Read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany Online
Authors: William L. Shirer
The next day, August 1, Halder went to work on the plans with his General Staff. Though he would later claim to have opposed the whole idea of an attack on Russia as insane, his diary entry for this day discloses him full of enthusiasm as he applied himself to the challenging new task.
Planning now went ahead with typical German thoroughness on three levels: that of the Army General Staff, of Warlimont’s Operations Staff at OKW, of General Thomas’ Economic and Armaments Branch of OKW. Thomas was instructed on August 14 by Goering that Hitler desired deliveries of ordered goods to the Russians “only till spring of 1941.”
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In the meantime his office was to make a detailed survey of Soviet industry, transportation and oil centers both as a guide to targets and later on as an aid for administering Russia.
A few days before, on August 9, Warlimont had got out his first directive for preparing the deployment areas in the East for the jump-off against the Russians. The code name for this was
Aufbau Ost
—“Build-up East.” On August 26, Hitler ordered ten infantry and two armored divisions to be sent from the West to Poland. The panzer units, he stipulated, were to be concentrated in southeastern Poland so that they could intervene to protect the
Rumania
n oil fields.
13
The transfer of large bodies of troops to the East
†
could not be done without exciting Stalin’s easily aroused suspicions if he learned of it, and the Germans went to great lengths to see that he didn’t. Since some movements were bound to be detected, General Ernst
Koestring
, the German military attaché in Moscow, was instructed to inform the Soviet General Staff that it was merely a question of replacing older men, who were being released to industry, by younger men. On September 6, Jodl got out a directive outlining in considerable detail the means of camouflage and deception. “These regroupings,” he laid it down, “must not create the impression in Russia that we are preparing an offensive in the East.”
14
So that the armed services should not rest on their laurels after the great victories of the summer, Hitler issued on November 12, 1940, a comprehensive top-secret directive outlining new military tasks all over Europe and beyond. We shall come back to some of them. What concerns us here is that portion dealing with the Soviet Union.
Political discussions have been initiated with the aim of clarifying Russia’s attitude for the time being. Irrespective of the results of these discussions, all
preparations for the East which have already been verbally ordered will be continued. Instructions on this will follow, as soon as the general outline of the Army’s operational plans have been submitted to, and approved by, me.
15
As a matter of fact, on that very day, November 12, Molotov arrived in Berlin to continue with Hitler himself those political discussions.
Relations between Berlin and Moscow had for some months been souring. It was one thing for Stalin and Hitler to double-cross third parties, but quite another when they began to double-cross each other. Hitler had been helpless to prevent the Russians from grabbing the
Baltic States
and the two Rumanian provinces of
Bessarabia
and northern
Bucovina
, and his frustration only added to his growing resentment. The Russian drive westward would have to be stopped and first of all in Rumania, whose oil resources were of vital importance to a Germany which, because of the British blockade, could no longer import petroleum by sea.
To complicate Hitler’s problem,
Hungary
and
Bulgaria
too demanded slices of Rumanian territory. Hungary, in fact, as the summer of 1940 approached its end, prepared to go to war in order to win back
Transylvania
, which Rumania had taken from her after the First World War. Such a war, Hitler realized, would cut off Germany from her main source of crude oil and probably bring the Russians in to occupy all of Rumania and rob the Reich permanently of Rumanian oil.
By August 28 the situation had become so threatening that Hitler ordered five panzer and three motorized divisions plus parachute and airborne troops to make ready to seize the Rumanian oil fields on September 1.
16
That same day he conferred with Ribbentrop and
Ciano
at the Berghof and then dispatched them to
Vienna
, where they were to lay down the law to the foreign ministers of Hungary and Rumania and make them accept Axis arbitration. This mission was accomplished without much trouble after Ribbentrop had browbeaten both sides. On August 30 at the Belvedere Palace in Vienna the Hungarians and Rumanians accepted the Axis settlement. When Mihai Manoilescu, the Rumanian Foreign Minister, saw the map stipulating that about one half of Transylvania should go to Hungary, he fainted, falling across the table at which the signing of the agreement was taking place, and regaining consciousness only after physicians had worked over him with camphor.
*
17
Ostensibly for her reasonableness but really to give Hitler a legal excuse for his
further plans, Rumania received from Germany and
Italy
a guarantee of what was left of her territory.
*
Light on the Fuehrer’s further plans came to his intimates three weeks later. On September 20, in a top-secret directive, Hitler ordered the sending of “military missions” to Rumania.
To the world their tasks will be to guide friendly Rumania in organizing and instructing her forces.
The real tasks—which must not become apparent either to the Rumanians or to our own troops—will be:
To protect the oil district …
To prepare for deployment from Rumanian bases of German and Rumanian forces in case a war with Soviet Russia is forced upon us.
18
That would take care of the southern flank of a new front he was beginning to picture in his mind.
The Vienna award and especially the German guarantee of Rumania’s remaining territory went down badly in Moscow, which had not been consulted. When Schulenburg called on Molotov on September 1 to present a windy memorandum from Ribbentrop attempting to explain—and justify—what had taken place in Vienna, the Foreign Commissar, the ambassador reported, “was reserved, in contrast to his usual manner.” He was not too reserved, however, to lodge a strong verbal protest. He accused the German government of violating Article III of the
Nazi–Soviet Pact
, which called for consultation, and of presenting Russia with “accomplished facts” which conflicted with German assurances about “questions of common interests.”
19
The thieves, as is almost inevitable in such cases, had begun to quarrel over the spoils.
Recriminations became more heated in the following days. On September 3 Ribbentrop telegraphed a long memorandum to Moscow denying that Germany had violated the Moscow Pact and accusing Russia of having done just that by gobbling up the
Baltic States
and two Rumanian provinces without consulting Berlin. The memorandum was couched in strong language and the Russians replied to it on September 21 with equally stern words—by this time both sides were putting their cases in writing. The Soviet answer reiterated that Germany had broken the pact, warned that Russia still had many interests in Rumania and concluded with a sarcastic proposal that if the article calling for consultation involved “certain inconveniences and restrictions” for the Reich the Soviet government was ready to amend or delete this clause of the treaty.
20
The Kremlin’s suspicions of Hitler were further aroused by two events in September. On the sixteenth, Ribbentrop wired Schulenburg to call on Molotov and “casually” inform him that German reinforcements for northern Norway were going to be sent by way of Finland. A few days later, on September 25, the Nazi Foreign Minister got off another telegram to the embassy in Moscow, this time addressed to the chargé, Schulenburg
having returned to Germany on leave. It was a most confidential message, being marked “Strictly Secret—State Secret,” and directing that its instructions were to be carried out only if on the next day the chargé received from Berlin by wire or telephone a special code word.
21
He was to inform Molotov that “in the next few days” Japan, Italy and Germany were going to sign in Berlin a military alliance. It was not to be directed against Russia—a specific article would say that.
This alliance [Ribbentrop stated] is directed exclusively against American warmongers. To be sure this is, as usual, not expressly stated in the treaty, but can be unmistakably inferred from its terms … Its exclusive purpose is to bring the elements pressing for America’s entry into the war to their senses by conclusively demonstrating to them that if they enter the present struggle they will automatically have to deal with the three great powers as adversaries.
22
The chilly Soviet Foreign Commissar, whose suspicions of the Germans were now growing like flowers in June, was highly skeptical when Werner von Tippelskirch, the chargé, brought him this news on the evening of September 26. He said immediately, with that pedantic attention to detail which so annoyed all with whom he negotiated, friend or foe, that according to Article IV of the Moscow Pact the Soviet government was entitled to see the text of this tripartite military alliance
before it was signed
, including, he added, the text of “any secret protocols.”
Molotov also wanted to know more about the German agreement with Finland for the transport of troops through that country, which he had heard of mostly through the press, he said, including a
United Press
dispatch from Berlin. During the last three days, Molotov added, Moscow had received reports of the landing of German forces in at least three Finnish ports, “without having been informed thereof by Germany.”
The Soviet Government [Molotov continued] wished to receive the text of the agreement on the passage of troops through Finland, including its secret portions … and to be informed as to the object of the agreement, against whom it was directed, and the purposes that were being served thereby.
23
The Russians had to be mollified—even the obtuse Ribbentrop could see that—and on October 2 he telegraphed to Moscow what he said was the text of the agreement with Finland. He also reiterated that the Tripartite Pact, which in the meantime had been signed,
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was not directed
against the Soviet Union and solemnly declared that “there were no secret protocols nor any other secret agreements.”
24
After instructing Tippelskirch on October 7 to inform Molotov “incidentally” that a German “military mission” was being sent to Rumania and after receiving Molotov’s skeptical reaction to this further news (“How many troops are you sending to Rumania?” the Foreign Commissar had demanded to know),
25
Ribbentrop on October 13 got off a long letter to Stalin in an attempt to quiet Soviet uneasiness about Germany.
26
It is, as might be expected, a fatuous and at the same time arrogant epistle, abounding in nonsense and lies and subterfuge. England is blamed for the war and all its aftermaths thus far, but one thing is sure: “The war as such has been won by us. It is only a question of how long it will be before England … admits to collapse.” The German moves against Russia in Finland and Rumania as well as the Tripartite Pact are explained as really a boon to Russia. In the meantime British diplomacy and British secret agents are trying to stir up trouble between Russia and Germany. To frustrate them, why not send Molotov to Berlin, Ribbentrop asked Stalin, so that the Fuehrer could “explain personally his views regarding the future molding of relations between our two countries”?
Ribbentrop gave a sly hint what those views were:
nothing less than dividing up the world among the four totalitarian powers
.
It appears to be the mission of the Four Powers
[he said]—
the Soviet Union,
Italy
,
Japan
and Germany—to
adopt
a long-range policy …by delimitation of their interests on a world-wide scale
.
The emphasis is Ribbentrop’s.
There was some delay in the German Embassy in Moscow in getting this letter to its destination, which made Ribbentrop livid with rage and inspired an angry telegram from him to Schulenburg demanding to know why his letter had not been delivered until the seventeenth and why, “in keeping with the importance of its contents,” it was not delivered to Stalin personally—Schulenburg had handed it to Molotov.
27
Stalin replied on October 22, in a remarkably cordial tone. “Molotov admits,” he wrote, “that he is under obligation to pay you a visit in Berlin. He hereby accepts your invitation.”
28
Stalin’s geniality must have been only a mask. Schulenburg wired Berlin a few days later that the Russians were protesting the refusal of Germany to deliver war material while at the same time shipping arms to Finland. “This is the first time,” Schulenburg advised Berlin, “that our deliveries of arms to Finland have been mentioned by the Soviets.”
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A dark, drizzling day, and Molotov arrived, his reception being extremely stiff and formal. Driving up the Linden to the Soviet Embassy, he looked to
me like a plugging, provincial schoolmaster. But to have survived in the cutthroat competition of the Kremlin he must have something. The Germans talk glibly of letting Moscow have that old Russian dream, the
Bosporus
and the Dardanelles, while they will take the rest of the Balkans: Rumania,
Yugoslavia
and
Bulgaria
…
Thus began my diary entry in Berlin on November 12, 1940. The glib talk of the Germans was accurate enough, as far as it went. Today we know much more about this strange and—as it turned out—fateful meeting, thanks to the capture of the Foreign Office documents, in which one finds the confidential German minutes of the two-day sessions, all but one of them kept by the ubiquitous Dr. Schmidt.
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