BARBAROSSA-HITLERS PLAN TO INVADE RUSSIA PART 4

BARBAROSSA-HITLERS PLAN TO INVADE RUSSIA

PART 4

THE KREMLIN
Despite all he evidence of Hitler's intentions, the build-up of German forces in eastern Poland, the presence of million of German troops in the nearby Balkans, the Wehrmacht's conquest of Yugoslavia and Greece and its occupation of Rumania, Bulgaria and Hungary, the men in the Kremlin, Stalin above all, stark realists though they were reputed to be and had been, blindly hoped that Russia somehow would still escape the Nazi tyrant's wrath. Their natural suspicions, of course, could not help but feed on the bare facts, nor could their growing resentment at Hitler's moves in south-eastern Europe be suppressed. There is, however, something unreal, almost unbelievable , quite grotesque, in the diplomatic exchanges between Moscow and Berlin in these spring weeks, in which the Germans clumsily to deceive the Kremlin to the last and the soviet leaders seemed unable to fully grasp reality and at in time.Though they several times protested to the entry of German troops into Rumania and Bulgaria and then the attack on Yugoslavia and Greece as a violation of the German-Soviet Pact and a threat to Russian "security interest", the Soviets went out of their way to appease Berlin as the date for the German attack approached. Stalin personally took the lead in this. On April 13, 1941, Ambassador von der Schulenburg telegraphed an interesting dispatch to Berlin recounting how on the departure of the Japanese Foreign Minister, Ysuke Matsuoka, that evening from Moscow,, Stalin had shown "a remarkable friendly manner" not only to the Japanese but to the Germans. At the railway station:

Kremlin and Red Square, Moscow

"Stalin publicly asked for me (Schulenburg wired)... and threw his arm around my shoulders: 'We must remain friends and you must now do everything to that end'! Somewhat later Stalin turned to the acting German Military Attaché, Colonel Krebs, first made sure that he was a German, and then said to him: 'We will remain friends with you,through thick and thin'!
Three days later the German chargé in Moscow, Tippelskirch, wired Berlin stressing that the demonstration at the station showed Stalin's friendliness toward Germany and this was especially important 'in view of the persistently circulation rumours of an imminent conflict between Germany and the Soviet Union'. The day before, Tippelskirch had informed Berlin that the Kremlin had accepted 'unconditionally', after months of wrangling, the German proposals for the settlement of the border between the two counties from the Igorka River to the Baltic Sea. 'The compliant attitude of the Soviet Government', he said, 'seems very remarkable.' In view of what was brewing in Berlin, it surely was.
In supplying blockaded Germany with important raw materials, the Soviet Government continued to be equally compliant. On April 5, 1941, Schnurre, in charge of trade negotiations with Moscow, reported jubilantly to his German masters that after the slowdown in Russian deliveries in January and February 1941, due to a 'cooling off of political relations', they had risen  'by leaps and bounds in March, especially in grains, petroleum, manganese ore and the non-ferrous and precious metals'. Transit traffic through Siberia, he added is proceeding favourable as usual. At our request the Soviet Government even put a special freight train for rubber at our disposal at the Manchurian border. Six weeks later, on May 15, Schnurre was reporting that the obliging Russians had put on special freight trains so that 4,000 tons of badly needed raw rubber could be delivered to Germany over the Siberian railway.

Map of the Trans-siberian railway (red)'

German deliveries of Machinery to Russia were falling behind, Schnurre observed, but he did not seem to mind if the Russians didn't. However, he was disturbed on May 15 by another factor. 'Great difficulties are created', he complained, 'by the countless rumours of an imminent German-Russian conflict', for which he blamed German official sources. Amazingly, the "difficulties", Schnurre explained in a lengthy memorandum to the Foreign Office, did not come from Russia but from German industrial firms, which, he said, were trying "to withdraw" from their contracts with the Russians.
Hitler, was doing his best to contradict the rumours, but at the same time he was busy trying to convince his generals and top officials that Germany was in growing danger of being attacked by Russia Though the generals, from their own military intelligence, knew better, so hypnotic was Hitler's spell over them that even after the war Halder Brauchitsch, Mannstein, and others (although not Paulus, who seems to have been more honest) contended that a Soviet military build-up on the Polish frontier had become very threatening by the beginning of the summer. Count von der Schulenburg, who had come home from Moscow on a brief leave, saw Hitler in Berlin on April 28 and tried to convince him of Russia's peaceful intentions. 'Russia", he attempted to explain, 'is very apprehensive at the rumours predicting a German attack on Russia. I cannot believe', he added, 'that Russia will ever attack Germany... If Stalin was unable to go with England and France in 1939 when both were still strong, he will certainly not make such a decision today, when France is destroyed and England badly battered. On the contrary, I am convinced that Stalin is prepared to make even further concessions to us'.
The Führer feigned scepticism. He had been 'forewarned', he said, 'by events in Serbia...What devil had possessed the Russians', he asked, 'to conclude the friendship pact with Yugoslavia?' He did not believe, it was true, he said, that 'Russia could be brought to attack Germany'. Nevertheless, he concluded, he was obliged 'to be careful'. Hitler did not tell the ambassador to the Soviet Union what plans he had in store for that country, and Schulenburg, an honest, decent German of the old school, remained ignorant of them to the last.

German Plane over Russia' (date unknown)

Stalin, too, but not of the signs, or of the warnings, of what Hitler was up to. On April 22 the Soviet Government formerly protested eighty instances of border violations by German planes which it said had taken place between March 27 and April 18, providing accounts of each. In one case, it said, in a German reconnaissance plane which landed near Rovno on April 15 there was found a camera, rolls of exposed film and a torn topographical map of western districts of the U.S.S.R., 'all of which give evidence of the purpose of the crew of this airplane'. Even in protesting the Russians were conciliatory. They had given the border troops, the note said, 'the order not to fire on German planes flying over Soviet territory so long as such flights do not occur frequently. Stalin made further conciliatory moves in May. To please Hitler he expelled the diplomatic representatives in Moscow of Belgium, Norway, Greece and even Yugoslavia and closed their legations. He recognized the pro-Nazi government  of Rashid Ali in Iraq. He kept the Soviet press under strictest restraint in order to avoid provoking Germany.
'These manifestations, Schulenburg wired to Berlin on May 12, of the intention of the Stalin Government are calculated... to relieve the tension between the Soviet Union and Germany and to create a better atmosphere for the future. We must bear in mind that Stalin personally has always advocated a friendship between Germany and the Soviet Union'.
Though Stalin had long been absolute dictator of the Soviet Union this was the first mention by Schulenburg in his dispatches of the term "Stalin Government". There was good reason. On May 6 Stalin had personally taken over as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, or Prime Minister, replacing Molotov, who remained as Foreign Commissar. This was the first time the all-powerful secretary of the Communist Party had taken government office and the general world reaction was that it meant the situation had become so serious for the Soviet Union, especially in its relation with Germany, that only Stalin could deal with it as the nominal as well as the actual head of government.  This interpretation was obvious, but there was another which was not so clear but which the astute German ambassador in Moscow promptly pointed out to Berlin. Stalin, he reported, was displeased with the deterioration of German- Soviet relations and blamed Molotov's clumsy diplomacy for much of it.
'In my opinion, schulenburg said, it may be assumed with certainty that Stalin has set himself a foreign-policy goal of overwhelming importance...which he hopes to attain by his personal efforts. I firmly believe that in an international situation which he considers serious, Stalin has set himself the goal of preserving the Soviet Union from a conflict with Germany'.

Stalin at the Tehran Conference in 1943

Did the crafty Soviet dictator not realize by now, the middle of May 1941, that this was an impossible goal, that there was nothing, short of an an abject surrender to Hitler, that he could do to attain it? He surely knew the significance of Hitler's conquest of Yugoslavia and Greece, of the presence of large masses of German troops in Rumania and Hungary on his southwest borders, of the Wehrmacht build-up on his western frontier in Poland. The persistent runors in Moscow itself surely reached him. By the beginning of May what Schulenburg called in a dispatch on the second dau of that month 'rumours of an imminent German-Russian military show-down" were so rife in the Soviet capital that he and his officials in the German Embassy were having difficulty in combating them.
'Please bear in mind, he advised Berlin, that attempts to counteract these rumours here in Moscow must necessarily remain ineffectual if such rumours incessantly reach here from Germany, and if every traveller who comes to Moscow, or travels through Moscow, not only brings these rumours along, but can even confirm them by citing facts'.
The veteran ambassador was getting suspicious himself. He was instructed by Berlin to continue to deny the rumours, and to spread it about that not only was there no concentration of German troops on Russia's frontiers but that actually considerable forces (eight divisions, he was told for his 'personal information') were being transferred from 'east to west'. Perhaps these instructions only confirmed the ambassador's uneasiness, since by this time the press throughout the world was beginning to trumpet the German build-up along the Soviet borders. But before this, Stalin had received specific warnings of Hitler's plans, and apparently paid no attention to them. The most serious one come from the government of the United States. Early in January 1941, the U.S. commercial attaché in Berlin Sam E. Woods, had sent a confidential report to the State Department stating that he had learned from trustworthy German sources that Hitler was making plans to attack Russia in the spring. It was a long and detailed message, outlining the General Staff plan of attack (which proved to be quite accurate) and preparations being made for the economic exploitation of the Soviet Union, once it was conquered.

German infantrymen watch enemy movements from their trenches shortly before an advance inside Soviet territory, on July 10, 1941

Secretary of State Cordell Hull thought at first that Woods had been victim of a German 'plant'. He called in J. Edgar Hoover. The F.B.I. had read the report and judged it authentic. Woods had named some of his sources, both in various ministries in Berlin and in the German General Staff, and on being checked they were adjudged  in Washington to be men who ought to know what was  up and anti-Nazi enough to tattle. Despite the strained relations then existing between the American and Soviet governments Hull decided to inform the Russians, requesting Under-secretary of State Summer Welles to communicate the substance of the report to Ambassador Constantine Oumansky. This was done on March 20.
Mr. Oumansky turned very white , Welles later wrote. He was silent for a moment and then merely said: "I fully realise the gravity of the message you have given me. My government will be grateful for your confidence and I will inform it immediately of our conversation. [The American consul in Königsberg (East Prussia), Koykendall, relayed a report specifying correctly the exact day the attack would begin. sic] If it was grateful, indeed if it ever believed this timely intelligence, it never communicates any inkling to the American government. In fact, as Secretary Hull related in his memoirs, Moscow grow more hostile and truculent because America's support of Briton made it impossible to supply Russia with all the materials it demanded. Nevertheless, according to Hull, the State Department, having received dispatches from its legations in Bucharest and Stockholm the first week in June stating Germany would invade Russia within a fortnight, forwarded copies of them to Ambassador Steinhardt in Moscow, who turned them over to Molotov. Churchill too sought to warn Stalin. On April 3 he asked his ambassador in Moscow, Sir Clifford Cripps, to deliver a personal note to the dictator pointing out the significance to Russia of German troop movements in southern Poland which he had learned through a British agent.  Cripps' delay in delivering the message still vexed Churchill when he wrote about the incident later in his memoirs. Before the end of April, Cripps knew the date for the German attack, and the Germans knew he knew it. On April 24, the German naval attaché in Moscow sent a curt message to the Navy High Command in Berlin: 'The British Ambassador predicts June 22 the day of the outbreak of the war'. This message, which is among the captured German papers, was recorded in the German Naval Diary on the same day, with an exclamation point added at the end. The Admirals were surprised at the accuracy of the British Envoy's prediction. The poor naval attaché, who like the ambassador in Moscow had not been let in on the secret, added in his dispatch that it was 'manifestly absurd.' Molotov must have thought so too. A month later, on May 22, he received Schulenburg to discuss various matters. 'He wa as amiable, self assured and well informed as ever', the ambassador reported to Berlin, and again emphasized that Stalin and Molotov, 'the two strongest men in the Soviet Union', were striving above all to avoid conflict with Germany.

Hitler's detailed plan of Action "Barbarossa". Hitler signed (Anhang No. 21) War Directive No. 21 to the German High Command for an operation now codenamed "Operation Barbarossa" stating: "The German Wehrmacht must be prepared to crush Soviet Russia in a quick campaign. The operation was named after Emperor Frederick Barbarossa of the Holy Roman Empire, a leader of the Third Crusade in the 12th century. The invasion was set for 15 May 1941. The plan for Barbarossa assumed that the Wehrmacht would emerge victorious if it could destroy the bulk of the Red Army west of the Western Dvina and Dnieper Rivers. This assumption would be proven fatally wrong less than a month into the invasion.

On one point the usually perspicacious ambassador couldn't have been more wrong. Molotov, at this juncture, was certainly not 'well informed'. But neither was the ambassador.
The extent to which the Russian Foreign Commissar was ill-informed was given public expression on June 14, 1941, just a week before the German blow fell. Molotov called Schulenburg that evining and handed him the text of a Tass statement which, he said, was being broadcast that very night and published in the newspapers the next morning. Blaming Cripps personally for the widespread rumours of 'an impending war between the U.S.S.R. and Germany' in the English press", this official statement of the Soviet government branded them as an 'obvious absurdity...a clumsy propaganda maneuver of the forces arrayed against the Soviet Union and Germany".
Even the recent German troop movements from the Balkans to the Soviet frontiers were explained in the communique as 'having no connection with Soviet-German relations'. As for the rumours saying that Russia would attack Germany, they were 'false and provocative'. The irony of the Tass communique on behalf of the Soviet government is enhanced by two German moves, one on the day of its publication, June 15, the other on the next day.
From Venice, where he was conferring with Ciano, Ribbentrop sent a secret message on June 15 to Budapest warning the Hungarian government 'to take steps to secure its frontiers'. The Germans were tipping off the Hungarians, but not their principal ally. When Ciano the next day, during a gondola ride on the canals of Venice, asked Ribbentrop about the rumours of a German attack on Russia, the German Foreign Minister replied:
'Dear Ciano, I cannot tell you anything as yet because every decision is locked in the impenetrable bosom of the Führer. However, one thing is certain: if we attack them, the Russia of Stalin will be erased from the map within eight weeks'.[This is from the last diary entry of Ciano, made on December 23, 1943, in Cell 27 of the Verona jail, a few days before he was executed. He added that the Italian government learned of the German invasion of Russia a half hour after it began. (Ciano Diaries, p 583),sic]

On the afternoon of 24 July 1943, Mussolini summoned the Fascist Grand Council to its first meeting since 1939. At that meeting, Mussolini announced that the Germans were thinking of evacuating the south. This led Count Dino Grandi to launch a blistering attack on his long-time comrade. Grandi put on the table a resolution asking the king to resume his full constitutional powers—in effect, a vote leading to Mussolini's total ousting from leadership. The motion won by an unexpectedly large margin, 19-7, with Ciano voting in favour.
Mussolini did not think the vote had any substantive value, and showed up at work the next morning like any other day. That afternoon, Victor Emmanuel III, the King, summoned him to Villa Savoia and dismissed him from office. Upon leaving the Villa, Mussolini was arrested. For the next two months he was moved from place to place to hide him and prevent his rescue by the Germans.
Ultimately Mussolini was sent to Gran Sasso, a mountain resort in central Italy (Abruzzo). He was kept there in complete isolation until rescued by the Germans. Mussolini then set up a puppet government in the area of northern Italy still under German occupation and called  it the Repubblica Sociale Italiana (R.S.I.).
Ciano, having been dismissed from his post by the new government, attempted to find shelter in Germany, alongside Edda and their three children, but the Germans returned him to R.S.I. agents and he was then formally arrested for treason. Under German and Fascist pressure, Mussolini had Ciano tried [Who was his son in law, sic]. After the Verona trial sentence, a Fascist firing squad, at a shooting range in Verona on 11 January 1944, executed Ciano and others (including Emilio De Bono and Giovanni Marinelli) who had voted for Mussolini's ousting. The executed Italians were tied to chairs and shot in the back as a further humiliation. Ciano was effectively executed for dissenting against Il Duce's will. His last words were "Long live Italy!"

The Lend-Lease Memorial in Fairbanks, Alaska commemorates the shipment of U.S. aircraft to the Soviet Union along the Northwest Staging Route

 [There was no charge for the Lend Lease aid delivered during the war, but the Americans did expect the return of some durable goods such as ships. Congress had not authorized the gift of supplies after the war, so the administration charged for them, usually at a 90% discount. Large quantities of undelivered goods were in Britain or in transit when Lend-Lease terminated on 2 September 1945. Britain wished to retain some of this equipment in the immediate post war period. In 1946, the post-war Anglo-American loan further indebted Britain to the U.S. Lend-lease items retained were sold to Britain at 10% of nominal value, giving an initial loan value of £1.075 billion for the Lend Lease portion of the post-war loans. Payment was to be stretched out over 50 annual payments, starting in 1951 and with five years of deferred payments, at 2% interest. The final payment of $83.3 million (£42.5 million), due on 31 December 2006 (repayment having been deferred in the allowed five years), was made on 29 December 2006 (the last working day of the year). After this final payment Britain's Economic Secretary to the Treasury, Ed Balls, formally thanked the U.S. for its wartime support.sic]

Outdated, but serviceable U.S. destroyers sit in the Back Bay at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, on Aug. 28, 1940. Plans were well underway to bring these ships up to date and transfer them to Allied countries to aid their defence. These programs would be signed into law as the Lend-Lease program in March of 1941, and would result in billions of dollars worth of war material being shipped overseas.

HITLER ORDERS THE INVASION
While the Kremlin was smugly preparing to broadcast to the world on June 14, 1941, that the rumours of a German attack on Russia were an 'obvious absurdity', Adolf Hitler that very day was having his final big war conference on Barbarossa with leading officers of the Wehrmacht. The timetable for the massing of troops in the East and their deployment to the jumping-off positions had been in operation on May 22. A revised version of the timetable was issued a few days later. It is a long and detailed document and shows that by the beginning of June not only were all plans for the onslaught on Russia complete but the vast and complicated movement of troops, artillery , armour, planes, ships and supplies was well under way and on schedule. A brief item in the Naval War Diary for May 29 states: 'The preparatory movements of warships for Barbarossa has began'. Talks with the General Staff of Rumania, Hungary and Finland, the last country anxious now to win back what had been taken from her by the Russians in the winter war, were completed. On June 9 from Berchtesgaden Hitler sent out an order convoking the commanders in chief of the three Armed Services and top Field Generals for a final all-day meeting on Barbarossa in Berlin on June 14.
Despite the enormity of the task, not only Hitler but his Generals wee in a confident mood as they went over last-minute details of the most gigantic military operation in history, an all-out attack on a front stretching some 1,500 miles from the Arctic Ocean at Petsamo to the Black Sea. The night before , Brauchitsch had returned to Berlin from an inspection of the build-up in the East. Halder noted in his diary that the Army Commander in Chief was highly pleased. Officers and men. he said, were in top shape and ready.
This last military powwow on June 14 lasted from 11 A.M. until 6.30 P.M. It was broken by lunch at 2 P.M., at which Hitler gave his Generals yet another of his fiery,eve-of-the-battle pep talks. According to Halder, it was 'a comprehensive political speech', with Hitler stressing that he had to attack Russia because her fall would force England to 'give up'. But he bloodthirsty Führer must have emphasised something else even more. Keitel told abut it during direct examination on the stand at Nürnberg: "The main theme was that this was the decisive battle between two ideologies and that the practices which we knew as soldiers, the only correct ones under international law, had to be measured by completely different standards". Hitler thereupon, said Keitel, gave various orders for carrying out an unprecedented terror in Russia by "brutal means". 'Did you, or did any other Generals, raise objections to these orders?' asked Keitel's own attorney. "No. I personally made no remonstrances", the General replied. Nor did any of the other Generals, he added.
It is almost inconceivable but nevertheless true that the men in the Kremlin, for all their reputation they had of being suspicious, crafty hard-headed, and despite all the evidence and all the warnings that stared them in the face, did not realize right up to the last moment that they were to be hit, and with a force which would almost destroy their nation. At 9.30 on the pleasant summer evening of June 21, 1941, nine hours before the German attack was scheduled to begin, Molotov received the German ambassador at his office in the Kremlin and delivered his 'final fatuity'. [Churchill's expression, sic] After mentioning further border violations by German aircraft, which he said he had instructed the Soviet ambassador in Berlin to bring to the attention of Ribbentrop, Molotov turned to another subject, which Schulenburg described in an urgent telegram to the Wilhelmstrasse that same night:
'There were a number of indications, Molotov had told him, that the German Government was dissatisfied with the Soviet Government. Rumours were even current that a war was impending between Germany and the Soviet Union... The Soviet Government was unable to understand the reason for Germany's dissatisfaction... He would appreciate it if I could tell him what had brought about the present situation in German-Soviet relations. I replied, Schulenburg added, that that I could not answer his questions, as I lacked pertinent information.'
He was soon to get it. For on its way to him over the air waves between Berlin and Moscow was a long coded radio message from Ribbentrop, dated June 21, 1941, marked "Very Urgent, State Secret, For the Ambassador Personally", which began: "Upon receipt of this telegram, all of the cipher material still there is to be destroyed. The radio set is to be put out of commission. Please inform Herr Molotov at once that you have an urgent communiction to make to him... Then please make the following declaration to him".

An Sd.Kfz-250 half-track in front of German tank units, as they prepare for an attack, on July 21, 1941, somewhere along the Russian war-front, during the German invasion of the Soviet Union'

                                             
THE FINAL BREAK
It was a familiar declaration, strewn with all the shop-worn lies and fabrications at which Hitler and Ribbentrop had become expert and winch had concocted so often before to justify each fresh act of unprovoked aggression. Perhaps it somewhat topped all the previous ones for sheer effrontery and deceit. While Germany had loyally abided by the German-Soviet Pact, it said, Russia repeatedly broken it. The USSR had practised 'sabotage, terrorism and espionage' against Germany. It had 'combated the German attempt to set up a stable order in Europe'. It had conspired with Britain 'for an attack against German troops in Rumania and Bulgaria'. By concentrating 'all availavle Russian forces on a long front from the Baltic to the Black Sea', it has 'menaced' the Reich. Reports received the last few days, it went on, eliminate the last remaining doubts as to the aggressive character of this Russian concentration... In addition, there are reports from England regarding the negotiation of Ambassador Cripps for closer political collaboration between England and the Soviet Union.
To sum up, the Government of the Reich declares, that the Soviet Government, contrary to the obligations it assumed,
1. has not only continued, but even intensified its attempts to undermine Germany and Europe.
2.has adopted a more and more anti-German foreign policy.
3.has concentrated all its forces in readiness at the German border. Thereby the Soviet Government has broken its treaty with Germany and is about to attack Germany from the rear in its struggle for life. The Führer has therefore ordered the German Armed Forces to oppose this threat with all the means to their disposal'.
"Please do not enter in any discussion of this communication", RIbbentrop advised his ambassador at the end. What could the shaken and disillusioned Schulenburg, who had devoted the best years of his life to improving German-Russian relations and who knew that the attack on the Soviet Union was unprovoked and without justification, say? Arriving back at the Kremlin just as dawn was breaking, he contended himself with reading the German declaration. Molotov, stunned at last,  had listened in silence to the end and then said:
"it is war. Do you believe we deserve that?"
[Thus ended he veteran ambassadors diplomatic career. Returning to Germany and forced to retire, he joined the Opposition circle led by General Beck, Gördeler, Hassel and others and for a time was marked to become Foreign Minister. of an anti-Hitler Regime. Hassel reported Schulenburg in 1943 as being willing to cross the Russian lines in order to talk with Stalin about a negotiated peace with an anti-Nazi government in Germany. Schulenburg was arrested and imprisoned after the July 1944 plot against Hitler and hanged.sic]
At the same hour of daybreak a similar scene was taking place in the Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin. All afternoon on une 21, the Soviet Ambassador, Vladinimr Dekanozov, had been telephoning the Foreign Office asking for an appointment with Ribbentrop so that he could deliver his little protest against further border violations by German planes. He was told that the German Foreign Minister was 'out of town'. Then at 2 A.M. on the 22nd he was informed that Ribbentrop would receive him at 4 A.M. at the Foreign Office. The envoy, who had been a deputy foreign commissar, a hatch-man for Stalin and the troubleshooter who had arranged the taking over of Lithuania, received, like Molotov in Moscow, the shock of his life. Dr Schmidt was present, has described the scene.:
'I had never seen Ribbentrop so exited as he was in the five minutes before Dekanozov's arrival.. He walked up and down his room like a caged animal...Dekanozov was shown in and, obviously no guessing anything was amiss, held out his hand to Ribbentrop. We sat down and... Dekanozov proceeded to put on behalf of his Government questions that need clarification. But he had hardly began before Ribbentrop, with a stony expression, interrupted, saying: 'That's not the question now'...

Vladimir Georgievich Dekanozov

Soviet statesman and one of the leaders of the Soviet State Security (GB) in the 1930s. Dekanozov was head of the NKVD foreign intelligence from December 2, 1938 to May 13, 1939, and then, from May 1939 to 1947, was assistant head of the People’s Commissariat (later Ministry) of Foreign Affairs.In late November 1940, Dekanozov was appointed Soviet Ambassador to Berlin (while remaining the Deputy People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs) – remaining in that position until the Nazi attack against the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. During 1941, he became a full member of the party’s Central Committee. It is a common wisdom in Russia that as an ambassador, Dekanozov proved unable to appraise the situation and evaluate the Nazi plans against the Soviet Union. In fact, according to recently published documents, Dekanozov DID appraise the situation and warned his immediate boss, Molotov, of the Nazi plans to attack the Soviet Union. He died 1953.

German troops in Russia, 1941"

The arrogant German Foreign Minister thereupon explained that the question was, gave the ambassador a copy of the memorandom which Schulenburg at that moment was reading out to Molotov, and informed him that German troops were at this instant taking 'military countermeasures' on the Soviet frontier. The startled Soviet envoy, says Schmidt, 'recovered his composure quickly and expressed his 'deep regret' at the developments, for which he blamed Germany. 'He rose, bowed perfunctorily and left the room without shaking hands. The Nazi-Soviet honeymoon was over. At 3:30 A.M.on June 22, 1941, a half hour before the closing diplomatic formalities in the Kremlin and the Wilhelmstrasse, the roar of Hitler's guns along hundreds of miles of front had blasted it forever.
Thee was one other diplomatic prelude to the cannonade. On the afternoon of June 21, Hitler sat down at his desk in his new underground headquarters, WolFsschanze (Wolf's Liar), near Rastenburg in a gloomy forest of East Prussia, and dictated a long letter to Mussolini . As in the preparation of all his other aggression he had not trusted his good friend and chief ally enough to let him in on his secret until the last moment. Now, at the eleventh hour, he did. His letter is the most revealing and authentic evidence we have of the reasons for his taking this fatal step, which for so long puzzled the outside world and which was to pave the way for his end and that of the third Reich. The letter, to be sure, is full of Hitler's customary lies and evasions which he tried to fob off even on his friends. But beneath them, there emerges his fundamental reasoning and his true, if mistaken, estimate of the world situation as the summer of 1941, the second of the war, officially began.
DUCE!
I am writing this letter to you at a moment when months of anxious deliberation and continuous nerve-wrecking waiting are ending in the hardest decision of my life. The situation: England has lost the war. Like a drowning person, she grasps at every straw. Nevertheless, some of her hopes are naturally not without a certain logic... The destruction of France ... has directed the glances of the British warmongers continually to the place from which they tried to start the war: to  Soviet Russia. Both countries, Soviet Russia and England, are equally interested in a Europe...rendered prostrate by a long war. Behind these two countries stands the North American Union goading them on...
Hitler next explained that with large Soviet military forces in his rear he could never assemble the strength,"particularly in the air", to make the all-out  attack on Britain which would bring her down. 'Really, all available Russian forces are at our border... If circumstances should give me cause to employ the German Air Force against England, there is danger that Russia will then begin its strategy of extortion, to which I would have to yield in silence simply from a feeling of air inferiority........'
Germany, Hitler said, would not need any Italian troops in Russia. (he was not going to share the glory of conquering Russia any more than he had shared the conquest of France). But Italy he declared, could 'give decisive aid' by strengthening its forces in North Africa and by preparing 'to march into France in case of a French violation of the treaty'. This was a fine bait for the land-hungry Duce. As for the war in the East, Duce, it will surely be difficult, But I do not entertain a second's doubt as to its great success. I hope above all, that it will then be possible for us to secure a common food-supply base in the Ukraine which will furnish us such supplied as we may need in future. [The secret buildup of the infrastructure in the Generalgouvernement (the occupied part of Poland) to support Operation Barbarossa. sic]
Then came the excuse for not tipping off his partner earlier. 'If I waited until this moment Duce, to send you this information, it is because the final decision itself will not be made until 7 o'clock tonight...Whatever may come, Duce, our situation cannot become worse as a result of this step, it can only improve... Should England nevertheless not draw any conclusion from the hard facts, then we can, with our rear secured, apply ourselves with increased strength to dispatching of our enemy.
Finally Hitler described his great feeling of relief at having finally made up is mind.....With hearty and comradely greetings, Your ADOLF HITLER' [The letter has been abbreviated and is not the entire text, sic]

'The German Axis'

         Hitler forced countries to become allies with Germany during Operation Barbarossa. When Romania and Hungary joined Germany’s list of allies, Russians accused Berlin of violating the spirit of the 1939 pact.  Hitler also was able to strengthened his allies by signing a new military alliance with Italy and Japan called the Tripartite Pact. Hitler used his allies for resources as well. Poland was used for supplies of iron, nickel, and other agronomies. Finland wanted revenge against Russia after the Red Army defeated them in 1939, so they too became allies with Germany.

Children of Japan, Germany, and Italy meet in Tokyo to celebrate the signing of the Tripartite Alliance between the three nations, on December 17, 1940. Japanese education minister Kunihiko Hashida, center, holding crossed flags, and Mayor Tomejiro Okubo of Tokyo were among the sponsors.
The second member of the Axis was Japan. Th story of the relationship between Hitler's Germany and imperial Japan involved a series of up and downs. Germany sought better relations with Japan initially for economic reasons. The relationship between Germany and Japan steadily improved as both countries were drawn closer by tension with the Soviet Union. Japan, along with Italy, signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, a treaty theoretically directed against the the Soviet Union, but in reality nothing more than a symbolic gesture. In Japan's case, tensions with the Soviet Union broke out into the open warfare along he border between Soviet controlled Mongolia and Japanese dominated Manchuria. The ensuing fighting resulted in two severe dubbing's of the Japanese by the Red Army. The Japanese, however, evaded attempts by Ribbentrop to bring Japan into a formal alliance with Germany. The Germans were also annoyed by what they regarded as unwelcome attempts by Japan to mediate between Germany and Poland. The relationship improved mainly due to the opposition to communism through the Anti-Comintern Pact and secondly the military alliance through the Tripartite Pact. Both nations had been adversaries during WW I and these agreements settled previous animosity between the nations through Yosuke Matsuoka's visit to Berlin, a German delegation was sent to Tokyo to celebrate the Tripartite Pact's signing, and through the Japanese ambassador to Germany Hiroshi Oshima among other correspondences. Gemany's declaration of war further solidified German-Japanese relations and showed Germany's solidarity with Japan and encouraged Japanese cooperation against the British.

EPILOGUE
At 3 0'clock in the morning of June 22, a bare half hour before the German troops jumped off, Ambassador von Bismarck awakened Ciano in Rome to deliver Hitler's long missive, which the Italian Foreign Minister then telephoned to Mussolini, who was resting at his summer place at Riccione. It was not the first time that the Duce had been awakened from his sleep in the middle of the night by a message from his Axis partner, and he resented it. 'Not even I disturb my servants at night', Mussolini fretted to Ciano, 'but the Germans make me jump out of bed at any hour without the least consideration'. Nevertheless, as soon as Mussolini had rubbed the sleep from his eyes he gave orders for an immediate declaration of war on the Soviet Union. He was now completely a prisoner of the Germans. He knew it and resented it. 'I hope for only one thing', he told Ciano, 'that in this war in the East the Germans lose a lot of feathers'. Still, he realised that his on future now depended wholly on German arms. The Germans would win in Russia, he was sure, but he hoped that at least they would get a bloody nose. He could not know, nor did he suspect, nor did anyone else in the West, on either side, that they would get much worse. On Sunday morning, June 22, the day Napoleon crossed the Niemen in 1812 on his way to Moscow, and exactly a year after Napoleon's country France, had capitulated at Compiegne, Adolf Hitler's armoured, mechanized and hitherto invincible Army poured across the Niemen and various other rivers and penetrated swiftly into Russia. The Red Army, despite all the warnings and warning sites, was, as General Halder noted in his diary the first day, 'tactically surprised along the entire front'. All the first bridges were captured intact. In fact, says Halder, at most places along the border the Russians were not even deployed for action and were overrun before they could organize resistance. Hundreds of Soviet planes were destroyed on the flying fields. Within a few days tens of thousands of prisoners began to pour in, whole armies were quickly encircled. It seemed like the "Feldzug in Polen"all over again.
'It is hardly too much to say', the usually cautious Halder noted in his diary on July 3 after going over the latest General Staff reports, 'that the "Feldzug" against Russia has been won in fourteen days'. In a matter of weeks, he added, it would all be over.


                                                                                                            FINAL-  HKS, May 2013

Acknowledgements
Credits;
Wikipedia
W.L. Shirer
Nicole Doherty Web Site
AP Photo
WWII Data Base
J.M. Roberts
S.Courtois                                                                                                

BARBAROSSA-HITLERS PLAN TO INVADE RUSSIA - PART 3

 BARBAROSSA-HITLERS PLAN TO INVADE RUSSIA

 Part 3

RUSSIAN COUNTER PROPOSAL
From this wearing experience with Moscow's tough bargainer and from further evidence that came a fortnight later of Stalin's increasingly rapacious  appetite, Hitler drew his final conclusions. It must be set down here that the Soviet dictator, his subsequent claims to the contrary notwithstanding, now accepted Hitler's offer to join the fascist camp, though at a stiffer price than had been offered in Berlin. On November 26, scarcely two weeks after Molotov had returned from Germany, he informed the German ambassador in Moscow that Russia was prepared to join the four-power pact, subject to the following conditions:
1. That German troops are immediately withdrawn from Finland, which ...belongs to the Soviet Union's sphere of influence...
2. That within the next few months the security of the Soviet Union in the Straits is assured by the conclusion of a mutual-assistance pact between the U.S.S.R. and Bulgaria... and by this establishment of a base for land ans naval forces by the Soviet Union within range of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles by means of a long-term lease.
3. That the area south of Batum and Baku in the general direction of the Persian Gulf is recognized as the centre of the aspiration of the Soviet Union.
4. That Japan renounce her rights to concessions for coal and oil in the northern Sakhalin. [Dispatch of Schulenburg,Nov 26.1940, NSR,pp.258-59,sic]
In all Stalin asked for five, instead of two, secret protocols embodying his new proposals and, for good measure, asked, that, should Turkey prove difficult about Russian bases controlling the Straits, the four powers take military measures against her. The proposals constituted a price higher than Hitler was willing even to consider. He tried to keep Russia out of Europe, but Stalin was demanding Finland, Bulgaria, control of the Straits and, in effect, the Arabian and the Persian oil fields, which normally supplies Europe with most of its oil. The Russians did not even mention the Indian Ocean, which the Führer had tried to fob off as the centre of "aspirations" for the U.S.S.R. "Stalin is clever and cunning", Hitler told his top military chiefs. "He demands more and more. He's a cold-blooded blackmailer. A German victory has become unbearable for Russia. Therefore: she must be brought to her knees as soon as possible".
The great cold-blooded Nazi blackmailer had met his match, and the realisation infuriated him. At the beginning of December he told Halder to bring him the Army General Staff's plan for the onslaught on the Soviet Union. On December 5 Halder and Brauchitsch dutifully brought it to him, and at the end of a four-hour conference he approved  it. Both the captured OKW War Diary and Halder's own confidential journal contain a report on this crucial meeting. The Nazi war lord stressed that the Red Army must be broken through both north and south of the Pripet Marshes, surrounded and annihilated "as in Poland". Moscow, he told Halder, "was not important". The important thing was to destroy the "life force" of Russia. Rumania and Finland were to join in the attack, but not Hungary. General Dietel's mountain division at Narvik was to be transported across northern Sweden to Finland for an attackon the Soviet Arctic region. Altogether some "120 to 130 Divisions" were allotted for the big campaign. [Sweden,which refused transit to the Allies during the Russo-Finnish War,permitted this fully armed division to pass through. Hungary of course joined in the war against Russia,sic] In its report on this conference, as in previous references to the pla to attack Russia, General's diary employs the the code name "Otto". Less than a fortnight later, on December 18, 1940, the code name by which it will go down in history was substituted. On this day Hitler crossed the Rubicon. He issued Directive No 21 it was headed:
OPERATION BARBAROSSA
It began: TOP SECRET The Führer's Headquarters December 18, 1940
The German Armed Forces must be prepared to crush Soviet Russia in a quick campaign before the end of the war against England. For this purpose the Army will have to employ all available units with the reservation that the occupied territories will have to safeguard against surprise attacks... Preparations... are to be completed by May 15, 1941. Great caution has to be exercised that the intention of an attack will not be recognized.
So the target date was mid-May of the following spring, The "general purpose" of Operation Barbarossa Hitler laid down as follows:
The mass of the Russian Army in western Russia is to be destroyed in daring operations by driving forward deep armoured wedges, and the retreat of intact, battle-ready troops  into the wide spaces of Russia is to be prevented.
The ultimate objective of the operation is to establish a defence line against Asiatic Russia from a line running from the Volga river to Archangel.

Opening phase of Operation Barbarossa.

Hitler's directive then went into considerable detail about the main lines of attack. The roles of Rumania and Finland were defined. They were to provide the jumping-off areas for the attacks on the extreme north and south flanks as well as troops to aid the German forced in these operations. Finland's position was especially important. Various Finnish-German Armies were to advance on Leningrad and Lake Ladoga area, cut the Murmansk rail line, secure Petsamo nickel mines and occupy the Russian ice-free ports on the Arctic Ocean. Much depended, Hitler admitted, on whether Sweden would permit the transit of German troops from Norway, but he correctly predicted that the Swedes would be accommodating in this. The main operations were to be divided, Hitler explained, by the Pripet Marshes. The major blow would be delivered north of the swamps with two whole army groups. One would advance up the Baltic States to Leningrad. The other, farther south, would drive through White Russia and then swing north to join the first group, thus trapping what was left of the Soviet forces trying to retreat from the Baltic. Only then, Hitler laid it down, must an offensive against Moscow be undertaken. The Russian capital, which a fortnight before had seemed "unimportant" to Hitler, now assumed more significance. "the capture of this city", he wrote, "means a decisive political and economic victory beyond the fall of the country's most important rail-road junction". And he pointed out that Moscow was not only the main communication centre of Russia but its principal producer of armaments.

Armed with heavy shovels, a hastily assembled work force of Moscow women and elderly men gouge a huge tank trap out of the earth to halt German Panzers advancing on the Russian capital. In the feverish effort to save the city, more than 100,000 citizens labored from mid-October until late November digging ditches and building other obstructions. When completed, the ditches extended more than 100 miles

A third army group would drive south of the marshes through the Ukraine toward Kiew, its principal objective being to roll up and destroy the Soviet forces there west of the Dnieper River. Farther south German-Rumanian troops would protect the flank of the main operation and advance toward Odessa and thence along the Black Sea. Thereafter the Donets basin, where 60 per cent of Soviet industry was concentrated, would be taken. Such was Hitler's grandiose plan, just before Christmas holidays of 1940, and so well prepared that no essential changes would be made in it. In order to secure secrecy, only nine copies of the directive were made, one for each of the three armed services and the rest guarded at OKW headquarters. Even the top field commanders, the directive makes clear, were to be told that the plan was merely for "precaution, in case Russia should change her previous attitude towards us". And Hitler instructed that the number of officers in the secret "be kept as small as possible. Otherwise the danger exists that our preparations will become known and the gravest political and militarily disadvantages result".
There is no evidence that the generals in the Army High Command objected to Hitler's decision to turn on the Soviet Union, whose loyal fulfilment of the pact with Germany had made possible their victories in Poland and the West. Later Halder would write derisively of "Hitler's Russian adventure" and claim the Army leaders were against it from the beginning. But there is not a word in his voluminous diary entries for December 1940 which supports him in this. Indeed, he gives the impression of being full of genuine enthusiasm for the "adventure", which he himself, as Chief of General Staff, had the main responsibility for planning. At any rate, for Hitler, the die was cast, and, though he did not know it, his ultimate fate sealed, by this decision of December 18, 1940. Relieved to haver made up his mind at last, as he later revealed, he went off to celebrate Christmas holidays with the troops and flyers along the English Channel, as far as it was possible for him to get from Russia. Out of his mind too, as far as possible, must have been any thoughts of Charles XII of Sweden and of Napoleon Bonaparte, who after so many glorious conquests not unlike his own, had met disaster in the vast depths of the Russian steppes. How could they be much on his mind? By now, as the record will shortly show, the one-time Vienna waif regarded himself as the greatest conqueror the world had ever seen. Egomania, that fatal disease of all conquerors, was taking hold.
[Although Operation Tannenbaum (English: Operation Fir Tree or Christmas Tree), known earlier as Operation Green, was a planned but cancelled invasion of Switzerland by Nazi Germany during World War II.
Even before the outbreak of war, Switzerland had every reason to expect invasion. After Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, he made overtures towards the various National Socialist-leaning organizations in German-speaking countries, particularly Austria and Switzerland.
For tactical reasons Hitler made repeated assurances before the outbreak of the Second World War that Germany would respect Swiss neutrality in the event of a military conflict in Europe. In February 1937 he announced that "at all times, whatever happens, we will respect the inviolability and neutrality of Switzerland" to the Swiss federal councillor Edmund Schulthess, reiterating this promise shortly before the German invasion of Poland. These were, however, purely political manoeuvres intended to guarantee Switzerland's passiveness. Germany planned to dispose of that country's independence after it had defeated its main enemies on the continent first. sic]

Hitler inspecting troops

MONTHS OF FRUSTRATION
And yet, after all the tumultuous victories of the spring and early summer 1940, there had been a frustrating six months for the Nazi conqueror. Not only the final triumph over Britain eluded him but importunities to deal her a mortal blow in the Mediterranean had been thrown away. Two days after Christmas Grand Admiral Raeder saw Hitler in Berlin but he had little Yuletide to offer. "The threat to Britain in the entire Mediterranean, the Near East and in North Africa", He told the Führer, "has been eliminated...The decisive action in the Mediterranean for which we had hoped therefore is no longer possible." Adolf Hitler baulked by the senility of Marshal Petain, had really missed the bus in the Mediterranean. Disaster had struck the Italian ally in Egyptian desert and now in December confronted it in the snowy mountains of Albania. These untoward happenings were also turning points in the war and in the course of history of the Third Reich. They had come about no only because of weaknesses of Germany's friends and allies, but, in part because of the Nazi warlord's incapacity to grasp the larger, intercontinental strategy that was called for and that Raeder and even Göring had urged upon him.
Twice in September 1940, on the sixth and twenty-sixth, the Grand Admiral attempted to open up new vistas in the Führer's mind now that the direct attack on England seemed out of question. For the second conference Raeder cornered Hitler alone and, without the Army and Air Forces to muddle the conversation, gave his chief a lengthy lecture on naval strategy and the importance of getting at Britain in other places than over the English Channel. The British, Raeder said, have always considered the Mediterranean the pivot of their world empire... Italy, surrounded by British power, is fast becoming the main target of attack...The Italians have not yet realised the danger when they refused our help. Germany, however, must wage war against Great Britain with all means at her disposal and without delay, before the United States is able to intervene effectively. For this reason the Mediterranean question must be cleared up during the winter months.
Cleared up how? The Admiral then got down to brass tacks: Gibraltar must be taken. The Canary Islands must be secured by the Air Force. The Suez Canal must be taken. After Suez, Raeder painted a rosy picture of what then would logically ensue: An advance from Suez through Palestine and Syria as far as Turkey if necessary. If we reach that point, Turkey will be in our power. The Russian problem will then appear in a different light... It is doubtful whether an advance against Russia from the north will be necessary. Having in his mind driven the British out of the Mediterranean and put Turkey and Russia in Germany's power, Raeder went on to complete the picture. Correctly predicting that Britain, supported by the U.S.A. and the Gaullist forces, eventually would try to get a foothold on Northwest Africa as a basis for subsequent war against the Axis, the Admiral urged that Germany and Vichy France forestall this by securing this strategically important region themselves. According to Raeder, Hitler agreed with this "general trend of thought" but added that would have to talk matters over first with Mussolini, Franco and  Pétain. This he proceeded to do, although only after much time was lost. He arranged to dee the Spanish dictator on October 23, Pétain, who was now the head of a collaborationist government at Vichy, the next day, and the Duce a few days thereafter.

Großadmiral Erich Raeder

'Erich Johann Albert Raeder was a naval leader in Germany before and during World War II. Raeder attained the highest possible naval rank—that of Großadmiral (Grand Admiral) — in 1939, becoming the first person to hold that rank since Alfred von Tirpitz. Raeder led the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) for the first half of the war; he resigned in 1943 [probably over naval tactics with Hitler,sic] and was replaced by Karl Dönitz. (whom he detested) Dönitz saw himself as Raeder's superior, and expected Raeder to be his subordinate.  He was sentenced to life in prison at the Nuremberg Trials, but was released early due to failing health. From the moment Raeder was convicted, a campaign to have him released was started by his wife, Erika who routinely made very exaggerated claims to the press about how harsh life was in Spandau prison for her husband In a 1950 interview, Erika Raeder claimed that her septuagenarian husband was forced to do brutal "hard labour" in Spandau when Raeder's job in Spandau was to work in the prison library. In another interview in 1951, Erika Raeder claimed that:"The treatment we Germans had to endure is worse than anything that happened to the Jews". Erika Raeder was on the whole portrayed favourably in the West German press, where she was depicted as a victim of Allied injustice while as a reporter put it "where does Raeder's guilt lie?" Erika Raeder's campaign to free her husband was joined by German veterans, who bombarded the American, British and French governments with demands that Raeder, who they claimed was an innocent man wrongly convicted at Nuremberg, be freed. Admiral Gottfried Hanson, head of the Verband deutscher Soldaten veterans' group in a letter in support of Raeder sent to the three western high commissioners' for Germany declared:
"As a friend of many years' standing, and certain that all ex-members of the Navy will agree with me, I venture to say that no military leader could had educated and influenced his subordinates from a higher moral and Christian level than did Raeder...both as a man and a Christian...How can genuine peace and real understanding among the nations of the Occident be brought about...if true right and justice is not applied to the Germans that are still be kept prisoners?"Erich Raeder died in Kiel on 6 November 1960, aged 84. He is buried in the Nordfriedhof (North Cemetery), Kiel.

Franco, who owes his triumph in the Spanish Civil War to the massive military aid of Italy and Germany, had, like all his fellow dictators, an in ordinate appetite for spoils, especially if they could be gained cheaply. In June, at the moment of France's fall, he had hastily informed Hitler that Spain would enter the war in return for being given most of the vast French African empire, including Morocco and western Algeria, and provided that Germany supplied Spain liberally with arms, gasoline and foodstuffs. It was to give Franco the opportunity to redeem this promise that the Führer arrived in his special train at the Franco-Spanish border town of Hendave on October 23.  But much had happened in the intervening months, Britain had stoutly held out, for one thing, and Hitler was in for an unpleasant surprise. The crafty Spaniard was not impressed by the Führer's boast that"England already is decisively beaten", nor was he satisfies with Hitler's promise to give Spain territorial compensation in French North Africa "to the extent to which it would be possible to cover France's losses from British colonies." Franco wanted the French African empire, with no strings attached. Hitler's proposal was that Spain enter the war in January 1941, but Franco pointed out the danger of such precipitate action. Hitler wanted the Spaniards to attack Gibraltar on January 10, with the help of German specialists who had taken fort of Eben Emael from the air. Franco replied, with typical Spanish pride, that Gibraltar would have to be taken by Spaniards "alone". Ans so the two dictators wrangled, for nine hours. According to Dr Schmidt, who was present here too, Franco spoke on and on in monotonous singing voice and Hitler became increasingly exasperated, once sprininging up, as he had done with Chamberlain, to exclaim that there was no point in continuing the conversation.

German leader Adolf Hitler meeting Spain's dictator General Francisco Franco on the Spanish border at Hendaye October 23,1940 to talk about Spain helping out in case of war.

Although Spanish dictator Field Marshal (Generalísimo) Francisco Franco did not enter the war on the side of Germany, he permitted volunteers to join the German Army (Wehrmacht Heer) on the clear and guaranteed condition they would exclusively fight against Bolshevism (Soviet Communism) on the Eastern Front, and not against the Western Allies or any Western European occupied populations. In this manner, he could keep Spain at peace with the Western Allies whilst simultaneously repaying Hitler for his support during the Spanish Civil War (see Condor Legion). Spanish foreign minister Ramón Serrano Súñer made the suggestion to raise a volunteer corps, and at the commencement of Operation Barbarossa, Franco sent an official offer of help to Berlin.
Hitler approved the use of Spanish volunteers on June 24, 1941. Volunteers flocked to recruiting offices in all the metropolitan areas in Spain. Cadets from the officer training school in Zaragoza volunteered in particularly large numbers. Initially, the Spanish government was prepared to send about 4,000 men, but soon understood that there were more than enough volunteers to fill an entire division: 18,104 men in all, 2,612 officers and 15,492 soldiers. Fifty percent of officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) were professional soldiers, many of them veterans of the Spanish Civil War. Many others were members of the Falange (the Spanish Fascist party). Others felt pressure to join because of past ties with the Republic or — like Luis García Berlanga, who later became a well-known cinema director — to help their relatives in Franco's prisons.
General Agustín Muñoz Grandes was assigned to lead the volunteers. Because the soldiers could not use official Spanish army uniforms, they adopted a symbolic uniform comprising the red berets of the Carlists, khaki trousers used in the Spanish Legion, and the blue shirts of the Falangists - hence the nickname "Blue Division." This uniform was used only while on leave in Spain; in the field, soldiers wore the German Army (Wehrmacht Heer) field gray uniform with a shield on the upper right sleeve bearing the word "España" and the Spanish national colours

Veterans on the funerals of Franco. On the flag, carried at right, says "Hermandad." (Brotherhood). Note: Spain was the only continental country that allowed veterans to wear German War Medals in public!

"Rather than go through that again", he later told Mussolini, in recounting hid ordeal with the Caudillo, "I would prefer to have three or four teeth yanked out", After nine hours, with time out for dinner in Hitler's special Dining car, the talks broke up late in the evening without Franco's having definitely committed himself to come into the war. Hitler left Ribbentrop behind that night to continue to parley with Serrano suñer, the Spanish Foreign Minister, and try to get the Spaniards to sign something, at least an agreement to drive the British out of Gibraltar and close them the western Mediterranean, but to no avail. "That ungrateful coward!' Ribbentrop cursed to Schmidt about Franco the next morning. "he owes us everything and now won't join us!" Hitler's meeting with Petain at Montoire the next day went off better. But this was because the ageing, defeatist Marshall, the hero of Verdun in the First World War and perpetrator of the French surrender in the Second, agreed to France's collaboration with her conqueror in one last effort to bring Briton, the late ally, to her knees. In fact, he assented to put down in writing this odious deal.
"The Avis Powers and France have an identical interest in seeing the defeat of England accomplished as soon as possible. Consequently, the French Government will support, within the limits of its ability, the measures which the Axis Power may take to this end".
In return for this treacherous act, France was to be given in the "New Europe" "the place to which she is entitled", and in Africa she was to receive from the fascist dictators compensation from the British Empire for whatever territoy she was forced to cede to others. Both parties agreed to keep the pact absolutely secret". [Although they did not learn the contents of the secret accord at Montoire, both Churchill and Roosevelt suspected the worst. The King of England sent through American channels a personal appeal to Petain asking him not to take sides against Britain. President Roosevelt's message to the Marshal was stern and toughly worded and warned him of the dire consequences of Vichy-France's betraying Britain. German documents have not been released by the British or American Governments.sic]
Despite Petain's dishonourable but vital concessions, Hitler was not satisfied. According to Dr. Schmidt, he had wanted more, nothing less than France's active participation in the war against Britain. On the long journey back to Munich the official interpreter  found the Führer disappointed and depressed with the results of his trip. He was even more so in Florence, where he arrived on the morning of October 28 to see Mussolini.

Before going to Hendaye to meet Franco, Hitlers Sonderzug (Special Train)stopped at the Montoire railway station to speak to Laval. On the way back from Hendaye to Aachen, Hitler met Petain at the same station'

They had conferred but three weeks before, on October 4, at the Brenner Pass. Hitler, as usual, had done most of the talking, giving one of his dazzling 'tours de horizon' in which was NOT included any mention that he was sending troops to Rumania, which Italy so coveted. When the Duce learned of this a few days later he was indignant.
'Hitler always faces me with a fait accompli, he fumed to Ciano. This time I am going to pay him back in his own coin. He will find out from the newspapers that I have occupied Greece. In this way the equilibrium will be re-established'. The Duce's ambition in the Balkans were as rabid as Hitler's and cut across them so far back as the middle of August the Germans had warned Rome against any adventures in Yugoslavia and Greece. "It is a complete order to halt all along the line", Ciano noted in his diary on August 17. Mussolini scrapped, for the moment anyway, his plans for further material glory in the Balkans and confirmed this in a humble letter to Hitler of August 27. But the conquest of a quick, easy conquest of Greece, which would compensate to some extent for his partner's glittering victories, proved too big a temptation for the strutting Fascist Caesar to resist, false though the prospect was. On October 22 he set the date for a surprise Italian assault on Greece for October 28 and on the same day wrote Hitler a letter (pre-dated October 19) alluding to his contemplated action but making it vague as to the exact nature and date. He feared Ciano noted that day in his diary, that the Führer might "order" him to halt. Hitler and Ribbentrop got wind of the Duce's plans while they were returning in their respective special trains from France, and at the Führer's orders the Nazi Foreign Minister stopped at the first station in Germany to telephone Ciano in Rome and urge an immediate meeting of the Axis leaders. Mussolini suggested October 28 at Florence and, when his German visitor alighted from the train on the morning of that day, greeted him, his chin up and his eyes full of glee: "Führer, we are on the march! Victorious Italian troops crossed the Greco-Albanian frontier at dawn today"!

28 October 1940 – 23 April 1941 (5 months, 3 weeks and 5 days) Southern Balkan Peninsula.Result; Greek tactical victory, strategic stalemate leading to German intervention'.

To all accounts, Mussolini greatly enjoyed this revenge on his friend for all the previous occasions when the Nazi dictator had marched into a country without previously confiding to his Italian ally. Hitler was furious. This rash act against a sturdy foe at the worst possible time of the year threatened to upset the applecart in the Balkans. The Führer, as he wrote Mussolini a little later, had sped to Florence in the hope of preventing it, but he had arrived too late. According to Schmidt, who was present, the Nazi leader managed to control his rage. Hitler went north that afternoon(Schmidt later wrote) with bitterness in his heart. He had been frustrated three times, at Hendaye, at Montoire, and now in Italy. In the lengthy winter evenings of the next few years these long, exacting journeys were a constantly recurring theme of bitter approaches against ungrateful and unreliable friends, Axis partners and "deceiving" Frenchmen.

An Italian soldier during the Greek campaign.

Nevertheless he had to do something to prosecute the war against the British, now that the invasion of Briton proved impossible. Hardly had the Führer returned to Berlin before the need to act was further impressed upon him by the fiasco of the Duce's armies in Greece. Within a week, the "victorious" Italian attack there had been turned into a rout, On November 4 Hitler called a war conference at the Chancellery in Berlin to which he summoned Brauchitsch and Halder from the Army and Keitel and Jodl from OKW. Thanks to Halders's diary and a captured copy of Jodl's report to the Navy on the conference, we know the warlord's decisions, the text of which is among the Nürnberg records. The German Navy's influence on Hitler's strategy became evident, as did the necessity for doing something about the faltering Italian ally. Halder noted the Führer's "lack of confidence" in Italian leadership. As a result it was decided NOT to send any German troops to Libya until Marshal Rodolfo Graziani's army, which in September had advanced sixty miles into Egypt to Sidi Barraani, had reached Mersa Matruh, a further seventy miles along the coast, which was not expected before Christmas, if then. In the meantime plans were made to send a few dive bombers to Egypt to attack the British fleet in Alexandria and mine the Suez Canal. As for Greece, the Italian attack there, Hitler admitted to his Generals, had been a "regrettable blunder" and unfortunately had endangered Germany's position in the Balkans. The British by occupying Crete and Lemnos had achieved air bases from which they could easily bomb the Rumanian oil fields and by sending troops to the Greek mainland threatened the whole German position in the Balkans. To counter this danger Hitler ordered the Army to prepare immediately plans to invade Greece through Bulgaria with a force of at least ten divisions which would be sent first to Rumania. "It is anticipated", he said, "that Russia will remain neutral". But is was in regard to destroying Briton's position in the western Mediterranean that most of the conference of November 4 and most of the ensuing Directive No.18 was devoted.
"Gibraltar will be taken (said the directive) and the Straits closed. The British will be prevented from gaining a foothold at another point of the Iberian peninsula or the Atlantic Islands.
View: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0E_Ewe8g2Y&feature=em-subs_digest-vrecs

                                                                                                 continued under Part 4

BARBAROSSA-HITLERS PLAN TO INVADE RUSSIA - PART 4

BARBAROSSA-HITLERS PLAN TO INVADE RUSSIA PART 2

MOLOTOV IN BERLIN
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 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 realised, 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 1st. 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 Rumanian's accepted the Axis settlement. When Mihai Manoiescu, 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 taken place, and regaining consciousness only after physicians had worked over him with camphor. [It cost King Carol his throne. On September 6 he abdicated in favour of his eighteen-year-old son, Michael, and fled with his red-haired mistress, Magda Lupescu, in a ten-car special train filled with what might be described as "loot" across Yugoslavia to Switzerland. General Ion Antonescu, chief of the fascist "Iron Guard" and a friend of Hitler, became dictator, sic.]
Ostensibly for her reasonableness but really to give Hitler a legal excuse for his further plans, Rumania received from Germany and Italy guarantee of what was left of her territory.
Light on the Führer'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 their forces. The real tasks-which must not become apparent either to the Rumanians or to our troops-will be: To protect the oil districts...To prepare for deployment from Rumanian basis of German and Rumanian forces in case war with the Soviet Russia is forced upon us'. That would take care of the southern flank, of a new front he was beginning to picture in his mind.

Antonescu and Adolf Hitler at the Führerbau in Munich (June 1941). Joachim von Ribbentrop and Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel in the background

enter picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Antonescu_execution.jpg; The execution of Marshall Ion Antonescu, former dictator of Romania (1940-1944) at the Fort Jilava prison in a suburb of Bucharest. He was executed along with three others: Mihai Antonescu (the former vice-president and minister of foreign affairs), George Alexianu (former governor of Transnistria), and General C.Z. Vasiliu (former deputy minister of interior affairs and head of the gendarmerie). June 1, 1946

The Vienna award and specially the German guarantee of Rumania's remaining territory went down badly in Moscow, which had not been consulted. When Schulenberg 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 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 consultations, and presenting Russia with "accomplished facts" which conflicted with German assurances about "questions of common interest". 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 3rd, 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 strong 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 has many interests in Rumania and concluded with a sarcastic proposal that if the article for consultation involved "certain inconveniences and restrictions" for the Reich the Soviet government was ready to amend or delete this clause of the treaty. 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. 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.

Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov signs the German-Soviet non-aggression pact in Moscow, August 23, 1939; behind him are Richard Schulze-Kossens (Ribbentrop's adjutant), Boris Shaposhnikov (General Chief of Staff of the Red Army), Joachim von Ribbentrop, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Pavlov (Soviet translator). Gustav Hilger, a German translator, stands next to Molotov. August 23, 1939'.

The chilly Soviet Foreign Commissar, whose suspicion of the Germans were now growing like flowers in June, was highly sceptical when Werner von Tippelskirch, the chargé, brought him the 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 wanted to know more about the German agreement with Finland for the transport of troops through that country, which he heard 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 be informed as to the object of the agreement, against whom it was directed, and the purposes that being served thereby. 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 inn the meantime had been signed, was not directed against the Soviet Union and solemnly declared that " there were no secret protocols nor any other secret agreements. 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 to know), Ribbentrop on October 13 got of a long letter to Stalin in an attempt to quiet Soviet uneasiness abut Germany. It is as might be expected, a fatuous and at the same time arrogant epistle, abounding in nonsense , 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 Führer could "explain personally his views regarding the future moulding 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 interest on a world-wide scale.

 'Friedrich-Werner Graf von der Schulenburg  was a German diplomat who served as the last German ambassador to the Soviet Union before Operation Barbarossa. He began his diplomatic career before World War I, serving as consul and ambassador in several countries. After the failed July 20 plot in 1944, Schulenburg was accused of being a co-conspirator.  After the failure of the attempt on Adolf Hitler's life on 20 July 1944, he was arrested and charged with high treason. On 23 October 1944, the Volksgerichtshof ("People's Court") sentenced him to death. He was hanged on 10 November 1944 at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin'.

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 this 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. Stalin replied on October 22, in a remarkable cordial tone. "Molotov admits", he wrote,"that he is under obligation to pay you a visit in Berlin. He hereby accepts your invitation. Stalin's geniality must have been only a mask. Schulenburg wired Berlin 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".
A dark, drizzling day, and Molotov arrived, his reception being extremely stiff and formal. Driving up 'Unter den Linden' to the Soviet Embassy, he looked like a plugging, provincial schoolmaster. But to have survived in the cut-throat competition of the Kremlin he must have something. The Germans talk glibly of letting have that old Russian dream, the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, while they will take the rest of the Balkans: Rumania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. [During the entire war the Russian Embassy in Berlin was considered Soviet territory by Germany, but they never entered or interfered with anything on the premises,sic]

Newspaper article from Pravda, 18 November 1940 depicting Molotov meeting German leader Adolf Hitler'

The glib talk of the Germans was accurate enough, as far as it went. Today we know much more about this strange, as it turned out, fateful meeting, thanks to the capture of the Foreign Office documents, in which one finds confidential minutes of the two-day session, all but one of them kept by the ubiquitous Dr. Schmidt. [Memoranda of the meetings of Molotov with Ribbentrop and Hitler on Nov.12-13,1940,ibid,pp. 217-54,sic]. At the first meeting between the two foreign ministers, during the forenoon of November 12, Ribbentrop was one of his most vapid and arrogant moods, but Molotov quickly saw through him and sized up what the German game was. 'England", Ribbentrop began, 'is beaten and it is only a question of time when she will finally admit defeat... The beginning of the end has now arrived for the British Empire". The British, it was true, were hoping for aid from America, 'but the entry of the United States into the war is of no consequence at all for Germany. Germany and Italy will never allow an Anglo-Saxon to land on the European Continent...This is no military problem at all...The Axis Powers are, therefore, not considering how they can win the war, but rather how rapidly they can end the war which is already won'.
This being so, Ribbentrop explained, the time had come for the four powers, Russia, Germany, Italy and Japan, to define their "spheres of interest'. The Führer, he said, had concluded that all four countries would naturally expand 'in southerly direction'. Japan had already turned south, as had Italy, while Germany, after the establishment of the "New Order" in Western Europe, would find her additional Lebensraum (Room to live) in (of all places!) "Central Africa". Ribbentrop, said he" wondered" if Russia would also not "turn to the south for the natural outlet to the open sea which was so important to her." "Which sea"? Molotov interjected icily.
This was an awkward but crucial question, as the Germans would learn during the next thirty-six hours of ceaseless conversations with this stubborn, prosaic Bolshevik. The interruption floored Ribbentrop for a moment and he could not think of an answer. Instead, he rambled on about "the great changes that would take place all over the world after the war" and gabbled that the important thing was that "both partners to the German-Russian pact had together done some good business" and "would continue to do some business". But Molotov insisted on an answer to this simple question, Ribbentrop finally replied by suggesting that "in the long run the most advantageous  access to the sea for Russia could be found in the direction of the Persian Golf and the Arabian Sea".
Molotov sat there, says Dr. Schmidt, who was present taking notes, "with an impenetrable expression". He said very little, except to the limited spheres of interest, "particularly between Germany and Russia". The wily Soviet negotiator was saving his ammunition for Hitler, whom he saw in the afternoon. For the all powerful Nazi warlord it turned out to be quite a surprising, nerve-racking, frustrating and even unique experience.

Vyacheslav Molotov, centre, the Soviet Foreign Minister was in Berlin for talks with Adolf Hitler and German Foreign Minister Joachim Ribbentrop on 12th November 1940. Later Molotov continued his talks with the German Foreign Minister, Ribbentrop. Their meeting was interrupted with an air raid on Berlin by the RAF. They moved to Ribbentrop’s private air raid shelter to continue the meeting. Allegedly Molotov was treated to a long monologue by Ribbentrop on why the British were ‘finished’, leading Molotov to comment:  "If that is so – then why are we in this shelter – and whose are those bombs that are falling?"

Hitler was just as vague as his Foreign Minister and even more grandiose. As soon as the weather improved, he began by saying, Germany would strike "the final blow against England". There was to be sure, "the problem of America". But the United States could not "endanger the freedom of other Nations before 1970 or 1980... It has no business either in Europe, in Africa or in Asia", an assertion which Molotov broke in to say he was in agreement with. But he was not in agreement with much else Hitler said. After the Nazi Leader had finished a lengthy exposition of pleasant generalities, stressing that there were no fundamental differences between the two countries in the pursuit of their respective aspirations and in their common drive towards "access to the ocean", Molotov replied that "the statement of the Führer had been of a general nature". He would now, he said, set forth the ideas of Stalin, who on his departure from Moscow had given him "exact instruction". Whereupon he hurled the book at the German dictator who, as the minutes make clear, was scarcely prepared for it.
"The questions hailed down upon Hitler", Schmidt afterwards recalled. No foreign visitor had ever spoken to him in this way in my presence". What was Germany up to in Finland? Molotov wanted to know. What was the meaning of the New Order in Europe and in Asia, and what role would the U.S.S.R> be given in it? What was the s"significance" of the Tripartite Pact? "Moreover", he continued, "there are issues to be clarified regarding Russia's Balkan and Black Sea interests with respect to Bulgaria, Rumania and Turkey". He would like, he said, to hear some answers and "explanations".
Hitler, perhaps for the first time in his life, was taken aback to answer. He proposed that they adjourn "in view of a possible air-raid alarm", promising to go into detailed discussions the next day. A showdown had been postponed but not prevented, and the next morning when Hitler and Molotov resumed their talks the Russian Commissar was relentless. To begin with, about Finland, over which the two men soon became embroiled in a bitter and caustic dispute. Molotov demanded that Germany get its troops out of Finland. Hitler denied that "Finland was occupied by German troops". they were merely being sent through Finland to Norway. But he wanted to know "whether Russia intended to go to war against Finland". According to German minutes, Molotov "answered this question somewhat evasively", and Hitler was not satisfied.

Russian Embassy, Unter den Linden, Berlin. Post War 1948

"There must be no war in the Baltic", Hitler insisted. "It would put a heavy strain on German-Russian relations", a threat which he added to a moment later by saying that such strain might bring "unforeseeable consequences". What more did the Soviet Union want in Finland, anyway? Hitler wanted to know, and his visitor answered that it wanted a " settlement on the same scale as in Bessarabia", which meant outright annextion. Hitler's reaction to this must have perturbed even the imperturbable Russian, who hastened to ask the Führer's "opinon on that". The dictator in turn was somewhat evasive, replying that he could only repeat that "there must be no war with Finland because such a conflict might have far-reaching repercussions". " A new factor has been introduced into the discussion by this position", Molotov retorted. So heated had the dispute become that Ribbentrop, who who must have become thoroughly frightened by this time, broke in to say, according to the German minutes, "that there was actually no reason at all for making an issue of the Finnish question. Perhaps it was merely a misunderstanding". Hitler took advantage of this timely intervention to quickly change the subject. Could not the Russians be tempted by the unlimited plunder soon to be available with collapse of the British Empire? "Let us turn to more important problems",he said.
After the conquest of England , 'he declared' the British Empire would be apportioned as giant world-wide estate in bankruptcy of forty million square kilometres. In this bankrupt estate there would be for Russia access to the ice-free and really open ocean. Thus far, a minority of forty-five million Englishmen had ruled six hundred million inhabitants of the British Empire. He was about to crush this minority... Under these circumstances there arose world-wide perspectives... All the countries which could possibly be interested in the bankrupt state would have to stop all controversies among themselves and concern themselves exclusively with partition of the British Empire. This applied to Germany, France, Italy, Russia and Japan.
The chilly, impassive Russian guest did not appear to be moved by such glittering "world-wide perspectives", nor was he convinced as the Germans, a point he later rubbed in, that the British Empire would soon be there for the taking. He wanted, he said, to discuss problems "closer to Europe", Turkey for instance, and Bulgaria and Rumania."The Soviet Government", he said, "is of the opion that the German guarantee of Rumania is aimed against the interest of Soviet Russia, if one may express oneself so bluntly". He had expressing himself bluntly all day, to the growing annoyance of his hosts, and now he pressed on. He demanded that Germany "revoke" this guarantee. Hitler declined. All right, Molotov persisted, in view of Moscow's interest in the Straits, what would Germany say "if Russia gave Bulgaria ...a guarantee under exactly the same conditions as Germany and Italy had given one to Rumania"?  One can almost see Hitler's dark frown. He inquired whither Bulgaria had asked for such guarantee, as Had Rumania? "He (the Führer)" the German memorandum quotes him adding, "did not know of any request by Bulgaria". At any rate, he would first have to consult Mussolini before giving the Russians a more definite answer to their question. And he added ominously that if Germany "were per chance looking foe sources of friction with Russia, she would not need the straits for that".  But the Führer, usually talkative, had no more stomach for talk with this impossible Russian. "At this point in the conversation", the German minutes, "the Führer called attention to the late hour and stated to break off the talk now, since the main issues had probably been sufficiently discussed".
That night Molotov gave a gala banquet to his hosts at the Russian Embassy on Unter den Linden. Hitler, apparently exhausted and still irritated by the afternoon's ordeal, did not put in an appearance. The British did. Press Reporters wondered as they had not appeared over Berlin, as they had every night, to remind the Soviet Commissar on his first evining in the capital, whatever the Germans told him, Britain was still in the war, and kicking. Most (the Foreign Press Reporters) had waited hopefully for the planes, but they did not come. Officials in the Wilhelmstrasse, who had feared the worst, were visibly relieved. But not for long. On the evening of November 13, the British came over early.[Churchill says the air raid was timed for this occasion. "We had heard of the conference beforehand", he later wrote, "and though not invited in the discussion did not wish to be entirely out of the proceedings".(Churchill,"Their finest hour,page 584), sic]

Molotov was born Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Skryabin (Russian: Вячеслав Михайлович Скря́бин) in the village of Kukarka (now Sovetsk in Kirov Oblast), the son of a shop clerk. He was educated at a secondary school in Kazan, and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1906, soon gravitating toward that organization's radical Bolshevik faction, headed by V. I. Lenin.The Molotov cocktail is a term coined by the Finns during the Winter War, as a generic name used for a variety of improvised incendiary weapons. During the Winter War, the Soviet air force made extensive use of incendiaries and cluster bombs against Finnish troops and fortifications. When Molotov claimed in radio broadcasts that they were not bombing, but rather delivering food to the starving Finns, the Finns started to call the air bombs Molotov bread baskets. Soon they responded by attacking advancing tanks with "Molotov cocktails" which were "a drink to go with the food". According to Montefiore the Molotov cocktail was one part of Molotov's cult of personality which he highly disliked. A collection of interviews with Molotov from 1985 was published in 1994 by Felix Chuev as Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics. Molotov died, during the rule of Mikhail Gorbachev, on 8 November 1986. He was 96 years old at the time of his death, and was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow.

Molotov's grave at Novodevichy cemetery"

While the British bombers cruised overhead in the night and anti-aircraft guns fired away ineffectively at them, the slippery Nazi Foreign Minister tried one last time to take the Russians in. Out of his pocket he pulled a draft of an agreement which, in substance, transformed the Tripartite Pact into a four-power act, with Russia as the fourth member. Molotov listened patiently while Ribbentrop read it through. Article II was the core. In it Germany and Italy, Japan and the Soviet Union undertook "to respect each other's natural spheres of influence". Any disputes concerning them would be settled "in an amicable way". The two fascist countries and Japan agreed to "recognize the present extent of possessions of the Soviet Union and will respect it". All four countries, in Article III, agreed not to support any combination "directed against one of the four powers". The agreement itself, Ribbentrop proposed, would be made public, but not, of course, its secret protocols, which he proceeded to read next. The most important one defined each other county's "territorial aspirations". Russia's was to "centre south of the national territory of the Soviet Union in the direction of the Indian Ocean".
Molotov did not rise to the bait. The treaty was obviously an attempt to divert Russia from its historic pressure westward, down the Baltic, into the Balkans and through the Straits to the Mediterranean, where inevitably would clash with the greedy designs of Germany and Italy. The U.S.S.R. was not, at least at the moment, interested in the Indian Ocean, which lay far away. What it was interested in at the moment, Molotov replied, was Europe and the Turkish Straits. "Consequently", he added, "paper agreements will not suffice for the Soviet Union, she would to insist on effective guarantees of her security".
The questions which interested the Soviet Union, he elaborated, concerned not only Turkey but Bulgaria... But the fate of Rumania and Hungary was also of interest to the U.S.S.R. and couls not be immaterial to her under any circumstances. It would further interest the Soviet Government to learn what the Axis contemplated with regard to Yugoslavia and Greece, and likewise, what Germany intended with regard to Poland...The Soviet Government was also interested in the question of Swedish neutrality...Besides, there existed the question of the passage out of the Baltic Sea...
The untiring, poker-faced Soviet Foreign Commissar left nothing out and Ribbentrop, who felt himself buried under the avalanche of the questions, for at this point Molotov said he would "appreciate it" if his guest made to answer them, protested that he was being "interrogated too closely".

Germans refuelling with train tank cars one week into Operation Barbarossa'

He could only repeat again and again, he replied weakly, that the decisive question was whether the Soviet Union was prepared and in a position to co-operate with us in the great liquidation of the British Empire. Molotov was ready with a cutting retort. Hilger duly noted in the minutes: In his reply Molotov stated that the German were assuming that the war against England had already actually been won. If therefore ,as Hitler had maintained, germany was waging a life-and-death struggle against England, he could only construe this as a meaning that Germany was fighting "for life" and England "for death". This sarcasm may have gone over the head of Ribbentrop, a man of monumental denseness, but Molotov took no chances. To the German's constant reiteration that Britain was finished, the Commissar finally replied, "If that is so, why are we in this shelter, and whose are these bombs which fall"?[Molotov's parting shot is given by Churchill, to whom it was related by Stalin later in the war. Churchill,Their Finest Hour,page 586,sic]

Continued under Part 3