Russia at war 1941-1945

Immediately following this Stalin speech to the young officers, there was a succession of desperate Russian attempts to "appease" the Germans in order to at least postpone the invasion, if there was to be one. On May 6 an ukase of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet appointed Stalin, until then "only" Secretary-General of the Party, President of the Council of People's Commissars, i.e. head of the Soviet Government. Molotov became

Deputy-President, whilst remaining at the same time Foreign Commissar.

The general public, not unnaturally, saw a danger signal in this appointment of Stalin as head of the government; in more normal conditions this would not have happened. One

of the men most impressed by this government change was Count Schulenburg who, in a

series of dispatches to Berlin, argued that Stalin was the most determined opponent of any conflict with Germany. But his counsels of moderation fell on deaf ears in Berlin; Hitler had decided long ago to attack Russia, regardless of what Schulenburg, an

exponent of the traditional Bismarckian Ostpolitik, thought or advised.

The next few weeks were marked by a kind of cold-footed opportunism on Stalin's part; to impress Hitler with his "friendliness" and "solidarity" he took such incongruous and gratuitous steps as closing down the embassies and legations of countries now occupied by the Germans, such as Belgium, Greece and Yugoslavia, which implied a sort of de facto, if not de jure recognition of their conquest by Germany.

[ This measure was, of course, not extended to the French "Vichy" Embassy in Moscow which had existed since 1940. The Ambassador was the erstwhile left-wing politician

Gaston Bergery, whose American wife, a former Schiaparelli model, would tell Russians how nice Paris was under the German occupation: "Les Allemands sont tellement corrects."]

For good measure, the strictest instructions were reiterated to the military authorities in the frontier areas and elsewhere on no account to shoot down any of the numerous

German reconnaissance planes flying over Soviet territory. In May 1941, the Soviet

Government went so far as to give official recognition to the short-lived pro-German and anti-British government of Rashid Ali in Irak—a country with which the Soviet Union

had not had any diplomatic relations before.

Also in May, only a few days after Stalin had become head of the government, the

Russians were puzzled and alarmed by the startling news of Hess's arrival in Britain. The news was presented in a highly confusing manner. TASS reported from Berlin on May 12

that, according to the Germans, Hess had "gone insane"; but this was not borne out by TASS dispatches from London, and the suspicion immediately arose of an Anglo-German deal—needless to say, at Russia's expense.

However, the Soviet press said very little about Hess; he was an awkward subject at a time when top priority had to be given to the development of cordial relations with Nazi Germany. Everything was done to keep the Germans happy, and considerable quantities

of oil and other materials in short supply were rushed to Germany without pressing for the delivery of industrial equipment from Germany due to Russia under the Trade

Agreement.

Whereas Schulenburg remained amicable in his talks with Molotov, the German

Government's response to Stalin's friendly economic and diplomatic gestures was

precisely nil. It seems, therefore, that it was in sheer desperation that—exactly a week before the Invasion—Stalin decided to publish that famous TASS communiqué of June

14, a document which was to figure prominently in all Soviet histories of the war written under Khrushchev as the most damning piece of evidence of Stalin's wishful thinking, shortsightedness and total lack of understanding of what was going on in Germany even at that late hour. This is the text of the famous TASS communiqué:

Even before Cripps's arrival in London and especially after he had arrived there, there have been more and more rumours of an "early war" between the Soviet Union and Germany. It is also rumoured that Germany has presented both

territorial and economic claims to the Soviet Union... All this is nothing but clumsy propaganda by forces hostile to the USSR and Germany and interested in an

extension of the war.

TASS is authorised to state: 1) Germany has not made any claims on the USSR, and