Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler

by Robert Gellately

  PART EIGHT

  HITLER’S WAR ON “JEWISH BOLSHEVISM”

  27

  WAR OF EXTERMINATION AS NAZI CRUSADE

  Only days after sweeping across Western Europe and briefly celebrating his victory over archenemy France, Hitler already had a vision of the invasion of the USSR in mind. Its aim was going to be “the extermination of Russia to its roots” (Vernichtung der Lebenskraft Russlands).1

  Nevertheless, he was still torn between trying to finish off the British and pursuing his long-anticipated war in the east. Foreign Minister Ribbentrop hoped the Soviets could be enticed into joining the Tripartite Pact signed in Berlin on September 27, 1940, by Germany, Italy, and Japan. Molotov came for a visit on November 12–13 to discuss such matters, but his brusque manners, probing questions, and humorless style—which had already made him notoriously difficult for diplomats to deal with—only succeeded in annoying Hitler. The führer told his immediate circle that Molotov had “let the cat out of the bag” by outlining Soviet interests in the Balkans and Finland. These were areas Hitler viewed as vital, so when he heard Soviet demands, he felt “relieved,” because he saw at once that the relationship with the USSR could not remain even a “marriage of convenience.” He may have had a lingering hope the Communists might be won over to the Tripartite Pact or an anti-British alliance. They might be lured by the prospect of the spoils of the British Empire in the distant south, chiefly in the Persian Gulf, Middle East, and India. But the effect of the talks was to harden Hitler’s deep conviction that the interests of Nazism and Communism were implacably opposed, and so reinforced his resolution to invade the Soviet Union.2

  By the end of 1940, he also had “strategic” reasons to do so, namely he coveted unfettered access to the food resources and raw materials in the east. However, the dominant motive—important to many in the Nazi movement—was connected to Hitler’s long-standing obsession with conquering lebensraum, the territory deemed essential to the health, welfare, and expansion of the Aryan race. In his view, Bolshevik Jews threatened to thwart this goal, just as German Jews had been behind the “stab in the back” that had brought the country to ruin in 1918. For Hitler, everything now depended on the assertion of absolute supremacy, and specifically the Nazi annihilation of “Jewish Bolshevism,” which he regarded as Germany’s principal contender for power on the world stage.

  As early as September 1919, Hitler had identified the Jews as Germany’s great racial enemy and said they had to be “removed altogether.” By April 1920, he was blaming them for the social havoc wreaked by Soviet Communism and warning that Germany had to do something or suffer the same fate. He came to believe that the nation’s racial existence depended on its success in driving out the Jews and fighting them in what he saw as their incarnation as leaders of the USSR. The Nazis would not rest, he said, “until the last Jew is removed from the German Reich.” His early battle cry had been: either “Soviet star” or “swastika.”

  This conviction was the driving force of Hitler’s foreign policy and dominated his thoughts as he developed his military strategy against the Soviets. In a meeting with his generals on December 5, 1940, he went through the steps to follow in the east, including the invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece (successfully completed in April 1941). He emphasized the need for a “war of extermination” on the Soviet Union and spelled out what that meant. He said the attack “must avoid the risky strategy of simply pushing the Russians back. We must use assault methods that cut through the Russian army and create pockets to be destroyed one by one. There must be a starting position that makes provision for major envelopment operations.” The conquest would follow.3 On December 18, he issued the directive for Operation Barbarossa, and the clock began winding down.

  The day after Hitler launched Barbarossa on June 22, 1941, he would tell Germans the war was defensive and the Soviets were the real aggressors. “Germany had not tried,” he said, “to carry its National Socialist ideology to Russia, but the Jewish-Bolshevik power holders in Moscow have unswervingly undertaken to impose their rule—intellectually, but above all militarily—on our and other European people. The results of the activity of this regime, however, were in every country only chaos, misery, and famine.”

  This was Hitler’s familiar account of what would happen should Bolshevism win the day and rule Germany. He said the time had come to take action against the “conspiracy of the Jewish-Anglo-Saxon warmongers and also the Jewish power holders of the Bolshevik Moscow Central.” They were supposedly trying to hinder “the creation of the new racial state and drive the new Reich again into powerlessness and misery.”4

  “COALITION FORCES” IN THE CRUSADE

  As soon as the war began, the press was instructed to return to the slogan used prior to the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939, emphasizing that the enemy was the “Jewish-Bolshevik Soviet government.” Hitler did not quite succeed in creating a Europe-wide “crusade against Bolshevism”—but then again, he never really wanted to share the glory. Italy as one of the Axis powers contributed some troops, as did Romania and Hungary, but Hitler did not put much stock in these or in any other foreign soldiers. Himmler was pleased to welcome “Germanic” volunteers in the Waffen-SS and used the slogan “European crusade against Bolshevism” to recruit the following representatives from “Germanic” nations by the end of 1941: 2,399 Danes, 1,180 Finns, 1,571 Flemings, 4,814 Dutch, 1,883 Norwegians, and just over 150 from Sweden, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. The crusade drew 6,400 ethnic Germans from Alsace-Lorraine, Luxembourg, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Hungary. People from “non-Germanic” nations, not so highly regarded on the Nazi racial hierarchy, were encouraged to join the Wehrmacht, and by the end of 1941 a total of 24,000 French, Croatians, Spaniards, and Walloons had enlisted. The volunteers wore German uniforms with special nationality badges. Russian émigrés were not allowed to join, nor were Czech nationals. When the quick victory that Hitler and all these volunteers expected failed to materialize, he grew more prepared to accept such foreigners in the ranks.5

  Hitler’s greatest error of omission lay elsewhere. He was unable to persuade Japan to move against the USSR in the Far East. Had the Japanese attacked the Communists, they would have tied down important divisions of the Red Army. Instead, as we will see, Soviet troops were free to leave the east of their country when Japan went after the United States. Hitler also had no luck convincing Turkey to attack the USSR from the south. As a consequence of these two failures, the German invasion came from only one direction, and Red Army troops, scores of well-trained divisions, complete with tanks and an air force that had guarded against Japan, were ultimately available when Moscow was about to collapse in late 1941.6

  Hitler took for granted that General Ion Antonescu, whom he had helped into power in Romania, would join. The conducator, or “leader”—as Antonescu styled himself—was prepared to place his “entire military, political, and social resources at the führer’s command.” On June 12, 1941, in Munich he joined the Nazi effort to deal with “the Slavic menace, which had made itself felt periodically for centuries and now must be eliminated once and for all.” He committed more than two Romanian armies to the cause.7 Soon after his return home he drafted his own orders to deal with the Jews: “All the Yids, Communist agents and their sympathizers must be identified…so that we will be able to carry out whatever orders I may transmit in due time.” He started to deport Jews three days before the German attack began.8

  Antonescu proclaimed a “holy war” on the greatest “enemy of the world, Bolshevism.” That was how he put it on the day the war broke out. The goal was also to win back territory “lost” to the USSR. The common views shared by Romania and Germany were the struggle against the Slavs, hatred of Bolshevism, and “an underlying anti-Semitism.”9Archibald Gibson, the Times of London correspondent in Bucharest, thought most Romanians supported Antonescu.

  The Balkan dictator immediately began settling scores with Communists and Jews. Mihail Sebastian, a Jewish wri
ter living in Bucharest, recorded in his diary for June 22 how Antonescu proclaimed “the holy war to liberate Bessarabia and Bukovina and to eradicate Bolshevism.” Within hours he got an inkling of what was to follow, from two propaganda posters: “One [poster] depicts Stalin in a white smock that carries traces of bloody hands. The text: ‘The Butcher of Red Square.’ The second—with the text: ‘Who are the masters of Bolshevism?’—shows a Jew in a red gown, with side curls, skull cap, and beard, holding a hammer in one hand and a sickle in the other. Concealed beneath his coat are three Soviet soldiers. I have heard the posters were put up by police sergeants.”10

  Antonescu ordered the immediate execution “of all Jewish Communists,” as well as “those found with red flags and firearms.” News leaked out about the pogrom in Iasi. Sebastian, who heard about it in Bucharest, called it “a dark, somber, insane nightmare.”11 It led to the deaths of an estimated ten thousand Jews, one of many such incidents to follow. By August ten times that many had been killed along with Communists who came to hand.12

  The city of Odessa, with a Jewish population of 180,000, became the scene of gruesome mass murder. The Romanians arrived when the Red Army withdrew on October 16. The headquarters of the Fourth Army was blown up, killing officers and men. In response Antonescu ordered reprisals on the following ratio: for every Romanian or German officer killed in the explosion, two hundred Communists were to be executed; for every soldier, the number was one hundred. For that purpose the Communists were to be arrested, along with one person from each Jewish family, a horrific example of where the persecution of “Jewish Bolshevism” logically led.13

  Odessa became “the city of the hanged,” with gallows everywhere. The bloodbath overwhelmed the Jews, and according to a postwar Soviet investigation around 100,000 were murdered in a process that ran for weeks. Germans were involved, but most of the dirty work was done by Romanians, who showed a penchant for cruelty that sometimes shocked even members of Einsatzgruppe D.14

  Antonescu said on July 30, in response to a letter of thanks from Hitler, that he wanted to reaffirm his commitment “to the campaign we have begun in the east against Russian Bolshevism, the arch foe of European civilization.”15

  What happened to the Jews in Romania illustrates that the Holocaust was a multinational operation. Its cost in human lives varied according to the extent of native anti-Semitism and the willingness to collaborate with Hitler.

  In Hungary, Admiral Miklós Horthy, de facto head of state, was anxious to form a military alliance with Germany. Hitler assigned Hungary only a secondary role in the attack on the USSR. He did not ask them to commit to the war, but wrote the Hungarian government on June 21 to inform them of the imminent attack. He said he was “acting in the spirit of the whole of European civilization and culture in trying to repel and push back this un-European influence,” that is, the Soviet Union.16 Horthy responded enthusiastically “as an old crusader against Bolshevism.” He said that for “twenty-two years he had longed for this day, and was now delighted. Centuries later mankind would be thanking the führer for this deed. One hundred and eighty million Russians would now be liberated from the yoke forced upon them by two million Bolsheviks.”17Even before the Hungarian declaration of war on June 27, they began encroaching on the border with the Soviet Union.

  Hitler was grateful, but frankly thought the Germans could go it alone. Döme Sztójay, the Hungarian minister in Berlin, neatly summed up the German attitude as follows:

  My judgment of the situation is that the Germans do not really need any substantial military support. To protect their northern and southern wings, and their nickel and oil, they have enlisted the Finns and Romanians. The latter are being wooed by them, as hitherto, by territorial revisions. They are not anxious to negotiate with other states, because they like to keep a free hand for themselves; nevertheless, from the propaganda point of view, they want to have as many countries as possible actively participating in the crusade against Bolshevism. Those who do not participate will feel it on their own skins someday.18

  Hitler’s conversation with Sladko Kvaternik, the deputy head of state in “independent Croatia” since April 10, 1941, was noteworthy not just for the agreement on joining the anti-Bolshevik campaign but for Hitler’s uncharacteristic openness about his intentions of settling accounts with the Jews. He mentioned only that they would be sent somewhere and said he did not care where.19

  Bulgaria’s King Boris III led his country down a tortuous path, hoping to avoid antagonizing either Germany or the Soviet Union, its Slavic brethren and neighbor. On March 1, the king’s rabidly anti-Semitic prime minister, with the government behind him, signed the Tripartite Pact (between Germany, Italy, and Japan). However, Bulgaria resisted pressure to join the attack against the USSR, though it instituted anti-Semitic measures like the Nazis’ Nuremberg Laws.

  Bulgaria’s record was mixed, sometimes committing atrocities in Thrace and even permitting the deportation of Jews from there. But when it came to Bulgarian Jews, it was not just the government but the nation as a whole—courageously inspired by the Orthodox metropolitan Stephan and other Church leaders—that would not tolerate repeated German demands to deport the Jews. There was no history of anti-Semitism in Bulgaria, and even though King Boris was called by Hitler to give up the Jews, the Bulgarians held firm. Thus the approximately fifty thousand Jews who lived in Bulgaria in 1939 remained at war’s end.20

  Hitler had no time for some would-be crusaders who were anxious to participate in the war against the USSR. The new Vichy government in France repeatedly tried to make arrangements with Hitler, who was not interested in having the country as a co-belligerent. Admiral François Darlan wrote to Hitler on May 14, 1941, that he wanted to offer Germany more than the use of French facilities and bases. He wished to join them in taking the “first steps toward a happier future for our two lands” and to work toward “European cooperation.” The Vichy government could claim to be as anti-Communist as the Nazis and showed itself, at least to Jews who were not French citizens, to be almost as anti-Semitic.21

  On July 6, the Germans said they were willing, with the blessing of President Philippe Pétain, to accept French volunteers from various right-wing groups. The Germans permitted only fifteen thousand to join up, but the French hoped for twice that number.22 Hitler was upset with a Vichy newspaper’s report that “the war against the Soviet Union was Europe’s war and that therefore, it had to be conducted by Europe as a whole.” He told top Reich leaders, to the contrary, that the conquests in the east were entirely for Germany.23

  Pierre Laval, another Vichy leader, told Albert Speer on June 19, 1942, that he hoped for a “lasting settlement” with Germany. France would provide “intensive economic aid” and a military alliance for “the heroic struggle in the east.” Laval was single-minded in his anti-Bolshevism. Backed by Pétain, he went to see Hitler on November 11to try again for a “full alliance,” but Hitler turned him down. The führer was looking for soldiers who passed his obscure racial-biological test, and the defeated French nation had failed.24

  This attitude underlines the importance of ideology in Hitler’s calculations. It also indicates in large measure why a broad European crusade failed to emerge. Hitler demanded a free hand in the east; he was arrogant and overconfident and distrusted “non-Germans.”25

  Even so, Vichy cooperated when it came to anti-Jewish measures. Of the 350,000 Jews in France, an estimated 77,000 were deported, about two-thirds of whom were refugees. According to one account, “The public clamored for anti-Jewish measures in the summer of 1940.” The French government was quick to act against foreign Jews but proceeded more slowly against Jews who were French citizens.26

  ORDERS AND PLANS FOR THE ATTACK ON “JEWISH BOLSHEVISM”

  Hitler’s directive for the attack on the USSR aimed to destroy the Red Army, but the “ultimate objective” was to “establish a cover against Asiatic Russia” by rolling back the country to the east. If needed, the German air force woul
d then eliminate “the last industrial area left to Russia in the Urals.”27

  Even though Hitler said in January 1941 that the Red Army was a “headless colossus made of clay,” he could not rule out the possibility that the situation could change. “The Russian,” he warned, must not be underestimated. The distances were great, but, he reasoned, no larger than the area Germany had already taken. He was convinced the invasion should go ahead as soon as possible. The mightiest weapons and most brutal methods would be used to “exterminate” the Red Army, take the most important industrial areas, and destroy the rest. Baku, with its major oil fields, also had to be captured. The land conquered would not be incorporated into the fatherland, but merely exploited. Victory in the east would make Germany unassailable and capable of taking on the world at some point.28

  On March 3, 1941, Hitler discussed a draft plan with the chief of the Wehrmacht operations staff, General Alfred Jodl. He said the war against “Jewish Bolshevism” was to be no conventional war:

  The impending campaign is more than a clash of arms; it also entails a struggle between two ideologies. To conclude this war it is not enough, given the vastness of the space, to defeat the enemy’s forces. The entire territory must be dissolved into states with their own governments with which we can conclude peace. Any revolution of major proportions creates facts that can no longer be expunged…. The Jewish-Bolshevik intelligentsia, until now the “oppressor” of the people, must be liquidated. The former bourgeois-aristocratic intelligentsia, insofar as the still exist among the immigrants, is also to be eliminated. They are rejected by the Russian people and in the last analysis are anti-German…. Under all circumstances we have to ensure that a national Russia does not take the place of Bolshevik Russia, because history proves that in the final analysis it would also be anti-German.