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

2 symbolic of the unreality of the scene: Schmidt, op. cit., 442.

3 “Wonders will never cease!”: Hans Baur, Hitler’s Pilot (London: Frederick Muller, 1958), 95.

3 an “infernal abortion”: Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1939), 539.

3 “instead wreaks only havoc”: Hitler’s speech to the Nuremberg Party Congress, September 13, 1937, quoted in Max Domarus, Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations, 1932–1945 (London: Tauris, 1992), 2:941–942.

3 a man “possessed by a demon”: Pravda, No. 256 (7222), September 16, 1937, 1.

3 who would “drown in their own blood”: Working Moscow, no. 275, December 1, 1936, reporting a speech by V. M. Molotov; Working Moscow, no. 276, December 2, 1936, reporting a speech by N. S. Khrushchev. Herostratus was a character from fourth century BC Ephesus who sought fame by burning down a temple.

4 heirs of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin: Norman Davies, White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War, 1919–20 (London: Pimlico, 2003), 29.

5 shortage of living space— Lebensraum —would be rectified: Hitler, op. cit., 533, 536–537.

5 “zig-zags and roundabout ways”: V. I. Lenin, Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1978), 13:22.

6 the “most beautiful” he had ever seen: Hoffmann, op. cit., 107.

6 Only very occasionally did I see a smiling face”: Schmidt, op. cit., 443.

6 the [secret police] would be on our heels”: Baur, op. cit., 97–98.

6 “it was forbidden to take tips”: Ibid., 98–99.

7 “butter from Denmark and the rest from various sources”: Hoffmann, op. cit., 105.

7 very soon, they all duly disappeared: Baur, op. cit., 95–96.

7 first session of discussions with the Soviets: Kleist, op. cit., 56.

7 “able to deal with any situation that comes up”: Gustav Hilger and Alfred G. Meyer, The Incompatible Allies: A Memoir-History of German-Soviet Relations, 1918–1941 (New York: Macmillan, 1953), 309.

8 “a man of extraordinary calibre”: Joachim von Ribbentrop, quoted in Rudolf von Ribbentrop, Mein Vater: Joachim von Ribbentrop, Erlebnisse und Erinnerungen (Graz, AT: Ares, 2013), 225, 228.

8 a tactic calculated to intimidate his guests: This is the inference drawn by Gustav Hilger; see Hilger and Meyer, op. cit., 301.

8 behaving with “jovial friendliness”: Ibid., 301.

9 “a common Eastern policy” against the USSR: Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945 (hereafter “DGFP”), Series D, Vol. VI (London: HMSO, 1956), no. 73, 85–87.

10 “That fellow Chamberlain has spoiled my entry into Prague”: Cited in Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–1945 (London: Allen Lane, 2000), 164.

11 “Britain would come to their aid”: The text of the British Guarantee is in E. L. Woodward and R. Butler, eds., Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–1939, Third Series, (London: HMSO, 1951), 4:552. The best discussion of the subject is G. Bruce Strang, “Once More unto the Breach: Britain’s Guarantee to Poland, March 1939,” Journal of Contemporary History 31, no. 4 (1996): 721–752.

11 diplomatic equivalent of a game of “chicken”: D. C. Watt, How War Came (London: Heinemann, 1989), 185.

11 “‘I’ll brew them a devil’s potion’”: Canaris quoted in Hans-Bernd Gisevius, To the Bitter End (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947), 363. Although the English edition of Gisevius’s book translates Hitler’s curse as “a stew that they’ll choke on,” “a devil’s potion” is closer to the original German and so is retained here.

11 “should expect to burn his fingers”: Max Domarus, Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations, 1932–1945 (London: Tauris, 1997), 3:1524–1534.

11 Hermann Göring playing a key role: D. C. Watt, “The Initiation of the Negotiations Leading to the Nazi-Soviet Pact: A Historical Problem,” in Essays in Honour of E. H. Carr, edited by C. Abramsky (London: Archon Books, 1974), 164–165.

12 “When Germany’s life is at stake”: Alfred Rosenberg’s diary, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 269 ( www.ushmm.org).

12 “like a man one could do business with”: Quoted in Richard Overy, Interrogations (London: Penguin, 2001), 320.

12 cut a deal with Hitler at their expense: Adam B. Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence: Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–73 (New York: Praeger, 1974), 257–259.

12 at the expense of the “nonaggressor states”: Jane Degras, ed., Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy (New York: Octagon Books, 1978), 3:318.

13 “true face” of “the policy of non-intervention”: Ibid., 320.

13 “The USSR had wanted to change the old equilibrium”: Sir Stafford Cripps to the Foreign Office, July 16, 1940, National Archives, London (FO371/24846, f.10 N6526/30/38).

14 “must do everything to ensure that the war lasts as long as possible”: Text from Albert Weeks, Stalin’s Other War: Soviet Grand Strategy, 1939–41 (Oxford, UK: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 171–173.

14 intended to discredit the Soviet Union: See Sergej Slutsch, “Stalins ‘Kriegsszenario 1939’: Eine Rede die es nie gab,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 4 (2004): 597–635.

14 “He aimed to set Germany against France and Britain”: Sergo Beria, Beria, My Father: Inside Stalin’s Kremlin (London: Duckworth, 2001), 51.

14 “A war is on between two groups of capitalist countries”: Quoted in Ivo Banac, ed., The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 1933–1949 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 115.

15 “Today we support Germany”: Cited in Richard Raack, Stalin’s Drive to the West, 1938–1945 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), 24, with the full text of the conversation quoted at http://www.lituanus.org/1965/65_2_02_KreveMickevicius.html.

15 “to expand the borders”: Felix Chuev, ed., Molotov Remembers (Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993), 8.

16 refer to him mockingly as “Litvinov-Finkelstein”: Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2006), 97–98.

16 “ensure the pursuance of the party line”: Documents quoted in Albert Resis, 16The Fall of Litvinov: Harbinger of the German-Soviet Non-aggression Pact,” Europe-Asia Studies 52, no. 1 (2000): 34–35.

16 an attempt to elicit some compromising information: Z. Sheinis, Maksim Maksimovich Litvinov: revoliutsioner, diplomat, chelovek (Moscow, 1989), 363–364, in Aleksandr M. Nekrich, Pariahs, Partners, Predators: German-Soviet Relations, 1922–1941 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 109.

17 he did not hesitate to recommend execution: Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003), 34.

17 “I signed most—in fact almost all—the arrest lists”: Ibid., 206.

17 “one of the most inexorably stupid men”: D. C. Watt, quoted in Chuev, op. cit., xix.

17 “Jews formed an absolute majority in the leadership: Ibid., 192.

18 “fixer” during the latter’s spell as ambassador in London: Michael Bloch, Ribbentrop (London: Bantam Press, 1994), 207.

19 “In place of the idea of world revolution”: DGFP, Series D, Vol. VII (London: HMSO, 1956), No. 180, 189, Ribbentrop circular, August 22, 1939.

19 “Despite all the differences in their respective worldviews”: SSSR-Germania 1939. Dokumenty i materialy o sovetsko-germanskikh otnosheniiakh v aprele-sentiabre 1939 g. (New York, 1983), 23, quoted in Nekrich, op. cit., 115.

19 “differing philosophies do not prohibit a reasonable relationship”: DGFP, Series D, Vol. VI, op. cit., No. 56, 63.

20 “The Führer believes he’s in the position of scrounging”: Elke Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Part 1 (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1998), 7:75, entry for August 24, 1939.