Roger Moorhouse - The Devils' Alliance - Hitler's Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941

A few, it seems, took the new climate of positivity toward Germany literally and began to express admiration for the Nazis or for Hitler personally. The younger generation, for example, had a far from universally negative view of the Third Reich, with some praising Germany’s higher standard of living or applauding its persecution of the Jews. Hitler, too, was praised as charismatic, as the archetypal “strong man,” who “fears no one, recognises no one, and does as he pleases.” Indeed, NKVD and Communist Party sources even reported finding swastikas daubed on Muscovite walls.

For others, meanwhile, the disillusionment engendered by the Nazi-Soviet Pact proved contagious, spilling over into a growing distrust of their own side. Like in the West, one explanation that emerged stressed the supposed convergence and similarity between communism and Nazism that the pact appeared to symbolize. As one wit put it, Hitler and Stalin “have agreed simply that there should be no leaders of the opposition and no parliaments. Now all that is needed is for Hitler to transfer from fascism to socialism, and Stalin from socialism to fascism.” Another quip doing the rounds in Moscow that autumn had Hitler and Ribbentrop submitting applications to join the Communist Party, while Stalin considered whether to accept them.

As the Soviet Union expanded westward in concert with the Germans, that critical minority grew increasingly shrill, questioning the invasion of Finland and even extending sympathy to those in eastern Poland who had now become Soviet citizens. “There they had their own little houses, cows, horses, and land, felt themselves to be the boss,” one opinion ran. “Now they’ll go hungry.” Unsurprisingly, an internal party memorandum that winter noted the existence among the population of “unhealthy and sometimes directly anti-Soviet feelings bordering on counter-revolutionary conversations.” Clearly Stalin would not be having things all his own way.

JUST AS STALIN STRUGGLED TO TAKE HIS PEOPLE WITH HIM, SO DID Hitler. The first source of criticism was from his international allies and sympathizers. There was a widespread feeling that the Nazi regime had been morally damaged by its association with Stalin—a sentiment even expressed by the Times of London. The Portuguese, for instance, were reportedly angered by the pact and by Germany’s affection for its new partner. Hungary, too, was unimpressed, and its people evidently found it “difficult to reconcile at such short notice their professed friendship for Germany with their long-standing hatred of Bolshevism.” Only the Budapest pro-Nazi newspaper Magyarság applauded the pact as “a new world record in clever diplomacy.”

In Italy, Mussolini faced a dilemma. Although he feared the prospect of war, he was nonetheless concerned that he would be left out of any potential windfall of benefits and so was minded to give his sanction to German plans. His foreign minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, meanwhile, was more principled in his opposition, seeing in the pact with Moscow a betrayal of the very foundations of Rome’s alliance with Berlin. Ciano was right: the Nazi-Soviet Pact clearly violated the terms of the secret protocol to the Anti-Comintern Pact, which stipulated that “without mutual consent” neither signatory would conclude political treaties with the USSR. He therefore confronted Mussolini, demanding that he not go along with the Germans. In his diary, he gave a flavor of the conversation. “You, Duce,” he wrote, “cannot and must not do it. The Germans, not ourselves, have betrayed the alliance in which we have been partners, and not servants. Tear up the [Axis] pact. Throw it in Hitler’s face and Europe will recognise in you the natural leader of the anti-German crusade. Speak to the Germans as they should be spoken to.” But Ciano’s pleas fell on deaf ears. Embittered and disillusioned, he could only vent his feelings in his diary. “The Germans are treacherous and deceitful,” he wrote. “Could there ever be a more revolting scoundrel than von Ribbentrop?”

The Japanese were similarly dumbfounded, seeing in Hitler’s pact with Stalin not only a public betrayal of their agreement with Berlin and Rome but also a dramatic deterioration in Japan’s geostrategic security. If Stalin now had a friendly frontier to the west, they would argue, what was stopping him from turning toward the east and threatening Japanese possessions in Manchuria? Indeed, such was the disquiet in Tokyo that the government of Hiranuma Kiichirō, which had wrestled with the idea of an anti-Soviet alliance with Germany, collapsed in acrimony. Even the Japanese ambassador in Berlin, Hiroshi Ōshima, a longtime friend of both Germany and Ribbentrop personally, saw the pact as a betrayal and tendered his resignation.

Neither did Hitler find much succor among his ideological sympathizers. In Britain, following the invasion of Poland, nobody supported Hitler beyond the lunatic fringe of those like Unity Mitford, who shot herself in the head in Munich on the outbreak of war, and William Joyce, who washed up in Berlin as the propagandist “Lord Haw-Haw.” Even the British fascist leader Oswald Mosley stated publicly that “any Englishman who does not fight for Britain is a coward.” Fearing that the war would ruin the British Empire, Mosley had hoped that Britain could avoid involvement and so had previously adopted a pacifist, antiwar line, with the slogan, “Why cut your throat today to avoid catching a cold tomorrow?” But when war came in September 1939, he nonetheless urged his followers to “do nothing to injure our country, or to help any other power.”

Most of the pro-German British Right followed Mosley’s lead. The Link, for instance, a cultural organization established in 1937 to “promote Anglo-German friendship,” closed its doors. Although unrepentant, its pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic founder, Admiral Sir Barry Domvile, explained, “Naturally, we closed down on the outbreak of war; that was essential, the King’s enemies became our enemies.” The Right Club ostensibly followed suit: another pro-Nazi society, founded by MP Sir Archibald Ramsay, it also closed down official operations with the outbreak of war, although a number of Ramsay’s followers continued leafleting and bill-posting well into 1940.

Only in the United States did Hitler briefly find a modicum of international sympathy. There, the pro-Nazi German American Bund, which had been founded in 1936 and consisted almost exclusively of German émigrés, was unabashed in seeking to project a positive view of its homeland and cheerleading for Hitler. Although its activities peaked early in 1939 with a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York attended by some 20,000 members, the events of that autumn propelled the organization into a rapid decline. In a curious parallel with the fate of the American Communist Party, the Bund’s leader, Fritz Kuhn, was convicted on fraud charges soon after the outbreak of the war in Europe, and its national secretary was convicted of perjury the following year. With that, the organization swiftly disintegrated.

Domestically, too, Hitler faced considerable opposition. Like Stalin, he confronted the challenge of contradicting years of propaganda against, deeply ingrained prejudices toward, and fears about his new treaty partner. Nazism had emerged, in part at least, as a response to the rise of the Bolsheviks and had largely defined itself as a national counterpoint to the perceived evils of “Judeo-Bolshevism.” With anticommunism an item of faith for many Nazis, the pact was bound, at the very least, to raise a few eyebrows.

Among his inner circle, of course, Hitler could effectively defend the move through the force of his personality or by appealing to realpolitik. If Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels had any reservations about the new arrangement, he did not share them with his diary. On the day of the pact’s signing, he was as effusive in private as his minions were in public, writing that “the announcement of the Non-Aggression Pact with Moscow is a world sensation!” Others were less convinced, however. Party ideologue Alfred Rosenberg was among those strongly opposed to the new alignment. When he first heard of the pact, he recorded his fury in his diary: “The trip of our minister to Moscow; an act of moral disrespect towards our 20-year struggle, towards our Party Rallies, towards Spain. About 4 years ago, the Führer said in my presencethat he would not make a deal with Moscow, because it was impossible to forbid the German people to steal and at the same time make friends with thieves.” He finished the entry snorting with derision: “Apparently the Soviets have already booked a delegation for the Nuremberg Rally.” Rosenberg would return to this theme a few days later. Although Hitler had clearly gone to considerable lengths to persuade him of the pact’s merits, he was still uneasy. “I have the feeling,” he wrote in his diary on August 26, “that this Moscow-Pact will one day wreak vengeance on National Socialism. It is not a move made with freewill, but an act of desperation. How can we still speak of the salvation and shaping of Europe, when we have to ask the destroyer of Europe for help?”