Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler

by Robert Gellately

  The Soviets would have liked to have had more time to prepare, but political, not military, considerations dictated taking the capital as quickly as possible. A three-pronged attack across an arc of 235 miles would converge on Berlin. Who would go down in history as the victor, Zhukov or Konev? At the Kremlin, Stalin dangled the plum: “Whoever breaks in first let him take Berlin.” Both hungered for victory so much that they would drive on their troops, to the point of taking unnecessarily high casualties.34

  Not only Stalin but the Red Army desired revenge and wanted to finish off the Hitlerites. They had reason enough for their passions, because when the Wehrmacht went east it took on the Nazi ethos and became in that sense Hitler’s army. It “not only tolerated mass murder of a totally new quality, but also to a large extent supported it.”35 The treatment of Soviet prisoners was abominable, breaking every convention of war with apparent ease because the “Russians” were seen almost as “subhumans.” An estimated 3.3 million Soviet prisoners died in captivity; many thousands were shot out of hand to avoid having to take prisoners; and still more had been brought back to Germany to be worked to death or executed by the Gestapo.36

  Roosevelt died on April 12. In his last message to Stalin, which arrived the next day, he hoped there would be no more distrust: “I feel sure that when our armies make contact in Germany and join in a fully coordinated offensive the Nazi armies will disintegrate.”37

  The Soviet fight for Berlin, which they continued to play down, opened in full force on April 16. They threw at least 2.5 million men into the battle, with over six thousand tanks and massive artillery. Stalin called Zhukov and Konev to stoke the competition between them. The aim was to defeat the enemy by April 22, Lenin’s birthday. The Soviets wanted to surround Berlin to warn off the Western Allies and to claim the mighty prize. Zhukov’s forces linked up with Konev’s on April 25 northwest of Potsdam, thus cutting off the city completely. Konev deferred to Zhukov, whose men took the Reichstag on April 30. When Army Commander V. I. Kuznetsov called Zhukov to report that the Red flag was atop the building Zhukov asked about the situation and was told that German troops were still fighting in the upper floors and in the cellars. They surrendered only late on May 1.38

  It would be difficult to calculate how many Soviet soldiers had to die needlessly because of Stalin’s determination and also the Red Army’s ambitions. There were wasteful charges against heavily defended German positions and attacks on major hills with tanks that bogged down. The battle as a whole cost the Red Army 78,291 killed and 274, 184 wounded. The exact German casualties are unknown.39 According to the standard work on the battle for Berlin, the most conservative estimate would be that both sides lost a total of a half million lives, including perhaps 100,000 civilians.40

  Stalin was delighted and, in his annual address on the international workers’ day, heralded the victories. He was still suspicious of the West and mentioned how the Hitlerites, in their desperation, “made overtures to the Allies in order to create dissension.” He denied Nazi propaganda that the Soviets would try to destroy the German people. The war criminals would be punished, reparations would have to be paid, but the war was not against the people as a whole. He promised the invading forces would not “molest” the peaceful population, but such a statement was belied by events on the ground.41

  Soviet posters sounded the note of the horror to come at the beginning of 1945: “Red Army Soldier: You are now on German soil; the hour of revenge has struck!”42 A January order from Zhukov went as follows: “Woe to the land of the murderers. We will get our terrible revenge for everything.” A directive to the Red Army on the eve of crossing into East Prussia said that “on German soil there is only one master—the Soviet soldier, that he is both the judge and the punisher for the torments of his fathers and mothers, for the destroyed cities and villages…. Remember your friends are not there, there is the next of kin of the killers an oppressors.”43

  Guidelines and orders were conveyed in many ways. More junior officers said they had to give an incentive for the soldier to “climb out of the trench and face that machine gun once again. So now, with this order, everything is clear: he’ll get to Germany, and there everything is his—goods, women, do what you want! Hammer away! So their grandchildren and great-grandchildren will remember and be afraid!” That did not sound very Communistic to Lev Kopelev, one of the few Red Army idealists to question how women and children were being treated. His officer’s answer was simple: “First let’s send Germany up in smoke then we’ll go back to writing good, theoretically correct books on humanism and internationalism. But now we must see to it that the soldier will want to go on fighting. That’s the main thing.”44

  When rape was not encouraged, it was tolerated, and at least in the beginning of the invasion it was not punished.45 Not only did the Red Army conduct a campaign of rape unlike anything seen in modern European history, but soldiers humiliated their victims in despicable ways. Nor did they spare the women of their own allies. Stalin’s reply to a visiting delegation of Yugoslav Communists who complained of the Red Army’s rapes in their country was memorable: Could they not understand, he asked, “if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometers through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle”?46

  Women, from the youngest girls to grandmothers, were subjected to the campaign of rape, and some were raped to death. Others were not just raped but sexually mutilated and killed. Villages of women roped themselves together and jumped into rivers to commit suicide to avoid the marauding troops. Eventually Stalin tried to rein in the troops, but their sullied reputation was already fixed. They were a poor advertisement for the “radiant future” promised by Communism. According to Alexander Werth, to the extent there was an “alarm” that made its way to the top, the concern was more about the wanton destruction of “German property” than about the “atrocities.” There was a candid admission that the troops were burning down factories and a lot more that the Soviets wanted to take as reparations or the spoils of war. Sometimes this booty was referred to euphemistically as “trophies,” but that word concealed massive suffering, humiliation, and death deliberately inflicted on the vanquished.47

  A sense of the mentality of the Soviet forces was conveyed by Vasily Grossman, the novelist, who kept notes on the campaign with one of Zhukov’s armies. He recorded his impressions on entering Berlin, but said little about the atrocities. He was struck most of all by the evident wealth of the country compared with the USSR. It was particularly in Berlin, he said, “that our soldiers really started to ask themselves why did the Germans attack us so suddenly? Why did the Germans need this terrible and unfair war? Millions of our men have now seen the rich farms in East Prussia, the highly organized agriculture, the concrete sheds for livestock, spacious rooms, carpets, wardrobes full of clothes.” They saw all the paved roads and what was by comparison boundless plenty and luxury and asked themselves plaintively: “But why did they come to us? What did they want?”48

  The answer of course was that the Germans had accepted in whole or in part Hitler’s version of the need to rid the world of “Jewish Bolshevism” and to secure lebensraum in the east. He gave them his own vision of a “radiant future,” a return to the Garden of Eden, racially pure and cleansed of all enemies. They followed that dream when it led down the path to hell.

  HITLER’S WILL TO DESTRUCTION

  Just after the opening of the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, when Hitler was expecting a victory, he told a foreign dignitary that when or if a crisis ever arose, he would annihilate all “deadbeats.” His favorite story ran like this: “If on the one hand the valuable people put their lives on the line at the front, it is criminal to spare the scoundrels. They have to be destroyed or, if not dangerous to society, barred in concentration camps from which they will never again be permitted to leave.” This was the same conversation in which Hitler talked about getting rid of all the Jews.49

  As the battlefront grew closer
, Hitler inspired the use of terror. On February 15, 1945, new drumhead courts were established on his orders. These tribunals with a judge, a Nazi Party functionary, and an officer from the Wehrmacht, the Waffen-SS, or the police could try anyone thought to endanger Germany’s ability or determination to fight on. The military had similar courts from January 20, 1943, and by 1945 all of them were operating inside Germany. The mentality of judges and other perpetrators became infused with viciousness, compounded by revenge seeking, bitterness, disappointment, and fear. Local dignitaries who dared issue calls to surrender were not immune. Men or women who raised the white flag or tried to resist the Wehrmacht’s decision to make a last stand in one place or another were trampled into the dust. Nazi terror, hitherto reserved for the Jews and for non-Germans in the east, was turned on the German people in the last months of the war.50

  Albert Speer recalled how Hitler often said German soldiers would have nothing to fear from the home front, because no mercy would be shown to “back-stabbers.” During the last months Hitler kept emphasizing, as he had for years, that the concentration camps and all their prisoners should be blown up.51 However, in 1945 his wishes were not immediately put into effect as they once might have been. Speer remembered an exchange he had with Hitler in mid-March about the destruction of German infrastructure in the face of the advancing enemy forces. Speer stated in a note to Hitler for a meeting on March 18: “It cannot possibly be the purpose of warfare at home to destroy so many bridges that, given the straitened means of the post-war period, it will take years to rebuild this transportation network…. Their destruction means eliminating all further possibility for the German people to survive.”52

  After the meeting broke up early the next day, Hitler met privately with Speer and reiterated: “If the war is lost, the people will be lost also. It is not necessary to worry about what the German people will need for elemental survival. On the contrary, it is best for us to destroy even these things. For the nation has proved to be the weaker, and the future belongs solely to the stronger eastern nation. In any case only those who are inferior will remain after this struggle, for the good have already been killed.”53

  Hitler then issued an order for the destruction of “all military, transport, communication, industrial, and supply installations, as well as anything else of value inside the Reich area.”54 He threatened to kill all prisoners of war. Before being forced out of France, he wanted its factories destroyed, but nothing came of that order.55 Similarly, his wishes for the Netherlands went unheeded. He wanted to flood that country by destroying the dikes.56 He was still capable of wreaking vengeance on sworn enemies, and many of the prominent individuals suspected of being part of the July 1944 plot were now executed. Some survived by pure luck.57

  Across Germany in the last months of war the Nazi terror system was used against “enemies” as never before. Foreign workers were particularly vulnerable, and hundreds were shot in one locality after the next. The slightest sign of resistance was obliterated.

  HITLER’S POLITICAL TESTAMENT

  Hitler’s final proclamation was made known on April 17 and addressed to soldiers in the east. He appealed to them to save Germany’s women and children. He began: “For the last time the Jewish-Bolshevik deadly enemy, with its masses, is preparing for an attack. They attempt to destroy Germany and to eradicate our people.” He said that after the old men and children were murdered, “the women and young girls will be forced to become camp whores. The remainder will be marched to Siberia.” If every soldier on the eastern front did his duty in the coming weeks, “the last attack from Asia will collapse, exactly as, in spite of everything, will finally happen with the breakthrough of our enemy in the west.” He struck a note of hopeless bravado: “Berlin remains German. Vienna will be German again, and Europe will never be Russian.” He still wanted a “bloodbath” of the Bolsheviks and weakly hoped for a turnaround in the war.58

  The last conversations recorded by stenographers in the bunker were between Goebbels—who had moved in with his family—and Hitler. They kept hoping the Allies would break up after all. Hitler wondered what Molotov would be looking for now, when as Soviet foreign minister he had tried to get so much earlier. The macabre dialogue was an exaggerated example of “after us, the deluge,” from a script written amid an inferno.

  On April 25 at his daily conference to discuss the situation, Goebbels mentioned how good it would if the battle for Berlin went well. But if it did not, he speculated, “and the führer were to find an honorable death in Berlin and Europe were to become Bolshevik, in five years at the latest the führer would be a legendary personality and National Socialism a myth. He would be hallowed by his last great action, and everything human that they criticize in him today would be swept away in one stroke.” Hitler responded: “That’s the decision: to save everything here and only here, and to put the last man into action—that’s our duty.”59

  During the night of April 24-25 the chancellery came under heavy fire. The next day Hitler desperately grasped onto news that relief was on the way—concluding that word would spread “like wildfire” among Berliners. It was not to be. Worse still, there was news that the Americans and the Red Army had met at Torgau on the river Elbe, and instead of shooting at each other, as Hitler predicted, or at least hoped, they celebrated.60 On April 28, Hitler and his military advisers in the bunker realized their prospects were bleak, and by midnight the next day, when the last possible chance of rescue was definitively snuffed out, Hitler had reached the end. He lived only another sixteen hours.61

  On April 29 at around 10: 30 p.m. word reached the bunker that Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, had been killed by partisans and their bodies desecrated in public. That reinforced Hitler’s resolve to commit suicide so that his remains could be burned before the Soviets captured him. Around midnight Hitler married Eva Braun, his mistress of many years. Their relationship had been quietly accepted by those around him but rarely acknowledged as sexual in nature. Hitler had presented himself as standing apart from ordinary men, of being married to “Germany,” as he proudly said at the height of his political success. Now, with his marriage to Eva, he was in retreat from his former life, relinquishing the fantasy of being savior of Germany, yielding to his mortality, and preparing for his own death and that of his new wife.

  At 11: 30 p.m. on April 29, just before his marriage, Hitler took aside Traudl Junge, his faithful and sympathetic secretary, to dictate his personal and political testaments—in effect the last documents of the “thousand-year Reich.”62 As on so many earlier occasions, his message to those who came after him was that the Jews were to blame for everything that had gone wrong. He repeated, one last time, his “prophecy,” first issued on January 30, 1939, of what would happen to the Jews should “they” bring about another world war. He said, at least indirectly, that the Jews had been made “to pay for their sins,” and that he had brought their punishment about, albeit, he said, “through more humane means” than the methods used against the German population. But what was still missing in his last written statement was a clear and unequivocal admission that he had started the war to realize his ambitions and had ordered millions of Jews to be killed. He ended his testament by demanding that even after his death the “leaders of the nation” observe the “laws of race” and continue the “merciless opposition” against the Jews.63

  By 4: 00 a.m. on April 30 the witnesses had signed these last documents, and Hitler had gone off to bed. He had lunch with Frau Hitler and the secretaries at 1: 00 p.m. and retired to his room. After a short pause, the denizens of the bunker who were close to Hitler, including Bormann, Goebbels and his wife, Magda, and the secretaries, were led in for a final farewell. Magda Goebbels begged him to leave Berlin, but he refused and went to his rooms, where he and Eva committed suicide. Not long afterward Frau Goebbels poisoned her six children, and then she and the increasingly desperate propaganda minister took their own lives.

  The entire Nazi enterpris
e was reduced to rubble, enveloped in chaos and human misery. Hitler and his followers had together created a catastrophe of unprecedented proportions for Germany and much of Europe. Now they reaped what they had sown. Even after Hitler’s death, the tragedies continued to unfold. A calamity of monumental proportions and fierce energy had swept over the continent from the west to the far reaches of Russia, a “horrible and violent whirlwind” that was far too fierce to be stopped and would not blow itself out for a time. The victorious Soviet armies were now in Berlin and beyond, and Stalin was intent that they should put their stamp on all they could claim.

  EPILOGUE

  In the course of completing this book, I spoke with a number of people along the way. Quite a few were disconcerted, sometimes also intrigued, by my naming Lenin, along with Stalin and Hitler, as one of the three truly vile despots of the first half of the twentieth century. Social scientists I met, at home but especially in Europe, castigated me for not giving Lenin enough credit for his “good intentions.” A colleague in the United States pleaded, “Of course, Lenin made a few mistakes.” Not everyone reacted so defensively to my portrayal of Lenin, however. Some confided that all along they had regretted the tendency of many scholars to place Lenin above history and shield him from the criticism he deserves. I submit that we have to avoid slipping into the role of apologist for Soviet leaders, including, and in some respects above all, Lenin, a heartless and ambitious individual who was self-righteous in claiming to know what was good for “humanity,” brutal in his attempt to subject his own people to radical social transformation, and convinced he held the key to the eventual overthrow of global capitalism and the establishment of world Communism.