A Sense of the Enemy: The High Stakes History of Reading Your Rival's Mind (18 page)

No doubt recognizing the study’s shortcomings, the OSS commissioned a separate psychological profile of Hitler, this time conducted by the psychoanalyst Walter Langer, brother of the renowned Harvard historian William L. Langer. Drawing on numerous interviews with those in the United States who had had personal contact with Hitler, Langer’s assessments were more coherent than the prior study, though by today’s standards the report still appears rudimentary. Psychobiographies remain a staple of intelligence communities’ multifaceted efforts to understand the enemy. They can provide rich pictures of a foreign statesman’s traits, habits, and predilections, but they suffer from the great mass of information problem. It is difficult to know which psychological traits are most meaningful at crucial junctures.

In 1940, Roosevelt did not need psychological assessments of the Führer of the kind the OSS would later produce. The President wanted a clearer sense of Hitler’s more immediate intentions. Fortunately, Roosevelt did not engage in simulation theory. He did not project onto Hitler the same reasoning process that Roosevelt himself employed. Pattern breaks such as Kristallnacht underscored to FDR that Hitler possessed a fanaticism distinct from, and far beyond that of, the average Realpolitik-driven head of state.

Welles’s reports only confirmed what Roosevelt already believed on this score. But what Welles may not have grasped from his visit was that Hitler harbored serious concerns about confronting the United States in war. Hitler used the Welles talks to demonstrate to Roosevelt his determination to prosecute and win the current conflict, or to see everyone “go down together.” Although Hitler aimed to deter Roosevelt, his words only solidified the President’s conviction that American entry into the war was inevitable.

Roughly eight months after Welles departed from Berlin, the Soviets would make their own attempt to probe the Führer’s mind. A hint of Hitler’s fear of facing the United States can be seen more directly in
the conversations between Hitler and Stalin’s special emissary to Berlin, though Stalin’s purpose was more immediately to discern Hitler’s intentions toward Russia.

Molotov’s Mission

Grasping that secondhand accounts of Hitler, such as Herman Rauschning’s book, could only reveal so much, Stalin instructed Molotov to meet with Hitler for the express purpose of divining the Chancellor’s true intentions. It was a reasonable attempt at theory-theory, and a brief departure from Stalin’s default mode of simulation, to which he would ultimately return. On November 11, 1940, Molotov arrived in Berlin for several days of discussions. Despite the pomp, those talks proved largely pointless. Hitler remained inscrutable, evading direct answers even when pressed. True to his reputation, the Führer held his cards too close to permit a peek.

Acting on Stalin’s orders, Molotov struggled to make Hitler explain the presence of German troops in Finland and Romania, as this was one of the few aggressive German moves that genuinely concerned the Soviet leader. The Führer demurred, calling them a trifle. Seven months later, those troops would be part of the coming attack.

Hitler tried to explain away German military actions as merely the necessary measures during the life and death struggle with England in which Germany now found itself. If Russia were in a similar position, Germany would of course understand Russia’s wartime actions. He assured Molotov that German troops in Romania would leave that country as soon as the war concluded.
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When Romania, Finland, and other points of friction arose in conversation on the second day of talks, Hitler urged the Soviet Foreign Minister to recognize that any disagreements they presently faced were insignificant compared to the great advantages that both nations would reap in the future, provided they continued to collaborate, and provided that Soviet Russia did not interfere in German-occupied territories for the duration of the war.

There were a few brief, revealing moments in the course of these discussions. Hitler hoped to use these conversations as the mirror image of his talks with Welles, both serving as part of his larger deception campaign. With the Welles talks, Hitler hoped to deter Roosevelt from
intervening by stressing Germany’s intention to fight to the bitter end. In contrast, Hitler sought to use the talks with Molotov to lull Stalin into believing that peace between the two nations could continue. In both sessions between Hitler and Molotov on November 12 and 13, Hitler repeatedly stressed that no meaningful disputes existed between Germany and Soviet Russia. He asserted that political and economic interests could be oriented in ways that would guarantee that conflicts would be avoided for long periods.
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This was what Stalin wanted to believe: that the war with Germany could be postponed until Soviet military strength could be enhanced.

At this point in the second day’s discussions, Hitler made one of his boldest claims—one that should have caught Stalin’s attention. The Chancellor invoked the immense power to result from joint German–Soviet cooperation: “The future successes would be the greater, the more Germany and Russia succeeded in fighting back to back against the outside world, and would become the smaller, the more the two countries faced each other breast to breast.” If they fought together, and against the rest, Hitler insisted that there was no power on Earth that could oppose them.
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Neither Molotov nor Stalin could have taken Hitler’s blandishments seriously. If Hitler were a realist, he would want to keep his Bolshevik enemy out of the war until victorious over Britain. But to insist that he desired to fight alongside his ideological foe against some unnamed opponent (presumably the United States) challenged credulity. Ludicrous comments such as these called into question the whole of Hitler’s assurances that his actions in Finland and Romania were trifles and not directed against the Soviet Union. But Stalin’s form of mentalizing stood in the way of drawing those conclusions.

That Stalin was duped by Hitler’s promises of future collaboration is doubtful. That Stalin believed in Hitler’s pragmatism is nearly certain. If indeed Stalin projected his own rationality onto the Führer, then he had to assume that Hitler would not attack while still at war with Britain. Stalin also learned from Molotov’s mission that Hitler was concerned about the possible involvement of America. Hitler had pressed Molotov to state whether Russia would declare war on the United States if America entered the war. Molotov replied that this question was of little interest. Hitler retorted that if a new war did break out, it would then be
too late for Russia to decide on its position. Molotov dodged any such commitments by saying that he saw little likelihood of an outbreak of war in the Baltic.
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This time it was Hitler who could not pin down the Soviets. If Stalin paid attention to this exchange, it likely reinforced his view that Hitler was prudent in military matters—probing the balance of forces and assessing enemies and allies alike. Such a realist, Stalin assumed, would defer an attack on Russia until his rear was clear.

As if to underscore the dangers ahead for German–Soviet cooperation, the banquet Hitler held for the Soviet delegation was shattered by a Royal Air Force bombing raid. Attendees had to scurry for cover as the festivities dispersed. It mattered little. Molotov would return to Moscow empty-handed, no closer to grasping Hitler’s underlying drivers or his more immediate intentions. Ten days after Molotov departed, Hitler issued the orders to his military to begin preparing Operation Barbarossa, the largest invasion in history.

Conclusion

Both Roosevelt and Stalin strove to gain strategic empathy for Hitler, for they fully recognized that their nation’s fates depended on their ability to read him correctly. Both leaders sent their closest foreign policy advisors to meet with Hitler in 1940. Both leaders hoped to buy time before going to war with Germany, and both missions aimed at gleaning the Chancellor’s will. One crucial difference between the two leaders’ conclusions can be traced to the way that each man mentalized. Roosevelt tried to grasp how Hitler thought by constructing a theory of how the Führer would behave based on Hitler’s own drivers and constraints. FDR recognized from episodes such as Kristallnacht that Hitler possessed a uniquely racist, extremist ideology that was more than mere rhetoric. Like Roosevelt, Stalin also recognized Hitler’s ideology, but unlike FDR, Stalin simulated what he himself would do if he were in Hitler’s place. Simulation theory best describes how Stalin typically mentalized. It explains his need to murder anyone who could threaten his power, from his colleagues to his officer corps. Stalin put himself in their shoes and decided that, if he were they, he would try to depose the leader. Therefore, he had to destroy his opponents before they could destroy him. Similarly, Stalin asked what he would do if he were in
Hitler’s place. Because preserving his own power always took precedence to advancing an ideological agenda, Stalin projected that same view onto the Führer. Stalin’s simulations proved the worst possible approach to Hitler: a man who was willing to risk his power, his life, and his nation rather than abandon or postpone his ideological mission.

Years later, after the war was over and some 20 million Russians lay dead, Stalin reflected on his mental debacle. He revealed to a small group of advisors a rare moment of self-reflection. “NEVER put yourself into the mind of another person,” he warned them, “because if you do, you can make a terrible mistake.”
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The great simulator may at last have understood why his attempts at strategic empathy had gone so horribly wrong.

Following Stalin’s death in 1953, communist leaders inside the Soviet Union and beyond continued to struggle with reading their opponents. For the ideologically minded Marxists in Vietnam, the challenge of reading the Americans was critical. As American involvement in Vietnam increased throughout the early 1960s, North Vitnamese leaders needed to gauge the likelihood of a full-scale U.S. escalation. And if the Americans did escalate, Hanoi needed a clear sense of its enemies’ weaknesses in order to defeat them. Fortunately for Hanoi, a sober strategist and hardened fighter against the French had been steadily rising through the Party ranks. Despite never having visited the United States, this enigmatic Marxist managed to pinpoint his rivals’ weakest links—and exploit them for all he could.

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Hanoi’s New Foe

Le Duan Prepares for America

The Underdog’s Focus

It was summer in Paris, but the mood inside 11 Darthe Street on the outskirts of town was tense.
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On July 19, 1972, American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and his team were conducting six and a half hours of negotiations with Le Duan’s right-hand man, the inveterate ideologue Le Duc Tho. In familiar fashion, Le Duc Tho offered up a historical lecture on Vietnam’s great tradition of repelling foreign armies. Hoping to bring the conversation to meaningful discussions, Kissinger presented a five-point plan, which he referred to as America’s last effort at peace, but the Vietnamese viewed it as simply more of the same old American proposals. Two days earlier, Hanoi had cabled its Paris delegation that the upcoming U.S. presidential election boded well for North Vietnam.
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If George McGovern could win, American concessions would be even more favorable than what Nixon and Kissinger were offering. It was a remarkable assertion, given that President Nixon was far ahead in the national polls and widely expected to trounce McGovern, which he did in a landslide. Nonetheless, Hanoi believed it would be beneficial to hold out for a McGovern victory. For the time being, the talks were at an impasse. But then a curious incident occurred when the two teams broke for tea.

In a reflective moment, Kissinger allegedly remarked to his Vietnamese interlocutors that if the Vietnamese possessed merely courage, then the United States would already have crushed them on the battlefield. The problem, Kissinger opined, was that the Vietnamese were
both courageous and intelligent. As a result, America was in danger of losing the war.

The room fell silent. Was this a Kissinger trap, one Vietnamese staff member recalled thinking. The staffers waited for their leader to respond. After some thought, Le Duc Tho asked Kissinger if this meant that he believed that the Vietnamese were more intelligent than the Americans. Le Duc Tho observed that the United States was far more advanced than Vietnam in science and technology, possessed high levels of education among its citizens, and contained more numbers of talented people than any other nation. Vietnam, he observed, was clearly the underdog. It was a small, economically backward, primitive agricultural state. Kissinger then asked, if America were so intelligent, why had it not defeated Vietnam? Le Duc Tho replied that twenty-four hours a day, every day, America must confront countless issues. As a result, its intelligence is dissipated. Vietnam, in contrast, had no choice but to concentrate its efforts on a single issue. “. . . We Vietnamese all just think about one thing 24 hours a day: How can we defeat the Americans?” Kissinger agreed that the issue was not which people were smarter but rather which was better able to apply its intelligence: “. . . I have to say that Vietnam uses its intelligence more skillfully than does the United States.”
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