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

Hitler was taken aback. Berezhkov claimed that the effect of this tirade on him was “like a cold shower” and that he “could not disguise his confusion.” For Schmidt, however, Hitler was “meekness and politeness itself,” and he noted with praise that the Führer did not “jump up and rush to the door” as he had been known to do during previous difficult negotiations. Rather, it seems, he calmly explained the principle behind the Tripartite Pact, stressing the importance of Soviet cooperation, and reassured Molotov that the USSR was “by no meansto be confronted with a fait accompli.” Although momentarily mollified, Molotov calmly restated his questions, pushing for more detail and demanding that matters be “more closely defined.” With that, it seems, Hitler decided that he had had enough. He looked at his watch and drew the meeting to a close, stating that discussions should be postponed “in view of a possible air raid alarm.” So, in his first day of talks in the German capital, Molotov had already endured many hours of negotiations, yet was no nearer to finding an agreement with his hosts; indeed, the two sides barely seemed to be reading from the same script.

That evening, the strains were already beginning to show. Molotov and his entourage repaired to the Bellevue Palace to inform Stalin of the day’s proceedings by telegram. Berezhkov, as part of his remit as interpreter, was obliged to type up his notes and was just about to begin dictating to a secretary when Molotov appeared in the doorway, stuttering with alarm: “What d-d-do you think you are doing? How many pages have y-y-you already transcribed?” Ripping the still-blank pages from the typewriter, Molotov admonished, “Consider yourself lucky. Can you imagine how many ears might have heard what Hitler and I spoke about one-on-one?” Fearing that the rooms of the Bellevue were bugged, the pair disappeared into Molotov’s bedroom, where they worked on the transcript in strict silence, passing notes to one another to address queries. Berezhkov knew he had had a lucky escape. People had been shot for less.

After the telegram had been sent to Moscow, Molotov was driven to the Kaiserhof Hotel, close to Hitler’s Chancellery, for a small reception hosted by Ribbentrop. Although the event was amiable enough, the political differences between the two sides were soon mirrored in other spheres. According to Molotov’s later recollections, he grilled the hapless deputy Führer, Rudolf Hess, on the structure of the Nazi Party. “Do you have a party programme?” he asked. “How could it be a party without a program?” “Do you have party rules?” he demanded, though he claimed he knew that the Nazis had neither. He went on “tripping up” Hitler’s deputy, asking if the Nazi Party had a constitution. Hess, it seems, had not expected a Soviet inquisition.

Neither was Hitler spared scrutiny. As Molotov would later recall, the Führer’s puritanical eating habits were swiftly made manifest. “The war is on,” he told Molotov, “so I don’t drink coffee now because my people don’t drink coffee either. I don’t eat meat, only vegetarian food. I don’t smoke, don’t drink liquor.” Molotov was bemused by such abstemiousness. “I looked,” he said, “and it seemed a rabbit was sitting next to me eating grass.” He was not minded to join his host in self-denial. “It goes without saying,” he boasted, “that I was abstaining from nothing.”

If Molotov felt elated by such exchanges, he was soon brought back down to earth upon his return to the Bellevue. There, at around midnight, Stalin’s response to his earlier telegram had arrived, and the Soviet leader spared his foreign minister few criticisms. He was especially angered by a passing comment that Molotov had made to Hitler that the 1939 agreement was “exhausted.” Stalin was concerned that such a formulation might lead the Germans to conclude that the nonaggression pact had fulfilled its purpose, when in fact it was important to append further treaties to that agreement. Far from being defunct, Stalin reminded his minister, the Nazi-Soviet Pact still represented the fundamental basis of Soviet-German relations.

The following morning, over breakfast at the Reich Chancellery, Goebbels got a close look at Molotov and his entourage for the first time. He would later confide his observations to his diary. The Soviet foreign minister, he wrote, “made an intelligent, astute impression, very reserved. [O]ne gets almost nothing out of him. He listens attentively, but nothing more, even with the Führer.” Essentially, he noted, Molotov was little other than “an outpost for Stalin, upon whom everything depends.” Goebbels was much less complimentary about Molotov’s entourage. “Very average,” he noted sourly of the assorted advisors, translators, and NKVD commissars, “not a single man of calibre. As if they wanted to thoroughly confirm our insights into the nature of Bolshevik ideology.” He went on: “One can’t have a sensible talk with any of them. Fear of each other and an inferiority complex are written on their faces. Even an innocuous chat is as good as impossible. The GPU [secret police] is watching. It’s terrible. In their world life is no longer worth living.” Goebbels drew his own political conclusions: “Our association with Moscow must be governed by pure expediency. The closer we get politically, the more distant we become in spirit and worldview. And rightly so.”

Despite such increasingly apparent differences, the meeting on that second day proceeded in a similar vein to that which had gone before, with both sides essentially talking past one another, but without particular rancor or controversy. Hitler kicked off the proceedings by returning to the issue that Molotov had raised the previous evening. Against Molotov’s assertion that Germany was violating the existing Nazi-Soviet agreements by stationing German troops in Finland, Hitler countered that Germany had “no political interest there” and had “lived up to the agreements” by not occupying any territory that was within the Soviet sphere of influence, which—he added testily—could not quite be said for the Russian side. Lengthy, inconclusive discussions followed, with German actions in Finland contrasted with Soviet actions in Bukovina, about which, Hitler complained, there had been “not a word in the agreements.”

When Molotov claimed that matters such as Bukovina were “irrelevant” to the wider relationship, Hitler showed a flash of irritation. “If German-Russian collaboration was to show positive results in the future,” he said, “the Soviet Government would have to understand that Germany was engaged in a life and death struggle, which she wanted to conclude successfully.” Consequently, Germany wanted to secure a number of economic and military prerequisites that “did not conflict with the agreements with Russia.” He assured Molotov, “If the Soviet Union were in a similar position,” Germany would “demonstrate a similar understanding for Russian needs.” Stressing the benefits of united German-Soviet action, Hitler stated that there was “no power on earth which could oppose the two countries” if they fought side by side.

Molotov agreed with that sentiment but, sticking doggedly to his theme, demanded a clarification of what he called the “Finnish question.” Criticizing the presence of German troops in Finland, he launched into a stinging rebuke of German actions in the region, ignoring Hitler’s protests that he had “always exerted only a moderating influence” on the Finns. Molotov pressed his case, asking for definitive recognition from Hitler that Finland lay in the Soviet sphere of influence and that Moscow had the same freedom of action in dealing with Helsinki as she had enjoyed in her dealings with the Baltic states. Hitler was evasive in response, denying any political ambitions in the region but stressing repeatedly that war in the Baltic was to be avoided at all costs. Such a war, he warned, would put “a strain on German-Russian relations with unforeseeable consequences.” Hitler then suggested that they move on to more important problems.