15 May document: for the best analysis see Chris Bellamy, Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War, London, 2007, pp. 99–121; also Constantine Pleshakov, Stalin’s Folly: The Secret History of the German Invasion of Russia, June 1941, London, 2005, pp. 75–84; Bianka Pietrow-Ennker (ed.), Präventivkrieg? Der deutsche Angriff auf die Sowjetunion, Frankfurt am Main, 2000; and for the conspiracy theorists, Viktor Suvorov, Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War?, London, 1990; Heinz Magenheimer, Hitler’s War, London, 2002, pp. 51–64. The whole debate was examined by the Russian Association of the Second World War Historians on 28.12.97. (Information Bulletin, No.4, 1998) and they rightly concluded that the Red Army was simply in no condition to launch an offensive. I am grateful to their president, Professor O.A. Rzheshevsky, for sending me the verbatim report.
‘Disinformation has now reached ambassadorial level!’: Pravda, 22.6.89
here Deportations from Baltic states: Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story of its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev, London, 1990, p. 203
‘This is a war of extermination’: Halder, Kriegstagebuch, vol. ii, pp. 336–7
‘Dortmund’, ‘Thus the start’: KTB OKW, vol. i, p. 417
‘on the eve of’: Sold. Paul B., Flak-Sonderger Wrkst. Zug 13, 22.6.41, BfZ-SS L 46 281
‘Early this morning’: Sold. Kurt U., 1.San.Kp.91, 6.Geb.Div., 21.6.41, BfZ-SS
‘My conviction is’: Fw. Herbert E., 2.Kp./Nachr.Abt.SS, SS-Div.Reich, BfZ-SS
‘thirty-nine aircraft incursions’: Maslennikov, RGVA 38652/1/58
‘In the course of the morning’: KTB OKW, vol. i, p. 417
‘impetuous dash’: Erich von Manstein, Lost Victories, London, 1982, p. 187
‘Of course I’ll be there’: Schmidt, Hitler’s Interpreter, p. 233
‘For the first time in years’: quoted Richard Lourie, Sakharov: A Biography, Hanover, NH, 2002, p. 52
‘Finally, after a successful attack’: RGALI 1710/3/43
‘The Russian is a’: Sold. Rudolf B., Stab/Nachsch.Btl.553, 27.7.41, BfZ-SS
NKVD massacres of prisoners: Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps, London, 2003, pp. 377–8; and Polish prisoners, Snyder, Blood-lands, p. 194
‘Lenin founded our state’: quoted Richard Overy, Russia’s War, London, 1999, p. 78
‘The whole field’: Aleksandr Tvardovsky, Dnevniki i pisma, 1941–1945, Moscow, 2005, p. 32
‘After Minsk began to burn’: Vasily Grossman papers, RGALI 1710/3/43
‘Before the corpses’: RGVA 32904/1/81, p. 28, quoted Anna Reid, Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II, 1941–1944, New York, 2011, p. 43
‘inadequate on the eve of war’: TsAMO 35/107559/5 p.364
‘only 3,800 were ready to fight’: ibid.
Evacuation of Lenin’s body: Ilya Zbarsky, Lenin’s Embalmers, London, 1998, pp. 118–21
‘probably no overstatement’: Halder, Kriegstagebuch, vol. iii: Der Russlandfeldzug bis zum Marsch auf Stalingrad, p. 38
‘There were about nine hundred’: Grossman papers, RGALI 1710/3/43
‘At the outset of the war’: Halder, Kriegstagebuch, vol. iii, p. 506
‘Whether they are riding somewhere’, ‘the much-battered enemy continued his cowardly advance’: RGALI 1710/3/43
‘At night, the sky’: Grossman papers, RGALI 1710/3/49
Soviet 34th Army collapse and self-inflicted wounds: RGASPI 558/11/49, p. 1, quoted Reid, Leningrad, pp. 65–6
Evacuation of Tallinn: David M. Glantz, The Battle for Leningrad, 1941–1944, Lawrence, Kan., 2002, p. 46
here Refugees described by Vasily Chekrizov: Reid, Leningrad, p. 116
‘Doesn’t it seem to you’: RGASPI 558/11/492, p. 27, quoted ibid., p. 106
‘Make it clear to all troops’: RGASPI 83/1/18, p. 18
‘A German aircraft appeared’: VCD, 21.8.41
‘My answer is’: 20.9.41, RGALI 1817/2/185
‘Crowds of civilians are escaping’: Gefr. Hans B., 269.Inf.Div., BfZ-SS
‘Columns of thick smoke’: VCD, 4.9.41
13: Rassenkrieg
‘One even sees’: O’Gefr. Hanns W., 387.Inf.Div., 31.5.42, BfZ-SS 45 842 Ukraine famine: see Snyder, Bloodlands, p. 53
‘Everyone admires’: Grossman papers, RGALI 1710/3/49
‘grass like cattle’, ‘they fell on’: Sold. Josef Z., 3.Kp/Ldsschtz. Btl.619, 12.9.41, BfZ-SS 20 355 D
‘The Russians arrived’: Paul Roser testimony, IMT VI, p. 291, quoted Peter Padfield, Himmler, Reichsführer-SS, London, 2001, p. 431
Partisan preparations: 2.9.41, Bellamy, Absolute War, pp. 267–8
‘time of iron’: Grossman papers, RGALI 1710/3/43
‘the shoah by bullets’: Vasily Grossman, The Road, London, 2009, p. 60
‘Some Thoughts on the Treatment’: Christopher Browning, ‘Nazi Resettlement Policy and the Search for a Solution to the Jewish Question, 1939–1941’, in his The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution, Cambridge, 1992, pp. 16–17, quoted Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century, London, 1998, p. 170.
Himmler and Madagascar: Christopher R. Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution, London, 2004, pp. 81–9
‘territorial solution’: quoted Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship, p. 112
‘This will happen best’: quoted ibid., p. 266
For the SS Einsatzgruppen, see ibid., pp. 224–43
‘self-cleansing efforts’, or Selbstreinigungsbestrebungen: ibid., p. 228
‘Jews in party and state’: ibid., p. 219
The ‘sardine method’: Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, New York, 1985, p. 146
‘A pilot from the third air squadron’: TsA FSB 14/4/326, pp. 264–7
‘men, women and children’: Gefr. Hans R., Interview ‘Die Deutschen im Zweiten Weltkrieg’, SWF TV, 1985, quoted Robert Kershaw, War without Garlands, London, 2009, pp. 285–6
‘A girl–a Jewish beauty’: RGALI 1710/3/49
‘In my opinion’: TNA WO 208/4363
‘They’re willing and comradely’: Gefr. Ludwig B., Nachsch.Btl.563, 27.7.42, BfZ-SS 28 743
‘the soldiers were shouting’: Grossman papers, RGALI 1710/1/123
‘People with fawning’: Ida S. Belozovskaya, GARF 8114/1/965, pp. 68–75
here Sixth Army and Babi-Yar: Hannes Heer (ed.), Vernichtungskrieg. Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941 bis 1944, Hamburg, 1996
‘On 28 September’: Ida S. Belozovskaya, GARF 8114/1/965, pp. 68–75
‘deformed newborns’: Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution, Chapel Hill, 1995, p. 43. Friedlander is the main source for the section on the euthanasia programme
‘Look at the eyes’: quoted Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, p. 137
14: The ‘Grand Alliance’
‘I will unsay no word’, ‘if Hitler invaded Hell’: Winant and Churchill’s speech of 22.6.41, Valentin M. Berezhkov, History in the Making, Moscow, 1983, p. 123
‘it would be fatal’: TNA HW 1/6, C/6863, quoted David Stafford, Roosevelt and Churchill, London, 2000, p. 65
‘a gift for treating’: Kenneth S. Davis, FDR: The War President, New York, 2000, p. 212
‘for much longer than’: Berezhkov, History in the Making, p. 126
‘The country that could produce’: quoted ibid., p. 141
here From 27 January to 20 August, fifty-two Axis ships sunk and thirty-eight damaged: GSWW, vol. iii, p. 712
‘German swimming-pool’: Wolf Heckmann, Rommel’s War in Africa, New York, 1981, p. 157
‘One has to treat the Italians’: Leutnant André F., 15.P.Div., 28.5.41, BfZ-SS 37 007
‘a bare flat plain’: Geoffrey Cox, A Tale of Two Battles, London, 1987, p. 134
‘the Führer is prepared practically’: BA-MA RM 7/29
‘He clinked glasses with Sikorski’: Ilya Ehrenburg, Men, Years–Life, vol. v: The War: 1941–1945, New York, 1964,
p. 19
15: The Battle for Moscow
‘on the roof watching’: quoted Lourie, Sakharov, p. 53
‘Most of the militia’: Yuri Vladimirov, Voina soldata-zenitchika, 1941–1942, Moscow, 2009, p. 118
‘I thought I’d seen retreat’: Grossman papers, RGALI 1710/3/49
German tanks chasing Red Army soldiers: Vladimir Voitsekhovich in Artem Drabkin (ed.), Svyashchennaya voina. Ya pomnyu, Moscow, 2010, p. 12
‘panic-monger’: John Erickson, The Road to Stalingrad, London, 1975, p. 217
‘The Russians are beasts’: Maj. Hans Sch., Stab/Pi.Btl.652, BfZ-SS 33 691
‘Lots of mad rumours’: ibid.
‘I don’t think anyone’: Grossman papers, RGALI 1710/3/49
‘Tolstoy’s grave’: ibid.
‘They used fear’: Vladimir Ogryzko, quoted Laurence Rees, World War II behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West, London, 2009, p. 112
Execution of gang boss: Vladimir Voitsekhovich in Drabkin (ed.), Svyashchennaya voina, p. 15
‘rubbish’: quoted Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, London, 1991, p. 422
‘Bosses from many factories’: Yefim Abelevich Golbraikh in Drabkin (ed.), Svyashchennaya voina, p. 79
‘surrounded by mobs’: quoted Lowrie, Sakharov, p. 55
‘human whirlpools’: ibid.
‘What went on at Kazan’: Ehrenburg, Men, Years–Life, vol. v, p. 17
‘The German invaders’: Alexander Werth, Russia at War, London, 1964, p. 246
‘I have looked through the files’: ibid., p. 15
‘destroy and burn to ashes’: quoted Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, p. 456
‘Stations were covered’: Vladimirov, Voina soldata-zenitchika, p. 119
SS motorcyclist: Bellamy, Absolute War, p. 317
‘destroyer battalions’: Vladimir Viktorovich Voitsekhovich in Drabkin (ed.), Svyashchennaya voina, 2010
‘the good old war-horse’: Richthofen KTB, 10.4.41, BA-MA N671/2/7/9, p. 59
‘around half-naked when’: quoted Charles Messenger, The Last Prussian: A Biography of Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, 1875–1953, London, 1991, p. 61
‘dependant’s’ ration, ‘smertnik’: Reid, Leningrad, pp. 168–9
‘Our situation with food’: VCD, 28.10.41
‘Our corporal Andronov’: ibid., 20.11.41
‘I saw a Polutorka’: ibid., 8.12.41
‘all along the bank’: ibid., 8–9.12.41
‘I cannot describe to you’: Gefr. Hans Joachim C., 6.Kp/Infantry.Rgt.67, 23.Inf. Div., 4.12.41, BfZ-SS
‘I don’t know what’s wrong’: Obgefr. Herbert B., Nachschubkp.31, 6.12.41, BfZ-SS
‘Are we going to have to pull out?’: Oberschütze Helmut G., 8.12.41, BfZ-SS
‘The frosts were exceptionally severe’: Ehrenburg, Men, Years–Life, vol. v, p. 35
Many of the wounded’: Oberschütze Helmut G., BfZ-SS, N:Gil
‘There’s an enormous number’: Oberschütze Helmut G., BfZ-SS
‘the Americans in the Grand Hotel’: Ehrenburg, Men, Years–Life, vol. v, p. 18
16: Pearl Harbor
‘This means war’: Robert E. Sherwood, The White House Papers of Harry L. Hopkins, 2 vols, New York, 1948, vol. i, p. 430
‘I think they have had’: D. K. R. Crosswell, Beetle: The Life of General Walter Bedell Smith, Lexington, Ky, 2010, pp. 227–8
Roosevelt’s decision on atomic weapons research: Kershaw, Fateful Choices, p. 7
‘national hara-kiri’: Joseph C. Grew, Ten Years in Japan, New York, 1944, p. 468, quoted ibid., p. 366
‘In the first six to twelve months’: Arthur Zich, The Rising Sun, Alexandria. Va, 1977, p. 19
‘third-class nation’: Nobutaka Ike (ed.), Japan’s Decision for War: Records of the 1941 Policy Conferences, Stanford, 1967, pp. 208–39, quoted Kershaw, Fateful Choices, p. 365
‘Do you mean to say’: Zich, The Rising Sun, p. 51
‘A gorgeous formation’: Fuchida Mitsuo, ‘Pearl Harbor: The View from the Japanese Cockpit’, in Stanley M. Ulanoff (ed.), Bombs Away!, New York, 1971, quoted Lewis, Eyewitness World War II, pp. 260–1
MacArthur’s command in the Philippines: Philippine Islands, USACMH, Washington, DC, 1992, pp. 4–9
‘Women clustered under’: Carlos P. Romula, USMC, quoted Lewis, Eyewitness World War II, p. 268
‘dollar arsenal of the Empire’: quoted Peter Thompson, The Battle for Singapore, London, 2005, p. 16
‘Today all of us’: TNA PREM 3/469/13
‘Prince of Wales looked magnificent’: O. D. Gallagher, ‘The Loss of the Repulse and the Prince of Wales’, Daily Express, 12.12.41
‘We’ll get it over by spring’: ibid., p. 35
‘not the slightest chance’: quoted Philip Snow, The Fall of Hong Kong: Britain, China and the Japanese Occupation, New Haven and London, 2003, p. 41
23rd Army’s invasion of Hong Kong: see ibid., pp. 53–7
‘There must be no thought’: ibid., pp. 66–7
‘the first man to surrender’: ibid., p. 67
10,000 Hong Kong Chinese women raped: ibid., pp. 81–2; see also testimony of Connie Sully, in Rees, Their Darkest Hour, pp. 129–35
‘We are paying very heavily now’: Alanbrooke, War Diaries, 12.2.42, p. 229
HMAS Sydney I am grateful to Michael Montgomery, the son of the cruiser’s navigating officer, for updating me on the Court of Inquiry in 2008–9 headed by Justice Terence Cole
‘astonished to find’: Theodore White (ed.), The Stilwell Papers, New York, 1948, p. 60
17: China and the Philippines
For the New Fourth Army incident, see Chang and Halliday, Mao, pp. 278–85
‘the greatest shame’: quoted Kawano, ‘Japanese Combat Morale’, in Peattie, Drea and van de Ven, The Battle for China, p. 331
Hemingway and Gellhorn in China, ‘China has cured me’ etc.: Caroline Moore-head, Martha Gellhorn: A Life, London, 2003, p. 213
here Chinese Communist opium trade: A. S. Panyushkin, Zapiski Posla: Kitay 1939 –1944, Moscow, 1981, p. 278, quoted Chang and Halliday, Mao, p. 3
‘Three all’: Edward L. Dreyer, China at War, 1901–1949, London, 1995, p. 253 Fall in the population of Communist base areas: Chalmers A. Johnson, Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence of Revolutionary China, 1937–1945, Stanford, 1962, p. 58
‘proletarian internationalism’: Garver, Chinese–Soviet Relations, p. 239
here Soviet military advisers in China: ibid., p. 40; Zhang Baijia, ‘China’s Quest for Foreign Military Aid’, in Peattie, Drea and van de Ven, The Battle for China, pp. 288–93
For the Japanese strategic bombing offensive, see Edna Tow, ‘The Great Bombing of Chongqing and the Anti-Japanese War, 1937–1945’, in Peattie, Drea and van de Ven, The Battle for China, pp. 256–82
‘A Red Cross ambulance’: Smedley, Battle Hymn of China, p. 158
‘The division’s situation was so desperate’: Tobe Ryöichi, ‘The Japanese Eleventh Army in Central China, 1938–1941’, in Peattie, Drea and van de Ven, The Battle for China, p. 227
‘the sick man of Asia’: van de Ven, War and Nationalism in China, p. 13
For the Nationalists’ problems in recruiting and feeding their forces and population, see ibid., pp. 253–83
here The food crisis in Nationalist China: Collingham, The Taste of War, pp. 250–5
‘offensive spirit’: van de Ven, War and Nationalism in China, p. 10
Plan ‘Orange’: Philippine Islands, USACMH, 1992
‘Battling Bastards of Bataan’: Philippine Islands, USACMH, 1992
18: War across the World
‘Roosevelt is a fanatic’: quoted Berezhkov, History in the Making, pp. 159–60
‘like a bolt from the blue’: TBJG, part II, vol. ii, p. 453
‘A great power doesn’t let itself’: Ernst von Weizsäcker, Erinnerungen, Munich, 1950, p. 280, quoted Kershaw, Fateful Choices, p. 422
‘On the 11 Dece
mber’: Gefr. Bisch, 2.Kp./Pz.Rgt.3, 2.Pz.Div., 21.12.41, BfZ-SS Dönitz and Hitler: Kershaw, Fateful Choices, p. 384
‘went to bed’: Lady Soames interview, Brendon papers, quoted Carlo D’Este, Warlord: A Life of Churchill at War, 1874–1945, London, 2008, p. 622
Churchill and Arcadia: Hastings, Finest Years, pp. 217–39
‘United States policy’: Anthony Eden, The Eden Memoirs: The Reckoning, London, 1965, p. 319
‘The American Army does not’: quoted John Ellis, Brute Force: Allied Strategy and Tactics in the Second World War, New York, 1990, p. 525
‘every promise the English’: Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945, New York, 1979, p. 338
‘I know you will not mind’: Warren F. Kimball (ed.), Churchill and Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence, 3 vols, Princeton, 1984, vol. i: Alliance Emerging, p. 421
‘Carry out your orders!’: Georgii Zhukov, Vospominaniya i Razmyshleniya, 2 vols, Moscow, 2002, vol. ii, p. 51
‘In order to beat a path’: P. Gerasimov, VIZh, no. 7, 1967, quoted Rodric Braithwaite, Moscow 1941: A City and its People at War, London, 2007, pp. 327–8
‘How did we miss him’: Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, pp. 443–4
‘a beautiful girl’: Leonid Rabichev, Voina vsyo spishet, vospominaniya ofitserasvyazista, 31-i armii, 1941–1945, Moscow, 2009, p. 75
Nearly 1,400 arrested: M. Gorinov (ed.), Moskva Prifrontovaya, 1941–1942: Arkhivnye Dokumenty i Materialy, Moscow, 2001, p. 415, quoted Braithwaite, Moscow 1941, p. 323
here Soviet losses in the January–April 1942 offensives: Krivosheev, Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses, pp. 122–3
Moscow in the early months of 1942: Braithwaite, Moscow 1941, pp. 333–9
Construction of the corduroy road: Bellamy, Absolute War, pp. 366–70
‘irresponsible and heartless treatment’: quoted Reid, Leningrad, p. 278
‘They hardly looked like’: Alexander Werth, Leningrad, London, 1944, p. 89
‘You don’t know what it was like’: quoted ibid., p. 22
The Second World War Page 111