The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

by William Shirer

  Molotov did not rise to the bait. The proposed treaty was obviously an attempt to divert Russia from its historic pressure westward, down 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. The U.S.S.R. was not, at least at the moment, interested in the Indian Ocean, which lay far away. What it was interested in at the moment, Molotov replied, was Europe and the Turkish Straits. “Consequently,” he added, “paper agreements will not suffice for the Soviet Union; she would have to insist on effective guarantees of her security.”

  The questions which interested the Soviet Union [he elaborated] concerned not only Turkey but Bulgaria … But the fate of Rumania and Hungary was also of interest to the U.S.S.R. and could not be immaterial to her under any circumstances. It would further interest the Soviet Government to learn what the Axis contemplated with regard to Yugoslavia and Greece, and likewise, what Germany intended with regard to Poland … The Soviet Government was also interested in the question of Swedish neutrality … Besides, there existed the question of the passages out of the Baltic Sea …

  The untiring, poker-faced Soviet Foreign Commissar left nothing out and Ribbentrop, who felt himself being buried under the avalanche of questions—for at this point Molotov said he would “appreciate it” if his guest made answer to them—protested that he was being “interrogated too closely.”

  He could only repeat again and again [he replied weakly] that the decisive question was whether the Soviet Union was prepared and in a position to co-operate with us in the great liquidation of the British Empire.

  Molotov was ready with a cutting retort. Hilger duly noted it in the minutes.

  In his reply Molotov stated that the Germans were assuming that the war against England had already actually been won. If therefore [as Hitler had maintained] Germany was waging a life-and-death struggle against England, he could only construe this as meaning that Germany was fighting “for life” and England “for death.”

  This sarcasm may have gone over the head of Ribbentrop, a man of monumental denseness, but Molotov took no chances. To the German’s constant reiteration that Britain was finished, the Commissar finally replied, “If that is so, why are we in this shelter, and whose are these bombs which fall?”*

  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 conclusions.

  It must be set down here that the Soviet dictator, his subsequent claims to the contrary notwithstanding, now accepted Hitler’s offer to join the fascist camp, though at a stiffer price than had been offered in Berlin. On November 26, scarcely two weeks after Molotov had returned from Germany, he informed the German ambassador in Moscow that Russia was prepared to join the four-power pact, subject to the following conditions:

  1. That German troops are immediately withdrawn from Finland, which … belongs to the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence …

  2. That within the next few months the security of the Soviet Union in the Straits is assured by the conclusion of a mutual-assistance pact between the U.S.S.R. and Bulgaria … and by the establishment of a base for land and naval forces by the Soviet Union within range of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles by means of a long-term lease.

  3. That the area south of Batum and Baku in the general direction of the Persian Gulf is recognized as the center of the aspirations of the Soviet Union.

  4. That Japan renounce her rights to concessions for coal and oil in northern Sakhalin.33

  In all Stalin asked for five, instead of two, secret protocols embodying his new proposals and, for good measure, asked that, should Turkey prove difficult about Russian bases controlling the Straits, the four powers take military measures against her.

  The proposals constituted a price higher than Hitler was willing even to consider. He had tried to keep Russia out of Europe, but now Stalin was demanding Finland, Bulgaria, control of the Straits and, in effect, the Arabian and Persian oil fields, which normally supplied Europe with most of its oil. The Russians did not even mention the Indian Ocean, which the Fuehrer had tried to fob off as the center of “aspirations” for the U.S.S.R.

  “Stalin is clever and cunning,” Hitler told his top military chiefs. “He demands more and more. He’s a cold-blooded blackmailer. A German victory has become unbearable for Russia. Therefore: she must be brought to her knees as soon as possible.”34

  The great cold-blooded Nazi blackmailer had met his match, and the realization infuriated him. At the beginning of December he told Halder to bring him the Army General Staff’s plan for the onslaught on the Soviet Union. On December 5 Halder and Brauchitsch dutifully brought it to him, and at the end of a four-hour conference he approved it. Both the captured OKW War Diary and Halder’s own confidential journal contain a report on this crucial meeting.35 The Nazi warlord stressed that the Red Army must be broken through both north and south of the Pripet Marshes, surrounded and annihilated “as in Poland.” Moscow, he told Halder, “was not important.” The important thing was to destroy the “life force” of Russia. Rumania and Finland were to join in the attack, but not Hungary. General Dietl’s mountain division at Narvik was to be transported across northern Sweden to Finland for an attack on the Soviet arctic region.* Altogether some “120 to 130 divisions” were allotted for the big campaign.

  In its report on this conference, as in previous references to the plan to attack Russia, General Halder’s diary employs the code name “Otto.” Less than a fortnight later, on December 18, 1940, the code name by which it will go down in history was substituted. On this day Hitler crossed the Rubicon. He issued Directive No. 21. It was headed “Operation Barbarossa.” It began:

  TOP SECRET

  The Fuehrer’s Headquarters

  December 18, 1940

  The German Armed Forces must be prepared to crush Soviet Russia in a quick campaign before the end of the war against England.† For this purpose the Army will have to employ all available units with the reservation that the occupied territories will have to be safeguarded against surprise attacks …

  Preparations … are to be completed by May 15, 1941. Great caution has to be exercised that the intention of an attack will not be recognized.

  So the target date was mid-May of the following spring. The “general purpose” of Operation Barbarossa Hitler laid down as follows:

  The mass of the Russian Army in western Russia is to be destroyed in daring operations by driving forward deep armored wedges, and the retreat of intact, battle-ready troops into the wide spaces of Russia is to be prevented. The ultimate objective of the operation is to establish a defense line against Asiatic Russia from a line running from the Volga River to Archangel.

  Hitler’s directive then went into considerable detail about the main lines of attack.* The roles of Rumania and Finland were defined. They were to provide the jumping-off areas for attacks on the extreme north and south flanks as well as troops to aid the German forces in these operations. Finland’s position was especially important. Various Finnish–German armies were to advance on Leningrad and the Lake Ladoga area, cut the Murmansk rail line, secure the Petsamo nickel mines and occupy the Russian ice-free ports on the Arctic Ocean. Much depended, Hitler admitted, on whether Sweden would permit the transit of German troops from Norway, but he correctly predicted that the Swedes would be accommodating in this.

  The main operations were to be divided, Hitler explained, by the Pripet Marshes. The major blow would be delivered north of the swamps with two whole army groups. One would advance up the Baltic States to Leningrad. The other, farther south, would drive through White Russia and then swing north to join the first group, thus trapping what was left of the Soviet forces trying to retreat from the Baltic. Only then, Hitler laid it down, must an offensive against Moscow be undertaken. The Russian capital, which a fortnight before had seemed “unimportant” to Hitler, now assumed
more significance. “The capture of this city,” he wrote, “means a decisive political and economic victory, beyond the fall of the country’s most important railroad junction.” And he pointed out that Moscow was not only the main communications center of Russia but its principal producer of armaments.

  A third army group would drive south of the marshes through the Ukraine toward Kiev, its principal objective being to roll up and destroy the Soviet forces there west of the Dnieper River. Farther south German–Rumanian troops would protect the flank of the main operation and advance toward Odessa and thence along the Black Sea. Thereafter the Donets basin, where 60 per cent of Soviet industry was concentrated, would be taken.

  Such was Hitler’s grandiose plan, completed just before the Christmas holidays of 1940, and so well prepared that no essential changes would be made in it. In order to secure secrecy, only nine copies of the directive were made, one for each of the three armed services and the rest to be guarded at OKW headquarters. Even the top field commanders, the directive makes clear, were to be told that the plan was merely for “precaution, in case Russia should change her previous attitude toward us.” And Hitler instructed that the number of officers in the secret “be kept as small as possible. Otherwise the danger exists that our preparations will become known and the gravest political and military disadvantages result.”

  There is no evidence that the generals in the Army’s High Command objected to Hitler’s decision to turn on the Soviet Union, whose loyal fulfillment of the pact with Germany had made possible their victories in Poland and the West. Later Halder would write derisively of “Hitler’s Russian adventure” and claim the Army leaders were against it from the beginning.37 But there is not a word in his voluminous diary entries for December 1940 which supports him in this. Indeed, he gives the impression of being full of genuine enthusiasm for the “adventure,” which he himself, as Chief of the General Staff, had the main responsibility for planning.

  At any rate, for Hitler the die was cast, and, though he did not know it, his ultimate fate sealed, by this decision of December 18,1940. Relieved to have made up his mind at last, as he later revealed, he went off to celebrate the Christmas holidays with the troops and flyers along the English Channel—as far as it was possible for him to get from Russia. Out of his mind too—as far as possible—must have been any thoughts of Charles XII of Sweden and of Napoleon Bonaparte, who after so many glorious conquests not unlike his own, had met disaster in the vast depths of the Russian steppes. How could they be much in his mind? By now, as the record shortly will show, the one-time Vienna waif regarded himself as the greatest conqueror the world had ever seen. Egomania, that fatal disease of all conquerors, was taking hold.

  SIX MONTHS OF FRUSTRATION

  And yet, after all the tumultuous victories of the spring and early summer of 1940, there had been a frustrating six months for the Nazi conqueror. Not only the final triumph over Britain eluded him but opportunities to deal her a mortal blow in the Mediterranean had been thrown away.

  Two days after Christmas Grand Admiral Raeder saw Hitler in Berlin, but he had little Yuletide cheer to offer. “The threat to Britain in the entire eastern Mediterranean, the Near East and in North Africa,” he told the Fuehrer, “has been eliminated … The decisive action in the Mediterranean for which we had hoped therefore is no longer possible.”38

  Adolf Hitler, balked by a shifty Franco, by the ineptitude of Mussolini and even by the senility of Marshal Pétain, had really missed the bus in the Mediterranean. Disaster had struck the Italian ally in the Egyptian desert and now in December confronted it in the snowy mountains of Albania. These untoward happenings were also turning points in the war and in the course of history of the Third Reich. They had come about not only because of the weaknesses of Germany’s friends and allies, but, in part, because of the Nazi warlord’s incapacity to grasp the larger, intercontinental strategy that was called for and that Raeder and even Goering had urged upon him.

  Twice in September 1940, on the sixth and the twenty-sixth, the Grand Admiral attempted to open up new vistas in the Fuehrer’s mind now that the direct attack on England seemed out of the question. For the second conference Raeder cornered Hitler alone and, without the Army and Air Force officers to muddle the conversation, gave his chief a lengthy lecture on naval strategy and the importance of getting at Britain in other places than over the English Channel.

  The British [Raeder said] have always considered the Mediterranean the pivot of their world Empire … Italy, surrounded by British power, is fast becoming the main target of attack … The Italians have not yet realized the danger when they refuse our help. Germany, however, must wage war against Great Britain with all the means at her disposal and without delay, before the United States is able to intervene effectively. For this reason the Mediterranean question must be cleared up during the winter months.

  Cleared up how? The Admiral then got down to brass tacks.

  Gibraltar must be taken. The Canary Islands must be secured by the Air Force.

  The Suez Canal must be taken.

  After Suez, Raeder painted a rosy picture of what then would logically ensue.

  An advance from Suez through Palestine and Syria as far as Turkey is necessary. If we reach that point, Turkey will be in our power. The Russian problem will then appear in a different light … It is doubtful whether an advance against Russia from the north will be necessary.

  Having in his mind driven the British out of the Mediterranean and put Turkey and Russia in Germany’s power, Raeder went on to complete the picture. Correctly predicting that Britain, supported by the U.S.A. and the Gaullist forces, eventually would try to get a foothold on Northwest Africa as a basis for subsequent war against the Axis, the Admiral urged that Germany and Vichy France forestall this by securing this strategically important region themselves.

  According to Raeder, Hitler agreed with his “general trend of thought” but added that he would have to talk matters over first with Mussolini, Franco and Pétain.39 This he proceeded to do, though only after much time was lost. He arranged to see the Spanish dictator on October 23, Pétain, who was now the head of a collaborationist government at Vichy, the next day, and the Duce a few days thereafter.

  Franco, who owed his triumph in the Spanish Civil War to the massive military aid of Italy and Germany, had, like all his fellow dictators, an inordinate appetite for spoils, especially if they could be gained cheaply. In June, at the moment of France’s fall, he had hastily informed Hitler that Spain would enter the war in return for being given most of the vast French African empire, including Morocco and western Algeria, and provided that Germany supplied Spain liberally with arms, gasoline and foodstuffs.40 It was to give Franco the opportunity to redeem this promise that the Fuehrer arrived in his special train at the Franco-Spanish border town of Hendaye on October 23. But much had happened in the intervening months—Britain had stoutly held out, for one thing—and Hitler was in for an unpleasant surprise.

  The crafty Spaniard was not impressed by the Fuehrer’s boast that “England already is decisively beaten,” nor was he satisfied with Hitler’s promise to give Spain territorial compensation in French North Africa “to the extent to which it would be possible to cover France’s losses from British colonies.” Franco wanted the French African empire, with no strings attached. Hitler’s proposal was that Spain enter the war in January 1941, but Franco pointed out the dangers of such precipitate action. Hitler wanted the Spaniards to attack Gibraltar on January 10, with the help of German specialists who had taken the Belgian fort of Eben Emael from the air. Franco replied, with typical Spanish pride, that Gibraltar would have to be taken by Spaniards “alone.” And so the two dictators wrangled—for nine hours. According to Dr. Schmidt, who was present here too, Franco spoke on and on in a monotonous singsong voice and Hitler became increasingly exasperated, once springing up, as he had done with Chamberlain, to exclaim that there was no point in continuing the conversations.41


  “Rather than go through that again,” he later told Mussolini, in recounting his ordeal with the Caudillo, “I would prefer to have three or four teeth yanked out.”42

  After nine hours, with time out for dinner in Hitler’s special dining car, the talks broke up late in the evening without Franco’s having definitely committed himself to come into the war. Hitler left Ribbentrop behind that night to continue the parley with Serrano Suñer, the Spanish Foreign Minister, and to try to get the Spaniards to sign something, at least an agreement to drive the British out of Gibraltar and close to them the western Mediterranean—but to no avail. “That ungrateful coward!” Ribbentrop cursed to Schmidt about Franco the next morning. “He owes us everything and now won’t join us!”43

  Hitler’s meeting with Pétain at Montoire the next day went off better. But this was because the aging, defeatist Marshal, the hero of Verdun in the First World War and the perpetrator of the French surrender in the Second, agreed to France’s collaboration with her conqueror in one last effort to bring Britain, the late ally, to her knees. In fact, he assented to put down in writing this odious deal.