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Tripolarity and Hitler’s Strategy of World Conquest
1998
6. The Western and Polar Wars, 1939–1945
By 1938, Hitler had already conceived of war with Britain and France in preventive terms: war was inevitable and it was better to fight now than later. Given the increased pace of Anglo–French rearmament after Munich, Germany’s window of opportunity would eventually be shut:
| Let us assume that because of our rapid rearmament we hold a four to one advantage in strength at the present time. Since the occupation of Czechoslovakia the other side has been rearming vigorously. They need at least one and a half to two years before their production will reach its maximum yield. Only after 1940 can they begin to catch up with our relatively large headstart. If they produce only as much as we do, however, our proportional superiority will constantly diminish, for in order to maintain it we would have to go on producing four times as much. We are in no position to do so. Even if they reach only half of our production, the proportion will constantly deteriorate. Right now, on the other hand, we have new weapons in all fields, the other side obsolete types. 1 |
Germany was at the peak of its relative power (power ratio = 4.95) and the combined strength of the Axis (7.59) far exceeded that of Britain (2.6) and France (1.18), which had reached its nadir for the interwar period (see table 6.1 below). The only problem, then, was to decide on a strategy for the Western attack. On May 23, 1939, Hitler outlined the plan. He would occupy Holland and Belgium with lightning speed, and then quickly defeat France. Afterward, if London did not sue for peace, he would try to eliminate England by a final decisive blow. In the event that air strikes failed to gain London’s capitulation, the Reich Chancellor was confident that Germany could still win a long war against Britain:
Figure 6.1
| If Holland and Belgium are successfully occupied, and if France is also defeated, the fundamental conditions for a successful war against England will have been secured. England can then be blockaded from Western France at close quarters by the Air Force, while the Navy with its U&-;boats can extend the range of the blockade. When that is done, England will not be able to fight on the Continent. 2 |
On May 25, 1940, Hitler’s goal to destroy the Allied armies in the West was on the verge of fulfillment. Of the Channel ports, only Dunkirk and Ostend remained as avenues of escape for the Belgian, British, and French armies. At this point, Hitler made arguably one of his most crucial mistakes of the war. Worried (unjustifiably as it turned out) that France would succeed in forming a new front along the Somme, Hitler chose to disregard Dunkirk and the British and concentrate instead on Paris and the French. This time, Germany would not be stopped on the Somme, as von Moltke had been stopped on the Marne through excessive concern about the British on the flank and through failure to maintain the momentum of the right wing. Any troops that escaped from Dunkirk would be imprisoned on the British Isles. 3
Thus, Hitler ordered Rundstedt’s tanks and troops, which were only 15 miles from Dunkirk, to stop and actually withdraw slightly in order to hold a blocking position along the line Gravelines–St. Omer–Béthune. There they were to wait for the arrival of von Bock’s forces, which were 35 miles away, but to whom Hitler had given the task of crushing the allies. Rundstedt protested that he already held the position and strength to close the trap; but if he waited for Von Bock’s forces, the British would escape. Hitler responded that the main objective was to defeat the French Army.
Bitterly opposed to Hitler’s orders, Halder’s diary entry of May 24, 1940, records: “The left wing [Rundstedt’s forces], consisting of armor and motorised forces, which has no enemy before it, will so be stopped dead in its tracks upon direct orders from the Fuehrer! Finishing off the encircled enemy army is to be left to air force!!” 4 In their effort to join up with Rundstedt’s forces, von Bock’s troops advanced slowly (taking 48 hours) and suffered heavy losses. On May 27, Hitler finally ordered the panzer divisions to push forward. It was too late. The British, having used the three–day respite to shore up their southern flank, thwarted the German attack. On May 30, Halder noted: “ . . . bad weather has grounded our air force and now we must stand by and watch how countless thousands of the enemy are getting away to England right under our noses.” 5
Of the 400,000 troops pinned at Dunkirk some 360,000 were saved, though not without the near–total sacrifice of their equipment—only 25 of 704 tanks came back from France. In Churchill’s words, “the nucleus and structure upon which alone Britain could build her armies of the future” had been preserved. 6 More important, the initial shock of the disaster in Flanders had been quickly dissipated by the miracle at Dunkirk. Rather than feeling resigned to defeat, the British people drew encouragement from the escape of 225,000 British troops from what had appeared to be certain destruction. To many, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) had been saved by divine intervention. With God on its side, Britain would surely win the war. Hitler’s generals grumbled: “With a more powerful Navy, at the outbreak of that war, or a wheeling movement by the Army towards the Channel Ports, the end would have been different.” 7
Nevertheless, after the defeat of France, Hitler again had high hopes of negotiating an end to the war with Britain. Convinced that Britain would “come to its senses” after the French armistice, Hitler rebuffed Franco’s promise to intervene on the Axis side if Spain received considerable rewards for doing so. This was the second and most critical mistake that Hitler made—one that probably cost him the war. Germany needed Spain’s cooperation in order to occupy Gibraltar and North Africa and thereby deny the Mediterranean theater to the British and later the Americans. Acting like a revisionist leader seeking to limit the coalition to a minimum winning one, however, Hitler turned down Franco’s request for the expansion of Spanish holdings in Morocco. As Paul Kecskemeti exclaims: “He wanted to take certain territories for himself, and the problem of getting enough for Germany—while also satisfying Italy without thoroughly alienating France—seemed arduous enough without the further complication of Spanish demands. It is probable, therefore, that Hitler said no to Franco primarily because he did not think Spanish help was really necessary.” 8 Seeing no need to incur the costs of a North African campaign in order to bring Britain to terms, Hitler desperately sought to preserve a cheap victory in the West, which he believed (as did most observers at the time) Germany had already “objectively” accomplished.
But Churchill stubbornly refused to capitulate to Germany, no matter how generous the terms. Encouraged by Dunkirk and backed by U.S. material assistance, the British people chose to fight rather than surrender. London’s decision for war was eased by progress in its civil and air defense systems that greatly moderated the public’s fear of a German “knockout blow.” Hitler and Admiral Raeder felt that an “invasion should be undertaken only as a last resort to force Britain to sue for peace.” 9 In the absence of any other means to coerce Britain to give up the struggle, on July 16, 1940, Hitler, after six weeks of deliberation, reluctantly issued “War Directive No. 16”—the invasion of Britain, code–named “SEALION.” Still clinging to his dream of a world divided between Germany and England, Hitler did not want this war. In a speech given three days after the directive, he claimed that Germany had made
| determined and honest efforts to achieve friendship with the British Empire—an empire which it was never my intention to destroy or even to harm. I do realise, however, that this struggle, if it continues, can only end with the complete annihilation of one or the other of the two adversaries. Mr. Churchill may believe that this will be Germany; I know it will be Britain. . . . I can see no reason why this war must go on. I am grieved to think of the sacrifices which it will claim. 10 |
The German fleet, having suffered heavy losses during the Norwegian campaign four months earlier, 11 was woefully unprepared for war. 12 Estimating that the minimum demands of the army for SEALION required 1,722 barges, 471 tugs, 1,161 motorboats, and 155 transports, the German Naval Staff concluded: “The task allotted to the Navy is out of all proportion to its strength.” 13 Hitler was not optimistic, but he agreed with Raeder that the key to victory was air supremacy. No invasion fleet could be put to sea until the Royal Air Force (RAF) had been destroyed, giving the Luftwaffe complete air mastery. In the Battle of Britain, Hitler once again blundered. In late August, Hitler shifted the Luftwaffe attack from the RAF Fighter Command bases to London. 14 Had the Luftwaffe persisted in bombing the airfields, the already exhausted Royal Air Force might have collapsed under the strain. Seemingly unaware of this, Hitler missed an opportunity to gain the required air supremacy for the amphibious assault against Britain.
British Policy Toward France: Buckpassing or Distancing?
Historians and political scientists have wondered why Britain did so little to help France against Germany and allowed Hitler to pursue piecemeal aggression. Recent interpretations of the case argue that Britain perceived defensive advantage in military technology and thus attempted to ride free on the balancing efforts of France. In short, Britain passed the balancing buck to France. 15
I maintain instead that unlike 1914, when the relative power ratios favored the status–quo alliance (Britain, France, and Russia), 1938 saw German power (4.03) alone exceed the combined strength of the European status–quo states, Britain (2.1) and France (1.37). (If Italy and Japan are added, the equation becomes more lopsided in favor of the revisionist coalition.) In this situation (where A > B + C), the theory predicts no coalition, since B and C cannot combine to defeat A and A does not require a coalition to defeat either B or C. I will attempt to show that, on both theoretical and empirical grounds, this interpretation is superior to the more widely accepted view.
The buckpassing argument is part of a larger theory that predicts the effect of perceived offensive/defensive advantage on multipolar alliance patterns. 16 When offense is perceived to have the advantage, the theory posits, states balance aggressively and unconditionally: Once one state goes to war, its allies must follow immediately, as if on a chain gang. Conversely, when defense is perceived to have the advantage, states attempt to ride free on the balancing efforts of others: allies pass the buck. The perception of offensive advantage in 1914 and defensive advantage in 1939 is said to explain the difference between the alliance dynamics prior to the two World Wars. The logic is consistent and compelling, but does the theory successfully explain the British case? For several reasons, I think not.
First, how does the theory account for the reversal of British policy after Munich? According to Christensen and Snyder:
| One of the reasons that Chamberlain appeased Hitler at Munich was his exaggerated estimate of German strategic bombing capabilities and his fear that Britain’s own retaliatory capability would not deter attacks on British cities. After the Munich crisis, Chamberlain pushed for a reorientation of British air power expenditures from bombers to fighters. Believing these efforts to be successful, he concluded by mid–1939 that a German attack on Britain would probably fail. This allowed him to guarantee Poland with less fear of the immediate casualties that this might produce. 17 |
In Christensen and Snyder’s own words, Britain’s behavior directly contradicts their hypothesis. Perceived offensive advantage (a German knockout blow) causes Britain to buckpass, not chain–gang, while defensive advantage (faith in their air defenses) causes it to balance more aggressively, i.e., guarantee Poland and pledge to station troops on French soil.
My distancing hypothesis, by contrast, predicts Britain’s partial policy reversal. After Munich, Anglo–French rearmament began closing the gap in Germany’s military advantage and Britain saw itself and not France as the more immediate target of German aggression. 18 As a result, Britain drew closer to France and actually pledged troops to a continental defense. The Chiefs of Staff (COS) paper “The Strategic Position of France in a European War” (February 1, 1939) supports this view. While indicating that “British defenses were in the process of being strengthened,” the COS stressed that “improvements would be shown during the next two years.” 19 Taking pains to contrast the “expected brighter future with the present,” the COS concluded: “We shall be in a position to defend ourselves at home and at the same time to afford considerably more assistance at sea, in the air and on the land, than we could today.” 20 When war came, however, the strength of Britain and France did not yet equal that of Germany. Thus Britain, having accepted a limited commitment to the Continent, did not entirely reverse its distancing policy regarding France, though it might have had war not come until 1941.
Second, a central theme of the buckpassing argument is that British elites feared that higher military spending, particularly for a larger and better–equipped army, would tempt the French to reduce their own military expenditures. By passing the costs on to France, Britain could confidently believe that Germany would be balanced at minimal cost to itself.
The actual military expenditures of the Great Powers tell a different story, however. In the crucial period 1934–38, Germany increased military expenditures by 470 percent, Japan by 455 percent, the Russians by 370 percent, and Italy by 56 percent. By contrast, the British increased spending by 250 percent, and the French by a pitiful 41 percent. 21 Hence, while one can argue that Britain should have spent more on the military to keep up with its potential enemies, it is implausible that Britain refused to do so because it worried that France would spend less. As Timothy McKeown points out, “increases in [French] military spending from 1934 to 1938 were so anemic that it is difficult to imagine them doing less, even had a stronger British effort offered them a greater opportunity to free ride.” 22
Third, the buckpassing argument relies on the assumption that the defense of Britain and France constituted a collective good. None of the authors,
however, explicitly makes this case, which is particularly troubling in light of the obvious differences between British and French security requirements. Britain was threatened by an air and sea assault; France by a land invasion. Thus, if one of the allies was able to secure its borders against a German attack, it does not follow that the other’s frontiers were thereby defended.
In fact, both British and French leaders believed that Germany could launch a successful air and amphibious assault against Britain’s home territory independent of a German occupation of France. Douglas Johnson observes that beginning in 1939, “the idea began to be put about that Germany was contemplating a move against Great Britain, perhaps preceded by a move against Holland and Belgium, rather than a move against France. If that was the case then France might well be able to stand by and allow that to happen. She could then do a deal with Hitler, or Mussolini, or both.” 23
As early as November 1938, Chamberlain advanced the “British–first” hypothesis at an Anglo–French meeting of ministers. In response to Daladier’s request “for greater support from Great Britain,” particularly more motorized divisions, Chamberlain denied that Germany would strike first against France on land and actually claimed that Britain would be Germany’s first target from the air:
| The present attitude of Germany had brought before His Majesty’s Government the possibility of a quarrel between Great Britain and Germany rather than between France and Germany, and the first blow might well, therefore, be struck against Great Britain rather than France. . . . The development of aviation had seriously altered the position in Europe, to the disadvantage of Great Britain. So long as Great Britain could only be attacked by sea, her defence was easy. But London was now the most vulnerable capital in the world. Within 24 hours of warfare London might be in ruins, and most of the important industrial centres in Great Britain as well. The principal armament centres were within range of enemy aircraft. His Majesty’s Government was bound to take account of the fact that the nerve centres of Great Britain might be paralysed at the outset of war. This was a vital point, and it was their first duty to make Great Britain as safe as possible. . . . The result of their considerations of the problem had been that they had decided to give priority to anti–aircraft defences over the demands of the land forces, whenever they competed.24 |
This view is supported by Harold Nicolson’s diary entry on October 31, 1939, of a discussion he and other British politicians had with French political leaders, including Edouard Daladier and Paul Reynaud: “[The French] think that we shall suffer very much from the air and that this time it will be we and not they who are invaded.” 25 Finally, on May 9, 1940, one day before the German attack on the Low Countries and France, the Chamberlain cabinet discussed a review of the strategic situation prepared by the Chiefs of Staff. The report predicted that Germany’s “most likely course . . . would be to launch a major offensive against Britain, and the main threat to the United Kingdom was an intensive air offensive which, if successful, might culminate in an attempt at actual invasion. An enemy occupation of the Low Countries would seriously aggravate this menace.” 26
The very fact that Britain survived after France’s defeat suggests that Anglo–French security lacked the property of jointness required of a collective good. Of course, this is not to imply that there was no relationship between British and French security or that British leaders expected that the fall of France would not affect the risk of a successful German invasion of the British Isles. It is simply to say that Britain’s frontiers would have been even less secure had Britain done more to bolster France’s defenses and so less to strengthen its own.
The nonrivalry property of a collective good is also suspect in this case. Anglo–French forces assigned to defend one of the allies’ frontiers could not simultaneously be used for the defense of the other’s. As Wallace Thies observes:
| Because defensive forces generally could not be transferred quickly and easily from one ally to another, alliance members did not view the forces of their allies as substitutes for their own. The French might take comfort in the knowledge that the British would almost certainly take their side in the event of war with Germany, but this did not relieve them of the requirement to build an army as large or nearly as large as Germany’s; the British navy might rule the seas but it would be of little help in shielding France against a German attack. 27 |
And until the British had secured their own borders, they had no intention of shielding France against a German attack. To do so would be to make Britain a more inviting target than France. Thus, the British Chiefs of Staff, convinced precisely of this, predicted in their last prewar strategic appreciation (February 20, 1939) that a German attack would be concentrated against Britain rather than France because “the vulnerability of the islands to combined air and sea attack would make [Britain] a tempting target.” 28 The COS gave four reasons for expecting the initial German assault to be directed against Britain:
| France could not resist alone after the defeat of Great Britain; a full–scale attack on France would involve heavy losses which might have a serious effect on German morale; British support to France under attack was likely to prove more effective than French support to Great Britain; and lastly, by use of her air force alone against this country Germany would exploit her relatively strongest weapon with the least expenditure of life and economic resources. 29 |
Believing that it would be attacked first, Britain made every effort during the final weeks of the twilight war to hasten the production of anti–aircraft equipment, especially Bofors guns, bomber and fighter aircraft, and fully trained crews. 30 The outcome of the Battle of Britain confirms the Chiefs of Staff’s belief that, for Britain, the “crux of the matter is air superiority.” 31
Even if the British had understood how quickly France would fall, it is far from clear that they would have, could have, or should have acted otherwise. According to J. L. Richardson, “even if more adequate resources had been available, the Army would probably not have adopted the kind of strategy and equipment likely to have made a crucial difference to the campaign in France in 1940.” 32 Indeed, many British elites expressed relief over France’s defeat. Chamberlain thought the French “terrible allies” and that Britain would be “better off without them.” Britain though “alone” by the end of June, was “at any rate free of . . . the French who ha[d] been nothing but a liability” and “it would have been far better if they had been neutral from the beginning.” 33 Like Chamberlain, Churchill and Halifax thought that Britain would be better off without the French. In Sheila Lawlor’s words, both Churchill and Chamberlain did not see “French survival as necessary to British survival.” 34 Sir Alexander Cadogan, too, “had been unsympathetic to the French ‘howling for assistance (and even a ‘token’ would, in his view, be ‘so much down the drain’). It would not ‘do any good’ and he would ‘sooner cut loose and concentrate on defence of these islands . . . We should really be better off.’ . . . He hoped the British were ‘not uncovering [themselves] to help a helpless France’ and would ‘like to see the French put up a much better show’ before he would ‘risk all help to them.’ They must concentrate on their ‘own defence and the defeat of Germany, instead of dribbling away to France all that we have that is good—and losing it.’ “ 35 Eleanor Gates points out that many British policymakers “openly viewed France as a heavy burden, which it was necessary to slough off, and gave full vent to their feelings after the French defeat.” In addition to those figures already mentioned, Lord Hankey “felt that France had been ‘a debit rather than an asset in the present war’ and found it ‘almost a relief to be thrown back on the resources of the Empire and America.’ . . . Air Marshal Dowding, who had jealously guarded his fighter squadrons throughout the Battle of France, went farthest of all. At the end of this agony, he actually said to Halifax: ‘I don’t mind telling you that when I heard of the French collapse I went down on my knees and thanked God.’ “ 36
To many British elites, the rise of air power had made France and the Continent less important for British security—just as, years later, ICBMs and mutual assured destruction made the balance of power in Europe largely irrelevant for U.S. security. Changes in the Air Ministry’s programs that obviated offensive and defensive deployment of the RAF in the Low Countries bolstered this belief in the expendability of the Continent, as Michael Howard observes:
"The Royal Air Force was [in autumn 1937] developing weapons–systems which were beginning to make a foothold on the continent of Europe, from their point of view, expendable. Consciously or unconsciously this may have affected the attitude of the Air Staff to the continental commitment.” 37 Resources devoted to the RAF were “believed to increase British capability both autonomously to deter a German attack on Britain and to deal with that attack should deterrence fail.” 38 Even Churchill called Britain’s fighter squadrons: “in effect our Maginot Line” 39 —a statement in considerable contrast to Baldwin’s claim in 1934 that Britain’s frontiers lay on the Rhine.
Finally, according to the buckpassing interpretation, Britain attempted to ride free on the strength of France’s balancing efforts. By contrast, the “distancing” hypothesis posits that alliances will not form among status–quo states when their combined strength is less than the opposing revisionist state(s). According to this view, the main reason Hitler was able to pursue piecemeal aggression unopposed was the power asymmetry in his favor, not the perception of defensive advantage.
The empirical record supports the distancing hypothesis. Contrary to the buckpassing view, Chamberlain never considered relying on the efforts of other states to provide for Britain’s security. Sidney Aster comments:
| [Chamberlain] held France and its statesmen in near contempt. “She [sic] never can keep a secret for more than half an hour, nor a government for more than nine months,” he observed in January 1938. Of particular concern were French economic and industrial troubles which hindered its rearmament programmes. His attitude to the United States was equally reserved. He never neglected to pay the usual homage to the “special relationship,” but his opinion of Anglo–American relations was that “it is always best and safest to count on nothing from the Americans except words.” With regard to the Soviet Union . . . his private letters indicate that he had no faith in Soviet military capabilities and considered the Russians untrustworthy as a potential ally. . . . Consequently, Britain could only look to its own resources for protection, having no reliable allies. 40 |
Figure 6.2
Among British elites, Chamberlain was not alone in detesting France for its military weakness and political instability:
| French weakness and despair between the wars owed much to cold and sometimes callous treatment from London, and Baldwin was not exceptional when he counted as a major comfort of retirement “that he should not have to meet French statesmen any more.” Repugnance was increased when a left–wing government like Blum’s—"hazardous associates,” Garvin called them—were [sic] involved. Those like Lord Lothian and Geoffrey Dawson, editor of The Times, who admired Hitler’s strength often made no secret of their detestation for a weak and untrustworthy France, and they were even less restrained once France had allied with the Soviet Union. 41 |
Upon succeeding Baldwin as Prime Minister on May 28, 1937, Chamberlain formulated a double policy of deterrence and appeasement, which was designed to provide for Britain’s security without relying on allies:
| His over–riding principle, articulated as early as 1934 while he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, was that Britain’s best defence policy “would be the existence of a deterrent force so powerful as to render success in attack too doubtful to be worthwhile.” As he wrote on 9 February 1936, in practical terms this meant “our resources will be more profitably employed in the air, and on the sea, than in building up great armies.” Nothing, including the outbreak of war with Germany in 1939, ever changed his view on this subject. Given this strategy, his priorities were to maintain fiscal stability, providing for home and imperial defence, and absolute opposition to Britain ever again committing itself to raising a 1914–style continental army. 42 |
Seeing only weak and unreliable allies, Chamberlain reacted to the Czech crisis by “dismiss[ing] as impractical the Churchillian alternative of a ‘grand alliance’ against the dictators.” Support for Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain declared, “would simply be a pretext for going to war with Germany. . . . [and] that we could not think of unless we had a reasonable prospect of being able to beat her to her knees in a reasonable time, and of that I see no sign.” 43 In other words, Britain could not join or put together a winning coalition, and so, as the theory predicts, no coalition formed. Rejecting the military option, Chamberlain instead redoubled his efforts to mediate possible areas of conflict with Germany—at least until the British rearmament effort had begun to pay off.
This “distancing” interpretation of British foreign policy also accords with Ribbentrop’s assessment of the possibility of Germany reaching a settlement with Britain in 1938:
| . . . the conclusion must be drawn that a war between Germany and England on account of France can only be prevented if France knows from the very beginning that England’s forces would not suffice to guarantee the common victory. Such a situation could force England and thereby France to accept many things which a strong Anglo–French combination would never tolerate. . . . If England with her alliances is stronger than Germany and her friends, she will in my opinion fight sooner or later. Should Germany, however, be so successful in her alliance policy that a German coalition would be stronger than its British counterpart, or perhaps as strong, it is quite possible that England would prefer to try for a settlement after all. 44 |
Arguing that Britain was behind in its rearmament program and was therefore playing for time, Ribbentrop concluded that Germany should pursue “[q]uiet but determined establishment of alliances against England, i.e., in practice, strengthening our friendship with Italy and Japan and in addition winning over all countries whose interests conform directly or indirectly with ours.” 45
Ribbentrop’s analysis proved essentially correct. Painfully aware of the imbalance of power between the British and German coalitions, Chamberlain continued to try to conciliate Hitler even after German troops occupied Prague on March 15, 1939. On March 19, he wrote “I never accept the view that war is inevitable.” 46 A week later he expanded on his view: “I see nothing for us to do unless we are prepared ourselves to hand Germany an ultimatum. We are not strong enough ourselves and we cannot command sufficient strength elsewhere to present Germany with an overwhelming force. Our ultimatum would therefore mean war and I would never be responsible for presenting it.” 47
As discussed, the German move did provoke a limited British commitment to the European continent. However, in light of the woeful state of the Territorial Army, Britain’s pledge could only be a symbolic gesture designed to encourage France to fight and not to remain neutral or, worse, side with the enemy if Germany attacked Britain directly. 48 Barely equipped for survival, Britain was in no position to help France.
In sum, during the 1930s the combined strength of Britain and France was less than that of Germany, and so no coalition formed. Instead, Britain distanced itself from France and adopted a dual policy of deterrence and appeasement. As the rearmament programs of Britain and France began closing the gap in Germany’s military lead, Britain drew closer to France and began to stand up to Hitler. That the gap was never entirely closed explains Britain’s not doing more to aid France.
The World Triangle Against Britain
After the Luftwaffe failed to deliver the knockout blow against Britain, Hitler realized that, as in 1914, what had been envisioned as a short campaign in the West had become a grinding war of attrition. To prevail, Germany would have to spend several years reconfiguring its forces for sea–based operations. Meanwhile, Hitler’s primary goal, victory over the USSR, would be delayed for the duration, perhaps for a decade or more. In addition, a slugfest with Britain greatly increased the risk that the United States would actively enter the war.
Seeing little to gain and much to lose, Hitler cancelled Operation SEALION. He never intended to destroy Britain, only “to make Britain compliant to the aims of his Programme by striking military blows against her.” 49 Having abandoned plans to invade England, Hitler realized that the war would continue well into 1941. Germany now required a more–lasting security in the East. This could be accomplished in one of two ways: either by drawing the Soviet Union into an anti–British coalition (and then smashing the USSR in 1942) or by attacking the USSR immediately. The latter option called for a two–front war.
For its part, The High Command of the Armed Forces had been urging Hitler to adopt Ribbentrop’s concept of a massive continental coalition composed of Germany, Russia, Japan, Italy, Spain, and France, whose purpose would be the destruction and partition of the British Empire. The formation of this anti–British bloc stretching from Madrid to Tokyo called for a diplomatic effort of herculean proportions on Hitler’s part. All of the revisionist states would have to agree, first of all, on participating in the onslaught of the British Empire, and secondly, on the division of the spoils, that is, who would get what piece of the former British Empire. To achieve this task, Ribbentrop had planned to designate each country its own mutually exclusive sphere of influence. All of the allies would be permitted southward expansion: Italy into North Africa, Japan into the Pacific, Germany into Central Africa, and the Soviet Union toward India. Though he remained extremely skeptical, Hitler went along with the project, which lasted from September to November of 1940.
The peripheral strategy against Britain commenced with the signing of the Tripartite Pact on September 27, 1940. For years, Ribbentrop had been urging the creation of a “world triangle” against the British Empire, consisting of Japan, Italy, and Germany. This had been the aim of Germany and especially of Italy in concluding the Anti–Comintern agreement of November 1937. But at that time, Japan, fearing that it might be drawn into a war with the United States, insisted that its only target be the Soviet Union.
For Japan, Hitler’s military successes in the summer of 1940 changed everything. Europe’s lost colonies in the Far East were there for the taking, if only Japan came to terms with Hitler, who, as conqueror of the Netherlands, France, and possibly Britain, could no longer be ignored. Thus, as soon as the Konoye–Matsuoka Cabinet was formed in July 1940, Japan let it be known that it was now anxious for a spheres–of–interest agreement with Germany based on a military pact with the Axis powers. An alliance with Italy and Germany, Matsuoka believed, would also provide Japan with insurance against a Soviet attack. Hitler and Mussolini so desperately wanted a military alliance with Japan that, “in return for recognition of Japan’s far–reaching aspirations and the good offices of Germany in effecting better relations with Soviet Russia, Japan was asked only to sign up with Germany and Italy and to take a ‘strong and determined attitude’ toward the United States.” 50
The signatories to the Tripartite Pact pledged to “cooperate with one another in regard to their efforts in Greater East Asia and the regions of Europe respectively” and “to establish and maintain a new order of things.” 51 The crux of the agreement resided in Article 3, whereby the three Axis powers agreed “to assist one another with all political, economic and military means when one of the three contracting parties is attacked by a power at present not involved in the European war or in the Sino–Japanese conflict.” 52 Hitler could not have been more pleased. The Germans had already persuaded the Italians to accept an offensive and defensive alliance in May of 1939; but Tokyo, despite intense efforts by Germany, had balked at a similar proposal. Finally, the Wehrmacht’s success on the battlefield had convinced the Japanese to climb aboard the Axis bandwagon. With regard to the military requirements of Hitler’s grand strategy, the navies of Japan and Italy would help to make up for Germany’s deficiency in naval armaments, which it had not yet remedied and needed for war with Britain and the United States. 53 The alliance, Hitler argued, would not only win Britain over to his policy by the threat of force but also prevent the United States from intervening in the European conflict by threatening it with a two–ocean war. 54 In his diary entry of September 27, 1940, General Halder described the pact as “an undoubted political success and a warning to America.” 55
Molotov Visits Berlin, November 1940
In the month following the Tripartite Pact, Ribbentrop’s “continental bloc” strategy misfired badly. Hitler was unable to devise a formula for the division of spoils that would satisfy Mussolini, Pétain, and Franco. Nevertheless, Hitler grudgingly agreed to give the peripheral strategy one last try. The occasion would be the visit by the Soviet Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, to Berlin from November 11 through November 13, 1940. 56 If the talks failed, Hitler would be confirmed in his belief that war with Russia, not Britain, was the solution to Germany’s problems. If the meeting proved successful, however, Germany stood to gain two advantages in its relations with the Soviet Union, as Martin Van Creveld points out: “By offering the Russians the prospect of expansion at the expense of Britain in the direction of the Persian Gulf and India, Hitler and Ribbentrop hoped not only to hurt the British but to ‘divert’ the Russians from their traditional European aims and relieve Germany of their pressure.” 57 Indeed, the crucial aspect of the continental bloc strategy from Germany’s perspective was to divert Russian expansion southward, away from Eastern Europe.
From Moscow’s perspective, Molotov was sent to Berlin to sound out Hitler’s intentions with regard to Russia and to begin negotiations for a new Nazi–Soviet pact on Soviet terms. Specifically, Molotov and Stalin wanted the withdrawal of German troops from Finland; placement of Bulgaria in the Soviet sphere of influence; and Soviet control of the Straits.
The first issue Hitler raised with Molotov was Finland. The Führer pointed out that “Germany did not desire any war in the Baltic Sea and that she urgently needed Finland as a supplier of nickel and lumber.” Consequently, “the decisive question for Germany was whether Russia had the intention of going to war against Finland.” According to the record, Molotov “answered this question somewhat evasively.” Hitler responded by repeatedly warning “that there must be no war with Finland, because such a conflict might have far–reaching repercussions.” Specifically, Hitler worried that Germany’s vital raw material shipments from the Baltic would be cut off and that “Allied bases might be established in Scandinavia.” 58 When Molotov replied that he could not understand the sudden danger to Germany of a second Baltic War, especially now—after Germany’s victories in the West, Hitler revealed a surprising concern:
| . . . the Führer . . . considered it entirely possible that the United States would get a foothold in those regions in case of participation by Sweden in a possible war. He (the Führer) wanted to end the European war, and he could only repeat that in view of the uncertain attitude of Sweden a new war in the Baltic would mean a strain on German–Russian relations with unforeseeable consequences. Would Russia declare war on the United States, in case the latter should intervene in connection with the Finnish conflict? |
When Molotov replied that this question was not of present interest, the Führer replied that it would be too late for a decision when it became so. When Molotov then declared that he did not see any indication of the outbreak of war in the Baltic, the Führer replied that in that case everything would be in order anyway and the whole discussion was really of a purely theoretical nature. 59
Putting this issue aside, Hitler then outlined the projected anti–British bloc, saying that:
| he wanted to create a world coalition of interested powers which would consist of Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Soviet Russia, and Japan and would to a certain degree represent a coalition—extending from North Africa to Eastern Asia—of all those who wanted to be satisfied out of the British bankrupt estate. To this end all internal controversies between the members of this coalition must be removed or at least neutralized. For this purpose the settlement of a whole series of questions was necessary. . . . It was a matter of determining in bold outlines the boundaries for the future activity of peoples and of assigning to nations large areas where they could find an ample field of activity for fifty to a hundred years. 60 |
As Ribbentrop put it to Molotov, “the decisive question was whether the Soviet Union was prepared . . . to cooperate . . . in the great liquidation of the British Empire.” 61
While agreeing in principle to the idea of a continental bloc, Molotov made it clear that Hitler would not succeed in his attempt to delimit the Soviet sphere of influence to Asia. To the contrary, Molotov repeatedly raised precisely those European questions that had been responsible for German–Soviet tensions in recent months: Poland, Finland, Romania, and particularly Bulgaria. With regard to the Balkans, Molotov issued several complaints and proposals for rectifying the situation:
As a Black Sea power, the Soviet Union was tied up with a number of countries. In this connection there was still an unsettled question that was just now being discussed by the Danube Commission. Moreover, the Soviet Union had expressed to Romania its dissatisfaction that the latter had accepted the guarantee of Germany and Italy without consultation with Russia. The Soviet Government had already explained its position twice, and it was of the opinion that the guarantee was aimed against the interests of Soviet Russia. Therefore, the question of revoking this guarantee came up. To this the Führer had declared that for a certain time it was necessary and its removal therefore impossible.
Molotov then came to speak of the Straits which, referring to the Crimean war and events of the years 1918–19, he called England’s historic gateway for attack on the Soviet Union. The situation was all the more menacing to Russia, as the British had now gained a foothold in Greece. For reasons of security the relations between Soviet Russia and other Black Sea powers were of great importance. In this connection Molotov asked the Führer what Germany would say if Russia gave Bulgaria, the independent country located closest to the Straits, a guarantee under exactly the same conditions as Germany and Italy had given one to Romania. 62
Hitler replied that the German–Italian guarantee to Romania “had been the only possibility of inducing Romania to cede Bessarabia to Russia without a fight. Besides, because of her oil wells, Romania represented an absolute German–Italian interest, and lastly, the Romanian Government itself had asked that Germany assume the air and ground protection of the oil region, since it did not feel entirely secure from attacks by the English.” Emphasizing this last point—that Romania had requested the guarantee—Hitler concluded that, if the Russian guarantee to Bulgaria “was to be given under the same conditions as the German–Italian guarantee to Romania, the question would first arise whether Bulgaria had asked for a guarantee. He [the Führer] did not know of any request by Bulgaria.” 63 In any event, Hitler would have to discuss the matter with Mussolini before anything concrete could be laid down.
On the final day of meetings, Molotov made it painfully clear to Hitler and Ribbentrop that Soviet interests could not be diverted to Asia but would continue to extend throughout Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Baltic, and the Mediterranean. 64
Two days after Molotov’s departure from Berlin, Hitler told his closest advisors that “the talks have shown the direction in which the Russian plans are moving. Molotov has let the cat out of the sack. They did not even try to hide their plans. To allow the Russians into Europe, would mean the end of central Europe. The Balkans and Finland are endangered flanks.” 65
In considering the prudence of Hitler’s decision to attack the Soviet Union, it is worth noting that Germany’s strength relative to the other great powers was at its high water mark during the period 1940–41. DePorte correctly points out:
| By 1940 Germany had become so powerful that it would dominate Europe unless prevented by a coalition of Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States. It took the power of all three to defeat the Third Reich. Britain alone, even with American support short of intervention, could at best have maintained control of its home island and the lanes of communication to its overseas dependencies and friends. The Soviet Union, even with Britain still in the war and with help from the United States, could at best have maintained a core of the Russian state, Brest–Litovsk style, at the farthest eastern end of Europe. Britain and Russia together could not have defeated Germany or disrupted its European empire. As in 1918 only American entry into the war could tip the balance from German victory in Europe to German defeat. 66 |
Confronted by the prospect of a war of attrition with Britain that risked bringing the United States into the conflict prematurely, Hitler decided to turn Germany’s attention to the defeat of the Soviet Union. With Russia out of the war, Britain would lose its last potential Continental ally and would, according to Hitler, sue for peace. More important, in control of the European Continent, Germany could then wage the final hegemonic war against North America.
Japan Proves a Reluctant Partner
Despite Hitler’s efforts not to disrupt American neutrality until Russia had been defeated, by January 1941, the U.S. appeared more likely to enter the war. To ensure that the United States, if it chose active belligerence, stayed out of the war in Europe and the Atlantic, Hitler turned to Japan and the Far East theater. In Hitler’s view, any steps taken by Japan against British possessions in the Far East might force Britain to come to terms with Germany, and thereby keep America on the sidelines. Hitler also sought to instigate U.S.–Japanese conflict to divert American energies from the Atlantic theater to the Pacific.
With preparations for the campaign against the USSR already set in motion, Hitler conceived of Japan’s role as holding Britain in check and keeping the United States neutral. This, he believed, would prevent an Anglo–American front from opening in Europe and allow Germany to attack the Soviet Union without complicating distractions arising in the West. Within the framework of Japan as a German “dagger” against America, Hitler urged Tokyo to attack Singapore, regardless of the consequences. The German leadership mistakenly believed, as did the military analysts in the U.S. and Britain, that a Japanese attack on Singapore would finish Britain off and allow the transfer of German troops to the eastern front for the planned attack on the Soviet Union, “Operation Barbarossa,” scheduled for mid–May 1941. An attack on Singapore would also serve as a litmus test of Japanese loyalty to Germany, which was in question because of Tokyo’s ambiguous commitment to the Tripartite Pact. Fearing abandonment, Hitler worried that the Japanese intended to reach an accommodation with Roosevelt, leaving Germany alone to face the United States.
On March 5, 1941, Hitler issued a directive outlining his aims for Japanese–German cooperation in the Far East:
| (a) the quick defeat of England is to be designated as the common aim in the conduct of the war, thereby keeping the U.S.A. out of the war. . . . (b)The SEIZURE of SINGAPORE, England’s key position in the Far East, would signify a decisive success for the combined warfare of the three Powers. 67 |
The directive also stated that “No hint of the Barbarossa Operation must be given to the Japanese,” 68 who would certainly not attack southward if they knew that the Soviet Union would soon be in the opposing camp. Instead, Ribbentrop told the worried Japanese Foreign Minister, Matsuoka, that “if Russia should ever attack Japan, Germany would strike immediately. He could give this firm assurance . . . so that Japan could push southward toward Singapore without fear of complications with Russia. . . . [If] Germany should become involved in a conflict with Russia, the Soviet Union would be finished in a few months.” 69
For his part, Admiral Raeder, Commander–in–Chief of the German Naval Staff, argued: “Japan wants to avoid war with the U.S.A. if possible, and she could do this if she would take Singapore by a decisive attack as soon as possible.” 70 In October 1940, General von Boetticher reported from the German Embassy in Washington that certain circles within the U.S. military considered “the fate of the [British] Empire to be sealed;” therefore “American advantage lay with an Axis victory,” for “you can’t go to bed with a corpse.” 71 On April 1, 1941, Hitler met the Japanese Foreign Minister, Matsuoka, in Berlin in a final effort to persuade Japan to attack Singapore immediately. The Führer described the overall situation of the war:
| [In] scarcely a year and a half 60 Polish divisions had been eliminated with the occupation of Poland, 6 Norwegian divisions with the occupation of Norway, 18 Dutch divisions with the occupation of Holland, and 22 Belgian divisions with the occupation of Belgium, and of the 138 French divisions there remained only 8 weak brigades. All of the English units had been routed and driven out. These were losses which could not be recouped and the position of England was no longer recoverable. Thus the war had been decided, and the Axis Powers had become the dominant combination. 72 |
Continuing, Hitler asserted that Britain had only two hopes, America and Russia. According to the Reich’s calculations, American aid “could appear in tangible form only in the year 1942 at the earliest, but even then the extent of such help would bear no relation to the increased productive capacity of Germany.” 73 Furthermore, Hitler argued, “If [the U.S.] helped England, she could not arm herself. If she abandoned England, the latter would be destroyed and America would then find herself confronting the Powers of the Tripartite Pact alone.” 74 The key was to prevent a U.S.–Soviet rapprochement. Hitler alluded to this possibility:
| Both the British Empire and the United States hoped that in spite of everything they would be able to bring Russia in on the side of England. They believed that they could attain this goal, if not this year, perhaps next, and thus produce a new balance of power in Europe. In this connection it should be noted that Germany had concluded well–known treaties with Russia, but much weightier than this was the fact that Germany had at her disposal in case of necessity some 160 to 180 divisions for defense against Russia. She therefore did not fear such a possibility in the slightest and would not hesitate a second to take the necessary steps in case of danger. 75 |
With Germany keeping Russia busy on its western front and the United States in the initial stages of rearmament, Hitler concluded that, “Japan was the strongest power in East Asia.” Surely they recognized that such a propitious “moment would never return” for Japan to realize her own Lebensraum . 76
The Japanese were unconvinced by Hitler’s arguments.Fearing entrapment, they refused to risk war with Britain—a war that would certainly provoke the U.S. against Japan as well. For now, Tokyo regarded Hitler’s scheme as nothing more than a transparent attempt to maneuver Japan into taking the full force of the American blow. And so, just as Ribbentrop’s periphery strategy against Britain proved a complete failure, the Three Power Pact had thus far failed to make Japan compliant to Hitler’s wishes.
War Among the Poles, 1941–1945
Having shelved the “periphery” strategy against Britain, Hitler concluded that his cherished Eastern campaign could no longer be delayed. The defeat of the USSR, Hitler thought, would not only prevent the danger of a American–Soviet coalition but would also compel Britain to give up the fight: “Britain’s aim for some time to come will be to set Russia’s strength in motion against us. If the U.S.A. and Russia should enter the war against Germany the situation would become very complicated. Hence any possibility for such a threat to develop must be eliminated at the very outset.” 77
As for Britain’s hope of active U.S. support, Hitler argued: “America will have less inclination to enter the War, due to the threat from Japan which will then have increased. A victorious campaign on the Eastern Front will have a tremendous effect on the whole situation [and] also on the attitude of the U.S.A.” 78
As Hinsley notes: “He would not attack Russia simply in order to undermine Great Britain by removing Germany’s last enemy on the continent,” but also “in the hope that precisely by this action the United States would be deterred from entering the War.” 79
Fortunately for the Anglo–Saxon powers, the Eastern Campaign was not a repeat performance of the Battle of France. Germany’s blitzkrieg strategy was foiled by the vast expanse of the Soviet Union, which enabled the Red Army to trade space for time. Germany might still have been able to defeat the USSR in 1941, however, if only Mussolini had not entrapped Germany by attacking Greece. To clean up the Duce’s mess, in March and April of 1941, Hitler withdraw some of his troops from the regions bordering the Soviet Union in order to crush Yugoslavia and Greece. The rescue of Italy cost Germany precious time and resources needed for the Eastern campaign. 80
The failure of the Wehrmacht’s offensive in 1941 gave the United States a breathing spell to begin mobilizing its enormous war machine and join the Soviet Union in an overwhelmingly powerful “two–against–one” winning coalition. But there was still time for Germany to win the war against the Soviets, turn around and defeat Britain (if it did not sue for peace), and thereby keep the United States off the Continent and out of the war. The question is: How did the Soviets wind up fighting Germany alone? How and why did Stalin allow this most terrible of situations, one that he had feared for years, to occur?
Stalin’s Failed tertius–gaudens Strategy
According to my scheme, the Russian bear was actually a fox: a limited–aims revisionist pole that tries to hold the balance and extort profit from its rivals. Like Hitler, Stalin conceived of the pre–World War II international system in tripolar terms. But unlike Hitler, who saw the European system as bipolar with the U.S. out of the picture, Stalin’s tripolar vision was based on his belief that Britain and France together constituted a third European pole—one that could effectively balance Germany. In his speech at the plenary session of the Central Committee in January 1925, Stalin revealed the tertius–gaudens strategy that would guide Soviet foreign policy in the next world war:
| The preconditions for war are getting ripe. War may become inevitable, of course not tomorrow or the next day, but in a few years. . . . But, if war begins, we shall hardly have to sit with folded arms. We shall have to come out, but we ought to be the last to come out. And we should come out in order to throw the decisive weight on the scales, the weight that should tilt the scales. 81 |
For the Soviet Union to become the enjoying third, Stalin had first to ensure that war would break out in the west, and that it would be a protracted one. And for that both sides must be formidably strong. Consistent with his desire to instigate a “second imperialist” war from which the Soviet Union could safely abstain, Stalin supported the victory of fascism in Germany but not the further spread of fascism throughout Europe. A triumph of fascism in Western Europe would not have produced the division of Europe into opposing armed camps of revisionist and status–quo states upon which Stalin was counting. Furthermore, a total fascist victory would ultimately endanger the Soviet Union.
Given Soviet Russia’s tertius–gaudens strategy, Stalin pursued a dual diplomacy regarding the fascist and democratic states. If Stalin’s grand design was to succeed, he would have to make certain that two potential hostile coalitions—an Anglo–Franco–German combination and a German–Japanese alliance—did not form. Since Germany was the only common member of the two feared coalitions, the solution to the Soviet security problem was, in the long term, a rapprochement with Berlin. And because Stalin did not believe that Britain and France would come to Russia’s aid in the event of a German attack in the east, an alliance with the dreaded Nazis in effect offered Moscow its only and therefore minimum winning coalition.
Obviously, Stalin’s strategy also required that France be militarily strong enough to keep from being overrun and speedily conquered by German forces. In the short term, therefore, Stalin supported the strengthening of a collective–security coalition led by France and directed against Germany. He also encouraged the democracies to rearm and instructed the French Communists to call off their campaign against the government’s plan to extend the period of French military service from one to two years. Robert Tucker comments:
| By his collective–security diplomacy, in combination with his popular–front tactics in the Comintern, Stalin was assisting events to take their course toward a European war. An accord with Germany remained a basic aim because it would offer an opportunity to effect a westward advance of Soviet rule while turning Germany against the democracies in what Stalin envisaged as a replay of World War I, a protracted inconclusive struggle that would weaken both sides while neutral Russia increased her power and awaited an advantageous time for decisive intervention. But to make sure that the European war would be protracted, he wanted Britain and France to be militarily strong enough to withstand the onslaught that Germany under Hitler was becoming strong enough to launch against them. That explains his moves to encourage ruling elements in both these major states to rearm with dispatch, and his order to the French Communists to support the French military buildup. 82 |
The power side of the model predicts a Nazi–Soviet alliance, but only one in which the Soviets actively participate in the fighting and are assured of receiving along with Germany an equal share of the spoils. (See discussion of equilateral tripolar system with two revisionist poles). By joining Germany to divide Poland, Stalin behaved according to the “Partitioned Third” version of tripolarity. True, Poland was not a pole; but the power configuration of Poland, Germany, and the Soviet Union was A < B = C, and so the logic of what I call a “Type 3” tripolar system still applies. In carving up Eastern Europe, the territory that lay between the two revisionist poles was divided equally between them, such that neither side made relative gains vis–à–vis the other.
Conversely, by encouraging Germany to attack westward by itself, Stalin acted contrary to the logic of the power side of the model. Stalin’s behavior is nevertheless understandable given his misjudgment of the strength of Britain and France. Believing that the Allies were stronger than Germany, the Soviet dictator aided Hitler (that is, he balanced against the Allies) in the hope that the two sides would be evenly matched, and the conflict would evolve into a war of attrition. In the end, Russia paid the price for Stalin’s mistake in overestimating the Allies’ strength.
The interests side of the model also predicts a Nazi–Soviet alliance; specifically, the pact supports the hypothesis that revisionist states flock together. For Russia, a rapprochement with Germany offered more than security: Soviet expansion was possible only in collusion with Hitler. In the end, the two countries’ shared interest in revisionism bridged their ideological divide. As Louis Fischer comments, ideology “proved no barrier when Hitler wanted war and Stalin coveted territory.” 83
Stalin’s own explanation for the Nazi–Soviet pact (given in 1940 to the British Ambassador Sir Stafford Cripps) testifies to the strength of shared interests, whether revisionist or status quo, in deciding who aligns with whom: “[The] U.S.S.R. had wanted to change the old equilibrium . . . England and France had wanted to preserve it. Germany had also wanted to make a change in the equilibrium, and this common desire to get rid of the old equilibrium had created the basis for the rapprochement with Germany.” 84 Similarly, Sir Nevile Henderson viewed the Nazi–Soviet pact as the inevitable outcome of any concession–making competition between status–quo and revisionist suitors of an unsatiated power: “[By August 11, 1939, Moscow] was asking for a free hand in the Baltic States. Russia’s real objective was thus becoming apparent; and, with Germany secretly in the market, the scales were being heavily weighted against the Western Powers. They could not barter away the honor and freedom of small but independent countries, but Germany could.” 85
Stalin’s “major blunder,” as Isaac Deutscher correctly points out, was that “he expected Britain and France to hold their ground against Germany for a long time; . . . he overrated France’s military strength; and he underrated Germany’s striking power.” 86 Consistent with these observations, in 1939 Stalin stated that “democratic states . . . are without doubt stronger than the fascist ones both militarily and economically.” 87 Given Stalin’s expressed belief that a bloc of aggressor states consisting of Germany, Italy, and Japan was arrayed against the interests of Britain, France, and the United States, and that the democracies were, in combination, “unquestionably stronger” than the fascist coalition, both militarily and economically, Stalin “could and evidently did calculate also that the oncoming war between them would be a protracted one that would result in their mutual weakening or exhaustion while Soviet Russia was at peace and rebuilding its own strength.” 88 After the Second World War, Voroshilov said: “We in spite of it all thought that if Germany attacked Britain and France, it would bog down there for a long time. Who could have known that France would collapse in two weeks?” 89
Viewing the European system as tripolar, it is easy to see why Stalin made a deal with Hitler. A nonaggression pact with Germany would destroy the status quo, afford easy spoils in Eastern Europe and Finland, and instigate a war of attrition among the capitalist powers. Better still, the Soviet Union enjoyed the role of kingmaker, as both Germany and the democratic powers needed it to form a winning coalition. Thus, Germany would be made to pay heavily for Soviet assistance in a war from which Russia could safely abstain. Stalin used his bargaining power to prolong the Anglo–Franco–Soviet negotiations just long enough to extract additional concessions from Hitler, in exchange for which the Soviet leader put his signature to the pact with Germany that he desperately wanted anyway. It appeared that Stalin had succeeded in the role of abettor: Germany was deflected to the west, while the Soviets comfortably looked on from the sidelines, gaining at the others’ expense. 90
Speaking of the pact, Stalin commented: “Of course it’s all a game to see who can fool whom. I know what Hitler’s up to. He thinks he’s outsmarted me, but actually it’s I who have tricked him.” 91 Events would soon prove otherwise, however. Hitler had duped Stalin. With the September 1 deadline for the Polish attack only a week away, Hitler was willing to give the Soviet dictator whatever he wanted to secure Soviet neutrality and thereby deter Britain from honoring its pledge to Poland. Indeed, the Führer seemed to be in an especially giving mood, confident that he would attack and crush Russia in the near future, taking back all he had given and more. 92
In retrospect, we know that it would have been far better for the Soviets to have balanced against, rather than bandwagoned with, Germany. In that case, Stalin would have presented Hitler with the prospect of a two–front war, seriously undermining the Führer’s strategy and perhaps causing its abandonment. But because he mistakenly perceived Europe as a tripolar, not a bipolar, system with France and Britain as the third pole, Stalin expected a war of attrition in the West. The fall of France abruptly ended Stalin’s dream of easy conquests in a postwar period when the rest of Europe would be exhausted.
This begs the question: When the long war failed to occur, why did not the Soviet Union immediately join Britain in its fight against Germany? The historian James McSherry offers a plausible hypothesis, which, if true, suggests an important limitation of my model. He argues that Bolshevik ideology prevailed over balance–of–power logic:
| With three or more approximately equal states, a balance of power operates almost automatically. Should state A appear to be growing too powerful and dangerous, states B and C combine against it. If state B becomes too powerful, A and C form an alliance. Tsars and foreign ministers in St. Petersburg reacted in this classical pattern almost instinctively. . . . But the Bolsheviks saw themselves winning everything or nothing. They perceived only two powers: the Soviet Union and an implacably hostile capitalist world. As long as the capitalists didn’t unite in a crusade against the U.S.S.R., what matter if one capitalist state became more powerful than the others or even brought some of the others under its sway? Once Hitler had conquered France, the Soviet Union was in mortal peril. But Stalin realized the full extent of the danger only on June 22, 1941. 93 |
To the extent that ideology overrides the logic of structure and interests, my hypotheses will fail to accurately explain and predict national policy.
But in this particular case, accepting the ideological interpretation may be conceding too much. My distancing hypothesis, which predicts that a state will not join the weaker side when it expects that its added strength will not change the outcome, offers a viable alternative explanation for Soviet behavior. According to this hypothesis, Stalin decided not to join Britain in balancing against Germany because, after the swift defeat of France, he judged that Britain was doomed. This hypothesis is consistent with the view of the British Ambassador to Moscow, Sir Stafford Cripps. In August 1940, Cripps observed that after France collapsed “there is no doubt that the views of the Soviet Government underwent a change, and, instead of proceeding with a rapid rapprochement, I was unable to obtain access of M. Molotov.” Hence, Cripps concluded:
| It is beyond question that there is not the slightest chance at the present time of producing any kind of rupture in German–Soviet relations, nor do I think that it is possible to reduce in any way the assistance which is being given to Germany by the Soviet Union so long as it appears to the Soviet Government that the German attack on Great Britain may lead to a speedy end of the war in favour of Germany. 94 |
In summary, before the war, Stalin overestimated the strength of France and Britain relative to that of Germany, misperceiving the Allies as the stronger side. Thus, the Soviet Union supported Germany, guarding its rear and supplying it raw materials, in the hope that the two sides would be as closely matched as possible, and the conflict would end in mutual exhaustion. By escaping participation in the fighting, the Soviet Union would emerge far stronger in relative terms in the aftermath of war than it had been prior to war’s outbreak.
After the collapse of France, when the tide turned strongly in Germany’s favor, similar balance–of–power considerations prescribed that Russia should switch sides, supporting the Allies, again in the hope of sustaining the visibly weaker side. By that time, however, Stalin had decided that Germany would soon win the war outright, whatever the Soviet Union did. Reconciled to a German victory, Stalin distanced the Soviet Union from Britain.
Japan’s Role in Germany’s Eastern War
Throughout the Eastern campaign, Hitler had insisted that Germany would defeat Russia without help from his allies. Even after “Operation Barbarossa” failed to produce a quick German victory, Hitler “rejected the idea of Japan taking part in ‘his’ Russian war by setting up another front in the East.” 95 Instead, he wanted Japan to hold Britain in check and keep America neutral to prevent the opening of a second front in Europe. Ribbentrop and the Foreign Office disagreed with Hitler’s “Germany alone” strategy against Russia. Ever since 1938, Ribbentrop had regarded Britain, not the Soviet Union, as Germany’s principal enemy. Fixated on the idea of challenging Britain with a “continental bloc,” the German Foreign Minister proposed enlisting the full support of Japan to end the war with Russia as soon as possible. A Japanese attack on Vladivostok would, in Ribbentrop’s view, “eliminate quickly the Russian opponent” and “release the German forces sooner for renewed action against England.” 96
In the summer of 1941, the Wilhemstrasse once again began pressuring Japan’s decisionmakers to attack British possessions in the Far East. On August 25, 1941, Ribbentrop sent a telegram to the German Ambassador in Tokyo, General Eugen Ott, expressing his frustration with those who were “misjudging the situation with regard to power and the military aspect” and seemed to be “unaware of Japan’s own strength and the weakness of the United States and England.”
| The fact that the United States has reacted to Japan’s occupation of Indochina only with economic sanction . . . the fact that the Roosevelt–Churchill meeting produced only words, and the fact that the United States has made the hopeless and almost desperate attempt to keep Japan out by means or insincere negotiations are clear signs of weakness on the part of the United States, proving that it will not risk any serious military action against Japan. This is no news to the military expert, for he has long known that the army and the air force of the United States are not yet ready and that its navy is still inferior to the Japanese navy. Moreover, a large majority of the American people are opposed to war. . . . Japan is still in a position to impose whatever decision she chooses. But the longer she waits, the more the balance of forces will change to her disadvantage . . . 97 |
As with the previous German request to attack Singapore, Japan did not take the bait. At the time, Tokyo was engaged in negotiations with Washington to improve Japanese–American relations. The Japanese Deputy Foreign Minister, Amau, reminded Ott that the “aim of the Tripartite Pact is to prevent war with America.” Amau further pointed out that bullying tactics made the U.S. more, not less, belligerent, as Berlin already knew:
| Japan first strove to [prevent war with the U.S.] by taking a threatening tone with Roosevelt, but to no avail—on the contrary it merely made Roosevelt take a firmer stand. . . . Germany, on the other hand, has not reacted to Roosevelt’s acts of provocation and . . . has even in the case of the closing down of the consulates, refrained from giving him any pretext for entering the war. Japan therefore considers it tactically correct . . . to use the same methods as those used by Germany. 98 |
Determined to prevent an agreement between Tokyo and Washington, Hitler had informed Tokyo in the autumn of 1941, that in the event of a Japanese attack on the U.S., Germany would wage war too. The Führer honored this commitment on December 11, 1941, when Germany declared war on America in accordance with the Three Power Pact. By supporting his Far Eastern partner, Hitler hoped that Japan would tie down the U.S. in the Pacific, keeping American forces well clear of the European theater. 99
Geography played a major role in Hitler’s judgment of the impact of America’s entry into the war. He did not deny the tremendous potential power of the U.S., but he questioned its ability to project that power. 100 In a conversation with Matsuoka on April 4, 1941, Hitler remarked:
| America’s performance depended on her transport capabilities, which in turn would be limited by the tonnage available. Germany’s warfare against shipping tonnage represented an appreciable weakening not only of England but of America also. Germany had made her preparation so that no American could land in Europe. She would wage a vigorous war against America with her U–boats and her Luftwaffe . . . 101 |
In addition, German intelligence data indicated that the U.S. would not be ready to intervene in the European theater for years to come. By that time, around 1943, the Reich would have established an empire over the Eurasian continent from which it could easily defend against an American attack. 102
The U.S. in the Eyewitness Role
In the 1930s, the aloofness of U.S. foreign policy during Italy’s seizure of Abyssinia; Japan’s invasion of China; and Germany’s takeover of the Rhineland, Austria, and the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, fully accords with the role of the ostrich: a polar power that acts like a weak state, choosing to be an eyewitness rather than a participant in world affairs. Indeed, the historical record offers little room for controversy: Roosevelt pursued an isolationist policy, refusing to commit the United States to the defense of the existing international order. Within the Roosevelt administration, there were competitive “idealist” and “realist” schools. Some officials, such as Secretary of State Cordell Hull, monotonously preached Wilsonian gospel, while others, like Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle, championed a brand of realism based on the concept of a separate, viable Western Hemisphere removed from the turmoil of Europe. There was no debate, however, on the essential thrust of U.S. foreign policy: both factions favored isolationism.
To his credit, the President viewed world politics as a relatively tightly coupled system, and for this reason his ideas did not fit neatly into either school. He warned that the U.S. could not expect to remain safe in its Western Hemisphere while the rest of the world was at war. In the age of air power, Roosevelt insisted, the 3,000–mile oceanic barrier, which had traditionally served to insulate the United States from foreign wars, would no longer prove an insuperable obstacle to aggressor states seeking territorial profits in the Western Hemisphere. 103 Moreover, for Roosevelt, the awesome destructive power of the new air technology meant that offense clearly had the advantage over defense. As early as May 16, 1933, in a message delivered to the heads of fifty–four states represented in Geneva, FDR declared that the “overwhelming majority of peoples retained excessive armaments because they feared aggression in an age when modern offensive weapons were vastly stronger than defensive ones.” 104 Employing Jervis–type systems thinking, FDR understood the pernicious effect of offensive advantage on the security dilemma.
Roosevelt’s systemic ideas about the interconnectedness of world politics, however, did not compel him to seek an activist foreign policy. With little or no chance of selling a forward foreign policy to an isolationist Congress and public, the President responded to aggression abroad in the classic tradition of U.S. isolationism, attempting to play “a passive role as the beacon of liberty to mankind, providing a model for the world to follow, but avoiding any active participation in a foreign conflict.” 105 In a speech in mid–1936, for instance, Roosevelt revealed that, while he sympathized with the troubles plaguing the European nations, “they have understood well in these years that [American] help is going to be confined to moral help, and that we are not going to get tangled up with their troubles in the days to come.” 106
Roosevelt’s oblique strategy risked several dangers. As an eyewitness to world affairs, the U.S. encouraged the four expansionist Great Powers—Germany, Japan, Russia, and Italy—to disregard the considerable latent power of the United States. Up until March 1941, the U.S. government—for all its high–sounding and idealistic rhetoric about the struggle against Nazism, Bolshevism, and Fascism—proved unwilling to aid frontline status–quo states. The passage of two major pieces of legislation, the Johnson Debt–Default Act and the Neutrality Act of 1939, effectively prevented the U.S. government and private citizens from arranging credit for any belligerent. 107 Uncertainty about when and if the U.S. would adopt a more interventionist policy tempted the Axis powers to try to overturn the status–quo order sooner rather than later.
Moreover, America’s military and political weakness compelled the other status–quo Great Powers to try to appease the stronger dictator states. To be sure, had America rearmed and pledged support for the European status quo, France and Britain would not have sat on their hands while the Axis powers leveled successive blows against the established international order.
Roosevelt’s passive foreign policy also risked the danger of a direct assault against the American Continent—a scenario that had caused the President himself a considerable amount of anxiety. Though it seemed remote at the time, the possibility remained that the Soviet Union and Germany might put aside their mutual hostility, if only temporarily, for the purpose of ganging up against the U.S. and its allies. Indeed, this is precisely the strategy that Mackinder had warned the sea powers to guard against and that Haushofer had urged upon Hitler.
Finally, the security of the Americas would have been severely compromised had Germany or Russia managed to grab the Continent quickly, before the U.S. could deploy its military forces. That the Soviets could hold out against the Nazi attack long enough to enable the U.S. to mobilize and employ its awesome resources was by no means assured. And the longer the U.S. took to effectively enter the war, the greater the risk that Stalin would make a second deal with Hitler.
Structural–systemic theory cannot explain why the United States did not play a more active mediator or balancer role in Europe; the answer resides at a lower level of analysis, either domestic politics or decisionmaking or some combination thereof. The immovable strength of American isolationist sentiment caused Roosevelt to shy away from any significant U.S. involvement in the affairs of Europe, even after a grave threat was perceived. Domestic politics also explains why, on those rare occasions when the Roosevelt administration did attempt to mediate a settlement, it did so halfheartedly—almost hoping that its efforts would fail.
But systemic theory does provide a partial explanation for the persistence of America’s isolationist policy. While Germany and the Soviet Union remained on opposite sides, the U.S. could expect a relatively stable balance in Europe. If war broke out between Germany and the Soviet Union and the power balance on the continent was disrupted, Britain, backed by substantial U.S. material aid, could be expected to assume its traditional role as balancer, throwing its weight on to the scale of the weaker side. For this scenario to have occurred, however, the U.S. would have had to mediate a stable settlement in Western Europe. The expansionary energies of Germany and the Soviet Union, the only two virile giants on the international stage capable of endangering the American continent, would then have been directed at one another.
Hitler Declares War Against the Distant Pole
Aware of the tripolar distribution of power, Hitler nevertheless simultaneously declared war on both of his polar enemies, the U.S. and the Soviet Union. In so doing, he forced into existence the only coalition that could defeat Germany. Indeed, as Hauner notes, “when on 11 December 1941 Hitler had declared war on the USA in a self–destructive fit of absent–mindedness he had to admit to the Japanese Ambassador Oshima three weeks later that he did not know how to defeat America.” 108 After all, Hitler had scheduled the decisive duel between the “Teutonic Empire of the German Nation and the American World Empire” to occur after his death.
The entry of the United States into the war threatened a large–scale Allied intervention in the Western Mediterranean and on the Atlantic coast of French West Africa, and with it a greater likelihood of Vichy defection and Spanish reluctance to side with the Axis. Forced to shift his attention from the Eastern Front to the Mediterranean theater, Hitler now advised his Italian and Japanese allies that the key aim of Axis policy in the spring and summer of 1942 should be a meeting in the Indian Ocean. If successful, this rendezvous operation would disrupt the entire Anglo–American supply system, gain Axis control of the Middle East oil resources, cut the southern supply route to the Soviets, and permit the flow of critical materials between Germany and Japan. It was a high–stakes roll of the dice that, one way or the other, promised to tilt irrevocably the balance of the entire war. The Italians, of course, did not need to be convinced of the supreme importance of the Mediterranean theater and the need to defeat Britain. Back in December of 1941, the Duce had already reached the conclusion that the key to victory was “the Suez Canal; the attack must come not only from one side, but ‘also from the East.’ “ 109
Toward that end, General Rommel’s German Expeditionary Corps in Africa were sent to bolster the Italian positions in Libya and Tripolitania with the hope that Egypt could be taken before the expected Anglo–American landing in the Western Mediterranean. The Japanese, for their part, had achieved victory off the coast of Ceylon in April, and, in light of Japan’s continued success in Burma and its Axis partners’ desire to link up in the Indian Ocean, it appeared that this latest victory would be followed by a further westward push into the area of rapid advance. In early May, German air activity increased over the Central Mediterranean and the Axis built up their supplies in North Africa for Rommel to move eastward from his bases in Libya. On June 21, Tobruk fell to Rommel’s forces as they sped toward the Suez Canal. Buoyed by the success of his latest offensive, Rommel convinced Hitler to scrap “Operation Hercules”—the planned attack on Malta that had been conceived by the Italian Supreme Command and strongly supported by Mussolini 110 —and gamble instead on his German expeditionary force continuing its dash to Egypt, from whence it would press on to the Persian Gulf. Simultaneously, the German offensive on the Eastern Front held the promise of a march across the Caucasus into the Middle East with the added prospect of a German thrust through Turkey. It appeared that the Axis rendezvous at Suez would be in sight by summer’s end, and with it a tide of Axis victories and Allied defeats. 111
The southern advance to the Caucasus was going according to plan and, by mid–August, had gained the Axis control of the Maikop oil field. But already the armies’ lines of communications and supplies were being pressed to their limits. In early November, the southern advance ground to a halt before the mountainous terrain of the Southern Caucasus, with the Grozny oil fields beyond that, and Baku, the ultimate objective, still further to the south.
To the north, forty German divisions began their attack on September 3 against Stalingrad, the possession of which would divide Central Russia from the Caucasus. As the German forces reached the outskirts of the city, the Russians withdrew behind the Don and created a Stalingrad front. During the early weeks of the fighting, the German air forces were flying up to 2,500 sorties a day but the Soviets were able to amass significant forces east of the Volga to launch an encircling offensive of their own. On November 19, the Russians attacked the Axis forces north of the city and on the following day assaulted the German positions to the south. Within a week, twenty–two German divisions were encircled, fourteen were destroyed. As December approached, the German Sixth Army had been completely encircled.
In an attempt to liberate the Stalingrad pocket, Hitler ordered General von Mannstein, whose forces had stalled in the Caucasus, to redirect his divisions north for the purpose of a combined attack with German forces directed to move eastward from their positions on the Don. On December 16, Mannstein’s armies, which had commenced their drive from the south four days earlier, were met and driven back by Russian forces moving southward from their positions east of Stalingrad. By the end of the month, the Red Army had destroyed another twenty–two German satellite divisions. Any hope of an Axis victory on the Eastern Front by year’s end had been dashed.
The crisis for the Axis in the East coincided with an equally catastrophic turn of events on the North African Front. On October 23, the British Eighth Army assaulted Rommel’s forces at El Alamein and achieved a decisive breakthrough just ten days later. Rommel, recognizing that the battle for Egypt was lost, ordered a general and swift retreat. The Allies now threatened a landing at Rommel’s rear in French North Africa. The fate of the Mediterranean campaign and Italy’s very survival required that unoccupied France and Corsica not fall into enemy hands. Both the Duce and Hitler feared that Vichy France would bandwagon with the Anglo–Americans.
Uncertain of French loyalty, Hitler summoned Laval to Munich for the purpose of offering the Vichy government a stark choice: full cooperation or occupation of the Free Zone, Corsica, and Tunisia. Laval rejected the formal offer of an alliance with Italy and Germany and then prevaricated on the Axis demand for the use by combined Italian–German forces of the bases of Bizerta and Tunis. Vichy’s hostility meant not only that German and Italian divisions—so desperately needed in Russia and North Africa—would be tied down in southern France, but also that the French fleet at Toulon had to be scuttled. On November 11, Axis air forces were in control of the Tunisian airfields and Italian and German armored units landed at Tunis and Bizerta. The establishment of an Axis bridgehead in Tunisia, however, could not change the course of the war. “In the long run,” Rommel pointed out, “neither Libya nor Tunisia could be held, for the African war was being decided by the battle of the Atlantic.” 112
To make matters worse, Japan had, for all intents and purposes, abandoned its European partners and their plan for a meeting across the Indian Ocean. Instead of pursuing the offensive in the Indian Ocean initiated so successfully in April, the Japanese foolishly disregarded Hitler’s advice and turned in the opposite direction to meet the American forces that had landed on Tulagi and Guadalcanal on August 7. In five months of bitter fighting in the Solomons, Japan suffered heavy losses in warships, ground combat assault troops, and naval air units that precluded the anticipated return to the offensive in the Indian Ocean. With Japan diverting its resources to the South Pacific, the British took Madagascar and the Americans opened a supply route across Iran that sustained the Red Army in its battle against the new German offensive. 113
The Japanese, by refusing to coordinate their military strategy with the European Axis, had gravely underestimated the obvious importance of the European theater to their own success; indeed, their empire in Southeast Asia had been handed to them by German victories in Europe. As a result of this oversight, the Axis frittered away their best chance to wrest the Middle East from Allied hands and to achieve victory on the Eastern Front in 1942. 114
For some time, the Japanese had been urging Hitler to reach a new agreement with the Soviet Union in order to focus their energies on fighting the British and Americans. The Axis defeats in the winter of 1942–43 further convinced Tokyo that its advice had been correct all along. 115 On December 15, the Italians joined their Axis partner in raising the issue of a possible settlement with the Soviets, which the Duce believed would be the cardinal issue of 1943. The next day, an Italian delegation led by Ciano and Marshal Ugo Cavellero left Rome by train to confer with Hitler in Berlin. In his subsequent memorandum to Mussolini, Ciano recorded:
| When I spoke of the possibility of a separate peace with Russia, Hitler expressed his own negative point of view in the following words. Germany had already in the past posed the problem of coming to an understanding with Russia, and precisely in the winter of 1940–41 every attempt was made to push the Russians into Central Asia. This was particularly discussed at the time of Molotov’s visit to Berlin. But the Russians did not follow this course. Instead they brought up their historic claims on Finland and the Dardanelles, against Roumania, and in the direction of Bulgaria. If Germany had given way at the time, the Russians would first have attacked Finland, and then after they had taken over the Roumanian oil, the Axis would have been placed in an untenable position. The Russia of Stalin still follows the path chosen by Peter the Great for the expansion of his people to the North and South–West. Russia has in no way shown herself prepared to follow the course proposed to her towards India and the Persian Gulf because she regards these aims as secondary. If she were first assured of hegemony over Europe, the rest would follow of its own accord. The break between Germany and Russia arose out of the increasing danger which this latter threat presented. When Hitler knew for certain that nine hundred airfields, an enormous quantity of war material and numerous troops were concentrated on the frontier, he had to take defensive measures. Can yet another attempt now be made to reach a settlement of the struggle with Russia? The Fuehrer asked himself this question some months ago, when rumour was spreading that Japan had sounded the Fuehrer in this sense. But, as we had assumed, we learnt that these rumours had been artificially spread by the Russians themselves to bring pressure on their allies to give more support in armaments, and to obtain the opening of the Second Front. What would the position be today if we somehow came to an agreement? It is certain that the Russians would devote six months to a complete overhaul of their equipment and strength in order to fall on our rear again. The Brest–Litovsk line is out of the question. These are regions which represent indispensable reserves of foodstuffs and raw materials for Germany and Russia alike. Thus any line drawn which might satisfy the requirements of one people would sacrifice the needs of the other. Even if we came to an understanding with Russia, we would not be able to move larger forces to Africa, because the only reason for the crisis which has arisen in Africa is to be found in our transport difficulties and not at all from lack of materials and troops. 116 |
Ruling out peace with Russia, Hitler stressed instead the utmost importance of the pacification of the Balkans: “Every measure must be taken to prevent the outbreak of fire in our rear in case an Anglo–Saxon landing takes place.” In addition, Hitler insisted that the Duce be asked “personally to telegraph to the Italian troops in Russia not to yield an inch of territory.” 117
Not surprisingly, some high German officials violently opposed Hitler’s conduct of the war. In July 1943, former Ambassador Ulrich von Hassell, a conservative nationalist dismissed in 1938, roundly criticized from the sidelines the German attacks against both the Soviet Union and the United States:
| There is absolutely no foundation for the assertion that Russia wanted to attack, or would have attacked later. We have here the pernicious example of the preventive war which Bismarck condemned. If Germany “stumbled” into the two–front war in 1914, Hitler wantonly brought it on in 1941. Russia had only one feeling about an intact Germany—fear. Russia would never have attacked Germany, or at least never have attacked successfully, so long as Germany possessed an unbroken army. It suffices to imagine what would have happened if Germany, after the fall of France, had remained in possession of a fully intact, powerful instrument of war, instead of wearing it out in battle against an underestimated Russia. The fight against Russia which Hitler started was just as reckless an undertaking as the war in general. After it had started there was at least one chance—the only “morally” good chance, from the propaganda point of view—to wage it exclusively against bolshevism and to make our watchword the liberation of the Russian people, with whom Germany had no quarrel. The opposite happened. Hitler united Russia behind Stalin against Germany. Incidentally, one might also point out the folly of aligning ourselves simultaneously against Poland as well as against Russia—a violation of the A B C of any Germany policy in the east. A further ruinous decision was that of declaring war on the United States. Annoying as it was to see this power supporting the other side, it was stupid of Hitler to seize the initiative and turn the United States from a supporter of the other side into our major foe, who would use the full force of her strength against Germany. It may be that Hitler thought he owed this action to Japan. If so, it was the only instance of treaty loyalty in Hitler’s career and a truly strange and disastrous one at that. 118 |
Most, if not all, historians and political scientists would agree with Hassell’s characterization of Nazi Germany’s bid for world domination as an extremely reckless strategy, one that was doomed to fail. Such a conclusion, I believe, is too categoric and somewhat difficult to defend in light of the evidence. Confronted by a global coalition of incredible strength and with scarcely any help from its allies, Nazi Germany more than held its own until 1944 and survived into 1945. The relatively narrow margin of the Allied victory suggests that the outcome of World War II might have been different had any one of several events broken another way. Let us therefore engage in what E. H. Carr called “parlour–games with might–have–beens.” 119
Counterfactual Parlour Games
What if, for instance, Germany had knocked the Soviet Union out of the war in 1941 or 1942, as it had done to Russia in 1917? What if Japan had not attacked at Pearl Harbor but instead had joined Germany against Russia? Would America have entered the war and, if so, would it have mobilized as quickly and with as much determination as it did after the Japanese attack? What if Hitler had not declared war against the United States? Would the U.S. Congress have declared war against Germany?
Engaging in similar speculation, Hugh Trevor–Roper claims that any one of four “hypothetical accidents” in 1940, could have put Hitler “in a position to conquer the world” in 1941: if Britain had not had a statesman able to unite the country to continue what looked like a pointless struggle against Germany; if Britain had not, at that precise historical moment, possessed the vital intelligence—"the Ultra secret”—critical to the air victory over Britain; if Franco had not resisted the temptation to rush to the aid of the apparent victor and had allowed an assault on Gibraltar; and, lastly, if Mussolini had not launched a surprise invasion of Greece. Had any one of these conditions been met, Germany would have defeated Britain and achieved a final victory in the West. Under such circumstances, Trevor Roper asks:
| Would Japan wantonly have attacked Pearl Harbor when defeated Britain and Russia offered an undefended prey? Would America have intervened in Europe, when there was no bridgehead left, in order to save Communist Russia? Is it not more likely that Hitler’s dream would have been realised: that a German empire would have been established, dominating Europe and hither Asia: that, in Hitler’s own phrase, the German age of the world would have begun?” 120 |
At the tactical level, what if Hitler had made use of “Russian commissars and Jews as cheap sources of labor [rather] than exterminating this sorely needed potential labor force"? 121 What if Nazi ideology had not prevented the full mobilization of German women (female employment dropped until 1943)? What if the Nazi regime had not brutally treated its foreign workers, forced laborers, and the inhabitants of the occupied territories, particularly in the Soviet republics? 122 Might the Nazis have been seen by these populations as liberators rather than hostile conquerors? With their help, might Germany have gone on to defeat the USSR? Finally, what if Hitler had upheld his original decision to send only a small force to defend a limited area in North Africa? 123 If it were possible to rewind a tape of history and replay the war, any one of these alternative scenarios might have occurred and produced a different outcome.
Conclusions
Hitler’s overall strategy accords with the expected behavior of a polar power trying to gain supremacy in a tripolar system. As one of three equal–sized poles, Germany could not defeat the nearest pole without first augmenting its strength by internal and external means, that is, through rearmament, the conquest of its neighbors, and key alliances with LGPs. Strengthened by these preparations, Germany, if it acted quickly, could then isolate and defeat the nearest pole. After several years of consolidating its European base and expanding overseas, Germany would be ready to challenge and defeat the other pole in the bipolar system.
Given the benefit of hindsight, A. J. P. Taylor concluded that Hitler “gratuitously destroyed the source of [his] success” by attacking “two World Powers who asked only to be left alone.” 124 And yet, Hitler came within a hairsbreadth of succeeding in his quest for European hegemony. Confronted by the combined military efforts of the entire world, Germany held out until 1945. Had he defeated the Soviet Union, a U.S.–German, rather than a U.S.–Soviet, bipolar system would have resulted.
In the end, Hitler blamed Germany’s destruction on British stupidity. He had offered Britain its only chance of holding on to its Empire and world–power status. How, he asked, could anyone have foreseen that the British would elect men who did not possess the intelligence to correctly assess England’s true interests? British elites, Hitler charged in 1945, had clung to an outmoded idea of the balance of power, conceiving of it not in global terms but rather as it related to Europe:
| [Churchill] has made the same mistakes as those generals make who wage a war according to the principles of the preceding war. . . . The crucial new factor [since Pitt’s day] is the existence of those two giants, the U.S. and Russia. Pitt’s England ensured the balance of world power by preventing the hegemony of Europe—by preventing Napoleon, that is, from attaining his goal. Churchill’s England, on the other hand, should have allowed the unification of Europe, if it wished to preserve that same balance of power. 125 |
This passage suggests that Hitler saw a German–dominated Europe as the third pole in a tripolar system. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Hitler therefore accurately predicted that Germany’s defeat would bring about a bipolar system:
| . . . with the defeat of the Reich . . . there will remain in the world only two Great Powers capable of confronting each other—the United States and Soviet Russia. The laws of both history and geography will compel these two Powers to a trial of strength, either military or in the field of economics and ideology. These same laws make it inevitable that both Powers should become enemies of Europe. And it is equally certain that both these Powers will sooner or later find it desirable to seek the support of the sole surviving nation in Europe, the German people. I say with all the emphasis at my command that the Germans must at all costs avoid playing the role of pawn in either camp. 126 |
Fortunately, the Second World War did not turn out as the Führer had planned in Mein Kampf . Instead, the two poles on Europe’s flanks were able to activate and combine their enormous resources in time to defeat the Reich and its Axis partners. By partitioning Germany, the Allies solved the “German Problem” that had given rise to two world wars in the space of twenty–five years. The structural effect of the division of Germany was to transform the volatile tripolar system into a stable, but very competitive, bipolar world.
Endnotes
Note 1: 1. Hitler quoted from memory by Speer in Inside the Third Reich, p. 163. Back.
Note 2: Hitler, May 23, 1939, quoted in Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe, p. 21. Back.
Note 4: Franz Halder, The Halder War Diary, 1939–1942, edited by Charles Burdick and Hans–Adolf Jacobsen (Novato, Calif.: Presidio, 1988), p. 165. Back.
Note 5: Halder’s diary entry of May 30, 1940, in Ibid., p. 172. Back.
Note 6: Churchill, quoted in Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe, p. 20. Back.
Note 7: Hinsley, Hitler’s Strategy, p. 37. Back.
Note 8: Kecskemeti, Strategic Surrender, pp. 53–54. Back.
Note 9: Hitler quoted in Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe, p. 26. Back.
Note 10: Hitler quoted in Wilmot, Ibid., p. 28. Back.
Note 11: To obtain bases for the naval siege against Britain, the German Naval staff had devised the Norwegian campaign, which was also intended to secure Germany’s supply of Swedish iron ore. Hitler reluctantly agreed to this plan after being persuaded that Britain might land in Norway first. Back.
Note 12: The U–boat arm, which Admiral Doenitz considered “the backbone of warfare against England and of political pressure on her,” had only 26 U–boats suitable for Atlantic operations with only 8 or 9 continually at sea, when the required minimum was 300 U–boats, out of which 90 could be kept at sea at all times. Hinsley, Hitler’s Strategy, pp. 6–7. Back.
Note 13: Quoted in Ibid., p. 29. Back.
Note 14: See George Quester, “Bargaining and Bombing During World War II in Europe,” World Politics, vol. 15, no. 3 (April 1963), pp. 417–437. Back.
Note 15: See Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine, chap. 5; Christensen and Snyder, “Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks,” pp. 162–165. Back.
Note 16: Christensen and Snyder, “Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks.” Back.
Note 18: See Donald Cameron Watt, How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War, 1938–1939 (London: Heinemann, 1989), chap. 6. Back.
Note 19: Wesley K. Wark, The Ultimate Enemy: British Intelligence and Nazi Germany, 1933–1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 217. Back.
Note 21: Milward, War, Economy and Society, p. 47. Back.
Note 22: Timothy J. McKeown, “The Foreign Policy of a Declining Power,” International Organization, vol. 45, no. 2 (Spring 1991), p. 270. Back.
Note 23: Douglas Johnson, “The French View,” in R. Douglas, ed., 1939: A Retrospective Forty Years After (London: MacMillan, 1983), p. 58. Back.
Note 24: DBFP, 3rd Ser., vol 3, Doc. 325, “Record of Anglo–French Conversations at the Quai d’Orsay on November 24, 1938” (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1950), pp. 288, 291–292. See also, Murray, The Change in the European Balance of Power, p. 275. Back.
Note 25: Nigel Nicolson, ed., The Diaries and Letters of Harold Nicolson: The War Years, 1939–1945 (New York: Atheneum, 1967), p. 45 (emphasis added). Back.
Note 26: J. R. M. Butler, Grand Strategy, vol. 2: September 1939–June 1941 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1957), p. 267. Back.
Note 27: Thies, “Alliances and Collective Goods,” p. 323. Back.
Note 28: Wark, The Ultimate Enemy, p. 215. Back.
Note 29: Butler, Grand Strategy, p. 172. Back.
Note 31: Quoted in Correlli Barnett, The Collapse of British Power (New York: Morrow, 1972), p. 583. Back.
Note 32: Richardson, “New Perspectives on Appeasement,” p. 303. Back.
Note 33: Neville Chamberlain as quoted in Sheila Lawlor, Churchill and the Politics of War, 1940–1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 53, 56. Back.
Note 34: Ibid., pp. 48–49. Back.
Note 36: Eleanor M. Gates, End of the Affair: The Collapse of the Anglo–French Alliance, 1939–40 1940–1941 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981), p. 566. For a similar reaction to the French defeat, see David Dilks, ed., The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, O.M. 1938–1945 (London: Cassell, 1971), pp. 292–293. Back.
Note 37: Michael Howard, The Continental Commitment (London: Temple Smith, 1972), p. 117. Back.
Note 38: Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine, p. 171. Back.
Note 39: Churchill quoted in Butler, Grand Strategy, p. 184. Back.
Note 40: Sidney Aster, “ ‘Guilty Men’: The Case of Neville Chamberlain,” in Boyce and Robertson, Paths to War, pp. 242–243 (emphasis added). Back.
Note 41: Christopher Thorne, The Approach of War, 1938–1939 (London: Macmillan, 1967), pp. 14–15. Back.
Note 42: Aster, “Guilty Men,” p. 247. Back.
Note 43: Chamberlain quoted in Ibid., p. 246. Back.
Note 44: Ribbentrop Memorandum to Hitler, January 2, 1938, “The Possibilities of Agreement With Great Britain, January 1938,” DGFP, Series D, vol 1, pp. 163, 165 (emphasis in original). Back.
Note 46: Chamberlain quoted in Aster, ” Guilty Men’,” pp. 252–253. Back.
Note 47: Chamberlain quoted in Ibid., p. 253. Back.
Note 48: See Watt, How War Came, pp. 94, 102. Back.
Note 49: Hildebrand, The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich, p. 93. Back.
Note 50: William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Undeclared War, 1940–1941 (New York: Harper, 1953), p. 27. Back.
Note 51: The Tripartite Pact between Japan, Italy, and Germany, September 27, 1940, as quoted in Nazism, Document #576, p. 796. Back.
Note 53: Weinberg, A World at Arms, p. 30. Back.
Note 54: Hildebrand, The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich, p. 102. Back.
Note 55: General Halder, as quoted in Rich, Hitler’s War Aims, p. 228. Back.
Note 56: The record of Molotov’s conversations with Hitler and Ribbentrop appear in DGFP, Series D, vol 11, Nos. 325, 326, 329, and 348. Back.
Note 57: Van Creveld, Hitler’s Strategy, p. 70. Back.
Note 58: Hitler–Molotov meeting on November 13, 1940, DGFP, Series D, vol 11, no. 328, pp. 555–556. Back.
Note 61: Ribbentrop as quoted in Geoffrey Roberts, The Soviet Union and the Origins of the Second World War: Russo–German Relations and the Road to War, 1933–1941 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), p. 129. Back.
Note 62: Ibid., pp. 559–560. Back.
Note 64: DGFP, Series D, vol 11, no. 329, pp. 567–568. Back.
Note 65: Hitler on November 15, 1940, quoted in Van Creveld, Hitler’s Strategy, p. 81. Back.
Note 66: Anton W. DePorte, Europe Between the Superpowers: The Enduring Balance (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), p. 42. Back.
Note 67: Hitler’s directive No. 24, March 5, 1941, DGFP, Series D, vol 12, pp. 219–220 (emphasis in original). Back.
Note 69: Conversation, Ribbentrop–Matsuoka, March 31, 1941, in Ibid., p. 413. Back.
Note 70: Admiral Raeder, as quoted in Hinsley, Hitler’s Strategy, p. 179. Back.
Note 71: Compton, The Swastika and the Eagle, p. 111; Boetticher telegram, October 2, 1940, DGFP, Series D, vol 11, p. 235. Back.
Note 72: Conversation, Hitler–Matsuoka, April 1, 1941, DGFP, Series D, vol 12, p. 386. Back.
Note 77: Quoted in Hinsley, Hitler’s Strategy, p. 131. Also see Hildebrand, The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich, p. 101. Back.
Note 78: Hitler, as quoted in Hinsley, Hitler’s Strategy, p. 132. Back.
Note 80: Calleo, The German Problem Reconsidered, p. 108. Back.
Note 81: Stalin quoted in Isaac Deutscher, Stalin: A Political Biography, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949), p. 411. Back.
Note 82: Robert C. Tucker, Stalin in Power: The Revolution From Above, 1928–1941 (New York: Norton, 1990), p. 345. Back.
Note 83: Louis Fischer, Russia’s Road From Peace to War: Soviet Foreign Relations, 1917–1941 (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), p. 322. Back.
Note 84: Cripps report of July 16, 1940, British Public Record Office, Foreign Office 371/24846, f. 10, N 6526/30/38. Quoted in Weinberg, World in the Balance, p. 7. Back.
Note 85: Henderson, Failure of a Mission, p. 259. Back.
Note 86: Deutscher, Stalin, p. 441. For Stalin’s overestimation of Anglo–French strength, see Adam B. Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence: Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–73, 2nd ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974), pp. 227, 229, 264. Back.
Note 87: Statement by Stalin before the Eighteenth Congress of the CPSU on March 10, 1939, as quoted in Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence, p. 264. Back.
Note 88: Tucker, Stalin in Power, pp. 587, 592. Back.
Note 89: Voroshilov quoted in Ibid., p. 592. Back.
Note 90: Supporting this view of Soviet foreign policy, Sir Nevile Henderson wrote:
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” . . . I always believed that Moscow’s chief aim was to embroil Germany and the Western Powers in a common ruin and to emerge as the tertius gaudens of the conflict between them. This was, up to August, similarly the professed view of all Germans from Hitler downward who commented on our Russian negotiations.” Henderson, Failure of a Mission, p. 259. Ironically, Stalin accused the Western democracies of engaging in an “abettor” strategy, which he himself would employ: “The [democracies’] policy of non–intervention reveals an eagerness, a desire . . . not to hinder Germany, say, from enmeshing herself in European affairs, from embroiling herself in a war with the Soviet Union; to allow all the belligerents to sink deeply into the mire of war, to encourage them surreptitiously in this; and then, when they have become weak enough, to appear on the scene with fresh strength, to appear, of course, ‘in the interest of peace,’ and to dictate conditions to the enfeebled belligerents.” Quoted in McSherry, Stalin, Hitler, and Europe, pp. 120–121. Back. |
Note 91: Stalin quoted in Tucker, Stalin in Power, pp. 597–598. Back.
Note 92: Though debate exists on this point, Barry Leach argues that Hitler never wavered in his belief that war with the Soviet Union was inevitable. See Barry A. Leach, German Strategy Against Russia, 1939–1941 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), chaps. 2 and 3. For the preventive–war aspects of Hitler’s Strategy, see Rich, Hitler’s War Aims, chaps. 9, 14, 15, and 18. For the propensity of authoritarian regimes to wage preventive wars, see Schweller, “Domestic Structure and Preventive War.” Back.
Note 93: James E. McSherry, Stalin, Hitler, and Europe, vol. 2, The Imbalance of Power, 1939–1941 (Arlington, VA: The Open–Door Press, 1970), p. 254. Back.
Note 94: Cripps to Halifax, August 2, 1940, British Foreign Office Papers, Public Records Office, 371/24845. As quoted in Douglas, New Alliances, p. 40. Back.
Note 95: Hildebrand, The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich, p. 115. Back.
Note 96: Telegram from Ribbentrop to Ott, no. 1383, August 25, 1941, DGFP., Series D, vol 13, p. 377. Back.
Note 97: Telegram from Ribbentrop to Ott, August 25, 1941, DGFP, Series D, vol 13, pp. 375–376. Back.
Note 98: Amau quoted in a telegram from Ott to Berlin, August 29, 1941, DGFP, Series D, vol 13, p. 410. Back.
Note 99: Hildebrand, The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich, p. 115. Back.
Note 100: Most power analysts agree that “nations face a ‘power gradient,’ which produces a decline in national capabilities due to distance.” Jacek Kugler and Marina Arbetman, “Choosing Among Measures of Power: A Review of the Empirical Record,” in Richard J. Stoll and Michael D. Ward, eds., Power in World Politics (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1989), p. 66 and the table on p. 76; and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, The War Trap (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), pp. 104–109. Back.
Note 101: Conversation, Hitler–Matsuoka, April 4, 1941, DGFP, Series D, vol 12, p. 455. Back.
Note 102: Essentially, Hitler gambled that Germany would win the race against time. Recognizing that Germany would not be fully prepared for the final hegemonic war against the U.S. until 1943–1945, Hitler claimed that in 1941, the Axis was in far better shape than the United States. History proved him wrong in this assessment. For analysis of the many problems with Germany’s war economy, see Klein, Germany’s Economic Preparations for War; Milward, The German Economy at War; and Berenice A. Carroll, Design for Total War: Arms and Economics in the Third Reich (The Hague: Mouton, 1968); and Murray, The Change in the European Balance of Power. Back.
Note 103: For the idealist–realist debate within the administration and Roosevelt’s disagreement with aspects of the isolationist creed, see Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo–American Alliance, pp. 27–29. Back.
Note 104: Offner, American Appeasement, pp. 31–32. Back.
Note 105: Robert A. Divine, Roosevelt and World War II, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1969), p. 8. Back.
Note 106: Samuel Rosenman, ed., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 5 (New York: Macmillan, 1942), p. 217. Back.
Note 107: For the British interim finance crisis and the underlying mutual distrust between the British and Americans, see Warren F. Kimball, “ ‘Beggar My Neighbor’: America and the British Interim Finance Crisis, 1940–1941,” The Journal of Economic History, vol. 29, no. 4 (December 1969), pp. 758–772. Back.
Note 108: Hauner, “Did Hitler Want a World Dominion?” p. 24. Back.
Note 109: Mussolini speaking at the Italian Council of Ministers on December 27, 1941, as quoted in Deakin, The Brutal Friendship, p. 17. Back.
Note 110: The Malta operation was also supported by Ugo Cavallero, Chief of the Italian General Staff, and General Albert Kesselring, who commanded the German Air Force based on Sicily, both of whom warned against the Egytian campaign as too risky and ill–advised prior to solving the Mediterranean traffic problem. Rommel’s swift halt at El Alamein proved the doubters correct. To stiffen the weakened Axis position at Alamein, the Italian reserves of men and shipping intended for the Malta operation were diverted to Rommel according to Mussolini’s instructions. Back.
Note 111: For discussion of the Indian Ocean strategy, see Gerhard L. Weinberg, Germany, Hitler, and World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), chap. 16. Back.
Note 112: Rommel quoted in Deakin, The Brutal Friendship, p. 79. Back.
Note 113: Weinberg, Germany, Hitler, and World War II, pp. 207–211. Back.
Note 115: Weinberg, A World at Arms, p. 463; Weinberg, Germany, Hitler, and World War II, p. 212 Back.
Note 116: Quoted in Deakin, The Brutal Friendship, pp. 93–94. Back.
Note 117: Hitler as quoted in Ibid., pp. 95–96. Back.
Note 118: The Von Hassell Diaries, entry of July 20, 1943, pp. 312–313. Back.
Note 119: Carr, What Is History?, p. 91. Also see Geoffrey Hawthorn, Plausible Worlds: Possibility and Understanding in History and the Social Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), ch. 1. Back.
Note 120: Trevor–Roper, “History and Imagination,” pp. 360–361. For a brief summary of Trevor–Roper’s thoughts, see Hawthorn, Plausible Worlds, p. 4. Back.
Note 121: Hildebrand, The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich, p. 111. Back.
Note 122: More than half of the Russian prisoners of war died in the camps, compounds, and extermination places. For the story of Nazi Germany’s unwillingness to use woman power and abuse and misuse of foreign workers and prisoners of war, see Edward L. Homze, Foreign Labor in Nazi Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967). Back.
Note 123: Instead, Hitler met Rommel’s demands for 70,000 tons a month of supplies, an Axis force of seven divisions, and a substantial amount of military hardware (260 aircraft by early 1942). All of these supplies were wasted on Rommel’s two reckless offensive advances from Libya into Egypt, which not only proved to be militarily infeasible but were also undertaken at a time when all of Germany’s forces should have been used to defeat the Soviets. See Martin van Creveld, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), ch. 6, “Sirte to Alamein.” Back.
Note 124: Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War, p. 278. Back.
Note 125: Hugh R. Trevor–Roper, ed., The Testament of Adolf Hitler: The Hitler–Bormann Documents, February–April 1945 (London: Cassell, 1961), p. 30. Back.
Note 128: Ibid., pp. 107–108. Back.
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