michael mills wrote:Leftist historiography posits that Hitler was always committed to an attack on the Soviet Union for two basic ideological reasons, one to seize "Lebensraum" for Germany, and two to extirpate Judeo-Bolshevism. It holds that he never wavered from that commitment, which in itself is sufficient to explain the German attack in 1941.
I wonder what authors are supposed to represent this "leftist historiography".
William Shirer ?
[...]From the captured Nazi documents and from the testimony of many leading German figures in the great drama that was being played over the vast expanse of Western Europe that year, it is plain that at the very moment of Stalin’s monumental complacency Hitler had in fact been mulling over in his mind the idea of turning on the Soviet Union and destroying her.
The basic idea went back much further, at least fifteen years - to Mein Kampf.
And so we National Socialists [Hitler wrote] take up where we broke off six hundred years ago. We stop the endless German movement toward the south and west of Europe and turn our gaze toward the lands of the East ... when we speak of new territory in Europe today we must think principally of Russia and her border vassal states. Destiny itself seems to wish to point our the way to us here ... This colossal empire in the East is ripe for dissolution, and the end of the Jewish domination in Russia will also be the end of Russia as a state.
This idea lay like bedrock in Hitler’s mind, and his pact with Stalin had not changed it at all, but merely postponed acting on it. And but briefly. In fact, less than two months after the deal was signed and had been utilized to destroy Poland, the Führer instructed the Army that the conquered Polish territory was to be regarded “as an assembly area for future German operations.” The date was October 18, 1939, and Halder recorded that day in his diary.
Five weeks later, on November 22, when he harangued his reluctant generals about attacking in the West, Russia was by no means out of his mind. “We can oppose Russia,” he declared, “only when we are free in the West.” At that time the two-front war, the nightmare of German generals for a century, was very much on Hitler’s mind, and he spoke of it at length on this occasion. He would not repeat the mistake of former German rulers; he could continue to see to it that the Army had one front at a time.
It was only natural, then, that with the fall of France, the chasing of the British Army across the Channel and the prospects of Britain’s imminent collapse, Hitler’s thoughts should turn once again to Russia. For he now supposed himself to be free in the West and thereby to have achieved the one condition he had laid down in order to be in a position to “oppose Russia.” the rapidity with which Stalin seized the Baltic States and the two Romanian provinces in June spurred Hitler to a decision.
The moment of its making can now be traced. Jodl says that the “fundamental decision” was taken “as far back as during the Western Campaign.” Colonel Walter Warlimont, Jodl’s deputy at OKW, remembered that on July 29 Jodl announced at a meeting of Operations Staff officers that “Hitler intended to attack the U.S.S.R. in the spring of 1941.” Sometime previous to this meeting, Jodl related, Hitler had told Keitel “that he intended to launch the attack against the U.S.S.R. during the fall of 1940.” But this was too much even for Keitel and he had argued Hitler out of it by contending that not only the bad weather in the autumn but the difficulties of transferring the bulk of the Army from the West to the East made it impossible. By the time of this conference on July 29, Warlimont relates, “the date for the intended attack [against Russia] had been moved back to the spring of 1941.”
Only a week before, we know from Halder’s diary, the Führer had still held to a possible campaign in Russia for the autumn if Britain were not invaded. At a military conference in Berlin on July 21 he told Brauchitsch to get busy on the preparations for it. That the Army Commander in Chief had already given the problem some thought - but not enough thought - is evident from his response to Hitler. Brauchitsch told the Leader that the campaign “would last four to six weeks” and that the aim would be “to defeat the Russian Army or at least to occupy enough Russian territory so that Soviet bombers could not reach Berlin or the Silesian industrial area while, on the other hand, the Luftwaffe bombers could reach all important objectives in the Soviet Union.” Brauchitsch thought that from eighty to a hundred German divisions could do the job; he assessed Russian strength at “fifty to seventy-five good divisions.” Halder’s notes on what Brauchitsch told him of the meeting show that Hitler had been stung by Stalin’s grabs in the East, that he thought the Soviet dictator was “coquetting with England” in order to encourage her to hold out, but that he had seen no signs that Russia was preparing to enter the war against Germany.
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.
The sooner Russia is smashed, the better.
The Nazi warlord then elaborated on his strategic plans which, it was obvious to the generals, had been ripening in his mind for some time despite all his preoccupations with the fighting in the West. The operation, he said, would be worth carrying out only if its aim was to shatter the Soviet nation in one great blow. Conquering a lot of Russian territory would not be enough. “Wiping out the very power to exist of Russia! That is the goal!” Hitler emphasized. There would be two initial drives: one in the south to Kiev and the Dnieper River, the second in the north up through the Baltic States and then toward Moscow. There the two armies would make a junction. After that a special operation, if necessary, to secure the Baku oil fields. The very thought of such new conquests excited Hitler; he already had in his mind what he would do with them. He would annex outright, he said, the Ukraine, White Russia and the Baltic States and extend Finland’s territory to the White Sea. For the whole operation he would allot 120 divisions, keeping sixty divisions for the defense of the West and Scandinavia. The attack, he laid it down, would begin in May 1941 and would take five months to carry through. It would be finished by winter. He would have preferred, he said, to do it this year but this had not proved possible.
The next day, August 1, 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.”
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. 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.
As a matter of fact, on that very day, November 12, Molotov arrived in Berlin to continue with Hitler himself those political discussions.
Source of quote:
William Shirer,
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, New York 1960, pages 795 and following
Emphases are mine.
Richard Overy?
[….] 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.
[….]
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. 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.
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.[...]
Source of quote:
Richard Overy,
Russia's War, Penguin Books 1998, pages 61 and following.
Hermann Graml?
[...]On 22 June 1941 153 divisions of the Wehrmacht of National Socialist Germany – together with units of the armies of allied states like Finland, Romania and Hungary – crossed the borders of the Soviet Union. Since the Second World War this operation, prepared under the code name “Barbarossa”, was unanimously considered by research on contemporary history as the classic example of a war of aggression. Only a secondary question was controversially discussed: Did the “Führer” of the Third Reich in his decision to attack principally intend to serve the goal contained in his ideology, i.e. the goal, insistently propagated since “Mein Kampf”, to conquer “living space in the East” for the German nation and for a German world empire? Or was the motivation stronger that resulted for him when, after the victorious campaigns in eastern, northern and western Europe, he was faced with the fact that the still unbeaten Great Britain did not think of acknowledging his domination of the European continent, and therefrom derived the conclusion that he must deprive the British government of the hope on its last “continental blessing” by conquering Russia?[...]
My translation from:
Wolfgang Benz et al,
Legenden, Lügen, Vorurteile, 12th edition 2002 by dtv Munich, page 194.
As we can see from the above, neither of the three "leftist" historians attribute Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union exclusively to ideological reasons.
All three hold that, while ideological considerations were a part of Hitler's motivations, there were also strategic concerns involved - preoccupation about Soviet westward expansion and/or the assumption that the defeat of Russia would also bring about the downfall of Britain.
And all three, if I understand them correctly, leave it open whether it was the ideological or the strategic component that carried the greatest weight in Hitler's decision making.
In my opinion, maintaining that Hitler attacked the Soviet Union for purely ideological reasons is as absurd as maintaining that he did so out of strategic considerations only.
The former theory would ignore Hitler's manifested concerns with the support that the Soviet Union represented for Britain and with Soviet expansionism, quoted by Shirer and Overy.
The latter, on the other hand, would fail to explain the marked ideological component of Hitler's campaign against the USSR and the fact that the idea of conquering "living space" in the East runs like a red thread through Hitler's statements at various times of his career:
Mein Kampf, Volume II, Chapter XIV
We National Socialists have to go still further. The right to territory may become a duty when a great nation seems destined to go under unless its territory be extended. And that is particularly true when the nation in question is not some little group of negro people but the Germanic mother of all the life which has given cultural shape to the modern world. Germany will either become a World Power or will not continue to exist at all. But in order to become a World Power it needs that territorial magnitude which gives it the necessary importance to-day and assures the existence of its citizens.
Therefore we National Socialists have purposely drawn a line through the line of conduct followed by pre-War Germany in foreign policy. We put an end to the perpetual Germanic march towards the South and West of Europe and turn our eyes towards the lands of the East. We finally put a stop to the colonial and trade policy of pre-War times and pass over to the territorial policy of the future.
But when we speak of new territory in Europe to-day we must principally think of Russia and the border States subject to her.[emphasis mine]
Destiny itself seems to wish to point out the way for us here. In delivering Russia over to Bolshevism, Fate robbed the Russian people of that intellectual class which had once created the Russian State and were the guarantee of its existence. For the Russian State was not organized by the constructive political talent of the Slav element in Russia, but was much more a marvellous exemplification of the capacity for State-building possessed by the Germanic element in a race of inferior worth. Thus were many powerful Empires created all over the earth. More often than once inferior races with Germanic organizers and rulers as their leaders became formidable States and continued to exist as long as the racial nucleus remained which had originally created each respective State. For centuries Russia owed the source of its livelihood as a State to the Germanic nucleus of its governing class. But this nucleus is now almost wholly broken up and abolished. The Jew has taken its place. Just as it is impossible for the Russian to shake off the Jewish yoke by exerting his own powers, so, too, it is impossible for the Jew to keep this formidable State in existence for any long period of time. He himself is by no means an organizing element, but rather a ferment of decomposition. This colossal Empire in the East is ripe for dissolution. And the end of the Jewish domination in Russia will also be the end of Russia as a State. We are chosen by Destiny to be the witnesses of a catastrophe which will afford the strongest confirmation of the nationalist theory of race.[emphasis mine]
But it is our task, and it is the mission of the National Socialist Movement, to develop in our people that political mentality which will enable them to realize that the aim which they must set to themselves for the fulfilment of their future must not be some wildly enthusiastic adventure in the footsteps of Alexander the Great but industrious labour with the German plough, for which the German sword will provide the soil[emphasis mine].
Source of quote:
http://www.stormfront.org/books/mein_ka ... 2ch14.html
Speech before the commanders of Army and Navy, 3 February 1933
[…]2. Nach außen. Kampf gegen Versailles. Gleichberechtigung in
Genf; aber zwecklos, wenn Volk nicht auf Wehrwillen
eingestellt. Sorge für Bundesgenossen.
3. Wirtschaft! Der Bauer muß gerettet werden!
Siedlungspolitik! Künft. Steigerung d. Ausfuhr zwecklos.
Aufnahmefähigkeit d. Welt ist begrenzt u. Produktion ist
überall übersteigert. Im Siedeln liegt einzige Mögl.,
Arbeitslosenheer z. T. wieder einzuspannen. Aber braucht
Zeit u. radikale Änderung nicht zu erwarten, da Lebensraum
für d(eutsches) Volk zu klein.
4. Aufbau der Wehrmacht wichtigste Voraussetzung für
Erreichung des Ziels: Wiedererringung der pol. Macht. Allg.
Wehrpflicht muß wieder kommen. Zuvor aber muß Staatsführung
dafür sorgen, daß die Wehrpflichtigen vor Eintritt nicht
schon durch Pazif., Marxismus, Bolschewismus vergiftet
werden oder nach Dienstzeit diesem Gifte verfallen.
Wie soll pol. Macht, wenn sie gewonnen ist, gebraucht
werden? Jetzt noch nicht zu sagen. Vielleicht Erkämpfung
neuer Export-Mögl., vielleicht - und wohl besser - Eroberung
neuen Lebensraumes im Osten u. dessen rücksichtslose
Germanisierung. Sicher, daß erst mit pol. Macht u. Kampf
jetzige wirtsch. Zustände geändert werden können. Alles, was
jetzt geschehen kann - Siedlung - Aushilfsmittel.[…]
Source of quote:
http://www.ns-archiv.de/krieg/1933/03-02-1933.shtml
My translation:
[…]2. Towards the outside. Fight against Versailles. Equality of rights in Geneva, but useless, if people don’t have the will fight. Care for allies.
3. Economy! Peasants must be saved!
Settlement policy! Future increase of exports useless.
World absorption capacity is limited and production everywhere exaggerated. Settlement is the only possibility to partially control the army of unemployed. But it takes time and a radical change cannot be expected, because the living space is too small for the German people.
4. Building of the armed forces is most important pre-condition for achieving the goal: re-obtaining political power. Conscription must be reintroduced. But before this the state leadership must see to it that the conscripts are not poisoned already before entering service by pacifism, Marxism, Bolshevism or fall for this poison after having served.
How shall political power be used once it has been obtained? Cannot tell yet now. Maybe fight for new export possibilities, maybe – and probably better – conquer new living space in the East and ruthlessly germanize it. What is certain is that only though political power and fighting the current economic situation can be changed. All that can be done for the time being – settlement – is but an auxiliary means. […]
Emphases are mine.
Minutes of a Conference in the Reich Chancellery, Berlin, November 5, 1937, FROM 4:15 to 8:30 P.M.
[…] The German racial community comprised over 85 million people and, because of their number and the narrow limits of habitable space in Europe, constituted a tightly packed racial core such as was not to be met in any other country and such as implied the right to a greater living space than in the case of other peoples.
[…]
The only remedy, and one which might appear to us as visionary, lay in the acquisition of greater living space -a quest which has at all times been the origin of the formation of states and of the migration of peoples. That this quest met with no interest at Geneva or among the satiated nations was understandable. If, then, we accept the security of our food situation as the principal question, the space necessary to insure it can only be sought in Europe, not, as in the liberal-capitalist view, in the exploitation of colonies. It is not a matter of acquiring population but of gaining space for agricultural use. Moreover, areas producing raw materials can be more usefully sought in Europe in immediate proximity to the Reich, than overseas; the solution thus obtained must suffice for one or two generations. Whatever else might prove necessary later must be left to succeeding generations to deal with. The development of great world political constellations progressed but slowly after all, and the German people with its strong racial core would find the most favorable prerequisites for such achievement in the heart of the continent of Europe. The history of all ages- the Roman Empire and the British Empire- had proved that expansion could only be carried out by breaking down resistance and taking risks; setbacks were inevitable. There had never in former times been spaces without a master, and there were none today; the attacker always comes up against a possessor.
[…]
Germany's problem could only be solved by means of force and this was never without attendant risk. The campaigns of Frederick the Great for Silesia and Bismarck's wars against Austria and France had involved unheard-of risk, and the swiftness of the Prussian action in 1870 had kept Austria from entering the war. If one accepts as the basis of the following exposition the resort to force with its attendant risks, then there remain still to be answered the questions "when" and "how." In this matter there were three cases [Falle] to be dealt with:[…]
Source of quote:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/d ... ssbach.htm
Emphases are mine.
Report on a Meeting on 23 May 1939 (my translation from the original transcribed under
http://www.ns-archiv.de/krieg/1939/schm ... 1939.shtml )
[…]The mass of 80 millions has solved the ideological problem. The economic problems must also be solved. No German can avoid the creation of the economic pre-conditions for this. Solving the problems requires courage. There must be no avoiding the solution of the problems by adaptation. On the contrary, the circumstances must be matched to the demands. Without intrusion into foreign states or attacking foreign property this is not possible.
The living space, adequate to the greatness of the state, is the basis of all power. For a time one may do without, but then the solution of the problems comes around one way or the other. There is the choice between rising or falling. In 15 or 20 years the solution will be compulsorily necessary for us. Longer than that no German statesman can go around the issue.
[…]
Danzig is not the object that is at issue. The issue for us is the extension of living space in the east and securing of food supplies as well as solving the Baltic problem. Food supplies can only be obtained in areas sparsely populated. Beside the fertility the German thorough agriculture will immensely increase the surpluses.
In Europe there is no other possibility.
Colonies: Warning against giving away colonial possessions. That is no solution of the food problem. Blockade!
If fate forces us to a conflict with the West, it is good to have more land in the East. In the war we can count even less on record harvests than in peacetime.
The population of non-German territories does not do military service and is thus available for work.
The problem 'Poland' is not to be separated from the conflict with the west.
Poland’s inner steadfastness against Bolshevism is dubious. Thus Poland is also a dubious barrier against Russia.
A successful war in the west with a quick decision is questionable, as is the attitude of Poland.
Pressure from Russia the Polish regime will not withstand. Poland sees danger in Germany’s victory over the West and will try to take this victory away from us.
There can thus be no question of sparing Poland, and the decision that remains is to attack Poland at the first appropriate occasion.[…]
Emphases are mine.
Halder’s notes on Hitler’s briefing of his military commanders on 30 March 1941 (my translation from Christian Streit,
Keine Kameraden. Die Wehrmacht und die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen 1941-1945):
[….]
Colonial tasks!
Two world-views fighting each other. Demolishing verdict about Bolshevism, which is equal to asocial criminality. Communism is an enormous danger for the future. We must depart from the standpoint of soldierly comradeship. The Communist is no comrade before and no comrade afterwards. This is a fight to annihilation. If we don’t see it as this, we will defeat the enemy, but in 30 years we will again be faced with the communist enemy. We don’t make war to conserve the enemy.
[…..]
Fight against Russia:
Annihilation of the Bolshevik commissars and the communist intelligence. The new states must be Socialist states, but without an intelligence of their own. It must be prevented that a new intelligence comes into being. A primitive Socialist intelligence is sufficient.
The fight must be conduced against the poison of disintegration. This is not a matter for military tribunals. The leader of the troops must know what this is about. The must lead in the fight. The troops must defend themselves with the means by which they are attacked. Commissars and GPU-people are criminals and must be treated as such.
For this the troops need not come out of the hands of their leaders. The leader must issue his directives in consonance with the feelings of the troops. [Marginal note by Halder: This fight is very much differentiated from the fight in the West. In the East harshness means mildness in the future.]
The leader must require themselves to do the sacrifice of overcoming their considerations.
[Marginal note: Order of the Commander in Chief of the Army]
Emphases are mine.
A few months later …
[…]Beyond satisfying the immediate needs of Germany during the war, there remained to be decided the long-term future of an area which, assuming the objectives of a line from Archangel to Astrakhan was achieved, contained over a hundred million people. Hitler had never thought of the invasion of Russia ending with a conventional peace treaty; it was to be a war of conquest, the purpose of which was not only to overthrow the Bolshevik regime but to prevent the emergence of a successor Russian state. But what was to replace it?
An unusual insight into Hitler’s mind in 1941-2 is provided by his Table Talk, records of the monologues to which his guests and entourage were subjected after meals at Hitler’s HQ, either the permanent installation in East Prussia which Hitler called ‘Wolfsschanze’ (Fort Wolf) , or his temporary HQ at Vinnitza in the Ukraine which he called ‘Werwolf’. Hitler would not allow a tape-recorder to be used, but he agreed to Bormann’s suggestion that a party official might be admitted to his meals who would sit in a corner and take notices unobtrusively. These were later corrected and approved by Bormann, as a record of the Führer’s genius.
The months from March to the end of October 1941 were a period in which Hitler felt more convinced than ever of his genius, the highpoint of the fantastic career in which he saw himself as the peer of Napoleon, Bismarck and Frederick the Great – characters to whom he referred in familiar terms – pursuing ‘the Cyclopean task which the building of an empire means for a single man.
The character of that empire was a subject which fired his imagination and constantly recurred in his talk. After the evening meal on 27 July he defined its limits as a line 200 – 300 kilometres east of the Urals; the Germans must hold this line in perpetuity and never allow any other military power to establish itself to the
west of it.
It should be possible for us to control this region in the East, with 250,000 men plus a cadre of good administrators. Let’s learn from the English, who, with 250,000 men in all, including 50,000 soldiers, govern 400 million Indians. This space in Russia must always be dominated by Germans.
Nothing would be a worse mistake on our part than to seek to educate the masses there …
We’ll take the southern part of Ukraine, especially the Crimea, and make it an exclusively German colony. There’ll be no harm in pushing out the population that’s there now. The German colonist will be the soldier – peasant, and for that I’ll take professional soldiers … For those of them who are sons of peasants, the Reich will provide a completely-equipped farm. The soil costs us nothing, we have only the farm to build … These soldier peasants will be given arms, so that at the slightest danger they can be at their posts when we summon them.
Hitler returned to the subject on the evening of 17 October, when Todt and Gauleiter Sauckel (who was responsible for conscripting foreign workers) provided and appreciative audience:
The Russian desert, we shall populate it … We’ll take away its character of an Asian steppe, we’ll Europeanise it. With this object we have undertaken the construction of road that will lead to the southernmost part of the Crimea and to the Caucasus. These road will be studded along their whole length with German towns and around these towns our colonists will settle.
As for the two or three million men whom we need to accomplish this task, we’ll find them quicker than we think. They’ll come from Germany, Scandinavia, the Western countries, and America. I shall no longer be here to see all that, but in twenty years, the Ukraine will already be a home for twenty million inhabitants, besides the natives …
We shan’t settle in the Russian towns, and we’ll let them go to pieces without intervening. And, above all, no remorse on this subject! We’re absolutely without obligations as far as these people are concerned. To struggle against the hovels, chase away the fleas, provide German teachers, bring out newspapers – very little of that for us! We’ll confine ourselves, perhaps, to setting up a radio transmitter, under our control. For the rest, let them know just enough to understand our highway signs, so that they won’t get themselves run over by our vehicles.
For them the word ‘liberty’ means the right to wash on feast days … There’s only one duty: to Germanize this country by the immigration of Germans and to look upon the natives as Redskins … In this business I shall go straight ahead, cold-bloodedly.
Ten days later he declared:
Nobody will ever snatch the East from us! … We shall soon supply the wheat for all Europe, the coal, the steel, the wood. To exploit the Ukraine properly – that new Indian Empire – we’ll need only peace in the West …
For me the object is to exploit the advantages of continental hegemony … When we are the masters of Europe, we have a dominant position in the world. A hundred and thirty million people in the Reich, ninety in the Ukraine. Add to these the other states of the New Europe and we’ll be 400 millions as compared with the 130 million Americans.
Source of quote: Alan Bullock,
Hitler and Stalin. Parallel Lives 1993 Fontana Press, London, pages 756-758.
Emphasis is mine.
Bullock’s translation of the highlighted passage is a rather benevolent one. Hitler’s words were actually the following:
In die russischen Städte gehen wir nicht hinein. Sie müssen vollständig ersterben. Wir brauchen uns da keine Gewissensbisse zu machen […] wir haben überhaupt keine Verpflichtungen den Leuten gegenüber.
Source of quote:
Christian Gerlach,
Kalkulierte Morde, page 801
My translation:
Into the Russian cities we shall not go. They must die away completely. We need to have no remorse in this respect […] we have no obligations whatsoever towards these people.
So while it seems reasonable to assume that Hitler put his ideological considerations on the back burner for as long as political and strategic needs required a friendly relationship with the Soviet Union, stating that he at any time abandoned his ideological aims altogether would be like maintaining that the "New Economic Policy" introduced by Lenin in the Soviet Union in the 1920s signalled his abandonment of Marxist ideas.
In a letter written to Mussolini after having issued his Directive no. 21 for the final preparation of Operation "Barbarossa", Hitler expressed his relief at finally having put an end to a policy that went against the grain of his beliefs and ideals. The respective passage is quoted in Bullock's a.m. book, and I will provide a transcription thereof as soon as possible after the Christmas holiday.
