Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941 полностью

Molotov, Gavrilović, and two other members of the Yugoslav delegation, with Stalin present, signed a “treaty of friendship and non-aggression” (though not an alliance) in Molotov’s Kremlin office at around 3:00 a.m. on April 6.¹³² At the improvised banquet, which lasted until 7:00 a.m., Molotov promised armaments, munitions, and planes. When Gavrilović asked Stalin if he had heard the rumors of a pending invasion of the USSR, the despot put on a show of confidence. “Let them come,” he said. “We have strong nerves.”¹³³

Soviet radio announced the treaty that morning, and Izvestiya published it later that day, with oversized photographs. But before dawn, the Luftwaffe had already begun bombing Yugoslavia (between 3,000 and 4,000 civilians would be incinerated), and Wehrmacht ground forces—retrieved from the border with the Soviet Union—had burst across the Yugoslav frontier. At 4:00 p.m. Moscow time on the 6th, a Sunday, Schulenburg finally was able to read out to Molotov an official note regarding the German military action. “It was extremely deplorable that an expansion of the war turned out to be inevitable after all,” Molotov repeated several times, according to the German account.¹³⁴ When, a bit later that night, Gavrilović called on the foreign affairs commissar to discuss the promised war matériel—including antitank guns and aircraft—Molotov observed that there “would be a considerable delay in such deliveries as the Soviet Union might agree to make, and that there were serious transport problems.”¹³⁵

Stalin had evidently expected that a Balkan war in the rough mountainous terrain, against valiant Serbs, would last several months, bogging the Germans down long enough to render impossible a spring–summer invasion of the USSR and gifting him another year to prepare Soviet defenses.¹³⁶ By April 13, however, Wehrmacht troops had already seized Belgrade.¹³⁷ The Wehrmacht, while losing fewer than 200 dead, took more than 300,000 Yugoslav soldiers and officers prisoner. The Soviets effectively abandoned Yugoslavia’s Communists, the most powerful pro-Soviet movement remaining in Europe, to their own devices.

On April 12, the dramatist Vishnevsky was at the Kremlin in a small group to see Voroshilov for a discussion of a film based on one of his plays. Voroshilov observed that “Stalin said of the war, ‘The Germans are seizing the Balkans. They act boldly. The English send forces to the Balkans as if teasing the Yugoslavs and Greeks.’” Vishnevsky recounted, “We moved on to the Hitler theme: the guy turned out to be far smarter and more serious than we supposed. A great mind, strength. Let them fault him: a maniac, a ruffian, expansionist, and so on, but in fact, a genius, strength. We listened attentively. A sober assessment of the potential enemy.” Voroshilov continued: “There are rumors, indirect so far, that Hitler will move in the direction of Ukraine and the Caucasus. Either they are trying to intimidate or, perhaps”—here Vishnevsky noted that Voroshilov took a moment to reflect—“it is a fact. But the Red Army will present difficulties for him.” Vishnevsky concluded: “Voroshilov does not doubt our strength. But once more he underscored the complete unreliability of the English.”¹³⁸

Germany had also declared war on Greece on April 6, to rescue Mussolini’s failed invasion (launched back on October 28, 1940). German troops, pouring in via Bulgaria, halted a Greek offensive, and by April 27 the swastika rose over the Acropolis. Mussolini’s army had suffered 154,172 dead, wounded, and sick, and the Greek army about 90,000 casualties. German losses for Yugoslavia and Greece combined were 2,559 killed, 5,820 wounded, and 3,169 missing. While Italy occupied the Greek mainland and the Bulgarians hastily went into Thrace, German forces occupied Athens, Thessaloniki, central Macedonia, Crete, and other Aegean islands, taking 218,000 Greek and 9,000 British prisoners.¹³⁹ In both Greece and Yugoslavia, Hitler significantly overcommitted the forces needed to secure his right flank, adding to the impression that the German campaigns could be construed as part of a still operative “peripheral strategy” against Britain in the Mediterranean. The British position was certainly further imperiled by the Balkan conquests.¹⁴⁰ But the Soviet Union’s was even more so.

CHURCHILL TO STALIN