Stalin полностью

Beria did his part, imposing a ban on the taunting of Gulag prisoners as “fascists.”¹⁸⁴ Molotov, at the USSR Supreme Soviet on August 31, denounced the “shortsighted people in our country” who were “carried away by simplistic antifascist propaganda.” Still, publicly, if obliquely, he acknowledged the confusion and consternation. “People ask, with an air of innocence, how could the Soviet Union consent to improve political relations with a state of the fascist type?” he allowed. Nonetheless, he could not help gloating. “If these gentlemen have such an irresistible desire to go to war,” Molotov said of the British and the French, “well, then, let them go to war by themselves, without the Soviet Union. (Laughter and cheers.)” He added, “We have never had any equally advantageous economic agreement with Great Britain, France, or any other country.”¹⁸⁵ The Supreme Soviet “ratified” the Pact unanimously. German ambassador Schulenburg was right, however, when he reported to Berlin (September 6) that “the distrust expressed toward Germany over many years cannot be eradicated that quickly, despite the effective counter-propaganda [of late] conducted at party and factory meetings.”¹⁸⁶

Among staunch Nazis, the shock and disgust were no less severe than at the Comintern. “A moral loss of respect in the light of our now twenty-year struggle,” despaired Alfred Rosenberg, one of Hitler’s principal tutors in anti-Bolshevism and anti-Semitism, who blamed Ribbentrop for the betrayal. Hitler assured his photographer, Hoffmann—who relayed word of dismay among the Nazi faithful—that “my party members know and trust me,” but the front garden at the Brown House, the national headquarters of the Nazi party in Munich, was littered with badges and insignia thrown away by the disillusioned.¹⁸⁷ By contrast, Ernst Köstring, the German military attaché in Moscow, paid a call on the external relations department of the general staff to congratulate the Red Army on the Pact. He had not been part of the Kremlin negotiations, but now he asserted that he had proposed a Soviet-German Pact already five years earlier, and that Ribbentrop—who was getting all the credit—had doubted the possibility of success right up “until he met personally with the great figure of comrade Stalin.”¹⁸⁸

STRATEGIC CHOICES

In the West, the Pact exploded with concussive force. “All the isms,” a British foreign office spokesman soon quipped, “are now wasms.” Chamberlain indignantly wrote to his sister Hilda (August 27) of “Russian treachery.”¹⁸⁹ Admiral Drax, too, would attribute the failure of his negotiations to Soviet bad faith, accusing Moscow of seeking talks with Britain and France merely to scare up a better deal with Hitler, a rich accusation from the British side. Still, Drax was partly correct: Stalin had effectively organized an auction for a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. In the event, the British made no offer. Whatever Stalin’s preferences, Hitler presented not just the better deal, but the only deal. Daladier, known as the Bull of Vaucluse, had instructed General Doumenc to “bring us back an accord—at any price,” but whether a bold French initiative to break with democratic Britain could have produced a binding bilateral military alliance with the undemocratic Soviet Union remains unclear.¹⁹⁰ The French, in any case, remained joined at the hip to the British, and the latter were immovable.¹⁹¹

Chamberlain wanted to prevent further Nazi aggression, but, through thick and thin, he had held fast to his policy of conciliation with Hitler. It is not difficult to condemn the vain, overly self-confident, obdurate British PM.¹⁹² But Chamberlain’s goals of avoiding war and safeguarding the empire were widely shared.¹⁹³ And although Stalin had offered a deal, the despot did not exactly inspire trust. Indeed, unlike many of his critics (then and subsequently), Chamberlain understood that the Soviet Union was a terrifying menace, writing to his sister and sounding board, “I distrust [the Soviet Union’s] motives which seem to me to have little connection with our ideas of liberty.”¹⁹⁴ The PM’s worst nightmare was well founded: that if Britain invited the Soviets to help beat back Hitler, Stalin would take advantage, and Communism would end up occupying the heart of Europe.¹⁹⁵

Of course, had Chamberlain confronted Hitler before the latter’s seizure of Austria or of Czechoslovakia, when the Wehrmacht was weak, the PM would have had far less need to rely on the Red Army (as opposed to merely threatening Germany with a British-Soviet united opposition), but before those armed actions, few people understood who Hitler really was. Chamberlain contributed to but did not create what was a genuine dilemma: whether to work with Hitler’s professed desire not to dominate all Europe or to facilitate Stalin’s suspected desire, if invited, to encroach into Central Europe.