In fact, they did. Within a few hours, the outline of a deal had been put together, with an agreed text to be made public together with a secret annexe delineating spheres of influence in the Baltics and in Poland, and effectively providing each side with carte blanche to move in and do as they pleased up to the defined line. Satisfied, Stalin called for vodka in the small hours of the morning to celebrate a toast. ‘I know how much the German Volk love their Führer,’ he said using the German word. ‘I would like to drink his health.’ Further rounds of toasts followed, with Molotov scarcely able to contain his joy. ‘It was our great comrade Stalin who began this coup of political relations,’ he beamed. ‘I drink to his health.’17
Stalin’s euphoria continued at his dacha just outside Moscow the next day where he joined senior members of the Politburo in a duck shoot. Of course it is all a game of bluff, he said, ‘a game to see who can fool whom. I know what Hitler’s up to. He thinks he’s outsmarted me, but actually it’s I who’s tricked him.’18 Hitler, of course, thought precisely the same thing. When a note was passed to him at around midnight in his Alpine idyll, reporting that the final agreement had been signed, his reaction – like Stalin’s – was that of a gambler convinced that he is on a hot streak: ‘we’ve won’, he declared triumphantly.19
The Soviet leader came to terms with Germany to buy time. Stalin had no illusions about Hitler or about the long-term threat he posed. Indeed, at the 17th Party Congress of the Communist Party in 1934, sections from Mein Kampf were recited to illustrate the dangers posed by Germany and its Chancellor. Stalin himself had read Hitler’s infamous work, underlining passages that set out the need for Germany to expand its territories into the east.20 The Soviet Union, however, needed to recover after a period of chronic turmoil. Catastrophic famine, the result of short-sighted and bloody-minded policy, had led to the deaths of millions from starvation and illness in the early 1930s. The suffering was horrific, and on a colossal scale. One boy who was eight years old at the time later recalled looking at a girl in his classroom in Khar’kov, who had put her head on her desk and closed her eyes during a lesson, seemingly fast asleep; in fact, she had died of starvation. They would bury her, he knew, ‘just as they buried people yesterday and the day before yesterday and every day’.21
In the years that followed, Soviet society devoured itself. Seniority within the Communist party offered no protection, as Stalin moved in on his closest rivals and former colleagues. In a spectacular series of show trials, held in Moscow, men who had become household names, not just in the Soviet Union but internationally, were sensationally accused of being counter-revolutionaries, tried and sentenced to death. Men like Grigorii Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, Nikolai Bukharin and Karl Radek, heroes of the 1917 Revolution, were among many sent to their deaths, denounced in venomous language as Fascist dogs, terrorists, degenerates and vermin by the chief prosecutor Andrei Vyshinskii. In a travesty of intellectual and cultural history, Vyshinskii was then honoured for his poisonous attacks when the Institute of Government and Law of the Soviet Academy of Sciences was rechristened to bear his name.22
Attention then turned to the army. The High Command was not so much decimated as annihilated, ravaged by a perverted and ruthless logic: it stood to reason that if junior officers were guilty of sedition, then their seniors were guilty either of complicity or of negligence. So one confession, beaten from a broken man, served to unleash cascades of arrests. The aim, one secret police officer later testified, was to prove the existence of a ‘military conspiracy within the Red Army that implicated as many participants as possible’.23
Of the 101 members of the supreme military leadership, all but ten were arrested; of the ninety-one detained, all but nine were shot. These included three of the five marshals of the Soviet Union and two of its admirals, as well as the entire senior air force personnel, every head of every military district, and almost every divisional commander. The Red Army was brought to its knees.24 In the circumstances Stalin needed breathing space to rebuild. The German approach was a godsend.
Hitler, on the other hand, was playing for higher stakes. He was desperate to gain access to resources that were essential if Germany was to build a position of strength and power in the long term. The problem was that Germany was poorly located geographically to gain access to the Atlantic and to trade with the Americas, Africa and Asia; Hitler therefore set his sights on the east. Behind his decision to reconcile with the Soviet Union was the idea that this would give him access to his very own Silk Road.
After the pact had been signed, therefore, Hitler summoned his generals to his Alpine chalet so that he could address them on what had been agreed and what he planned. Leaning on the grand piano, he talked at length about himself. The German people were lucky to have him, he declared, a man in whom they had total confidence. But now, he went on, it was time to seize the moment. ‘We have nothing to lose,’ he said to his senior officers; Germany can survive for only a few years in its current economic condition; ‘we have no other choice’, he told the generals.25
An alliance with the Soviet Union would not only allow the recovery of lands taken away by the Treaty of Versailles; it would guarantee Germany’s future. Everything hinged on Germany’s success – and it was vital to remember this at all times. ‘Close your hearts to pity,’ he said. ‘Act brutally. Eighty million people must obtain what is their right. Their existence must be made secure.’26 He was talking about the invasion of Poland, but also about the new dawn that would result from the rapprochement with the Soviet Union. For Hitler, coming to terms with Stalin did more than offer the chance to raise the stakes further in his game of political brinkmanship; it offered the prospect of resources. Although he had talked often about Lebensraum, or living space, for the German people since he first rose to prominence, what was at stake, he told his generals, were concrete prizes: grain, cattle, coal, lead and zinc. Germany, at last, could be free.27
Not all those listening were convinced. Hitler said that the war would take six weeks; it would take more like six years, muttered General von Reichenau.28 Nor was General Liebmann impressed. The speech, he said, was boastful, brash and ‘downright repulsive’. Hitler was a man who had lost all sense of responsibility. Yet – as the leading modern authority on Nazi Germany notes – no one spoke out against him.29
Hitler was convinced that he had found a way to protect Germany’s future. One particular area of weakness was the inadequacy of domestic agriculture. As recent research suggests, this was a sector that had suffered during the 1930s as the German war machine began to be assembled, consuming resources, time and money. In fact, new legislation actually served to reduce the amount of investment in agriculture in this period.30 Germany remained heavily dependent on imports because home production did not provide enough for self-sufficiency.31 Talking to a senior diplomat in Danzig in August 1939, Hitler brought up the topic of the impossible strain that had been placed on Germany during the First World War – one of his long-term recurring themes. Now, however, he claimed to have the answer. We need Ukraine, ‘so that no one is able to starve us again as they did in the last war’.32
Ukraine, or rather the fruits of its rich fertile soil, was delivered to him with the signing of the non-aggression pact in 1939. The months that followed Ribbentrop’s visit to the Russian capital saw Nazi and Soviet officials shuttling back and forth between Moscow and Berlin. The Germans were confident that the opening could be translated into an agreement, especially with regard to ‘all territorial problems from the Black to the Baltic Seas’, as Ribbentrop told Molotov in August 1939.33 More delicate discussions centred on trade terms and above all on volumes and prices for Soviet wheat, oil and other materials needed to sustain Germany’s invasion of Poland and its aftermath. Stalin was fuelling Hitler’s war.34
The alliance gave Hitler the confidence and the promise of resources that enabled him to attack Poland, safe in the knowledge that his position in the east would be secure following his agreement with
Stalin (‘I can guarantee on my word of honour that the Soviet Union will not betray its partner,’ said the Russian leader when the agreement was signed).35 As one of the more astute senior officers realised, though, agreeing to dismantle Poland made Germany more vulnerable – not less – by dragging the Soviet frontier dramatically westwards; it would be better, noted Franz Halder, to remain on good terms with Russia and focus on the British positions in the Middle East and the Mediterranean.36
On 1 September 1939, barely a week after the historic agreement, German troops poured over the frontier, scything their way through Polish defences. Alongside the seizure of territory as the advance closed on Warsaw was the aim of decapitating the Polish elite. As Hitler saw it, ‘only a nation whose upper levels are destroyed can be pushed into the ranks of slavery’. As such, officers and leading figures were targeted – by those who knew what they were looking for: fifteen of the twenty-five commanders of the squads instructed to seek out and annihilate ‘the upper levels of society’ had doctorates, mostly in law or philosophy.37
The realignment of Germany and the Soviet Union and the attack on Poland caught Britain and France cold. Although war was declared, neither country provided much meaningful military or logistical support to the Poles. The Royal Air Force did undertake some limited bombing operations, but by far the most common payloads carried by aircraft that flew over German territory were not incendiary devices but leaflets whose aims were rather hopeful, if not downright naive. ‘There is good reason to believe that the German authorities feared the effect of our propaganda,’ read the minutes of the very first item on the Cabinet meeting agenda in early September 1939. The fact that ‘our aircraft were able to fly with impunity all over the North-West of Germany’ was bound to have ‘a depressing effect on the morale of the German people’. Dropping more leaflets in the future might be very effective, it was agreed.38
In the meantime, panicked appraisals flooded back to London from India and Central Asia – for the agreement signed by Molotov and Ribbentrop did not just provide a channel of essential supplies for Germany and pave the way for war in Europe. The minister in Kabul, Sir Kerr Fraser-Tytler, warned that there was much speculation locally about whether Britain would provide military support in the event of a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.39 These concerns were shared by the India Office, where the Secretary of State released an alarmist document for the War Cabinet in London that painted a near hopeless picture of Indian defences, especially its anti-aircraft resources, which apparently amounted to nothing more than a single battery consisting of eight three-inch guns.40
Although London was sceptical about the danger in Central Asia in the immediate short term, it was recognised that Germany’s alliance with the Soviet Union did pose a threat to British interests in the east. By the spring of 1940, careful consideration was being given to what seemed to be an inevitable showdown. As a report to the War Cabinet by the Chiefs of Staff entitled ‘The Military Implications of Hostilities with Russia in 1940’ explained, it was ‘unlikely that the Soviet Government would lose any time in taking action against India and Afghanistan’, a development that would create ‘the maximum diversion of Allied strength’.41 As another report set out with chilling lucidity, there were a great many ways in which German co-operation with Moscow could be deeply detrimental to the Allies: Britain’s oil interests in Iran and Iraq were potentially vulnerable and might be lost, and worse, could pass to the enemy.42
There was substance to these concerns. The Germans had been highly active across the Middle East and Central Asia in the 1930s, with Lufthansa establishing an extensive network of commercial flights across the region, and companies like Siemens and the Todt organisation making serious inroads into the industrial sectors in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. Innumerable roads and bridges had been designed by German engineers, and built or their construction supervised by German technicians. Telecommunication infrastructure had been installed by companies like Telefunken, who found their expertise in great demand.43 These ties led to Germany being seen positively across the whole region – something that was enhanced by perceptions of Hitler in the Islamic world as a leader who was decisive and stood up for what he believed in. This message was reinforced by the nest of agents controlled by the Abwehr, German military intelligence, who had been actively building contacts and gathering support across the region between the eastern Mediterranean and the Himalayas.44
Indeed, by January 1940, there were active discussions within the German High Command about how the Soviets should be encouraged to intervene in Central Asia and India. Plans were circulated by General Jodl, one of the Wehrmacht’s most respected senior officers, regarding a joint Germano-Soviet push into the Middle East. This would ‘require relatively little’ effort, but would at the same time ‘create a trouble-spot threatening to England’.45 A separate, audacious plan to restore to the Afghan throne King Amanullah, who had taken up residence in Berlin after being deposed, was likewise carefully developed.46 Then there were efforts to foment trouble in strategically sensitive regions. The Faqīr of Ipi, a 1930s version of Osama bin Laden – an ascetic preacher, mystical but bloodthirsty, religiously conservative yet socially revolutionary – was identified as a perfect partner to destabilise the North-West Frontier and divert British attention and resources. One problem was finding him: he was highly elusive and had given the British the slip countless times. Another was to find him unobtrusively: one mission ended in disaster when two German agents whom the Abwehr thought would be less conspicuous if disguised as leprosy experts were killed and wounded in an ambush set by the Afghan army. When contact was finally made with him, the Faqīr’s demands in return for help against the British bordered on the absurd.47
German bridge-building elsewhere across the region had been no less energetic. Many in Iran and Iraq were taken with Hitler’s dynamism and his rhetoric. There was a natural overlap, for example, between the deep anti-Semitism of the Nazi regime and that of some leading Islamic scholars. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Muammad al-usaynī, had welcomed the rise of a man he later referred to as ‘al-ajj Muammad Hitler’. The German leader’s anti-Semitic views were grist to the mill of a man happy to call for the death of Jews, whom he referred to as ‘scum and germs’.48
Admiration for Germany across the region went much further. Some scholars have pointed out the similarities between the ideology that Hitler imposed on Germany in the 1930s and a similar programme adopted in Persia of ‘purification’ of the Persian language and customs, and a conscious effort to hark back – as the Nazis did – to a semi-mythical golden age. Indeed, the decision to change the name of Persia formally to Iran was supposedly the result of Teheran’s diplomats in Berlin impressing on the Shah the importance of the idea of ‘Aryanism’ – and the shared etymological and pseudo-historical heritage that Iran’s new identity could easily reference.49
The foundation of the Ba’ath (‘renaissance’) party in Iraq likewise owed much to Nazi propaganda and to the idea of rebirth.50 And then there was the telling exchange between Hitler and the envoy of the Saudi king. ‘We view the Arabs with the warmest sympathy for three reasons,’ Hitler told the envoy in 1939. ‘First, we do not pursue any territorial aspirations in Arab lands. Second, we have the same enemies. And third, we both fight against the Jews. I will not rest until the very last of them has left Germany.’51
Not surprisingly, therefore, one plan after another was developed in London and Paris to try to contain the Germans and the Soviets. The Chief of the French General Staff, Claude Gamelin, asked for plans to be drawn up to build up a stronghold, ideally in the Balkans, that could put pressure on Germany from the rear if need be.52 The idea was taken seriously, endorsed by the French Prime Minister, the porcine Edouard Daladier, before falling out of favour. It was replaced by an audacious plan to launch an attack on Scandinavia that was designed to cut German supplies of Swedish iron ore – which received enthusiastic backing from Winston Churchill, now First Lord of the Admir
alty. ‘Nothing would be more deadly . . . than to stop for three or even six months this import’, wrote Churchill. Britain ‘should violate Norwegian neutrality’ and mine Norway’s coastal waters. Taking these steps would threaten Germany’s ‘war-making capacity and . . . the life of the country’.53
Crippling Germany’s supply chain was at the centre of all the discussions. Eventually, in the spring of 1940, attention turned to Baku. The head of the French Air Force, General Vuillemin, championed a plan by which Allied forces could use bases in the Middle East to strike at facilities, primarily in Soviet Azerbaijan. Squadrons operating from British bases in Iraq and from French bases in Syria could, it was claimed, reduce oil production in the Caucasus by half over the course of two to three months. According to the first draft of the plan, this would have ‘decisive repercussions on Russia and Germany’. Subsequent versions promised even rosier projections: fewer attack groups would deliver similar gains but over a quicker time frame.54
The results of a bombardment of the Caucasus would be dramatic, British strategists agreed: there would be an immediate disruption of ‘the industrial and agricultural economies of Russia which would be incrementally paralysed and prevented from working. It will eliminate all the hopes that Germany had of rationally organising Russian production for its benefit and will, from this viewpoint, have a decisive influence on the outcome of the war.’ French and British planners became convinced that destroying Russian oil facilities was the best way to remove the threat posed by Germany.55
Such plans for joint action were scuppered when Hitler launched a lightning attack on France. To many, the German assault looked like a work of tactical genius, catching the defenders by surprise through a series of dazzling operations, meticulously planned in advance and expertly executed by an army that was battle-hardened and had extensive experience of occupying foreign lands. In fact, as recent research shows, the success in France owed a great deal to chance. More than once, Hitler lost his nerve, instructing troops to hold position, only to find that orders did not reach group commanders until after they had moved miles ahead of where they should have stopped. Heinz Guderian, a dashing Prussian-born tank commander, was even relieved of his position for insubordination after he kept on advancing – even though the order to hold his position had probably never reached him. During this period, Hitler himself became so fearful that his forces were being caught in a non-existent trap that he came close to a nervous breakdown.56 The rapid advance was the ill-deserved prize for a gambler who had beaten the odds.
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