A World at Arms (42 page)

The Soviet concessions to Germany in the last stages of these negotiations must be seen in the context of other concessions made simultaneously by Moscow in new German-Soviet economic talks, concessions designed by Moscow to assist in moving forward the broader political issues discussed between the two countries since September of 1940. The Germans had told the Russians about their Tripartite Pact with Italy and Japan at the last moment and had pointed out that this treaty was open to Soviet adhesion. Molotov was subsequently invited to Berlin to discuss this project, with a visit of von Ribbentrop to Moscow to follow. Molotov was to talk over the current problems in German-Soviet relations as well as the possibility of joining the Axis powers.
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In anticipation of this trip, the two sides made very different preparations. Though collecting material for the talks, including a draft treaty for the Soviet Union to join the Tripartite Pact,
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the Germans quietly went forward with their preparations to attack the Soviet Union. As the relevant order of Hitler put it:

Political conversations designed to clarify the attitude of Russia in the immediate future have been started. Regardless of the outcome of these conversations, all preparations for the East previously ordered orally are to be continued. [Written] directives on that will follow as soon as the basic elements of the army’s plan for the operation have been submitted to me and approved by me.
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There was, in other words, no German expectation of a new long-term agreement with Russia; war was intended, and only the details of relations in the intervening months would be explored.

The Soviet government went at this matter very differently. Evidently anticipating a new general agreement with the Germans, an agreement bringing up to date the prior ones of August and September 1939, and one that would insure continued fruitful cooperation between them against Great Britain, the leadership in Moscow attempted a replay of their 1939 tactic of pretending to negotiate with Great Britain in the hope of extracting greater concessions from Germany. In the spring of 1940 they had requested trade negotiations with the British, and in the summer they had insisted on Sir Stafford Cripps being made ambassador if he were to be received for any such negotiations.
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Unlike the French, who had been almost exuberant in their attempts to shift the theater of war from Western Europe and involve the Western Powers in hostilities with Russia,
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the British had held back. Repeatedly Chamberlain and Halifax had resisted pressure for actions against the Soviet Union, had stalled the French projects, and had insisted on maintaining diplomatic relations with Moscow.
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The failure of the effort of Cripps
to interest the Soviet Union in the dangers posed by German domination of Western and Central Europe has already been recounted.
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As Cripps explained to London, fear of Germany dominated Soviet policy, but the conclusion drawn by Moscow was the need to remain on good terms with her and under no circumstances to provoke Berlin by alignment with London.
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There did follow some negotiations looking toward a trade agreement and a possible political agreement as well, but the Soviet government was careful both to avoid coming to any agreement–the British never received an answer to their approach–and to leak information on the fact that negotiations were taking place. They evidently hoped that once again the publicly ventilated possibility of a Soviet alignment with the West might facilitate agreement with Germany, but they would find that they had miscalculated badly.
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Unlike 1939, this time, as in the years
before
1939, the Germans were not interested, having already made very different decisions about their relationship with Russia. In view of Soviet efforts to come to a new agreement with the Germans, all the British could do to sour the Berlin visit of the Soviet Foreign Minister, who could not find the time to receive their ambassador, was to bomb the German capital while Molotov was visiting there.
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The talks Molotov had with Hitler and other German leaders covered a great deal of ground, even if some conversations had to be held in an air raid shelter.
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The Germans reviewed the progress of the war and expressed their desire for the Soviet Union to join in a general southward advance in which Germany and Italy would divide Africa between them, the Soviet Union would head for the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf,
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while Japan would take over South and Southeast Asia. Molotov agreed in principle to joining the Tripartite Pact but wanted the details clarified. In particular, he made it clear that the Soviet Union intended to annex Finland and expected the Germans to adhere to their prior agreement to such a step. Furthermore, he argued for real and immediate Soviet advances toward the Straits and thus to the Mediterranean rather than the vague route to the Indian Ocean. As subsequent events would show, the Soviet government believed that the differences between Soviet and German proposals could be worked out; but the refusal of the Germans to promise that they would abide by their prior policy on Finland should have opened eyes in Moscow.

The Finnish question, in fact, was the one which took up more time than any other. One wonders whether Molotov ever asked himself why the Germans, who did not need the Petsamo nickel mines in 1939 when about to go to war with Britain and France, were so certain they needed them now? Even more extraordinary was the insistence of Hitler that
the war with Great Britain had already been won, but that in case of new troubles between the Soviet Union and Finland, the British or the United States might station an air force in Finland! In any case, the Germans made it clear that they would not stand for the Soviet Union to carry out its intention of annexing Finland and that they would block any further Soviet advance in Southeast Europe. We know now that these German positions were designed to protect the flanks of their attacks on Russia the following spring; apparently Molotov, however much annoyed by German views, did not grasp their real import.

Shortly after Molotov’s return to Moscow, the Soviet government took steps toward what it appears to have assumed would be a new settlement with Germany. Simultaneously Moscow moved on three fronts. A revised protocol for Russia to join the Tripartite Pact was sent to Berlin on November 25. Obviously meant as a serious offer, it reflected previously expressed Soviet aspirations and contained nothing that the Germans would have objected to the year before: a mutual assistance pact between the Soviet Union and Bulgaria, bases at the Straits, Finland to be left to the Russians with German interest in the nickel and forest products there to be protected, and the abandonment of Japan’s special concessions in northern Sakhalin, concessions Japan would not need once she acquired the rich resources of Southeast Asia.
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On the same day, the Soviet government proposed a mutual assistance pact to Bulgaria with both powers expected to join the Tripartite Pact.
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Finally, at the same time the Soviets made massive economic offers to the Germans, showing themselves willing to make major sacrifices in Soviet-German economic relations to demonstrate to Berlin the potential value of good relations with Moscow.
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Since the Soviet government had worked out this program with care and repeatedly urged the Germans to respond to their proposals, one must assume that they thought it a reasonable basis for a new agreement. They clearly anticipated that the war between Germany and Great Britain would last for some time yet and wanted the Germans to concentrate on that while the Soviet Union strengthened its position in Eastern Europe. The Tripartite Pact which Moscow offered to join included a commitment to fight alongside Germany, Italy and Japan if any of these countries became involved in war with the United States, and thus could easily bring the Soviet Union into war with the two Western Powers. Stalin evidently thought this an appropriate risk to run, especially since he would be in such mighty company–company which in any case was located between the Soviet Union and the Western Powers on the major European and Asiatic fronts. If the French and, to a far lesser extent, the British had been reckless in their willingness to risk war with the
Soviet Union in the winter of 1939-40, the Soviets were prepared to return the favor with compound interest in the winter of 1940–41 in the form of a willingness to fight the United States and Great Britain.

The Germans, however, were completely uninterested in having the Soviet Union join the Tripartite Pact and never replied to the Soviet offer in spite of reminders. They encouraged the Bulgarians to reject the approach from Moscow and went forward with their own plans to send troops into Bulgaria for an invasion of Greece that will be reviewed subsequently. There was only one facet of the Soviet move that Germany was happy to respond to positively, and that was the offer of a new economic agreement on terms highly favorable to the Germans. After a good deal of bargaining, complicated by German refusal to supply some of the materials the Soviet Union wanted as well as large arrears in German payments and the need to settle the argument over compensation for the piece of Lithuania, a new agreement was finally signed on January 10, 1941.
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Molotov, who apparently hoped that as in 1939 Soviet economic concessions would pave the way to a political agreement with Germany, asked on January 17 whether such an agreement could now be worked out and expressed astonishment at the absence of any answer to the Soviet offer to join the Tripartite Pact.
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He never got one.

Given the German decision to attack the Soviet Union, it should be easy to understand why Berlin never replied to the political proposals but was happy to sign a new trade agreement. If the Soviet Union would help supply the German war economy until the day of the invasion, that was certainly all to the good. If, on the other hand, there were detailed political negotiations on sensitive subjects on which German strategic interest connected with that invasion precluded German agreement to Soviet wishes, there was a real possibility that the Russians might hold back on the promised deliveries and transit shipments from East Asia which the Germans so desperately wanted. From Berlin’s perspective, gathering in the goods while keeping their diplomatic mouths shut was clearly the smartest policy.

This pattern continued for the remaining period until June 22, 1941. The Soviets were unhappy about Germany’s occupying Bulgaria and steadily expanding its influence in the Balkans. They were equally displeased about the obvious way in which Finland moved more and more into the German orbit. But because many of these moves looked to the Soviet Union as if they were primarily directed against Great Britain–and that was particularly the case when the Germans destroyed the pro-British regimes of Yugoslavia and Greece in April 1941–they could
continue to imagine that their pact with Germany served their own interests. Since they did not see these moves as preparing the flanks for a forthcoming attack on themselves, they stood by for the third time in a year as the Germans cleared continental Europe of Allied forces.
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Strangely enough, at the end of the process of helping Germany conquer Northern, Western, and Southern Europe, the Russians found themselves on the continent with Germany by themselves. This dangerous prospect was unfolding for the Soviet Union in the spring of 1941.
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Whatever they did or did not believe of the reports from their agents in Europe, from the warnings they received from the British, from the Americans, and from their agents in Japan, it was certainly obvious that Germany was building up very large military forces in Eastern Europe. Whether designed to threaten or to attack, this buildup suggested the danger of war. Terrified of the prospect, the Soviet government now tried desperately to reassure the Germans by placating gestures.

In a series of moves Moscow attempted to pacify Germany. They not only stopped pressuring Finland but even promised to deliver extra wheat to that country.
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They gave in to the Germans on border delimitation issues.
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They withdrew their diplomatic recognition of the Belgian, Norwegian, Yugoslav and Greek governments-in-exile and recognized the anti-British government established by Rashid Ali al-Gaylani in Iraq.
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Of greater practical importance than these political gestures was the massive increase in economic deliveries. Extra trains were run in such numbers that the Germans had a hard time shipping the vast quantities of supplies received from the border stations where the train gage changed. Though thrilled to obtain these supplies–especially the extra transshipments of rubber from East Asia–the Germans reciprocated by deliberately stalling on their own return deliveries. If the Soviets would run trains across the border until minutes before the attack, that was fine with the Germans but had no impact on their policy.
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That policy was also unaffected by other steps the Soviet Union took. The Russians allowed a German commission to take a good look at their aircraft industry, but the report of the greatly impressed commission was simply not believed.
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The neutrality treaty with Japan signed in April might show the Germans that they could not count on Japan to join in an attack on the Soviet Union. In a number of demonstrative gestures, Stalin tried to show his own great personal interest in continued good relations with Germany.
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In a speech to the graduates of Soviet military academies on May 5, the day before he took over the formal leadership of the government, Stalin appears to have set forth in some detail and quite frankly the relative strengths and capabilities of Soviet and German
military powers, showing the need for Russia to take German superiority into account while continuing to build up its own defenses.
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