Stalin полностью

Besides Japan, the Baltic states presented another key to any Nazi-Soviet deal, which Ribbentrop understood, but his deputy, Weizsäcker, opposed any Baltic partition.⁵³ An internal German decision to renew bilateral economic negotiations with the Soviet Union, offering a 200-million-reichsmark credit for Soviet purchases in Germany, emerged on July 7, 1939, and was conveyed to Mikoyan three days later.⁵⁴ On July 9, Proskurov, Soviet military intelligence head, reported to Stalin on the basis of information from the Warsaw-based Soviet spy Kurt Welkisch (“ABC”), who had visited Berlin in June, that Kleist had reconfirmed Nazi plans to annihilate Poland, with a target date of late August or early September (Scheliha’s earlier report had it for July). Kleist noted that Hitler was set upon a “radical solution of the Polish question” regardless of the military position of France and Britain. “Neither the Führer nor Ribbentrop,” Kleist was quoted as saying, “believe that the Soviet Union would take part in Anglo-French military actions against Germany.” That conclusion was based upon the inconclusive state of Western negotiations in Moscow and “the recent behavior of Moscow toward Berlin. Moscow gave us to understand that it is ready to conduct negotiations with us, that it is utterly uninterested in a conflict with Germany, and that it is also uninterested in fighting for England and France.” Kleist added that Germany would keep its hands off the Baltic states, in deference to the Soviet Union, and that “peace-loving relations between Germany and Russia over the next two years, in the Führer’s opinion, are the prerequisite for resolving the problems of Western Europe.”⁵⁵

But Stalin further learned that, with Chamberlain’s approval, on July 18, 1939, Horace Wilson, an adviser to the PM, had met secretly with a “special assistant” to Göring, Dr. Helmuth Wohlthat. The full range of what they discussed cannot be gleaned from Wilson’s account.⁵⁶ Still, Germany’s ambassador to London, Herbert von Dirksen, informed Berlin that Wilson had stated that a nonaggression pact with Germany “would allow England to free itself from its obligations vis-à-vis Poland.”⁵⁷ On July 19, reinforcing the renewed push to cut a deal with Hitler, Chamberlain and Halifax, at a British cabinet meeting, carried the argument not to accede to Soviet demands to open military talks immediately and earnestly for a full alliance with ironclad commitments. But Britain conveyed its agreement to launch the military talks with Moscow, in parallel with the political ones. Maisky was fooled.⁵⁸ On July 20–21, as Stalin took in a physical culture parade on Red Square, the secretary of the British department of overseas trade, Robert Hudson, a scion of a soap king, met with Wohlthat, too, and, as if representing the British government, seems to have offered Hitler not just Danzig and the Polish Corridor but also a large British loan and the settlement of all of Germany’s colonial claims—if only the Führer would refrain from taking all of Poland by force.⁵⁹

“The Biggest Bribe in History,” ran the scandalous headline in the British Daily Express (July 22), which published leaks, evidently from Hudson, of Chamberlain’s back-channel efforts to negotiate with Hitler. Forty-eight hours later, Pravda carried word of the British offer to Germany, with details that were wildly inaccurate but repeated from the British press.⁶⁰

British intelligence had come to understand that “Germany’s future policy is in the keeping of a single man: a visionary, fanatic, and megalomaniac, a being of violent complexes,” who aimed for European domination. But they surmised that Hitler’s rearmament had resulted in a supposedly fragile German economy starved of resources, as well as a supposedly disaffected German populace. Therefore, British intelligence reasoned, Hitler could fight only short wars, and only in places like Poland and Ukraine, where he could not just expend but also grab resources. Halifax, however, wondered whether the limitations on Germany spotlighted by British intelligence might push “the mad dictator to insane adventures.”⁶¹ Chamberlain, for his part, believed that if Britain applied pressure, Germany’s strategic weaknesses would compel Hitler to back down from his domination schemes. After all, what government could avoid accommodating social and economic pressures at home? If he became too headstrong, Hitler might even be overthrown by “moderates.”⁶² “Hitler has concluded that we mean business and the time is not ripe for a major war,” the PM wrote to his sister Ida (July 23, 1939). “Unlike some of my critics I go further and say that the longer the war is put off the less likely it is to come at all.”⁶³