The Greatest Battle

by Andrew Nagorski

  That admiration hardly made up for the wariness the two leaders felt as they monitored each other’s rhetoric and actions. Hitler’s notions about what the Bolshevik Revolution represented were clearly spelled out in Mein Kampf. “Never forget that the rulers of present-day Russia are common blood-stained criminals; that they are the scum of humanity…. Furthermore, do not forget that these rulers belong to a race which combines, in a rare mixture, bestial cruelty and an inconceivable gift for lying, and which today more than ever is conscious of a mission to impose its bloody oppression on the whole world.” And Stalin had carefully read the passages of Mein Kampf where Hitler spelled out his intention to conquer and enslave Russia, treating it as Lebensraum for the German people. He also had read Conrad Heyden’s The History of German Fascism, which left no doubt about Hitler’s tactics: “His promises cannot be regarded as those of a reliable partner. He breaks them when it is in his interest to do so.”

  Both sides professed their good intentions as they prepared their nonaggression pact. During his visit to Moscow that culminated in the signing of the agreement, Ribbentrop insisted that his country was directing its efforts against the West, not the Soviet Union. Stalin raised a glass of champagne and declared: “I know how much the German nation loves its Führer; I should therefore like to drink to his health.” But Stalin clearly hadn’t forgotten Hitler’s track record. When Ribbentrop proposed a flowery preamble to the pact, Stalin would have none of it. “The Soviet Union could not possibly present to the Soviet people in good faith assurances of friendship with Germany when, for six years, the Nazi government has showered the Soviet government with buckets of shit,” he retorted. During the actual signing of the pact, Stalin added, “Of course, we are not forgetting that your ultimate aim is to attack us.”

  Nonetheless, both leaders were elated by the agreement. Hitler had obtained the guarantee of Soviet nonintervention he needed to be able simultaneously to conquer Poland and prepare for a war with Great Britain and France, the European powers that had pledged themselves to defend that doomed country. And Stalin was convinced he had outsmarted both the Western powers and his German counterpart, while setting up his grab not only of eastern Poland but the Baltic states as well. “Hitler wants to trick us, but I think we’ve got the better of him,” he told Nikita Khrushchev.

  In the long run, Stalin did get the better of Hitler. He proved to be more coldly calculating, less blinded by fanatical messianic goals than his German counterpart. But in the immediate period that followed—right up until Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union less than two years later, and right through the battle for Moscow—Stalin’s boast that he had outsmarted Hitler would ring hollow. The events unleashed by the nonaggression pact would demonstrate that both leaders, wrapped in their respective cocoons of absolute power, had delusional tendencies that clouded their judgment, contributing to their misjudgment of each other. Their countrymen would soon begin paying the price for their enormous mistakes.

  After Germany and the Soviet Union crushed Poland’s forces, which were unable to stop the onslaught first from the west and then from the east, the victors hailed the dawn of a new era by signing the German-Soviet Agreement of Friendship and on the Frontier between the U.S.S.R. and Germany on September 29, 1939. The collapse and partition of the Polish state, the agreement claimed, had “laid the solid foundations for a lasting peace in Eastern Europe,” and it was time for Britain and France to reconcile themselves to the new order rather than remain in a state of war with Germany.

  A month later, Molotov left no doubt that the Soviet leadership had been engaged in far more than a tactical maneuver when it had decided to come to terms with Germany. In a speech to the Supreme Soviet on October 31, he expressed his delight that Poland had been wiped off the map and branded Britain and France aggressor nations. “A short blow at Poland from the German Army, followed by one from the Red Army, was enough to reduce to nothing this monster child of the Treaty of Versailles,” he declared. “Now Germany stands for peace, while Britain and France are in favor of continuing the war. As you see, the roles have been reversed.”

  Then he added a rhetorical flourish that demonstrated just how far the Kremlin had gone in its embrace of its new ally. “One may like or dislike Hitlerism, but every sane person will understand that ideology cannot be destroyed by force,” he said. “It is therefore not only nonsensical but also criminal to pursue a war ‘for the destruction of Hitlerism’ under the bogus banner of a struggle for ‘democracy.’”

  But in purely military terms, the Soviet Union wasn’t nearly as ready as Germany to capitalize on the new conditions for “a lasting peace.” It was one thing to “liberate” the western Ukraine and Belorussia from the Poles, who were reeling from the German invasion, and to begin applying the pressure on the tiny Baltic states that would soon lead to their occupation. It was quite another, Stalin quickly discovered, to project Soviet power against even a small country that had the resources and will to put up surprisingly stiff resistance. That country, of course, was Finland, which would exact a high price from the Soviet forces who attacked it, thus diminishing Stalin’s standing in the eyes of the world, and especially in Hitler’s.

  When the Soviet Union demanded that Finland allow it to establish military bases on its territory and cede the Karelian Isthmus north of Leningrad, the Finns refused. Stalin then prepared for what Politburo member Anastas Mikoyan would later call the “shamefully conducted war with Finland.” Working with Defense Commissar Kliment Voroshilov and other top officials, he mapped out the plans for a military strike that, he was convinced, would produce a quick victory and allow him to install an already prepared puppet government and turn Finland into the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Republic. “He was confident that everything would be done in two weeks,” Mikoyan recalled.

  Instead of accepting their fate, the Finns fought back with a ferocity that stunned the ill-prepared Soviet forces. “Most of our troops were ground up by the Finns,” Khrushchev wrote later. That was hardly an overstatement. More than 125,000 Soviet troops perished in the Winter War, while Finnish losses totaled about 48,000. The Finns had also dealt the Kremlin a huge psychological blow. “The Germans could see that the U.S.S.R. was a giant with feet of clay,” Khrushchev continued. “Hitler must have concluded that if the Finns could put up such resistance, then the mighty Germans would need only one powerful blow to topple the giant.” With the benefit of hindsight, he added, “Stalin lost his nerve after the defeat of our troops in the war with Finland. He probably lost whatever confidence he had that our army could cope with Hitler.” Although the Finns were finally forced to accept the Soviet terms that they had rejected earlier, this was a far cry from the outcome that Stalin had expected.

  Stalin would later complain to Churchill and Roosevelt that “the Red Army was good for nothing” in the Finnish campaign, and he would sack Voroshilov. In what would prove to be a foretaste of his behavior after every setback, he was eager to shift responsibility for everything that went wrong: the failure of Soviet intelligence to detect how heavily the Finns had fortified the Mannerheim line, the shortage of automatic weapons and winter clothing, the breakdown of supply lines, and all the other indicators that the campaign was a product of incompetent planning.

  In stark contrast, Hitler soon proved that his Polish campaign was only the first in a string of victories. From April to June 1940, German forces took Norway and Denmark, swept through the Netherlands and Luxembourg to strike at Belgium, and bypassed the Maginot Line to storm into France, whose swift collapse left Stalin sputtering in frustration. Khrushchev was with Stalin when he heard about France’s surrender. “He was racing around cursing like a cab driver,” he recalled. “He cursed the French. He cursed the English. How could they allow Hitler to defeat them, to crush them?” Stalin also spelled out what this could mean for Russia, that it would allow Hitler “to beat our brains in.”

  As far as the German leader was concerne
d, the Soviet debacle in Finland and his own victories only proved that his original strategy could and would work. On August 11, 1939, shortly before Ribbentrop’s trip to Moscow that would produce the nonaggression pact, he told Carl Burckhardt, the League of Nations Commissioner in Danzig, “Everything I undertake is directed against the Russians. If the West is too stupid and blind to grasp this, then I shall be compelled to come to an agreement with the Russians, beat the West and then after their defeat turn against the Soviet Union with all my forces. I need the Ukraine so that they can’t starve us out, as happened in the last war.”

  There was just one problem: England stood in the way of Hitler completing the “beat the West” part of this plan. During the summer of 1940, Hitler was still hoping to lay the groundwork for Operation Sea Lion, the invasion of Britain. But when the Luftwaffe failed to best the Royal Air Force in the battle of Britain, he recognized that his forces weren’t capable of mounting such an invasion anytime soon. On September 17, he postponed Operation Sea Lion indefinitely.

  Hitler then talked himself into believing that the fastest road to defeating England was by turning on his Soviet ally. In his early writings, he had always posited the destruction of his eastern neighbor, and now he was convinced more than ever that this was the solution that would solve his other problems as well. “Britain’s hope lies in Russia and the United States,” he told his generals on July 31, 1940. “If Russia drops out of the picture, America, too, is lost for Britain, because elimination of Russia would tremendously increase Japan’s power in the Far East. Russia is the Far Eastern sword of Britain and the United States pointed at Japan.” With Russia defeated, he reasoned, the Japanese would tie down the U.S. in the Far East, restricting its ability to help Britain.

  As for the European theater, Russia’s defeat would be equally devastating for Britain, he continued. “With Russia smashed, Britain’s last hope would be shattered. Germany then will be master of Europe and the Balkans.” As General Franz Halder, the German Army Chief of Staff, noted, Hitler’s conclusion was unambiguous. “Decision: Russia’s destruction must therefore be made a part of this struggle. Spring 1941. The sooner Russia is crushed the better.”

  After his victory in France, Hitler had paid a visit to Paris, stopping at Les Invalides to visit Napoleon’s tomb. But if he had any thoughts about the possible parallel between his own ambition to defeat Russia and the disastrous experience of the French emperor, he kept them to himself. Later, he would tell his generals, “I will not make the same mistake as Napoleon.” It was far from clear, however, what particular mistake he thought he was avoiding. It certainly wasn’t the mistake of taking on Russia in the first place. He was too deeply wedded to the idea that victory in the east would strengthen, not weaken, his drive for domination over the Western world.

  According to General Henning von Tresckow, Hitler believed that Britain was able to keep resisting because of its alliance with the United States, which was a “hinterland” full of resources that would eventually wear down German might. To counteract this, Hitler needed to gain control of Russia’s vast industrial and agricultural resources, along with its manpower. Some German officials were skeptical of this line of reasoning. The number two man in the Foreign Ministry, State Secretary Ernst von Weizsäcker, wrote to Ribbentrop that “to beat England in Russia—this is no program.” But Ribbentrop wasn’t the type of official who would stand up to his boss. As Hitler’s interpreter Paul Schmidt, who also held the rank of ambassador in the foreign ministry, told U.S. Army psychiatrist Leon Goldensohn during his imprisonment in Nuremberg, “Ribbentrop was a complete imitator of Hitler—even to the design of his cap.”

  At the end of 1940, Hitler issued Directive 21, his secret order for Operation Barbarossa, as the planned attack on Russia was called. (The origin of the name hardly seems auspicious: Barbarossa was the nickname of Frederick I, the German emperor who drowned while trying to lead his troops to the Holy Land in 1190.) According to the order, “The German Armed Forces must be prepared, even before the conclusion of the war against England, to crush Soviet Russia in a rapid campaign.” It outlined a strategy of “daring operations led by deeply penetrating armored spearheads” that would wipe out Soviet forces in western Russia. The object was to surround and destroy the major fighting units before they could retreat. “The final objective of the operation is to erect a barrier against Asiatic Russia on the general line Volga–Archangel,” it stated. “The last surviving industrial area of Russia in the Urals can then, if necessary, be eliminated by the Air Force.” In other words, Germany would be the master of the European part of the Soviet Union, with all its resources.

  To achieve that result, the German assault would first need to destroy Soviet forces in the Baltic region and Leningrad. Afterward the order envisaged an attack “with the intention of occupying Moscow, an important center of communications and of the armaments industry.” The capture of the Soviet capital, it added, “would represent a decisive political and economic success and would also bring about the capture of the most important railway junctions.”

  Hitler had clearly shoved aside not just historical misgivings based on Napoleon’s Russian campaign but also those based on Germany’s more recent experiences in World War I. As he had noted in Mein Kampf, “For three years these Germans had stormed the Russian front, at first it seemed without the slightest success. The Allies almost laughed over this aimless undertaking; for in the end the Russian giant with his overwhelming number of men was sure to remain the victor while Germany would inevitably collapse from loss of blood.” This time, however, his string of victories from Poland to France, coupled with the Red Army’s humiliation in Finland, convinced him that his forces would triumph easily.

  How easily? In December 1940, Hitler insisted that by the following spring his forces would be “visibly at their zenith” while Soviet forces would be at “an unmistakable nadir.” “Since Russia has to be beaten in any case, it is better to do it now, when the Russian armed forces have no leaders and are poorly equipped,” he added in early January. On another occasion, he told General Alfred Jodl, “We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.” Propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels chimed in with a similar prediction. “Russia will collapse like a house of cards,” he wrote in his diary.

  Taking their cue from their Führer, some German generals grew increasingly euphoric in their predictions. General Günther Blumentritt suggested to his colleagues in April 1941 that “fourteen days of heavy fighting” might prove enough to achieve victory; other military estimates ranged from six to ten weeks. This only reinforced Hitler’s own optimism, which looked almost cautious by comparison. He predicted a campaign that would last no more than four months, maybe three. With that in mind, he at first set May 15, 1941, as the date for the invasion. If he wanted to avoid Napoleon’s mistake of getting caught in the Russian winter, then that date afforded him the time he needed to achieve victory before the first snows—even if victory would take the full four months.

  If Hitler had stuck to this timetable, he would have launched the invasion of the Soviet Union about a month earlier than Napoleon did when he led his Grande Armée into Russia in late June 1812. It would have given him extra time to reach his key strategic objectives, especially Moscow, before summer weather gave way to fall rains that turned the country’s roads into tracks of mud and then the fast approach of winter. It would have given him that extra margin of time that could have played a crucial role.

  But with Hitler’s confidence soaring while Stalin’s was plummeting, the German leader felt free to address other problems in the broader war. And, thanks to his putative ally Benito Mussolini, he felt compelled to do so just when his focus should have been on final preparations for Operation Barbarossa, making sure that the military brass was able to stick to the original timetable.

  Mussolini had chafed at the fact that Hitler’s procession of surprise attacks and victories, which were often as
much a surprise to Il Duce as to the victims, had left him looking like a marginal figure. In the fall of 1940, he decided to spring his own surprise and prove that he, too, could swiftly conquer. When Hitler came to meet him in Florence on October 28, Mussolini proudly announced, “Führer, we are on the march! Victorious Italian troops crossed the Greco-Albanian frontier at dawn today!”

  Within a few days, the Italian troops were in retreat, and, as Hitler put it to his generals, Mussolini’s action was proven to be a “regrettable blunder.” It jeopardized German control of the Balkans. Even as he was preparing the plans for Operation Barbarossa, Hitler began drawing up plans for Marita, a German offensive in Albania and Greece to salvage the situation. Then he was enraged by another unexpected development. In March 1941, a coup in Belgrade overthrew the pliant Yugoslav government and produced a new challenge to German control over the region. The army and the Luftwaffe would exact revenge by attacking Yugoslavia and Greece in early April, taking special care to devastate Belgrade on his instructions. But in order to do so, Hitler issued a fateful order to his generals. “The beginning of the Barbarossa operation will have to be postponed up to four weeks,” he told them.

  “This postponement of the attack on Russia in order that the Nazi warlord might vent his personal spite against a small Balkan country which had dared to defy him was probably the most catastrophic single decision in Hitler’s career,” William Shirer wrote in The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich.

  At the time, though, Hitler had no inkling of that. He wanted the Balkans tidied up before he dealt with Russia, and, looking eastward, he continued to believe that he still had enough time to triumph there, even if the margin for error in his calculations was narrowing. Instead of launching Operation Barbarossa more than a month earlier than Napoleon had done 129 years before, he would end up sending his armies eastward at exactly the same time in June as the French emperor.