Russia

After the Munich Agreement of 1938, France and Britain decided that they must make no more concessions to Hitler’s Germany and began to entertain the possibility of co-operating with the Soviet Union in defence of Poland and Romania. Eventually military talks were held in Moscow. However, the threatened states were reluctant to allow Soviet troops to cross into their territory before hostilities actually began, which was understandable but impractical given the nature of mid-twentieth-century warfare. For their part, the Soviets were at least as worried about Japan as about Germany, and were disinclined to make sacrifices for powers which had been adamantly hostile to them until now. Irritated by the sluggish pace of negotiations, the Soviet diplomats became more and more ambivalent. Then the German government, with uncannily good timing, made an offer of attractive terms. A deal with Germany would remove the spectre of having to fight a war on two fronts. Besides, the Soviet Union had been ostracized for decades, and now a major Power was offering to treat with it on equal terms. Stalin was flattered, ³⁶ and decided it would be better to sup with the German devil than with the stand-offish French and British.

Under the secret terms of the Nazi—Soviet Pact which was then drawn up, Stalin connived at a German invasion of Poland in return for territory on his western frontier — eastern Poland as far as the river Bug, and a sphere of influence that included the Baltic states. But Stalin did not move when German forces invaded Poland on 1 August 1939. Only when it became obvious that the Poles had been decisively defeated did he order Soviet troops in, and call in the promises under the Pact.

Much as Alexander I had done with Napoleon at Tilsit in 1807, Stalin had delayed a major war by concluding a spheres-of-influence agreement with Hitler. Not only had he delayed invasion, he had thrust out the Soviet Union’s western frontiers to create a useful screen against attack, and had regained old imperial territories lost in the aftermath of the Revolution. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania became constituent republics within the Soviet Union. Finland remained independent, but after the winter war which followed it was forced to cede a strategically important area in Karelia, south of Murmansk and the northern shores of Lake Ladoga. For good measure Stalin also took the opportunity to take back Bessarabia. He did not expect to remain permanently at peace with capitalist powers — either Germany or, more particularly, Japan. But he now felt secure against any imminent attack from the West. He deceived himself.

There were intimations that Hitler might order an invasion. Army intelligence warned of the possibility in April; other disturbing rumours came through diplomatic channels. The Kremlin’s response was sluggish. Construction work was started on defensive positions, a few more units were moved into the Baltic region, but Stalin was sceptical of the warnings, suspecting that the Western Powers were trying to trick him into war with Germany. When the blow fell, on 22 June 1941, it caught him by surprise and most of the Red Army unprepared. ³⁷

The invading German armies were joined by substantial contingents of Romanian, Hungarian, Italian and Croatian formations, so that, as with Napeolon’s invasion, the operation took on the appearance of a crusade. As the crack panzer divisions rolled forward there were prospects of their being joined by a ‘Fifth Column’ of the disaffected, not least among the subject nationalities, particularly in the newly Sovietized Baltic states, in Ukraine and elsewhere.

The next four months saw a series of unmitigated military disasters for the Soviet regime. ³⁸ Enemy forces advanced on every front, Moscow was threatened, and Stalin fell out with his own Chief of Staff, Zhukov. The issue concerned high strategy. Zhukov advised the transfer of units from the Far East to stiffen the defences of Moscow. Stalin would not have it and made the ailing Shaposhnikov Chief of Staff while assuming direction of the war himself. Yet he was soon to contemplate having to abandon Russia and seeking asylum with his new-found Western ally Britain. Soviet losses were already enormous in terms of both men and material. By September Leningrad (as St Petersburg was now called) was under siege, Moscow itself was in danger, and in the south German forces were racing towards the lower Volga. Survivors of the army purges were quickly released, fed a meal or two, and pressed back into service.

This war was not like the others, and Marshal Tukhachevskii, executed nearly three years earlier, had foreseen what form it would take: