Draft,12.12.2019 “Telling the Real from the Fake: The Origins of World War II” Paper given in Moscow, week of 15 December 2019 Michael Jabara Carley I want to talk today about the origins of World War II. You may know that it is a controversial subject, which is a political question and not just a matter of historical debate. Who was to blame for the outbreak of war in September 1939? If you look at political cartoons in AugustSeptember 1939, or read press accounts in the west, you will see that the British and French governments wanted at once to pass the blame to the USSR, especially for signing the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression. This is easy to understand because France and Britain had a lot to hide and often the best defence is offence. In December 1939-January 1940 the British government planned a white paper to blame the USSR for the failure of 1939 tripartite negotiations to organise an anti-Nazi alliance. The white paper included a large number of telegrams between the British embassy in Moscow and the Foreign Office in London. A 2 print run of 100,000 copies was planned. Some government officials could not wait for publication. It’s great propaganda, they said, to discredit the USSR. The only trouble was that the French government did not agree with officials in London. It might be good propaganda, but not for us, said the French ambassador in London. The French thought the collection of documents would likely convince people that the USSR was more serious about concluding an anti-Nazi alliance than Britain or France. Especially Britain. What if the Soviet government decides to reply to the white paper, French diplomats asked? This was an excellent question because the Narkomindel was indeed planning a reply. The French effectively vetoed publication and the white paper was filed. That was not the end of efforts to tag the Soviet Union with responsibility for starting WWII. Hitler seemed almost to disappear from the discussion. In 1944 the former French air minister, Pierre Cot, published his memoirs. He wrote the following: “We need to finish with this hypocrisy which consists of declaring the Soviet government 3 responsible and solely responsible for the rupture of the Franco-Soviet pact.” We will have to wait for the opening of the archives, Cot went on to say: they will confirm that France bore a greater responsibility than the USSR for the collapse of Franco-Soviet relations. French diplomacy left Stalin scarcely any choice but to sign the non-aggression pact. In fact, we now have the open archives, British, French, Soviet, and they bear out what Cot wrote seventy-five years ago. Did it matter in the west? Of course not. The United States and Britain had a problem in 1945 at the end of the war. The Red Army played the predominant role in crushing the Nazi Wehrmacht. For every one Nazi soldier killed by the western allies, the Red Army killed nine. In 1945 this was not a secret. Western public opinion was more supportive of the USSR than were western governments. If the US and British governing elites wanted to blame the USSR for WWII, they would have to figure out a way to induce public amnesia about the Red Army’s role in crushing the Wehrmacht. 4 In 1948 the US State Department issued a collection of documents entitled Nazi-Soviet Relations, 1939-1941, to which the Soviet government replied with Falsifiers of History. The propaganda war was on, as was the western, especially US attempt to attribute to the USSR as much as to Nazi Germany the responsibility for setting off World War II. US propaganda was preposterous given the history of the 1930s as we now know it from various European archives. Was there ever a greater gesture of national ingratitude than US accusations blaming the USSR for the origins of the war or the rubbing out of the colossal Soviet contribution to the common victory against Nazi Germany? It was the Red Army which paid most of the butcher’s bill for victory. Lucky it was for the British and Americans. But the United States and Britain wanted and still want to take the laurels of victory for themselves. It is like soldiers wearing war medals they did not earn. US propaganda in every form of media—magazines, films, comic books, dime novels—was very successful. These days in the west the Soviet role in destroying Nazism is practically unknown. And the west wants to keep it that way. The anti-Russian campaign to falsify history 5 paradoxically intensified after the dismemberment of the USSR in 1991. The Baltic States and Poland led the charge. Like a tail wagging the dog, they stampeded all too willing European organisations, like the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Warsaw (OSCE) and the Parliamentary Assembly Council of Europe, Strasbourg (PACE), into ridiculous statements equating Stalin with Hitler in provoking World War II. It is the triumph of ignorance by politicians who know nothing or who calculate that the few who do know something, will not be heard. After all, how many people have read the diplomatic papers in various European archives detailing Soviet efforts to build an anti-Nazi alliance during the 1930s? How many people would know of the responsibilities of London, Paris, and Warsaw in obstructing the common European defence against Nazi Germany? The few historians and informed citizens who do know the truth can easily be marginalised, belittled, or ignored. You know, it’s discredit the messenger to discredit the message. Of course, you don’t have to convince most Russian historians. Nor have they sat idly by, watching the western smear campaign. 6 Neither has the Russian government. The year 2019 marks the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the war. Numerous books have been published to counter the west’s “fake history”. Several government agencies have organised highly publicised exhibitions of heretofore secret documents on the origins of the war. Russian television has run documentaries and fora to set the record straight. In the Russian Federation this is like preaching to the converted. Somehow Russia has got to get its view widely disseminated in the west. What did actually happen in the 1930s? Here is a short résumé based on fragments from a new book I am writing. Seventeen chapters written so far, and a typescript approaching 1,000pp. I am using all those archives to which Pierre Cot referred back in 1944, 75 years ago. Let’s start at the beginning. In late January 1933 President Paul von Hindenburg, appointed Adolf Hitler as German chancellor. Within months Hitler’s government declared illegal the German Communist and Socialist parties and commenced to establish a one party Nazi state. The Soviet government had heretofore maintained tolerable or correct 7 relations with Weimar Germany, established through the treaty of Rapallo in 1922. The new Nazi government abandoned that policy and launched a propaganda campaign against the Soviet Union and against its diplomatic, trade, and business representatives working in Germany. Soviet business offices were sometimes trashed and their personnel roughed up by Nazi hooligans. Alarm bells went off in Moscow. Soviet diplomats and notably the Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Maksim M. Litvinov, had read Hitler’s Mein Kampf, his blueprint for the German domination of Europe, published in the mid-1920s. The book became a bestseller in Germany. For those of you who may not know, Mein Kampf identified Jews and Slavs as inferior peoples—other Nazi leaders used the terminology of Untermenschen—sub-humans, good only for slavery or death. The Jews were not to be the only targets of Nazi genocide. Soviet territories eastward to the Ural Mountains were to become German lebensraum, living space. France was also named as a habitual enemy which had to be eliminated. 8 “What about Hitler’s book?” Litvinov often asked German diplomats in Moscow. The narkom had a sense of humour. Oh that, they said, don’t pay it any mind. Hitler doesn’t really mean what he wrote. Litvinov smiled politely in reaction to such statements, but did not believe a word of what he heard from his German interlocutors. In December 1933 the Soviet government officially launched a new policy of collective security and mutual assistance against Nazi Germany. What did this new policy mean exactly? The Soviet idea was to re-establish the World War I anti-German entente, to be composed of France, Britain, the United States, and yes, even fascist Italy. Although not stated publically, it was a policy of containment and preparation for war against Nazi Germany should containment fail. In October 1933 Litvinov went to Washington to settle the terms of US diplomatic recognition of the USSR. He had discussions with the new US president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, about collective security against Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. Iosif Stalin, Litvinov’s boss in Moscow, gave his approval to these discussions. Soviet-US relations 9 were off to a good start, but in 1934 the State Department—almost to a man, anti-communists and sovietophobes—effectively scuttled the rapprochement launched by Roosevelt and Litvinov. At the same time Soviet diplomats in Paris were discussing collective security with the French foreign minister, Joseph PaulBoncour. In 1933 and 1934 Paul-Boncour and his successor Louis Barthou strengthened ties with the USSR. The reason was simple: both governments felt threatened by Hitlerite Germany. Here too promising Franco-Soviet relations were sabotaged by Pierre Laval, who succeeded Barthou after the latter was killed in Marseille during the assassination of the Yugoslav King Alexander I in October 1934. Laval was an anticommunist who preferred a rapprochement with Nazi Germany to collective security with the USSR. He gutted a Franco-Soviet mutual assistance pact which was finally signed in May 1935 only to delay its ratification in the French National Assembly. I call the pact the coquille vide, or empty shell. Laval lost power in January 1936 but the damage had been done. After the fall of France in 1940, Laval became a Nazi collaborator and was shot for treason in the autumn of 1945. 10 In Britain too Soviet diplomats were active and sought to launch an Anglo-Soviet rapprochement. Its aim was to establish the base for collective security against Nazi Germany. Here too the policy was sabotaged, first by the conclusion of the Anglo-German naval agreement in June 1935. This was a bilateral pact on German naval rearmament. The Soviet and French governments were stunned and considered the British deal with Germany to be a betrayal. In early 1936 a new British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, put a stop to the rapprochement because of so-called communist “propaganda” in Moscow. Soviet diplomats thought Eden was a “friend”. He was nothing of the sort. In each case, the United States, France, and Britain halted promising discussions with the Soviet Union. Why would these governments do something so seemingly incomprehensive in hindsight? Because anti-communism and sovietophobia were stronger motives amongst the US, French, and British governing elites than the perception of danger from Nazi Germany. On the contrary, these elites in large measure were sympathetic to Hitler. Fascism was a bulwark mounted in defence of capitalism, against the spread of communism and 11 against the extension of Soviet influence into Europe. The great question of the 1930s was “who is enemy no. 1”, Nazi Germany or the USSR? All too often these elites, not all, but the majority, got the answer to that question wrong. They preferred a rapprochement with Nazi Germany to collective security and mutual assistance with the USSR. Fascism represented force, power, and masculinity for European elites which often doubted themselves and feared communism. Leather uniforms, the odor of sweat from tens of thousands of marching fascists with their drums, banners, and torches were like aphrodisiacs for elite men unsure of their own virility and of their security against the growth of communism. The Spanish civil war, which erupted in July 1936, polarised European politics between right and left and rendered impossible mutual assistance against Germany. Italy was a peculiar case. The Soviet government maintained tolerable relations with Rome even though Italy was fascist and Russia, a communist state. Italy had fought on the side of the Entente during World War I and Litvinov wanted to keep it on side in the new coalition he was trying to build. But the duce, Benito Mussolini, had colonial 12 ambitions in East Africa. He launched a war of aggression against Abyssinia, the last parcel of African territory which had not been colonised by the European powers. To make a long story short, the Abyssinian crisis was the beginning of the end of Litvinov’s hopes to keep Italy on side. In Romania too Soviet diplomats had some early successes. The Romanian foreign minister, Nicolae Titulescu, favoured collective security and worked closely with Litvinov to improve Soviet-Romanian relations. Between Titulescu and Litvinov there were discussions about mutual assistance. These too came to nothing. Romania was dominated by a far right elite which disapproved of better Soviet relations. In August 1936 Titulescu found himself politically isolated and was compelled to resign. He spent much of his time abroad because he feared for his life in Bucharest. In Czechoslovakia, Eduard Beneš, like Titulescu, favoured collective security against the Nazi menace. In May 1935 Beneš, the Czechoslovak president, signed a mutual assistance pact with the USSR, 13 but he weakened it to avoid going beyond the scope of the FrancoSoviet pact, sabotaged by Laval. The Czechoslovaks feared Nazi Germany, but they would not ally closely with the USSR without the full backing of Britain and France, and this they would never obtain. Czechoslovakia and Romania looked to a strong France and would not go beyond French commitments to the USSR. France looked to Britain. The British were the key, if they were ready to march, ready to ally themselves with the USSR, everyone else would fall into line. Without the British—who would not march—everything fell apart. The USSR was busy almost everywhere in Europe trying to organise collective security. Even in Warsaw, though it was a tough nut to crack. In fact, all the western capitals were tough nuts to crack. In January 1934 the Polish government signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany in spite of a formal alliance with France. Imagine the reaction in Paris; it was very negative. The Polish elite never hid its preference for a rapprochement with Germany rather than for better relations with the USSR. Polish diplomats had flirted with their Soviet 14 counterparts as a lure to attract Berlin. The Poles became spoilers of collective security sabotaging Soviet attempts to organise an antiGerman entente. Soviet diplomats repeatedly warned their Polish counterparts that Poland was headed to its doom if it did not change policy. Germany would turn on them and crush them when the time was right. The Poles laughed at such warnings, dismissed them out of hand. The Russian is an “Asiatic” and “barbarian”, one Polish general said, at least the German is a European and an homme d’ordre (человек порядка). The choice between the two was easy to make. Let me be clear here. The archival evidence , to my mind, leaves no doubts, the Soviet government offered collective security and mutual assistance to France, Britain, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, even fascist Italy, and in every case their offers were rejected, indeed spurned contemptuously in the case of Poland, the great spoiler of collective security in the lead-up to war in 1939. In the autumn of 1936, all Soviet efforts for mutual assistance had failed, and the USSR found itself isolated. No one wanted to ally with 15 Moscow against Nazi Germany; all the above mentioned European powers conducted negotiations with Berlin to lure the wolf away from their doors. Yes, even the Czechoslovaks. The idea, both stated and unstated, was to turn Hitler’s ambitions eastward against the USSR. “A spirit of capitulation,” Litvinov warned Stalin, “has arisen not only in France, but also in Czechoslovakia….” This is why the Soviet government renewed its efforts to strengthen relations with France now governed by the centre-left Front populaire. It did not on any account wish to find itself isolated in Europe, a real danger if France and Britain could conclude a deal with Hitler on security in Western Europe. To make a long story short, Litvinov’s efforts to improve relations with France by starting military staff talks failed. The French high command issued directives to stall discussions with Soviet soldiers and diplomats. A few months later Stalin turned on his military high command; senior commanders were executed, jailed or cashiered. What was Stalin thinking? It was the perfect pretext for the French to back away from better relations with the Soviet Union. Franco-Soviet relations never recovered even in 1939. 16 Then came Anschluss in March 1938 (Austria disappeared) and the Munich betrayal in September 1938. Britain and France sold out the Czechoslovaks to Germany. “Peace in our time,” Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister, declared. Czechoslovakia was dismembered to buy “peace” for France and Britain. Poland got a modest share of the booty as part of the dirty deal. Poland was a Nazi accomplice in 1938 before becoming a Nazi victim in 1939. “Vultures,” Winston Churchill called the Poles. One disgusted French diplomat likened them (the Poles) to “ghouls who in former centuries crawled the battlefields to kill and rob the wounded….” In February 1939 the Manchester Guardian called Munich, selling out your friends to buy off your enemies. That sounds about right. March 1939 brought the chickens home to roost. The fascists triumphed in Spain, rump Czechoslovakia disappeared, and the Wehrmacht walked into Memel, seized from Lithuania, without a shot fired. No one much cared about Spain but the disappearance of Czechoslovakia was the wake-up call. War was coming. 17 There was one last chance to conclude an Anglo-Franco-Soviet pact of mutual assistance against Nazi Germany. I call it the “alliance that never was”. In April 1939 the Soviet government offered France and Britain a political and military alliance against Nazi Germany. The terms of the alliance proposal were submitted in writing to Paris and London. Logically, you would think that the French and British governments, in their predicament, would have seized Soviet offers with both hands. It did not happen. The Foreign Office rejected the Soviet alliance proposal while the French grudgingly went along. On 3 May, Narkom Litvinov was sacked and replaced by Viacheslav M. Molotov, Stalin’s right arm. For a time Soviet policy continued unchanged. In May Molotov sent a message to Warsaw that the Soviet government would support Poland against German aggression if so desired. On the very next day, the Polish government declined Molotov’s proffered hand. The Poles were incorrigible. 18 In spite of the initial British rejection of Soviet proposals, AngloFranco-Soviet negotiations continued through the summer months of 1939. To make a long story short, at the end of July the British and French agreed to send military delegations to Moscow to conclude an anti-Nazi alliance. The Anglo-French military missions traveled to the Soviet Union on a slow chartered merchantman, the City of Exeter, making a top speed of thirteen knots. One Foreign Office official had proposed sending the missions in a fleet of fast British cruisers to make a point. The Foreign Secretary, Edward Lord Halifax, thought that idea was too provocative. So the French and British delegations set out on a lumbering, rented merchantman and took five days to get to the USSR. They played shuffleboard to kill time. All the while, tick tock, the countdown to war was underway. Were the British and French serious? The British chief negotiator, Admiral Sir Reginald Drax, had no written powers to conduct negotiations or sign an agreement with the Soviet side. The Foreign Office eventually sent out documents by air mail, though it’s not clear whether Drax ever received them. His French counterpart, General 19 Joseph Doumenc, had a vague letter of authority. He could negotiate, but not sign an agreement. Doumenc and Drax were supernumeraries, relative nobodies. On the other hand, the Soviet delegation was headed by Marshal Voroshilov, commissar for war. He had full plenipotentiary powers. “All indications so far go to show,” advised the British ambassador in Moscow, “that Soviet military negotiators are really out for business.” In contrast, formal British instructions were to “go very slowly”. When Drax met Foreign Secretary Halifax before leaving for Moscow, he asked about the “possibility of failure” in the negotiations. “There was a short but impressive silence,” according to Drax, “and the Foreign Secretary then remarked that on the whole it would be preferable to draw out the negotiations as long as possible.” Doumenc commented that he had been sent to Moscow with “empty hands.” Doumenc and Drax had nothing to offer their Soviet interlocutors. They could not deliver Polish cooperation. Britain could send two divisions to France at the outset of a European war. The Red Army could immediately mobilise one hundred divisions, and Soviet forces were just then thrashing the Japanese in heavy fighting on the 20 Manchurian frontier. “They are not serious,” Stalin concluded. The French and British governments appeared to think they could play Stalin for a mug. Oh, how wrong they were. After years of Anglo-French bad faith, what would you have done in Stalin’s boots, or any Russian leader’s boots? Until the very end the British and French governments tried to string along the USSR. Hence, on 23 August 1939 Stalin agreed to the non-aggression pact with Hitler to avoid being isolated on the precipice of war. After nearly six years of trying to create a broad anti-German entente in Europe, notably with Britain and France, the Soviet government had nothing to show for its efforts. Nothing. By late 1936 the USSR was effectively isolated, and still Soviet diplomats tried to obtain agreement with France and Britain. The British and French, and the Romanians, and even the Czechoslovaks, and especially the Poles sabotaged, spurned or dodged Soviet offers, weakened agreements with Moscow and tried themselves to negotiate terms with Berlin to save their own skins. The Soviet government feared being left in the lurch to fight the Wehrmacht alone while the French and the British sat on their hands in the west. After all, 21 this is exactly what the French and British did while Poland collapsed at the beginning of September in a matter of days. If France and Britain would not help Poland, would they have done more for the USSR? It is a question which Stalin and his colleagues most certainly asked themselves. Nowhere in Europe did any government want to ally wholeheartedly with the USSR against the common foe. All the small powers counted on Britain and France to stand firm, but they never did. The USSR was the ugly Cassandra, the truth teller warning of the Nazi danger: almost everyone despised her and few would embrace her. Contrary to western fake history, these are the factual circumstances which framed the outbreak of war in September 1939.