On the very day of Molotov’s arrival in Berlin, the Führer had signed the secret Directive No. 18, which read like a warning to himself not to fall into temptation to strike a bargain with Moscow again
But the question had not been settled. Lingering doubts and possible reversibility in Hitler’s momentous decisions, paradoxically, were raised precisely because subsequent directives were issued to reaffirm them. Consider, further, that after the invitation to Molotov had been sent, Hitler had had his utterly fruitless meetings with Franco and Pétain. Could Stalin fill the breach left by the failures of Spain and Vichy France to join Hitler in undercutting Britain’s Mediterranean positions? Also on November 12, Hitler signed the order for Germany’s “peripheral strategy” to fight Britain, undergirding the quest for allies in an anti-British front. Even after Molotov’s abrasive visit, moreover, Jodl, Hitler’s closest military adviser, was of the opinion that the Soviets continued to offer important value to Germany, above all in the war against Britain, which had not yet been won.311 Similar views were expressed by Admiral Raeder and even by Göring.312 Halder expected the Soviets to join the Axis and, apropos of Molotov’s visit, recorded the following in his diary (November 16): “Result: Constructive note; Russia has no intention of breaking with us. . . . As regards the Tripartite Pact it is clear that Russia wants to be a partner, not its object. Pact must be reframed!” Halder judged Hitler inclined to avoid a war with the Soviet Union, provided that Stalin did not demonstrate expansionist tendencies into Europe
That same day, Hitler told Italian foreign minister Ciano that “it is necessary to apply strong measures in order to divert Russia from the Balkans and push her southward.” Two days later, the Führer made almost the identical statement in a letter to Mussolini.315 On November 19, when the commander of the Luftwaffe mission in Romania expressly asked for instructions in the event of a German-Soviet war, Hitler had Jodl delay a reply until the arrival of the formal Soviet response to the invitation to join the Tripartite Pact.316 On November 26, Hitler told the Hungarian prime minister, Count Pál Teleki, that “Russia’s conduct is either Bolshevist or Russian nationalist, depending on the situation. . . . Nonetheless we could try to bring her into the great worldwide coalition that stretched from Yokohama to Spain,” but “divert them to the south Asiatic continent.”317 Also on November 26, however, Hitler received the Soviet reply to the invitation to join a pact of four, with its over-the-top demands. 318
SUPREME CUNNING?
In 1940, the USSR had only one third as many tractors as the United States, but twice as many as the whole of Europe. The United States had twenty-eight continuous strip mills for steel, while the Soviet Union possessed five, and all of Europe just three.319 Stalin had discontinued most new civilian construction and imposed higher assessments on collective farmers (from a calculation based on actual sown acreage to one based on the farm’s potentially cultivatable land), while delivering less machinery to farms. Soviet per capita grain production still had not reached pre-1914 levels.320 At the same time, urbanites were now awarded garden plots en masse to grow their own food. In this tight context, Stalin was nonetheless prepared, in exchange for his demands in joining the Axis, to sweeten his economic contributions, including the delivery (by May 1941) of 2.5 million tons of grain, 1 million above existing Soviet obligations.321 Stalin feared any interruption in the imports of German military technology, even though he suspected the Germans were deceiving him, and made deputy aviation commissar Yakovlev travel three times to Berlin to verify that the Soviets were getting the best Germany had. (“See to it that our people study the German planes,” Stalin told him. “Learn how to smash them.”)322
