was quite willing to receive his slice of the new world share-out which was being planned in the Three Power Pact, but without having to give up the Balkans. Hitler had no illusions about this. "Herr Molotov", he wrote to Mussolini on 20th November, " has made it plain that he was becoming increasingly interested in the Balkans". Any doubts there may have been on this score were dispelled by Moloytov's letter of 25th November, 1940, in which he stated the conditions on which the Soviet would join the Three Power Pact. The plan on which the Nazis had worked for several weeks for refloating the pact of August, 1939, and diverting the Russians from the Balkans did not survive the test of the Berlin talks. According to von Papen, who is a good judge, it was then that Germany lost the war, since that was the moment when war with Russia became inevitable.
I think Tasca caught the real meaning of directive 18.
I wonder what makes Mills think that. Unlike Shirer, Tasca doesn’t seem to have transcribed even an excerpt of the directive referred to. What he took care to transcribe, on the other hand, are the self-serving statements of Keitel and Hitler whereby they tried to portray Molotov as the bad guy whose attitude had prompted their decisions.

It is interesting, however, that Tasca considers Hitler’s purpose in his conversations with Molotov as having been
[…]to discover and clarify the present attitude of Russia [Tasca's emphasis].[…]
Richard Overy ([[i]Russia’s War[/i], page 63) wrote: […]It is not entirely clear why Hitler authorized Ribbentrop to send the invitation. He may have hoped that the growing threat of the Soviet Union might be neutralized by agreement after all. He may have used it as an opportunity to find out just what Soviet ambitions were.[my emphasis][…]
michael mills wrote: Hitler ordered the continuation of work on a number of mutually exclusive contingency plans, including the plan for military action against the Soviet Union, pending clarification of the Soviet Union's intentions; which of the contingency plans was actually proceeded with depended on that clarification.
It seems that by this time the plan for military action against the Soviet Union was no longer a mere “contingency plan”.
William Shirer (as above) wrote:The next day, August 1 [1940], Halder went to work on the plans with his General Staff. Though he would later claim to have opposed the whole idea of an attack on Russia as insane, his diary entry for this day discloses him full of enthusiasm as he applied himself to the challenging new task.
Planning now went ahead with typical German thoroughness on three levels: that of the Army General Staff, of Warlimont’s Operations Staff at OKW, of General Thomas’ Economic and Armaments Branch of OKW. Thomas was instructed on August 14 by Göring that Hitler desired deliveries of ordered goods to the Russians “only till spring of 1941.” In the meantime his office was to make a detailed survey of Soviet industry, transportation and oil centers both as a guide to targets and later on as an aid for administering Russia.
A few days before, on August 9, Warlimont had got out his first directive for preparing the deployment areas in the East for the jump-off against the Russians. On August 26, Hitler ordered ten infantry and two armored divisions to be sent from the West to Poland. The panzer units, he stipulated, were to be concentrated in southeastern Poland so that they could intervene to protect the Romanian oil fields. The transfer of large bodies of troops to the East could not be done without exciting Stalin’s easily aroused suspicions if he learned of it, and the Germans went to great lengths to see that he didn’t. Since some movements were bound to be detected, General Ernst Köstring, the German military attaché in Moscow, was instructed to inform the Soviet General Staff that it was merely a question of replacing older men, who were being released to industry, by younger men. On September 6, Jodl got out a directive outlining in considerable detail the means of camouflage and deception. “These regroupings,” he laid it down, “must not create the impression in Russia that we are preparing an offensive in the East.”[my emphasis][…]

Richard Overy ([[i]Russia’s War[/i], pages 61 and following) wrote: ][….] The sudden expansion of Soviet territory westward, although conceded in principle in 1939, produced fresh anxieties in Berlin. The Soviet-Finnish war had left Germany in a difficult position, for her sympathies were with the Finns. After the end of the war German troops were stationed in Finland. The deliveries of machinery and weapons to the Soviet Union agreed upon in the pact were slow and irregular, in sharp contrast with the scrupulous provision by the Soviet side of materials and food. Despite constant Soviet complaints, the German suppliers dragged their heels whenever they could rather than allow the latest technology fall into Russian hands. From Hitler’s point of view the most unfortunate consequence of the pact was the rapid forward deployment of the Red Army in Eastern Europe. He was embroiled in a major war, which he had not wanted and which the pact had been supposed to avert. Now, instead of a powerful Germany dominating Eastern and Central Europe following Poland’s defeat, Germany was engaged in an unpredictable war against the British Empire, while the Soviet Union was free to extend its influence unchecked. The occupation of Bessarabia was a final blow. A few weeks later Goebbels wrote in his diary: ‘Perhaps we shall be forced to take steps against all this, despite everything, and drive this Asiatic spirit back out of Europe and into Asia, where it belongs.’
Hitler had anticipated him. On July 3 [1940],instructions were issued to the German armed forces, under the code name ‘Fritz’, to begin preliminary studies for an operation against the Soviet Union. At first the army believed that Hitler wanted to inflict only a local defeat on Soviet forces so as to push back the frontier between them and force Stalin to recognize ‘Germany’s dominant position in Europe’. The army told Hitler on July 21 that a limited campaign could be launched in four to six weeks. But Hitler’s ideas, which had at first been uncertain, hardened over the course of the month, as a stream of intelligence information came in showing how Soviet diplomats were now pushing into the Balkans in their efforts to spread Soviet influence. When Hitler’s Operations Chief, General Alfred Jodl, called together his senior colleagues on July 29, he had the most startling news. After making sure that every door and window in the conference room aboard a specially converted train was tightly sealed, he announced that Hitler had decided to rid the world ‘once and for all’ of the Soviet menace by a surprise attack scheduled for May 1941.[my emphasis]
[….]
There can be no doubt that practical strategic issues did push Hitler towards the most radical of military solutions. But a great war in the East had always been part of his thinking. Here was the real stuff of Lebensraum – living space. Hitler’s plans assumed fantastic proportions. By August he had decided to seize the whole vast area stretching from Archangel to Astrakhan (the ‘A-A Line’) and to populate it with fortified garrison cities, keeping the population under the permanent control of the master race, while a rump Asian state beyond the Urals, the Slavlands, would accommodate the rest of the Soviet people. Planning moved forward on this basis. By the spring of 1941 comprehensive programmes for the racial, political and economic exploitation of the new empire had been drawn up. ‘Russia’, Hitler is reported as saying, ‘will be our India!’.
Every effort was made to keep the whole enterprise camouflaged.
[my emphasis] Hitler maintained relations with his Soviet ally, although they became acutely strained. On 27 September 1940 he signed the Tripartite Pact with Japan and Italy, which divided the world into separate spheres of interest – ‘New Orders’ in the Mediterranean, eastern Asia and Europe. This realignment was read with unease in Moscow. The some month German troops appeared in Romania for the first time, and in Finland. Hungary and Romania joined the Tripartite Pact. In October Italy, which had joined the war on the German side in June, invaded Greece and opened up the prospect of fascist expansion into the Balkans. The on October 13 Stalin received a long, rambling letter from Ribbentrop which ended with a tantalizing invitation to join the Tripartite Pace and revise the world order together.[…]
michael mills wrote: Therefore, if Molotov had accepted the German proposals for a definition of zones of influence, which would have precluded any further Soviet expansion to the west, the plan for action against the Soviet Union would not have proceeded, and one of the other plans would have been selected for implementation, most probably Raeder's Plan Felix.
Maybe, but unlikely, considering the basic decision and the progress that the planning had made so far, see above.

But we will never know, will we?
michael mills wrote: Accordingly, it is apparent that Shirer has distorted the true meaning of directive 18.
Funny statement. Shirer quoted the excerpt of the directive dealing with the Soviet Union, which Tasca conveniently refrained from doing.
michael mills wrote: It did not indicate that military action against the Soviet Union was already decided and inevitable, but rather that it was contingent on the outcome of negotiations.
“It” (the directive) may not have indicated this, but the previous documented statements cited by Shirer and Overy, coupled with the passage of the directive quoted by Shirer, suggest that Hitler intended to take military action against the Soviet Union irrespective of the outcome of the conversations with Molotov.
michael mills wrote: The former Soviet diplomat Vladimir Petrov, who defected in Australia in the 1950s, wrote in his article "A Story of the Nazi-Soviet Partnership" (ORBIS, Winter 1968 issue, Foreign Policy Research Institute, University of Pennsylvania):
There are conflicting theories as to precisely when and why Hitler made up his mind to invade Russia. The early planning, and the gradual movement of troops towards the Soviet border which began late in the summer, prove little: no war is "inevitable" until it actually starts. But it seems that early in October, as he invited Molotov to come on a state visit, Hitler decided to make a last attempt to find out how much Stalin's ambitions clashed with his own. That his mind was then still open, is suggested by the fact that on the day of Molotov's arrival in Berlin in November he instructed his military chiefs to resume preparations for the invasion of England "in the spring of 1941", a plan which could be carried out only if the attack on Russia were called off.
What Petrov says backs up Tasca's analysis. I would suggest that Roberto read a few more books with alternative views, rather than continuing to rely on Shirer, a very tendentious source.
Why Shirer should be any more tendentious than Mr. Tasca and Mr. Petrov is beyond my understanding. At least he is not shy of quoting the documentary evidence, which the “alternative” sources Mills relies on seem to be. And the evidence cited supports his “tendentious” assessment.
michael mills wrote: Roberto also quotes the following assertion by Overy:
The object of the visit, according to General Alexander Vasilevsky, who accompanied him, was ‘to define Hitler’s intentions’ and to ‘hold off German aggression for as long as possible’. The evidence now suggests that Molotov was pursuing more than this, that Stalin wanted a second pact defining spheres of influence in Eastern Europe.
Overy here understates Stalin's intentions considerably. It was not merely a question of redefining the spheres of influence agreed on in the secret protocols to the agreements of August and September 1939; the demands put forward by Molotov represented a gigantic westward expansion of Soviet power, placing the whole of the Balkans under Soviet domination, and reducing Germany economically to the status of a satellite, since all its sources of raw materials would be under Soviet control.

It appears that Overy wants to minimise the importance of the Molotov visit as the turning-point in Germany's move to military confrontation with the Soviet Union, in favour of an earlier, ideologically determined decision.
Interesting theory, but where is the evidence to give it some substance?
michael mills wrote:It is noteworthy that the traditional Soviet historiography mendaciously distorts the nature of the Molotov visit. Here is what Alexander Nekrich (who later defected) wrote in his 1965 book "June 22, 1941" (which in an irony of history was soon after banned by the Soviet Government because of its negative portrayal of Stalin):

(Page 147):
The Soviet government continued to carry out scrupulously the agreements it had concluded with Hitler's Germany, not giving her the slightest excuse to worsen relations. Germany, on her part, tried to take advantage of the situation to pressure the Soviet Union and force it to conduct its foreign policy exclusively in the German interest. For this purpose the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, V. M> Molotov, was invited to Berlin in November 1940. In the course of the conversations which took place between him, on the one hand, and Hitler and Ribbentrop on the other, an offer was made to the Soviet Union to join the Tripartite Pact and take part in the remaking of spheres of influence in the world. The Soviet government turned down the German proposals [my emphasis]. The Berlin conversations left no doubt that Germany's aggressiveness had grown, and she was attempting to achieve world domination in the shortest time.

The final stage in the development of German-Soviet relations ran from the unsuccessful November conversations to Germany's attack on JUne 22, 1941. The Soviet Union, as before, made every effort to prevent war. From Germany's side everything was done to put the Soviet Union in the least advantageous political, diplomatic, and military situation at the moment of attack.

After the November conversations there could no longer be the slightest doubt about Germany's true intentions. The events which exploded in the Balkans should also have led to this conclusion.
Vladimir Petrov, the translator and publisher in the west of Nekrich's banned book, comments in relation to the bolded passage, "This factually not true". An understatement; it is a bare-face lie, intended to conceal the fact that Stalin was prepared to partition the world with Hitler, provided that the latter took the subordinate role.

Furthermore, Nekrich does not mention the Soviet demands, involving expansion to the west and south-west, thereby concealing Stalin's agressiveness. Instead, he claims that the talks revealed German aggressiveness, a laughable distortion, since Germany was quite prepared to leave the Soviet Union in possession of the territories it had already gained under the 1939 agreements. Germany's position vis-a-vis the Soviet Union was essentially defensive, seeking to prevent further Soviet expansion into areas of vital economic interest to Germany.

The most cursory reading of Nekrich's book reveals that the current leftist interpretation of the German-Soviet war and its causes, propagated by many of the historians quoted by Roberto, is simply a watered-down version of the Soviet propagandistic version, shorn of its more obvious falsehoods.
Mills obviously hasn’t made an even cursory reading of Overy’s writings.
Richard Overy (as above, pages 63 and following) wrote:[…]Molotov arrived by train on November 12. Two days of discussion followed which satisfied neither party. Molotov was so abrupt with Hitler that their meeting on the first afternoon became heated, and Hitler refused to attend the evening dinner to welcome the Soviet party. Hitler and Ribbentrop hinted that the Soviet Union should turn away from Europe towards British India. They talked in generalities, Molotov in details. His instructions were to discuss points that closely concerned Soviet security in Europe, but he found that the Germans were trying to get the Soviet Union embroiled in the war with Britain. There could be no agreement on this basis. In the middle of an embassy banquet on the 13th, Molotov found himself forced to take shelter from a British bombing raid. Taking advantage of the interruption, Ribbentrop presented Molotov with a draft treaty delimiting the Soviet ‘New Order’ ‘in the direction of the Indian Ocean’. With the noise of guns and bombs in the background, Molotov dismissed the suggestion and told Ribbentrop that what the Soviet Union really wanted was hard talking about Bulgaria, Turkey, Sweden, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Greece. The following day Molotov returned to Moscow. On November 25 he filed with the German ambassador a list of demands that represented the Soviet price for extending the alliance: German withdrawal from Finland, a free hand for the Soviet Union in Iran and the Persian Gulf and Soviet bases in Bulgaria and Turkey. Hitler ordered Ribbentrop not to reply.
Agreement had always been unlikely, as both sides recognized. Goebbels watched Molotov and the Soviet delegation breakfasting with Hitler in the Chancellory. ‘Bolshevist subhumans’, he wrote in his diary, ‘not a single man of any stature.’ On the very day of Molotov’s departure, Hitler ordered final preparations ‘to settle accounts with Russia’. On December 5 he told his military staff that by the spring German ‘leadership, equipment and troops will visibly be at their zenith, the Russians at an unmistakable nadir’. On December 18 he signed War Directive Number 21 ordering the preparation for war on the Soviet Union, ‘Operation Barbarossa’. A date was set for the following May, ‘the first fine days’. On January 9, at his retreat in Berchtesgaden, he gave a speech on the future of Germany. ‘Russia must now be smashed,’ one witness recalled him saying. ‘The gigantic territory of Russia conceals immeasurable riches … Germany will have all means possible for waging war against continents … If this operation is carried through, Europe will hold its breath.’[…]
A failed, half-hearted attempt to involve the Soviet Union in the war against Britain in order to solve the British problem first, immediately followed by the final “go ahead” – that’s what becomes apparent from Overy’s account of the Molotov visit and the already quoted context, in my opinion. Overy, as I understand him, leaves it open whether or not the Molotov visit was more than what I called the final push to Hitler’s decision. And it seems rather far-fetched to accuse him of having “propagated” a “watered-down version of the Soviet propagandistic version, shorn of its more obvious falsehoods”.

As to whether this accusation can be made against Shirer’s account of the talks between Hitler/Ribbentrop and Molotov, I will tomorrow provide a transcription of this account for our readers to decide for themselves.


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#18

Post by David Thompson » 20 Dec 2002, 23:34

Here you go, Roberto -- I had a copy of the English edition of Shirer:
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#19

Post by David Thompson » 20 Dec 2002, 23:37

And here's the rest of it:
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#20

Post by michael mills » 21 Dec 2002, 03:14

Much has been made in a number of preceding posts about the German planning for an attack on the Soviet Union between July and December 1940. The conclusion has been drawn that Germany was therefore to committed to such an attack as of July 1940.

However, during that period Germany was also planning a number of other options, including invasion of Britain, an attack on Gibraltar in alliance with Spain, occupation of French Morocco, occupation of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East etc. These must all be regarded as contingency plans, any one one of which , but not all, could have been implemented under the right political and strategic conditions.

The planning for an attack on the Soviet Union was likewise of a contingent nature, with implementation dependant on political and strategic developments. The evidence suggests that the Soviet reply of 25 November 1940 to the German proposals to Molotov, a reply that implied German acquiescense to Soviet domination of Europe, made it clear to Hitler that Soviet westward expansion was the immediate "clear and present danger", and caused him to select the option of attacking the Soviet Union over all the other options that were canvassed in directive 18 of 12 November. It is a crucial factor that Hitler signed directive 21 on 18 December, after he had had time to assess the Stalin letter of 25 November.

Vladimir Petrov considers that the final and irrevocable decision for an attack on the Soviet Union may not have been made until early April 1941, when the Soviet UNion supported the anti-German coup of 27 March in Yugoslavia, and entered into an alliance with the new anti-German regime there.

We now know that the Soviet Union was also preparing contingency plans for an attack on Germany in 1940 and early 1941. Those plans mirrored the contingency planning by Germany; they indicate that both Germany and the Soviet Union were planning for the possibility of a future breakdown in their relations, leading to war, and wanted to be ready for it, if necessary to launch the first strike. In fact, the Wehrmacht had been preparing its contingency plans even before Hitler gave his directive to Brauchitsch; when he did so, Brauchitsch simply pulled a prepared contingency plan out of the drawer.

What we do not know for sure is whether Stakin ever gave the go-ahead to convert the Red Army's contingency plans into a firm plan for an actual offensive in 1942 or even 1941. That issue has been obfuscated by Soviet historiography, which alternately presented Stalin as the wise leader who foresaw German aggression and prepared for it, or else as the stupid bungler who almost lost the war.

As I wrote previously, while our knowledge of German planning is pretty well complete, due to Allied analysis of the German archives which fell into their hands, our knowledge of equivalent Soviet planning is incomplete, due to incomplete analysis of the former Soviet archives, to which full access is still not available. Details of Soviet planning and preparations are still emerging only in dribs and drabs. But enough has emerged to convince some Russian historians (not only Vladimir Bogdanovich Rezun - pace Roberto!) that Soviet planning had in fact been elevated to the level of a definite westward offensive in 1941.

The historical fact is that Germany got its attack in first, which in hindsight gives the appearance of an inevitable offensive movement from July 1940 onward. It is however significant that the US Army analysis quoted by David Thompson recognises that Germany was planning a preventive war, rather than an unprovoked aggression.

David Thompson is also to be congratulated for posting the pages from Shirer, which reveal the latter's bias. For example, take the following passage, on page 1060:


Molotov did not rise to the bait. The proposed treaty was obviously an attempt to divert Russia from its historic pressure westward, down to the Baltic, into the Balkans and through the Straits to the Mediterranean, where inevitably it would clash with the greedy designs of Germany and Italy.

[My emphasis]
So, for Shirer, Soviet expansion to the West was "historic", whereas German and Italian expansionism was "greedy". It is obvious that Roberto and certain other contributors to this forum share that bias.

It is also typical that the self-confessed former neo-Nazi Roberto resorts to character-assassination of Tasca when all else fails. All we know is that Tasca, a franch citizen, remained in France during the war, and carried on with his profession as a writer, journalist and political commentator. In that, he was like the vast majority of French officials and intellectuals, who remained at their posts, eg Mitterand, Sartre etc. To make of that "collaboration" is drawing a very long bow indeed. The Government of Petain was after all the legal government of France, and was recognised as such by the United States until the final German occupation at the end of 1942. The fact that Tasca was writing and publishing in France in 1948 suggests that he was not viewed as a traitor by the post-war Gaullist government, unlike certain other intellectuals such as Brasillach.

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#21

Post by Scott Smith » 21 Dec 2002, 06:54

David Thompson wrote:This material, drawing on numerous monographs prepared by German generals, does not support Tasca's conclusion that "Germany made its final decision to attack the Soviet Union after Molotov's visit to Berlin [on 12 Nov 1940], at which Soviet demands to be given hegemony over South-East Europe and Finland were made clear." Instead, these accounts make it clear that Hitler had decided on war when the USSR annexed the Baltic republics in July of 1940.
Yes, after the Baltic republics were liquidated by the NKVD the General Staff started forming the first plans for a Soviet war. The amazing thing is that it wasn't done long before, as I pointed out above. Contingency planning is what General Staffs do. But the German General Staff were professionals who were dedicated to the One Perfect Plan--with the one by Graf von Schlieffen the classic Grand Plan--so this is not really too surprising.

In any case, Hitler made the final decision to invade the Soviet Union after meeting with Molotov in November, 1940 when it was irrevocably determined that Germany could not work with the Soviets (erroneously, IMHO). Senior Nazis like Hess, Himmler and even Göring were not too enthusiastic when they heard about Barbarossa for the first time. Goebbels was a bit more dissembling about it in his diary, but he too was worried.
:)

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#22

Post by michael mills » 21 Dec 2002, 14:52

Scott Smith wrote:
In any case, Hitler made the final decision to invade the Soviet Union after meeting with Molotov in November, 1940 when it was irrevocably determined that Germany could not work with the Soviets (erroneously, IMHO). Senior Nazis like Hess, Himmler and even Göring were not too enthusiastic when they heard about Barbarossa for the first time. Goebbels was a bit more dissembling about it in his diary, but he too was worried.
Scott,

Why do you think it was erroneous for Germany to conclude that it could not work with the Soviets?

Do you think that Hitler should have accepted Stalin's conditions for entering into a formal alliance with Germany, Italy and Japan, ie giving the Soviet Union hegemony over Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey and Finland?

It is possible that if Germany had accepted, then a bloc of sufficient strength would have been formed to deter an Anglo-American invasion, meaning that Germany would not have lost the war. But it would certainly at best have ended up under Soviet hegemony, rather like Finland after the Second World War (or Prussia between the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the Crimean War). At worst, it might eventually have been invaded by the Soviet Union and quickly conquered due to being cut off from its resource base in South-East Europe.

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#23

Post by Roberto » 23 Dec 2002, 16:44

michael mills wrote:Much has been made in a number of preceding posts about the German planning for an attack on the Soviet Union between July and December 1940. The conclusion has been drawn that Germany was therefore to committed to such an attack as of July 1940.

However, during that period Germany was also planning a number of other options, including invasion of Britain, an attack on Gibraltar in alliance with Spain, occupation of French Morocco, occupation of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East etc. These must all be regarded as contingency plans, any one one of which , but not all, could have been implemented under the right political and strategic conditions.

The planning for an attack on the Soviet Union was likewise of a contingent nature, with implementation dependant on political and strategic developments.
Evidence speaking against the merely “contingent” nature of that planning is contained in the quotes from Overy and Shirer in my previous posts on this thread.

Shirer nevertheless considers the outcome of the Hitler-Molotov meeting to have been the determining factor of Hitler’s decision to attack the Soviet Union, as can be seen in the scanned excerpts from The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich kindly provided by David.

Not so Alan Bullock, who in his parallel biography of Hitler and Stalin writes the following:
Four months after the victories in the west had apparently left Hitler master of Europe, nothing had gone right for him. On 4 November he told the Wehrmacht commanders that everything must be done to get ready for ‘a major settling of scores with Russia’[my emphasis], but when asked by the Army High Command to clarify his priorities for the intervening period, his answer in his directive of 12 November (No. 18 ) was to list all the options, without any indication of which he meant to pursue. He still hoped for French participation in the war against Britain and the defence of their African colonies; he still believed the Spaniards could be persuaded to capture Gibraltar and close the Western Mediterranean to the British. An armoured division and air forces were held in readiness in case the Italians needed support in North Africa; the army and the Luftwaffe must make preparations to occupy the Greek mainland, if the Italian attempt to do so failed; plans for the invasion of England might be revived in the spring of 1941, and the three services must try in every way to improve these.
The new factor was the importance Hitler now attached to Finland and the Balkans, particularly Rumania, in view of his plans for attacking Russia. As a result there had been a marked deterioration in German - Russian relations in the late summer and autumn of 1940. After being careful not to become involved in the Russo-Finnish war, Hitler had resumed arms supplies to Finland at the end of July, and in September signed an agreement granting Germany the right to send troops to Norway via Finland and to station troops to protect the route. The Russians took these moves to be aimed at them and to be in breach of the Nazi-Soviet Pact. They felt this even more strongly after Hitler’s intervention in Rumania in response to their own annexation of Bessarabia. The second Vienna Accord, giving Hungary half Transylvania, and Bulgaria the southern Dobrudja, at Rumania’s expense, had been made without consulting Russia, and had been followed - again without consultation - by the German guarantee of Rumania’s remaining territory (which could only be a guarantee against Russia) and the arrival of German troops.
Ribbentrop’s Tripartite Pact signed by Germany, Italy and Japan on 27 September was bound to appear to the suspicious Stalin, who had not been informed of it until the last moment, as even more plainly directed against the Soviet Union, and a revival of the defunct Anti-Comintern Pact.
[my emphasis] In fact Ribbentrop himself still saw the Nazi-Soviet Pact as his diplomatic masterpiece, and Britain, which had rebuffed him, as Germany’s real enemy. If it was possible, he was eager to extend the Tripartite Pact to include the Soviet Union as well, so establishing a worldwide coalition committed to the defeat of Britain and the partition of her empire. There is no evidence that Hitler was prepared to consider such a reversal of policy seriously, but he agreed to invite Molotov to Berlin for discussions.[my emphasis]
In a long letter which he dictated for Ribbentrop to sign, Hitler blamed everything that had happened during the past year, including German actions in Finland and Rumania, on the British, who were bent on causing trouble between Germany and the Soviet Union. Describing the Tripartite Pact as both anti-British and anti-American, he invited Stalin to join the other three powers in an alliance to carve up the world.
Stalin’s dry reply was in noticeable contrast to Hitler’s windy rhetoric:

<<My dear Herr Ribbentrop,
I have received your letter. I thank you sincerely for your confidence, as well as the instructive analysis of recent events
... M. Molotov acknowledges that he is under obligation to pay you a return visit in Berlin. He accepts your invitation ...
As to joint deliberation on some issues with Japanese and Italian participation, I am of the opinion (without being opposed to this idea in principle) that this question would have to be submitted to previous examination.
Yours etc.
J. Stalin>>

Whatever Ribbentrop may have hoped for, Hitler had not changed his mind about attacking Russia in 1941. The evidence points to his agreement to invite Molotov with the purpose of sounding out the Russians’ current attitude, and misleading them about his own plans, rather than to exploring the advantages of combining with Russia to eliminate Britain first. The Directive No. 18 issued on the day Molotov arrived in Berlin (12 November 1940) spoke of political discussions to ‘clarify Russia’s attitude for the coming period’ but added that, ‘regardless of what results these discussions have’, all preparations for the east were to be continued and further directives would follow as soon as the plan of operations had been submitted and approved.[my emphasis]
When the discussions with Molotov began, Hitler sought to put the discussion of German-Russian relations on the loftiest plane, ‘beyond all petty momentary considerations’. To lay down the course of these over a long period was only possible, ‘when two nations such as the Germans and Russians had at their helm men who possessed sufficient authority to commit their countries to development in a definite direction. Looking ahead, Hitler saw the need to forestall the development of American power, which had a more solid foundation than that of the other Anglo-Saxon Power, England. The European continental Powers had to act jointly against the Anglo-Saxons and set up a kind of Monroe doctrine for the whole of Europe and Africa, dividing up the colonial territories they each needed and establishing their respective spheres of interest.
Molotov ignored Hitler’s attempt to beguile him with world-historical projections, and instead raised a series of down-to-earth questions about German-Russian relations in the present. What were the Germans doing in Finland, which had been allotted to the Russian sphere of influence? What was the significance of the Tripartite Pact? How far was Germany prepared to respect Russia’s interests in Bulgaria, Rumania and Turkey? What was the meaning of the New Order Hitler spoke of in Europe and Asia and what role would the USSR be given in it?
Hitler assured him there was no question of confronting Russia with a fait accompli. The real difficulty had been establishing collaboration between Germany, France and Italy. Only now that a settlement between these countries had been accepted in outline had he thought it possible to approach Russia about ‘the first concrete steps towards comprehensive collaboration’, not only in regard to the problems in Western Europe, which were to be settled by Germany, Italy and France, but in regard to the Asian issues which were the concern of Russia and Japan, and in which Germany was to act as a mediator. ‘The USA had no business either in Europe, Africa or Asia.’
The following day, Hitler attempted to forestall Molotov’s complaints by admitting that the necessities of war - the need to safeguard supplies of raw materials - had obliged Germany to intervene in areas where she had no permanent interests, such as Finland (where Germany needed to secure nickel and lumber) and Rumania (where she was concerned about he oil supplies). ‘Much greater success could be achieved in the future, provided that Russia did not now seek success in territories in which Germany was interested in the future.’ Molotov was not prepared to let these issues, ‘which spoiled the atmosphere of German-Russian relation’, be brushed aside, and a sharp exchange followed over Finland. Hitler asked if Russia wanted to go to war against Finland again; a war in the Baltic would put a heavy strain on their relations. What more did Russia want in Finland? ‘A settlement on the same scale as in Bessarabia’, was Molotov’s reply.
In an effort to bring the discussion back to ‘more important questions’, Hitler repeated that both sides agreed in principle that Finland belonged to the Russian sphere of influence, and continued:

<<After the conquest of England the British Empire would be apportioned as a gigantic worldwide estate in bankruptcy of 40m square km. In this bankrupt estate there would be access for Russia to the ice-free and really open ocean. Thus far, a minority of 45 million Englishmen had ruled the 600 million inhabitants of the British Empire. He was about to crush this minority ...
In these circumstances there arose worldwide perspectives ... Russia’s participation in the solution of these problems would have to be arranged. All the countries which could possibly be interested in the bankrupt estate would have to stop all controversies and concern themselves exclusively with apportioning the British Empire. This applied to Germany, France, Italy, Russia and Japan.>>

Molotov replied that he had followed the Führer’s argument with interest and agreed with everything that he had understood. But the decisive thing was first to be clear about German-Russian collaboration. Italy and Japan could be included later. After sitting impassively through a further visionary flight by Hitler, Molotov resumed where he had left off: his next question was the Balkans and the German guarantee to Rumania. If Germany was not prepared to revoke that, what would she say to a Russian guarantee to Bulgaria? Hitler at once retorted that he had not heard of any such guarantee being requested by the Bulgarians. When Molotov pressed him on the Black Sea and the Dardanelles, he added that ‘if Germany were looking for sources of friction with Russia, she would not need the Straits’.
Schmidt, who acted as interpreter, wrote that he had not been present at such sharp exchanges since the conversations with Chamberlain during the Sudeten crisis. Franco had only angered Hitler by evasion; Molotov answered back and argued with him. This was a liberty which Hitler did not forgive and he took no further part in the talks, unexpectedly failing to appear at the banquet which Molotov gave in the Russian Embassy the same evening.
Halfway through the dinner, a British air raid drove the host and guests to take shelter below ground. Ribbentrop with characteristic maladroitness chose the occasion to confront Molotovo with the draft of an agreement which would bring the Soviet Union into the Tripartite Pact, with two additional secret protocols, on the model of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, defining the Four Powers’ spheres of interest. Apart from territorial revisions in Europe at the conclusion of peace, Germany’s aspirations were said to be centred in Central Africa; Italy’s in North and East Africa; Japan’s in South-East Asia. It was proposed that the USSR’s be defined as lying to the south of her national territory in the direction of the Indian Ocean.
This was a bold but transparent proposal aimed at diverting Russia from her traditional areas of expansion - in Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Mediterranean, where she would clash with Germany and Italy - to the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, where she would become embroiled with the British. To make it more attractive, the second protocol promised German and Italian co-operation in detaching Turkey from her commitments to the West and replacing the Montreux Convention with a new agreement for the Straits. As an additional attraction, Ribbentrop held out tantalizing but vague hopes of securing for Russia a non-aggression pact with Japan, and Japanese recognition of Outer Mongolia and Sinkiang as lying within the Soviet area of influence.
Molotov, as dour as ever, responded with a list of European questions in which Russia was not prepared to disinterest herself: the future of Rumania and Hungary as well as Turkey and Bulgaria; what the Axis proposed for Yugoslavia and Greece; Poland and the Baltic. As Hitler had done, Ribbentrop made one last effort to pull the conversation back to the ‘decisive question’: was the Soviet Union prepared to co-operate in the liquidation of the British Empire? When Ribbentrop went on insisting that Britain was finished, Molotov made his famous reply. ‘If this is so, why are we in this shelter, and whose are these bombs that are falling?’
His final word was that ‘all these great issues of tomorrow’ could not be separated from those of today and the fulfilment of existing agreements.

Molotov had been bound by his brief and unable to respond to the proposals with which the Germans attempted to dazzle him. Stalin, however, once he had the time to study them, saw advantage in joining Ribbentrop’s Four-Power Pact. Russia had done exceptionally well out of the original Nazi-Soviet Pact, and Stalin was prepared to accept a sphere of influence with its centre redefined as the area south of Baku and Batum in the general direction of the Persian Gulf. A Soviet reply was sent on 25 November, less than a fortnight after Molotov’s return, accepting Ribbentrop’s proposal, provided that Hitler in his turn was prepared to accept certain conditions. These were the immediate withdrawal of all German troops from Finland and a Russo-Bulgarian Treaty which, together with a base on the Bosporus to be granted by Turkey, would give the Russians control of passage to and from the Black Sea.
Despite repeated enquiries from Moscow, however, no German reply was ever sent to the Russia note. Hitler’s offer had been designed to divert Russia from Europe. Once it became clear that Stalin still insisted on regarding Finland and the Balkans as within his sphere of influence, Hitler lost such interest as he had had in further negotiations. Under the impression produced by Molotov’s stubborn questioning and insistence on Soviet rights, Hitler had told Göring before the Russians left Berlin that he was confirmed in his decision to attack the Soviet Union in the spring. Göring tried to dissuade him, arguing as Raeder had that they should concentrate on driving the British out of the Mediterranean before turning against Russia, an operation which he had always thought best deferred to 1943 or 1944. Hitler was not to be persuaded; he was convinced that Britain was powerless to damage Germany and could be dealt with after Russia had been defeated. Whatever doubts remained were removed by the Soviet reply and Stalin’s attempt to set conditions.[my emphasis] On 5 December Hitler ordered the army High Command to accelerate the preparations for an attack in the spring: ‘The decision over European hegemony will be made in the struggle against Russia.’[…]
Source of quote: Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin. Parallel Lives, 1993 Fontana Press, London, pages 741 and following
michael mills wrote:The evidence suggests that the Soviet reply of 25 November 1940 to the German proposals to Molotov, a reply that implied German acquiescense to Soviet domination of Europe, made it clear to Hitler that Soviet westward expansion was the immediate "clear and present danger", and caused him to select the option of attacking the Soviet Union over all the other options that were canvassed in directive 18 of 12 November.
Yeah, sure.

I suppose that is why, as
Richard Overy wrote:[…]Hitler’s plans assumed fantastic proportions. By August [1940] he had decided to seize the whole vast area stretching from Archangel to Astrakhan (the ‘A-A Line’) and to populate it with fortified garrison cities, keeping the population under the permanent control of the master race, while a rump Asian state beyond the Urals, the Slavlands, would accommodate the rest of the Soviet people. Planning moved forward on this basis.[…]
And I also presume that this was the reason why, as
William Shirer ([i]The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich[I], New York 1960, page 795 and following) wrote:[…]At a further conference at the Berghof on the last day of July 1940, the receding prospects of an invasion of Britain prompted Hitler to announce for the first time to his Army chiefs his decision on Russia. Halder was personally present this time and jotted down his shorthand notes of exactly what the warlord said. They reveal not only that Hitler had made a definite decision to attack Russia in the following spring but that he had already worked out in his mind the major strategic aims.

Britain’s hope [Hitler said] lies in Russia and America. If that hope in Russia is destroyed then it will be destroyed for America too because elimination of Russia will enormously increase Japan’s power in the Far East.

The more he thought of it the more convinced he was, Hitler said, that Britain’s stubborn determination to continue the war was due to its counting on the Soviet Union.

Something strange [he explained] has happened in Britain! The British were already completely down. Now they are back on their feet. Intercepted conversations. Russia unpleasantly disturbed by the swift development in Western Europe.
Russia needs only to hint to England that she does not wish to see Germany too strong and the English, like a drowning man, will regain hope that the situation in six to eight months will have completely changed.
But if Russia is smashed, Britain’s last hope will be shattered. Then Germany will be master of Europe and the Balkans.
Decision: In view of these considerations Russia must be liquidated. Spring, 1941.
[my emphasis]
The sooner Russia is smashed, the better.
[…]
Or why on 12 December 1940 Hitler stated that
[…]Political discussions have been initiated with the aim of clarifying Russia’s attitude for the time being. Irrespective of the results of these discussions, all preparations for the East which have already been verbally ordered will be continued. [my emphasis] Instructions on this will follow, as soon as the general outline of the Army’s operation plans have been submitted to, and approved by, me.[…]
(Shirer, as above).

Or why he
…told Göring before the Russians left Berlin[my emphasis] that he was confirmed in his decision to attack the Soviet Union in the spring[…]
(Bullock, as above).
michael mills wrote:In fact, the Wehrmacht had been preparing its contingency plans even before Hitler gave his directive to Brauchitsch; when he did so, Brauchitsch simply pulled a prepared contingency plan out of the drawer.
What’s the source of this assertion?
michael mills wrote:But enough has emerged to convince some Russian historians (not only Vladimir Bogdanovich Rezun - pace Roberto!) that Soviet planning had in fact been elevated to the level of a definite westward offensive in 1941.
Such as, Mills?

I mean the both the historians and the evidence.
michael mills wrote:The historical fact is that Germany got its attack in first, which in hindsight gives the appearance of an inevitable offensive movement from July 1940 onward. It is however significant that the US Army analysis quoted by David Thompson recognises that Germany was planning a preventive war, rather than an unprovoked aggression.
From what passages of said analysis is this conclusion derived?
michael mills wrote:David Thompson is also to be congratulated for posting the pages from Shirer, which reveal the latter's bias. For example, take the following passage, on page 1060:
Molotov did not rise to the bait. The proposed treaty was obviously an attempt to divert Russia from its historic pressure westward, down to the Baltic, into the Balkans and through the Straits to the Mediterranean, where inevitably it would clash with the greedy designs of Germany and Italy.

[My emphasis]
So, for Shirer, Soviet expansion to the West was "historic", whereas German and Italian expansionism was "greedy". It is obvious that Roberto and certain other contributors to this forum share that bias.
Why, I would have expected the well-read dissident researcher to know that access to the Bosporus was always a goal of Imperial Russia and accordingly to understand the term “historic” in this sense, instead of seeing it as signaling a positive assessment of Stalin’s ambitions.

In his eagerness to castigate the supposedly “tendentious” Shirer (who, ironically, attributes to the Hitler/Ribbentrop – Molotov meeting much the same significance as Mills’ Mr. Tasca), Mills obviously missed the following passage of the scan provided by David that shows what exactly Shirer thought of Stalin’s ambitions:
William Shirer wrote:From this wearing experience with Moscow’s tough bargainer and from further evidence that came a fortnight later of Stalin’s increasingly rapacious appetite, Hitler drew his final conclusion.
michael mills wrote:It is also typical that the self-confessed former neo-Nazi Roberto
I was wondering just how long a slimy character like Mills would manage to do without slimy remarks such as the above.

As we’re at it, from what statements of mine did Mills infer that I’m a “self-confessed former neo-Nazi”? The exact wording might be of interest to our readers.
michael mills wrote:resorts to character-assassination of Tasca when all else fails.
Mills may explain why it is “character-assassination” to suspect that a former Communist converted to Fascism is somewhat less than objective a source. That this description applies to Tasca I concluded from what
walterkaschner wrote:For Michael Mills:

Mr. Mills, do you have any further information as to the author of your source, Angelo Tasca? From what little biographical information I've been able to find on him, he would seem to have been a very interesting fellow. Apparently (and I don't know if this is correct or not) he was one of the original founders of the Italian Communist Party, fled from Mussolini to Moscow, was then expelled from the Party as a Trotskyite, fled to Paris, swung politically increasingly toward the Right and ended up as a fervent Pétainiste during the German occupation of France. I've become fascinated by the flip-flop from Left to Right that one sees not infrequently during the decades 20s, 30s and 40s - and in the US even a bit later. I wonder if anyone has done a thorough study of these types - (I'm familiar with Eric Hoffer's study of "True Believers").

Regards, Kaschner
Needless to say, I have more confidence in the assessment of Mr. Kaschner than in the protestations of Mills that Tasca’s work for the Pétain government doesn’t mean he was a fervent supporter of that government.

As to Mills’ “when all else fails” baloney, readers may decide whether I relied merely or mainly on “character assassination” rather than on the lack of sufficient evidence presented by Tasca in support of his contentions on the one hand and the abundant evidence to the contrary on the other.

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