Nikolay V. Starikov
Who set Hitler against Stalin?

   Translators: Iskander Shafikov, Aleksandr Grebenkov

   © English translation Piter Publishing House, LLC, 2013
   © Design of English edition, Piter Publishing House, LLC, 2013
   © ООО Издательство "Питер", 2015

Foreword

   This book is dedicated to all those who laid down their lives for Russia.

   What this book IS NOT:
   This book IS NOT about the Great Patriotic War.
   This book IS NOT about the Second World War.
   This book IS NOT a reference on the tanks, artillery, or aviation in the opposing armies.
   This book IS NOT a detailed analysis of field, marine, or air battles.
   This book IS NOT a biography of Adolf Hitler, or a complete history of the Nazi Party.
   This book IS NOT a thorough investigation of the ins and outs of the Nazi ideology, or a book of statistics on the countless victims of the Brownshirt butchery.

   What this book IS:
   This book IS about those who made this dreadful war at all possible.
   This book IS about those who financed Hitler and his party.
   This book IS about those who helped them to their power.
   This book IS about those who gave them ammunition, new territories, and confidence in their strength —
   about those who can and must spend their lives behind bars, sharing the responsibility for their unspeakable villainy with the Nazi leaders.
   This book IS about the true creators and masterminds of the most terrible war in human history.

Why is the World War II history still full of riddles?

   This war, like the next war, is a war to end war.
David Lloyd George

   I have dealt with the history of wars many a time, and all these times I have seen the same thing: contemporaries would refer a war to some time in the future, while it already stood at their countries’ frontiers.
Carl von Clausewitz

   The many years that have passed since the end of the Second World War have produced thousands of books relating to it. It might seem there should have been left no gaps in this bloodiest and most horrifying conflict in the history of mankind. As it is, quite the opposite is true. Historians have done well calculating the exact number of tanks, cannons, aircraft, and troops that belonged to each of the involved countries, but have failed to answer the simplest questions. Such “inconvenient” questions invariably come to mind when reading books on this period in history. No sooner does one give more thought to the elementary explanations provided by these venerable scholars and investigators, than their absolute inconsistency strikes the eye.
   You will, for example, read on one page that Adolf Hitler planned to conquer the entire world, while a next one will tell you, quite unexpectedly, that Germany proved totally unprepared for the war that broke out in September 1939. The Nazi only wished to attack Poland, they say, and speculated that Great Britain and France would not ally with it. That accounted for Germany’s unpreparedness for a full-scale war. They state that the Wehrmacht was petering out of drop bombs, and after the routing of France (which in fact took Germany only six weeks) the army had run out all ammunition [1 - Taylor, A. J. P. The origins of the Second World War. Dva vzgl’ada. M., 1995. P. 420.].
   Is that the kind of preparation for a global conquest? In order to occupy the whole planet a two-month ammunition reserve is obviously quite insufficient. Our blue ball of a planet has much space. And space, as we know, abhors a vacuum. To establish your sovereignty on some territory, you will first need to liquidate the current one. Now let’s recall what countries were the greatest powers at that time. It was not Poland, which Hitler was prepared to fight against. The main players on the political map of that period were Britain, France, and the United States of America. It is these countries that Germany was not prepared to fight against.
   To land in England and to subjugate America across the ocean, Germany would need a large fleet. Hitler did start building one, but the large-scale shipbuilding programme was to wind up as late as mid-1944 [2 - Jacobsen, G.-A. 1939–1945. The Second World War. M., 1995. P. 17.]. Besides, Hitler himself would often tell his marines that the war with Britain would not start before that year.
   Why then did Germany engage in war in 1939, some four years before the date it would be prepared for it? What an odd way to embark on a global conquest for the head of the German Reich! He must have known, must he not, that starting a war before one is prepared for it guarantees one’s defeat. Why then did he make such a terrible blunder? Why fight unprepared?
   Two years later, though, Hitler made a still graver blunder by attacking the Soviet Union. The countdown for the Third Reich began on that day – June 22, 1941. Notwithstanding its initial phenomenal success, Germany rolled down to its imminent ruin, for it now found itself fighting on two fronts. As unanimously held by historians and military experts, this simultaneous war on the Eastern and Western fronts doomed the German military power to total destruction. Could Adolf Hitler have failed to foresee this?
   He couldn’t – in fact, he knew everything perfectly well. In his famous memoirs The Voice of Destruction (aka Hitler Speaks), Hermann Rauschning cites a number of conversations of the Führer on various subjects, including his war plans. Interestingly, when asked about the possible result of a triple alliance of Russia, France and Britain against Germany, Hitler replies point blank, “That would be the end”. But the glib Führer doesn’t stop there. “But that stage will never be reached”, he adds. “It would only happen if I failed in all my undertakings. In that case I should feel I had wrongly usurped this place” [3 - Rauschning, H. The Voice of Destruction (Hitler speaks). M., 1993. P. 100. Hereinafter The Voice of Destruction (Hitler Speaks) is quoted from the G. P. Putnam’s Sons English-language edition (New York, 1949) available from the Internet Archive Universal Library here: https://archive.org/details/VoiceOfDestruction (Translator’s note).].
   November 23, 1939, sees Hitler delivering a speech at a Wehrmacht high command council, putting forth plans and drawing conclusions. And here again he rides his hobbyhorse – the First World War and the importance of no second front. “In 1914, a war on several fronts began. It did not solve the problem. Today, the second act of this drama is being written. We must state for the first time in these 67 years: we do not have to wage a two-front war! What we have been dreaming of since 1870 [4 - That is, since the Franco-Prussian War.], and have considered nearly impossible, has now happened. For the first time in history we have to fight only on one front, there is none other to bind us. <…> The situation now is such as we used to think unachievable” [5 - Taylor, A. J. P. The origins of the Second World War. M., 1995. P. 105.].
   But what happens then? Something quite inconceivable – the Führer deliberately changes the situation for the worse by attacking the USSR while engaged in a war with Britain! Adolf Hitler, realising the crucial importance of no second front for Germany, knowing that such a war would be doomed to failure, with his own hands adds the Eastern front to the existing Western front.
   Let us see how this seemingly absurd act on the part of Hitler is explained by historians. They say that Hitler did that to destroy the last potential ally of Britain on the continent.
   Mark these words. Look at the map. Summon your knowledge of history.
   Hitler attacks the Soviet Union to secure a total destruction of Britain!
   Now if the present-day United States is worried by Iraq, it attacks Iraq and not Pakistan. And a threat from Tehran will hardly be addressed by the Americans by bombing, say, Beijing. When one country is seen as a threat by another, the latter will normally campaign against the source of the threat. Can there be any exceptions? Indeed; in that case, the targets for the attack will be the rival country’s closest allies and associates, without whose assistance it will no longer pose a threat. Now what was the Soviet assistance to Britain in 1941? Did the Soviets ship ammunition, weapons, foodstuffs or raw materials there? Nothing of the kind. The only thing ever sent from Moscow to London was some hearty communist salutations, submitted, besides, to the Soviet embassy. The Soviet Union never was Britain’s ally; never exported any arms or ammunition to it; never leased any of its territory for British military bases. Quite on the opposite, when Germany waged wars in Europe, the Soviet Union adhered strictly to its current trade agreements with Berlin, providing Germany with vital products, including petroleum, wheat, and other commodities of strategic importance. While at war with Britain, Germany was greatly affected by the naval blockade thwarting the incoming and outgoing shipment of commodities necessary for military production chains. In such dire straits, Germany was much relieved by its continuing good relations with the Soviet Union, which purchased goods and materials required by Germany on the global market and then transported them safe and sound to the very borders of the otherwise blockaded country [6 - For example, 100% of crude rubber was imported by the Reich via the USSR. Other materials were imported using the same scheme (those which the war-torn Germany was not able to purchase directly).].
   These shipments could not be sunk or otherwise destroyed by British submarines and aircraft. We must therefore make one simple conclusion: It makes no sense for any country attacking a global superpower with which you have a non-aggression pact, and which supplies you with vitals, not your enemy! Why should one multiply one’s enemies, depleting one’s friends, or, to put it more precisely, one’s benignly neutral partners?

   Why did Adolf Hitler attack the Soviet Union, although he had admitted that a war on two fronts would bring Germany to its ruin?

   Here historians play their last trump. By routing the USSR, they explain, Hitler was hoping to coerce Britain into a peace agreement. All would be well, but does the shortest way from Berlin to London really lie through Moscow? Clearly not. There would be a far shorter one, by crossing the English Channel from the occupied France. One would not, in reality, lose oneself in the devious expanses of Russia with the view to ending up in England. This is utterly preposterous. What sort of “Hitler’s hopes” are they talking about?
   The sheer inconsistency of such and other statements cannot but strike the eye of today’s attentive reader. But it was as conspicuous even before the USSR was attacked. For example, it was plain to Count Galeazzo Ciano, Foreign Minister of Fascist Italy from 1936 until 1943. Not only was he an Italian minister, but he married to the daughter of Mussolini – he was a member of the family. As we know, Italy was not a mere observer in the Second World War; it declared war to the USSR after Germany. Now here is an extract from Count Ciano’s personal diary.
   Numerous sources point to the fact that the operation against Russia will begin shortly. The idea of war against Russia is in itself quite popular, for the defeat of Bolshevism must belong among the most important events in the history of human civilisation. However, this war doesn’t appeal to me as a symptom, for it has no adequate and convincing reason underlying it. A popular explanation of this war is that it will take place for no better reason than an attempt to find a way out of a difficult situation that has emerged against all odds [7 - Jacobsen, G.-A. 1939–1945. The Second World War. M., 1995. P. 153.].
   Such evidence is abundant. Funny to think, everyone at present is quite confident about the reason of Hitler’s aggression against Russia. Go ask anyone, ask yourself, and you will hear that hackneyed explanation of Hitler’s move. Wherefore all that clarity and unambiguity? Our contemporaries have read tons of books of the Second World War, and have got thoroughly imbued with this notion. But the contemporaries of the war itself, many of them being top-notch and highly competent politicians, found the idea of Germany attacking the USSR not just surprising, but completely off-the-wall. Why so? Because they hadn’t had the notion of no other possibility for Hitler than to attack the USSR pounded into their heads for sixty years, as we do now! As a result, those who lived in the 1940-ies considered that sort of “way out” rather a “way in” for the Reich into inferno; whereas we consider it the only possible solution for the Nazi.
   Besides, many of the Third Reich’s élite were strongly against the ruinous move against the Soviets, to include the Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop who would end his life on the gallows at Nuremberg.
   Russia is no potential ally of the English. England can expect nothing good from Russia. Hope in Russia is not postponing England’s collapse. With Russia we do not destroy any English hopes. <…> A German attack on Russia would only give the British new moral strength. It would be interpreted there as German uncertainty as to the success of our fight against England. We would thereby not only be admitting that the war was going to last a long time yet, but we might actually prolong it in this way, instead of shortening it [8 - Joachim von Ribbentrop. Memorandum by the State Secretary in the German Foreign Office (Weizsäcker).The English translation is quoted from the public-domain materials available at ibiblio: The Public’s Library and Digital Archive: http://www.ibiblio.org/ (Translator’s note).].
   Why on earth did Germany’s leader commit what even his diplomats saw as the worst of all possible blunders? Such questions are not quite so naïve as may at first appear. Why, some 130 years before Hitler’s time, the same “route to London” was chosen by Napoleon. His catastrophic failure that had its roots in 1812 was a prominent and awful lesson to consider for militarists in all countries who were thinking of a war against the Russians. And Hitler remembered well that lesson. Still, he was about to walk twice into the same water. Why? What drives Britain’s biggest enemies to take such odd steps? Different in their nationalities, different in their slogans and their forces, these men take the same old path over and over again – the path they know to be a blind-alley!
   Why do they go for Moscow and not for London?
   Instead of disembarking in England, Napoleon’s 600-thousand-strong army wades knee-deep in Russian snow blizzards. Could they have at least tried to disembark in England? Even if some 200 thousand had gone down to Davy Jones in the English Channel, the remaining troops would have surely pounded the British Isles into a stair carpet leading right up to the great Emperor’s feet. But the Russian campaign went all wrong.
   However, what Hitler does is still more ridiculous. Routing France in summer 1940, he proceeds to attack Britain from the air. That rather brief series of air combats went down in history as the “Battle of Britain”, which was of course won by the British. You know why? Because the Germans had not employed all their air forces to win it – they used them sparingly, to be more precise. That the German Luftwaffe incurred heavier losses than the British air forces during the “Battle of Britain” is a well-known fact. This was the reason, as we will read in history books, why Germany almost completely ceased its air attacks of England. So Britain stood out.
   The reason why Hitler spared his aviation is also given in books. He did that, you will read, because he wanted to spare his fighters and bombers for the future Russian campaign. So they could not use them right now against the British. They could not bomb British air facilities, cities and sea ports; they could not destroy British fighters in the air and British troops on the ground. The Luftwaffe should be economised on, otherwise there won’t be enough planes and pilots for the Russian campaign – not enough to defeat Russia. And why defeat Russia? To able to defeat Britain afterwards, to be sure [9 - For example, we can read these lines in the war diary left by the German General Franz Halder: “Adequate air forces for a siege of Britain will not be available until the Eastern campaign is substantially concluded and the Air Force is refitted and enlarged”. (Entry of September 13, 1941). Quoted by: War journal of Franz Halder, V. VII // Combined Arms Research Library Digital Library, http://goo.gl/J1VLQw].
   Churchill’s memoirs reflect the same nonsense:

   Hitler’s plan for the invasion of Russia soon brought us much-needed respite in the air. For this new enterprise the German Air Force had to be re-deployed in strength, and thus from May onwards the scale of air attack against our shipping fell [10 - Churchill, W. The Second World War. V.1. P. 23.].

   But another page in the same book expresses the opposite view:

   He wishes to destroy the Russian power because he hopes that if he succeeds in this he will be able to bring back the main strength of his Army and Air Force from the East and hurl it upon this Island, which he knows he must conquer or suffer the penalty of his crimes. His invasion of Russia is no more than a prelude to an attempted invasion of the British Isles [11 - Ibid. P. 174.].

   One can’t but admit that Hitler chooses a very singular way of invading Britain: without winning it over from the start, he goes on to attack the Soviet Union, only to resume his campaign against Britain sometime in the future!
   He would probably have done better to use all his forces against Britain from the first, without any such “cunning” plans. Why attack the Soviet Union just to return to the Channel having already no able fleet to neutralise the British one? Such questions do not normally go down well with historians.
   As we know, all anti-British adventures and campaigns of all sorts meet the same end. Some three years after Napoleon’s Russian campaign, the great French Empire was erased from the global map. It took Hitler’s Third Reich less than four years to come to ruin after a similar attempt.
   Now if such astute state leaders as these two men (for only an astute politician is capable of taking over power in a country) – if such persons commit apparently self-destructive actions that precipitate their empires into the abyss with equal and surprising rapidity, then we are inevitably left with one idea. Might it be that these politicians are not inept dense-headed laymen (as one would be forced to think), but we are deliberately being kept partially in the darkness about the reasons why both Napoleon and Hitler chose the road to hell for themselves and for their countries?
   As is appears, the “darkest” part of this information is also the most essential. What kind of information is it?
   Not only the Nazi leader’s actions seem enigmatic, but often those of British, French and American politicians. Suffice it to recall that the beaten Germany after the First World War was completely disarmed. How did it then happen that the best forces of the world were engaged in a six-and-a-half-long desperate struggle against one German army in the Second World War – the army that Germany was not supposed to have? How could Germany have recuperated and indeed enhanced its military power between the two world wars? How did Germany’s neighbours let it slip by? And most of all, how such a politician as Adolf Hitler could at all have gained power, after laying out his plans openly in his Mein Kampf?
   Questions, questions, questions… One could put endless questions and have the same cock-and-bull stories for an answer. These countries, they overlooked him; they didn’t have enough strength to stand up against him; they did not recognise any threat in him; they trusted him; etc. etc. Some game of hide-and-seek, not big politics. Describing any of such “fatal blunders” of some of the largest political figures of that time, Word War II historians will as often as not use quotations that impugn their prior statements. Here is one example – an extract from the testimony of Hjalmar Schacht, former Minister of Economics under Hitler, at the Nuremberg Trials.
   I must say <…> it was a disappointment to me that Germany’s rearmament was not in any way replied to by any actions from the Allies. This so-called breach of contract on Germany’s part against the Versailles Treaty was taken quite calmly. <…> Military missions were sent to Germany to look at this rearmament, and German military displays were visited and everything else was done, but nothing at all was done to stop Germany’s rearmament [12 - Quoted from: Nuremberg Trial Proceedings V. 12, 118th day (Wednesday, 1 May 1946), Morning Session // Contents of The Nuremberg Trials Collection at the Avalon Project, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/05–01–46.asp].
   The history of the Second World War that we are being fed with cannot account for the motives and actions of most state leaders of the time. Those persons were the locomotives of history. It was the decisions made by Hitler, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt that directly affected the course of the future events. Turning over the pages of historical books and memoirs, we cannot realise why these otherwise “sensible” and certainly outstanding figures erred so grossly and so obviously. What does it all mean?
   It means that the whole history of the Second World War that can be considered the “official version” of modern historiography has been concocted with one single purpose – that of disguising the truth about the horrors of that time.
   Disguising the truth and concealing some real criminals who must bear responsibility for millions of deaths from the trial of man and of history – that is the ultimate purpose. Nuremberg tried and convicted only those villains whose crimes lay on the surface. Blood-handed executives went to prison and up the gallows, while the masterminds of World War II were sleeping soundly in their beds.
   Nowadays tampering with historical evidence is picking up momentum. You can now hear some people say that it is the Soviet Union to blame for this war; that it was the “bloody” and “rapacious” Stalin who actually helped the obsessed Hitler to his position in Germany; that is was the aggressive Soviet Russia that aided and abetted the vicious Führer in turning Europe into a bloodbath. But once the USSR failed to invade the whole world in 1945, it means that the Russians (together with all the other Soviet nations) lost the war.
   Well, let us try to make some sense of the mess that those now far-off years presented.
   And we’ll start by the simplest question —
   Where did Adolf Hitler find money to be able to occupy the whole planet?

Who helped Hitler with money?

   It was immaterial whether they laughed at us or reviled us, whether they depicted us as fools or criminals; the important point was that they took notice of us…
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

   There will be no revolution in Germany, for all revolutions are banned in that country.
A British joke

   On September 12, 1919, a meeting of a tiny political party held in the Sterneckerbräu, a Munich beer hall, was joined by an unknown war veteran. His name was Adolf Hitler. Millions of people were just starting to recover from the First World War, when human history had insensibly taken a path that lead to still more dreadful battles, still more harrowing crimes – to the hideous ovens of Majdanek and Treblinka, to the Siege of Leningrad, to the Battle of Stalingrad and the Kursk Salient.
   The date when that meagre sprig that was eventually to grow into the Cyclopean tree of the German national socialism can be established with some accuracy. On March 7, 1918, one Anton Drexler founded a society under the poetic title Freien Arbeiterausschuss für einen guten Frieden (Free Workers’ Committee for a Good Peace) that totalled some forty workers as the members. At their quite harmless meetings during the World War, that set of lotus-eaters would sit around there with their beer mugs, theorizing on the pleasures and benefits of universal peace.
   There are but three ways to reach peace in any war – to win it, to lose it, or to end it in a tie by parley. While Drexler’s followers were jabbering it in the beer hall, events in Germany went along the first possible scenario – the Kaiser’s Empire, subverted by external revolutionary propaganda and the “live” example of the Russian Revolution, went all to pieces. Peace did settle in, but not the one Drexler and his ilk had been dreaming of. It was the treaty of Versailles. It was that town near Paris where, on June 28, 1919, the well-known Treaty was signed, to give rise, in the long run, to the Nazi Party and a new, more terrible, war. But why should we consider this peace treaty as a forerunner of a new war? The fact is, this “treaty” was daylight robbery in the guise of a harmless – and important – international document, which, nonetheless, didn’t change its true face. What may be most surprising, the Treaty was thus condemned not only by Lenin and not only by German politicians, but by members of the Triple Entente! For example, Marshal Ferdinand Foch of France, Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Armies from 1918, is famous for saying that the Treaty was “not a peace, [but] an armistice for twenty years” – the words that would prove a prophecy. Other statements also went down in history, though less widely known. “The economic clauses of the treaty [of Versailles] were malignant and silly to an extent that made them obviously futile [condemning] Germany to pay reparations on a fabulous scale”, – these are the words pronounced not by Adolf Hitler (who rode the wave of the Treaty’s critique), but by Sir Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom [13 - Churchill, W. The Second World War. V.1. P. 21.].
   As it is, the Germans were simply robbed. Germany lost about 73 thousand square kilometres of its territory (ca. 13.5 %), with over 6.5 million people living there (ca. 10 %). What is more, the “truncated” country forfeited its overseas colonies, and was to repair all the damage entailed by the conflict to the victorious parties. As to the indemnity, its total sum at first remained undetermined; it was named only later. The sum was fantastic. And it was altered several times. The final version of the calculation would have Germany make their last payment as late as in 1988! [14 - Fest, I. Hitler. Perm, 1993. V.2. P. 92.]
   It was as if a hurricane had swept over the once prospering land. Large amounts of state property were seized in compensation of the damage, including, for example, 140,000 dairy cows. But before being bled dry, Germany must first be hog-tied to have no chance of rebelling against the “victorious” looters. “Germany was disarmed. All her artillery and weapons were destroyed. Her fleet had already sunk itself in Scapa Flow. Her vast army was disbanded. <…> No military force of any kind was allowed. Submarines were forbidden <…>”, Churchill would testify in his book [15 - Churchill, W. The Second World War. V.1. P. 25–26.].
   The German army was limited to one hundred thousand men; the country was not allowed to produce military aircraft, or tanks, or men-of-war. Chaos and anarchy ensued in the defeated and bled country, multiplied by an economic collapse.
   It was against this catastrophic backdrop that Anton Drexler made up his mind to turn his club-like society into something more serious, when on January 5, 1919, he formed the German Workers’ Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei). Remarkably endowed with oratory skill, young Adolf Hitler quickly became the Party’s new leader, outshining its founder. Eventually he was the one and only Leader – the Führer of the new political force. He changed not only the philosophy of the Workers’ Party, but its name, prefixing it with the word “national-socialist”, so it went down in history as the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or NSDAP).
   A great mass of various literature is devoted to the history of the Nazi Party and its leader. You can go to any book market, and will be surely faced with the half-insane eyes of Adolf Hitler staring at you from a couple of front covers, or the heavy-set outlines of his troopers. You may think all questions have long been answered. And yet, as soon as you take a more disinterested look at the history of the Third Reich, every new book you read will bring in more and more obscurity and ambiguity. Very soon you will learn that even the most “authoritative” researchers refer in their books to facts that are strangely at variance with each other. Figures will differ grossly even where they have never been called in question – for example, the membership of Hitler’s party. What can be easier, it seems, than to look up the Nazi literature in the archives for the key figures of the party’s development? We know that the Nazi spoke and wrote much about their “years of struggle” and “fallen comrades”; we should naturally expect the growing number of the Nazi Party to be well documented… Nothing of the kind!
   “As of November 1923, the Party numbered 15,000”, writes Konrad Heiden in his Hitler’s Rise to Power, a book he published in 1936, while the party was in its heyday [16 - Heiden, K. Hitler’s rise to power. M., 2004. P. 178.].
   “The party was rapidly growing. At the end of 1922, it had some 22,000 members. At the time of the putsch [it] numbered some 55,000”, writes the British historian Ian Kershaw in his 1990 book Hitler [17 - Kershaw, I. Hitler. Rostov n/D, 1997. P. 64.].
   Recalling that Hitler’s failed putsch took place exactly in November 1923, we have a tremendous disproportion in the two quoted figures – within the 55 years between the appearance of the two books the Nazi Party membership was estimated four times as large! Keeping that kind of pace, the “historians” of some three hundred years later will subscribe the entire population of Germany to the Nazi Party.
   For reassurance, let’s take down a third book for reference – that written by Alan Bullock, another influential “expert” on the Nazi Germany. And once more, we bump into quite different figures. “The membership rose from about 1,100 in June 1920 to 6,000 in early 1922, and about 20,000 in early 1923” [18 - Bullock, A. Hitler and Stalin: Parallel lives. 1994. V.1. P. 102.].
   We might suppose that the historians of the Nazi Party each use their own, separate source – a separate archive or documentary, which should explain the discrepancies. But the archives and documents are always the same – it is the quotations that differ! Where on earth are all these figures taken from? – this secret is worse than all the secrets of the Nazi Germany.
   To be short, each author has his own version. These versions are then blindly copied by smaller-scale authors, to result in a total mess in literature.
   How then can we study the history of the Second World War, where it is essential to know the real numbers of artillery, tanks, and troops involved in battles, once we can’t depend on historians for such an easy question as the number of “members” of the Nazi Party?
   But why ask about the number of the Nazi? Why do we need it at all? There is one good reason – to show by a very simple example the amount of sheer ignorance of facts on the part of the Nazi leader’s biographers. This is to warn you against taking for granted all that fudge written about the Second World War – not without checking and double-checking it with your own mind. No fewer cock-and-bull stories are written about the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people. I conceived this book as an attempt to put in some order the tons of motley information concerning this period in history; to extract that grain of truth that would help us realise the real causes of Russia’s worst tragedy that began on June 22, 1941.
   History has its stereotypes. These stereotypes, or clichés, are well known to anyone, though no one can tell who and when created them. Go ask who gave money to Hitler, and you will hear the same reply – German manufacturers. This stereotype has variants, including “major capitalists”, “the Krupp group”, “German corporations” and so on and so forth.
   But let us get down to brass tacks. All the political activity of any party is financed by those who take sides with it. This is a naïve point of view. The correct one is as follows: the political activity of a party is financed by those who expect to achieve something by it. This phrase is far more sinister. For example, a party that calls for support of national industry can be sponsored by the owners of textile and footwear factories. The idea is, if this party comes to power, is will raise import fees on shoes and clothing, which will bear a direct benefit to domestic manufacturers. Is this bad for people? Probably not – unless all business competition is destroyed in the country under the banner of boosting “national industry”. Likewise, a party oriented for national defence will be aided and abetted by the military lobby expecting the blabbering of the politicians to be followed by new orders on missiles, radars, tanks, and aircraft. Again, is this bad for the country? Not unless the military expenses go beyond the reasonable. To put it in a nutshell, financial support of political forces by tycoons has always been there, and will always be. This is not something invented in Russia, but a common phenomenon in every country where the supreme authority is elected by the nation. Democracy as the ultimate form of people’s rule leads any politician to one sad conclusion – the largest electorate is won by money, not by nice slogans. Money is needed not to bribe the voting public, but just to get your ideas across – to bring them home to people from television and newspapers – to say and be heard! You will have to pay through the nose for all that, bearing in mind the simple rule: the larger the country, the larger the target electorate, the more money you need.
   After the fall of monarchy in 1918, the same kind of democracy was established in Germany. Even the country itself between its defeat in the First World War and Hitler’s rise to power is known as the Weimar Republic, after the name of the city where the new German Constitution was enacted. Admitting that Germany was a republic, everything said above holds true for the country of that time. Any political activity must be fed by money, just as the furnace of an engine must be fed by coal. You won’t get anywhere without that “fuel”. Both the success and the duration of your future political “trip” wholly depend on the amount of banknotes to be spent. Here we come to the question for which we have undertaken this brief foray into the theory of politics.
   What was the source of financial “coal” for Adolf Hitler, who only fifteen years after his “seminal” appearance in the Munich beer hall came to the top power in Germany?
   The question is no sooner asked, than a ready reply given. The same old stereotype: he was sponsored by German industrial magnates. A good reply it is – and a very convenient one, too. Convenient for everybody. Soviet-time historiography did with that explanation alone. In the West, another ready reply is common, thanks to Suvorov-Rezun. They say that it was Stalin who guided and helped Hitler to his power, seeing him as a new “icebreaker of revolution”. This should mean, according to that judgment, that the Bolshevik communists gave money to the Nazi – a statement that has zero logic in it. One might as well blame the Yeltsin Russia, too poor even to print currency, for financing international terrorism on a large scale. Accusing the Soviet Union under Stalin of fostering the Nazi is similarly absurd. The Russian Civil War had not yet ended, when Hitler’s party was already toddling to its might. How could the Russian communists possibly have financed the German anti-communist movement? One might as well name Lenin the benefactor of Kolchak and Wrangel! Why concoct such obvious apple-sauce? That is to accuse Russia of the whole bag of tricks. There is a second reason as well – to avert suspicions from the true forces that stood behind that cannibal party…
   German industrial magnates did go down in history as Hitler’s sponsors. But we will ask again: Did they have any reason for sponsoring the National-Socialists?
   Why, you will say, the Nazi were all fiercely anti-communist; by sponsoring them, the bourgeoisie sought to prevent the risk of a Red revolution. This is another common bag of lies that has nothing to do with reality. Small wonder that no figures or dates are cited in books that use this kind of argument. We will yet take pains to compare things.
   In November 1918, immediately after the monarchical regime came to ruin, Germany was teetering on the brink of a Bolshevik revolution. What is more, this Socialist revolution did take place in the country – a long time before the appearance of the obsessed Führer on the political stage. The period of chaos and anarchy caused by the fall of the Kaiser was followed by the emergence of two main political forces – a social democrat government and communists who sought to deepen the revolutionary movement. The situation came to a head in 1919, with mass skirmishes in Berlin, and the arrest and execution of the German Communist Party leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg (the so-called “Spartacist uprising”).
   The struggle did not end there, though. The Bremen communists proved quicker on the draw, and on January 10, 1919, the Bremen Soviet Republic was declared. To back up the new-born Red republic, a detachment commanded by Ernst Thälmann set out for Bremen from Hamburg. But no backup could help the rebels – the German army was firmly on the side of the current government. As early as on February 4, the Red Bremen was seized by a division commanded by General Gerstenberg. The Bremen Soviet Republic bit the dust so quickly that all the children in the USSR knew that city only by the wonderful Grimm brothers fairy-tale and the still more wonderful Soviet animation film.
   Early March 1919 saw a new wave of conflicts in Berlin. A national walkout organised by the communists took the form of an all-out revolt that was eventually crushed down, with some 1,200 casualties. The volunteer paramilitary units formed by regular and non-commissioned officers (the so-called Freikorps, literally “Free Corps”) and the police suppressed the uprisings with firmness and savagery. There are confirmed cases when a group of striking workers was mowed down by machine-gun fire just for flying a single red banner.
   Who was it who made such a blood bath of the revolting communists? It was Gustav Noske, a German member of the Council of the People’s Deputies (Rat der Volksbeauftragten) during the November Revolution. This “glorious son of the German nation” went down in history as “the Bloodhound [19 - The Bloodhound is a large hound (dog breed), famous for its extraordinary sense of smell. In medieval Britain, these dogs would be frequently engaged in the pursuit of thieves, murderers, and other criminals. A bloodhound could take the scent of the fugitive(s), start the trail, and almost invariably track them down. Also, the bloodhound was sometimes used to dispatch a wounded animal in a hunt. In medieval times, these dogs were often trained to pursue the fleeing enemy on a battle field.]”. The connection between this alias and the blood of those massacred by his command is but incidental, characteristic as it is. It was Noske’s own words about himself in the days of the revolt – “Someone has to be the bloodhound; I shall not shirk the responsibility” [20 - The original phrase in German is: “Einer muss der Bluthund werden, ich scheue die Verantwortung nicht”. (Translator’s note)].
   Still, April had new waves of chaos in store for Germany. On April 13, 1919, the Bavarian Soviet Republic was proclaimed in Munich. It was not to live long, however, and already on May 5 it collapsed. But in the beginning, everything looked not unlike the Bolshevik power grab in Russia. The short-lived republic had its own Council of Actions to represent the supreme authority, as well as an Executive Council headed by communists but comprising at first also independent social democrats. The young Red republic’s strategy would be easy to understand for everyone who is acquainted with the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The immediate programme included disarmament of the police and the “bourgeoisie”; confiscation of private property and nationalisation of banks; holding of hostages; workers’ control of enterprises; and even a German version of the Cheka [21 - The All-Russian Extraordinary Committee for Combatting Counter-Revolution, Speculation, and Sabotage. (Translator’s note)] (a Committee for Combatting Counter-Revolution) [22 - Fest, I. Hitler. Perm, 1993. V.2. P. 182.]. The German “comrades” had yet some inventions of their own, for instance, the prohibition of history as a school subject, or the emission of banknotes with an expiration date [23 - Preparata, G.D. Hitler Inc.: How the UK and the USA created the Third Reich. M., 2007. P. 97–98.].
   Even a German Red Army was formed, which at once carried out a number of successful operations. At first, it routed the governmental forces north of Munich, taking over control of Karlsfeld and Freising. The German Red Army’s subsequent operations were also attended by success, markedly the battles for Dachau, the Bavarian town that was yet to gain its notoriety during the Second World War. But there the winning streak for the Munich communists ended – a 60-thousand-strong army commanded by Gustav “the Bloodhound” Noske pushed forward, surrounding the rebelling region. The army which consisted of regular units and volunteer veterans went down on the Bavarian Republic, destroying the rebels with as much atrocity as did the communists. House-to-house fighting in Munich lasted for five days, ending up in firing squad executions in a prison yard…

   Notably, the counter-revolution actions in Bavaria were bloodier than the revolution itself. The Reds were guilty of shooting eight hostages (all members of the Thule occultist society). At the same time, the White volunteer units destroyed a Red medical convoy; shot 21 members of the Catholic Apprentice Society; 12 workers from Perlach; 50 recovered Russian prisoners of war; as well as the leaders of the Bavarian Soviet Republic – Rudolf Egelhofer, Gustav Landauer, and Eugen Leviné. Both Ernst Röhm and Rudolf Hess took part in the recapture of Munich. However, Adolf Hitler, who at the time was in the city, was oddly inert and did not take any active steps to help the struggle against communism. The Nazi historiography took pains to leave this page in the Führer’s biography in the dark.

   The Red revolution in Germany was suppressed, but that was no merit of the Nazi. Simply because at that time no “national socialists” even existed; instead, there were some twenty or thirty beer-drinking gossips sitting around at their leisure in Munich struck by the Civil War. As to Adolf Hitler, he was a young self-conscious ex-serviceman and had nothing to do with big politics.
   Did the communist do anything further to seize the reins? They did. But all such attempts were suppressed by the army and the police, and never by Hitler’s storm-troopers. A new wave of violence caused by the “struggle of the proletariat” surged across Germany in 1923. In October 23 to 25, riots struck Hamburg, spearheaded by that same Ernst Thälmann. For three days and three nights the rebels fought behind barricades in the city and on its outskirts. Neither did national socialists participate in these fights. Adolf Hitler had his own “number one” problems to take care of – the planning of his takeover operation, later known as the Beer Hall Putsch, had entered the homestretch.
   On the 8th and 9th of November, the Nazi attempted a takeover in Munich. Hitler himself was heading the demonstration, pistol in hand and helmet on head. The police opened fire, and the Führer had a very narrow escape. His party comrade, Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, who was marching by his side, was killed by a shot, and in falling, he clutched at Hitler and pulled him down on the ground, dislocating his collar bone. Hermann Göring was badly wounded about his groin – that injure would prove so intolerable as to force him to take to analgesic drugs forever after, and eventually reduce the future Reichsmarschall to an inveterate drug addict. In total, some fourteen Nazi and three policemen remained were left dead and prostrate on the ground.
   We can see that all the attempts by the communists at a military takeover were always brought down by the government in power. Not only did the Nazi fail to offer any assistance, but they actually made things worse. See for yourselves – only a fortnight after the Red Putsch in Hamburg, the Brown, or Beer Putsch struck Munich!
   Now, if you were in Krupp’s or Thyssen’s shoes, who would you give money to? The ruling social-democratic party that could beget some outstanding “bloodhounds”, if need be, or someone else? Why would you pay the radicals? Why would you burn your house if it became infested with rats, once there are other good ways to get rid of them? Hitler with his radical party may be indeed compared to burning the house to rid it of vermin. Why would the German industrial elite sponsor the Nazi – the radicals – the mad heads? The Nazi were evidently not a protection against the “Red menace”; what is more, they even tried to take over the reins.
   It seems more probable that the capitalists of that time would have thought that it’s as broad as it’s long. And it is not the similar colours of the Communist and Nazi banners, or their similar ways of propaganda that matter. It’s another thing: both Communism and National Socialism, albeit antagonistic, are revolutionary doctrines!
   We demand that profits not earned by labour and the slavery of interest rates be made away with.
   We demand that military profits be confiscated without pity.
   We demand that industrial concerns be nationalised.
   We demand that industrial and office workers have their shares in the profits of large commercial enterprises.
   We demand that a healthy middle class be brought up and supported; that large commercial stores be immediately withdrawn from private ownership and leased at moderate fees to small entrepreneurs.
   We demand that a land reform be enacted that would meet the interests of the German nation; that a law on irrevocable confiscation of land for public needs be adopted; that land lease interests and land speculation be forbidden.
   If you thought you were reading an extract from a communistic brochure, you are mistaken. These are all clauses from a Nazi political programme. These are the “protectors of the national capital”. They were even prepared to deprive owners of their land irrevocably. Some Bolsheviks, you would say! So again – would you give money to such radicals whose slogans are so much like those of your hated communists? Or would you instead try to reinforce the existing Weimar Republic? Say, inject money into the police and increase their size, and raise salaries in the army. I imagine you would be more at rest if your life and your private savings and enterprises were protected by government bodies and not Brownshirts, right?
   If that be so, then go on with your propaganda and make a hero of Gustav Noske who brought down the communists in 1919. He is a defence minister as one should be, with his heavy hand, iron nerve, and readiness to answer for his actions. But no – already in 1920, the “Bloodhound” is made to retire, never to reappear on the political stage. Why would anyone want an even bloodier ruler in the person of Hitler who would evidently make even the “bloody” Noske look like a blue-eyed boy scout? You would do well to create images of the “true German courage” from the police who have proved so efficient in depleting Thälmann’s gunmen at the Hamburg barricades. Here’s a good replacement to Gustav Noske. These policemen were surely commanded by someone who had guts.
   Why would you pay Adolf Hitler? When will he be capable of putting down riots and crush the German Communist Party? How would you know at all if he can do that? As of 1920-ies, Hitler is not even “a bird in the hand”, not to say “two in the bush”; he is a crocodile, so far a little one, but with sharp teeth. And you house is already alive with rats… You could, of course, take up taming the croc, teaching him to catch rats. But this is a dangerous enterprise – someday your new “pet” will devour yourself together with (or instead of) the rats. And so he did. Together with the Communists, all the other parties were disbanded – the Social Democratic party; the Independent Social Democratic party; the Economic party; the German Centre party; the Bavarian People’s party; the German Democratic party; and even the German National People’s party, as well as all the smaller ones – all at the same time [24 - The Weimar Republic had a total of 38 active political parties.]. The Nazi packed all these into concentration camps “to think better”. Do you really need this, you German industrial magnates?
   Ironically, after their almost synchronic attempts to overthrow the government, the Nazi and the Communists waxed strictly law-abiding, again almost at a time. When out of prison in 1924, where he had been kept but a short time, Hitler took a once-and-for-all pledge to gain power by purely legal means. A clandestine Ninth Convention of the German Communist party held in April 1924 also adopted a completely legal roadmap. From then on, the Communist party made its presence in the Parliament and struggled for power by legal elections, discarding the idea of a coup d’état. Communists were now occupied by propaganda, public demonstrations and meetings, and the manufacturing of red banners and flyleaves. True, they did have their own armed squadrons, just the same as the Nazi, but they never conspired for another coup. At least, there is no dependable historical document to prove the opposite – none at all!
   The “Red menace” in Germany had subsided. Communists could hardly come to power, even by parliamentary elections. The best result that these followers of bearded Karl Marx could achieve was on November 6, 1932, when they garnered 5,980,200 votes, or 16.9 % of the electorate. Was that a risk? Not at all. A Communist majority in the Parliament was definitely out of the question. Knowing that, one would wish nothing more than to let them keep their quiet struggle for the rights of the proletariat, sitting, as it were, in the Parliament. Why would one think of fuelling the Nazi who would then ban all the other parties and declare themselves the best protectors of the German working society?
   Most ironically, the German “Red menace” was not believed even by its prime antagonist, Adolf Hitler. “Such a danger [Bolshevism in Germany] does not exist, and has never existed”, he told in his conversation with Hermann Rauschning. “I have always made allowance for this circumstance, and given orders that former Communists are to be admitted to the party at once. The petit bourgeois Social-Democrat and the trade-union boss will never make a National Socialist, but the Communist always will” [25 - Rauschning, H. The Voice of Destruction (Hitler speaks). M., 1993. P. 107.].
   And so they did. A great many former communists entered the NSDAP. Such immigrant party members were later dubbed “beefsteaks”, being “brown” on the outside, but “red” inside.
   Germany would see no other riots from that time – neither from the right wing, nor from the left one, which to us is of special importance. Once there was no fear of poison, there was no need for an antidote. It would have been reasonable to start fortifying the law and its enforcing bodies, cracking down on the left and right radicals. Yet someone did want to see Hitler in power very badly. And that “someone” was surely not a group of German industrialists.
   So far we have found no good ground for German magnates to finance the Nazi. There were, of course, some of them who did give money to the Nazi, but this is by way of exception. Those who did so had evidently been ignorant of the Nazi political programme, or had failed to see in it a heavy socialistic bias. But even putting aside the programme, the very name of Hitler’s party – the National Socialist German Workers’ Party – would suffice to rule out the question of being favoured by large capital owners. Have you known a tycoon sponsor a socialist workers’ party, while there are others out there, and more respectable too?
   There is another point to mention. Let’s ask when those “German industry magnates” could have been actually financing the Nazi. It took Adolf Hitler fifteen years to rise to power, from 1919 to 1933. When reading literature on the road of the Nazi leaders to the very top of German political Olympus, one can but observe one striking fact – the closer is Hitler to victory, the more information on his sponsors is given by historians. True, when Hitler had already been made Chancellor, only the silly or the lazy wouldn’t contribute to the budget of the NSDAP. As the Nazi took another long stride to power, still more were willing to support them. The party’s leader could now negotiate financing affairs on a par with any German magnate. Hundreds of thousands of storm troopers and regular party members stood at his back, as well as the sympathy of millions of voters. It was at that moment that Hitler could really address “German industry magnates” and receive their material help. However, historians would rather overlook one very important detail. Almost all the evidence of such financial support refers to the last two years preceding the power grab by the Nazi. The well-known German industrialist August Thyssen declares in his book I Paid Hitler that the accumulated financing Hitler received from industrial companies totalled two million Deutschemarks [26 - Melnikov, D.; Chernaya, N. Criminal Number One. M., 1982. P. 138.]. The North Rhine-Westphalia group of industrialists also gave Hitler over one million Deutschemarks during 1931–1932, as testified by Funk at the Nuremberg Trials [27 - Ibid.].
   But the winners of the Second World War somehow closed their eyes on that. None of Germany’s industrial élite was ever tried for having financed the party who had the blood of millions of people on their hands. For example, in 1947, Alfried Krupp (Alfried Felix Alwyn Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach) was convicted to twelve years imprisonment with confiscation of property – but not on the charge of having extended financial support to the Nazi, but for having practiced slave work at his factories, exploiting innocent people brought by force from Eastern Europe. The industrial magnate Kirdorf from the Ruhr region went so far as to pay the tithe of five Pfennigs to the NSDAP from every ton of coal sold. This amounted to a stunning six million Deutschemarks per year. Some money! But he was never charged or tried for that. If that same coal had been mined by concentration camp prisoners who had been dying by thousands from sheer emaciation, the “sponsor” would certainly have been punished. Once there are no exploited prisoners, there’s no charge – that’s how it was.
   Indeed, no one was brought to book for paying Hitler! And not because those industrialists were thought to be beyond the reach of law, but because their donations were grossly dwarfed by the expenses of Hitler’s party. Their help was of importance, but not of key importance, for even in the roaring 1930-ies, the Golden Age of Hitler and his party, the Nazi’s expenses did not tally with their income!
   According to some estimations, the expenses of the NSDAP spent on political propaganda, the wages of the storm troops, and the endless election campaigns must have totalled from 70 to 90 million Deutschemarks!
   And now hear them talking about donations of one to three million Deutschemarks! Even the six million from the coal industry is quite disproportionate to what they really spent. Adding party membership fees and miscellaneous donations by German citizens, we still end up with 30 to 40 million Deutschemarks unaccounted-for. Is this possible that the industrialists might be lying to conceal their real contribution to Hitler’s budget? Hardly so. Who was it then, who gave him those millions? He couldn’t have made them out of nothing, could he?
   This question still remains without an acceptable reply. Precisely speaking, there have been replies readily given by some, but only to lull the readers out of asking unwanted questions. The fact that almost 90 % of the NSDAP financial documents vanished during the last days of the party may give some colour to this matter. In the spring of 1945 the Nazi made haste to destroy evidence. Only the archives of the Gestapo and the correspondence between the top commanders of the SS and the party leadership (for example, between Kaltenbrunner and Bormann) survived to be seized by the winners in the war. Still, the surviving documents sufficed to confine many leaders and top officials of the Third Reich either to the hangman or to decades behind bars. Why on earth had the Nazi not taken care of those documents as well? The answer is readily given – they were too occupied with destroying their financial history. It was that which they had been making every effort to get rid of in the first place. And only after that, they had proceeded to burn the less “grave” papers, like mass execution and deportation warrants, in order of significance. But why, among the smoking ruins of Berlin and Munich and on the brink of total annihilation, why should anyone take such pains to prevent the world from knowing the source of money used by the Führer to come to his power? What difference would it make to Göring or Himmler if everyone knew the “heroes” of the financial backstage dealings? They would stand trial in any case, and be condemned to at least many years in prison. Why would they think of burning folders with bills and receipts instead of those with warrants and reports of executions?
   Göring and Himmler had no reason to do that whatsoever. Their crimes were too grave to bother about petty things like that. But there were those smaller fry in the Nazi hierarchy who had plans to live on. One example is the unchallenged treasurer of the NSDAP and SS Obergruppenführer Franz Xavier Schwarz. It was he who destroyed the bulk of the party’s financial documents in the Munich “brown house”. Herr Schwarz was privy to all the monetary transactions of the party, and of course its financing. Hitler himself would often remonstrate that Schwarz wouldn’t give him a Pfennig, with “his arse glued to the gold chests”, and that he (Hitler) would sooner get something “begging on the church porch”. So raging and fuming with indignation, Hitler still never thought of firing or even punishing Schwarz. Because Schwarz was exactly what a Minister of Finance is supposed to be.
   Now why did Xavier Schwarz burn the financial documents? And still more interestingly, why didn’t he burn all the documents, but left some untouched? That was all because he had plans for further life, to fulfil which he must make certain steps. He must destroy all the compromising materials and leave only the most harmless ones. On that condition only could he hope to be spared by those who had his life and well-being in their hands.
   But who were they? German industrialists like the Krupps and the Borsigs? Of course not. They were those who defeated the Nazi Germany – the leaders of the Antihitlerite nations. Which occupation zone did the Nazi bigwigs try so desperately to get into after the defeat? Not hard to guess – that controlled by the United States and the United Kingdom. So it happened that Franz Xavier Schwarz was arrested in Munich by the allied forces who had entered the city not long after he had destroyed everything “unfit” in his archive. It is those remaining documents that have enabled latter-day historians to judge that Hitler was financed by German industrialists.
   Here comes the miraculous conclusion: once the 10 % of the documents that have actually been preserved state that financing was made by German capitalists, the lost 90 % must have been to the same effect! This kind of inference was drawn by both Western and Soviet historians and scholars, and has never changed up to the present day. The layman can’t see beyond this conclusion to notice the logical fallacy. But why would one burn documents, saving some of them, if the preserved part could later be used to restore the content of the destroyed ones? It is evident that the destroyed documents must be radically different from those preserved. To destroy that which no scholar will ever find – that is logical enough! To destroy that which would compromise the leadership of the victorious parties in the war – their secret services and intelligence bureaus, and to preserve the sort of things Schwarz did – materials bearing on donations from Krupp, Borsig and others of the kind – those magnates who could now do nothing to alter the situation of the NSDAP ex-treasurer.
   What happened next to Franz Xavier Schwarz may serve to confirm our conclusions. Having obliterated the papers which could cast a shade on the winners, he was given an almost “baby” term, when considering his important position in the NSDAP and the SS – only two years’ imprisonment. Already in 1947, the ex-treasurer walked free from jail. Everything was as agreed – at least, that’s what he must have thought. Schwarz says his say at the trial, silencing what should be silenced, gets his two years and then goes at large. The one thing he forgot was that “the only good witness is a dead witness”. So right out from jail, Schwarz died – that same year. When in prison, he had been safe and sound.
   The people who sponsored Hitler ad his party have been named quite often. But these names are either the same old “Krupps and Borsigs” or peripheral figures. When Hitler was tried for the Beer Putsch, it was elicited that he had received money for the party from the director of the Bavarian Industrial Union, privy councillor Aust, the Union’s lawyer Doctor Kulo, and so on.
   These names can go on and on, but they won’t tell us anything. Their donations are too ridiculous to believe that they could have helped Hitler to seize the top power in Germany. But why should history books be so persistent in their moving tales of how Hitler was supported by burghers? One of those tales you will find in nearly all such books narrates about the donations made to the NSDAP by one Helena Bechstein, the wife of the owner of a large piano factory. That old woman, as the story goes, felt a mother-like affection for Adolf who was an orphan. When later he was spending time in prison, she would even call herself his mother to gain a visit. A similar generosity was evinced by a Frau von Seidlitz – according to Hitler’s biographers, she gave all her money to the Nazi party [28 - Heiden, K. Hitler’s rise to power. M., 2004. P. 179.]. Does it mean that those overactive old ladies should have been placed into the prisoner’s box? Do we call narrow-minded middle-class dames past their prime responsible for the millions killed by the Nazi?
   Those who are so colourful in their descriptions of those old ladies’ affections and sympathies are either totally ignorant of how political parties are financed, or, quite on the opposite, too expert in that field. It is clear that the donations extended by a few tender-hearted women are not enough to support a whole party, not to say storm troops. But there must have been some persons who did give the needed sums to the Nazi, for the storm troops grew by leaps and bounds! And every trooper was fully provided for by the party. Every member of the SA (Strurmabteilung) was paid his wages, not exuberant, but regular, even during the total unemployment that had paralysed Germany. It was money and not Hitler’s famous oratory skills that was the most convincing argument in recruiting new members. You can just put on a brown shirt – and you’ll have something to feed your family with. So the SA was constantly growing in number, as did the party’s expenses to keep it. Where could the Führer take the required sums of money from? Neither can membership fees be an adequate explanation; otherwise, we’ll get into the absurd. Let’s say a would-be storm trooper enlists in the party and pays the due fee. And that fee is then used to equip him and pay him wages? Preposterous!
   Strange as it may be, the truth about the real sources of money for the Nazi lies in the same books about Hitler. “Hitler also organised systematic collection of money abroad”, Heiden remembers. “One of his most zealous collectors was a Doctor Hanzer in Switzerland” [29 - Heiden, K. Hitler’s rise to power. P. 181.].
   I must confess, when I read this, I had to go back and reread it more than once to make sure I had grasped the meaning.
   Hitler, just making his first steps in politics, is on a hunt for money abroad!
   But the authors of books on Hitler do well to spare our nerves by inserting the word “also”, lest we should by any chance surmise that the young and hungry Nazi party received all its funds from other countries! To make assurance double sure, these “historians” always have a couple of Aryan old women up their sleeve, or some German industrial tycoon who donated a tithe of his earnings to Hitler.
   It is quite conceivable that citizen of some country should make donations to their countrymen who are in politics. They may have a fancy for the leader or his programme, or some other thing. One can’t ban donations to political parties, after all, can one? Let them donate. However, any autonomous country does not allow accepting donations or material contributions from abroad: it is well-known that those harmless-looking gifts conceal the work of the secret forces of a rival country whose ultimate goal is to set up its own protégé ruler in power, which is certainly solely to its own benefit. For the same reason, any country that values its independence and liberty should have a keen eye on all sorts of funds, foundations and charity associations bankrolled by foreign “philanthropists”. In Russia, there is a generic word for all such formations – “nongovernmental organisations”. Why do you think they are paid so close an attention in this country? That is to preclude financing internal political struggle from without.
   This makes sense. However, this book is not about the problems of young Russian democracy. It is about those of another democracy, also young, but German. That of the Weimar Republic, to be precise. To judge even by the scanty and disjointed sources available to us, things were turned upside down in the Germany of the 1920-ies. And unlike today’s Russian Government, no one among the top authorities of Germany of that time seemed to take any interest in the who’s and why’s of the NSDAP foreign financing scheme. The sad result of the lack of such interest that could have saved the ruling government is known to us – in 1933, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany.
   But what foreign country or countries could have been willing to help that dark horse in German politics with money? Historians propose several different versions, which one can hardly read without a smile.
   “The party, which had proved so successful in bringing itself to the foreground, was also supported by Czechoslovak, Scandinavian, but chiefly Swiss financial groups” [30 - Fest, I. Hitler. Perm, 1993. V.1. P. 271.], states Joachim Fest who is widely recognised as one of the best biographers of Hitler.
   This comes unexpected. Where are the “German industrialists” we’ve heard so much of? It appears that the more serious investigators of the Nazi history do not trust stereotypes, as would the gullible reader (though they don’t oppose them either).
   Why should Czechs sponsor the young, but obviously already fanatical Hitler? He hasn’t got anything in his bag yet but his speeches in beer halls and circuses. And brilliant these speeches are, for sure, he’s got a gift for them, indeed! For that, he is so far but a small figure on the local Bavarian political stage. And it’s not even that! The very Nazi party is yet a tiny society. This will later be confirmed in the writings of the “great connoisseurs” of the Third Reich. “Until 1930 the Nazis remained a minor party on the fringe of German politics”, writes Alan Bullock [31 - Bullock, A. Hitler and Stalin: Parallel lives. Smolensk, 1994. V.1. P. 102.].

   The young politician Adolf Hitler bore no marks or makings of the great leader he was eventually to become

   But what business could Czechs have had with the Nazi? What reason could Scandinavians have had to finance Hitler? What could Switzerland have had to do with the national socialists? No good reply to these questions is given by historians and scholars, simply because no good reasons can possibly be found for such conjectures. As a rule, you will come across some kind of general phrase; for example, “The motivating reasons for supporting the party were as diverse as the funding sources” [32 - Fest, I. Hitler. Perm, 1993. V.1. P. 272.].
   What we need is answers, not run-arounds! It may be good to write books and publish them in millions of copies to secure a comfortable life for yourself, without ever really getting your head round the things you write about. I am not saying anything against authors and investigators living in comfort. But I would certainly want them to respect their readers at least!
   In 1938 to 1939, Czechoslovakia would be torn apart and devoured by Hitler. Was it that which these mysterious Czech “friends” on the NSDAP gave their precious money for? They would have been blind to do that.
   The neutral “Scandinavians” were also said to have helped Hitler. But who were these Scandinavians? Were they Norwegians whose territory would be occupied in 1940 by the one they sponsored? Could it have been the King of Norway who had been bored enough to start a game of political roulette, granting a lump sum to the would-be Führer and later fleeing from his country aboard a British man-of-war? You must admit, there are simpler ways to set on a sea voyage. Or, maybe, the word “Scandinavians” meant Danish who would be occupied with no resistance on their part? Or Swedish who miraculously preserved neutrality throughout the war?
   I have already said that any act of funding a political party has a definite goal to achieve. Especially so, if the funding is made from another country. In that case, the goal must be very serious and on a global scale, and the benefit must be not only economical, but primarily geopolitical and strategic.
   Well, for the life of me, I can see no reason for any of Hitler’s “donors” to pay him. What could be their gain? What geopolitical advantage? What profit to Czechoslovakia or Norway, or Switzerland from the revival of a strong Germany? Zero profit. Or were all they secret Nazi adherents? But have you heard of any in Denmark, Czechoslovakia, or, most of all, in Switzerland? True, there were a few hundred fanatics who were enlisted into SS divisions and later found their rest in common graves. But money donors and cannon fodder are completely different things!
   According to Fest, “in the autumn of 1923, Hitler went to Zurich and was said to bring back with him “a coffer full of Swiss francs and American dollar banknotes” [33 - Fest, I. Hitler. P. 271.]. To put it simply, someone granted the future leader of Germany a substantial sum in foreign currency, on the very eve of his attempted coup. Hear them talking about Swiss themselves who did it!
   Let me explain something. In April 1917, Vladimir Lenin returned to Petrograd (St. Petersburg) from Switzerland, having travelled across Germany in a sealed armoured carriage. Why then do they so often write that the money the Bolsheviks so suddenly procured had been provided by the German General Staff? What absolute nonsense! Lenin had been staying in Switzerland – in fact, in that very city of Zurich that was only six years later visited by Adolf Hitler, for his own motives. So, if use the logic proposed by the books on Hitler, we must conclude that Lenin had accepted money from Swiss! The Swiss intelligence services organised the October Revolution! It is to be regretted that no one should have gone so far in their speculations. That idea would really have taken the cake. As with the Nazi, Switzerland had no conceivable reason to back either a Russian revolution, or a German left-wing society. We might as well suggest that they did it to boost demand on Swiss chocolate and wrist-watches in a war-torn Europe.
   We won’t get anywhere trying to analyse Hitler’s rise to power and his role in the outbreak of the Second World War without ruling out the notion of Czechs and Swiss as the Nazi’s principal benefactors. But why on earth do Hitler’s biographers stick to that downright rubbish? Could they indeed be so naïve to suggest in in full earnest?
   No, they can’t, and that is why they resort to prevarication. But faithful to their labour, these authors can’t but mention the fact, having abundant evidence that Hitler’s gold streams ran through Czechoslovakia, Scandinavian countries, and Switzerland. And though mentioned but in a few lines, this brief testimonial speaks louder of the causes and effects of world wars than volumes of historical treatises.
   The financing of shady dealings and obscure occurrences in world politics is always effected via banks and personalities that belong to neutral countries! Should such an affair surface up, the blame can at any moment be laid on the neutrals to avert suspicions from the superpowers. And it is only the neutral countries that Hitler’s historians put the blame on. Swiss bankers only did their job, as it appears. They had been “told” to give money to Herr Hitler, and so they did it.
   There is another question of importance – why these “kind-hearted” neutrals sponsored Hitler’s party, out of all out there. Or maybe they sponsored all the German parties, hoping for a good “roll of the dice”? No, they didn’t. They only gave money to the most promising ones. And not only Adolf Hitler. “Kurt W. Lüdecke, who was regarded as a “dark horse”, also obtained considerable funds from some sources, unknown to the present day, but most likely, foreign ones, which enabled him, for example, to run a payroll of his “own” SA detachment of over fifty troopers” [34 - Fest, I. Hitler. P. 271–272.].
   Who was that Kurt Lüdecke? A Nazi panjandrum? Not at all. You will see books describe him as “one of the earliest supporters of the movement”, “one of the comrades”, or even “an agent of Hitler’s”. And now we have this quite inconspicuous “comrade” digging some unknown, but on all presumption foreign, sources for money to finance Hitler’s yet budding endeavour. Then we see the same “dark horse” as a reporter for the Völkischer Beobachter, a newspaper controlled by the NSDAP central body. Why wasn’t this valuable provider of funds and a “comrade” of Hitler’s appointed as Gauleiter, or SS Gruppenführer, or even as editor-in-chief, but only a humble reporter? An old friend in need could be a friend indeed for the newly appointed Reichschancellor Adolf Hitler, especially so astute a man as was Lüdecke, who instead is sent off to write reports for a periodical.
   Small wonder, though. A “dark horse” reads “agent” or “spy”. A newspaper reporter is the favourite and rather hackneyed story of intelligence officers working under cover. We can infer with reasonable accuracy the source of the financial “Renaissance” of the yet nascent Nazi movement in 1920–1922 from Lüdecke’s itinerary in the 1930-ies. Where does he go? To Bremen, Rostock, or Berlin? To Moscow, Prague, or Geneva? Nothing of the sort. Kurt Lüdecke goes to the United States of America.
   A still more curious version exists, suggesting that Hitler was sponsored by the French intelligence service! [35 - Nezavisimaya Gazeta, of April 29, 2005.]
   But we are quite familiar with kind of logic. There is evidence that the Nazi received financial help from the bordering France. One can’t obviate that fact in a book. There must be some explanation for it. So our “investigators” will say that the French financed the Nazi as Bavarian separatists!
   True, France had always backed Germany’s disintegration. So the idea of financing those who wished to separate Bavaria from the rest of the country should be a sound one. There is only one point – neither Hitler, nor his followers had ever expressed such intents. What is more, Hitler regarded France as Germany’s number-one enemy. “We must fully realise that the deadliest foe of the German nation is, and will always be, France. No matter who should be in power there – the Bourbons or the Jacobins, Napoleons or bourgeois democrats – the ultimate objective of French external politics will always be that of seizing the Rhine. And to keep this great river in their hands, France will always invariably seek to see Germany a weak and disintegrated state”, Hitler would write some time later in his notorious Mein Kampf. Could the French intelligence be headed by sheer idiots?
   At the time of these “French” money transactions Hitler’s book had not yet seen light, which fact may, in the eyes of “hitlerologists”, account for this oddity. It is true that Hitler hadn’t yet published his “landmark” work; but the NSDAP certainly had a programme, which one would certainly have done well to browse through at least, before giving money the party. Just to be able to tell between separatists and radical nationalists.
   The French, however, appeared to be totally unacquainted with the NSDAP political programme. We can only suppose that the French intelligence service was so rich that they didn’t bother to read the official documents of those organisations it was about to finance. They simply drew the budget earmarked by Paris for the special purpose of sponsoring German extremist organisations.
   Why do we come to this funny conclusion? Simply because anyone who has ever seen the programme of Hitler’s party knows that it has nothing whatever to do with separatism! Likewise, any “capitalist” could clearly see in it points which hardly breathed capitalism; say, those about the “irrevocable confiscation of land” and “nationalising industrial concerns”. As it is, the NSDAP stood fast for a solid and integral Germany. The very first clause in the programme can suffice to clear all doubts:
   We demand the integration of all the Germans, based on the right of national self-identification, into Great Germany.
   Let us suppose that the French went the hard way by deciding to read the programme starting from its end. But even in that case it would have been as clear as daylight. The NSDAP programme of April 1, 1920, was known informally as “The Twenty-Five Clauses”, consisting of this many clauses (articles). The last, twenty-fifth, clause reads as follows:
   With the view to achieving all the aforesaid, we demand the formation of a strong centralised imperial government. The indisputable authority of a central political parliament over the entire territory of the Empire and all its organisations – [etc.]
   One might as well accuse of separatism the Russian White Army General Denikin, with his slogan of a “United and Indivisible Russia”, or Minin and Pozharsky’s militia. Does it mean that the French had indeed been too lazy to read the Nazi’s brief programme? Or maybe it means that they had read it, and fully realised who and why they were financing? Why then should they assist those who only fifteen years later would devastate and occupy their homeland? Such things do happen: a man can breed and train a ferocious brute of a dog as protection against his neighbours, when one day the animal, breaking loose from his chain, goes at his master.
   The events that took place in Germany after the First World War require some digression. The payment of the war reparations brought about an unprecedented inflation and pushed the unemployment rate sky-high, which together dropped the living standard to a catastrophic level. Starving war invalids is just one commonly seen picture of the Germany of the 1920-ies. Unheated households, famine-stricken children, a wave of suicides… The weaker ones saw only one way to put an end to the horrors of their life – a gas stove or a well-soaped hemp rope. Sometimes whole families would take that final step.
   Picture to yourself comparatively well-dressed people, whose clothes have not yet worn out since the war began, rummaging in rubbish dumps in search of something to eat. Prostitution is rampant. Paupers, beggars, invalid demonstrations crying out for raising subsidies – subsidies enough to buy a glass of milk, nothing more.
   Those who remember the Perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Union are familiar with this image of chaos and poverty. But what happened in Russia after Yegor Gaidar’s notorious reforms in the 1990-ies is like living in Paradise when compared to German post-war reality. Germany walked and crawled through a Purgatory, though all the circles of a Dantean hell. The inflation was unspeakable. In the autumn of 1923 one egg cost the price of 30 million eggs in 1913! [36 - Bullock, A. Hitler and Stalin: Parallel lives. 1994. V.1. P. 111.] A young American newspaper reporter whose name was Ernest Hemingway retells a touching story he heard from a German waiter who had saved enough money to purchase a hotel. But now he could buy only four bottles of Champaign for the same price. Herr Ernst Hanfstengel (to whom we will return presently), returning home, can’t get milk for his little son. Milk is dispensed only for ration tickets, and those are nearly unavailable. The only solution for him is to order huge amounts of coffee at a five-star hotel and pour out the tiny portions of cream into a bottle for his son [37 - Hanfstengel, E. Hitler: Lost years. M., 2007. P. 23–24.].
   Those who would like to know more about the life of Germans in the years immediately following the First World War are strongly advised to read the novels of Erich Maria Remark, in particular, The Black Obelisk. This novel has some vivid descriptions of situations when, receiving one’s salary before lunchtime, one would make directly for a nearby shop – there would be another zero added to the price tags after lunch.
   But that’s the life of ordinary German citizens. The Nazi met with many financial hardships, too, at first. The first storm troops were not able to hold parades in winter, for they had no warm boots. But little by little things went better. Higher storm troop officers and party functionaries were now paid in foreign currency [38 - Fest, I. Hitler. Perm, 1993. V.1. P. 272.]. This meant stability and a sustainable, decent life in an inflation-strangled Germany. Like any other party, the NSDAP collected contributions and donations. Storm troopers went about the streets with coin mugs, and one was supposed to buy a ticket to attend one of Hitler’s speeches that gave in circuses, like some actor. All that was there, for sure, but such income was received in the Deutschemark that was continuously losing its value. And the good old ladies also made donations in Deutschemarks. “No party could then live on membership fees paid in Deutschemarks”, as has been characteristically pointed out by historians [39 - Heiden, K. Hitler’s rise to power. M., 2004. P. 178.]. And still we are never the wiser about who actually gave US dollars and Swiss francs to Hitler. Let’s try to find an answer ourselves then. By understanding whose interests Hitler and his party suited most nicely we can guess who financed their development and rise to power. How do we know whose game Hitler was going to play, you will ask? Simple enough – we can read his programme book (which the “unfortunate” French spies failed to do). So let’s get down to Mein Kampf.
   As it is, the book has many threads woven together – personal reminiscences of a retired soldier, anti-Semitic statements, all in one heap. But we are interested only in the author’s political views – anything that can throw light on his political plans. Hitler’s sponsors did not enjoy our present position to see into the future and foretell the result of his political career.
   The book opens with an analysis of the causes of Germany’s defeat in the First World War.
   If European territorial policy could be carried out against Russia only with England as an ally, then, on the other hand, colonial and world trade policy was conceivable only against England with the help of Russia. <…> However, one did not at all think of forming an alliance with Russia against England, nor with England against Russia, for in both cases the end would have been war <…> [40 - Hereinafter Mein Kampf is quoted from the Reynal And Hitchcock English-language edition (New York, 1941) available from the Internet Archive Universal Library here: https://archive.org/details/meinkampf035176mbp (Translator’s note)].
   This sole statement reveals the plain direction that Hitler’s politics was taking. In order to be able to take something from somebody, Germany must ally with someone else that it was not going to take anything from. The Kaiser’s diplomats had not thought this far, and had got the country embroiled in a war against the whole world.
   Since, however, it was generally not desired to have anything to do with planned war preparation, the acquisition of territory in Europe was abandoned owing to the fact that instead of this there was devotion to colonial and trade policy, and an otherwise possible alliance with England was sacrificed, without, however, logically getting backing from Russia, and finally the government stumbled into the World War, abandoned by all<…>.
   Surely, one can’t win if one struggles against all. That is the first conclusion the author arrives at. Then he proceeds to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of his country’s enemies.
   We must at last become entirely clear about this: the German people’s irreconcilable mortal enemy is and remains France.
   But Germany’s other enemy from the Triple Entente, Britain, is characterised using a completely different modality. It is even vindicated.
   Precisely in order not to allow France’s power to grow too great, participation in her hankerings for loot was England’s sole possible form of action for herself. In reality England did not achieve her war aim.
   The sons of “perfidious Albion” had always attempted to weaken the strongest country on the continent. Quite recently, it had been Germany. But now that it had been ruined and devastated, it no longer presented any threat for the British. In Hitler’s view, now Britain could only be looking askance at France!
   Thus the fruit of the struggle against the development of German power was politically the precipitation of French hegemony on the continent.
   However, the pillars of British politics are forged not for decades but for centuries. And so, Hitler reflects, Britain has no reason to back out this time.

   Cover of the first edition of Mein Kampf, the pivotal book of the Third Reich. The crucial political idea is that Britain must be Germany’s primary ally

   England’s desire is and remains the prevention of the immoderate rise of any continental power to world political importance; that is, the maintenance of a fixed balance of power relation among European States; for this seems to be the premise of British world hegemony.
   Here the author comes to another conclusion – the crucial one in his book, the one it was written for.
   Whoever undertakes, from the above viewpoint, an estimate of the present possibilities of an alliance for Germany must reach the conviction that the last practicable tie remaining is only English support.
   Hitler wants to let bygones be bygones, without looking back at Britain’s old sins. The 1918 defeat, the revolution, the sunken German fleet, the exorbitant reparations – all that he was prepared to forgive and forget. For the British hadn’t done all that out of spite; nothing personal, only business.
   Now, alliance policies are not advanced from considerations of backward-looking discords, but rather fructified by a knowledge of past experiences. Experience, however, should now have taught us that alliances for the achievement of negative goals suffer from internal weaknesses.
   Think positive, that’s what he is basically saying! No need to bear a grudge against the British, no need to expect them to pat you on the shoulder. One can’t expect them to turn suddenly pro-German, a well. Such politicians have never existed in England.
   Every Englishman as a statesman is, of course, first of all an Englishman, every American an American, and no Italian will be found prepared to play any other politics than pro-Italian politics. Whoever, then, thinks of succeeding in concluding alliances with foreign nations on the basis of a pro-German sentiment of their leading statesmen is either a jackass or a fraud. The premise for the linking of national fates never lies in mutual respect or even congeniality, but in a perspective of mutual expediency for both contracting parties. That is, let us say, however invariably an English statesman pursues pro-English policies and never pro-German, quite definite interests of these pro-English policies can, for the most diverse reasons, duplicate pro-German interests.
   The notion of “duplicate interests” is that launch-pad that can propel Germany into the bright future and Hitler to the political Olympus in his country.
   England desires no German world power, but France desires no power at all called Germany: a really quite essential difference. Today, however, we are not fighting for position as a world power, but we must struggle for the existence of our fatherland, our national unity, and for daily bread for our children. If, with this viewpoint, we want to keep our eyes open for European allies, then there remain practically two States: England and Italy.
   It is curious that both Soviet and Western historians and politicians never investigate Hitler’s devoted affection for Britain. It is hardly mentioned at all, or but in a few words, for example, those of Winston Churchill: “England and Italy are the only two possible allies for Germany” [41 - Churchill, W. The Second World War. V.1. P. 43.].
   Hitler next expounds that a strong France would be the bane of the existence of England and Italy, out of all other countries. The Führer’s logic is plain as daylight. Since these two countries would hate to see the strengthening of France developing its hegemony in Europe thanks to the weakness of Germany rather than its own intrinsic power, these countries become Germany’s friends, if not on purpose. My enemy’s enemy is my friend. Well, maybe not exactly a friend, but certainly not an enemy!
   On the soberest and coldest reflection, it is today primarily these two States, England and Italy, whose most natural self-interests, at least in all essentials, do not oppose the conditions of existence of the German nation, indeed, to a certain degree are identical with them.
   The very word “England” is repeated in the quoted chapter with surprising frequency. Hitler keeps driving home the same idea, under various sauces.
   For Germany, however, the French danger means an obligation to subordinate all considerations of sentiment, and to reach out the hand to those who, threatened as much as we are, will not tolerate and bear France’s drive toward dominion.
   What is Hitler talking about? Could he be trying to make friends with Britain? And that almost a decade before his establishment in power? Exactly. And no buts about it.
   In Europe there can be for Germany in the predictable future only two allies: England and Italy.
   The key to success and proliferation for a weak and beaten Germany is a union with the defeaters that have no more interest in weakening the already weak Germany.
   And then it occurred to me – it is not for German burghers and Hausfraus that Hitler wrote his book. Not for the lads in the Hitlerjugend, not for the burly storm troopers, nor for the “men in black”, the SS. For Hitler, Mein Kampf was a splendid opportunity to address the rulers of the world of that time – England, and bring home his message, which was plain enough. A powerful movement is being born in Germany headed by Hitler. It has not yet gained its full swing, so it asks for help. Like a green sprout reaching for light, the Nazi party is making its way through the political “soil” of Germany. The party needs only two things: money and once more money. And there should be no fears about the party – the Nazi are “good guys”, they pose no threat to the British. The ambitious German politician Adolf Hitler sets up a forceful Anglophile movement and tries to bring it up to political power. The British could as well consider supporting him; for when he mounts the German political Olympus, he is going to enforce politics favoured by the United Kingdom; for there are no discrepancies between his political programme and that of Britain. Hitler needs no other allies.
   …How every one of these points could have been burned into the brain and feeling of this nation until, finally, in the heads of sixty million men and women the same sense of shame and the same hate would have become a single fiery sea of flames, out of whose glow a steely will would have risen and a cry forced itself <…>
   The treaty of Versailles indeed drove Germany to the very brink of destruction. The huge reparations due to be paid, famine, cold, poverty, unemployment, suicides… What kind of “cry” did Hitler expect to “force itself” from the souls of the Germans? “Feed us”? “Make us warm”? “Give us jobs”? “Cancel our reparations”? “Rescind the treaty of Versailles”?
   Not at all. Mein Kampf suggests something completely different, being intended for quite a different audience than scholars are inclined to think.
   We want arms once more!
   That is the exact phrase in the book that ends the previous one.
   Will Germany ask for arms from its defeaters to turn them against those who have devastated their Vaterland? Will it attempt to recover its lost territories and overseas colonies? But who will arm Germans against themselves? No need to worry. Hitler gives a ready answer in his book, and very clear one.
   The premise for the winning of lost territories is the intensive advancement and strengthening of the remaining remnant State as well as the unshakable decision <…> to consecrate at the given moment to the service of the liberation and unification of the whole nation <…>: that is, setting aside the interests of the separated regions.
   Hitler is not going to claim back the “separated regions”! Just because an alliance with Britain is Germany’s only chance to recover and regain its bygone grandeur. This goal is worth any sacrifice. The victorious Britain must have no fears to rearm Germany, as long as the arms will be used for quite different purposes, such as conquering new territories for the benefit of both nations.
   National fates are solidly welded together only through a perspective of a common triumph, in the sense of common gains, conquests, in short, a joint expansion of power.
   What “conquests” does Hitler plan to set out on for Germany and England to benefit from? This is the subject of the next chapter (Chapter 14) in Mein Kampf, with a tell-tale title – Eastern Orientation or Eastern Policy. This chapter is the most favoured source of quotation for many Soviet historians. However, it cannot well be understood without the previous chapter; so I must ask for an excuse from my readers for these long quotations. Now this Chapter 14 is extremely important for the understanding of the roots of the Second World War. But to be able to find a reply to what really happened on June 22, 1941, still more important is the direction of thoughts that had formed themselves in the head of the future Führer and Reichschancellor Adolf Hitler before it all began.
   In Chapter 14, Hitler expounds where the Nazi will send the German troops after being armed by the First World War victors.
   The demand for the re-establishment of the frontiers of the year 1914 is political nonsense of such a degree and consequences as to look like a crime.
   Let me remind that Germany’s defeat in the First World War resulted in massive forfeiture of its territories. These territories were grabbed by France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Lithuania. The overseas colonies were re-colonised by the United Kingdom. A demand to return these territories would mean war with the countries that now occupied them. Poland, Czechoslovakia and Lithuania are controlled by the Union Jack, while France is its number-one ally. The British will have no interest in such a war, hence no desire to sponsor it. For this reason, Hitler attempts to dissipate their doubts once and for all. We don’t want back our Alsace and Lorraine, says he, you may rest on it. There are other places of interest – far to the East, far beyond Poland and Lithuania.
   With this, we National Socialists consciously draw a line through the foreign-policy trend of our pre-War period. We take up at the halting place of six hundred years ago. We terminate the endless German drive to the south and west of Europe, and direct our gaze towards the lands in the east. We finally terminate the colonial and trade policy of the pre-War period, and proceed to the territorial policy of the future.
   But if we talk about new soil and territory in Europe today, we can think primarily only of Russia and its vassal border states.
   That’s clear enough, isn’t it? “We draw a line through the foreign-policy trend of our pre-War period” means no expansion of Germany to the territories it strove to occupy before the First World War, namely, China, Africa, and Asia. As it is, those lands are already divided among the English, the French, and other European nations. Even America has an axe to grind on these continents. Hitler won’t go there – he will go to Russia. There is land enough for everybody there; not only for the Germans, but for the British as well!
   Like an experienced clairvoyant, Hitler strives to dispel all the doubts and shilly-shally of the British intelligence services for who he intended his book. An alliance between Germany and Russia is the perennial nightmare for the Anglo-Saxondom. What happens if these two continental powers become friends? In that case, arming Hitler’s Germany might be “cruising for a bruising”, once he starts claiming the world hegemony in a tie with the Soviet Union.
   Such jejune speculations are utterly ruled out in Hitler’s book.
   The former Russia, divested of its German upper stratum, is, entirely aside from its new rulers’ private plans, no ally for a struggle of the German nation for freedom. Considered purely militarily, in the event of a Germano-Russian war against Western Europe, which would probably, however, mean against the entire rest of the world, the relations would be simply catastrophic. The struggle would proceed not on Russian but on German soil, without Germany being able to get from Russia even the slightest effective support.
   After these reassuring words, the author again addresses his target audience – those in London, not in Berlin. Considering exactly who the following words are addressed to, one can’t but see the book in a different light.
   See to it that the strength of our nation is founded, not on colonies, but on the European territory of the homeland. Never regard the Reich as secure while it is unable to give every national offshoot for centuries his own bit of soil and territory.
   It seems Hitler has made his point quite clear already; basically, he owns that:
   • he stands for an alliance with Britain;
   • blessed by the English and French to rearm Germany, he is ready to attack and conquer the Soviet Union not only in the interests of Germany, but in those of other “forward-looking” nations;
   • he is prepared to withdraw claims to restore the former German territories that have been occupied by his Anglo-Saxon “friends”.
   Clear as it is, Hitler keeps harping on the same string of a British-German alliance, as if to make assurance double sure.
   The most important is first the fact that an approach to England and Italy would in itself in no way evoke danger of war. The only power which would come into question as opposing the alliance, France, would not be in a position to do so.
   Besides, why should France stand up against Hitler who, though calling France Germany’s enemy, is going to make his conquests in the direction of Smolensk and Kharkov and not Marseille and Toulon?
   A further consequence would be that Germany would be freed from its adverse strategic situation at one blow. The most powerful protection of the flank on one side, the complete guaranty of our supply of the necessities of life and raw materials on the other side, would be the blessed effect of the new order of States.
   In all events and circumstances, Hitler sees his alliance with Britain as a panacea for all the pains and aches of the German nation. A kind of balm on the wounds of the fatally injured country.
   But almost more important would be the fact that the new union of States comprises a capacity for technical performance which, in many respects, is almost mutually complementary. For the first time Germany would have allies who do not suck like leeches on our own economy, but which both could and would contribute their share to the richest completion of our technical armament.
   You are still in the dark about the proposed source of the technologies, money, and ammunition? About those with whose help Hitler could not dispense in his war plans? Why, he writes quite openly about it. The concluding chapters of Mein Kampf are one endless train of eulogy on the United Kingdom, page after page.
   The English mother country is really only the great capital of the British world empire <…>
   The greatest world power of the earth and a youthful national State would constitute different premises for a struggle in Europe <…>
   England means everything for us Germans – that notion concludes Mein Kampf. The book having a total of fifteen chapters, we find that a seventh part of Hitler’s fundamental literary work is devoted to the blessings of a friendship between England and Germany.
   But the Anglo-Saxon rulers of this world do not easily extend their graces. “Of course, as I already emphasized in the previous chapter, the difficulties standing in the way of such an alliance are great”, Hitler stresses. One must prove one’s helpfulness, loyalty and malleability; only then the British intelligence bigwigs may condescend to notice the otherwise inconspicuous German politician.
   So Hitler expresses his readiness to make every effort for the alliance to come true.
   And this is possible the moment when, filled with warning need, one single course, conscious of its aim, is adopted and held, instead of the past decade’s foreign-policy aimlessness.
   What course is that? What is Hitler’s objective? These questions are simple to answer if you have read this chapter.
   The recovery and rearmament of Germany immediately followed by an intrusion into the wide expanses of Russia is the Nazi leader’s first and foremost goal. The one essential condition for it, the basis for the recovery of Germany’s economic and military strength is an alliance with Great Britain.
   How could one fail to notice, encourage and support this well-minded patriot?
   How could one leave such a helpful leader without a penny?
   How could one forbear to help this Anglophile politician to his power?

Leon Trotsky – the Father of the German Nazism

   A state always is the first to fall, and economy follows it, never the other way round… Economy can’t prosper, if it isn’t protected by a powerful and prosperous state.
Adolf Hitler

   Strange though it may appear, being sovereign and conservative to the core at home, England always tended to patronize the most demagogic strivings in its foreign relationships, steadily encouraging every popular movement intended to weaken sovereign terms.
Report of Durnovo N.P. to Nicolas II, the Emperor. February 1914

   It is important to answer who brought the Hitlerite regimen to power to understand all the further tragic events. Incorrect estimate of the early Nazi period leads to misunderstanding of reasons of World War II. Mysteries and compelling issues multiply. According to books in history, political leaders act in spite of any logics and common sense. However, that is hardly possible. We have already mentioned that driveling idiots don’t normally stay at power. Statesmen act in the interests of states entrusted to them and follow their own logics at that. If a puppet is at power, it also follows demands of the state, though, it is not the state it belongs to. It is important to understand that every action is taken to provide political or economical dividends to the country. If the country’s sovereignty is phoney, every action is taken to bring dividends to the host-state. If after reading a research in history you get the impression that before World War II all states were led by fools, who didn’t understand simple things obvious even to the Reader, then the author of that research must have failed to comprehend that historic period!
   To judge actions of the World’s leading politicians correctly, one must go back in time and take a dive into the greasy midst of the Russian and the German revolutions. Let’s start with the latter, which is the German one. It broke out against hard struggle Germany was going through in every sphere. However, it can’t be explained with military defeat. Well, it can, if some of important facts are disremembered. It was in 1945 that the enemy completely occupied Germany, which had resisted to the last. When the revolution started in Autumn 1918, there wasn’t a single enemy soldier in the German lands. Germany didn’t suffer from carpet bombing, which could obliterate entire towns. It went through serious economical problems, but in 1918 Berlin and Hamburg didn’t starve like Leningrad in 1941. Why did the revolution happen, then?
   Because it was being prepared. The same powers which crushed the Russian Empire in February and October were doing it. At that time they were going to overthrow their second geopolitical rival, Kaiser Wilhelm. And they managed to do it! Artificiality of this crush in Germany provided the Nazi with splendid grounds for agitation.
   “I am telling you, if I come to power in a legal way, the Nazi Court shall be established, and the November revolution will be avenged, and many shall be decapitated in a legal way” [42 - Bullock, A. Hitler and Stalin. V.1. P. 278.], Hitler announced in the open. Might he have not been telling the truth or might he have been exaggerating stating that Germany had been backstabbed, or was it another trick of Goebbels’s propaganda? [43 - Curiously, General Malcolm, the Head of the British military mission in Germany was the first to pass the word about Germany having been “backstabbed” and thus having lost the war. (Preparata, G.D. Hitler Inc. How Britain and the USA created the Third Reich. P. 148.)] Judge for yourself…
   When Germany crushed, Prince Maximillian of Baden was the Chancellor. Actually, when he came to power on October 3, 1918, a new government was established, where not ceremonious Kaiser officiaries but right-wing social-democrats ruled, headed by Ebert and Scheidemann. In the end of September 1918 the situation at front-lines was complicated. The Germany Allies started to hesitate [44 - Not many can give a correct answer, if asked who the Entente and Russia within it were fighting during World War I. Let us remind you that Germany had three allies, which were Austo-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria.]. On September 30 Bulgaria concluded armistice with the Entente countries. Leaders of Austro-Hungary and Turkey also started to consider saving their regimes instead of winning the lasting war. At that time it was most important to reinforce their spirit and confidence of winning.
   It was obviously true for Germany. Its competitors had to solve another problem number one, which was holding separate negotiations with German satellites. The matter was that if allies of Germany seceded from it, it would inevitably loose, though, if they remained, the war could have lingered on. And population of London and Paris was at the edge of exhaustion; they might not have withstood millions of new death notices. Even the USA that had just joined the struggle didn’t wish this struggle to linger on. It was not by chance that Washington had been waiting for almost four years and had declared war on Germany in half a year before it was defeated. The point was to come and get everything made, not filling inaccessible German trenches with dead bodies of American soldiers.
   And some real miracles started in this crucial moment. The German Chancellor Prince Max of Baden caught a cold. It was bad for him, of course, but it wasn’t too disastrous for the country. Though, it wasn’t the Prince’s illness that caused the trouble, but its consequences. What happened? Nothing important, really. Nonsense.
   Prince Max of Baden fell asleep.
   And he was sleeping for some really long time. As long as normal people never sleep, even if they are extremely tired and busy. You will find no information about it in school books, as historians normally miss out the facts they can’t explain. However, this information can be learnt from memoirs of the British Prime-Minister Lloyd George. It wasn’t the matter of uncommonly long sleep of the Reichschancellor, it was that Germany actually lost the war while he was asleep!
   “Excessive dose of dormitive made him unconscious for 36 critical hours, since November 1 till November 3. When he awoke, he discovered that the last German allies, Turkey and Austro-Hungary, had broke off the war. Disturbances enkindled by Bolsheviks agitators were breaking up all over Germany” [45 - Lloyd, George D. War memoirs. M., 1938. V.6. P. 145. (Quote from the book by Shatzillo, V. World War I 1914–1918. M., 2003. P. 349–350.)].
   Actually, Vienna and Istanbul made separate peace with the Entente, and the Head of the German Government was fast asleep at that time. When he opened his eyes, his country was at the Death’s door already…
   Do you believe that the Reichschancellor could have spontaneously fallen asleep and slept for 36 hours? Do you believe that no one could have woken him up? Or that no one felt like that despite what was going on? Stalin would never sleep the battle of Moscow away, no matter how tired he would be! Hitler would never sleep the battle of Berlin, no matter how badly his nervous system would be stressed! Even overtired and ill George Bush, as well as any other President, would be woken up, if something as catastrophic as the event on September 11, 2001 would happen in the USA. Their position obliges them to manage their country, to give directions and to react to rapidly changing conditions.
   But Prince Max of Baden was sleeping. There are only two reasonable explanations of him sleeping that calmly on the decisive moment of the German history. Both of them make us feel that the German “revolution” is very similar to a plot or to an operation of an Intelligence Service.
   • It wasn’t by chance that the ill Prince got the horse drench of dormitive and that no one who could have woken him up was allowed to see him.
   • Prince chose that pathetic alibi himself, pretended to be ill and quietly “slept” in his study, not interfering into crushing of his country (as all of it had been agreed before).
   Let inquisitive historians determine what really happened there. In this case more details doesn’t really make more sense. However, we will mention one more interesting point, featuring the German revolution and “the Sleeping Beau”, Prince of Baden. As it is well-known, crush of the Kaiser Empire started from the sailors’ revolt in Kiel. Just as in Russia, sailors were “beauty and pride” of the revolution. Both our and their Naval forces spent most of the war in ports. Dreadnoughts and battleships were too expensive to let them sink during battles in vain. Thanks to idleness and propaganda, sailors became the impulsive force of “changes”…
   The revolt in port Kiel took place, because “the buddies” disaccustomed to military service didn’t wish to take part in the decisive battle with the British fleet. German admirals had a good idea, actually, they wanted to give a fateful battle. And then let the luck hold. Victory could have totally changed the situation, but defeat wouldn’t have made things any worse. Anyway, dying in a battle suits military honor better than capitulation. Though, sailors propagandized by social-democrats failed to support such great idea and started a revolt.
   How shall we call this? A military rebellion. Such fault has always been severely punished in every army. In wartime Court martial of any army would simply sentence the guilty ones to execution. However, the German government, including social-democrats, didn’t use force against rebels. Moreover, Prince Max issued an order, prohibiting to use weapons for suppression of expanding disturbances. When his inaction weakened the regime enough, the Reichschancellor instantly woke up and called to headquarters of Kaiser Wilhelm in the town of Spa, suggesting that Kaiser should abdicate. “Only his long-drawn sleep prevented Prince Max from making certain suggestions to Wilhelm before” [46 - Shatzillo, V. World War I 1914–1918. M., 2003. P. 350.], the British Prime-Minister Lloyd George wrote in his memoirs. You might not feel so, but the more I studied the miracles of that time, the more I doubted that the valiant German Prince Max was sleeping, indeed…
   This situation looks very alike our February revolution, when the Monarch was made to abdicate. It was this abdication, not “the revolution situation”, which instantly put the country on the Death’s door. Though, whereas Nicolas II yielded to blackmail, Kaiser showed some temper. He was able of doing it, because unlike his Russian cousin he wasn’t under arrest. However, such persistence of the Monarch prevented starting of the further mechanism, intended to quickly liquidate the entire German Empire as the powerful military country. So, it was necessary to tell some bold lies.
   Max of Baden made something absolutely incredible, which Prince and Prime-Minister could never have done. He announced that Kaiser had abducted despite the fact that the latter clearly refused to do so!

   The Head of the German government Prince Max of Baden “fell asleep” in autumn 1918. That time was so crucial for history of Germany that he can be easily convicted of treachery

   In fact, Wilhelm abducted only three weeks after his abduction had been announced! [47 - The Global History. M., 2001. V. 20. P. 188.] And Prince wasn’t just Reichschancellor, he was the cousin of Kaiser. If this was not treachery, what shall treachery be like?
   There are some other “accidental coincidences” assuring us that both our and the German revolution were made with one pattern. February disorders in Petrograd started on February 23, right after the Tsar left for his Headquarters in Mogilev. Eight days later Russia learnt that he had abducted. It was all the same in Germany. On October 28, 1918 Wilhelm left Berlin for his Headquarters in Spa, and twelve days later Germans learnt that they didn’t have a Monarch anymore…
   It is well-known that when the Moor has done his work, the Moor can go. Having appropriated the God’s authority (as the Monarchs were the Lord’s Anointed), Max of Baden instantly announced his retirement and appointment of Ebert, leader of social-democrats, to the Chancellor’s post. At first he ceded his Kaiser, then he ceded his post. In an hour (!) after that the second leader of the social-democratic party Scheidemann extended the revolution even further, having arbitrarily announced Germany a Republic!
   The Government of “the sleeping” Prince Max stayed at power for only a month. And within this period it managed to loose all German allies, and even Germany itself! Later Hitler called these gentlemen proditors and traitors. And it wasn’t only about smooth liquidation of Monarchy. Scheidemann, Ebert and their accomplices hastily signed cessation of arms with the Entente countries, as soon as they came to power. It was made so handily that Germans were outwitted as a middlebrow in a shellgame. When one reads this document, no doubt about sponsors of the German revolution remain.
   “Clause 4. The German army shall cede the following military goods: 5 thousand cannons, 25 thousand machine guns, 3 thousand trench mortars and 1,700 airplanes…
   Clause 7. … The Allies get 5 thousand steam locomotives, 150 thousand wagons and 5 thousand trucks…
   Clause 9. The German Government undertakes to support occupation armies in the Rhineland (excluding Alsace-Lorraine).
   Clause 10. Immediate one-sided repatriation … of all army prisoners, who belong to armies of the allies…” [48 - Shatzillo, V. World War I 1914–1918. P. 338.]
   Besides all the above-mentioned, Germany was obliged to provide its entire fleet to the Entente, i.e. 6 heavy cruisers, 10 battleships, 8 light cruisers, 50 destroyers and 160 submarines [49 - History of World War I 1914–1918. M., 1975. P. 508.].
   How do you like this armistice? Can text related to armistice contain such clauses? The other wording for armistice is ceasefire. However, the document offered by the Entente and hastily signed by the new German government can only be considered as unconditional surrender. At the same time, if Germans learnt what the British and the French demanded, the population would go on rebelling. That is why the document was called armistice. At first, Germany surrendered its weapons, obliged to withdraw its troops from occupied lands and to hand over its fleet to the Entente’s supervision, to hand over all of its heavy armament and transport means and to release all captives. Only when Germans had no more army and means of resistance the peace talk was to be started. In fact, at first Germans surrendered their weapons, and only then they learnt the terms and conditions of the deal!
   Germany was crushed without a hitch. With Kaiser’s consent the German delegation started peace negotiation as early as on November 7, 1918, even before Wilhelm had abdicated. The allies let Germans consider the offer for 72 hours, which expired on November 11. But Kaiser would never have agreed to such predatory terms. Signing such document actually meant that Germany lost World War I! So, it was necessary that by the time of signing the truce Kaiser wasn’t the Head of Germany anymore. Otherwise, this ceasefire, looking more like surrender, wouldn’t have been signed. That is why Max of Baden had to lie about Kaiser’s abdication on November 9. And the new puppet government instantly signed the documents till November 11, as demanded by the enemy.
   These papers were all right! When did the Entente’s leaders manage to calculate military property and steam locomotives that Germans were to hand over? Or did the German delegates kindly bring a list with them? Or may the allies have prepared the agreement in advance, as they knew about the revolt being prepared?

   The Entente’s propagandists were assuring Germans that as soon as Germany got rid of its Kaiser, equitable peace agreement would be signed. To a certain extent such attitude made many Germans unwilling to support him.
   Germans overthrew its leader, brought the country to chaos and made it impossible for its army to fight further. However, Germans weren’t spared in any way, when terms of the armistice agreement and the Treaty of Versailles were being compiled. Conversely, that were the harshest terms of armistice since the Punic wars between Rome and Carthage. Consequently, Germans felt deceived and betrayed. It has to be mentioned that vengeance caught up with most of the traitors. Thus, Matthias Erzberger, who signed “the peace agreement”, was shot in August 1921 by two young Nationalists. Most of those who signed the Treaty of Brest from the part of Russia perished in 1937–1938…

   Naturally, the predatory Treaty of Versailles was signed after that. You know what happened next. Reparations till 1988, starvation, chill and unprecedented inflation. Germans sobered fast, but they had no way back. Goods output reduced to the level of 1888, but since that time the population increased by 30 %! [50 - How the German sword was forged. M., 2006. P.7.] Germans could only stand it or shut their windows and open gas valves in their kitchens. That is when Adolf Hitler started his way to the political arena. He understood who had won the last world war and who kindly permitted Germany to be put back on its feet.
   So, who organized the February and October Revolution in Russia and the November Revolution in Germany?
   Almost all my books are dedicated to inquiry into this matter. There are loads of proof there [51 - Refer to Starikov, N. 1917. Not revolution, but a special operation! 1917. Who murdered Russia?; Betrayed Russia. Our “allies” from Boris Godunov to Nicolas II; From Decembrists to Mujahidins. Who fed our revolutionaries?]. It is absolutely impossible to repeat all of it in the research related to mysteries of Adolf Hitler coming to power. Let the Reader refer to the books already published, and let me only repeat the conclusion that matters for our research of causes and reasons of World War II.
   Revolutions in Germany and Russia were organized by the British Intelligence Service at adequate support of the USA and France. The aim of the World Slaughter I was to play off one great country against the other and to later unleash revolutions in both of them, thus destroying these countries [52 - Refer to Starikov, N. 1917. Not the revolution, but the special operation! M., 2007.]. All possible political parties were used to reach this goal. In Russia these were SRs, Kadets, Menshiviks and Bolsheviks; in Germany that were ace-deuce social democrats. However, it didn’t went smoothly for the British Intelligence Service. If Germany had its own “bloody dog” Noske, in Russia murdering of political competitors was firmly undertaken by Bolsheviks. Having been delivered to Russia by the British Intelligence Service in a sealed wagon as agreed with German security services, they didn’t want to get away from the political arena. Having turned out to be gifted and merciless organizers, Bolsheviks won the Civil war and got out of control of British curators.
   When dust from crushing of the great Russian Empire settled down, the surprised British saw something impossible. Instead of a huge but predictable Royal Empire there was a smaller but absolutely unpredictable new country, the USSR. It was headed by people, who were personally aware of how revolutions had been made and who thus were worthy competitors in political struggle.
   However, the Soviet Union wasn’t dangerous because of its new ideology. At least, its mottos, “-isms” and configurations of regimes were only means for reaching the intended goal, not the goal itself. That is why Bolsheviks, who collapsed Russia, had to continue politics of their incoronated predecessors, when they came to power. They quickly got almost all the lands lost back, though, it was made in the name of Marxism at that time. However, the true reason was not the ideological triumph of the bearded man from London, but logics of geopolitical opposition and protection of the country’s interests [53 - For 37 years Carl Marx lived in London. That is where he wrote his “Capital” and where he is buried. And the First Communistic International was established in this city. It was not by accident. For about 200 years all anti-Russian forces find shelter with this city. Simply remember the most recent events of contemporary Russian history to see how fair this statement is.].
   When we say that Great Britain used revolution as a weapon to destruct its geopolitical rivals, it must be understood that Britain and the USA had been kind of a single whole for a long time. Once Brits were in the lead, but since 1945 Americans took up the reins. There were certain disagreements between them, of course. But disagreements between the Anglo-Saxon were absolutely minor, if compared to their monolithic solidarity in matters of grabbing global resources. That is why not only the British but the American Intelligence Service as well participated in crushing of their geopolitical competitors [54 - Despite obvious domination of the USA in the late XX – early XXI century, the British Intelligence Service MI6 still was the most powerful in the global arena. Famous movie character James Bond worked for this Service, not for CIA. Even our “freedom fighters”, involved into something very alike espionage, were leaving for London, not for Berlin or Geneva, for some reason.].
   There was also a place for the French in this block of “progressive mankind”. Differently speaking, the so-called Western world was getting more and more close-knit in regard to pursuing of common objectives since Napoleon Bonaparte had been defeated. One of the objectives was to destroy all dangerous rivals, such as Russia and then Germany, who prevented them from using global resources. And “the imaginative disagreements” started, when it was necessary to determine shares of goods due to each of the parties. However, such disagreements had no effect on solidarity of Western democracies. Mind, this is how historians call the sworn friendship of Britain, France and the USA in the period between two World Wars [55 - After World War II “progressive mankind” took Italy and Germany under its wing. Though, to get there these countries had to sacrifice some of their foreign policy sovereignty. And occupation troops of the winners still remained in German lands, and that weren’t only American troops. A patrol of the French Military Gendarmerie could be met somewhere in the German wilderness.].
   Yet, only two latter states are called republics, whereas Great Britain is constitutional monarchy. That difference of political regimes makes us comprehend that comparing countries basing on the method of management is rather conventional, at the first place, and that these states weren’t united by some “global human values” or “struggle for human rights”, but something deeper and permanent, which was the self-interest, at the second place.
   Now, let’s consider the situation in the Earth in early 20-ies of the XX century. Immeasurable wealth of Russia is well-known. Even without any geological investigations it can be assumed that 1/6th of land can hardly contain only sand, clay and pebble stones. The powerful Russian Empire was located on vast lands. As any other country or empire Russia had a lot of problems, conditioned by its history, geography and ethnic composition. The British Intelligence Service was aiming at every point of tenderness of its rival. However, Russia didn’t collapse in a moment, and subversive activities against it took months and even years. The work took a lot of time, about 100 years, and it was methodical, hasteless and long-term. It started right after Napoleon Bonaparte had been defeated, as Russia became the most powerful empire in the European continent then. This work finished with the February and the October Revolutions and the Civil War.

   This is how the Russian Empire was finally crushed. However, political struggle is as endless as politics itself. And as soon as the USSR appeared in the map, the attempts to crush it started. After it was finally managed in 1991, the subversive activities against the Russian Federation started. Let’s not flatter ourselves. Until we become as small as Monaco or Luxemburg, they will still wish to weaken us and to divide us into pieces despite our political regime and its “democratism” or “openness”. The scope of investment also proves that. In 2007 the USA invested 43 billion dollars into activities of their Intelligence Service. In 1996 the amount was 26 billion dollars [56 - Echo Moskvy, radio broadcasting, October 30, 2007.]. The amounts spent by Great Britain are strictly confidential [57 - To read about stages of subversive activities of the British Intelligence Service in Russia refer to Starikov, N. From Decembrists to Mujahidins. SPb., 2008.].

   The Anglo-Saxon organized the revolution in Russia not only because they wished to strike their opponent. They also wished to manage all values that would become “nobody’s”. However, things turned out to be very different. Bolsheviks led by Lenin surprised everyone, and even themselves, and managed to assemble Russia anew. When the founder of the Soviet state died in 1924, everything was rather fragile yet. Economy should have been built anew. And that was when struggle of two ideas, two personalities and two philosophy systems for the country’s development ran high in the USSR. Over the coffin of the dead Ilyitch Stalin and Trotsky came to grips, fighting for leading the VKPb (the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks), for the right to move the party and the country wherever each of them needed. We won’t describe biographies of these Communist leaders in detail, and won’t tell about all the peripeteias of the intraparty struggle in the Soviet Union, as thousands of books were written about it. We only have to understand the essence of the encounter and dates of key events related to it. In fact, it was this encounter, taking place in offices of the Kremlin and far away from Munich, which might have played the crucial part in fate of the unheard of Adolf Hitler, a Gefreiter of the German army…
   If all the stump oratory of party leaders was narrowed down to simple and comprehendible phrases, the essence of the encounter would be as follows. Trotsky considered that revolution in Russia wasn’t the aim, but was a way to start a revolution fire in more mature countries, which in the end should have lead to the global victory of Communism. Stalin considered that Bolsheviks’ victory in Russia was so unique that it was valuable on its own, and it was necessary not to export the revolution further, but to start building Socialism in the country relived from burden of Capital.
   “Struggle for the party” began around this ideological core. Trotsky announced that “construction of the independent socialistic society wasn’t possible in any country of the world” and thus called to start external revolution war. “The socialistic revolution, – he wrote, – starts in the national arena, develops into the international one and finishes in the global one. Thus, the social revolution becomes permanent in a new and wider meaning. It can’t end until the new society finally triumphs all over the planet”.

   Leon Davydovitch Trotsky was going to do “the global revolution” further, as Western security services ordered him to. This meant he was ready to sacrifice millions of Russian men to foreign interests

   Stalin and his followers objected to that and accused the author of the permanent revolution theory of oppositionism and of attempts to divide the party. “We can and must built socialism in the USSR. However, to build socialism it is necessary to exist in the first place. It is necessary to take a break from war, to prevent intervention attempts, to win a minimum of international conditions…” [58 - Stalin, J.V. Collected edition. M., 1953. V.9. P. 25.]
   Trotsky applied his entire gift of oratory and polemics to outmatch his less eloquent rival. At that period Stalin and Trotsky spoke a lot to convict each other. Having expressed their arguments, they started to crack each other down. The most dreadful weapons applied were quotes from Lenin, whose works could provide anything at all, which is well-known. There is no point in providing all arguments used by the opponents, as these were rather dull and could take even the most interested reader to the land of Morpheus. Let’s find out some more interesting things. What was going on at the top of the Soviet party? What was there behind the theoretical (prima facie) argument of Stalin and Trotsky?
   Historians are trying to find some grains of sense in tons of verbal shells of Marxist kind, which the opponents produced during this discussion. However, the truth is somewhere else. It is in the biography of Stalin and Trotsky, in history of our revolution and its origin. It is even with where the opponents had been before the Russian Empire crushed and in how they appeared at the top of the Bolsheviks’ party.
   During the February revolution Joseph Stalin stayed exiled to Siberia. As he needed to get to the boiling Petrograd, he simply took a train after he had been amnestied by the Temporary Government and came to the capital of Russia. Then the hot-tempered Georgian became a true follower of Lenin and obediently fulfilled all instructions of the Leader. Stalin was rather indirectly involved into organization of the October revolution [59 - It is not the open preparation of the October revolution, but the main backstage kind of work. By now there is not a single fact confirming directly or indirectly that Stalin was related to Western Intelligence Services. Stories of his cooperation with the tsarist secret police are a different thing, but still there is no proof of that. Joseph Vissarionovitch can be called “an honest revolutionary”, as far as the term of honesty can be applied to this category of people.]. And he had nothing to do with opaque financial support provided to the Bolsheviks’ party…
   It was all the difference of the world with Trotsky. When the February revolution happened, he was in faraway America, where he was doing nothing, according to his story. Trotsky was a revolutionary by profession. By all accounts, he was a highly-paid worker, because he had 10 thousand dollars in his pocket, when he was leaving for his Motherland. Now after quiet devaluation of fazool this amount may seem laughable. But in the beginning of the century the American currency was no match to what it is nowadays. This amount can easily be multiplied by 20 or 30. And mind, he had the money in his pocket, some kind of cash allowance. Primary amounts the Americans bankers provided for the Russian revolution were received through accounts of the neutral Sweden and brought by unfeatured persons of no-reputation in their cases. No one claims that Vladimir Ilyitch himself brought a thick case with money in a sealed wagon. Though, anyway, Bolsheviks had loads of money. Who did they get that money from? From Germans? Well, some of it, indeed, but it is to be understood that significant amount of “German” money received by Lenin was paid through credits, provided to Germany by America. Just like Lenin, Trotsky was related to opaque backstairs, related to foreign security services. Having come back to Russia, Trotsky and Lenin quickly united and instantly forgot about their bygone disagreements. It must also be noted that Trotsky joined the Bolsheviks’ party as late as in summer 1917. However, he applied much more efforts to organize the October revolution than any Bolshevik leader, including Lenin.

   Joseph Vissarionovitch Stalin pursued interest of Russia, which at that time was called the USSR, in his politics

   Differently speaking, Leon Davydovitch Trotsky was a representative of the American capital (or Anglo-Saxon Intelligence Services) in the new revolutionary Russia. Thus, he performed certain actions and expressed certain ideas…
   One fact shall be announced, and everything about Trotsky will become clear. In early 20-ies he was the Head of the People’s Commissariat of communication lines. Being headed by Leon Davydovitch, this company signed an agreement that would do credit to any Plunder and Flee Inc., and which made the Securities and Exchange Company look as a derisive and amateurish project. It was the agreement about bulk purchase of steam locos in Sweden from Nydqvist & Holm AB.
   Everything was so very interesting in that order. Firstly, the amount, which was 1,000 steam locos. Secondly, the price, which was 200 million golden rubles. However, other details were also peculiar. Everyone knows that Sweden is not the Motherland of elephants, but the signees of that agreement somehow left out that Sweden was not top-of-the-range in regard to global locomotive construction. Nydqvist & Holm AB even had no production opportunities to produce the goods ordered by the Soviet party. So, the parties agreed that Russia would pay money, the Swedish would build a plant with that money, and then the locos would be produced and sent to us.
   When you want to buy shoes, do you have to credit the shoe seller, so that he would to build a tannery? If someone needed locos that much, why didn’t they order them somewhere else? And if they were needed that much, why did the Soviet party agree to wait for five years?
   Nydqvist & Holm AB had never constructed more than 40 locos per year. But at that time it decided to brace itself up and to produce as much as 50 locos in 1921! After that the order was evenly spread within five years, when the Swedish should have been building a plant with our money. In 1922 the buyer should have received 200 locos, and since 1923 till 1925 it was 250 locos per year [60 - The Russian State Economical Archive. F. 4038. Op. 1.D. 31. L. 22. (Quoted from the book of The New Historical Messenger. 2004. No. 1.)]. At that the Soviet party wasn’t only a buyer, it was a creditor. And it wasn’t the advance payment for the locos. In May 1920 the Swedish company received not only an advance payment of 7 million Swedish crones, but also a non-interest loan of 10 million crones “to built a mechanical workshop and a boiler-house”. According to the agreement this loan should have been paid back during the period, when the last 500 locos would have been delivered.
   If the Soviet party decided to reduce its order, the Swedish would be allowed not to pay the loan back! And the Soviet party could do so, if dispatch of locos would be delayed due to the fault of the Swedish part. And the agreement didn’t contain any conditions that would allow to terminate the agreement with the Swedish company.
   However, it wasn’t all. The price of ordered locos was about twice as big as their cost during pre-war times. And they were paid not with devaluated paper money but with golden rubles! [61 - The New Historical Messenger. 2004. No. 1.] The case was rather spicy, as the price was too high, the money was paid and the goods weren’t provided. And it wasn’t clear when they would be provided! Any tax inspector or auditor would start to rub his hands, if he discovered something like that. Trouble was in the air, and the person who would discover fraud, might have been promoted.
   Weirdness of “the loco case” was described in the Soviet magazine Economist in early 1922. Mr. Frolov, the author of the article, felt puzzled about such a strange way of making business. He also asked a logical question, why these locos should have been ordered in Sweden, namely. Wasn’t it logical to develop or, to be more precise, to recover the local industry? The Putilovsky plant was able of producing 250 locos per year before the war. Why didn’t it get the loan? That vast amount of money would have allowed “to put our own locomotive plants and to feed our own workers” [62 - Frolov, A.N. Modern state and nearest perspectives of railway transport. Economist. 1922. No. 1.P. 176. (Quoted from the book The New Historical Messenger. 2004. No. 1.)].
   And indeed, the proletarian authorities should have strived to start there own industrial facilities as soon as possible and to let proletaries earn money, as supposedly the bloody massacre in Russia was started for their profit. As early as in late 1923 RSFSR had about one million unemployed [63 - Brief course of history of VKPb. M., 1938. P. 251.]. And the Soviet government signed an incredibly stupid and enslaving agreement, definitely damaging itself, trying to feed Swedish capitalists. Why was that?
   Are you surprised how weirdly Mr. Trotsky was making business? You will be surprised even further, when you learn how Lenin reacted to the article in the Economist magazine. “All of them are definitely counter-revolutionaries, the Entente supporters, a company of its slaves and spies, and youth molesters. We have to do something, so that these military spies would be caught. We have to systematically arrest them and exile them from our country” [64 - Lenin, V.I. Collected edition. V. 54. P. 266.], the Proletary leader wrote. And he asked Felix Edmundovitch Dzerzhinsky to close this magazine down…
   Let’s get back to the price of the agreement, the one so unfavorable for Russia, which was almost prohibited to criticize. It was 200 million golden rubles. Was it much or not? To understand this we need to find out what a golden ruble was. In 1922 Lenin’s government passed through a monetary reform to get economy out of crisis. New monetary units were produced, chervonets. They contained 7.74 grams of gold. One new chervonets was worth 10 golden pre-revolution rubles. This arrangement turned out to be rather successful. In a short period of time rate of the Soviet chervonets against global currencies became even and then became even more profitable than the tsarist pre-revolution ruble was [65 - In 1924 one dollar was worth one ruble and 94 kopecks. Compare: in 1907 one dollar was worth two tsarist rubles.].
   The golden ruble was a sterling monetary unit. When Bolsheviks came to power, golden reserves of the State bank in Russia was 1.101 million golden rubles. Some of gold (650 million rubles) were evacuated to Kazan, then Kolchak got it, and after he was defeated, about 409 million rubles were returned [66 - Archive of the Russian Revolution. M., 1991. V. 5–6. P. 103.]. Though, this would have been like that, if Bolsheviks wouldn’t have spend a kopeck, but we know that it wasn’t so.
   So, 200 million rubles didn’t just make a colossal amount. It was one quarter of the gold reserve of the country!
   Why did it happen? Why was Trotsky doing it, and why Lenin was covering this colossal mess up? Were Ilyitch and Davydytch flatly stealing for a rainy day? Could they have been stealing that especially large amounts? Wasn’t that absurd? Why would the Head of the Soviet Russia Vladimir Ilyitch Lenin deliver money to the West in such clumsy way? He was never going to move there himself. And why would he need as much as ¼ of the country’s golden reserve?! Lenin can be accused of any sins, but monetary symbols weren’t of decisive importance in his life ever. On the contrary, Bolsheviks would desperately need money to construct the new state. The loco agreement was signed in the end of 1920 – beginning of 1921.
   Wrangel’s army evacuated from Crimea to Constantinople in November 1920. In fact, it was the end of the Civil War. Money should have been transferred from the country before that, in 1918–1919, when Denikin had a short bound to Moscow and when Judenitch was at Petrograd. In 1921 it was time to blow the steam off and to start recovery of the country and establishment of new socialistic peace in it.
   So, what can such strange actions of Lenin and Trotsky mean? It just was that debts should have been repaid and that agreements should have been fulfilled. Amounts spent for crushing of Russia should have been paid back. It was one of the agreements between representatives of Western government and Bolsheviks. Lenin managed to stay in power for so long, because he didn’t breach all his agreements with the Anglo-Saxon “partners” at once, because he was doing it step by step and because he violated only some of the agreements. Having come to power in Russia with the aim to crush it, he aggregated all of its lands on the quiet. This can explain certain logics of his actions. Let’s not pay tsarist debts, but let’s provide concessions. Let’s not return the power, but let’s repay the money spent.

   They were paying the money back in many ways. The simplest way was to take values abroad. If you think that money were spent for “the global revolution”, please, note the following. Lenin and Co were preparing the so-called “global revolution” only in Germany and Austro-Hungary, but they didn’t do any preparations in either France or Great Britain. And foremost, amounts of financial support that Bolsheviks provided for crushing of the German Empire never matched the amount of values really transported away from Russia. The Swedish police announced that Bolsheviks provided 2 million rubles for revolution propaganda abroad (meaning, only in Germany). However, in autumn 1918, right when the coming German revolution was being financially backed up, Isidor Gukowski, Deputy People’s Commissar of Finance, arrived in Stockholm. He had crates full of money and gems. Hands at the Swedish police assessed the amount of that from 40 to 60 million rubles [67 - Björkegren, H. Traffic in Scandinavia. Russian Revolutionaries in Scandinavia in 1906–1917. M., 2007. P. 425–427.]. What were these amounts intended for? How come they were 20 to 30 times bigger than the official amount Lenin had provided for the German revolution? Mind that values were mainly transported through Sweden, where the Soviet Embassy was opened in the end of November 1917, headed by Vatslav Vorovsky. Millions of rubles started to be transferred to banks of Stockholm, in particular, to Nya Banken of Olof Aschberg, whose name is often met in books telling us how Bolsheviks financially supported Germans. And what is interesting, money arrived in Russia and went away from it through the same channels. At that, when money was being transferred to Russia through Sweden, it was kind of German money. But did Ilyitch provide the money to Germany, when it was transferred back in the same way? Did Kaiser spend that money to start revolution in his own country?
   It is not as difficult to answer this question as it may seem. On one hand, Bolsheviks were transferring money from Russia to repay the “debts” to their curators from the British Intelligence Service. This money was directly transferred to Kaiser’s Germany and used to crush it, which the Anglo-Saxon needed. On the other hand, Soviet Russia won the Civil War, which involved acquisition of the necessary equipment abroad. And finally, pumping Russian values to the USA and Great Britain ensured that authorities of the most powerful countries of the world would be loyal to Bolsheviks. All the above-mentioned together allowed Bolsheviks to win in the Russian civil strife so unexpectedly.
   This is what the American Historian Guido Giacomo Preparata tells us in his book: “The significant number of contracts, concessions, and licenses subsequently released by Lenin’s empire to American firms during the Civil War, and in its immediate aftermath, formed something of a smoking gun of Bolshevism’s early Allied sponsorship: $25 million of Soviet commissions for US manufactures between July 1919 and January 1920, not to mention Lenin’s concession for the extraction of asbestos to Armand Hammer in 1921, and the 60-year lease granted in 1920 to Frank Vanderlip’s (the Chairman of the Board of the National City Bank of New-York. – N.S.) US consortium formed to exploit the coal, petroleum and fisheries of a North Siberian region covering 600,000 square kilometers” [68 - Preparata, G.G. Hitler Inc. How Britain and America made the Third Reich. P. 120.].

   This was the top-level political pliantness, refusing and agreeing at once. If they would have totally refused on all accounts and have decided not to pay the borrowed money back, that might have caused new murderous assaults, and even their own comrades might have liquidated them. So, it was necessary to return THAT money anyway!
   Though, how could money have been returned to Western bankers? Could it have been transferred to the West with a payment slip saying “Bank of New York; to American bankers”? And the description of payment purpose should be “Repayment for the Russian revolution and Bolsheviks’ victory in the Civil war”, then. Naturally, that was impossible. Proletary leaders can’t provide “people’s” money to Western bourgeois. Especially when such troubled times came. Let me remind you that in March 1921, when Russia received its first 50 locos, the revolt in Kronshtadt burst out.
   How can one quarter of the country’s golden reserve can be transported away without a weak spot anywhere? An EXCUSE is required, and the true receivers of the payment could help with that. You simply need to buy something from the West, and there will be no problem with departure of the money train. For instance, you can buy locomotives, which Russia needs really bad. Trotsky organized this purchase, but Lenin’s rather rough reaction to the article published in the Economist magazine can be explained by the fact that these activities had been planned and approved by Ilyitch himself. So, you still fail to understand why Bolsheviks won the Civil War, and the White Armed Forced aided by “the Western democracies” lost it? [69 - For more details about support the Allies provided to the Whites and reasons of their defeat check Starikov, N. 1917. Who finished Russia? M., 2007.]
   By the way, money for revolution were transferred to Russia through the Swedish bank system. Then they were repaid through it. With interests and words of gratitude. However, that was where “friendship” and “cooperation” ended. And Lenin and Co had control over the USSR in their hands. That was more important than money and more valuable than gold.
   To comprehend background of relationship between Bolsheviks and the West one must remember that Leninists had scammed the Anglo-Saxon, in fact. The latter were substantially tricked, as neither the country or its treasures were surrendered to them. However, while the Civil War was going on in Russia, and while it was hoped that Bolsheviks would have “cleaned up their acts” and would have done everything as it should have been done, Communism and Bolshevism fighters weren’t too popular. Though, they were still needed to a certain extent, as someone should have been “the bloody dog” and the bugaboo to ensure better pliability of fervent revolutionaries.
   After that active stranglehold of the Russian White armed forces started. If you haven’t read memoirs of generals and officers, who left with Wrangel, you should do it. Their point is that firstly the British and the French refused to supply to the Wrangel’s army after leaving, though later they agreed to provide their support, having taken Russian battle ships as payment, though. At the same time they started active propaganda among soldiers, calling them to leave the army and to become refugees. Only adamant wills of Wrangel and Kutepov allowed to keep the troops under control. However, sooner or later members of the White army would have to spread all over Europe, living at misery and taking the hardest jobs.
   And there was no real need for the German national socialists in 1920–1921, either. That is why they didn’t get any support, and they should have thanked Hitler’s talents and enthusiasm of his first comrades and supporters for their first minor success. This was the time of those soft-hearted elder ladies, who would spare some money to the hungry Nazi. The point was that “the true Arians” were “as all right as soot is white”, “Till the middle of 1921 the Party couldn’t afford a cashier, and bill-carriers had no money to buy any glue!” [70 - Fest, I. Hitler. V.1. P. 270 .]
   Hitler’s portraits of that period show him in simple and sometimes shabby clothes. He was living in a beggarly furnished small room in Tirstrasse, its floor covered with rubbed-off linoleum. There was only a bed, and a bookshelf, and one armchair, and a self-made table there [71 - Hanfstaengl, E. Hitler. The Missing Years. P. 44.]. Friedelind, granddaughter of Richard Wagner, the favorite composer of Hitler’s, remembered him like: “In Bavarian leather breeches, short thick woolen socks, a red-blue-checked shirt and a short blue jacket that bagged about his unpadded skeleton” [72 - Bullock, A. Hitler and Stalin. V.1. P. 106.].
   And here is one more description of Hitler, “In his heavy boots, dark costume and leather vest, half-upstanding collar, with that weird moustache, he didn’t make any striking impression. He looked much like a waiter in a landside café” [73 - Hanfstaengl, E. Hitler. The Missing Years. P. 27–28.].
   The Führer also had some attitude to business, “He made everybody desperate, because you could never be sure, if he would attend the meeting appointed, and it wasn’t possible to wrest any decision out of him” [74 - Ibid. P. 76.].
   When Pfeffer von Salomon, future Head of storm troops (Sturmabteilung), saw his Führer for the first time, he simply refused to get acquainted with him. That was because the Leader was dressed as a homeless vagrant, an old morning coat, yellow leather boots and a rucksack on his back. Another description of Hitler’s appearance of that time said he was wearing a blue costume, a violate shirt, a brown vest and a bright red neck-tie [75 - Fest, I. Hitler. V.1. P. 221.]. The future Führer made a poor show, didn’t he? In modern language, stylists and imagemakers had a lot of work to do. And they did! Can anyone imagine Hitler of 1941 in shorts?
   Hitler’s personal expenses were also very minor. As late as on Easter in 1923 he borrowed several Deutschemarks from Göring to take a festive trip to the mountains. Talking of these years later he stated, “For years I lived on Tyrolean apples. It’s crazy what economies we had to make. Every mark saved was for the Party” [76 - Geiden, K. Way of the NSDAP. Führer and His Party. P. 178.].
   As they say, beggars are not choosers. That is why all first supporters of Hitler were ideological. It was because their leader didn’t work for money, he worked for the sake of the idea, and this caused certain respect and attracted people to Hitler as much as his gift of oratory did. When did the Nazi’s financial position start to improve? As soon as they were needed for the first time. As we see they weren’t required in 1921, and in the beginning of 1922 there was still no need in them. Historians don’t report any financial miracles in regard to the Nazi of that period.
   Since April 10 till May 19, 1922 the Soviet Russia under the name of RSFSR participated in the International conference in the Italian town of Genoa [77 - The USSR will be established on December 30, 1922. It will include Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia and the Transcaucasian Republic.]. In fact, it was the first “beauty parade” of Bolsheviks’ leaders in front of the entire “civilization”. And as usual, money was discussed. The Western governments pushed immense financial claims out, which included both pre-war and war debts plus interests. Besides, Bolsheviks were required to repay all property provided to the White governments, which they hadn’t paid (!) with interests, as well as to reimburse cost of all enterprises, which had been owned by foreign citizens. In opinion of Western experts, all of it was worth 18 billion golden rubles.
   Naturally, Bolsheviks couldn’t pay that much. Annual payment would have equaled 80 % of Russia’s state balance of that time. Naturally, it was expected that Bolsheviks incapable of paying back would have surrendered Russia and have finalized its enslavement, passing it to their ex-partners from the Entente, who had crushed the Russian Empire by means of revolution, aided by Kerensky and Lenin.
   And that was then that Vladimir Ilyitch gave the finger to the negotiating partners. Instead of implicit acknowledgement of debts and driving Russia into financial servitude the Soviet delegation didn’t hesitate to push a counterclaim out, which included foreign intervention and the Blockade. The total amount was 30 billion golden rubles. Several days later dumbstruck Western diplomatic officials were offered a softer version of the claim. Bolsheviks agreed to acknowledge pre-war debts of Russia and were ready to provide former owners with the right to lease their ex-property or to take it on concession terms. In exchange England, France and Italy were to acknowledge the Soviet government de jure, provide it with financial support, “forget” about nationalized enterprises, as well as forgive war debts and corresponding interests.
   No one had ever talked to the winners in World War I that boldly. Besides, while Western delegations were discussing incredible Bolsheviks’ demands, the Soviet delegations managed an extremely important diplomatic step. On April 16, 1922 a termless agreement between RSFSR and Germany was signed in Rapallo, the Genoa suburb. Parties mutually gave up their claims in regard to reimbursement of military expenses and non-military losses; moreover, Germany acknowledged nationalization of the German state and private property in the RSFSR! This Agreement was signed in secret, at night, and diplomatic officials of other Western delegations learnt about it only after it had been signed [78 - Danilov, A.A., Kosulina, L.G. History of Russia. The XX century. M., 1998. P. 235.].
   That was too much! Actually, Lenin’s Russia managed to trick both the British and the French. Naturally, the Genoa conference ended in nothing. Right after it another attempt to make Bolsheviks surrender Russia to the West failed. During the Hague conference on June 15–22, 1922, the Soviet delegation held to the same stand as it had done in Genoa. It became clear that Bolsheviks got out of control and should have been talked to in a different way. And it was also necessary to bring discipline to Germany, which so clearly had showed its independence. The British Intelligence Service didn’t accomplish revolutions in Russia and Germany to make two of them friends!

   Two days after the Treaty of Rapallo had been signed, on April 18, 1922 governments of the Entente countries, the Little Entente countries (Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Romania) and Poland, and Portugal addressed Germany with a sharp note. They accused Germany of being disloyal to the Allies, as well as of “secretly signing of the agreement with Russia behind backs of its colleagues”. The Mass Media caused incredible disturbance. Finally, Joseph Wirth and Walter Rathenau, leaders of the German delegation, paid a visit to the Soviet delegation next day, on April 19th, and begged (!) to return them the signed agreement. The representatives of the “free democratic” Germany were in such panic that they were visiting the British embassy, calling Berlin and coming back to talk the Soviet delegation into pretending there hadn’t been an agreement signed all the time! Naturally, Russian diplomatic officials didn’t understand that, and the agreement remained in effect.

   And instantly the powers required by the Anglo-Saxon roused in the country of beer and sausage. Like frogs in the drying up moor they were waiting for their time. When the moor dries up, they are waiting petrified. Though, when some vivifying moisture is spilled, they become extremely active. It was just like that with German political parties. With the necessary ones, naturally, with the nationalistic ones.
   Let me remind you that the Treaty of Rapallo was signed on April 16, 1922. And of all things “the abrupt increase of the amount of party members” of NSDAP started right in spring 1922! [79 - Fest, I. Hitler. Perm. V.1. P. 253.] It was in 1922–1923 that runaway inflation started in Germany. The population was rashly becoming poor.
   And in the middle of 1922 Adolf Hitler got some money. Rather a lot of money, in fact. It was because he planned to hold a party conference in Munich in January 1923. Five thousand of perfectly (and freshly!) uniformed troopers should have marched in front of their leader [80 - During the Genoa conference Henry Deterding, Head of the oil company Royal Dutch offered to establish a united consortium that would get all oil concessions in Russia. When the offer failed, he instantly appeared among those financially supporting the beginning politician Adolf Hitler (Geiden, K. NSDAP way. The Führer and his party. M., 2004. P. 146).]. At the same time twelve sites for holding of meetings were leased. Orchestras, folk dancers and even a famous clown were hired to attract the audience [81 - Fest, I. Hitler. V.1. P. 261.]. Right after Rapallo, in spring 1922, the print run of the Hitlerite newspaper rapidly increased from 8 to 17.5 thousand copies [82 - Ibid. P. 352.]. And when the conference ended, they started to issue Völkischer Beobachter every day. So, there were some coincidences…
   Now we can answer the question why the mysterious foreign sponsors supported the young Nazi movement. German nationalists actively used outer forces to destabilize the situation in the country. Nazis were effective and valuable not personally but for the ability to provoke in Germany the governmental crisis and to remove the cabinet, so disliked by the Anglo-Saxon, that had guts to sign an agreement with Bolsheviks. Weimar Republic was the democratic country and the cabinet would easily resign should the political situation in the country go worse. Instead of resignation (if not accepted) the nationalists could also organize assassination. Let us once again remember the date of conclusion of the Soviet and German treaty of Rapallo. It was April 16, 1922. And on June 24, 1922 the group of nationalist plotters assassinated the Minister of the Foreign Affairs of Germany, Walther Rathenau, who was ethnic Jewish. This was an obvious example for all German politicians: the assassinated was for approximation with Moscow [83 - Sadovaya, G.M. Walther Rathenau: the Path to Rapallo // History and Historiography of the Foreign World in Persons Samara, 1999. P. 121–139.]. Though for gradual approximation, looking back to the West.
   Already on November 14, 1922 Josef Wirth, German Chancellor, resigned. He was the one who authorized the Treaty of Rapallo. Wirth frankly wanted the approximation of Germany with the Soviet Russia, however, he was for gradual steps and feared reaction of the western states to such foreign policy and independence of Germany [84 - Gintzberg, L.I. Josef Wirth: a Path to Struggle for Peace and Partnership between the Peoples/Modern and Contemporary History 1981. No. 1.P. 105–124; No. 2.P. 102–121.]. Death of Walther Rathenau was convincing and showed that such fears did really had grounds.
   Along with the tension inside the German government the pressure from outside also grew stronger. Delays in payment of reparations became an excuse. Some time earlier in the history the Entente countries did not rush Germany but then it was the different time. After Rathenau’s assassination and resignation of Wirth some crucial measures followed. In January 1923 the French troops occupied the major industrial land of Germany – Ruhr [85 - The Ruhr land is approximately 90 km long and 45 km wide. We will mention this land later on again but keep in mind for now that this small piece of land produced about 80 % of German coal, cast iron and steel and had the most developed railway system in the world.] to take under control coal mining and shipment. German government urged the population to put up passive resistance. The French really did behave as the invaders. For example, they executed by shooting from the machine gun a demonstration of workers at one of the factories in Essen. Thirteen people were killed and over thirty were injured. When the funerals of the killed were visited by about half a million people, the French military court sentenced the owner of the firm and eight employees that held management positions to fifteen and twenty years of imprisonment accordingly [86 - Fest, I. Hitler. V.1. P. 265.].
   The whole Germany clenched its teeth in indignation. Diversions and attacks of the French soldiers started on the territory of Ruhr which were followed by numerous death sentences [87 - In Ruhr land 400 people were executed for acts of sabotage and 300 of them were executed by … the German authorities (Preparata, G.G. Hitler Inc. How Britain and America Made the Third Reich. P. 191).]. What about the Nazis that dressed as the extreme German patriots at the meetings?
   For those who understands the true financial sources of Hitler, it would be no surprise that members of his party did not participate in struggle with the French. On the contrary, Hitler personally promised to expel anyone who was actively participating in the resistance of Ruhr occupation! There were actual cases when he fulfilled his threat. According to witnesses it was just a year earlier when Hitler was talking about the necessity of the partisan warfare if the Ruhr land was occupied! [88 - Hanfstaengl, E. Hitler. The Missing Years. P. 33.]
   The grown and stronger NSDAP could be easily used as any other nationalistic groups for destabilization of the inner affairs in Germany. There is such a twist of fate! Those who more than any others shout about the Great Russia, Great Germany and so on, in most cases blindly used the geopolitical rivals of its countries to weaken and disintegrate them! Let’s think about the noble but short-sighted White Russians. Rejecting the pure thought about “trading Russia”, heads of the White Movement lost in the Civil War in the end and gave up the country to Bolsheviks. Contemporary Russian skinheads and extreme nationalists do not even suspect that by beating up the “blacks” they firstly damage their own country. It is not about the image of the state but about the simple fact that in a multinational country assault of one nation by another always leads to disintegration which in the end is so desirable for its outside rivals. In the same way Nazi Hitler voluntarily or involuntarily played into the French and English hands that financed him not by means of his mythical “separatism” but by the very pure “patriotism”! [89 - Right after the Hitler’s putsch (8–9.11.1923). Chancellor, G. Stresemann resigned (23.11.1923).]
   Approximately one year before Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch there had appeared several interesting personalities. Together with them there came the money which origin could not be explained by the historians. Financial streams flew to Hitler from many directions. Besides French and English (“Swiss”) sources American funds also found Hitler. In the same year of 1922 Germany was searching for new political personalities who could be later used depending on the situation: to replace the disliked politicians, to organize murders and provocations. At that time nobody was planning to lead Hitler to the power. Almost nobody even ever heard of such person.
   That is why American military attaché in Germany captain Truman Smith at first met with entirely different people: the former general Ludendorff who was in charge of the German army during the World War I and Crown Prince Rupprecht. They told American captain about the new rising star. On November 20, 1922 captain met with Führer in his shabby flat on the first floor [90 - Shirer, W. Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. M., 1991. P. 38.]. Hitler was quite frank with the American. It was clear that if the military attaché of the embassy was interested in politicians and not only in guns, the field of his activities should be larger than simply military issues. Yet unknown head of the small local Bavarian party told about his intention to “eliminate Bolshevism”, “to remove Versailles shackles”, to establish dictatorship and create a strong country. Practically Hitler used the rare chance when an American intelligence agent found him and offered his personality as the “civilisation sword” in the struggle with Marxism. That is with Russia!
   The offer turned out to be very timely: such fanatics would be in need at any moment. It was not yet time to fight with the Russians but it was good idea to have a closer look at the guy. When captain Truman Smith returned to Berlin, he made a detailed report that was on November 25, 1922 sent by the embassy to Washington. The pity was that the official American military attaché could not occupy himself with the German politician too actively due to his diplomatic status. However Hitler seemed to the Yankee so perspective that the same day the future Führer was under control of the new contactee from the American intelligence service. Nazi leader gave the pass to the next meeting of the party to the Yankee but captain Truman Smith did not go there himself but sent their a “friend of his”. The friend’s name was Ernst Franz Sedgwick Hanfstaengl. The son of a successful art dealer, who had German father and American mother, was born in Bavaria and in 1909 graduated from Harvard University. The entire World War I half-German Hanfstaengl spent in the United Sates and was in no hurry to support his distant motherhood. Moreover he was not arrested being the German citizen when the USA declared war to Germany and when he promised “not to get involved into any anti-American activities”, he was let free. Why? Because his lawyer turned out to be the Secretary of State of the American President Theodore Roosevelt! [91 - Hanfstaengl, E. Hitler. The Missing Years. P. 22.]
   However when Germany lost in the war, Hanfstaengl rushed back to his native country. In destroyed Germany that was suffering from inflation life of an “American” Ernst was an example of prosperity and affluence. He always had some money but the resource of his income was not always quite transparent: because the damned inflation destroyed German firm of his father. “Official” version of his prosperity was some kind of an art gallery in the United States. Such explanation was persuasive and could not be checked. That is a very convenient explanation.
   When Ernst received an invitation to the meeting in which Hitler was going to take part, he instantly liked him and they soon became friends. Later he even wrote the memoir books called My Friend Adolf, My Enemy Hitler and Hitler. Missed Years. I would really recommend everybody to read those books. Why? Not because the books have some literature value but rather because of some impressive facts set forth in the books. It turns out that vanity is typical not only of poets and artists, commanders and men of letters. It is typical of the intelligence agents as well. That is why in the afternoon of their lives they slowly write a modest book in which, of course, they do not reveal all the facts, no. But they very neatly insert the truth among the well-known historical facts, they insert such truth in hues so that the attentive reader would realize that author of the book was rendering history secretly from everybody – helping the weird fanatic Adolf Hitler.
   There is something to write about indeed. Ernst who was two meters tall was nicknamed by Nazis “Putzi” which meant “baby” (or “funny” or “amusing”). Under this name he entered the history of the German Nationalistic Movement and history books. Narrow-minded historians picture Hanfstaengl as a typical motley forgetting that such role is the most convenient for hidden impact on the ruler.

   Ernst Hanfstaengl, American intelligence agent following the task from his government but not his heart provided Adolf Hitler with truly invaluable services

   Putzi’s role in establishment of NSDAP as the party and Hitler as the political leader has never been really appreciated. Pianist Hanfstaengl introduced the coarse corporal to Munich nobility, its arts and literature circles. Meeting such people as the Hanfstaengl family attached some respectability that lacked Hitler’s personality and established new important connections. As a matter of fact Putzi and his wife Helen were the first noble family that opened the doors of their house to Hitler. Most probably they were his first “stylists” and “image-makers”. Hitler learnt how to behave in the society and acquired some manners.
   He was always welcome in the Hanfstaengl villa. It was the place where Hitler could not only enjoy his favorite Wagner played live on the piano but also get some financial support. Putzi Hanfstaengl was rich and could afford to support a little the beginner-politician. He could suggest something, show the correct direction. Ideas that Hanfstaengl put into the head of Hitler-beginner were honestly revealed in his memoirs: “Should there be another war, it will be inevitably won by those supported by America. The only correct policy that you should stand up for is friendship with the United States. If Americans occur on the side of your rivals, you will loose any war” [92 - Hanfstaengl, E. Hitler. The Missing Years. P. 36, 62.].
   Take notice that such advocacy was addressed not to the leader of the state or head of the government but to the yet unknown leader of a marginal organization. Thanks to the editor who wrote introduction to Hanfstaengl’s book: He formulated Putzi’s words in a shorter and simpler manner: His ideas consisted in the fact that Germany would never get balance and magnitude without partnership with Britain and especially with the United States. The main idea that he was trying to fix in Hitler’s head was that any attempts to balance accounts in Europe would turn delusive if those two naval states joined the opposing party” [93 - Ibid. P. 9–10.].
   Those thoughts were good and correct. If we develop them further, we will get the following: be friends with England and the USA and fight with Russia. It seems we have already come across those ideas somewhere, have seen them already. But where? In Hitler’s Mein Kampf! It is getting more and more interesting: in 1923 Hanfstaengl had geopolitical dialogues with Hitler, he educated the future Führer, extended his outlooks. And no later than in 1924 the “student” already wrote a book where he word by word repeated the ideas of his friend. So who is the real author of Mein Kampf? Turns out it’s an American intelligence agent.
   If somebody has doubts with regards to why Ernst Hanfstaengl “by accident” got to know Adolf Hitler, just advise such person to read Hanfstaengl’s books. There would be no more doubts. Too many factors point at the fact to which authority the rich American “friend” of the German Nazis belonged to. Beyond any doubt Hitler was the talented orator. But such talent had to be developed and nourished. Ernst Hanfstaengl was the one who supported Hitler in becoming a self-confident leader. He lifted his oratory talent to the next level: “I told him about an efficient use of the expressive aphorisms in the American political life and explained how this can be intensified by caustic headings in the newspapers, how speech can be made brighter with phonetic and alliteration effects” [94 - Hanfstaengl, E. Hitler. The Missing Years. P. 51.].
   Hitler agreed. In fact he absorbed almost everything like a sponge. “In many respects Hitler was pliable and compliant” [95 - Ibid. P. 63.], – pointed out Hanfstaengl. Within developing his orator’s talent Hitler asked quite reasonable questions:
   “You are absolutely right. But how can I drum my ideas into the heads of the German people without being published? Newspapers completely ignore me. How can I think about my oratory successes with our damned Völkischer Beobachter that comes out weekly? We will not achieve anything until it is published daily” [96 - Ibid. P. 50–51.].
   It was the year of 1923. In November Hitler would make an attempt of the coup d’etat. He badly needed propaganda to get support of the people. And propaganda required financing. Too bad it was nowhere to get the financing. Possibly the future Führer would be a simple orator forever who made speeches at Munich beer feasts if not for a saying: rather have a hundred friends than a hundred rubles.
   Adolf Hitler did not have a hundred of friends but he had one true friend. And that was enough because his friend was Ernst Hanfstaengl. He would be the one to finance propaganda! “In March 1923 Hanfstaengl gave Hitler a loan in the amount of one thousand dollars. During those times such sum was a lot of money” [97 - Heiden, K. The Path of NSDAP. Führer and His Party. P. 178.].
   Don’t get confused about the word “loan”. There are many grounds to suppose that Putzi didn’t rush Hitler to return that money. And one thousand was really a great sum of money in those times! According to Hanfstaengl even one dollar was a fortune not to mention a thousand! [98 - Hanfstaengl, E. Hitler. The Missing Years. P. 40.]
   Members of the Nazi party used the money to purchase two new printing machines for their newspaper Völkischer Beobachter. At that moment Hitler’s newspaper was no longer a small piece of paper, but became a regular newspaper that came out daily. It was not the only Hanfstaengl’s contribution in creating Nazi’s major mouthpiece. He personally attracted a cartoonist Schwarzer to develop the new bright heading, the “cap” and suggested the new motto for the newspaper – “Labour and Bread” [99 - Hanfstaengl, E. Hitler. The Missing Years. P. 51.].
   When publishing was arranged smoothly, Hanfstaengl helped Hitler in other small but very important matters. He was the one who explained Hitler that music was extremely important to throw the crowd into ecstasies and to force historic enthusiasm. As example Putzi played for Führer Harvard marches and Hitler even made SA orchestra to memorize the melody. Afterwards Hanfstaengl composed about ten new march melodies for the Assault Division! [100 - Ibid. P. 48.] when Hitler was elected Chancellor, the Assault Division would be marching under the Brandenburg Gate to those “pathetic marches” composed by an American.
   At the same time the fact of Putzi’s supporting Nazi and transfer of the money was thoroughly hidden by Hanfstaengl. Several times he mentions that in his memoirs: “I decided to secretly support the nationalistic-socialistic party”; “I… understood that any support which I provided had to be kept secret”; “I still kept in secret my support of the Nazi and could not allow any fuss about it” [101 - Ibid. P. 39, 55.].
   What was the reason to hide it? Explanations were quite unconvincing: “I am a member of the family firm”. So what important business did Hanfstaengl have with Hitler that it was allowed to walk with him in the street but not allowed to help him with money? Upon arrival from America to the native land the future Führer’s fan was engaged not in trading or brokerage but in studying of the Bavarian king-patron Ludwig II [102 - Martirosyan, A. Who Brought War to USSR? M., 2007. P. 287.]. It is all the same as being afraid of being compromised during Yeltzin’s time for studying the favourites of empress Catherine II or Elisabeth. What else Hanfstaengl was engaged in other than teaching Hitler, sponsoring him and going into business trips with him? It is hard to understand from his memoirs. He did not include detailed descriptions of his commercial activities.
   Yet he did remember to tell the reader about the content of Hitler’s book shelve which he once observed while visiting Führer. Would you be interested to find out what the head of the political party read in his free time? I guess so. You would look at the shelf, wouldn’t you? Would you remember all the names? You would probably have a look and remember some of them. But you would hardly be able to reproduce the exact list of books when you wrote memoirs 25 years after. That’s because you are an ordinary person. While Ernst Hanfstaengl, such a great friend of the Nazi leader made something extraordinary for an ordinary person “Books were all different. Finding some time I made a list of them” [103 - Hanfstaengl, E. Hitler. The Missing Years. P. 44.], – wrote the American. Such behaviour that seems extraordinary for an average person is quite typical for an intelligence agent.
   It seems that contacts with Hitler and collection of information were the major activity and work of his friend Hanfstaengl. The rest was only a kind of disguise. So, for example, Hanfstaengl supposedly wrote the script for a movie and supposedly it took him almost a year. But this movie was never even screened! Why? Because Putzi never wrote a script. He was systematically busy with the only thing really – preparing the future Führer for Germany. While telling about his script-making was a good reply to any question about his professional life. After all there was no such profession as supporting Hitler.
   “The party always lacked money” [104 - Ibid. P. 52.], – wrote Hanfstaengl in his book. Why then the two-meter friend and sponsor gave only one thousand dollars, not two, or three, or ten if he was so close to Hitler for a reason? Very simple: His legend was that he was rich but not a billionaire; he could not donate amounts that exceeded reasonable extents of the rich bourgeois. One thousand dollars was fine but not ten, no. Yet he could introduce Hitler to the right people, he could give good advice. Soon came the time, just before the putsch, when Hitler went to Switzerland to get some money. This country had always been home for intelligence services of all the countries of our world. Was it again the true friend who directed him there?
   This fact is left unknown but we know for sure another thing: After failure with the putsch Hitler ran away to Hanfstaengl house located in settlement Uffing, 60 km from Munich [105 - Seward, D. Napoleon and Hitler. Smolensk, 1995. P. 79.]. At that moment Hitler was in despair, his hysterical personality was extremely stressed. Seeing no way out Hitler made a decision to shoot himself and put the revolver against his temple. As we know well it never happened. Who should we thank for saving the life of one of the most terrible savage in the history? Hanfstaengl’s wife, she was the one who knocked out the revolver from Hitler’s hand. It was in this house that Hitler got arrested by policemen and sent to prison where he began to classify his ideas (told by Hanfstaengl) into a book. The first thing Hitler did after coming out of prison was not visiting Göring or Rosenberg but visiting Hanfstaengl’s new house behind the river Isar…

   Hanfstaengl couple managed to save Hitler’s life twice. For the first time it happened in 1923 during their car trip to Berlin. The road was going through Saxony which was practically under the power of communists. That is why in that part of Germany there existed an order to arrest Hitler and “was even assigned a price for his head”. The unit of communistic militia stopped the car on the road. Then it was really the question of life and death. And at that very moment Hanfstaengl took out the Swiss passport out of his pocket (he used it to return from the USA) and explained that he was a foreigner going to the Leipzig Fair and accompanied by the driver and the footman. “You saved my life”, said Hitler then. In the next years Hitler always remembered that incident with appreciation. While Hanfstaengl wrote in his book that “Hitler was offended that I called him the footman”.

   Grateful Hitler did not forget his friend and appointed him to the responsible position of the Press Secretary of Foreign Affairs of the party. Besides Putzi was in the head of the department of foreign press in the staff of Führer’s deputy. In his business trips abroad he was actively advertising new German powers.
   Skeptic would say that these facts do not prove anything. And he would be absolutely right! Yet Hanfstaengl’s biography includes some more interesting facts. That modest press secretary had some truly incredible contacts and acquaintances.
   In summer 1932 a rather influential British politician came to Germany with a private visit. His name was Winston Churchill. In Sir Winston’s memoirs we find a very interesting note: “In hotel Regina one gentleman was introduced to one of my companions. His surname was Hanfstaengl. He talked about Führer a lot and seemed to be a close friend of his. As I found him entertaining and talkative and all the same he spoke good English I invited him to have lunch. He was really under a spell telling about Hitler’s opinions and views. I could feel he was completely charmed by him. Most probably he was ordered to engineer contacts with me as he was clearly making all the attempts to leave a good impression. After lunch he started playing the piano and he performed a lot of plays and songs so well that we all had a great pleasure. He turned out to know all my favourite English songs. And he was good at entertaining society. It turned out he was Führer’s favourite at that time. He told me that I had to meet Hitler personally and that it would be easy for him to engineer a meeting between us” [106 - Churchill, W. World War II V.1. P. 151.].
   Sir Winston told about the matter as if some accidental acquaintance was trying to introduce him to Führer. In Hanfstaengl’s description the story sounded differently: “I spent quite a lot of time in the company of his son, Randolph (Churchill’s son. – N.S.) during our pre-election trips. I even organized plane flights together with him once or twice [107 - As Hitler was the major striking force of Nazis during the last year before his coming to the power in the country he was constantly flying to meetings from one German town to another. He was provided with a special rented plane and Goebbels came out with a good advertising slogan: “Führer over Germany”.]. He paid my attention to the fact that his father comes with the visit to Germany and that we should arrange a meeting” [108 - Hanfstaengl, E. Hitler. The Missing Years. P. 200.].
   You must admit that knowing the son who several times had flights with Hitler and Hanfstaengl is something more than just “one gentleman was introduced to one of my companions”. One way or another but British politician agreed to arrange a meeting: “At that time I had no national prejudices against Hitler. I knew little of his doctrine, of his past and knew absolutely nothing of his personal qualities. I admire people who rise in defense of their defeated country even if I am on the other end. He had the full right to be a German patriot if he wanted to” [109 - Churchill, W. World War II V.1. P. 15.].
   So who actually ordered Hanfstaengl to “make contact” with the British politician? Who ordered him to arrange a meeting of the two great political personalities? Hitler himself? No. Führer did not ask to arrange this contact because he did not go to that meeting with Churchill no matter how hard Ernst Hanfstaengl persuaded him to! “That is how Hitler missed the only chance to meet with me” [110 - Ibid. P. 15.], – complained Churchill. A serious politician could not behave like that – first ask about the meeting with one of the leading political personalities of the most powerful state in the world and later failing to go that meeting. That was too childish and not frivolous. It was only half a year left before Hitler seized the power, and personal meeting with Churchill would not be unnecessary. It appears that Hanfstaengl was ordered to introduce Hitler to Churchill not by the Nazis but by that very intelligence service that very cleverly and neatly attached their agent to the rising star of the German politics Adolf Hitler. Otherwise why would he know Churchill’s son and take him to pre-election flights?

   Hitler and Hanfstaengl (the first on the left) at the plane during the continuous pre-election flights. Son of Winston Churchill several times participated in those flights

   There is only one answer: all Hanfstaengl’s activities were directed to persuade Hitler to be friends with England and the USA and for that purpose he was bringing Hitler closer to the strong people of the world. Even Führer’s failure to appear at the meeting did not intervene the British politician from discussing some very delicate issues. With whom? With Hanfstaengl. “Tell me what your boss thinks about the alliance between your country, France and England?” [111 - Hanfstaengl, E. Hitler. The Missing Years. P. 202.] – asked Churchill.
   And why on earth did an old fox Winston come to Germany? Maybe to find out who would be in the head of Germany in six months?
   Hitler’s good friend made many more good favours for him. For example, in February 1934 without notifying Führer he went to Benito Mussolini. The purpose of the trip of the modest press secretary was to push duce to stabilization of relationships. As Hanfstaengl told Mussolini “something must be wrong when such complications stand between our two fascist states” [112 - Hanfstaengl, E. Hitler. The Missing Years. P. 259–261.]. As we know from the history it was the time when the two dictators were moving towards each other. We should only wonder about one detail: how Hanfstaengl achieved to be received by the head of Italy? Is every German occurring on the territory of their country got treatment with Chianti and got to meet Mussolini? The rank of our hero was not so high to get there.
   But Hanfstaengl’s connections were truly fantastic. If you have an idea that all these breath-taking memoirs were written by Putzi following the image of baron von Münchhausen and all his memoirs are simple invention, you would be quite mistaken. Because if the statement about the visit to Mussolini is difficult to verify, there still exist some “concrete reinforced” evidences of the incredible powers of Ernst Hanfstaengl. After he had done so much for the Reich, he suddenly left Germany in 1937. Meaning that he secretly left the country because he supposedly had conflict with Hitler’s surroundings and felt threat to his life.
   Where did our hero go? To his other home – America. It appeared that in America he had another good friend, his Harvard classmate – president of the USA Franklin Delano Roosevelt! Our German hero worked for Hitler in the position of the press secretary of foreign affairs of the party, so what? In the United States Putzi laid wreaths to the memorials … with eagles and swastika, so what?
   During the World War II Hanfstaengl was working… as president Roosevelt’s counsel! [113 - Shirer, W. Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. P. 39.]
   As an expert on the Nazi Germany he was working under arrest, that is under guard. He was under the guard of the sergeant of the American Army Egon Hanfstaengl. A namesake? No, he wasn’t. He was the son timely rescued from Germany and sent to guard his farther under personal order of the American president! This was the friendship which lasted exactly until Nazi consolidated its forces. There was no further need to direct or give advice: the war for which Hitler was so required, for which Hanfstaengl worked so much, was not far away. Or maybe simply the contract was over? It is a really dark story just as the one about Hitler coming to power.
   Nevertheless, let’s return to Russia. After leaving the Western partners without the spoils at the Genoa Conference and after breaking through the diplomatic isolation by means of the Treaty of Rapallo, Lenin seemed to be completely exhausted. The 52 year old Vladimir Ilyich had a stroke. It happened in May 1922. This was the first time when the issue on successor rose. Practically Lenin appointed nobody after himself and the strokes that followed the first one did not allow him to fully govern the country. It resulted in the beginning of struggle for the Lenin’s heritage between Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin. The struggle unrolled in unstable economic and political conditions: In 1922 the transfer from the New Economic Policy and the next step in “collection of the Russian lands” – establishment of USSR started in the country.
   The date of Lenin’s death knew every single person in the Soviet Union: January 21, 1924. However there is another date just as important for understanding of fascism origins but hardly anyone remembers it [114 - It was 1 February 1924. On that day the United Kingdom officially acknowledged USSR.].
   The interrelation between these two events cannot be left unnoticeable. England waited until Lenin died and only after that acknowledged the Soviet Union [115 - Right after the patron, the vassals also started acknowledging USSR: on 7 February 1924 – Italy where Benito Mussolini was the Prime Minister, on 13 February – Norway, on 25 February – Austria, on 8 March – Greece, on 15 March – Sweden, on 18 June – Denmark, on 6 July – Albania, on 19 July – China, on 1 August – Mexico, on 28 October 1924 – France. The last in this “acknowledgement order” was Japan, it happened on 20 January 1925, while the United States acknowledged USSR on in 1933.]. The matter was not in the non-acceptance of communism by the heads of Britain. The matter was in the principal position not to deal with the one who lied to them. The one who was sent to destroy the country and transfer it under governance of the West and who had fulfilled the first task but rejected to fulfill the second. In Genoa he demonstrated once again that he could perform political “somersaults” just as good as his British “friends”. Such issues as establishment of the diplomatic relations were not done within one week. Consultations were in the active phase before the death of the leader. And acknowledgement of USSR in nine days after Lenin’s passing away was quite a direct and unambiguous hint at which political course of the USSR would find understanding. Lenin’s “leaving” gave a wonderful opportunity to fix those problems that his sharp mind created for the Anglo-Saxon. And that situation had to be fixed by Trotsky. All the hopes were placed on him.
   It is now the correct time to return to ideological disagreements between Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky, disagreement between the theory of constructing the socialism in one country and principal impossibility to do it. What is it – the construction of the new social structure? It is struggle, blood, civil war, sacrifices and devastation. Trotsky and Stalin had almost no disagreements in this issue. But the clash was over and it was time to restore the country. And this is where disagreements began. Stalin thought that to construct socialism in the USSR new factories, plants and railways had to be build. Socialism was supposed to improve the life of a working person. There was such a need to build kindergartens, schools and libraries. Socialism was aimed at eliminating illiteracy and ignorance. Sources were supposed to be contributed to improvement of the infrastructure, to construction of health resorts for working people. The purpose was not only to restore Russia but to improve it.
   What did Trotsky offer? Socialism is impossible in one, separate Russia. Thus such large-scale construction was senseless from his point of view. Why would you need to build a roof without laying a foundation! And the foundation of the happy life in Russia could be only the world revolution. The revolution had to be performed and then deal with everything else. That meant no kindergartens and resorts. Nothing is needed after all other than financing of the world revolution movement and establishing of the strong army that would bring sunrise to the whole world on the edge of the blade. According to Trotsky such permanent revolution had to be exported all the time. What did it mean? It meant that at any moment USSR could attack any other country at its choice and discretion of comrade Trotsky. And at the choice of his foreign friends, those to whom Leon Trotsky sent the “railway” funds.
   The situation was far from harmless. If Trotsky had won, all the county’s resources would be spent for establishing the threat for the surrounding world [116 - Rezun-Suvorov attributes such brutal aggression to USSR of the Stalin period, thus, explaining the mechanism of the World War II. While such concept lost in the battle together with its author Trotsky and Stalin never used it. At the VII congress of Communist International in 1935 it was officially declared that the world revolution was not prepared any more.]. Therefore comrade Trotsky gave his supervisors from the British and American intelligence services a good reason to achieve the destruction of USSR through war. That is a reason for another military defeat of the Russian army and for creating a magnificent cause for country’s occupation. Who would accuse the West of the aggression if USSR was getting ready to attack? Nobody, everybody would only applaud. Besides the theory of revolution export would enable the United Kingdom with our own hands and with the blood of our own soldiers to create tension in the required territories of the world. The Persian Shah doesn’t want to grant England oil? The Red Army would bring revolution to Iran, would make a mess and later the white and innocent Englishmen would come and save the Persians from the brutal communists. And take the oil as a thank you note.
   It is very appropriate to cite one of the statements of Joseph Stalin: “Opposition thinks that the issue on construction of socialism in USSR has only the theoretical pursuit. That is not correct. That is a complete delusion” [117 - Stalin, J.V. Collected works. V.9. P. 37.]. Decision in regards of the course that the country would choose really determined its further practical actions. And those actions were completely opposite. If Stalin won, the country would be independent and restoration would begin, if Trotsky took advantage, the country would be at the edged of the next “October” and thousands of the Russian men might fall dead on the battle fields trying to set on fire Europe and Asia.
   And the main thing: if Trotsky’s ideas triumphed over, USSR would have no allies at all! Because there are no other socialistic countries in the world and all the capital countries were our enemies a priori! And that meant that the Treaty of Rapallo that was so dangerous for England would die away.
   The first large collision between Stalin and Trotsky happened in January 1923 because of the mentioned above occupation of Ruhr by the French. Trotsky called upon the support of the communists who as we well remember arranged the uprising in Hamburg in October 1923. That meant to sacrifice friendship with Germany for the idea of the world revolution. Friendship with the Germans was not only parties, handshakes and smiles of the diplomats. Friendship was also equipment, machines, optics that other than Germany nobody supplied to our country. USSR badly needed all the above. That is why Stalin was absolutely against the intervention. And there was no intervention.
   In January 1924 Lenin died and the battle for Russia came out into the open phase. It was yet unclear who was going to win. Quite possible that another war might be required for Russia’s destruction. For that purpose there had to be the country that would start such war. And such country needed a relevant leader.
   Trial over the Nazi putschists took place in February-March 1924. Hitler was sentenced to 5 years of prison. Without losing any time he started dictating his future book Mein Kampf to Rudolf Hess in which as we remember he was celebrating the advantages of the England and Germany alliance for the both countries. You are not surprised, are you? He was supposed to be placed in the cell, he was supposed to be re-educated but he was not supposed to write books! But the prison for Führer was like a resort. Good feeding, numerous visitors that took about 6 hours per day [118 - Fest, I. Hitler. V.2. P.5.].
   Hitler was provided with the most favourable conditions. “The place of confinement looked like a Deli store. The grocery store with flower, fruit and wine departments with large inventory could be opened in his prison cell” [119 - Hanfstaengl, E. Hitler. The Missing Years. P. 119.], – this is how Ernst Hanfstaengl described Hitler’s place of imprisonment. By the way the American came to that prison with a visit not because of the sentimental feelings. He was getting ready to drag Hitler out of that difficult situation. Hitler’s manuscript, the masterpiece, was secretly carried out from the prison and was already typed in the printing facility of Völkischer Beobachter but the Nazi newspaper had numerous invoices payable. That invoices had to paid, otherwise all that had been done, would be all for nothing.
   “I paid some of the invoices and confirmed some others, that was enough to keep the newspaper operating” [120 - Ibid. P. 122.], – wrote Hitler’s “kind genius” in his memoirs. Pro-English Hitler’s ideas expressed in the book belonged to Hanfstaengl in many aspects and it would be a pity if the book had not been published. And that did not really cost some great money, some simple trifles. Instead of five years of Hitler’s imprisonment he spent there only thirteen months! [121 - Hitler was in prison from November 12, 1923 to December 20, 1924.] The support was not significant but played the crucial role…
   Hitler walked free from jail and the next financial miracle occurred right away. Later on Hitler was miraculously boosting German’s economy but first of all the financial miracle happened to him personally. The finished manuscript of his book Four Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice was published under the new name Mein Kampf. The issue of the book would not be very big and the interest from the readers would be even less. In 1926 the second volume of Mein Kamp went out but it did not change the core of the matter. The first volume was sold in 1925 in the amount of 10 thousand copies, in 1926 in the amount of 7 thousand copies. In 1927 both volumes found only 5,607 buyers and in 1928 even fewer – only 3,015 [122 - Fest, I. Hitler. V.2. P. 82.].
   It is clear that with such number of issues or with such “sales” as we currently call it the writer could not survive. However the young “writer” Adolf Hitler lives a rather well-to-do life. It seemed that he had no other sources of income. But it did not prevent him from living a free and easy life. After coming out of prison Hitler spent only half a year in his former old flat in Munich, since 1925 he was renting and later he bought a villa in the Alps, in the notorious Obersalzberg. Besides he bought a Mercedes-compressor of the latest model something that not every writer could afford and for Germany of that time it was unusually expensive purchase [123 - Ibid.]. Hitler’s lifestyle started acquiring the gloss that was so typical of him later: good clothes, money, a car and a driver. Tax police of Weimar Republic was quite interested in the sources of the unknown income of Führer that gave him an opportunity to live luxuriously right after his imprisonment. Responding to the tax authority request Hitler replied: “Neither in 1924 nor in the first quarter of 1925 I received any income at all. I paid for living expenses with the loans that I took in the bank. Money that I spent for the car is from the same source”.
   The correspondence between Hitler and tax authorities is the subject for a separate story. “My personal demands are limited to the very simple things, I do not drink alcohol or smoke tobacco, I eat in the cheapest restaurants and other than the apartment rent I have no expenses that the income of writer-publicist could not cover” [124 - Fest, I. Hitler. V.2. P. 82.], – responded Adolf Hitler to the tax authorities. As in the section “profession” Führer indicated in particular: Writer-publicist. The only income indicated in his tax declarations was the income from selling books as was due for the writer. However Hitler’s debit and credit did not agree: the expenses were much over the income which gave rise to questions from the tax inspectors. Führer used loans as the explanation; he insisted that he took loans to make purchases. However the sources which he used to discharge the loans are obscure as of today
   Let us return to the USSR again. I do not want to describe all the details of the battle between the two communistic leaders. Though such wording is not quite correct. Practically within the frames of one and the same political organization there were two completely different parties. The party aimed at restoration and construction of the new Russia, and the party striving to sacrifice the country to the interests of the world revolution, or if speaking directly to the interests of the West.
   Hey historians! Where are you? I offer you a wonderful subject for a thesis. Examine the coincidence between the dates of NSDAP and the Communistic party and a lot of facts would become clear. We will only note the most outrageous coincidence. At different times opposition of the Stalin policy made up various programs. They could be united by one thing: if the party accepted such program nothing would be left of the country. All these programs sounded very pretty, for example, the famous platform of 83. Its essence was in the following: Let there be the super-industrialization through higher taxes imposed on the middle-class farmworkers, price increase on consumer goods and withdrawal of floating assets from cooperation. Price increase on consumer goods would result in the corresponding price increase on farm produce and decrease of ruble’s financial soundness, while withdrawal of the significant part of floating assets from cooperation would contribute to strengthening of the private capital in trading. It is clear that imposing higher taxes on farmers could not become the solid foundation for the authorities. All that would only imply weakening of the state and decline of the living standards. We had chance to observe within the period from 1985 to 1991 what happens to the state that takes measures which result in the dramatic decline of the living standards of population. Let us compare the dates again, when did the supporters of Trotsky establish that political platform?
   Turns out it happened in May 1927. And on May 27, 1927 the United Kingdom broke any diplomatic relationships with the USSR! Can you believe in such a coincidence?
   For our survey the very fact of such fast breaking up of the diplomatic relations is important: in February 1924 we acknowledged the USSR and in May 1927 they don’t want to know us anymore. Why? Simply because Stalin’s victory over Trotsky was becoming very evident already and the United Kingdom was not ashamed to demonstrate its position. The hint was quite transparent: should Stalin’s political course take over, the consequences for the Soviet Union had to be very sad.
   There is nothing to be surprised about. Actions of the internal opposition of any power in Russia are always surprisingly synchronized with the events on the international arena.
   It was not the organizers of the Dissenters’ March who decided to proceed with the actions right on the eve of international summits and meetings. Such “surprising” coincidences started from Herzen’s times and the times of the People’s Freedom party, that is, from the middle of the XIX century.
   Reasons for breaking up the relations between England and the Soviet Union were also interesting. In 1926 England was shaken by the workers’ strike. It was suppressed very cruelly. On June 12, 1926 the British government brought the note of protest to the government of USSR which informed that the United Kingdom “could not pass in silence the action of the Soviet authorities that consisted in the special permit to transfer funds to the Great Britain that were aimed to support the strike”. The response of the Soviet Union cabinet read that it could not prohibit the workers of the country to provide the altruistic support to the English workers. As a matter of fact the USSR transferred money using the so-called non-governmental organizations which currently are quite fairly under the stricter control of the Russian state. In this regard the reaction of the United Kingdom to USSR’s steps was quite significant.

   Something that they are allowed to do we are prohibited to do. That is such a “sincere” belief of the western countries. They are the ones who could finance our opposition through funds and organizations. When we are trying to do the same there are no limits for indignation of the Anglo-Saxon. Just in the same manner when they do not allow to pump up foreign money for their politicians and it is referred to as normal. No sooner did we crack down the non-commercial organization, they were full of indignation again.

   However the heads of the USSR cabinet did not yield to such blackmail. On November 14, 1927 Trotsky and Zinoviev were expelled from the party. Because on 7 November the opposition was trying to arrange in Moscow and Leningrad “alternative” demonstration that looked more like the attempts to start the new coup d’état. Stalin’s response was to expel Trotsky from the party. Later at the meeting of politburo it was decided to deport him from the capital.
   On January 10, 1928 Trotsky was deported to the far-away city Verny (contemporary Alma-Ata). His journey was quite convenient: Leon Trotsky had a separate carriage in his possession, other than him and the members of his family, there was placed his entire archive, the library and all required personal belonging (including hunting inventory and the dog) [125 - Abramovich, I.L. Memories and Opinions. M., 2004. V.1. P. 99.].
   Of course, the leader of the non-performed world revolution did not enjoy the deportation. Yet for Hitler and Nazis the year of Trotsky’s deportation becomes on the contrary the beginning of the extraordinary growth. “Hitler’s successes and the success of his doctrines can be followed up very easily. In 1928 he had only 12 mandates in the Reichstag. In 1930 this figure was already 107 and in 1932 – 230” [126 - Churchill, W. World War II V.1. P. 43.].
   NSDAP took off very sharply in becoming the major nationalistic force (at that moment only on the territory of the southern lands) absorbing the great number of small nationalistic allies and groups. Later the period of growth within the whole Germany started. The last evidences that described the marches of the storm-troops rather unflattering refer to the period of 1927 (that is before Trotsky’s deportation): “They were wearing the cheap and shabby uniform, and the truck that they arrived with did not look his best and was more like the outdated rattletrap” [127 - Seward, D. Napoleon and Hitler. P. 83.].
   Everything is so interconnected in this world! Sometimes it is just incredible! Who would think that no sooner Leon Trotsky departed to Alma-Ata, the allowances and the uniform of the fascist storming troops would improve. You do not believe in such coincidence? Go and find descriptions of their marches like the one that took place in 1928 and was referred to above!
   However the really crucial point after which Hitler uncontrollably and dramatically went high to the top of Germany was in the first quarter of 1929. Again, for another time, Hitler’s movement went through some favourable changes. For a start, as usual, Hitler himself. His biographers wrote that in 1929 a section on Loans Interest disappeared from his tax declaration forever [128 - Fest, I. Hitler. V.2. P. 101.]. Another financial miracle occurred in Hitler’s life and he was no debtor any longer! At the same time he moved again and was living in the nine-room apartment in Prinzregentstrasse, in the district for well-to-do bourgeois [129 - Ibid.]. He had a big escort: helpers, guards, drivers, cooks and even gardeners [130 - Melnikov, D., Chernaya, N. Criminal Number One. M., 1982 P. 97.].
   Not that long ago as in the beginning of 1929 Führer’s deputy Rudolf Hess was personally travelling around Germany accumulating funds, He distributed to German industrial dealers two sets of photographs: in pictures of the first set there were demonstrations of the communists, while on the other were marching soldiers [131 - Ibid. P. 140.]. The words following up the pictures were very simple: these are destruction forces and we are the order. But SA was poor and badly needed the uniform and equipment. In other words, it needed money. Money was supposed to come from those who had it and who were interested not to lose everything that they possessed.
   Hitler himself on the contrary slowed down all his activities. “In 1927 he gave fifty six public speeches, while two years later he reduced this number to twenty nine” [132 - Fest, I. Hitler. V.2. P. 87.]. Was he tired? No, but the propaganda result could then be already achieved by other means and there was no need any more to strain his voice at the meetings. At that moment money replaced Hitler in his campaign. And newspapers. I am not talking about the Nazi press at the moment. For some reason particularly in 1929 the owner of the media empire Alfred Gugenberg established alliance with Hitler. The official version was that it was done to unite in the joint confrontation against the new plan of “Germany’s Renaissance” (Young Plan). The real reason was to let Hitler free in the open environment. Numerous newspapers started writing about him. Radio mentioned his name. It was the time when the great number of Germans found out about their tireless leader for the first time. Hitler’s promotion was so active that within two years the number of his supporters rose by seven times [133 - At election on May 20, 1928 Nazis got 2,6 % of votes while on September 14, 1930 – already 18,3 %.].

   Hitler is getting ready to inspect his storm troops, Nuremberg, 1927. Comrade Trotsky was not yet deported from USSR and not yet departed to Alma-Ata. And while Leon Trotsky was continuing his battle for power, soldiers’ uniform left much to be desired. Nazis did not get the money yet, the golden shower would occur for Hitler and NSDAP right after Trotsky’s deportation

   While some very short time in the past due to the lack of finances Hitler had to cancel the congress planned for 1928 and instead he convened the meeting of party heads in Munich in August of the same year (he had to save money: he could afford to update the uniform for the soldiers but could not yet afford to arrange a real congress!). Historian have an explanation for that too: they say it was “due to rebellious attitude in the party” [134 - Fest, I. Hitler. V.2. P. 88.]. But we can understand very well that reduction of financial allowances is the very favourable environment for rebellious moods and grumble. With the money any internal problems in the party could be easily solved [135 - The raise of salaries in 1931 solve the problem with Berlin SA who were demanding the increase of allowances (see: Bullock, A. Hitler and Stalin. Life and Power. V.1. P. 280).]. But Hitler did not have money at that time. He invested all of it in the next pre-election campaign [136 - Fest, I. Hitler. V.2. P. 196.].
   He invested the money but lost: On May 20, 1928 NSDAP got only 2,6 % of votes and turned on the ninth position. So who was sponsoring the political outsiders? Only those who really needed them. And already on August 3–4, 1929 the greatest congress of Nazis in the history took place in Nuremberg. Thirty specially ordered trains delivered 200 thousand party members [137 - Bullock, A. Hitler and Stalin. Life and Power. V.1. P. 199.]. 60 thousand storm-troop soldiers marched in front of Führer. All this was organized by the political organization that in summer 1928 didn’t have money to convene the congress and later lost the elections? Who was this kind fairy who helped the Nazi?
   The name of the fairy was the intelligence services of England, the USA and France. Almost entire future “anti-Hitler coalition” which would be driving to the grave the terrible beast which they themselves had fed and brought to life. Judging by the dates that we took into consideration the next financial miracle for that political organization was supposed to occur from the beginning to the mid of 1929. We have already witnessed that Hitler always obtained money when events in USSR were going contrary to the West’s scenario. What did happen in our country during that period of time?
   On February 10, 1929 Trotsky was deported from USSR.
   In the middle of December 1928 the special authorized member of the board of the State Political Directorate from Moscow arrived to Trotsky with the request to terminate his leadership of the opposition otherwise the party would rise question on his deportation. Trotsky rejected the offer and chose expatriation [138 - The leader who had fallen out of favour was deported very promptly: decision on deportation was made at the end of January and on 10 February he was already aboard the steamboat. That is why at the very beginning of 1929 Rudolf Hess was still travelling around Germany and collecting money. It was the question of two-three months and there would be no more such need. Hitler would have no more lack of money.]. The first destination place was Turkey, island Pinkepon, in the sea of Marmora. There he started issuing the Opposition Newsletter right away, he wrote an autobiography My Life which by the way highly appraised by Hitler. There Trotsky also wrote the History of the Russian Revolution and other works where he desperately criticized the country of which he was one of the creators (USSR) and which ran away out of his control. In 1933 he moved to France and in 1935 to Norway. He was constantly writing and issuing some works [139 - The Opposition Newsletter was published within 12 years (July 1929 – August 1941). 87 issues in 65 books came out during this period.].
   Where did he find the funds? The “trains” interest? Or was somebody supporting him financially? But who would need a person who had already performed revolution, who was the used material already? It could be somebody who was supporting Leon Trotsky financially before, from 1905 to 1917! Neither Trotsky’s family nor he personally ever experienced any financial hardships, money appeared from nowhere. It was also quite curious that the ardent revolutionary Trotsky never had any difficulties with receiving entry visas to the countries with bourgeois democracy. For instance why would the French let the champion of the permanent revolution come to their country?
   At the end of 1936 Trotsky left for Mexico where he had been residing until on August 20, 1940 in the place called Coyoacan he was killed with a mountaineers’ ice axe by undercover NKVD agent Ramón Mercader…
   Without Stalin there would be no Hitler, – Trotsky wrote.
   Leon Trotsky was right, absolutely right. The point is that historians see the wrong sense in the words of the “demon of the world revolution”. Stalin never financed Hitler, he provided him with no support to reach the top and did not have any contacts with the Nazis until they became the official leaders in Germany.
   Stalin made Hitler the one required leader by destroying the Trotskyism, by deporting Trotsky away from USSR, by accepting the developing course for the country different from the one that the United Kingdom with its allies imposed on us! If Trotsky won in the USSR, he would give up the country without any struggle. Why would Germany need such an evil leader as Adolf?
   It is time to say the truth: It was not Stalin, not German industrialists who created Hitler, it was the eternal geopolitical rivals of Russia.
   They were the ones who prepared the World War II to fix the mistake that had been made in 1917. This is what Adolf Hitler was required for.
   And that is there was nobody to stop him!

Why England and France didn’t care to avert the Second World War

   The essential cause of the stability of our currency is to be sought for in our concentration camps.
Adolf Hitler

   …Any more or less serious war must be prepared in advance.
Vladimir Lenin

   For many years historians and politicians all over the World have been wondering, if the dreadful Second World War could have been averted. Have there been any possibilities to prevent it? Who is guilty of the fearful scenario that lead dozens millions of people to death?
   After thinking a little historians provided their answer. If Adolf Hitler, his party and associates were guilty of those events, then the war couldn’t have been prevented, as the Nazi would trigger it off, anyway. Indeed, their doctrine and their ideology called for violence and praised it.
   It is so in some way. However, Hitler had to solve many incredibly complicated problems to move from idle chatter to dreadful actions. Firstly, he had to establish a party, to state its program aims and to conquer more and more followers of his ideas. And this is where the Nazi would instantly get into trouble. Propaganda required issue of printed leaflets and books, brochures and news-papers; it was necessary to produce uniforms and flags, to pay salaries to functionaries and propagandists. Yet, even after these problems would have been solved, even a smallest war couldn’t have been unleashed. To attack someone it was necessary to be managing the state, not the party.
   Could it have been possible to prevent further cruel acts of the Hitlerite regime? Even at tenuous consideration it becomes obvious that opportunities were aplenty.
   If we consider them, it will become apparent that someone made every effort to bring Hitler to power and levy a war.
   Let’s start with the base, with democracy. As you might remember, the Weimar Republic was a Democratic state, where citizens elected regulatory bodies by means of universal and equal ballot voting. It was being done this way in German lands since 1919 till 1933, until the Nazi remained alone in the political arena, firstly having disembodied other political organizations and secondly having issued a law, prohibiting establishment of the new ones. Though, Germans had pure democracy for 14 years, until they gave Hitler 43.9 % of their votes during the election on March 5, 1933. But at that time the Nazi’s party was alone in the voting list.
   And yet, what made Germans vote for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party? Things can’t be explained only through repressions, concentration camps and Gestapo. Historians have one answer to that, Hitler was brought to power by economical depression. Immense German inflation was followed by as tremendous Great Depression.
   Many of us know that inflation was great in the Weimar Republic, though hardly anyone knows any real values. These values are so large that one simply can’t comprehend them. They are beyond anybody’s imagination. They are just incogitable. Judge for yourself.
   During four and a half years of democracy and liberty the Deutschmark declined against the American dollar by 1815 times. That was extremely and dangerously much. However, it was only the beginning. True economical “wonders” started right in 1923. It was the year when Ernst Hanfstaengl had helped Adolf Hitler to acquire a printing house, where the Nazi’s news-paper was printed for the populace. It was then that the Führer believed in himself and was thinking of revolution merely all day long, having absorbed some ideas subtly expressed by Hanfstaengl about it being necessary for Germany to become friends with America and Great Britain. It was the year when Hitler staged the Beer Hall Putsch.

   Exchange rate of paper Deutschemark to American dollar [140 - Values in regard to German inflation are provided in the book by Preparata, G.G. Hitler Inc. How Britain and America made the Third Reich. P. 189–190.]

And the way for the displeased populace was open. Obviously, unprecedented destabilization of the national currency should have led to unprecedented destabilization within the country. Such troubled times always cause the most fervent extremists to emerge. [141 - In 1913 the German State had 300 milliard Deutschmarks. According to the exchange rate on November 1923 it was about 7 cents. (Preparata, G.G. Hitler Inc. How Britain and America made the Third Reich. P. 193.)]

   In the end of November 1923 one dollar was worth four trillion two hundred milliards of Deutschemarks! This value was astronomically large, indeed. Modern astronomers state that there are one trillion of Galaxies all over the Universe…
   Can you imagine that inflation in peace-time reached the amount of 578.512 % (five hundred seventy eight thousand five hundred and twelve percent) within less than one year? However, the arithmetical aspect of too many zeroes wasn’t the most direful thing. Because of such impairment of the money value it was necessary to take a barrow full of depreciated currency to go marketing. If someone wished to buy something bigger than food, he would need a cargo vehicle.
   Can unrelieved gloom of life in Germany during that period be described with one sentence? Well, here is this sentence: people weren’t buried in wooden coats anymore, paper bags were used instead [142 - Preparata, G.G. Hitler Inc. How Britain and America made the Third Reich. P. 191.]. A wooden coat became extreme luxury, just like an American dollar. At the same time Ernst Hanfstaengl presented his friend Adolf as much as one thousand dollars. Were all of these events accidental?
   And one more fact to prove that inflation in Germany was man-made and artificial. Having reached truly astronomic values at the time of Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch, inflation stopped three weeks after that. That unprecedented astronomic inflation simply stopped. Indeed, there was no need for it any longer. Even under such phantasmagoric conditions Germans didn’t support Hitler in his attempt to conquest power. Five (!) days after the Beer Hall Putsch on November 13, 1923 Hjalmar Schacht was authorized to deal with matters of national currency [143 - Ibid. P. 243.]. He managed to fix the final purchase price of 4.2 trillion Deutschmarks per one dollar. On December 22, 1923, Schacht became Head of the German Central Bank, and in August 1924 he adopted new solid Deutschmarks, sponging the memory of fourteen zeroes on German currency as a nightmare [144 - Ibid. P. 244, 248.]. The American dollar became worth 4.2 Deutschmarks.
   The first economical apocalypse in Germany didn’t help Hitler to come to power, so it was necessary to exploit the second one. On October 29, 1929, also known as Black Tuesday, there was an unprecedented crash in the Stock Market in New-York [145 - It is peculiar that the Nazi newspaper «Völkischer Beobachter» didn’t care to mention the crash in the New-York Stock Market.]. The crash signaled top-rank global economical crisis, also known as Great Depression. It must have been another miraculous coincidence, but this crisis stopped as soon as Hitler became Reichschancellor [146 - The Great Depression started in 1929 and finished in 1933.]. However, it wasn’t the most surprising thing about the story of Great Depression.
   Let’s go for strictly for the facts. What sticks out here first is strange relation between causes and effects. The crisis happened in America, and Hitler came to power in Germany, this is what historians tell us. How is that logical? Brokers and intermediaries were shooting themselves to death, were jumping out of windows, but evil Hitler for some reason came to power in another country. By the way, it was a global crisis. It was stated to be the main reason of the Nazi’s victory. Oh, it was such a crisis, it was so violent, it was a global crisis! That is why German burghers wanted a strongman.
   It seems logical in some way. In troubled times people always wish stability and are eager to follow the one impersonating and promising it. There was only one “only” there. As it was a global crisis, “hitlers” would have come to power not only in Germany, but everywhere. The crisis was victoriously marching all over the World, not only over German lands. From New-York and Washington the crisis was moving evenly like a tsunami, and only the USSR escaped it. Though, nowhere SUCH government came to power. There were no SUCH party and SUCH leader anywhere.
   How could it be possible? Has the crisis like a localized strike affected only the German economy? This question is very important, and that is why books about Hitler and Nazism provide detailed descriptions of how the crisis affected the German economy, but don’t say a word about England or the USA. At best, Author would briefly sum it up like “In England and in the United States economical and social consequences might have been as severe…” [147 - Fest, J. Hitler. V.2. P. 104.] And then there will be a long story about the number of unemployed in Germany only. And Reader gets an impression that Germans were the only ones to be in trouble, that was why they voted for Hitler. Though, it’s a lie.
   And this lie wasn’t occasional, it intended to disguise help that the demoniac Führer got. It was Germany that had to attack Russia, it wasn’t France, or England, or the USA. That is why it was Germany where the aggressive leader should have come to power…
   It is true that Germany had some real trouble. As we have already mentioned, as soon as the story about the Nazi coming to power is told with certain values, story-telling historians surprisingly lack coordination.
   “In September 1929 the number of unemployed came to 1 million 320 thousand persons, and in September 1931 it reached 3 million” [148 - Melnikov, D., Chernaya, L. Offender number one. P. 112.], this is what Soviet historians say. However, Western researches need to downplay the part of their governments in Hitler’s coming to power, so they assess the German economy of that period even worse, “As early as in the beginning of 1929… the number of unemployed for the first time exceeded three million [149 - Fest, J. Hitler. V.2. P. 103.]. Another Western Researcher A. Bullock stated that this amount equaled 3 million as early as before the global crisis [150 - Bullock, A. Hitler and Stalin. V.1. P. 269.].
   The book issued in the USSR provides some absolutely different values. Even the dynamics of unemployment is different there. The amount of unemployed becomes less before the crisis and increases after it. “In 1928 the amount of unemployed came to 650 thousand persons for the first time since 1918 (before that it was over a million)” [151 - Melnikov, D., Chernaya, L. Offender number one. P. 112.]. And in Western research papers amounts of unemployed Germans keeps hopping like a hare beyond any logical outline. They insist that tremendous growth of the unemployed number because of the crisis caused millions of people to consider voting for Hitler. And before October 1929 the German economy was expanding and but for the global crash, the Nazi would have never come to power. Though, how can stability be considered, if there were three million unemployed there? What does the Black Tuesday have to do with that? Make up your mind, please, either Germany was stable, and the global crisis should be blamed, or there were millions of unemployed, and then the Weimar “democracy” was the one guilty.
   Yet the task set for the Western researchers is a complicated one, and a contradictory, too. They have to explain how Hitler came to power and to shift the blame to the economical environment beyond humans’ control. This is where the contradictions come from, making it look like the Western authors have never read their own books. Indeed, one page (!) later after stating that there were three million unemployed in Germany in the beginning of 1929. J. Fest, for instant, says that in September 1930 the number of unemployed “exceeded three million again” [152 - Fest, J. Hitler. V.2. P. 105.]. The Researcher doesn’t explain how this value was changing. However, we don’t really need that information. If this value varied seriously (say, it was 3 million, then it became 2 million, and then it became 3 million again), than it is a symptom of instability rarely met. If this value varied a little (say, it was 3 million, then it became 2 million 900 thousand, and then it became a little bigger than 3 million), it is also a sign of instability, because the number of unemployed is permanently high, and the country is in a dead-end state…
   Well, it was an extremely complicated task for the Western writers, indeed. Blaming the crisis in the Weimar Republic for Hitler coming to power, they should by no means reveal that German so-called democracy was managed from abroad in the best interests of Great Britain and the USA. The author of this book doesn’t hyperbolize or invent things.
   “Behind the veneer of republican governments and Democratic institutions, imposed by victors and tainted with defeat…” [153 - Churchill, W. The Second World War. V.1. P. 43.], this is how not Göring or Goebbels, but Winston Churchill himself considered German “democracy” of that period.
   Information about amount of unemployed wasn’t classified. This value is normally determined by state authorities, so it can be easily found, if necessary. Then, why do authors writing about Hitler have these values so different?
   That is because even basing on the number of unemployed some interesting conclusions can be made. Who is the first to suffer in case of Stock market crashing and financial crisis? Naturally, it is large industry. When people loose their money and jobs, they instantly stop buying goods intended for long-term use, though they don’t start buying less food at once. So, firstly, such enterprises are stopped. At the same time plants producing tools and units are stopped, as nobody is going to buy anything from them in case of crisis, it is bad timing for production expansion. This was exactly what happened in Germany. Since 1929 till 1932 volumes of industrial production reduced twice [154 - Melnikov, D., Chernaya, L. Offender number one. P. 112.]. Consequently, large centers should have suffered from the worst social consequences of the crisis. Following logic of Hitler-studies, residents of these areas voted for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party and ensured its triumph.
   But was it really so?
   “The highest percentage of the Nazi voters was to be found in … agricultural districts of north and east Germany… They also did very well in districts with a mixed economy of agriculture and small-scale industry…” [155 - Bullock, A. Hitler and Stalin. V.1. P. 264.]
   “The Nazis did much less well in urban heavy-industrial … areas” [156 - Ibid. P. 264.].
   “…Their (the Nazi. – N.S.) percentage of the vote reached its peak of 41 per cent in communities (rural as well as urban) of under 25,000 and fell to 32 per cent in those over 100,000” [157 - Ibid. P. 267.].
   Unbelievable, but workers of Berlin, Hamburg and Ruhr, who were the first to loose their job and bread, didn’t go to vote for Hitler due to some reason. However, farmers and habitants of German small comfortable towns, who were relatively okay, zealously supported him. How is that logical?
   This is not logical at all. Everybody describing the Nazi Reich repeats certain clichés. The pioneers intentionally created some stereotypes, and the followers gladly repeat them. Consequently, the ones who helped Hitler to seize power and thereby became accomplices in his crimes, the ones guilty of the Second World War instigation, of genocide on the Jews and deaths of 24 million of our fellow-citizens, hide behind bunches of figures and words in books of these amateurish writers…
   Though, it is easier to comprehend the truth than it may seem. When the Nazi came to power in Germany, there were about 6 million unemployed there [158 - Melnikov, D., Chernaya, L. Offender number one. P. 112.]. How many unemployed were there in England and the USA, though? I have been looking for these figures for some time, and I managed to find them.
   In England two million people had no job, whereas in the USA the value was 15 million [159 - Taylor, A. The Second World War // The Second World War: Two views. P. 381.].
   The book under the impressive name of Global history, written by leading historians, provides even more stunning results, stating that there were 17 million unemployed in the USA [160 - Churchill, W. The Second World War. V.1. P. 32–33.].
   “The whole wealth so swiftly gathered in the paper values of previous years vanished. The prosperity of millions of American homes had grown upon a gigantic structure of inflated credit now suddenly proved phantom. The mighty production plants were thrown into confusion and paralysis. In the wake in the collapse of the stock market came during the years between 1929 and 1932 an unrelenting fall in prices and consequent cuts in production causing widespread unemployment” [161 - Churchill, W. The Second World War. V.1.], this is what Winston Churchill wrote about the Great Depression in the USA.
   So, it wasn’t only Germany where people were scavenging for food. There were much more people in the same situation over the ocean, about which we just don’t know now. To be more specific, no one conceals disastrous consequences of the Great Depression in the USA, this data is just provided in other books.
   Books about Hitler and his coming to power never provide any of these facts. So, it seems to the Reader that crisis has affected the Germans most.
   By the way, coal mining level in the USA reduced by 42 %, cast iron production – by 79 %, steel production – by 76 %, and car production – by 80 %. Only 46 of 297 blast furnaces were operated [162 - The Global History. V. 22, P. 250–251.]. The amount of enterprises and firms crashed in the USA during the crisis period was fantastic – it was 135,747. 10,000 banks fell to non-existence! [163 - Ibid. P. 252–253.] After industry and finances the American agriculture also sank into the deep crisis, and wheat export from the USA reduced by 82 %. Prices for agricultural products collapsed, causing income of farmers to reduce more than twice. During five years of the crisis over one million farms were put up for sale, which was 18.2 % from the total amount of farms in America [164 - Ibid. P. 252.].
   The USA population wasn’t going to face up to such quick and disastrous decrease of their living standards. America was shaken by series of meetings and demonstrations, in which hundreds thousands of people took part. Everything was so bad in America that the Unemployed Hunger Marches became its “carte-de-visite” (not a visit card of Germany). These ended in December 1931 by the nationwide Hunger March to Washington. In summer 1932 unemployed veterans of the First World War took their turn to go forward to Washington. They were picketing the Capitol for five days, after which the President of the USA ordered to drive them away by force. This military operation was performed not by Police, but by Army Corps with Cavalry and even tanks! [165 - The Global History. V. 22. P. 253–254.]
   No one was good in the World then, as since 1931 the Deutschmark stopped being convertible, the pound sterling lost its gold standard, and Roosevelt devaluated the dollar after coming to power.
   Explosion is most destructive in the place, where the missile lands; most serious destructions are observed in the epicenter of earthquake or tornado. Things in the outskirts of the crisis can’t be worse than in its center. So, where should the Nazi have come to power? Judging by the amount of unemployed, it should have been the USA. And in Great Britain extremists should have played some serious part in politics, at least, or even win. However, nothing like that happened in the Anglo-Saxon countries. How come their Fascist parties were so weak and didn’t play any part in histories of their countries?
   That was because no one was going to bring a Führer to power in England or the USA!
   Hitler’s coming to power wasn’t caused by either economic or inside political reasons of Germany. It wasn’t decided in Berlin that he should be at the helm, it was decided in London and Washington.
   The Anglo-Saxon States had their global interests in future defeat of Russia. Only after such decision had been made, Hitler was literally dragged to the top, all possible actuators within political and economical elite of Germany applied…

   The British must have had enough secret actuators to pull in Germany, otherwise suicidal policy of the Weimar democracy playing along with Hitler simply can’t be explained. Though, let conspiracists and conspiracy theoreticians study this matter. We are well with absolutely clear actuators, which allowed to move the German policy as needed. This was the Treaty of Versailles. Scrupulous winners put loads of conditions there, but for the very important one, the amount of reparation. The Treaty contained only general wording, which obliged the German government to reimburse damage caused to citizens of Allied states and to cover expenses for pensions of soldiers, widows and families of those, who died on the Entente side. Differently speaking, the guilty one was found and condemned, but the Court didn’t mention how much he had to pay to the indemnities. Only the first call was indicated in the Treaty, and it was 20 billion Deutschmarks [166 - The Global History. V. 20. Results of the First World War. P. 171.]. Imagine what a powerful actuator the winners had! In case of “correct” policy the reparation amount could be reduced, and in case of “incorrect” actions it could be rapidly increased. And the main point was that the Treaty couldn’t have been contested! It was curious that the precise reparation amount was announced right in 1928. Right after Trotsky was exiled, and when Hitler instantly got loads of money and started his breakthrough to the height of power.

   Of course, it is possible that economical regress in Germany made regular burghers took a fancy in the Nazi. But the main reason why electors sympathized Hitler was different. During 14 years of its existence the Weimar Republic had proven absolutely incapable of solving any more or less important state matters.
   “A sense of absolute melancholy and existential frustration dominated” [167 - Fest, J. Hitler. 1993. V.2. P. 105.], says Fest J. about feelings of Germans during the economical crisis. However, these words can be used in regard to the entire period of the Weimar Republic. The country was a perfect mess. There is no need to invent a time machine and travel to Germany of that time to see that. It is enough to look through history school books. And it must be looking through, not close reading, because absurdness of the Weimar realities is striking. Why so?
   Because elections took place in Germany all the time!
   Any good idea reduced to absurdity becomes really bad. This was what happened to elections in Germany. In modern Russia the Parliament and the President are elected once in four years, though, no one would deny that instability adversely affects economy increases in years of fateful elections. Businessmen and foreign investors await the results of voting by Russian citizens to decide, if it is time to get packed or to invest. Even in mature countries change of the government and presidents affect market indexes and exchange rates. Of course, countries with unstable democracy and immature economy don’t make exclusions. Please, notice, that neither in the USA or Great Britain, or France anyone devised to hold pre-election battles too often. As Western politics and economists understand perfectly well, annual elections can destroy any powerful economy and make the population extremely tired of permanent political encounters. We have seen it fairly well in terms of our country. Anybody’s mind can stand instability for a rather short period, and after that people simply stop attending elections and paying interest to things on.
   However, in Germany something unimaginable was going on. “One of the Democratic provisions of the Weimar Constitution prescribed elections to the Reichstag every four years. It was hoped by this provision to make sure that the masses of the German people should enjoy a complete and continuous control over their Parliament. In practice of course it only meant that they lived in a continual atmosphere of febrile political excitement and ceaseless electioneering” [168 - Churchill, W. The Second World War. V.1. P. 43.]. Parliamentary elections once in two years caused Deputies and Parties to start getting ready for the new election campaign right after they entered the Reichstag. There was no time for work! Was it possible that authors of the Weimar Constitution didn’t know such simple matters?
   Certainly, it wasn’t. However, this Constitution was passed with the Trojan horse, bringing permanent instability, which should only have been actuated as required. Why was it necessary? To move the politics of Germany according to the course required. Indeed, elections are not just leaflets and bulletins, they are accompanied by rows and deadly struggle. Candidates and parties need support, assistance and money, so they can be managed without formation of a new powerful German state, which in the end of 19th century became the most rapidly growing player in the global stage. Titanic strains were taken to defeat Germany during the First World War, as well as immense amounts of money and millions of lives. It would be unpardonably stupid to let things go on their own in the German land after that. When the Soviet Union released the Eastern Europe from Fascists, no one doubted that Stalin would establish Russia-friendly regimes there, somewhere in good way, somewhere tenderly, and somewhere by means of downright violence. It was reasonable and correct from the political point of view. Can it be assumed that in 1918 Leaders of England, France and the USA were less clever and hadn’t established puppet regime in Germany?
   Take Churchill. In his memoires he tells us how he has been sharing areas of influence with Stalin in the end of the war, rather straightforward and extremely cynical. No illusions, no ideology, only pure profit, Churchill chaffered Greece, and communist rebels didn’t get any support from Moscow there. Their ideology didn’t help them, because ideology is always a disguise for true interests of the state. Ideological screens change, whereas the essence remains the same.

   Long enough Great Britain, France and the USA were trying to bring Hitler to power in Germany in a lawful way. The Nazi’s election poster

   Statesmen act serving the interests of their countries, not in accordance with ideological clichés.
   It would be too naive to think that “the free” Germany wasn’t controlled extremely tight by the ones who had defeated it in the First World War. There were so many ways to perform such control. Within the political sphere this part was fulfilled by the Social Democratic party of Germany. Its leaders, Streseman and Ebert, along with the “sleeping” Prince Max von Baden, skillfully staged the Revolution and the Kaiser’s abdication. Social Democrats became the ruling party. They wrote the Constitution with its never-ending elections cycles, and Ebert, their leader, became the first President of Germany [169 - There were only three Presidents in the Weimar Republic, F. Ebert (1919–1925), P. Hindenburg (1925–1934) and A. Hitler (1934–1945). Germans’ attitude to Ebert, who signed the Treaty of Versailles, was obvious due to the fact that during his funeral Cardinal von Faulhaber, Archbishop of Munich and Freising absolutely refused to order the church bells ring. And Ebert being the Jew provided Hitler with perfect grounds for anti-Semitic propaganda later.].
   It was this party, or rather its foreign favorers, whom the country owned its political instability. In fact, elections were held much more often than once in two years. Germany was the Parliamentary Republic. To form the government a coalition should be established within the Parliament, and the majority of votes was required. Any moment it could have fallen into pieces, when some party would leave it because of some principal matter, and normally it was the Social-Democratic party [170 - For example, one of the Reichstag assemblies had been in session for one day only before it was dissolved on September 12, 1932.].
   Let’s summarize. Owning to so “Democratic” democracy in Germany, which has never been anywhere in the World, over fourteen years (1919–1933) the country passed not through seven [171 - As the Constitution required it, twice a year.], but through nine Reichstag elections! [172 - 19.01.1919; 06.06.1920; 04.05.1924; 07.12.1924; 20.05.1928; 14.09.1930; 31.07.1932; 06.11.1932; 05.03.1933. Let’s ignore the election on 12.11.1933, when only the Nazi were on the bulletin.] Plus Presidential elections, election to territorial and municipal parliaments. For instance, in 1932 the NSDAP participated in five full-term elective campaigns! [173 - Two Presidential elections, two Reichstag elections and one election into local Parliaments (Bullok, A. Hitler and Stalin. V.1. P. 302).] Not only regular electors, but leaders of the NSDAP themselves were tired of permanent election fever. “We must come to power in the nearest future. Otherwise, we will have to convince ourselves during elections unto death” [174 - Kershow, I. Hitler. Rostov n/D, 1997. P. 82.], – Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary.
   Moreover, not only the Parliament members were playing leapfrog, the Government was doing the same. During fourteen years of the Weimar democracy fourteen different persons served as Reichschancellor! [175 - Gustav Bauer (1919–1920), Hermann Müller (1920), Constantin Fehrenbach (1920–1921), Joseph Wirth (1921–1922), Wilhelm Cuno (1922–1923), Gustav Stresemann (1923), Wilhelm Marx (1923–1925), Hans Luther (1925–1926), Wilhelm Marx (1926–1928), Hermann Müller (1928–1930), Heinrich Brüning (1930–1932), Franz von Papen (1932), Kurt von Schleicher (1932–1933), and Adolf Hitler (1933–1945).] To comprehend all absurdity of this situation let us make a comparison. In nowadays England the Prime Minister Tony Blair headed the British Government for 10 years, Margaret Thatcher did it for 12 years. They were one Thatcher and one Blair, not fourteen of them! Even Eltzin’s line of Prime Ministers was a sample of stability and order, if compared with the German pandemonium…
   So, in this Tzardom of Absurd the Leader with the Party appeared, who denied all this carrousel entirely. This alone was enough to make people sympathetic. “Parties adherent to Marxism and their companions had 14 years to show what they were capable of. The result is on hand, it is a heap of ruins” [176 - Fest, I. Hitler. V.2. P. 276.], – Hitler was smearing his opponents, using the situation in the country. Furthermore, he was a talented organizer and propagandist [177 - Thus, the Nazi were the first to send their electors discs with recorded speeches of the Führer in agitation purposes. By the way, this indirectly confirms that Hitler had vast electoral budgets (Melnikov, D., Chernaya, L. Offender number one. P. 130).].
   Even red color of his flags wasn’t borrowed from Communists. Colors of the Nazi’s flag precisely repeated the flag of the Kaiser Germany, black, white and red [178 - Black swastika in a white disc on a red flag.]. (Social Democrats, who were the majority in the German Parliament and who deep-sixed their country to please their friends from the Entente in 1918, immediately put into use new colors of the German flag, black, red and yellow) [179 - After Hitler’s Germany was defeated, it was obviously impossible to keep swastika in the state flag, so colors of the German flag were turned to Weimar ones. They remain till the present time.]. Hitler manipulated emotions, telling people, “Elect us and everything will be just like old times”. Though, the Nazi’s program didn’t mention Majdanek, Auschwitz and the coming war with almost the whole World…
   People turned to the Nazi not because they fancied the NSDAP, but because they were fed up with parties alternative to Hitler. For instance, number of electors who voted for the social-Democratic party reduced from 37.9% in 1919 to 18.3% in March 1933, and the number of followers of the Democratic party of Germany reduced from 18.6 % to 0.8 % within the same period [180 - All values in regard to elections in Germany are provided in: Bullock A. Hitler and Stalin. V.1. P. 3 of the cover.].
   However, even under these terms Hitler failed to win the election. The fact that the Nazi leader became the Chancellor because his party won the election is another convenient lie, speculated by historians. Adolf Hitler administered the oath of Reichschancellor on January 30, 1933. The election preceding this date was held on November 6, 1932 the NSDAP got 33.1 % of votes. Please, notice that election win is considered ultimate, if a party gets 50.1% of votes. In this case Head of such political party automatically becomes in charge of the government. However, the Nazi didn’t manage it! the NSDAP was the largest Parliamentary party, but it wasn’t voted for by the absolute majority of electors. Moreover, beside the previous election there was a negative trend in regard to voting for Hitlerites, as on July 31, 1932 they got 37.4 % of votes, whereas on November 6, 1932 they got 4.3 % less. By the way, the difference is not really impressive when expressed in percents, but it is quite remarkable when provided in number of votes. On July 31, 1932 Hitler was voted for by 13,745,800 Germans, though, three months later the number of the Nazi’s supporters reduced by 2 million (on November 6, 1932 they were 11,737,000) [181 - Even when Hitler became Chancellor, when Reichstag burnt down and the repressive apparatus was started, the Nazi didn’t manage to win the election.].
   On March 1, 1933 they received 43.9 % of votes.
   Hitler who won the election is a myth. He was simply appointed in charge of the country. Someone provided enough pressure on the German political elite, and Hitler’s shortcomings and eccentricity were kind of forgotten. How could that be possible?
   The point is that collapse of Democratic institutions in Germany had started before the Nazi came to power. In March 1930 when Hitler received only 18.3 % of votes (and when Trotsky had been out of the USSR for about a year), it became obvious that despite all the effort and enormous financial support, its source unknown, Hitler would never win the Parliamentary election. The Germans had too much common sense for that. However, the British government wasn’t too pleased about it. Someone had to attack the USSR and to put things there as required by Ruler of the World. Thus, it was necessary to arrange the fallback. And it was arranged.
   Since March 1930 German principles of Parliamentary democracy were amended a bit [182 - The last true Parliamentary cabinet of the Weimar Republic was coalitional cabinet, headed by Hermann Műller. When time for “amendment” came, partners involved into the coalition brawled, and the cabinet was broke up (surely, you can imagine that German Social-Democrats made the coalition to fall apart, haven’t you?)].
   Before that the leader of the Parliamentary majority could become Chancellor, but since then Reichschancellor was to be appointed by the President according to clause 48 of the Weimar Constitution. In other words, any citizen of Germany could be appointed to the post of the Government Head, even if he or she hadn’t win the Parliamentary election [183 - This isn’t commonly spoken of, but the “powerless” English queen isn’t obliged to appoint the Head of the winning party to the post of the Prime Minister. She can appoint anyone to that post. Though, why the constitutional monarch doesn’t use her powers which an absolute monarch also has, is a subject for another conversation.].
   However, it was a fallback. It was preferable that the Nazi would win “fair and square”. Considering the incredibly large amount of elections held in Germany on the eve of Hitler’s coming to power, one might think that it was intended to hold as much elections as needed to let the NSDAP win. Though, when it became obvious that it couldn’t have been managed, Hitler was simply appointed as Chancellor…
   Could Hitler have been stopped? Yes, he could. It was necessary not to start the political carrousel in the country, not to make Germans allergic to elections and thus increase the amount of the NSDAP supporters. Ernst Hanfstaengl and others shouldn’t have been appointed to help the future Führer to become a respectable politician with good manners [184 - The future Chancellor had rather peculiar manners. A big lover of sweets, Hitler could passionlessly add sugar powder to expensive dry wine right in front of the astonished company.]…
   And the most important thing was that there were no ironclad basis for Hitler’s appointment to Reichschancellor post! Anyone could have been appointed to the post, except for the person which would become Offender Number One in the history of humanity due to this appointment. Everything could have been done, but only if Hitler’s coming to power wouldn’t have been required by the external forces, whom the German politics implicitly obeyed…

   The Social-Democratic party of Germany realized orders of its foreign sponsors even in spite of the self-protection instinct, oddly hoping that Nazism wouldn’t destroy them. Hitler was appointed to Chancellor’s port on January 30, 1933. Next day the agency of Social-Democrats, the Vorwärts newspaper addressed him with a feelingful article, saying “You are calling us November criminals, but could you, a representative of the working class, have become a Reichschancellor without us? Social Democracy provided workers with equal rights and respect. Only through us you, Adolf Hitler, have managed to become Reichschancellor”.

   So, Adolf Hitler solved the first problem. Though, having become Reichschancellor in January 1933, he had no opportunities to trigger a military conflict. The reason for that was rather unpoetic, as in fact he had no army. With the Reichswehr of one hundred thousand soldiers, having no tanks, aviation, heavy artillery or marine forces, the demoniac Führer could have invaded the neighboring little Luxemburg, at most, and even for that he would need a permission of other countries. To start the Second World War Hitler had to form the army anew, to rename it, to arm it with the most modern arms and to increase it into 42 times! [185 - When the Second World War started, which was on September 1, 1939, the German Army under a new name of Wehrmacht instead of Reichswehr had 4 million 233 thousand persons. In 1933 there were 100 thousand. (Martirosyan, A. Who brought war to the USSR. M., 2007. P. 412.)]
   At this, the neighboring states should fail to notice militarization of Germany, should not comprehend a simple and obvious fact that if someone was setting up an enormous army, it wasn’t just for potato digging or fence painting. Armies are always arranged to make war! And if someone paid no attention to Hitler’s arrangements, thereby, they immediately became accomplices in his crimes, because they let the future killer make a knife, sharpen it and stab the victim with it.
   Anyone understands that keeping an army costs a lot. It costs even more to rearm it. And only really astronomically large amounts would let to make the army 42 times bigger. Such task couldn’t be solved even by a mature country. If an empire is on the brink of collapse, if there are 6 million unemployed, if plants and factories are being closed because of cash outflow due to the global crisis, it is simply impossible. Economics won’t stand crazy increase of military expenses, living standards will decrease, which will either result in revolution or rejection of the selected militaristic course.
   However, we all know that Hitler managed that. How could he have done it? For instance, Stalin had to imply industrialization to recover the Economy in a similar situation. To make people work a lot and for low wages, they were forced to join kolkhozes (collective farms). Only due to inconceivable sacrifices and losses, at the expense of many human lives the powerful Red Army that succeeded in protection of Russia was arranged. Though, Hitler didn’t establish any kolkhozes and didn’t increase wages of the population, but decreased them. By 1938 the problem of unemployment in Germany was solved, and since 1936 there even was a shortage of workers, and the right to work was guaranteed by the law. Great residential blocks and loads of sports facilities were erected for workers. It seems incredible now, but it were the Nazi government, not Social-Democrats, who introduced paid vacations [186 - Seward, D. Napoleon and Hitler. P. 152.]. Five years after Hitler came to power nothing within the country reminded of the dreadful crisis past.

   When the hope for the Nazi’s winning the election was lost, Adolf Hitler was simply appointed Reichschancellor

   What does that mean?
   That doesn’t tell us of a “cannibalistic” essence of Communism or especial humaneness of Nazism. All the above-mentioned allows to make a single conclusion that someone provided Hitler with enormous financial support! Someone provided money that made such economical boost possible. Construction of autobans and military orders alone couldn’t have recovered the Economy, as empty treasury would have to pay for all of it, and then would sort of get all the money spent for guns and roads back. Though, Stalin and Russian Bolsheviks didn’t get any money. The only way to get money was to take it from their own population, and all ways were good for that. But it was not Hitler’s problem, as those who were moving him to power, provided him with money.

   Unless we assume that the Hitler’s Economy wasn’t supported from the abroad, it worked like in a bad joke:
   – Where do you get money from?
   – From my bed-side table.
   – Who puts it there?
   – My wife does.
   – And where does she get it from?
   – I give it to her.
   – But where do you get money from?
   – Are you slow-witted? Didn’t I tell you I take it from my bed-side table?

   To conceal the fact that the Nazi Germany was financially supported by the West, historians invented a simple trick. Data on economical wonders of the Hitler’s Reich are provided on one page, and data on Western support are given in another page. They provide extensive quotations from Hitler’s speeches about his wish to crash Communism, and almost evade his statements, which could throw light on his mysterious sponsors. However, such facts can’t be concealed completely, and they appear in the most unexpected places. For instance, the book of H. Picker “Hitler’s Table Talks” provides some curious story of how Führer solved his economical tasks.
   On January 30, 1933, when Hitler came to power, the Reich treasury had only 83 million Deutschmarks. Annual budget gap was 900 million, and 5 billion reparations should have been paid. Unjoyful arithmetic, indeed.
   If you get such economy, how soon will you be able to pay out the necessary amounts and make the army 42 times bigger EXCLUSIVELY ON YOUR OWN? The right answer is “never”, if things are being done fair and square. However, things are different, if it is a give-away game…
   That is why Hitler was so confident. When the Minister of Internal Affairs von Papen told him that 5 billion should have been paid urgently, saying “We are so lucky, they have asked for 150 billion before” [187 - Picker, H. Hitler’s Table Talks. Smolensk, 1993. P. 54.], the Führer reasonably questioned him why and how they were going to pay that.
   “We have to pay, – said von Papen, – because otherwise they will arrest our property abroad!”
   “We don’t have anything”, – Hitler said and prohibited paying.
   Hitler explained his point to the British Ambassador Horace Humboldt during presentation of credentials. “Do you imply that new Germany rejects obligations undertaken by its previous governments?”, the Ambassador asked and promised to inform the London Cabinet about that.
   What happened next? Did Great Britain send a Note of Protest? Or a warning through diplomatic channels? Or did it apply some economical sanctions?
   In a table-talk Hitler himself explained what happened next.
   “England or France have never claimed us in regard to payments. I’ve never been afraid of the British in this matter” [188 - Ibid. P. 55.].
   And as the British played the premier violin in the global political arena, Hitler could afford himself to be afraid of no one. That is where his bravery and economical miracles came from…
   To be specific, the German economy started to recover as early as in 1924. It became obvious that the possible future war with Russia would require not only leaders [189 - This was taken care of, when Hitler was let out of prison before he stayed for at least ¼ of his term.], but a country-aggressor. Poland alone wasn’t able of defeating Russia. The French and the British didn’t want to fight themselves. A scenario of 1914 was good, but Germany was weaker than ever. It was necessary to recover it first. And voila, after the defeated country had been drained, its economical renewal starts. At first it was slow and inconspicuous. On August 16, 1924 representatives of the victorious powers accepted the so-called Dawes plan, which implied that the American capital would provide depleted Germany with loans to let it revive. After that Germany would continue paying reparations out. At this key sectors of German economy would have been acquired by American monopolies at a low price. Not two but three birds would be killed with one stone:
   • the future aggressor would be prepared;
   • income would be obtained due to capital penetration;
   • German economy would become very dependent on foreign investors, and consequently it would be easier to manipulate its politics.
   Germans received quite a lot of money, 190 million dollars [190 - Preparata, G.G. Hitler Inc. How Britain and America made the Third Reich. P. 249.]. At once, right in August 1924, it made the rate of the German currency stable, and fearful times when milliards and trillions of Deutschmarks marks had been worth one dollar were gone. Still, other points of the plan weren’t as humane. Under the plausible pretext of reparation covering it was intended that the Allies would control the state budget of Germany, as well as currency circulation and credit, and railways. This was when “Putzi” Hanfstaengl appeared near Hitler, and the military attaché Truman Smith went to the parade of German politicians…
   In fact, Germany was quietly occupied by America. That is why there was no need for “hard way” occupation of Ruhr by the French, so French and Belgian armies left. However, they were replaced by a special committee of experts, chaired by the General reparation agents. This authority started to supervise defeated Germany [191 - Germany was as delusively independent then, as, for instance, the modern Iraq is. The latter has its government, its flag, its official hymn, but it can’t make its own solutions. The West could do whatever it needed in Germany. The result is well-known. There were continuous elections, preterm release of Hitler, his appointment to the Chancellor’s post. Since 1918 till 1933 all events in Germany were taking place not because the Germans wished it.].
   (There was another curious aspect of the German economy revival through borrowings. Authors of the Dawes plan expected that German industrial products would be exported to the USSR and would disrupt industrialization, causing its unprofitability and inexpedience. And there is one more surprising coincidence, as one of the ideas of the Trot opposition was to make Russia an agricultural country, a source of raw materials, whereas it was planned that equipment would be bought from abroad.)
   No one knows exactly how much money was invested into recovery of Germany. According to different estimates, by 1930 it was about 28 to 30 billion dollars [192 - Preparata, G.G. Hitler Inc. How Britain and America made the Third Reich. P. 251.]. Curiously enough, total amount of reparation payments provided by Germany within this period hardly exceeded 10 billion Deutschemarks [193 - Ibid.]. This is what was going on when Germany was being considered as a possible applicant to defeat Russia. German economy was receiving much more money than was being taken away. Naturally, such ratio assisted in recovery of the German industrial manufacturing, which reached the pre-war level by 1927.
   Foreign capital was actively penetrating into all spheres of the German economy. The concern IG Farbenindustrie entered agreements with American and English chemical companies. According to the Agreement signed in 1926 it agreed to share the global gunpowder market with the American concern of DuPont and the English company Imperial Chemical Industries. The American company Standardoil owned about 90 % of all assets of the German-American oil company. The well-known and richest German Allgemeine Elektrizitätsgesellschaft (General electrical company) was under control of American and English companies.
   Readers who drive cars know that attribution of car brands to different countries is rather nominal. For instance, “German” Opel is owned by the General Motors concern, which also produces Chevrolet and other brands. However, not many know that Americans from General Motors have taken control over the Opel plant in Köln as early as in the period described here! Trucks which German soldiers would later ride along European and Russian roads were mainly assembled from components brought from the USA! [194 - Ovsyany, I.D. The Mystery of the War Being Born. M., 1971. P. 44–45.] In 1929 Germany outrun England in steel and cast-iron melting, in electric energy production, in car manufacturing and other most important industries, taking the second place in the World… after the USA.
   However, time passed, and the Dawes plan became out of date. Then another plan was developed by the Committee of financial experts, chaired by the American Banker Young O. This plan was accepted in 1929–1930. Reparation payments were slightly reduced, and the main thing was that the authority supervising Germany was eliminated. This may seem weird, if one forgets that after Trotsky had been exiled in January 1929, Hitler’s way to power entered its terminal stage. It was important that future activities of the Führer wouldn’t have been noticed, so the supervising body was eliminated.
   Young’s plan was cancelled in 1932, and Germany was almost relieved of reparation payments, despite only a small amount of it had been paid. Why so? Simply because in 1933 Adolf Hitler would become Chancellor, and he would have to make economic miracles. And he really would need money to do that…
   Here are some figures indicating the problems Hitler had to solve when he came to power. Budget expenses for armament since 1933 till 1939 were increased tenfold (from 1.9 billion Deutschemarks to 18.41 billion Deutschemarks). In percents the values of increase are also impressive, it increased from 24 to 58 % [195 - How the German sword was forged. M., 2007. P. 13.]. Just compare, the most hazardous Communistic USSR, which supposedly was going to conquer the entire World, spent only 9 % of its budget for military expenses in 1934; France spent 8.1 %, Japan spent 8 %, and England, which was going to use others to fight, spent 3 % [196 - Ibid.].
   As we know, Adolf Hitler managed his task outright. Within an incredibly short term, within 6 years at the helm, he managed to build the military machine of immense power. Historians call it the Nazi economical miracle. They fervently argue, if doubtless economical growth in Hitler’s times was real or was it alike an economical pyramid, where war was the best way to get out of a dead-end. Strangely enough, both parties involved in this abstract discussion are wrong. Both growth and depression of the German economy weren’t caused by any inner reasons. The Nazi success was financially supported and organized by the entire “civilization” of that period, as Russian lovers of Western countries like to call them. That is why it wasn’t Hitler who determined when the German industry should stop or continue developing. Obviously, Germany wasn’t capable of keeping that immense expenses for armament without extraneous help. Consequently, there were only two possible outcomes, either the German economy should have got new assets from the outside, meaning it should have been financially supported further, or the war with Russia should have been started, which Hitler was being raised for. Owners of the World, the Anglo-Saxons, really didn’t like wasting their money. It was more economically (not even politically!) profitable to start the shooting war soon. The earlier it would be started, the less money they would have to provide to the bottomless Hitlerite military machine. That is why it would have been better to start the war in 1938, not in 1939. And starting the war in 1939 would have brought more profit than in 1940.
   Hitler’s way to power was a continuous incredible political and economical triumph. He succeeded in one thing after another, until it all ended in grand failure…
   There can be no miracles either in economy or politics! Every successful deed of the empire is provided by someone’s painstaking labor and by loads of everyday activities, invisible to outsiders. And there is a long list of defects and specific omissions behind every failure. However, this is so when success or failure are within the scope of possible. Whenever something incredible occurs, something that historians later call a miracle or unbelievable success, the background is much more simple.
   Every story of phenomenal success of one party is always a story where the party on the other side of political barricades has betrayed its interests. The more unbelievable is the miraculous success of one country, the more leaders of another country have played along with it. Thus, Hitler’s incredible success in the global scene didn’t depend on his outstanding diplomatic or political talents, but was determined by the preliminary agreed retreat of England, the USA and France.
   Could militarization of Germany have been stopped? Could Hitler have been prevented from forming the new powerful Wehrmacht? Could the German plants be prevented from production of the newest tanks and airplanes?
   Surely, all of that was possible. In fact, nothing even should have been done in this regard. According to the Treaty of Versailles Germany was absolutely unarmed and could in no way resist external pressure, supported with armed forces. In due time the French occupied the Ruhrland without any resistance from the teeny German army. When Hitler came to power, the German army was still as teeny as it was before. So, the demoniac Führer could repel the outside threat with nothing but his gift of oratory. He had no legal opportunities to increase and rearm his army. New divisions weren’t needles in a haystack. Intelligence Service of any other country would notice that the competitor’s army increased several times. Formation of new divisions required arms, uniforms, premises, and people, at last.
   There was no national compulsory service in Germany with its army of one hundred thousand. However, to qualitatively increase the army tenfold, it was a must to have it. In fact, the only thing which should have been done to prevent the Second World War was not to let the Nazi put national compulsory service in. In that case all their other actions would be senseless, as the army wouldn’t be able to fight without people. They couldn’t call in all the German men, as it would cause economic collapse. The army would be increased gradually, letting new recruits in one by one.
   However, after new recruits would join the German army, it wouldn’t be ready to fight for several years, as new soldiers would require training. “There was no possibility of Germany creating an army which could face the French Army until conscription had been applied for several years. Here was a line which could not be transgressed without an obvious and flagrant breach of the Treaty of Versailles. In all these years the German Army might nourish and cherish its military spirit and tradition, but it could not possible even dream of entering the lists against the long-established unbroken developments of the armed, trained, organized manpower which flowed and gathered naturally from the French military system” [197 - Churchill, W. The Second World War. P. 35.].
   Future victims of Hitlerite aggression had great advantage. They had armed forces, whereas Germany didn’t have any, in fact. Even the neighboring France had a larger army, and there was Great Britain, too. At German borders there were Czechoslovakian and Polish armies, allies of London and Paris, and each of these was larger than the German army. All competitors of Germany had tanks, airplanes and combat vessels. Whereas, the Nazi came to power armed only with “progressive doctrine” of their Führer. It would have been enough to inform the violent German leaders through diplomatic channels that in case national compulsory service was put in, the Western countries would react rather harsh and might even occupy Germany. Such announcement could be made openly. People of European countries would get the message right, after all the victims of the First World War Paris and London would by no means let Berlin to restore its military powers. By no means at all.
   Though, no one stopped Hitler in that simply way. Why so? Did they fail to comprehend that creation of a new army required new soldiers? Didn’t they think of how Hitler would set manufacturing of military machines? Didn’t they know there was nothing to resist him with? These are questions for kindergarten boys, but when it comes to statesmen, we shall consider, if we interpret reasons of their actions right.
   If leaders of the Western World wished to prevent the coming war, they would have been able to do it either without any blood spilt, or spilling a minor amount of blood, if compared with what happened later. And the author of this book is not the only person to think so. “Up till 1934 at least German rearmament could have been prevented without the loss of a single life” [198 - Churchill, W. The Second World War. V.1. P. 38.], Winston Churchill wrote later. Why hasn’t it been prevented? Churchill provides no answer to that in his memoirs. However, there is a fixed rule obvious to any reasonable person. If politicians see a danger and deliberately do nothing to prevent it, then they need it to be there!
   If Hitler wasn’t stopped, when he was getting ready for the war, then the war was just what they needed. They means not only the Führer, but leaders of England, France and the USA, who in fact were the ones acting in the global scene. To exonerate them from responsibility the legend was started, firstly by Western historians, then with help of Suvorov-Rezun. The legend said that the German army was rearmed that fast, because the USSR helped it, having established training centers, where German military men learnt the ABC of winning. The lay public gets an impression that aggressive Russian Bolsheviks let the German military men to their polygons and trained them there, using the newest Russian tanks and airplanes with the aim to exaggerate the World War…
   Let’s make things clear. The USSR had three military facilities, where German officers were trained, indeed. These were the tank school in Kazan, the flight school in Lipetsk and the chemical site Tomka. Though, if we take a closer look, we’ll see that claiming Stalin trained and armed the German army is absurd. It is not by chance that books accusing Russia – the USSR – of training future Hitlerites don’t ever provide specific figures…
   Development of top-secret joint military projects followed the Treaty of Rapallo, signed by Germany and Russia in 1922. Despite during the First World War Russians and Germans fought each other, they were both defeated to satisfaction of the Anglo-Saxon. Correspondingly, both countries didn’t have opportunities for development of modern military equipment production, and neither they could train their military men appropriately. Germany was prohibited to do it, and the USSR was isolated and didn’t have its own production base. Consequently, both countries, not only Germany, were interested in cooperation, which would let them not to fall behind the leading military empires.
   Let’s start with tanks. During the First World War Russia didn’t manage to start producing them. That is why the Red Army used foreign armored vehicles, and these weren’t the most recent models. What don’t the writers accusing the USSR of training Germans like to write about in their books? About specific things, models of tanks. Otherwise, it would be obvious that Germans weren’t trained in Russia, using the Russian tanks and learning from the Russian teachers. Everything was so very different there.
   The Agreement about the joint tank school was signed on October 2, 1926 in Moscow. It was the German party, who undertook all expenses for keeping the school and buying the equipment necessary for its operation, including the tanks. The Soviet party provided technical workers for workshops, workers and security.
   The students of this school were to learn using British and French military machines. How did “foreign” tanks get to the USSR? The Soviet Intelligence Service hardly could have stolen them, though, it wasn’t necessary. It were the Germans, who had to buy and bring the tanks to the Soviet Union by means of certain affairs. Thus, the Red Army didn’t spend a kopek, but obtained the newest pieces of foreign military machines. And in fact we provided the Germans only with our lands.
   However, it took longer for the German party to obtain the tanks than it was expected. For instance, in 1927 the school had only two tanks, as well as two caterpillar tractors, two trucks, two passenger cars and two motorbikes. Ten military machines promised by Germans arrived as late as in the beginning of 1929 [199 - The Military Historic Magazine. 1993. No. 6.P. 39–44. No. 7.P. 41–44. No. 9.P. 36–42.]. Only since then students could get complete education. Training in the school continued till 1933, when the school was eliminated on Hitler’s order.
   When someone tells us that German tankers learned to fight in the USSR, we should remember that there were no German students in Russia, when the Führer started to rearm his army. During the entire period of its existence three classes of German students graduated from it, 10 students in academic year 1929/30, 11 students in 1931/32, and 9 students in 1933 [200 - Gorlov, S.A. Top-secret: Moscow-Berlin Alliance, 1920–1933. M., 2001. P. 220.]. The total was 30 students. There is no need to explain that Hitler had much more tankers than that, and it can’t be stated that the USSR provided serious input to development of German armored forces.
   It was rather similar with “production” of German aces. First attempts towards establishment of the joint flying school in Lipetsk were made in 1923, when the German Military Ministry bought some Dutch single-seat fighters from the Fokker company through an intermediary. Officially the order was performed for airpowers of Argentina. Just like it was with tanks, acquisition and delivery of planes from Germany to Russia took long. Comprehensive training began only in the second semester of 1926. Please, notice that the flying school had only foreign airplanes, including 34 Fokker fighters, 8 Heinkel reconnaissance planes, trainer aeroplanes Albatros, Heinkel, Junkers and one transport Junkers. How come? In fact, the USSR, so very “aggressive” and “wishing to conquer the World”, wasn’t able to produce good airplanes in 1926. Industrialization was only coming. Actually, the Soviet Union offered its skies to the German, whereas the latter brought whatever else was required, at the same time teaching our pilots and design engineers. Actually, only the attending personal was 100 % “ours”, which was cleaners and security. The Lipetsk flying school was headed by a Reichswehr officer, students were taught by German teachers, applying German programs [201 - Pykhalov, I. The Great Belied War. M., 2005. P. 25.].
   For example, in 1932 the school staff was 303 persons, including 43 Germans, 26 Soviet military pilots and 234 Soviet workers, mechanical engineers and clerks. Whenever accidents occurred in the school, dead Germans were sent home in hearses, packed into boxes signed “Machine components”, which was done for conspiracy reasons. Totally 120 German airplane fighters and 100 airplane observers were trained or retrained in the flying school of Lipetsk [202 - Sobolev, D.A., Khazanov, D.B. German trace in history of the Russian aviation. M., Rusavia, 2000. P. 119.]. Was it much or little? They were more than tankers, but it still wasn’t enough for the German military air forces. And there is one more thing. It was rather difficult for Germany to train its tankers in its own lands. They were either trained in tractors or in wooden models of tanks, mounted on passenger cars. It was easier with pilots, as military pilots are not really different from the civil ones. The latter only needed to be retrained a bit. Civil aviation wasn’t prohibited in Germany. By 1932 illegal military flying schools in Braunschweig and Rechlin trained about 2,000 future Luftwaffe pilots [203 - Ibid. P. 126.]. Consequently, the Lipetsk school didn’t provide crucial input into training of the Nazi Luftwaffe. Obviously, this school also was closed in 1933 on Hitler’s direction. The official reason for that was the need to save money…
   So, finally, presence of Soviet-German projects provided zero risk to safety of the USSR and other countries. Instead, having entered partnership with Germany, leaders of the Red Army got access to modern equipment and experience of the Germans.
   And all of it was for money of the Germans. Having finished cooperation on Hitler’s order, the Germans left the USSR and left all property of the schools to the Red Army.
   The third facility established due to cooperation of the Red Army and Reichswehr was the chemical site Tomka, located not far from the Volsk town in the Saratov region. There Soviet students learnt to use chemical weapons and counteract to them [204 - Pykhalov, I. The Great Belied War. M., 2005. P. 35–38.]. 400 thousand of chemical projectiles remaining since the First World War became unfit for use, and the USSR started to produce new chemical weapons only after cooperation with its German partners. Who knows, Germans may have understood the Red Army potential and decided against using chemical weapons during the coming Great Patronymic War…
   But no, military power of the Germans was forged somewhere else. If previously German generals used any opportunity for military cooperation with both East and West, new Reichschancellor of Germany abruptly stopped dealing with the USSR and totally concentrated on dealing with European empires. Military schools in the USSR weren’t needed any longer, as West was ready not to notice rapid growth of the German army. Everything could be done in the native Fatherland since then. And Hitler did. Only two years past since he came to power, and “On March 9, 1935, the official constitution of the German Air Force was announced, and on March 16 it was declared that the German Army would henceforth be based on national compulsory service” [205 - Churchill, W. The Second World War. V.1. P. 37.].
   The West didn’t react to that. Why? May Paris and London have been so scared of the news that Germany had combat aviation, that they were afraid to talk to the Führer in the language of ultimatums? May the German airplanes have been better and newer than the foreign ones, and retrained civil pilots and graduates of the Lipetsk school have been experienced and invincible? Our historians explain these and all others steps made back by the West in regard to Hitler, saying that the former were unwilling to fight and were afraid of the German air forces. Though, as soon as one looks through facts, he will learn that these statements are absolutely false.
   After having been defeated in the First World War the Germans handed over to the Entente 20 thousand airplanes and 27 thousand engines [206 - Shunkov, V.N. Wings of the Third Reich. Minsk, 2004. P.3.]. After that Germany was prohibited to have air forces since 1918 till 1935. Naturally, the Germans were working on new models of airplanes, but it must be understood that real work started only in 1933, when Hitler came to power with his carte blanche for army development.

   Fearsome German “crop dusters” which were so much “afraid of” in London and Paris

   The job started, but when national compulsory service was introduced, the airpowers weren’t rearmed, and their rearmament had hardly even started. The German airpowers in 1936 were as similar to airpowers used during the Second World War as a plane of 1914 is alike a jet fighter, used in the end of the Second World War. Only the name was alike, nothing else. If you want to check it, watch German newsreel of that time. When Hitler came to power, parades were being held all the time. Look closer on airplanes in the air. Powerful Luftwaffe used in 1935 to 1936 were… “crop dusters”. Biplanes with nacelles were very similar to our famous night-bomber U2, nicknamed “crop duster”. Watch newsreel of German parades of that period and experience utter disbelief.
   The World War would start as soon as in three years, and there were symmetrical lines of fighters, reconnaissance planes and bombers in the German skies, all of them corn dusters!
   And it’s not a joke. Those planes didn’t have any protective covers for pilots, and to make pictures the second pilot of the reconnaissance plane simply had to hang over the board. Shooters with machine-guns weren’t protected in any way, either. Is that a small thing? Oh no, it is an indicator of the aircraft engineering level. I couldn’t believe my eyes, so I looked through some documents. I remember ravenous silhouettes of German fighters and bombers from movies about the Great Patronymic War. When have the Germans managed to manufacture those, if in 1936 Germany didn’t have a single plane like that, which would glorify Luftwaffe in the coming war?
   In 1936 Germany had biplane Ne 51. It was a typical “corn duster”. It was even used during the first stage of the Second World War, though as early as in Spain it had become obvious that it was hopelessly out-of-date in regard to Soviet models of fighters, which were used by Republicans [207 - Shunkov, V.N. Wings of the Third Reich. P. 206.]. However, in 1936 Ne 51 wasn’t an old thing for German airpowers, it was the most recent development. History of this plane started in 1931, when the Ministry of Transport in Germany on the Reichswehr order asked the Heinkel Company to design a one-place biplane fighter [208 - Ibid. P. 205.]. In November 1932 the pilot plane made its first flight. And in spring 1934 these planes were put into mass production. However, as Hitler hadn’t yet announced Luftwaffe formation, these planes had civil marks and registration. So, would Hitler manage to scare the entire Europe with these “most recently developed” “crop dusters” in some two years?
   German armies got the German planes, which we normally see in shots and movies much later. Let’s follow the order. The most well-known and outnumbered German fighter-plane of the Second World War was Messerschmitt Bf.109. Its prototype was first produced in the end of 1932, and its pilot version took the first flight on May 28, 1935 [209 - Ibid. P. 106.]. The dreadful war machine, in one copy, though, was equipped with a British engine of the Roll-Royce Company, Kestrel V. Why a British engine? Simply because German engines of that grade weren’t yet ready. So the British “comrades” helped. At that time England was the main exporter of weapons and army goods in the World…
   However, the pilot plane wasn’t the one to have the British motor. All serially produced Messerschmitt planes had been equipped with these engines until the German industry managed to produce enough engines of that type, “In 1935 11 of 28 types of military planes were equipped with British and American motors, supplied by Rolls-Royce, Armstrong Siddeley, Pratt & Whitney and others” [210 - Ovsyany, I.D. The Mystery of the War Being Born. P. 44.].
   Successful performance flights made Willy Messerschmidt’s fighter-plane the favorite. However, German pilots mistrusted these planes at first. Why so? Because they were so used to nacelles of their “corn dusters”, and new planes had a tightly closed cabin!
   However, we needn’t care about fears of German pilots. We are more interested in dates, when loads of these fighter-planes were delivered to flying units, when leaders of England and France were “so much afraid” of them. Production statistics in regard to these planes couldn’t provide a basis for such fears. In 1936 two pilot planes were produced, in 1937 – 54 planes.
   Well, may be, Hitler some problems with these fighter-planes, but things were much better with other plane types? Let’s follow history of the famous dive bomber Junkers-87. It was called Stuka for short. It was this plane that dropped the first bomb during the Second World War. These bombers were stroking our positions in Soviet movies, howling and falling in long piques.

   By the way, the idea of providing these planes with sirens that would howl when a plane falls in a pique belonged to Hitler himself. Still, not always his intervention channeled things right. “Impeccant” Führer made mistakes just like everyone else. Hitler was allergic to horses, so he dismissed all cavalry divisions but one. Absence of cavalry played a low-down trick with Germans, when they fought in Russia, in impassable dirt [211 - See Hanfstaengl, E. Hitler. The Missing Years. P. 57.].

   When did this wonderful enemy plane appeared? It turned out in the end of 1935, and its serial production started in 1937 [212 - Shunkov, V.N. Wings of the Third Reich. P. 294.].
   So, it is rather weird, the West was desperately afraid of Luftwaffe, which in 1936 didn’t have at least one really modern plane!
   Winston Churchill was a British patriot and one of the most famous leaders of Great Britain. That is why he couldn’t just tell how it all happened. However, one of his phrases should make Reader thoughtful. “Up till the middle of 1936 Hitler’s aggressive policy and treaty-breaking had rested not upon Germany’s strength, but upon the disunion and timidity of France and Britain and the isolation of the United States” [213 - Churchill, W. The Second World War. V.1. P. 172.].
   Well, the alibi was absolute, there was dissociation, timidity and isolation. We can see how “isolated” the USA was, checking how many American Intelligence Officers like Ernst Hanfstaengl were hanging around Hitler. Now, the facts:
   • On September 19, 1934, modern equipment for aviation plants, which cost 1 million golden dollars, was delivered from the USA to Germany. Later this equipment was used to produce German planes [214 - Preparata, G.G. Hitler Inc. How Britain and America made the Third Reich. P. 332.];
   • At the same time Germany received many military patents from American companies Pratt & Whitney, Duglas and Bendix Aviation [215 - Ibid. P. 333.], so the famous bombers “Stuka” (Junkers-87) were constructed in accordance with technologies brought from Detroit [216 - Ibid.].
   This is background for “dissociation” and “timidity” of Paris and London. We can’t pay too much attention to technical details, so let’s summarize for short. In 1936, when Hitler was already “afraid of”, he had neither modern airplanes, nor tanks. The first really worthy tank of the Hitlerite Reich was Pz III, which was put to production in 1938. Modernized versions of its predecessor Pz II F with additional front armor plate (which prevented tanks from becoming easy trophy of the enemy) were put into production in June 1940. That is why Winston Churchill wrote in his memoirs, “The vast tank production with which they broke the French font did not come into existence till 1940” [217 - Churchill, W. The Second World War. V.1. P. 151.].
   Why should winners of the First World War in 1936 become afraid of the ones defeated, humiliated and unarmed, when there were absolutely no grounds for that? However, it is this “fear” that is used to explain, why Hitler so easily managed to get the lost German lands back. Saarland of Germany was taken away from the country and was managed by the League of Nations. To turn the country into a powerful aggressor, Hitler firstly had to get back all regions, recently taken away from his country. Though, Britain, France and America, who had pulled Germany to pieces in Versailles, aided him to do it. Germany should have become strong. However, as it was too weak and was at the very first stage of its rearmament, it was kind of indecent to be afraid of its Reichswehr of one hundred thousand. Having no other decent alibi, they had to act in a clear diplomatic way, through Referendum…
   Firstly, the Führer returned Saarland to the fold of the Third Reich. After it had been rejected from Germany, the League of Nations undertook its management in 1919. Its coal mines were handed over to the French as a reparation payment. Residents of Saarland lived like that for 16 years, and nobody ever asked what they thought of it. And all of a sudden they were offered to decide if they wanted to join the Nazi Germany, the Democratic France or to remain with the League of Nations.
   At first sight, there was nothing to find fault with. Only some minor details and little things incited suspicions. Hitlerite Germany started a violent propagandistic campaign among the population of the region and even in France itself. However, Paris didn’t agitate people at all. Moreover, two days before plebiscite the French Minister of Foreign Affairs Laval announced, “France doesn’t care of the results”. Imagine how people of Saarland, who were fighting for joining the France, felt after such announcement. British diplomats also provided their lepton. They assumed a rather weird position, positively objecting that the League of Nations should keep its power in Saarland. In opinions of the British, this was a disabling burden for the prototype of the modern UNO. Thus, outcome of the Referendum on January 13, 1935, was predetermined in advance. Finally, 90 % of people voted for reunion with Germany.
   According to decision of the League of Nations Saarland was returned to the Reich’s fold. When the French General Staff demanded that Germany was prohibited to locate its military contingent in Saarland, the French Government declined the project of this resolution…
   One shouldn’t be surprised about the weird position of Pierre Laval, the Ministry For Foreign Affairs in France. It is enough to remember what happened to his predecessor on this post, Louis Barthou. When studying biography of this French politician, you can only wonder for how long he survived. Those getting on the way of such powerful forces and processes of global politics don’t normally linger on the Earth. Louis Barthou was one of not many Western politics, who conceived aspiration for peace in its simplest sense, as prevention of the potential aggressor from recovery. It was he who headed the notorious Reparation Committee, which considered how much money Germany would have to pay after the First World War. On January 9, 1924 he chaired the Committee meeting, where it was decided that Germany failed to fulfill its reparation obligations under the Treaty of Versailles with three votes of France, Belgium and Italy against one vote of England. After that the French occupied Ruhr, which was not only drastic, but even violent.
   When on February 8, 1934 Louis Barthou got his ministerial portfolio, he displayed his aspiration to as violent repression of Hitler. And we understand that Great Britain absolutely couldn’t agree to that. Barthou’s policy got in the way of preparation of the new World War. For instance, this Minister of Foreign Affairs in France notified the Chairman of the Geneva Disarmament Conference, the British citizen Henderson, that Germany shouldn’t be considered “equal” in regard to armament. And at that time Hitlerite German was only making its first timid steps to build up its muscles. Instead of surrendering everything to Hitler Barthou intensified relations with French allies. In 1934 he visited Warszawa and Prague. While Poland and Czechoslovakia were ready to rear-strike Germany, Paris could sleep fast. After coming back from this trip Barthou suggested the so-called Eastern Pact, which would ensure safety both to Western and Eastern Europe. Finally, on September 15, 1934 France invited the USSR to join the League of Nations. Activities of Louis Barthou in every way conflicted efforts required for reinforcement of Hitlerite Germany. By the end of September of that year he prepared a project of a joint agreement, according to which France, Italy, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Romania should together ensure independence of Austria.
   And reckoning was fast. On October 9, 1934 Barthou was “incidentally” killed by a Croatian terrorist, who attempted to murder the Yugoslavian King Alexander during his visit to France. Some researches will tell you that Barthou became the victim of the German Intelligence Service during the Teutonic Sword Operation. It is so, indeed. But question yourself, why Germans would kill Louis Barthou, if any reasonable French minister would act in the same way?
   Ensuring safety of France and suppressing German aggression in the egg is a sacred liability of every patriot of this country. If, God forbid, the Minister of Foreign Affairs in France is murdered nowadays, will France enter a union with Iran or the Northern Korea? What kind of Intelligence Service will start shooting all French Ministers of Foreign Affairs one by one, hoping that sooner or later a traitor ready to betray his Motherland will appear in Paris? The German Intelligence Service simply couldn’t annihilate everyone in top echelons of power, rooting for their country!
   Murdering Barthou had sense only if the Germans knew that his death would be followed by surrender of all its stands by France and that Barthou was the only person preventing it! And German leaders could get such information only through their secret contacts with the British and the French Governments.
   Rather suspicious circumstances of the murder also suggest something like that. It was announced that special precautions would be taken, though the promised escort of Mobile Guards wasn’t there. And the procession itself was moving as slowly as a leisurely pedestrian. When the car reached the Exchange Building in Marseilles, someone whistled. A man ran out of the crowd, broke through (!) guards and unstopped climbed the running board. Then the stranger made several shots, and the King was outright dead, and Barthou was fatally wounded [218 - Ovsyany, I.D. The Mystery of the War Being Born. P. 47–48.]. Right after his death the new Minister of Foreign Affairs Pierre Laval “set-out to reach a lasting Franco-German settlement…” [219 - Bullock, A. Hitler and Stalin. V.2. P. 123.]
   Could Hitler have been stopped? Yes, he could. To do so the French and British Governments had to prohibit Referendum in Saarland. German wouldn’t be able to resist: it had neither tanks, nor airplanes, nor soldiers. However, everyone was teaming up Hitler, contrariwise. And it was a very important first advancement of the Nazi. After it triumphs would go one by one. I don’t feel like overloading this book with detailed description of political intrigues of that days, because that way it will be entirely about implausible and weird political position of France and Great Britain. The Reader may take any book about this historic period and see for yourself.
   We shall only notice one obvious fact that Adolf Hitler was “an ingenious politician” as long as his Western partners were playing a give-away game with him, frowning and making announcements pro forma [220 - This wasn’t only about Hitler. V.I. Lenin amazed his comrades with the same “ingenious” foreseeing of events. In fact, he simply knew that A.F. Kerensky was playing a give-away game with him (Facts and details of this game is described in: Starikov, N. 1917. Not Revolution but a Special Operation!).].
   When Hitler announced introduction of national compulsory service, England issued “a protest” [221 - Schmidt, P. Hitler’s Interpreter. Smolensk, 2001. P. 10.], and France issued “a strong protest” [222 - Ibid.], however, no real political actions were taken. Though, some actions were taken, to be accurate. The British Delegation headed by John Simon and accompanied by Lord Anthony Eden arrived to see Hitler in Berlin. Visit of those serious-minded gentlemen indicated that the British wanted “to solve the case peacefully”. Firstly, the “anxious” British delegates exchanged friendly smiles and handshakes with Adolf Hitler. Paul Schmidt, the Führer’s interpreter, especially remarked in his memoirs that there was no anxiety in faces of the arrived British. After that friendly negotiation took place.

   P. Schmidt provided some peculiar evidence about supposed fears of the British. When the British asked Hitler about power of the German Luftwaffe, the Führer lied not moving a muscle that it equaled the British air forces. “As I see, both British are surprised and even skeptic about Hitler’s announcement, the interpreter wrote. – My impression was later confirmed by Lord Londonderry, the British Minister of air forces, whose meetings with Göring I usually attended as the interpreter”. There you are.

   The British didn’t believe that Hitler had air forces comparable with their own, and they instantly became “afraid” of him and let him to arm further at a quick rate [223 - Quote from the book: Schmidt, P. Hitler’s Interpreter. P. 23.].
   On June 18, 1935 “the German Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary” Joachim von Ribbentrop signed the Anglo-German Naval Agreement with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Great Britain Samuel Hoare [224 - Samuel John Gurney Hoare, Viscount Templewood, a rather remarkable person. In 1917 he was the Russian Intelligence Resident and applied much strain to organize events in February and October. In 1935 he had a new job from his Motherland, he was helping Adolf Hitler to recover military power of Germany fast. In 1939 he became British Ambassador to Spain, through which the Nazi contacted the Western world. Samuel Hoare was in the middle of these events.]. According to that Agreement Germany could legally construct war ships in case “the German Navy was limited to 35 % of the total power of the British Navy”. According to the Treaty of Versailles Germany was prohibited to have its own submarines. Now Germans were entitled to construct submarines in case their tonnage was below 45 % of the submarine forces of Great Britain. If Germany wished to increase that limit, it would have to inform the British Government. It was rather provocative that Germans had to get final permissions to construct their new submarines not in Berlin, but in London!
   Having felt such permissiveness, Hitler started to behave more boldly. “Hanfstaengls” surrounding him assured him that any his further steps would be absolutely unpunished. On March 7, 1936 he brought troops into the demilitarized Rhineland. None of the countries were entitled to keep their troops in those lands, annexed from Germany, which created a buffer zone between France and Germany. And Hitler boldly violated this international agreement.
   “We were sure that the paper war would most certainly lead to the real war… My friend from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed the point of view, which many of our department held to, “If France cares a bit about its safety, it should immediately bring troops to Rhineland” [225 - Schmidt, P. Hitler’s Interpreter. P. 46–47.].
   Such attitude was common not only among politicians, but also among German military men. They told about it during Nuremberg Trial. “They (the French. – N.S.) could have kicked us out in two twos…” [226 - Melnikov, D., Chernaya, L. Criminal Number One. P. 270.], said Field marshal Keitel.
   “I have to testify that the French covering army could have literally blown us off” [227 - Ibid.], Colonel Jodl testified.
   German divisions which had intruded Rhineland couldn’t resist attack of the French, indeed. In fact, this “operation” of the German army was very alike a cheap vaudeville. Five infantry regiments were put in trains. Soldiers and officers thought that they were going for maneuvers, and thus they weren’t either morally or technically ready for real war. It was only in carriages that commanders of regiments opened sealed orders and learnt they were going to occupy Rhineland. Only three trains with one regiment in each crossed Rhine. One headed to Aachen, another to Trier and the third one to Saarbrücken. Other German troops didn’t intrude into the restricted area.
   However, leaders of the German army were terrified. Having no possibility to persuade Hitler to cancel that “suicidal” order, the military men sent Hermann Göring with that mission. Though, that didn’t help. “The Führer assured us that France wouldn’t act”, General Blomberg said later. “…During their conversation Hitler overpersuaded Göring and lured him to his side” [228 - Cartier, R. Les secrets de la guerre devoilés par Nuremberg. M., 2005. P. 38.]. The only thing that was achieved was that the Führer agreed to withdraw his troops in case of any encounter with the French army. And true, thirteen divisions of the French army moved towards the border. But… they didn’t advance further [229 - Melnikov, D., Chernaya, L. Criminal Number One. P. 270.]. Despite the fact that they were absolutely entitled to do so. The international community represented by the League of Nations acknowledged that Germany had violated the Treaty of Versailles and had directly threatened safety of France [230 - Schmidt, P. Hitler’s Interpreter. P. 52.].
   Why was Hitler so sure that the French would act despite the basic self-protection sense? Why did he choose to pull all the eggs in one basket? A fire-fight with a French squadron would lead to withdrawal of troops, Hitler losing face and his possible dethronement. The answer is provided in the book of Raymond Cartier, issued without delay in 1948. Hitler thought that France had lost its independence and had become a dependent country. “The Führer, said Göring, often said that France wouldn’t do anything until England approved it, and that Paris had become a diplomatic affiliate of London. Consequently, it was enough to settle thing with England, and everything would be fine in the West” [231 - Cartier, R. Les Secrets De La Guerre Dévoilés Par Nuremberg. P. 39.].
   Hitler knew that France wouldn’t do anything. All Hitler’s “bold” actions were firstly discussed with the Great Britain government through back channels. And only after that they were put to life. So much for “ingeniousness”…
   However, with much wisdom comes much sorrow. And much troubles. Despite full loyalty of the French and the British promised to the Führer, some randomness couldn’t be left out. What if commander of some regiment would disobey the order from Paris? Hitler’s entire career was at stake, so he was rather thrilled. He often said later, “Forty eight hours after the troops invaded Rhineland were the most restless in my life” [232 - Schmidt, P. Hitler’s Interpreter. P. 48.].
   His trouble was generously compensated, though. “The Führer is glowing. England is motionless…” [233 - Kershaw, I. Hitler. P. 180.], Goebbels wrote in his diary. However, Hitler’s interpreter Paul Schmidt, who expected the West to react violently, wrote something absolutely different in his memoirs, “For reasons absolutely incomprehensible for us in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs France rested satisfied with summoning the League Board…” [234 - Schmidt, P. Hitler’s Interpreter. P. 48.]
   So, could Hitler have been stopped? Indeed, he could. Instead of agreements he should have been send ultimatums and the Nazi viper should have been crushed in the egg, in its cradle. Then not a single bomb would have fallen in London and Paris, millions of people wouldn’t have got into concentration camps, and European Jews and Gypsies wouldn’t have been totally extirpated. However, if Western Democratic countries took their hard line, Hitler wouldn’t have been able to attack Russia, which was his main task…
   To make solving of that task possible all “progressive humanity” of that period “failed to notice” the Nazi crimes and “failed to hear” anybody’s evidence of how they treated human lives. Though, such crimes and evidence were quite a lot till the end of 1935. The point is that in September of that year the Nazi Germany openly accepted Nuremberg Laws. This is what two legal acts are called in historiography, The Reich Citizenship Law and The Law for Protection of German Blood and German Honour, announced in the NSDAP Conference and accepted with one voice by the Reichstag Session (which was summoned in Nuremberg specially for the Party’s Conference). These laws once and for all determined the racist essence of Nazism. According to Clause 2 of the Reich Citizenship Law only a person with “German or kindred blood, and whose actions prove the wish and capability to loyally serve the German nation and the Reich” could be a citizen”. In this way a stroke of a pen made all German Jews, who were over half a million, lost their German citizenship [235 - In 1933 there were 503 thousand of Jews living in Germany. (Radio “Echo Moskvy” on April 10, 2006.)].
   The Law for Protection of German Blood and German Honour introduced some restrictions unprecedented in a civilized European country of 30-ies of the XX century. Under color of “racial defilement” marriages and even extramarital intercourse between the Jews and “citizens of German and kindred blood” were prohibited. Such marriages were announced void even if they had been concluded abroad. The Jews were prohibited to hire Aryan women younger than 45 to serve in the house. The Jews were deprived of the right to display the national German flag and even to use fabrics of that color!
   The Racist Legislation was rapidly expanding. As definition of the Jew wasn’t clearly identified in Nuremberg Laws, on November 14, 1935, the comment was issued providing executives a straight explanation.
   • “A Jew can’t be the Reich citizen. He can’t vote on political matters. He can’t take public posts”;
   • “A Jew is a person who had three pureblood Jew grandparents”.
   Further the criteria for determination of Jews and Jewish crossbreeds from mixed marriages, the term of Non-Aryan was introduced. 12 more decrees were issued, which prohibited certain professions, limited liberty of movement for Jews and made it obligatory to mark IDs of the Jews as “Jude” (“The Jew”).
   All these insane decrees of the Nazi weren’t kept secret from the international community. These were rather official laws of the German state. Their observance was controlled, their violence was punished by fine payment or imprisonment. How did the international community react to that? Were there protests, or boycotts, or cut off of diplomatic ties?
   Political elite of that time reacted in a rather weird way.
   Germany was trusted to hold the Olympic Games in 1936.
   The place where the Olympics takes place has always been of political importance, and I think this is indisputable. Holding the Olympic Games is prestigious, it increases the country’s authority in regard to foreign policy, as well as respect to the country at the global scene. And it was exactly the Nazi Germany headed by Adolf Hitler, whom the International Olympic Committee trusted to hold the Olympics.
   It meant that the Führer was still getting certain support, and that the give-away game with the international political elite was still going on. Rights of that game were rather simple, as long as Hitler did everything as required (armed and prepared for the war with the USSR), he was provided with money, insufficient lands and political prestige. In sight of his population and the rest of the World. When someone tells us that it was Stalin who had brought Hitler to power, they prefer not to mention these Olympics. That is because it’s crystal clear that the USSR had no part in choosing Berlin for holding of the Olympic Games in 1936. Why so? Because the USSR sportsmen participated in the Olympics for the first time only 16 years after that, in summer 1952, in Helsinki. When Adolf Hitler fired the Olympic torch in his capital, representatives of the Soviet Union didn’t in any way participate in work of the International Olympic Committee…
   Since August 1 till 16, 1936 Olympics in Berlin were taking place. Nuremberg laws had been effective for about a year already. Some members of Jewish communities timidly called out for boycotting that Olympic Games. Was it possible? It was, if it was desired. We should remember that in 1980 the USA boycotted Games in the USSR due to some political reasons, which were invasion of Soviet troops to Afghanistan. Suggest that the Nuremberg laws were accepted not in the Nazi Germany, but in the USSR. Would this be enough to boycott the Olympics-80? Sure! This reason would be much more fundamental than the Afghani one. There could be such a splash in Mass Media, and so many tears could be squeezed out of Western population…
   So, why weren’t the Olympics boycotted in 1936? Because the principle worked, he’s a villain, but he is our villain. That is why the Committee for putting the Olympics XI off Berlin, summoned in New York, didn’t succeed. The International Olympic Committee sent the Board to the Reich capital, and members of that Board didn’t discover anything that could have negatively affected the Olympic Movement [236 - To understand how weird it was that Berlin was chosen the Olympic Games host city, think of the present day. Sochi became the host city of the Winter Olympic Games 2014, though it had two competitors, Salzburg and Pyeongchang. 10 cities but Berlin claimed to host the Olympic Games 1936, but Germany won.]. Neither oppression of the Jews, nor insane racist laws were noticed. That is politics. Even today we can see how fighters for human rights cynically and extremely uncovered notice only what is advantageous to those, who financially support them, and pay no attention to things which they don’t need to see…
   And the Olympics were held, indeed! Flags with swastika soared high in the stadiums, and hearts of Germans were filled with pride for their country and respect, and gratitude to Adolf Hitler. When he appeared in Opening of the Games, everyone rose. Their right hands were thrown up in Nazi salute. Members of the International Olympic Committee in their black costumes and with golden chains on their chests were standing next to Hitler. Walls trembled with deafening “Sieg Heil!”.

   For some reason the international community failed to notice that they were still using a caliper to find true Aryans in the Olympic Games host city

   It was beautiful, colossal and dramatic. From here the legend about the Führer who knew everything better than anyone and never made mistakes originated. Indeed, it was his tough will that recovered the spirit of the nation and took it from one victory to another [237 - Even results of the Olympics played into Hitler’s hands. German sportsmen won in the team scoring, as they got 89 medals; Americans took the second place with 56 medals, and Italians took the third place with 22 medals.]. This emotional burst of German citizens played into Hitler’s hands, when it was time to start the war…
   Closing the Games, the Chairman of the IOC Pierre de Coubertin said many good words about hosts of the Olympics, “…Mutual understanding shall light blind hatred. Thus, the building I have been constructing for half a century shall be reinforced. You the athletes don’t forget the flame which the Sun has fired and which came to you from Olympia to lighten and warm our epoch. Keep it earnestly in the depth of your soul, so that it would be able to reappear at the other end of the World…” [238 - Your astonishment from the choice of place to hold the Olympics may have settled. Now you might be not surprised that the IOC decided to hold the next Olympics in… Tokyo. Well, there is nothing weird about it, Russia is a large country, and someone had to crush it from the Asian wing.]
   There were no claims in regard to level of Games organization. The Hitlerite Germany was steadily entering the global scene. However, the story of how the insane Führer could have been stopped, but nobody wanted it to happen, wouldn’t be complete without one more detail. Sponsors of Hitler wanted to please him so much that they manage to performed a true miracle. Something happened in regard to the Olympic Games, which had never happened before and would hardly ever happen again.
   Not only the summer, but also the winter Olympic Games took place in Germany in 1936!
   It took place on February 6 to 16 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. How come? Never in the history of sports were Olympic Games held twice a year in one country. It turns out that Hitler was once again played along by France, which all of a sudden refused to hold the Winter Olympics. Being in a rather tight situation, the IOC agreed to Hitler’s proposal and trusted his country to hold the second Olympics in the same year.
   Why so? Those who wish to find some tough political logics behind weird facts, would say it happened because he managed the first Olympics so well. This is a convenient explanation, no doubt. But it is false. The IV Winter Olympics, which the French almost “scuttled”, took place before the summer one. Why so much trust in Hitler? He hadn’t held the Games yet and hadn’t proven he was good at that. However, the Nuremberg laws and Amendments to them had been applied for long. Though, no one paid attention to such minor things, when the great new crushing of Russia was being prepared…
   So, how many times could Hitler have been stopped? I haven’t counted. Let the historians do it, they need some grounds to defend their theses. We shall only recall one more way how the main criminal in the history of humanity could have been stopped.
   When Hitler was condemned for the Beer Hall Putsch, he was not only sentenced to five years in prison. There was another measure of punishment due for him. He should have been exiled from Germany after that. Though, miraculously the judges “forgot” to put that in his sentence, despite the Law on the Republic Protection ordered to do so [239 - Geiden, K. Way of the NSDAP. Führer and His Party. P. 216.]. And if this “prisoner of conscience” would have been exiled from the country, the global history might have developed in an absolutely different way. The point is that in that case Hitler may have never returned to German lands.
   He had Austrian citizenship!
   Actually, the NSDAP leader was a Gastarbeiter. He came to Germany and worked there as a leader of the Nazi party, not a janitor or a painter, but it didn’t change anything. The Austrian Hitler should have been exiled to Austria and prohibited from returning to the German lands. And that would be it! A new fuhrer should have been looked for.
   Hitler himself understood it pretty well. It was the second time when he could have been ruined because of his passport. For the first time the matter of exile of the bothersome Austrian was raised in 1922 by the Bavarian Minister of Internal Affairs Schweyer. That time Hitler was protected by the leader of Social-Democrats Erhard Auer, who referred to “principles of freedom and democracy” [240 - Fest, J. Hitler. V.1. P. 255.].
   Was the reputable proponent sane? Didn’t he go mad? Could he have been afraid of an international row? [241 - Surely, there wouldn’t have been a row. The British would simply have to start looking for a new man to take the part of the future fuhrer. Hitler was only perspective and interesting to those, who was planning and creating “the German fascism”. For everyone else Hitler didn’t exist, and almost nobody knew him. The Brockhaus encyclopedia, issued in spring 1923, vaguely described the German politician “George Hitler”, and the only article in “Times” of London (before the Beer Hall Putsch) called him “Hintler” (Hanfstaengl, E. Hitler. Lost years. P. 66).]
   No, everything was correct. Let’s remember the troubled story of the German Revolution in 1918, Social-Democrats signing cessation of hostilities, which looked more than capitulation, elective carrousel till the very end, profitable for the Nazi. All of this were done by Social-Democrats. They didn’t do it by mistake, they did it on the order of British special services. They were ordered to help Hitler to stay in the Fatherland. If he was exiled and didn’t lead Germany, who would attack Russia? Who would order to kill the Jews in gas chambers? Who would order to annihilate millions of “inferior Slavonians” and create an artificial lake in the place of Leningrad? Such useful politician should remain and be supported. So, Social-Democrats were helping the one, who would send them to concentration camps for “reeducation”… [242 - If many persons and political forces are considered as independent political subjects, their activities may seem really stupid. Not without reason German Social-Democrats were called Social-traitors in the Stalin’s USSR, and German communists were prohibited to side with them.]
   Adolf the Gastarbeiter didn’t want to take risks again, and soon after leaving the prison in 1925 he refused his Austrian citizenship. And it became even more interesting after that.
   Till 1932 Hitler was a stateless citizen! [243 - Melnikov, D., Chernaya, L. Criminal Number One. P. 98.]
   By the way, that was the reason that the Führer had never become a Deputy of the Nazi faction in Reichstag.
   So, how could Hitler have been stopped? It could have been done in a very simple way, as a person without German citizenship couldn’t stand for posts of the Chancellor and the President.
   If Hitler hadn’t been provided with German citizenship, he wouldn’t have been able to head the German Reich!
   Granting or not-granting of citizenship is in jurisdiction of the state and its commanding authorities. This process can be retarded or totally blocked. Within assets of the bureaucratic system there is always a possible reason for the delay or refusal. And properly speaking, there was a reason, and it was a rather valid one, as this competitioner was accused of attempting the revolution.
   However, right before he came to power the Führer got his precious citizenship on February 22, 1932 [244 - Hanfstaengl, E. Hitler. The Missing Years. P. 190.]. Not earlier and not later, but just in time…

Why London and Paris presented Vienna and Prague to Hitler

   People are the ones who define the state borders and they are the ones who change them.
Adolf Hitler. Mein Kampf

   Diplomacy despite its all conditional shapes acknowledges only real facts.
Charles de Gaulle

   Triumph after triumph is exactly how the result of all the actions of Adolf Hitler can be described. He had solved all the set tasks: he became the head of the country, he returned all the lost territories without striking a ball, he received permission from England and France for rearmament. But he had to solve one more task. Without this last task all his intermediate achievements had no value. The new powerful and confident Germany was to attack the USSR. To implement this aggressive motion, Germany needed a springboard for attack. Without such springboard it was impossible to make a strike at Russia. After all it was not that important how many tanks and planes Hitler had, whether they were old or new until Germany had no common border with USSR. Missiles and supersonic planes were not yet invented and it had to be done the old way – troops had to approach the country and only then attack. How do you do it if the Third Reich and the Soviet Union are separated by the territories of other countries?
   No mistake it was a complicated task but the decision was found. The idea was to make buffer states disappear from the map. The best English and French diplomats were trying to tackle this task.
   To get the logic of the further events, it is better to take a look at the map of Europe. Better have a look at the map of those times though a contemporary one will also do. What countries cut off the territory of the future aggressor from his victim? Have a look and you will easily predict the direction of further steps of the German Führer. Since German military machine moved in the right direction – to the Russian Border, loyal attitude from the British and French diplomacy was guaranteed to Hitler.
   Until those days, in case with Saar and Rhineland, Hitler annexed lands that were earlier a part of the Kaiser Empire that deep down of course gave “indulgence” to the western politicians. For instance, that Germans returned what they used to own and we just overlooked it.
   At that moment the situation was different. Hitler’s first real “foreign” victim was Austria. The matter was not that Austria was the homeland for Adolf Schicklgruber, where the future German Führer grew up and came to maturity. We should not either mention the ethnic proximity of Germans from Austria and Germany. Let this issue be discussed by philologists and ethnographers. The point was that Hitler for the first time using threats and “strong-arm” made the chancellor of an independent Austrian state sign an agreement with Germany which virtually deprived the country of its independence.
   On February 11, 1938 Austrian chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg was requested to visit Hitler at Berchtesgaden. At once Führer declared that the head of Austria had no grounds for relying upon the support of Italy, France and England and that he better not indulge in illusions [245 - Schuschnigg was a chronic smoker (he could smoke 60 cigarettes per day) so Hitler deliberately prohibited him to smoke during the negotiations (see Melnikov, D., Chernaya, L. Criminal Number One. P. 289–290).].
   After such “fruitful” talk but leaving Hitler without the consent to sign an agreement with Germany despite all the threats, Schuschnigg left for Vienna. The only thing that Austrian chancellor could use to oppose Hitler’s pressure was to make public Hitler’s threats. Tough respond of the world community would not allow Hitler to swallow Austrian state.

   Winners of World War One cut off the significant pieces of German territories. The territories were cut off that much that those-times Weimar Germany could not attack the USSR. Western countries had to “fear” Germany to return to Hitler everything that had been lost

   Kurt von Schuschnigg had the hope to get protection from the “civilized world”. Just recently England and France were as firm as rock concerning the Austrian issue. They had used all the tools to prevent establishment of the united German state in Europe.Upon breakup of the Habsburg’s Empire National Assembly of the new democratic Austria made a decision on reunification with the new democratic Germany. Everything was performed in the democratic manner and “in accordance with legislation then in force”. However, the Entente countries were not that happy about strengthening of their former enemies. They did not only made everything possible to make the will of the Austrian National Assembly to remain on the paper but also secured in the Treaty of Versailles that Germany could not swallow up its neighbor: “Germany acknowledges and will strictly respect the independence of Austria… it acknowledges that such independence shall not be alienated without the consent of the League of Nations” [246 - Article 80. Cited from book by Shatzillo, V. World War One 1914–1918. P. 395–396.]. Just in case similar prohibition was included into the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye executed between the winners and Austria: “Independence of Austria is inalienable. Thus, Austria shall refrain from any act that could directly or indirectly compromise its independence…” [247 - Article 88. Cited from book by Shatzillo, V. World War One 1914–1918. P. 405.]
   Thus, both England and France opposed Germany’s attempts of unification. But only until Adolf Hitler came to power!
   Let us confront several dates.
   • Besides the Treaty of Versailles and Treaty of Saint-Germain there was also the Geneva Protocol signed in October 1922 under the pressure of the Entente countries that in line with the two mentioned above refrained convergence of Vienna and Berlin. Under this Protocol Austrians had a direct obligation not to enter into any agreements with Germany [248 - After the end of World War I and after building of the “fair” peace with the Entente, Austria had seen just as much sorrow as Germany had: hunger, cold, terrible unemployment and galloping inflation rates. In January 1922 100 Swiss Francs cost 135 thousand krone and in August – already 1.1 million krone (World History. M., 2001. V. 22. P. 89).].
   • On August 28, 1931 the Permanent Court of International Justice in the Hague made a resolution that the planned customs union between Germany and Austria contradicted the Geneva Protocols and thus was illegal.
   • On July 15, 1932 in accordance with the Geneva Protocol Austria was promised a large financial loan provided it will refrain from Anschluss (unification) with Germany until 1952.
   But once Germany has Hitler at the helm, position of England and France turns 180 degrees round. That was the position that Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg ran into. The West had grounds for a firm position: German Führer had the guts to threaten the head of the neighboring state and violated the Agreement between Germany and Austria that he himself had signed. However representatives of the western diplomacy kept silent. Austria and its Chancellor were left alone.

   Austro-German Agreement of July 11, 1936 guaranteed mutual non-interference into inner affairs and independence of Austria as of “the second German country”. One specific detail is that while Schuschnigg was trying not give up the country to Hitler, he was working out a back-up variant of restoration of the Gabsburgs’ power in the country. But the English and the French needed no restoration of the monarchy but strengthening of Germany instead. That is why solution that was proposed by Schuschnigg was “not supported by the European states”. But Austrian Chancellor had the solid ground to feel hatred to Nazis. Even before the whole story with signing the agreement with Germany, his wife had gotten into mysterious car accident. Chancellor’s wife and her driver had died. What made this car accident suspicious was that chancellor’s wife might have Schuschnigg’s briefcase with the documents compromising Hitler. The briefcase disappeared in the accident.

   We should though give Schuschnigg his due: he was trying to resist the pressure until the very end. Schuschnigg scheduled the referendum to Sunday, March 13, 1938. Negative respond to the question whether Austrian citizens would like to join Germany would be the legal reason for the world community to prohibit Hitler to occupy Austria. Hitler had to be slowed down just for a few days. Berlin understood that such development of the events could be harmful and that is why the next day Schuschnigg received from Berlin the ultimatum: to call off the plebiscite and resign at a short notice.
   Why Hitler was all of a sudden scared of the Austrian referendum? Did he not believe that most of the Austrians would want to become citizens of the Third Reich? Quite possible that he did not. Anyway Nazi’s leader was perfectly aware of how the required results of voting were obtained. If Austrian officials imitated the figures that they needed, further existence of Hitler’s state would be quite questionable. The West would sponsor Germany only until it moved in the right direction. That direction was the East. Along that way Hitler could be allowed to swallow entire countries and peoples but only provided that such actions were sufficient and in line with Hitler’s obligation to launch a war with Russia. No one would finance the Third Reich simply for nothing which meant that the country with abnormal extent of militarization could hold balance only moving forward like a bicyclist. Austrian referendum with its hardly predictable results could put a barrier in front of such a “bicyclist” for indefinite time [249 - By 1938 Germany spent for armament program 52 % of the entire state expenses and 17 % of GDP (Bullok, A. Hitler and Stalin. P. 155). To compare: military expenses of the Russian Federation shall not exceed 2.7 % of GDP, this is what President V.V. Putin declared in one of his interviews.]. This is where the hysterical ultimatum comes from with its firm request to call of the plebiscite…
   Was London, Paris and Washington aware of this situation? They were and that is why they kept quiet. Meanwhile Chancellor Schuschnigg delayed his respond to Hitler waiting for support. Berlin repeated the order three times. Finally on March 11, 1938 Schuschnigg received another ultimatum: if Germany’s demands were not fulfilled, the same day 200 thousand German soldiers would cross the Austrian border. When Austrian Chancellor received no diplomatic support from the leading world powers, he made a speech on the radio and informed Austrian people that he resigned to prevent the bloodshed. Arthur Seyss-Inquart replaced Schuschnigg and immediately turned to Berlin with the request of help to suppress the riots supposedly organized by the Reds. At dawn of 12 March German troops entered Austria [250 - Resistance to Hitler’s plans cost Kurt von Schuschnigg dear. After Austria was joint to Germany, he was kept in custody at Gestapo for several weeks and later was sent to the concentration camp until 1945.].
   As the referendum had already been declared, it was undiplomatic to call it off. Hitler declared that plebiscite in Austria should certainly take place, only a little later of the due date. Under the frame of referendum’s preparation works three authorised representatives of the national will arrived at Berlin. Major specialists to organize democratic procedures turned out to be Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler, SD chief SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich and SS-Oberst-Gruppenfuhrer Kurt Dluege. Having such a solid team in Austria Hitler could be calm about the results of the referendum. At the same time it was decided to hold plebiscite on the entire territory of the Third Reich.
   SS members at once started adjustment of their suppression machine in Austria. Persecutions of Jews started at once. Another notorious personality of SS – Adolf Eichmann hurried to Vienna. His task was to do everything possible to make Austrian Jews to emigrate. Reality of the German cities of those days became the reality of Austrian cities: humiliations, insults, assaults of Jews. World community did not notice anything just as before it had not “seen” the sufferings of the German Jews…

   In general 1938 was “rich” for anti-Jew acts in the Third Reich. On 16 July SS officials were prohibited to spend nights at Jewish hotels; on 23 July Jews were obliged to always carry IDs; on 27 July the decree on renaming the streets named after Jews came out; on 7 August the order came out in accordance with as of January 01, 1939 Jews were prohibited to give their kids the original German names, and every name of the Jewish child had to be added wi the second name: “Israel” for boys and “Sarah” for girls; on 31 August limits for postings made by Jews were introduced, while the back side of every envelope intended for Germans had to be marked “Not for Jews”; on 11 November studying of Jewish kids in common German schools was abolished. World community did not take notice of all the above facts…

   USA President Franklin Roosevelt refused to give any comments of the events in Austria. The Chancellor of the Exchequer of England Lord Simon declared that the United Kingdom never gave any special guarantees on the independence of that country. All the obstacles that England put in the way of unification of German and Austrian Germans were instantly removed. On March 14, 1938 the issue on Austria joining Germany was discussed at the House of Commons. Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Chamberlain informed the parliament that the English and German ambassadors submitted a protest to German government in regards of the violent actions in Austria. Interesting fact that German Minister of Foreign Affairs simply refused to accept the English protest! What did follow next? An appeal to boycott, mobilization?
   No. In two weeks, on April 2, 1938, British government officially acknowledged the seizure of Austria by Germany.
   Reaction of the French government was even less expressive. It turned out that exactly on March 11, 1938 the French government had changed. What a “coincidence”! The old government could not already while the new government [251 - The so-called second government of Léon Blum.] could not yet judge the actions performed by Germany. Another fact is that it existed for only three weeks. The next government of France had nothing left but to acknowledge the new state of affairs in Europe after the United Kingdom… [252 - On April 10, 1938 the new Cabinet headed by Édouard Daladier came to power in France, on 2 April An-schluss was acknowledged by English. Why did that always happen so that all the diplomatic and “inde-pendent” steps European countries had always performed only after the United Kingdom? In contemporary history only after the United Kingdoms and the USA?]
   As a matter of fact entry of the Nazi troops to Vienna was not so triumphal as it was portrayed by Hitler’s propaganda. The matter was that “ferocious” column of German tanks was stuck on the way to Austrian capital. While it was not the bad road or fire of antitank guns that prevented the tanks from moving forward – on the contrary the road was perfect road. “Despite the wonderful weather and good conditions largest part of tanks was out of order. Defects of heavy motor artillery were discovered and the road from Linz to Vienna was locked by heavy machines” [253 - Churchill, W. World War Two. V.1. P. 122.], notices Winston Churchill rather acidly.
   Hitler failed to make a triumphal entry to Vienna. His mood with regards to inclusion of his motherland into the Reich was shaded. Later he personally went via Linz [254 - Linz was Hitler’s home town. He was born and grew up there.], when heading to Austrian capital and instead of the fine columns of his army, he saw helpless stuck tanks, armored infantry cars and artillery pieces. To make the triumphal entry to Vienna on schedule many efforts had to be made. Armored cars and heavy motor artillery pieces were loaded onto railways trucks and only thanks to that fact they achieved to be in Vienna on time. Tanks were removed from the columns and in entire disorder entered Vienna only the next day in the morning.
   Speaking of Hitler’s annexing Austria, we have to mention the important role of Mussolini in the Anschluss. Being one of the winning countries Italy was one of the major guarantors of Austrian neutrality and sovereignty. The explanation was very simple: In accordance with Article 36 of the Treaty of Saint-Germain Italy got from the former Austro-Hungarian Empire large territories and as no other country Italy was interested in Austrian sovereignty.
   That is why Vienna most of all relied on Mussolini. And in the beginning he justified the hopes: in 1934, when locals Nazis became active, Italy sent the troops to the Austrian border messaging that it would not stand German rule in Austria. However during the Anschluss Italy made nothing to support the neighbor. In estimations of the change of Mussolini’s position we should remember that though officially there was the agreement between Berlin and Rome, there were yet no solid reasons for the head of Italy to consider this friendship the strong one [255 - The so-called “Axis” Berlin-Rome appeared on October 25, 1936 during the visit of the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ciano, to Germany. Japan joint German-Italian alliance considerably later – on December 11, 1940.]. Not in the least fascist Mussolini had to unconditionally support the Nazi Hitler! Similar spiritual and ideological views are one thing while perspective of the return to the country populated with ethnic Germans, former Austrian and now Italian territories was quite another concept [256 - Up until our days a part of the so-called Southern Tirol, populated by Germans, is a part of Italy.].

   Benito Mussolini did not protest against the Anschluss of Austria not because of his affection to Hitler or Nazi ideas but simply for the particular political dividends. Dividends that were to come from England and France and not from Germany

   Foremost Hitler personally was aware of that. “Tell duce that I will never forget him that… If he ever needs support or occurs in unsafe situation, he may be sure, I will be standing by him, whatever happens, even if the entire world turns its back to him!” [257 - Seward, D. Napoleon and Hitler. P. 208.] – this was Führer’s reaction to the message from Mussolini where he clearly explains that he will not interfere into the Anschluss.
   Why on earth did Mussolini act like this? Certainly not because of affection to his “friend Adolf”. There are no such feelings in politics. Italy made benefit of such position in regards of the Austrian issue. Benefit from where? From England and France. Mussolini was so exhilarated by heroic deeds of the ancient Romans that he also decided to build in Italy the new empire. The first challenge for the fascist state was the attack of Ethiopia, at that time called Abyssinia. On October 4, 1935 Italian troops invaded the country.

   History of the Italian-Ethiopian relations had a long background. Long before Mussolini Italy made attempts to conquer this small African country. Around Abyssinia the lands were already conquered and divided, but Abyssinia’s Christian monarchs achieved to maintain independence. In 1896 during the Battle of Adwa Italian army that was forwarded to conquer Ethiopians was totally defeated. This one day Italy lost as many soldiers as it had lost during all Italian wars in Africa. After this victory a new country – Ethiopia “appeared” on the world map. It was left alone just for a little while: in 39 years the aggression was repeated [258 - Ovsyaniy, I.D. The Secrecy in Which the War was Born. P. 111.].

   Abyssinia requested to apply international sanctions against Italy. On October 7, 1935 Assembly of the League of Nations acknowledged Italy as aggressor which nevertheless had no significant consequences for Mussolini’s regime because the introduced sanctions allowed Italy to continue the war. No actions on introducing serious sanctions like breach of relations or military pressure on the aggressor were performed. It is no coincidence that there was nothing in the documents of the League of Nations on prohibition of the supply of the most important types of raw materials for Italy: oil, iron ore and coal. Besides, the USA and Germany were not the members of the League of Nations and consequently they were not obliged to fulfil the regime of sanctions at all. On the contrary, in 1935–1936 United States of America dramatically increased the volumes of oil supply to the aggressor, while the United Kingdom government declined the offer on naval blockade of Italy and closing of the Suez Canal for Italian ships that could be a significant means of pressure [259 - So export of oil from the USA to Italy in 1935 increased by 140 % compared to the previous year, and in the Italian Africa it was increased by tens (same source p. 111–112).].
   The powers were unequal but still badly armed Ethiopians put up the strong resistance. In response Italian army applied against the civilian population of Ethiopia poisonous gas. Instead of condemning such barbarian actions, the United Kingdom took up a rather weird position: it did not only make anything to strengthen the sanctions but actually started making efforts to abolish them. On June 18, 1936 Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Eden made a speech at the House of Commons saying the sanctions that had been introduced against Italy were not giving the result that was anticipated. We already had multiple chances to make sure that London was the “law-maker” on the political market of the world arena. And already on July 4, 1936 after occupation of the Ethiopian capital Addis-Abeba, the League of Nations made a decree to abolish further sanctions.

   The “civilized world” practically had not “noticed” the slaughter committed by Italian fascists at lake Ashenge on April 03, 1935 when 140 planes dropped chemical bombs onto civilians. Nobody paid special attention to the crimes of Japan that attacked China either. Without going into details about that terrible war let us refer to just two expressive facts. Within the siege of Shanghai Japanese were so thorough in killing the civilian population that one of the witnesses described the events like that: from the area of 4.5 square kilometers nobody came alive. During the storm of Nanjing Japanese troops killed 200 thousand people – every second citizen of the city [260 - Falin, V. The Second Front Line. Anti-Hitler Coalition: Conflict of Interests. M., 2000. P. 44–45.].

   How is then the siege of Abyssinia related to the Anschluss of Austria? It is actually related very directly. Yielding position of Mussolini that allowed Hitler to take over its neighbor was immediately rewarded. On March 12, 1938 German tanks filled all the roads to Vienna and on April 16, 1938 the agreement between England and Italy was signed in Rome without unnecessary publicity. In accordance with that agreement England and Italy were to establish “good neighborly relations”. But the major thing was that England acknowledged the siege of Abyssinia by Italy. Practically British gentlemen exchanged Vienna for Addis-Abeba.
   The list of the European capitals that were “given up” to Führer without specific disguise can be added with Spanish Madrid. Hitler who was creating the new and huge army in real hurry badly needed the grounds for testing new machinery, training officers and so on. And such grounds were created for him.
   Many facts about the Spanish War are well known in our country because the USSR actively participated in it. However the true sense of unleashing this conflict was deliberately distorted in the Soviet historiography. The underlying cause of the civil war in Spain was not so much the struggle between the communism and fascism. It was the general rehearsal of the future all-out military clash between the USSR and Germany. In this civil war England and France, under disguise of complete neutrality, in reality actively supported one of the parties of the conflict – the rebel General Franco but not the legitimate government of Spain. The support of “democracies” to Spanish fascists was not only of the indirect character but was actually the most direct. However historians prefer not to remember about that…
   Clear those London gentlemen had no concern of either General Franco or his ideas. If fascists won in the Spanish civil war, British diplomacy would have a chance to solve several important issues at once:
   • Hitler and Mussolini would acquire the possibility to launch their wars and win, believe in their power and test their army and military machines in real life;
   • in case of victory the future aggressors would obtain the important raw materials base [261 - Spain gave about 45 % of the world’s mercury, over 50 % of pyrite, it was the large exporter of iron ore, tungsten, lead, zinc, potassium salts, silver and other mineral deposits required for war industry. Control over these sources of strategic raw materials allowed Hitler to significantly strengthen its economic potential (Behind the Scenes of Non-Intervention Policy. M., 1959. P. 22–23).];
   • major core of the Nazi ideology – struggle with communism and its destruction – would obtain the plain evidence.
   The coup against Spanish government started in the evening of July 17, 1936 in Spanish Morocco, on Canary and Balearic islands. The next day the Ceuta’s radio channel broadcast the famous as of today conventional sign – the signal to start the coup: “Over all of Spain, the sky is clear”. After this message military units rose in revolt on the territory of Spain but major military contingents were on the territory of Africa. The notion of this problem was perfectly expressed by Herman Goering when he was giving evidence at the Nuremberg Trials: “Franco asked Germany for help. He needed support from the air. Together with its military units Franco was in Africa and couldn’t move the military units because the communists gained control of the fleet and the crucial factor in that war was the possibility of landing operations of the troops in Spain…” [262 - Thomas, C. The Spanish Civil War. M., 2003. P. 213.]
   There appeared a dangerous situation: the coup could be suppressed due to impossibility to move a part of the African army of Franco onto the continent. Without a doubt Hitler made a decision to help. In less than two weeks after beginning of the coup two German military squadrons arrived at the shore of Spain, while German transportation planes arrived at Morocco. With Hitler’s support Moroccan military units safely landed on the territory of continental Spain.
   How can the world community react on the intervention of the third country into the inner conflict in Spain? Especially when that third country was going to support the military parts that revolted against the legitimate government? The reaction may be rather tough. It could be sanctions, boycott, request of immediate stop of the intervention. Let us not forget that Berlin was going to host the Olympic Games in 1936, a significant and important event for the Nazi regime. And just a month before such an important event Hitler got involved into the civil war in Spain! And the committee seating in New York at the very same time lacked the arguments to boycott the German Olympic Games! No matter what the world community did not want to take notice of the plates like “No Entry for Jews and Dogs” hanging on the doors of the public toilets in the Nazi Reich. All of a sudden Führer makes such a gift to all those who wanted to deprive him of the Olympic flame – he performed a military intervention into an independent country. Maybe now the world community would boycott the fascist Olympic Games?
   Why did Hitler take such risks? Because he knew well that the Third Reich was guaranteed the regime of the most-favored treatment! Until then the Third Reich was exactly in line with the agreements with its British partners…
   Nazi did not confine only to the transportation of the rebels. The next day, on July 31, 1936, English newspaper Daily Herald informed on the dispatch from Hamburg to Spain of 28 planes filled with bombs, shells and other munitions. Such situation would continue within the entire war: Germany and Italy undertook to provide supplies to Franco supporters. On the contrary there would be big problems with the supplies to the Republicans: the United Kingdom and France would proclaim the non-intervention policy into the Spanish affairs. Already on July 25, that is after a week from the beginning of coup, the French government made a decision on the prohibition of arms export to Spain. France was supported by the United Kingdom in this matter. While Germany and Italy were in no hurry to proclaim non-intervention getting ready to transport Franco’s army to the continent. Neutrality of France was so consistent that Paris banned export of those arms and planes to Spain that had been ordered and paid for by the Spanish government long before the agreement on neutrality and non-intervention!
   “Why our orders from France that had been made before 18 July should not be fulfilled only because the plotters attacked us?” – asked puzzled head of the Spanish government Giral. There was no response. All the protests and demands of the republican Spain remained a voice in the space. Until September. Why exactly until this month? Because Olympic Games were to start in September in Berlin and there had to be no single cause, even a tiny one, to spoil it. Hitler’s regime had to demonstrate its respectability.

   There is one quite noteworthy but rather little known fact: the supporters of boycott of the Olympic Games in Berlin offered to hold alternative Olympics in Spain, Barcelona. The civil war was just started there at that time and nothing came out of this idea. Please understand me correctly: the war was started in Spain not to spoil this alternative Olympic Games. The grounds for Führer were prepared in advance and for world-class politicians it was as clear as a sky that Spain would soon be involved into turmoil. That is why this idea of holding alternative Olympics in Barcelona was thrown to the supporters of boycott simply to provide an additional insurance for “dear” Hitler to avoid useless complications. Knowing in advance that nothing would come out of this idea.

   Once the Olympic battles were over, the situation changed. On September 9, 1936 the International Committee on non-interference into Spanish affairs started its work in the English Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Its major purpose was to block any support to the republicans under the pretext of false neutrality and to push USSR to independent actions that would violate international legislation. And so the events were developing in the direction very much favorable for the English. On October 22, 1936 Soviet ambassador in London sent the note to the English Ministry of Foreign Affairs which proposed to acknowledge and restore the right of the Spanish government to purchase the armaments. The note warned that otherwise the Soviet government would not consider itself bound by the agreement on non-interference more than other countries – participants of the agreement [263 - Izvestiya of 30 October 1936.].
   If Germany and Italy supplied weapons to Spain, USSR would also make the supplies. That was just for the benefit of England. The Soviet Union got involved into the conflict and it only required the correct accentuation. Because that “bloodthirsty communists” craved to establish the rules in Europe. That is why in response to our note England published its own where all the incidents of violation of the obligation on non-interference that required investigation were enumerated. From the point of view of England there were four of such incidents all in all: one in the responsibility of Italy and three were supposedly performed by the Soviet Union…
   Not it is the right time to answer the question why after all USSR got involved into the badly stinking Spanish turmoil. There are several reasons:
   • Republican government paid for all the supplied military weapons in gold and Soviet Union did nothing for a song.
   • Germany got the chance to test its tanks and planes, Soviet Union had the same opportunity.
   • Only the blind one could not realize what European countries bring up the Führer for. It was a very attractive idea to detain and defeat the aggressor on the foreign territory and moreover practically by somebody else.
   • Some ideological likeness between the USSR and republican Spain could only be placed as the last reason in this list.
   If Hitler and Mussolini were smart enough to get mixed into the Spanish affairs, it was stupid to miss the opportunity to smash the opponent by somebody else and additionally get some money for that!
   While the republican government simply had no choice. It owned the gold reserves but thanks to the “non-interference” nobody would sell anything to the country. Stalin’s USSR was the only country where Spain could purchase weapons, Indeed there were the United States but in 1935 American Congress passed an act on “neutrality” [264 - Falin, V. The Second Front Line. Anti-Hitler Coalition: Conflict of Interests. P. 34.]. What does that mean? That means that Spain could not buy weapons from America but Germany could. That is why the republicans did not get any American armaments while their opponents were richly supplied with American weapons through the German firms. In May 1937 American Congress passed the new law on neutrality. It permitted the president of the country to sell military materials to the fighting party for cash and provided the buying party did the transportation itself. What a misfortune that republicans had no relevant ships. While Franco (or better say his German friends) had both the ships and cash and that is why American weapons in large amounts were supplied to Franco.
   There is one issue that has never been properly studied. For some reason historians pass it around. They tell us in big detail about the bad Germany and Italy that supported Franco and supplied weapons and military equipment to him. Then they tell us about Hitler and Mussolini who started sending military forces to Spain. All this was great expenses. Maintaining only one German legion Kondor by estimations of the German army, that included 250 planes, 180 tanks, hundreds of antitank guns and other weapons, from November 7, 1936 to December 31, 1938 cost over 190 million Reich marks [265 - War and Revolution in Spain. 1936–1939. V.1. P. 204.]. Any person that knows some deal about the war economy is aware that planes and tanks are not the most costly part of the army. The most expensive is combat ships. So the fleets of the revolts was regularly reinforced due to supplies from Berlin and Rome [266 - Kuznetsov, N. The Day Before. M., 2003. P. 208, 219.]. Total sum of entire support from Germany and Italy to Franco’s supporters amounted to no less than 1 billion dollars [267 - War and Revolution in Spain. 1936–1939. V.1. P. 200.].
   What General Franco paid for such a generous support? Where did he find such great amounts of money? Nobody gave answer to this question, historians keep silent. Because Franco had no financial resources – all gold reserves of Spain were in the hands of the republicans. The head of the coup had nothing to pay with. It turns out that Germany burdened with enormous growth of its own military expenses, simply threw great sum of money for nothing. Italy did exactly the same. Franco did not receive and economic dividends from victory, did he? During the war he would be selling all the strategic raw materials of Spain to Germany and Italy, he did not present them. There would be no political dividends either: in several years Franco will reject to fight for its German “friends” against England, France and USSR [268 - Hitler and Franco met in Endai in 1940. “Thankful” Franco said that he was in the middle of siesta and made Hitler wait for him for half an hour. Later Führer said that he would rather agree to pull out three or four teeth than meet with caudillo ever again. The only thing that Hitler would be able to squeeze from Franco was to send to the Eastern front “volunteers” – one division that got the name the “blue” one.].
   He would remain the only dictator who did not only successfully survive through World War Two but remained at the head of the country until his death [269 - The Decree of August 04, 1939 proclaimed Franco the lifelong “supreme governor of Spain, responsible only before God and history”. In 1955 Spain was accepted to United Nations. In 1973 Franco resigned from the post of Prime Minister maintaining the title of the supreme governor of the state and of the Commander-in-Chief of the Spanish army. Spanish dictator died on November 20, 1975.].
   Incidentally neither Hitler nor Mussolini settled no scores or held a grudge with Franco. Why? Because all the bills for the Spanish war and all German military supplies were covered by the same secret sponsors of Nazi as well as the Hitler’s “economic” miracle.

   Evidences of the “unselfish support” of the Nazi economy may be found anywhere, one just needs to search. Due to Hitler’s takeover of Austria, for example, there occurred an issue on discharge of the Austrian external debts by the German government to England, the USA, France and other countries. On April 12, 1938 English government proclaimed that it supposed that Germany would take Austrian’s responsibility for the external debts. In the response application of May 12, 1938 German government informed England that it did not consider it possible to take over the obligations on discharging of the Austrian external debts. What did Berlin hear in reply? Nothing! London and all the other “peace-loving” nations kept silent and did not demand money from Hitler.

   While with the Soviet supplies everything is quite clear. They were paid to the last kopeck but not by the Soviet Union. USSR historians enjoy writing about the campaigns of collecting money to support Spanish workers and that those funds were used to purchase everything necessary for the republicans. It’s a lie. All the supplies were paid by the Spanish party because as we have already mentioned the legitimate government had gold reserve of Spain. Republicans had no cash but Soviet Union didn’t mind to take the gold and additionally delivered all the cargoes on its ships – not only weapons but medications and many more. Military advisers, the integral evil within supplies of the complicated weapons, arrived to Spain on the same ships. It was not quite enough to have the tanks and the planes, one required to know how to use them. The difference was in the number of military experts: during the war in Spain USSR sent 2 thousand “volunteers” there [270 - War and Revolution in Spain. 1936–1939 V.1. P. 221.]. While Italy and Germany operated with completely different figures. Averagely at the height of war 10–12 thousand of Germans and 40–45 thousand of Italians were in actions [271 - Striving to give the invaluable experience to as many soldiers as possible Italians and Germans were constantly rotated. All in all between 1936 and 1939 over 300 thousand soldiers managed to fight for the rebels. War and Revolution in Spain. 1936–1939 V.1. P. 202–203.].

   Those who accuse USSR in the attempts to unleash the world revolution, prefer not to compare the dates and figures. Such absent-mindedness is no coincidence – otherwise all their fragile and unsteady structure would fall apart. Everybody knows that Stalin achieved to carry through a very successful operation: a considerable part of the gold reserve of Spain, about 510 tons, was transferred to USSR. When dates are not indicated, a reader might get an impression that everything was done a day before the crash of the republicans. In reality the gold was exported right after the beginning of the civil war! The coup began on July 17–18, 1936 and at the end of October 1936 the valuable cargo already arrived at Odessa. While the civil war lasted until April 1939 afterwards! Where is ideology here? This is pure pragmatism. This gold was used to pay not only for the supplies of the Soviet weapons but for the weapons that were supplied from the third countries. As a matter of fact USSR became the bank for the fighting Spain. The total sum of the cost of all the military cargoes delivered to the republican Spain amounts to 202.4 million dollars [272 - War and Industry Courier. 2006. No. 28 (144).]. Cost of the gold was considerably higher: about 518 million dollars [273 - Sudoplatov, P. Special Operations. Lubyanka and Kremlin 1930–1950. P. 117.].

   As war efforts still brought no victory to Franco’s supporters, in November 1937 it was decided to suppress the republicans by blockade. The party was played magnificently: Franco sent to England the note notifying that his command decided to block the Spanish port Bilbao and not provide access to Spain for the English ships with grocery. Proud Mistress of the sea, the owner of the most powerful fleet in the world, did not even try to “explain” that there was no option for negotiating with England in such a way but moreover simply swallowed the blow to its successful trade [274 - Not long before the civil war 50 % of Spanish export went to the United Kingdom while Spain received from this country 17 % of its entire import (Thomas, H. Civil War in Spain. P. 199). Having a powerful economic lever, England could actively impact the state of affairs in the country. Thus they impacted – the civil war started…].

   Meeting of Franco and Hitler on the Spanish and French border, 1940. Spanish dictator rejected to fight in the World War Two on the side of the German and Italian “benefactors” appreciating the help for the victory from completely different countries

   British government immediately refused to send more ships to Bilbao reasoning that the port was blocked and mine studded. The purpose of that Franco’s maneuver was transparent. Since “civilized” countries did not send their ships to Spanish shores, fascists could quietly drown any ships. And it would be really hard to complain about such actions: one had to be more attentive to Franco’s declarations!
   To catch the republicans in the blockade, Italian military ships started the real war against the merchant ships, obviously against the Soviet ones. Because only our ships delivered to Spain equipment and grocery besides weapons. On November 11, 1936 the ship Soyuz Vodnikov was detained in the Strait of Gibraltar. It was the first “sign”. Within the following next months attacks of the Soviet ships became more and more frequent and sometimes they ended tragically. On December 14, 1936 in the area of Gibraltar the Soviet ship Komsomol was drowned, on 31 August and on 1 September two more Soviet ships – Timiryazev and Blagoev [275 - Maysky, I.M. Spanish Diaries. M.: VIMO, 1962. P. 139.] were drowned. This is what Soviet ambassador Maysky would later write in his memoirs.
   Relations between the USSR, Italy and Germany were becoming tense while the tension of the civil war became less tense. The scale was persistently inclined by the British and French diplomacy in favor of Franco and finally it started moving in his direction. From the beginning of 1939 the United Kingdom and France shed all the vestiges of responsibility and openly took the side of the conflict where they were actually present from the very beginning – the side of fascists. “At the very high point of the battle for Catalonia (December 1938 – February 1939) there was a great number of planes, weapons, tanks, torpedo boats, etc. accumulated at the French and Spanish border. If they occurred in the hands of republicans on time, the entire course of battle could be changed” [276 - Kuznetsov, N. The Day Before. P. 198.], – admiral Kuznetsov who was a military-marine advisor in Spain writes in his memoirs. But France refused to open the border that in the end led to defeat of the republicans who were left without weapons. Defeated troops moved back to the French territory. Together with them there were thousands of the refugees. Speaking in contemporary words there occurred the “humanitarian disaster”.
   To save people the republican Minister of the Foreign Affairs of Spain applied to Paris with request to let Spanish refugees to enter the French territory. Once again French government refused to open the border, however after the outrage of the French society, it slightly “opened” the border. Small groups of refugees began to leak onto the French territory. Wounded soldiers of the Spanish army crossed the border with them. Then France tightly closed the border again and event returned all injured soldiers back to Catalonia. On February 3, 1939 Italian aviation made the mass attack on the borderline town Figueres. Over a thousand people were killed, a crowd of panicking people rushed running removing on its way the borderline cordons and moving into France. Only after that the French government post factum decided to authorize what already had happened, France officially opened the border both for the refugees and retreating soldiers of the republican army.
   Such outcome was not hard to predict. Crowds of refugees simply had nowhere to go. From one side there was the enemy that knew no compassion [277 - Spanish civil war as probably any civil war had the examples of terrible cruelty from both parties. Supporters of Franco were shooting workers and communists, their opponents burnt down the churches, brutally killed the monks, raped nuns. Franco himself became notorious for the words that not a single request on forgiveness should be given to him until the sentence was executed.]. From the other side there was the French border. Where else were they supposed to seek the salvation? Soviet ships transported just a small number of Spanish people. The rest of them in search of salvation rushed to neighboring France [278 - All in all 10 thousand injured, 170 thousand refugees and about 250 thousand soldiers of the republican army ran onto the French territory. (Thomas, C. Civil War in Spain. P. 526.)]. How did the French government get prepared for the future inflow of refugees? No preparation there was!
   “In short notice the government of Daladier constructed several huge concentration camps (in Saint-Cyprien, Pratt de Mollo and some other places). Tens of thousands of hungry and suffering people were left there without water, bread and soap, in the open sands. Epidemics soon began and the death rate was extremely high…” [279 - Maysky, I.M. Spanish Diaries. P. 153.]
   The French camp for the refugees was an open space in sands surrounded by barbed wire. People themselves started to dig burrows in sand. The first ten days there was no food, water or even medical help to the injured. People were dying in great numbers. Why French were so inhuman? Of the best motives, of course. It turns out that by hosting refugees in such terrible conditions they were trying to persuade them to return home, to Spain… [280 - Thomas, C. Civil War in Spain. P. 526–527.]
   Spanish civil war was organized and meticulously fulfilled for the purposes that have no direct relation to the country itself. If manganese and lead were in Portugal or in Luxembourg, the grounds for testing the German military machine would be established there. Authors of the Spanish tragedy thoroughly cleaned after themselves. According to their concept the “non-interference” policy was the best alibi for the generations to come. Additionally after all Hitler did afterwards, they could bravely put all the blame on him. The major criminal of all times and peoples was accused of unleashing the civil war in Spain. But nobody could ever hide all the facts. They sometimes can be slightly disguised under the layer of stereotypes and clichés. Shaking the bloody and dusty history of the people of the XX century can reveal horrible nightmares…
   Not long before the coup General Franco was in the so-called exile on the Canary Islands appointed to the position of the governor. He had to fly to Morocco to become the leader of the coup. Spanish planes could not deliver him there – they were controlled by the army loyal to the government. “Friends” of the General helped. They managed to freight the foreign plane with the crew for Franco. Guess what country was the owner of the plane? Exactly! The plane was English and was called the Swift Dragon [281 - Thomas, C. Civil War in Spain. P. 115.]. British pilot, captain Bebb, was the pilot. Supposedly Franco could not trust any of his fellow citizens [282 - On November 7, 1936 the British newspaper New Chronicles published a story about the brave captain Bebb.].
   After departing from London, the plane first arrived to Canary Islands and then delivered general Franco to Ceuta where he became the head of the Moroccan troops of the army. If you think that this was the only single charter flight, you are mistaken. After delivery of Franco to Africa the plane with the emissaries of the Spanish general flew further to Mussolini [283 - Thomas, C. Civil War in Spain. P. 200.]. Pilot was the same captain Bebb. The flight turned out to be quite useful: in Italy they came to final agreement on providing support to the rebels. Flight on the English plane saved them from many possible troubles. Who would venture to knock down an English plane?
   This is the starting point of the Spanish civil war. The final point would be drawn in the very same “ink”. Civil war in Spain officially ended on April 1, 1939. Let’s remember the year 1939: Not only was the local conflict on the agenda already but a full-scale war in Europe. It was time to get Hitler’s hands free. No time for getting mixed in such trivial matters, it was time to fulfil the obligations and attack the Soviet Union. Why England and France suddenly set aside “shyness” and quickly started finishing off the republicans to end the war in Spain in the shortest terms possible. On February 27, 1939 England and France officially acknowledged Franco’s cabinet and in the same official way broke off the relations with the republican government. The next step was made by the Americans. The same month British cruiser Devonshire rendered direct support to Spanish rebels in taking over Menorca Island. British cruiser did not only delivered there Franco’s representative but under the threat of artillery bombardment it forced the commander of the naval base to transfer all the powers and authorities to Franco’s officer… [284 - Franco knew very well who was the boss on our planet. When on 01 September 1939 the World War started, the head of Spain applied with the request to provide a loan to restore the country. In September 1939 the war actions were between Poland, France and England, from one party, and Germany, from the other. Franco asked for money not from his “friends” Mussolini and Hitler but … from the United Kingdom (Thomas, C. Civil Wars in Spain. P. 567).]
   In Europe it was time to transfer to Hitler the next territory on his way to the USSR’s frontier. That was the territory of Czechoslovakia. It should be noted that the background for making claims against it were provided to Führer by the authors of Treaty of Versailles and Saint-Germain Agreement. Eventually 3.4 million of former Austrian Germans began living on the territory of Czechoslovakia, a new state, shaped of pieces of the Austrian monarchy, making up 22 % of its population [285 - Preparata, G.D. Hitler Inc. How Britain and USA Created the Third Reich. P. 350–351.]. Sometime in the past Czechs were a minority that had no national establishment in the borders of Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Then they exchanged roles with the Austrian Germans and in that situation there was no way to avoid oppressions. If you have any doubts about that, have a look at the contemporary Baltic States and the position of the Russian speaking population there…
   When we study a long list of countries that were sacrificed to Hitler on his way to the war, we have a quite reasonable feeling of sympathy for the victim. However we should be aware that countries occurring under Hitler’s rule in the game of political roulette were not exactly that meek and mild “innocent lambs”. The grounds of independent Czechoslovakia were laid… in the tsar’s Russia, when refugees of the First World War were united into a special separate corps. In the middle of 1917 it consisted of two full-grown divisions and hardly had time to fight against the Germans. Real “fame” came to the Czechoslovak corps during our Civil War. As a matter of fact the coup of Czechoslovak officers in May 1918 became the starting point of the Russian internecine actions. It was the oil spilt into the fire ready to flash out. When Czechoslovak officers had done their duty, they were in no hurry to liberate “Slavic brothers” from Bolsheviks, but let the Russians fight with each other leaving into the rear of the Kolchak’s army. There they were busy protecting the railway. That is, they burnt down the villages, thrashed peasants and filled their stomachs with peasants’ food.
   When Kolchak’s army failed, actions of these heroic Czechoslovak officers, in particular, turned the defeat of the White into a disaster. Czechs blocked the railway and deprived the troops and the refugees from the opportunity to evacuate. Eventually Kochak’s army on foot (!) crossed entire Siberia along the railway road! Slowly moving warm carriages hosted Czechs while right near, in taiga, tens of thousands of soldiers and women and kids were dying of hunger and cold. This extraordinary betrayal of the ones and exceptional heroism of the others was entered into our history as Siberian Ice March [286 - See details: Starikov, N. 1917. Who Murdered Russia?]. Final point of all their activities was the arrest and giving out General Kolchak for massacre to the Bolsheviks. The order was given by the French General Janin and executed by the Czech General Syrov.
   Czechs were brining from Russia not only piles of clothes and goods squashed into heated carriages. Heroic legions took with them a part of the gold reserve of our country known as “Kolchak’s gold”. This exact despicable metal stolen from Russia became the foundation of the Czech koruna, a converted currency which became one of the strongest currencies in Europe. And the economy of Czechoslovakia, as strange as it may sound, became one of the most successful among the countries that had survived the terrible events of the World War One. The newly established state of Czechs and Slovaks was the only country in Central and South-Eastern Europe that was widely exporting the capital. Growth was witnessed in all the spheres of the Czech economy but in some of them it was simply fantastic. Most developed industries of Czechoslovak economy were weapon and … shoes industries. In 1928, for example, Czechoslovakia was on the first place for exporting boots, high boots and sandals [287 - World History. V. 22. P. 95.]. However such flourishing did not last for long – history of that young Czechoslovak state lasted only 20 years (from 1918 to 1938) when the allies from London and Paris decided to give the country to Hitler. The Third Reich had to move closer to the USSR’s frontier while Czech workers had to provide shoes and weapons for the German army.
   German media inspired by numerous bloodless Hitler’s achievements rolled out an active campaign aimed to fulfil demands of the Germans living in Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia. Activity of the German community inside the country also increased. The vanguard of the idea “to return all Germans to one Reich” was proclaimed by the Sudeten German Party governed by Konrad Henlein. Austrian Anschluss gave many reasons to talk about the infringement of Germans national minority rights in Czechoslovakia. All the Austrian Germans joined “one family” – why should not Sudeten Germans do the same? Henlein’s party demanded “territorial autonomy” for the Sudeten Land [288 - Schellenberg, W. Labirinth. M., 1991. P. 46.].
   Government of Czechoslovakia was not going to surrender to Germans at all. And Czechs had all the ground for such a position. Czech army, one of the most powerful in Europe, was ready to protect its country in case of aggression. The correlation of powers was quite promising for such determination. In spring 1938 the army of Czechoslovakia consisted of 34 divisions against 28 divisions of Vermacht [289 - Seward, D. Napoleon and Hitler. P. 210.]. By the fall of the same year the rapidly growing German army became considerably more powerful but still Hitler’s army did not have that many advantages. The fight would be: 39 German divisions with 1.8 million people against 36 Czech divisions with 1.6 million people; against 2,400 German planes and 720 tanks, Czechoslovakia had 1,500 planes and 400 tanks [290 - Volkov, F.D. All Secrets Ever Come to Light. M., 1989. P.9.]. Let’s not forget that the Czech army was going to defend while the German army gad to attack.
   After celebrated Hitler’s declarations in German parliament, the Czech government was getting ready and was taking serious actions to defend: including transfer of the military plants inside the country, introduction of 24h working day at eight aviation plants and completion of mobilization of the industry and food reserves. Poland was also optimistic due to the treaty of alliance made with France. Simple logic naturally gave Czechs the idea that Paris would not so easily give away such a strong and useful ally. Look at the map: even the geographic position of Czechoslovakia had to persuade the French to actively defend it: in case of the armed conflict between France and Germany, Czechs could attack Germany from the rear. Besides military plants Skoda located in Czechia had such annual output of weapons that the entire war industry of the United Kingdom produced in the same period of time [291 - Churchill, W. World War Two. V.1. P. 150.]. Who in their full senses would give away such riches to Hitler?
   Only those who want to become even richer. That is why events around Czechoslovakia began to take a very “strange” turn. Instead of active resistance against Hitler’s aspirations, there started some kind of peanut policy. Its result was the notorious Munich Agreement of September 1938 in accordance with which Führer obtained everything that he aspired for. Did the West fear the German military power again? “There is no way German troops could defeat the French in 1938 or 1939” [292 - Same source. P. 151.]. – Winston Churchill wrote. That means that Hitler could not defeat the Czechs, French and English at once, that is quite obvious. Why then the heads of the “democratic countries” were not determined enough? Because they did not need the victory over Germany which they brought up themselves so carefully! Hitler had not yet fulfilled all the obligations and it was not very productive to remove him into a disposal area. Nobody would kill the trained and well-fed fighting dog before the start of the fight. Why waste the food and the time? While it is a good idea to feed to the fighting dog a stupid turkey that is used to masters’ kind words and caress and does not see the obvious fact that pets are loved until their masters do not need their meet!
   The role of the unlucky pet prepared for slaughter by the allies this time was played by Czechoslovakia. The first meeting of its masters was held in London on April 28–30, 1938. To Czechs surprise French diplomacy joined the demand of the English diplomacy to avoid the clash with Germany whatever the cost. On May 15, 1938 New York Herald Tribune published news from London that had a direct message that since neither France nor USSR would fight for Czechoslovakia, England would least of all want to take up the arms to defend the Slavic republic. And since Czechoslovakia needed to make a sober estimate of its position and to understand that the only way out was the peaceful solution of the issue with the Sudeten Germans [293 - In May 1938, as if had been ordered, the “free” and “independent” British newspapers started publishing numerous similar articles. On 6 May Daily Mail claimed Czechoslovakia in its front page article as the terrible country populated exceptionally by racists whose outrageous attitude to the German speaking population of Sudeten Britain could not stand any longer (cited from Preparata, G.D. Hitler Inc. How Britain and USA Created the Third Reich. P. 351).].
   Naturally after such declarations the intonation of Hitler’s aspirations was becoming less and less compromising. Moreover the note in the American newspaper “miraculously” concurred with the one quite revealing event. Two days before the publication in New York Herald Tribune the head of the Sudeten German party Konrad Henlein arrived in London. Only the fact of his visit gives grounds for certain thoughts. Henlein had several visits to the members of the British parliament and meetings with the representatives of opposition. After this visit his demands (and consequently the key intonation of the speeches) changed from the autonomy to breakdown of Czechoslovakia.

   Not only representatives of German but also of English intelligence service actively worked with the head of Sudeten Germans. Key people of Germany knew about that communication but never prevented the contacts. Because at the moment everybody including the German and the English were playing for one team, the team that prepared Czechoslovakia to be transferred to Hitler. “English intelligence service was aware… one of its agents, colonel Christie, already had several meetings with Henlein, another one was at the beginning of August of 1938 in Zurich”, wrote in his memoirs the head of the SS intelligence service [294 - See: Schellenberg, W. Labirinth. P. 46.].

   On July 18, 1938 personal adjutant to Adolf Hitler, captain Wiedemann brought a personal message to London from Hitler to British Prime Minister Chamberlain. The next day this letter was already discussed in Paris where English Prime Minister arrived with the British royal couple. The Czechs were not invited to be present at this meeting. Indeed would you advise with the turkey about the way and time you are going to slaughter it?
   Hitler’s proposals were acknowledged as acceptable. On July 22, 1938 England demanded from Czechoslovakia to take all determinate actions to “maintain European peace”. Czechs replied that agree to provide autonomy to Sudeten Germans. However Henlein immediately, on July 29, 1938, addressed the public with the declaration: all the Germans in any country shall obey “only to the German government, German laws and the voice of the German blood”.
   After that speech English diplomacy continued it pressure of the Czechs. On 3 August the authorised representative of Chamberlain, Lord Runciman, arrived in Prague. This impartial mediator in reality had the mission to persuade Czechoslovakia to give away Sudeten land to Germans. The Czechs resisted: they did not want to understand that everything had been decided already. On September 7, 1938 London newspaper Times published an article where it was offered to Czechs not to be obstinate and make everything in a friendly way – “become homogeneous from the national point of view state” [295 - Melnikov, D., Chernaya, N. Criminal Number One. P. 295.].
   The situation around Czechoslovakia was especially curious because except for the agreement between France and Czechoslovakia there also existed an agreement between Czechoslovakia and USSR. In case of attack The Soviet Union had to come to a rescue of the victim of aggression. However there was one interesting snag in the text of the agreement: Moscow was to support Prague only provided the same support would be performed by Paris. At the beginning of September 1938 the French government applied to the government of USSR with a question on its position if Czechoslovakia were attacked. The reply from Moscow was very simple: representatives of USSR, England and France were to get together at a short notice and publish a declaration on behalf of its countries warning that Czechoslovakia would be supported in the event Germany attacked it. As for the Soviet Union, it was ready to fulfil its obligations under the agreement [296 - When the crisis between Germany and Czechoslovakia was at its very height, USSR coordinated its army to battle alert, moved the troops to the Polish border which territory would have to be crossed to support Czechs; the troops included 60 infantry regiments, 16 cavalry divisions, 3 tanks corps, 22 separate tank battalions, 17 squadrons. 330 thousand reservists were sent to the troops and additionally several tens of thousands of soldiers that had completed their service were detained (Bullok, A. Hitler and Stalin. V.2. P. 196).].
   What do you think was the reaction to our proposals? Hard to answer? Then there is another question: Did the countries that had prepared Hitler to attack USSR need this attack never to happen? Did they need Germany to be defeated by joint forces of France, Czechoslovakia and USSR? Did they need Hitler to back off and to stop his approaching to our frontier?
   As the West’s goal was quite different, “Soviet proposals were practically ignored” as Winston Churchill wrote. “These proposals were not used to impact Hitler, they were treated with significant negligence, not to say with defiance which Stalin kept his mind. The events proceeded with its customary routine as if Soviet Union was not existent” [297 - Churchill, W. World War Two V.1. P. 176.].
   Understanding the logics of the British politics, it is not hard to predict the actions of the Western diplomats. Rather “strange” actions of the English who were literally beseeched by the anti-Hitler opposition in Germany “to display intractability on the Sudeten issue” would not seem so surprising any more. In the middle of August 1938 the emissary of the German military with the hard pronounced surname von Kleist Schmenzin arrived in London. In his talks with the British politicians he told Churchill, in particular, that German armament was “not on the high level”. He informed that complete rearmament of Vermacht would be fulfilled in 1943 at the earliest and consequently at that moment England, France and Czechoslovakia could take up a rather hard position in relation to the Third Reich without any serious risk [298 - Ribbentrop, I. von. Memoires of the Nazi Diplomat. Smolensk, 1998. P. 149.]. Churchill wrote in his memoires that “according to the evidences from generals Halder and Jodl during the Munich negotiations only 13 German divisions remained in the West, of them 5 consisted of cadre soldiers” [299 - Churchill, W. World War Two V.1. P. 150.].
   Seeing that London gentlemen were not going to repulse Hitler, head of the German General Staff colonel general Halder in the first days of September 1938 sent the new emissary to London. Lieutenant colonel with another complicated surname as the first delegate, Boehm Tettelbach, had the similar task. “My task was to ask the very narrow circle of major politicians in the English Ministry of Foreign Affairs to be very solid in regards of Hitler’s demands. People that had given me this task reckoned that respond from the English government would be a definite “no” [300 - Cited from book Ribbentrop I. von. Memoires of the Nazi Diplomat. P. 149.], – he later told himself to the newspaper Rheinische Post on July 10, 1948.
   German officers could not get the meaning of the political game. They thought that if the new arguments were provided to the English, they would change their position. Especially if the British were informed that in case of proclaiming the full mobilization in Germany, there was plan of arrest of Adolf Hitler [301 - Schmidt, P. Hitler’s Translator. P. 119.]. Straightforward generals and colonels could not make it out that the “real” politics which they were observing was only the derivative of those solutions that were taken privately and behind the curtain. It didn’t occur to them that “takeover” of Czechoslovakia by Hitler had already been resolved by the United Kingdom and was in the process of fulfilment upon mutual consent. And that Hitler’s arrest would be the collapse of all their thoroughly structured plans…
   Instead of giving the rebuff and taking up the solid and joint position with the USSR, England was continuing to exert additional pressure on Czechs. First the government of Czechoslovakia was offered to annul the agreements with France and USSR. Next the joint English and French note of 19 September offered Prague to transfer to Hitler the Sudeten Land at short notice. “…Further maintaining in the borders of Czechoslovakia state the areas primarily populated by the Sudeten Germans, – the document explained, – cannot be practically continued without endangering the interests of Czechoslovakia and interests of the European world… Keeping peace, safety and live interests of Czechoslovakia cannot be further provided if these areas are not immediately transferred to the German Empire” [302 - Ovsyaniy, I.D. The Secrecy in Which the War was Born. P. 190.]. It was offered to transfer the lands promptly, without holding the plebiscite. The term to respond was also limited – only two days! Because on 22 September the meeting of British Prime Minister Chamberlain and Hitler was planned…
   Think about it: Actions offered to Czechoslovakia were literally the suicide of the whole country. Could that quite independent and really sovereign state agree for something like that? Well, Czechs did agree. Decades have passed since those events. And nobody learnt anything. Again we see in Europe those “independent”, “sovereign” states that are ready to satisfy any fancies of their “older friends”. They will happily allocate on their territories American radars and missiles, without hesitation will send their soldiers to the remote Iraq, will wreck any profitable deal with the Russian state or our private companies. The master just makes a speech and they are sticking their heads into a noose smiling, like in September 1938 Czechoslovakia did…
   We should say to Czechs credit that they did resist. However the turkey before going under the knife, also makes a run around the yard. While this will not change anything since the master has decided to make her the decoration of the table. On September 20, 1938 English and French ambassadors received an answer from Czechoslovakia. It contained a request to reconsider the decision and transfer the issue to be studied by the arbitration procedures in compliance with the Agreement between Czechoslovakia and Germany of 1925 [303 - Ovsyanniy, I.D. The Secrecy in Which the War was Born. P. 206–207.].
   Czechs’ stubbornness could spoil everything. The point was that in case of the military conflict with Germany, France would have to support Czechoslovakia! And in that case USSR could come to the rescue of not only Prague but Paris as well! The system of allies would be in action: Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance of May 2, 1935, Soviet-Czech Agreement of May 16, 1935. And the entire beautiful combination of the West would scatter like a house of cards.
   Meanwhile London and Paris began to lose patience. Evening of the same day, 20 September, English ambassador Newton informed the Czech government that “if they continue persisting, English government will stop getting involved into their fortune”. The French delegate Delacroix supported that threatening warning. But the diplomats would not settle down on that. At two in the morning (!) ambassadors of the “friendly” England and France woke up the Czechoslovak president Beneš. It was their fifth visit for that day. The night guests presented him with a note, and in fact, the real ultimatum: “if they (government of Czechoslovakia. – N.S.) do not accept the English and French plan, the whole world will call Czechoslovakia the only faulty party of the inevitable war” [304 - Melnikov, D.N. Chernaya Criminal Number One. P. 296.].
   On September 21, 1938 the ultimatum of allies was discussed at the session of the Czechoslovak government. It’s decision is not hard to predict. After a little wagging around the yard, the turkey let the master to hold it tightly and carry to the execution spot. There were too many reasons for slaughtering it. The answer to the question “why” we can read in Churchill’s book: “…One should remember such a significant fact: within one year of 1938 Hitler as a result of annexation joint to the Reich and placed under absolute power 6 million 750 thousand Austrians and 3 million 500 thousand of Sudeten Germans – all together over 10 million citizens, workers and soldiers” [305 - Churchill, W. World War Two. V.1. P. 151.].
   On September 29–30, 1938 the notorious Munich Agreement was signed in the Bavarian capital, legally binding the transfer of the Sudeten Land to Germany. The Agreement was signed by Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain and Daladier. Cezch representatives were not invited into the meeting hall where the “masters” were sitting; they were in the next room. And only after all the negotiations and signing procedures had been completed, they were informed what was going to happen to their country. There was such a hurry to sign the Munich Agreement that the inkpot in the room where the world politics was ruled turned out to be empty [306 - Melnikov, D., Chernaya N. Criminal Number One. P. 301.]. As a matter of fact ink and the signatures were just a formality, because everything had already been agreed long ago.

   It is rather interesting what the leaders of the countries were discussing in Munich behind the closed doors. As everything had been decided already, the only question that the British Prime Minister Chamberlain asked was: “Will Czech population that will be moved to the central regions of Czechoslovakia be able to take cattle with them?” Hitler answered: “Our time is too expensive to think about such rubbish!” British Prime Minister said nothing [307 - Ovsyanniy, I.D. The Secrecy in Which the War was Born. P. 199.].

Sudeten Germans greet Führer at the end of 1938

   Ribbentrop, Chamberlain and Hitler during the negotiations in Munich, when Czechoslovakia’s destiny was settled

   On October 1, 1938 German troops entered the territory of Czechoslovakia. There was no resistance in the country. Later, when German generals were inspecting Czech fortifications, they could only nod and say that it was very smart of Führer to resolve that issue peacefully because particularly in Sudetes there were the first-class fortification structures. In case they had to storm the lands, many soldiers would die while approaching the territories [308 - Bullok, A. Hitler and Stalin. V.2. P. 201.]. “During the firing exercises experts were surprised and acknowledged that weapons which they were going to use against that fortifications would not work and would not bring the accepted result” [309 - Speer, A. Memories. M., 1997. P. 169.], – Albert Speer diplomatically wrote in his memoires. In practice such evaluation meant complete impossibility for the German army to storm and defeat Czech fortification. That was the reason why western diplomats were realistic in their estimations of the still modest possibilities of Vermacht and solidly insisted on unconditional surrender of Czechoslovakia!
   Still that was not yet the end of the “turkey’s” sufferings. Right after signing of the Munich Agreement there started the second part of the performance which was never ever described. “…Germans were not the only beasts to tear Czechoslovakia. After the Munich Agreement was executed on 30 September …sh government sent the ultimatum to the Czech government which had to be responded within 24 hours. …sh government demanded to promptly transfer to it the border region Teshin. There was no possibility to resist such a gross demand” [310 - Churchill, W. World War Two. V.1. P. 141.].
   We intentionally missed the name of the country in the quotation of the British Prime Minister that behaved with such a terrible attitude towards Czechoslovakia. What country was it? Fascist Italy? Communistic USSR? Militaristic Japan? Who else among the historians of the World War Tow has only bad references?
   The country that made an offer “impossible to resist” to the Czech government was the government of Poland!
   Just another ally to France as Czechoslovakia! Neither London nor Paris said a single word to protect Czechs in that situation. The “innocent victim” of the future aggression, Poland, behaving as a regular scavenger was in a hurry to nip off a piece of the Czech territory. No later Teshin region occurred in the ownership of Poland. While in 1938 Poland had no sentiments about tearing off the territory of Czechoslovakia, in a year it will be Poland’s turn already… [311 - Churchill wrote about the Poles even more firmly than the author of this book: “…hyenas eagerly took part in the robbery and destruction of the Czechoslovak state” (see the same book. P. 189).]
   Seeing like other countries are enjoying the meal consisting of foreign territory, the Prime Minister of Hungary, Imredy declared that the interests of the Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia were “discriminated”. And he also achieved his goal: On November 2, 1938 Hungary received 12 thousand kilometers of the territory of the Southern Slovakia and a small part of the so-called Transcarpathian Ukraine (Transcarpathia) with the population around 1 million people…
   So who presented to Hitler Vienna and Prague? [312 - Officially in accordance with the Munich Agreement the remains of Czechoslovakia with the magnificent Prague were not transferred to Hitler. But in reality it was also Hitler’s already. Details of this issue will be described in the next Chapter.]
   This question is a very simple one to answer.
   It was done by those who despite their permanent position “suddenly” allowed Austria to be joint to Reich.
   It was done by those who despite the international law in every possible way prevented the legitimate Spanish government to defeat the rebels and persistently did not notice the Italian and German support to the General Franco.
   It was done by those who despite their obligations of the ally did not support Czechoslovakia but on the contrary did everything for Czechoslovakia to surrender.
   It is a little known fact but an interesting detail: the next day after signing the Munich Agreement, the United Kingdom and Germany signed an additional agreement [313 - Ribbentrop, I. von. Memoires of the Nazi Diplomat. P. 152–153.]. English Prime Minister Chamberlain invited Hitler to talk confidentially. He suddenly took out a piece of paper out of his pocket. What was this agreement about? Nothing too important, just a trifle. A little “insurance”. “German Führer and Chancellor and the British Prime Minister came to an agreement that the issue of English and German relations is the priority for the two countries and Europe” – the document declared. The agreement that was signed the day before and English-German naval agreement was considered by the heads of two countries “the symbol of determination” of the two nations “never to fight against each other”!

   Historians tend to forget about this little “insurance”. Guarantee of Hitler’s aggression in the east was supposed to become this unremarkable agreement and not the Munich Agreement which concerned only Czechoslovakia! Many documentaries often show the return of Chamberlain from Munich to London. He stands next to the plane, holds a piece of paper and declares: “This is peace for our generation!” “Peace for our time!” The audience thinks that he holds the Munich Agreement in his hands. While Nevill Chamberlain tightly holds the additional English-German agreement. And in December 1938 similar agreement was signed between France and Germany [314 - Ovsyanniy, I.D. The Secrecy in Which the War was Born. P. 221.].

   That meant that Hitler would be multiplying his military powers only on land, while nothing would prevent Britain from its further naval dominance. English nation had no interest where would the head of the German Vermacht direct the land bulk of its army…
   Aggression of Germany against the USSR was becoming more and more visible. In fall 1938 Hitler and those who brought him up to defeat Russia were departing Munich quite satisfied with each other. It will take only half a year and those who shook hands with Hitler in Munich would call him an aggressor. And it will happen because of… Czechoslovakia.
   That particular moment would become the start of the most interesting period in the world history…

How Adolf Hitler turned into an “impudent agressor” in just one day

   They would laugh at me as a poor prophet. But a vast majority of the laughers are silent now. And those who are still laughing are likely to stop soon [315 - Reich Chancellor Hitler’s speech on the anniversary of the “Beer Putsch”, November 8, Munich, 1942.].
Adolf Hitler

   Ukraine makes part of the USSR. But some part of Ukraine is the territory of other states. Byelorussia makes part of the USSR. But some part of Byelorussia is the territory of other states [316 - Closing remarks on the political report of the VKP(b) Central Committee to the 16th Congress (source: Stalin, J.V. Works. P. 7).].
Joseph V. Stalin

   To be a good judge of the events discussed in this chapter, one has to return to the map to see that the Soviet Union and Germany had no common borders at the time. Hitler was able to attack the USSR only from the territories of some neighboring states. Theoretically, he might have launched a campaign from the Baltic States, Poland and Romania. But such plans were hard to realize. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were independent states created by Great Britain and France from the debris of the Russian empire to ensure a buffer zone between Soviet Russia and Germany. The framework for the British policies after World War I was to oppose an alliance between the two continental powers; such a possibility was Britain’s continual nightmare.

   Rendering assistance in gaining independence and forming a new state with consequent changes on the map is always due to obvious interests of some country or countries. No one would ever assist a country to win political sovereignty just to realize the principle of self-determination or “out of kindness”. At present, the USA is concerned about “building democracy” in Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova, but the aim is not the welfare of these countries. The aim is to create hostile buffer states to encircle Russia. To constitute a precedent “the civilized world” severs Yugoslavia and recognizes Kosovo. In the same fashion, it is willing to recognize the severed parts of our territory.

   It was a lucky game in Germany to bring to power the Nazis headed by the fuehrer that admired Great Britain. But in Russia the situation turned out to be “unfavorable”. Comrade Stalin gained the upper hand of comrade Trotsky and took energetic measures to restore the empire. In this situation, the buffer block between the two states stood in the way of organizing Hitler’s assault on the USSR.
   English policies have always been guided by England’s own benefits. A change in the political situation brings about a change of tactics: the time has come for England to yield “English-born” puppet states to Hitler. The question – why England and France lost ground to Hitler, little by little, – puzzles historians and perplexes analysts. They write about incredible peaceable disposition that infected London and Paris like a disease. But Hitler quarreled with the Western world not because of his aggressiveness, but because of his “inappropriate” (according to the British conception) peacefulness…
   The political map of the then Europe may explain something. The independence of the Baltic countries was only a disguise, the same as in Czechoslovakia; it worked until the beast of prey was out for blood. If Hitler had wanted their territory for attacking the USSR, no doubt, he would have got it, on some pretext or other. But this would have sharply restricted his activity. “The Polish Corridor” (Poland) separated East Prussia from the Reich which ruled out concentrating considerable forces there. An armed conflict with Russia would have put the German troops at a disadvantage, separating the rear from the front-lines and hitching supplies. Thus normal warfighting would have fully depended on the favor of Poland, or, to be more exact, on the goodwill of England and France.
   That was the trouble. Poland, the main British and French ally in East Europe, like Czechoslovakia and the Baltic States, was cut out of the suiting of the Russian and German empires by the victorious Entente. England and France masterminded a prospective war by sending Hitler to the East, having provided the springboard for attack, as well as production facilities and resources [317 - According to the Versailles Treaty, Poland got a strip of land, a former part of East Prussia, the so called Corridor that separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany. The idea was to let Poland gain access to the Baltic Sea. Since the end of the war this territory, now called Kaliningrad Oblast, has been separated from the rest of Russia by Lithuania.].
   Without Poland it would have been impossible to deploy the German troops and thus ensure the potent firepower necessary to crush the USSR. The Germans received evidence of that as early as in autumn 1936 during the Barbarossa-type exercise held by the General Staff. The German General Staff concluded: “No solution concerning the East campaign can be reached without solving the problem of a jumping-off place in East Poland” [318 - Martirosyan, A. Who brought the war to the USSR. P. 416.].
   Consequently, it was crucial for Hitler to carry Poland’s consent and cooperation. Poland was just as “independent” in its decisions, as Czechoslovakia that chose a happy dispatch, like a samurai commanded by his master.
   In the eyes of Hitler, Poland jammed the way to the Soviet borders, like a giant plug. But the British and the French had the power to force that plug out at the right moment so as to let an extended front of the German troops cross our territory. On the right flank of the aggressor, ready to hit Russia, was Romania. Hitler had not yet buddied up to it. But that would come with time. Romania, like Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, was a member of the Little Entente and an ally of Britain and France, not Germany. But to ensure Hitler’s aggression England would not hesitate to give up one more country to the Nazis. Romanian oil was vital for a war of motors that was to come.

   The following facts pour some light on who played the master in Romania. In 1929 the country was hit by a world crisis and borrowed money from English, French and American banks (“stabilization loan”), and in 1931 it borrowed more (“development loan”). The loans were granted on crippling terms, and the country was unable to pay out the interest rates, to say nothing of the debt amount. According to the agreements the creditors obtained significant concessions related to the telephone business, the tobacco industry, the matchmaking, salt making, the production of tissue paper. Romania was as good as bankrupt, and the creditors formed a group of nine experts to establish full control over the state budget and the National Bank. In fact, the country went into receivership. No German bank, though, represented the receivers [319 - World History. V. 22. M., 2001. P. 309–313.].

   What was London’s scenario of the German campaign against Russia? Germany was supposed to attack Russia leaning on its economic, territorial and political facilities. The involvement of the Poles in the conflict was motivated by their cherished dream of “Great Poland” including a considerable part of Ukraine, Byelorussia and Russia. It was possible that Hitler might crush Russia hand over fist, or might get bogged down. That made no difference as long as London had the power “to shut off the spigot”, in due time. Poland was to remain in the rear of the German army and “put down the gate”, at a word of command from London, to leave the Germans without supplies. Then the picture was to change, with the victorious coalition of England, France and the USA joining the fight as a top dog.

   It was 1938 that triggered off the unrestrained weaponization of “the peaceful nations”. Their tall tales about defending themselves against Hitler are untenable. Even the limited armaments they already had were enough, if all they wanted was self-defense. This book explains what they were after. They wanted to stab Hitler in the back and dictate terms to Russia, supposedly drained of resources by the war. “The US preparations for war, at sea and on land, are under way at heightened rates already mounting up to the colossal sum of 1,250 million dollars”, writes E. Pototski, the Polish ambassador in Washington, on January 16, 1939 [320 - Source: Ribbentrop, J. von. Memoirs of the Nazi Diplomat. P. 311–312.]. Three days after Chamberlain brought peace to “our generation” following the idyllic summit in Munich, he plumped for armament at whatever the cost [321 - World History. V. 22. M., 2001. P. 154.].

   Then the Western peacemakers intended to ensure the triumph of “freedom” and “democracy”:
   • in the USSR a shift in power towards “democracy” was supposed to ensure repayment of the late tsar’s debts, denationalization, embezzlement of natural resources including oil, diamonds, timber, etc.;
   • in Germany the generals were supposed to remove Hitler for putting Germany at odds with the civilized world.
   The factor of the Polish troops on the Russian borders, i.e. in the rear of the German expedition army, made the German resistance highly improbable. At this time human rights defenders and journalists were supposed to begin “to see”, all of a sudden, the Nazi atrocities, with the “Nuremberg Trial” that denounced the German Nazism and put to death its leaders (all that really happened later).
   It should be mentioned that by hounding Hitler on Russia the British politicians never thought him to be their equal. Following his slaughterous work in the wide open spaces of Russia, Adolph was supposed to get either the dock or an ampoule with poison. Having done the dirty work of political and ethnic cleansing of Russia, Hitler was to fall into oblivion, while the grateful humankind was to fall for England, France and America for ridding them of the horrors of Nazism. Czechoslovakia, Austria and the Baltic states were supposed to be “independent” and “free” again, until next time when their masters sacrificed them for their geopolitical interests.
   This is a tentative and rather sketchy scenario of a war against the USSR. No one ever mentioned it, because the real events took a different turn and because the future victors of the Second World War, the masterminds of Hitler’s aggression, would have looked too charmless.
   Did the Kremlin know what kind of patience the governments of England and France were playing on the European political table? It did, without doubt. Only a blind person might have overlooked what country Hitler’s Reich put at stake. On March 1, 1936, long before the takeover of Austria and Czechoslovakia, Joseph Stalin was interviewed by the American journalist Roy Howard. One of the questions was: “How do you picture the German aggression against the USSR? In what directions could the German troops move?” The head of the USSR said: “History shows the following picture. If some country wants to wage a war against another country that may not necessarily be a neighboring one, it starts looking for a passage to reach the borders of the country it wants to attack. An aggressive state usually finds such a passage… I don’t know what passage Germany may find for its goals, but I can well imagine those willing “to lend” such a corridor” [322 - Stalin, J. Conversation with Mr. Roy Howard, president of the American newspaper holding “Scripps-Howard Newspapers”. March 1, 1936, Moscow, Partizdat VKPB Central Committee, 1937. P. 6–7 (source: Martirosyan, A.A. Who brought the war to the USSR. P. 461).].
   Joseph Stalin turned out to be right: Hitler was “lent” Austria and Czechoslovakia and was slowly, but surely led to the Soviet borders. Beyond Slovakia (the region of Czechoslovakia) lay Zakarpatye (the Transcarpathian region) that was on the border of the Soviet Ukraine.
   It was more than a territory – it was a pretext.
   Even the most flagrant aggressor, the most bloodthirsty dictator needs a peg to hang a thing on. The more life-like, the better. Hitler did have such a pretext. He was to take over Czechoslovakia with Slovakia that included Zakarpatye as its integral part!
   England gave the fuehrer an ace of trumps by giving him an access to the territory populated by ethnic Ukrainians. Thus he had a stalking horse for his aggression. The USSR had Ukraine, and Germany had Zakarpatye. Is this clear!? A territory might be annexed. Especially, if some independent Ukrainian government pleaded with Adolf Hitler to do this…
   In Munich England and France yielded part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, and they knew beforehand that they would let him take the rest. They counted on a simple trick to violate the Munich guarantee they gave to Czechoslovakia and at the same time to observe their agreement with Hitler. On one occasion the British prime-minister Chamberlain said frankly: “It will be wrong to suggest that we are committed by this guarantee to ensure the existing borders of Czechoslovakia. The guarantee pertains only to unprovoked aggression” [323 - Ovsyany, I.D. The secret of the war trigger assembly. P. 190–193 (see also: The Munich Treaty: Documents on the eve of World War II. 1937–1939. V.1. November 1937 – December 1938. M., 1981. P. 237–239).].
   The West guaranteed the integrity of the remaining part of Czechoslovakia only in case of aggression against it. Thus no guarantee worked, if the country split up on its own! Such was the trick of Hitler’s takeover of Czechoslovakia. Both the aggressor (Germany) and the “appeasers” (England and France) acted according to the plan worked out in advance. Hitler was playing the part of a naughty teenager, while the gentlemen from London and Paris performed benevolent and weak-willed tutors…

   The map of Europe by the September 1, 1939

   One may find something amiss in this speculation because of one little thing: according to the Munich treaty a small part of Zakarpatye was to be taken over by Hungary, not Germany. But the English and the French media of the day would give one the impression that European diplomacy did not set store by that fact. Though Adolph Hitler had not a patch of land inhabited by ethnic Ukrainians, the Western press raised hell provoking Hitler for aggression against the USSR. Solicitous journalists prompting the fuehrer to take a certain course gave it to understand that that course would have widespread support in the major capitals of Europe. “Why would Germany take a risk of war against England and France for their colonies, while in Ukraine it might gain much more?” [324 - Ovsyany, I.D. The secret of the war trigger assembly. P. 223.] – argued Gringoire, a Paris newspaper, on January 5, 1939. It painted a picture, laying it on with a trowel, of piles of foodstuffs, and grain, and mineral resources, awaiting the new occupant of Ukraine, so that it looked like a new bonanza. An that within call, a little over one hundred kilometers!
   The hearsay that Hitler was about to send troops to Ukraine excited the world political stratosphere. Coulondre, the French ambassador in Germany, reported to Paris, referring to his talks with the Nazi leaders: “It looks that the methods and ways are still indefinite, but the general purpose seems to be clear: the creation of Great Ukraine, a Germany’s garner. To this end it is necessary to conquer Romania, reach an agreement with Poland, and detach some territories from the USSR. The German vigour will go to any length to have way, and there is talk in the military circles even about an expedition to the Caucasus and Baku” [325 - It is noteworthy, that Hitler does not yet have a square foot of land, and the French ambassador is already talking about the fuehrer’s subsequent measures related to deploying the German army. To detach Ukraine from the USSR Hitler needs the territories of Romania and Poland. There is not a word about annexing Zakarpatye. Why? Is it because this question has already been discussed and settled? And now the Western diplomats are discussing Hitler’s further steps to realize the military conflict between Germany and the Soviet Union (Ovsyany, I.D. P. 222).].
   But due to an event that happened at that time the course of history changed. On the face of it, that was nothing out of the common. The history of the Soviet Communist party is riddled with congresses and still more with plenums. The March 10, 1939 saw Stalin presenting a current report. Stalin’s report was no ordinary thing, not only because it marked regular TV broadcasting [326 - Early March 1938 saw the first pilot TV-broadcast networked from the Moscow Shabolovka TV centre. The trial show of the film “The great citizen” that highlighted the work of the congress was to pave the way for regular TV broadcasting. The people, though, had no TV-sets to watch the shows.], or because he spoke about war. The war was touched upon by many delegates to the 18th Congress of the VKPB, for example Molotov in his opening remarks, Manuilsky in his report on the work of the Comintern Executive Board, Beria, Chrushchev, Poskrebyshev, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Mekhlis, Shaposhnikov, Budyony, Mikhail Sholokhov, Admiral Kuznetsov. What should attract historians is not the speech of any of these figures, but what Stalin said about war.
   His report is so significant to gain insight into the sequel of events that I must appeal to the reader to hold his/ her breath and peruse the key-notes of Stalin’s speech that I will allow myself to comment on.

   “Let me enumerate the most important developments over the period under review marking the outbreak of a new imperialist war. In 1935 Italy attacks Abyssinia and conquers it. In summer 1936 Germany and Italy arrange a military intervention of Spain, with Germany gaining a foothold in the Spanish Morocco and the North of the country and Italy in the south and Balearic Islands. In 1937 Japan seizes Manchuria, encroaches on North and Central China and occupies Peking, Tientsin and Shanghai, ousting its foreign rivals from the occupation zone. In early 1938 Germany annexes Austria, and in the autumn it seizes Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland. At the end of 1938 Japan seizes Canton and at the beginning of 1939 it occupies the island of Hainan” [327 - Stalin, J. The problems of Leninism. 2nd ed. M., 1946. P. 569.].

   As this book is devoted to Hitler, it will treat only the German aggression. But Japan had similar motives for war: it enjoyed the most-favored nation treatment on the part of England, France and the USA. Having made an assault on China, Japan reached the USSR borders before Germany and came to initiating military action at Khalhin-Gol and Lake Khasan. The two powers were preparing to strike Russia from west and east (one would be interested to know that the Olympic Games following the Berlin Olympics took place in Tokyo).
   Japan has always been our neighbor, but to unleash war it is necessary to prepare footholds and work out a pretext. The conflict in Mongolia satisfied both the demands.

   …“War is inexorable. It can’t be veiled. War is war, a military block is a military block, and an aggressor is an aggressor. The peculiar feature of the new imperialist war is that it is not yet a world war. Wars are unleashed by aggressive states, such as England, France and the USA, constraining non-aggressive states to submit and yield one thing after another. Thus, one can witness a repartition of the world and spheres of influence at the expanse of non-aggressive states, without any resistance and even with a kind of laissez faire on their part. It is incredible, but it is a fact” [328 - Stalin, J. The problems of Leninism. P. 570.].

   It was with concern that the Kremlin watched “the miraculous peacefulness” that had suddenly overcome the greatest world leaders. But Moscow cherished no illusions.

   “What is it that makes the new imperialist war so lop-sided and odd? How could the non-aggressive countries have yielded their positions to the aggressor? Why had they failed, despite their military potential, to meet their obligations? Did they fail to resist because they were weak? Not at all! The collective economic and military potential of the non-aggressive democratic states was undoubtedly greater, than that of the Nazi states.
   What accounts then for the constant cessions of their rights? Maybe, the fear of revolution explains it? But this was not the only and principal cause. The leading cause was renunciation on the part of most non-aggressive states, especially England and France, of collective security and, instead of it, sticking to the principle of non-interference, i.e. neutrality” [329 - Ibid. P. 570–571.].

   Interestingly, Stalin finds that fear of revolution is only the secondary cause of the western compliance. His speech that sounds like a shy brook at the beginning gains momentum, little by little, and by the end turns into a turbulent mountain stream.

   “Formally, the policy of non-interference may be characterized as follows: “may every country defend itself from the aggressor the way it finds fit and according to its capacity; this is none of our business and no concern of ours; so, we’ll do trade both with the aggressor and its victims”. But in reality the policy of non-interference suggests turning a blind eye to the aggressor unleashing war.
   The policy of non-interference implies the idea of appeasing the aggressor, letting him do evil; thus it suggests keeping out of the way when Japan rushes into war against China, or when Germany launches a war against the Soviet Union after making a mess of European politics. This policy causes the opponents to be mired in conflict, encouraging each party on the quiet, to let them exhaust each other. Then, after they become weak enough, the policy-maker comes to the foreground with fresh troops, naturally, “in the interests of peace”, and dictates his terms to the war parties. Cheap and easy! [330 - Stalin, J. The problems of Leninism. 2nd ed. M., 1946. P. 570–571.]

   Standing at the rostrum, Stalin straightforwardly discloses the western scheming, which would never be realized, but which, at that time, was the major threat to the state that he headed. Why wasn’t that threat realized? Because Stalin tells Hitler above board what is in store for him: exhausted in the war against the USSR, the Germans, as well as the Japanese, will be brought pressure to bear on by “non-aggressive states” following the “non-interference policy”.

   “They gave way to Germany by letting it seize Austria despite their commitment to safeguard its sovereignty and Sudetenland. They left Czechoslovakia to sink or swim, violating all their obligations and then lying in the mass media about “the weakness of the Russian army”, about “the cachexy of the Russian air force”, about “the disorders” in the Soviet Union, encouraging the Germans to move farther to the East and tempting them with easy game. The general purport was that once Germany rushed into war with Russia, it would be all plain sailing. No doubt, this gives an incentive to the aggressor and stirs up trouble”.
   Conspicuous is the hullabaloo of the Western press over Soviet Ukraine. They screamed themselves hoarse about Germany going east, about Zakarpatye with its 700 thousand population that the Germans already had at their disposal, about the German annexation of Soviet Ukraine with its 30 million no later than in spring. It looks that this media frenzy aimed at enraging the Soviet Union against Germany poisons the atmosphere and stirs up a conflict with Germany without reasonable justification” [331 - Ibid. P. 572.].

   No comment is necessary. Stalin’s appeal to Hitler is transparent: they provoke you to attack us and provoke us to defend. And when we get bogged down in the war, they will come to divide our natural resources and shear Germany again. Do you want this, Adolf Hitler? Have you established your party to get Germany from the abyss into which the corrupt Weimar politicians had shoved for that end?
   Then Stalin sets off a terrible information bomb. For the sake of absolute clarity he addresses Hitler directly!

   “Still more conspicuous is the fact that some politicians and journalists of Europe and the USA, weary of anticipating a military campaign against Soviet Ukraine”, are themselves beginning to reveal the real cause of the non-interference policy. They communicate the true information and write in black and white about their disappointment with Germany, because the Germans, instead of going east against the Soviet Union, have turned west claiming colonies for their nation. One might think that the Germans have been granted the western regions of Czechoslovakia for levying war on the Soviet Union, and now Germany won’t settle the bill and gives the civilized West the brush-off.
   I am far from expatiating on the topic of the non-interference policy and talk about treachery. It would be naïve to moralize to the people who reject moral values. Politics is politics, as the old hard-boiled bourgeois diplomats say. It should be noted, though, that the big and hazardous political game kicked off by the adherents of the hands-off approach may end in a setback.
   That’s what’s behind non-interference, the prevailing European policy. That’s the current political situation in the leading capitalist countries [332 - Stalin, J. The problems of Leninism. P. 572.].

   In point of fact, Joseph Stalin, addressing the delegates to the Congress, summarized what had been going on in the world politics since his victory over Lev Davidovich Trotsky. Most historians are grossly mistaken thinking that the head of a state communicates with the head of hostile state through mass media, thinking that proposals of peace, alliance and friendship are made first at party congresses, or during parliament debates, or at press-conferences.
   A direct or indirect address of a state leader to another state leader in a public utterance never suggests initiating an official contact or a proposal to initiate such a contact! It is no secret that besides official state diplomacy there is also quiet diplomacy that engages, instead of foreign ministers or ambassadors, some inconspicuous or obscure figures who start discussing perspectives of mutual relations between their countries. After long talks in a café or a tap-room in search of compromise, these figures begin to see how the land lies and then they get the green light from their leaders and, in a while, one of the leaders “suddenly” makes a public declaration that becomes a pivotal point in state-to-state relations.

   There is a modern example of “beer diplomacy” that handles global problems: a private meeting between Fomin (his real name was Alexander Feklistov), a Soviet counselor of the embassy in Washington and a KGB agent from the external intelligence department, and John Skulley, an American journalist from the ABC TV company, an authorized representative of President Kennedy. Their supper in the Washington restaurant “Occidental” paved the way for the compromise settlement of the Caribbean crisis and prevented a large-scale nuclear war [333 - Vash tainiy sovetnik, №42 (271). 05.11.2007.].

   Those who doubt it may look back at Hitler’s way to power complicated by numerous clandestine activities that may do credit to a popular thriller. Remember all the “genius” decisions of the fuehrer in his foreign politics. These decisions were due to his foresight, they resulted from simple knowledge of the way his “appeasers” were going to act. Who told him that France would not bring troops to the Rhineland? Who guaranteed London’s acquiescence at the news of Germany’s fast M-day build-up? Did the British and French ambassadors say anything like that? Naturally, they didn’t. All this came as the result of quiet diplomacy [334 - Some documents of the Nazi leadership concerning the problem of Czechoslovakia reveal the fuehrer’s “foresight of genius”. The Reichschancellor’s conference a year before the shameful capitulation of Czechoslovakia saw Hitler’s clear view of the Western policies: “The fuehrer thinks, that with great probability one may state that England and, conceivably, France have quietly filed Czechoslovakia away in storage and will be satisfied at Germany’s solution of the problem” (Yakobsen, G.-A. 1939–1945. The second world war // World War II: Two Approaches. P. 81).].
   No one ever informs the official diplomatic circles of their behind-the-scenes activity, because it may contradict the official position of the government. Why should the British ambassador in Germany know of England’s long-lasting complicated operation of Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union? He is supposed to obey the commands of his ministry and make public the position of his government in Berlin and present protest notes, though, unofficially, the fuehrer had long got the West European sanction for his impudent policies and knew quire well that the West would not respond.
   Behind-the-scenes talks used to be a common thing long before the 20th century and cannot be put down to any particular culture. In the medieval history of Europe, one may find quite a number of references of secret missions, mysterious messengers and unexpected changes in the political climate. It doesn’t pay to get involved in the maze of history, as one can always find evidence of quiet diplomacy, even from come-at-able library books.
   “In April 1938 the NKVD resident agent Ribkin stationed in Finland was summoned to the Kremlin where he was entrusted by the Politburo to do a special task… He was instructed to make a proposal concerning a mutual agreement to the Finnish government behind the back of the Soviet ambassador. Stalin emphasized that the aim to conduct was a search, so the proposal was to be made unofficially, i.e. without intermediary of the ambassador. Ribkin did as he was told to do. But the agreement was turned down. Nevertheless, it triggered off a discord in the Finnish leadership, and later Russia took advantage of it by making separate peace with Finland” [335 - Sudoplatov, P.A. Special operations. Lubyanka and the Kremlin in 1930–1950. P. 75.].
   Pavel Sudoplatov was one of the chiefs of the Soviet security services and had the right to know a lot of things that even senior government officials didn’t know. But there were things that were a peg too high even for him. For example, he didn’t know anything about the subcurrent of the non-aggression pact with Germany: “Yet the non-aggression pact with Hitler was signed with dispatch that amazed me: only two days before signing the pact I was missioned to look for ways of peaceful settlement of our relations with Germany. We continued sending our strategic proposals to Stalin and Molotov at the time, when the treaty had already been signed: Stalin had held the talks in utmost secrecy” [336 - Ibid. P. 77.] (emphasis added. – N.S.).
   We are most unlikely to find out who and when initiated the secret contacts between Germany and the USSR. But such information is of less significance than the fact that such contacts had taken place. The excellent relations between the USSR and the Weimar Republic changed for extremely bad relations, when Hitler came to power. Yet, in the early 30-ies they began to improve without any obvious diplomatic measures: the leaders of both the states never met at high level, never shook hands; instead, they cursed each other. Within 11 months of 1933 the Soviet embassy in Berlin sent to the German home ministry 217 protest notes [337 - Martirosyan, A.P. 434.], i.e. 20 notes a month! It so happens that except on their days off and holidays the Soviet diplomats protested every day!
   The economic relations between the two countries had been seriously damaged. During the first half of 1933 the Soviet export to Germany was reduced by 44 %. Then Hitler’s government declared the bi-lateral trade agreement signed on May 2, 1932 null and void [338 - Ibid. P. 434.]. After taking office Hitler took pains to clear the German market from Soviet supplies. What did the USSR export to Germany? Essentially, it was the same power product that is exported by today’s Russia to today’s Germany. The lion’s share of the Weimar republic’s demands for oil and hydrocarbons was satisfied by Soviet supplies. To this end, they set up joint venture companies, such as Derunaft (Deutsche-Russische Naphtagesellschaft) that dealt in oil and Derop that dealt in gasoline and kerosene. After the Nazi party came to power, the USSR was promptly ousted from the market which availed the western oil monopolies and Germany’s new economic policy.

   The Derop Company that served about 2,000 filling stations all over Germany was boycotted. Its board of directors and local branches in Berlin, Cologne, Dresden, Stuttgart, Munich and other cities of Germany were raided and searched. The employees, particularly the Soviet citizens, were detained, humiliated and released for failure of evidence. The Derop fuel stations, too, were robbed and destroyed by motorized storm-troopers, with the fuel being either made boot, or just let to leak away. Hitler was told to give out the order “to open a can of worms”, when he saw Soviet filling stations. Both politically and economically, this order seems to lack common sense [339 - Gorlov, S.A. Top Secret. The Moscow-Berlin Alliance: 1920–1933. P. 296–297.].

   Is it reasonable to make war preparations against the USSR and keep importing its oil? The next day after the war breaks out, Stalin will turn off the taps to bring the whole German army to a standstill. But the problem is erased with supplies coming from the USA and Great Britain. Instead of Soviet benzene the fuel for Hitler’s tanks and planes will come from other sources: “Before the war one third of all the filling stations in Germany belonged to a German-American joint venture, one fourth was owned by Standard Oil, and the rest belonged to I.G. Farbenindustrie and the English trust Royal-Dutch Shell. Standard Oil was instrumental in storing up the amount of fuel worth 20 million dollars and building a refinery producing avgas [340 - Ovsyany, I.D. P. 44–45.].
   In April 1933, as well as on August 10 and November 1, 1934 Germany and England signed a number of bilateral conventions: a coal agreement, a trade agreement, a monetary understanding and a pay accord. According to the latter, England was to buy German goods to the tune of 100 pounds for every 55 pounds spent by Germany on buying English goods [341 - Martirosyan, A.P. 438–439.]. Germany had the right to convert the margin into pounds and spend it for buying any goods in the world market. It means that since Hitler came to power the British government had been pumping money into the German economy. That was partly the cause of the German “economic miracle”. At the same time the trade turnover was liable to change, because England knew quite well which side her bread was buttered on. In 1937 Nazi Germany bought British goods to the tune twice as much as two continents rolled into one and four times as much as the USA [342 - Preparata, G.D. Hitler Inc. How Britain and the USA made the Third Reich. P. 229–230.].
   In the meantime, the relations between the USSR and Germany soured. In the background of the obvious political animosity and economic unfriendliness of the Third Reich the USSR takes a curious move: “It is necessary that comrades Mikoyan, L.M. Kaganovich, M.M. Kaganovich, Tevosyan, Sergeyev, Vannikov and Lvov should submit for consideration a list of indispensible technical facilities to be ordered on account of German credit” [343 - Decree of the Politburo of the VKPB Central Committee dated January 21 1939b №67/187 (source: Bezimeski, L.A. Hitler and Stalin before the fight. M.: Veche, 2000. P. 184).].
   Judging by the quote, the Politburo did not doubt the positive response from Germany. However, there was no “trade boom” between the two countries. The names are remarkable, too: M.M. Kaganovich supervised the line of aircraft manufacturing, I.F. Tevosyan was in charge of shipbuilding, I.P. Sergeyev was responsible for war stores (!), B.L. Vinnikov managed the production of armaments, and V.K. Lvov was the Minister of Engineering. The scope of activity of these top managers suggests that they were not going to buy toys or Christmas decorations. So why was Stalin so confident that the indispensible military equipment might be ordered in Germany, the dominant potential adversary of the Soviet Union? Who was able to guarantee that Germany, building up armaments to attack the USSR, would be executing the Soviet military orders?
   Diplomatic correspondence will leave these questions unanswered; one had better look for the answers in the secret contacts between Germany and Russia that started in 1938. It looks that the head of the Third Reich was beginning to realize what he was in store for thanks to his “friends” from the European capitals. He was not ready to go to war on the Western terms, with the Polish bottle-neck in the rear of his army. Now that Germany had gained strength, he could afford to make his own terms instead of unquestionable acting in the interests of those who had brought him to power. It was then that the Soviet-German secret negotiations began to be realized…
   We do not know the names of the negotiators. But they carried out their mission well, because on December 22, 1938 the Germans proposed to the Soviet trade agency in Berlin to sign an agreement. Germany offered extremely beneficial terms: a loan amounting to 200 million marks would make it possible for the USSR to buy German manufactured goods and was to be returned within two years by supplying raw materials to Germany. It was absurd to offer such easy terms to a potential enemy. One would never credit the would-be victim of attack; on the contrary, one would sooner borrow from him. Why would the German Nazi government take such a fancy to the Russian Bolsheviks?
   The backstage negotiations must have been a success. The parties came to an understanding that explains the seemingly curious optimism of the Politburo decree based on the German proposals. A quest for a compromise was hardly an easy job, because Germany and the USSR pursued absolutely different aims. Stalin found it essential to get in touch with the potential aggressor that was gradually moving towards the Soviet borders in order to try to change the direction of this movement, to redirect it against the nurturers of the German Nazism. Germany’s economy was all militarized, war was exigent to ruin Russia, but Hitler was trying to launch it in the most favorable conditions. It should be borne in mind that Stalin had no alternative to normalizing relations with Germany; England and France had no intention of striking up “friendships” with Moscow with the view of averting the rising Nazi threat in Europe. The German leader must have felt like a bride being talked into choosing the right groom – either from the West (which meant sticking to the old scenario of attacking Russia, or from the East (which meant rewriting the whole play from cover to cover).
   Both covertly (at first) and overtly (later) the Soviet diplomacy was making headway and finalized by entering into the Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact. At the same time the British negotiators showed uncompromising attitude at their talks with Germany; as a result, Hitler decided to break his deal with the West. What kind of commitments the German fuehrer had violated seems to be the most exciting page in the history of preparations of World War II…
   Britain’s “peace-makers” and Germany’s “aggressors” gave a short notice to the rest of Czechoslovakia before it was swallowed up. On October 1, 1938 Germany occupied the Sudetenland and by mid-May 1939 assumed control of the whole country. To learn more about this one can turn to history books which will also define Hitler’s behavior as treacherous and explain the “sudden clarification” of England and France, although it was obvious from the career of the Bohemian private first-class [344 - That was how the German President Paul von Hindenburg named Hitler, giving his blessing to Hitler’s chancellorship. The fuehrer came from Austria, while Bohemia, a Czech region, belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Someone told Hindenburg that Hitler was a Bohemian, and wrong as it was the president kept this name for Adolf Hitler whom he did not like very much.] that he was by nature “a treacherous aggressor” and an incurable liar. History books lie, too, trying to cover up the harsh truth.
   Hitler’s treachery and aggressiveness toward his Western partners and “creators” consists not in annexing the rest of Czechoslovakia, but in NOT HAVING DONE IT!
   To understand this remarkable paradox one has to project oneself into that period of time, but not to London, or Paris, or the newly-built pompous Reich Chancellery that Hitler occupied in Berlin. One ought to picture oneself in Bratislava, a bohunk town, or to Hust [345 - “The first division” of Czechoslovakia in November 1938 resulted in the cession of Zakarpatye with the cities of Uzhgorod and Mukachevo to Hungary; Hust was the capital of the remaining part of Zakarpatye in Czechoslovakia.], an even more provincial-looking town in Zakarpatye; in a flash, these towns became centers of world political intrigues…
   It should be remembered that the guarantees to Czechoslovakia given by Hitler were invalid in case of its dissolution. Consequently, it was necessary to build up the situation of irreconcilable differences inside the country within the shortest possible time to cause that dissolution. So separatism broke out like there’s no tomorrow. In comparison to the feud that rose between Czechs and Slovaks, the two brotherly nations, Shakespeare’s plays might seem rather dull. In 1918, when the new state of these brotherly Slavonic nations emerged from the shambles of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, it seemed inconceivable that the Slovaks would opt for separation. In the Habsburgs’ monarchy the Czech territory made part of Austria, and Slovakia was part of Hungary. After breaking from the “bonds” of the Empire, the Czechs and Slovaks declared Czechoslovakia a united and indivisible republic.

   A historical paradox: when Hitler interfered in the Spanish war, humiliated the Jews in Germany and had the skulls of his fellow-citizens measured, the West took him to be a respectable politician. But scarcely had he refused to attack the USSR and swallow Zakarpatye, when he turned into “an impudent aggressor”

   But after the cession of Sudetenland the Slovaks began to hunger after independence [346 - Melnikov, D., Chernaya, N. Criminal number 1.P. 304.].
   Prague promised the Slovaks autonomy and carried out the pledge: a new law was adopted on November 19, 1938 that recognized Slovakia’s autonomy including Ruthenia [347 - The German name for Zakarpatye.], part of Slovakia populated by ethnic Ukrainians. That was Transcarpathia, the land that Hitler wanted badly on order to engineer a war against the USSR.
   If some politicians in London or Paris really wanted to save Czechoslovakia they might have taken pains to avert the Slovak separatism. How? It sufficed to declare that they would never admit Slovakia’s independence [348 - Transcarpathia was no big deal. Once Slovakia remains an integral part of Czechoslovakia, Transcarpathia remains, too.]. Most European countries of the then period took their lead from England and France. So, of London or Paris should make such a declaration, it would shake the resolution of Bratislava to gain independence. But the western diplomats kept sitting at home…
   The German newspapers, that only yesterday resented the violation of rights in Sudetenland on the part of the Czech government, now began to cry buckets over the sorry lot of the Slovaks. Tiso and Durchanski, the leaders of separatists deliberately appealed to Hitler to defend their country from the Czech “oppression”. The leaders of Zakarpatye acted in the same way. Their self-appointed government declared independence of the country. The developments fitted in the scenario. The dissolution of Czechoslovakia was now a hard fact. Slovakia declares independence and breaks away, while Zakarpatye as part of this territory breaks away from Slovakia. Then the newly-proclaimed states appeal to Hitler to defend their sovereignty and the Fuehrer virtually incorporates them into the Third Reich [349 - Adolf Hitler violated the agreements their contents are inaccessible. Possibly, Slovakia was supposed to remain actually independent, with Zakarpatye actually incorporated into the Third Reich. But from the point of view of deployment of troops it was more expedient to swallow Slovakia, as well.]. The rest of Czechia – as a convenient jumping-off ground to attack the USSR – Hitler annexed without firing a shot:
   • the borders of the Third Reich came very close to the Soviet Ukraine separated from it only by a thin belt of 140–150 kilometers (Poland’s West Ukraine) [350 - The Soviet Union made some adjustments after World War II. Therefore, the situation of 1938–1939 does not conform to the modern maps, as the present-day Slovakia shares borders with Ukraine.];
   • Germany had a splendid opportunity to deploy troops on its newly-won territory;
   • under the circumstances the USSR could only watch the German troops gearing themselves for war, but could not take any preventive measures without violating Poland’s sovereignty.
   After deploying the troops and mounting an all-out attack, it was easy for Hitler to find a pretext due to Ukrainian nationalists. For example, the Soviet part of Ukraine might appeal to Hitler to liberate the people from the yoke of Bolsheviks. Besides, it was possible to set up a kind of protectorship named “Ukraine” to incorporate all its parts. In short, Hitler had a lot of variants at his disposal, the main condition being incorporation of Slovakia and Zakarpatye into his empire. That was the key problem he was faced with.

   There was preparation work being done: as early as in 1929 champions of independence working for nearly all European intelligence services set up an organization of Ukrainian nationalists (OUN) headed by Colonel Eugene Konovalets. The organization united all those striving for “an independent and free Ukraine”. Konovalets twice met with Hitler who suggested that his adherents take a training course in the Leipzig Nazi Party School. The USSR was trying to keep on top of the developments. May 23, 1938 saw Pavel Sudoplatov planted into the OUN, as Pavlusya Valyukha made Konovalets “a present” – a box of chocolates with a bomb inside. So Konovalets died from the explosion in a Rotterdam café. He was substituted by another leader, Andrey Melnik, who had neither experience, nor charisma. Therefore, in the period 1938–1939 The OUN organization broke into two fractions, one headed by Melnik and the other by Bandera, after shoot-outs among the rank-and-file activists that claimed the lives of thousands.

   On March 13, 1939 during the visit of the leader of the Slovak nationalists to Berlin he was instructed to call a special session of the Slovak parliament (Seim) to declare the independence of Slovakia. Next day Slovakia’s premier made this declaration in parliament. The attempts of some delegates to discuss the question were nipped in the bud. Thus, March 14, 1939 saw an independent Slovakia. As expected, the new state immediately appealed to Hitler for defense. It is clear as daylight: there is but one step from an appeal for defense to annexation. Thus, the rest of Czechia was annexed after the annexation of Sudetenland. On the day when Slovakia’s Independence was declared following the dissolution of Czechoslovakia (March 14, 1939), the ex-president Gaha, having lost half his territory, come to Berlin.
   From a book devoted to Hitler’s biography one may learn, how the malicious fuehrer forced the Czech president suffering from a heart disease to yield his country to the Germans. The author of such a book tries to give a false impression that Czechoslovakia was against it. In fact, the decision passed off without a hitch. Mr. Gaha came to Berlin on his own initiative that was made public as early as March 13, i.e. before Slovakia’s declaration [351 - Shirer, W. The rise and fall of the Third Reich. P. 322.]. His train arrived in Berlin at 22.40. He was received as a distinguished guest, the way that suited the head of a state, with a guard of honor, welcomed by Joachim von Ribbentrop, Minister of Foreign Affairs, who gave the ex-president’s daughter a bunch of flowers. Then they took Gaha to Adlon, Berlin’s best hotel [352 - The ex-president took one of the best accommodations in the hotel where his daughter found the fuehrer’s pleasant surprise – a box of chocolates. Hitler was fond of sweets and thought them the best as a gift.].
   Gaha saw Hitler in his study at one a quarter past one a.m. One would make a blunder to suggest that Gaha spoke about the right of his nation to sovereignty. He spoke quite the opposite and even went as far as to say that he often wondered if Czechoslovakia should be an independent country. That reduced him to asserting the absurdity that he was unalarmed about the fate of his country as it was in the fuehrer’s hands [353 - Ribbentrop, J. von. Memoirs of a Nazi diplomat. M., 1998. P. 158.].
   After Gaha entrusted the fate of his country to the fuehrer, the latter lost control of himself. He was a tangle of emotions. “He rushed into the rooms of his secretaries and kissed them. “My children, – he said, – today’s the greatest day in my life. I’ll go down in history as the greatest of all Germans” [354 - Bullock, A.P. 219 (incidentally, it is worth noting that in this case it was not immodesty on Hitler’s part. He simply repeated the headlines of the British papers quoting their premier Chamberlain who said that the fuehrer was “the greatest German of our epoch”. Source: Preparata, G.D. Hitler Inc. How Britain and the USA made the Third Recih. P. 348).].

   During the whole war there were no guerillas, nor subversive activities, nor large-scale sabotage in Czechoslovakia. The Czechs were peacefully working for the benefit of the Third Reich, enjoying their favorite beer after working hours. To stir up opposition England sent a raiding force including Kubish and Gabchik to kill Reinhard Heydrich, an SS general and the head of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The details of his assassination prove that there was no guerilla movement in Czechia even 3 years after the occupation! Heydrich was moving in an open car, the only other person being his driver, his holstered pistol at his side the only weapon. He paid for his indiscretion. After killing Heydrich the raiders found no better way to do than hide at a Prague church. The Germans arrested 11 raiders; only one agent managed to get away clear, they chased him as far as a village, where he managed to escape with the help of some residents. His name remains secret. But Lidice, the name of that village, associated with massacre, has gone down in the history of the war. As an act of retaliation, the Germans killed all the men of the village. The following two years was a quiet period again. Only when the war against Germany weighed down the balance, the independent Slovakia (not the occupied Czechia!) rebelled against the occupation (August 1944). The Czechs rose in rebellion only on May 5, 1945, which was a laugh, as it was just before the surrender of the garrison of Berlin (May 2) and Germany’s capitulation only a week later (May 8). Comment is needless.

   Hitler’s joy over the news was remarkable. The Czech president requests Hitler to protect Czechia; as a result, he constitutes the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia as an integral territory of the Third Reich! Tiso, the Slovak leader, makes a similar request. It took Hitler only one night to settle the Czech question, unlike the Slovak application that required a longer time. Hitler acceded to their request only on March 16. It may be assumed that he spent some time on analyzing the situation in Czechia after the dissolution of the country. Yet the solution of the Slovak problem shows no ordinary qualities of Germany’s leader. Usually quick in taking decisions, this time Hitler lingers as if deliberately leaving the matter in abeyance.
   His positive response to Bratislava’s appeal (March 16) does not clear up the status of the Slovak state. Instead of summoning the leaders of the two states to Berlin to sign up the necessary papers, he goes to Vienne (March 18) [355 - Bullock, A.P. 219.]. “The Defense Pact” between the Reich and Slovakia was signed on March 23 in Berlin by Ribbentrop and the Slovak minister Tuka [356 - Shirer, W.P. 325.].
   Thus England and France did not know until lunchtime on March 23, if Slovakia would be integrated into the Third Reich.
   Hitler spent 9 days (!) trying hard to give the false impression that Slovakia would not be integrated. Why? Because he decided to outdo his Western partners. During the second Czech crisis the British and French negotiators agreed that Hitler would occupy Czechia, Slovakia and Zakarpatye. As a matter of fact, Hitler annexed only Czechia. Neither Slovakia, nor Zakarpatye were incorporated into the German Empire. The territorial growth of Germany had not yet paved the way for Germany’s aggression against the USSR.
   At the 18th Congress of the VKP(b) J. Stalin said: “You’d think that Germany got some territories of Czechoslovakia as a price to launch war against the Soviet Union, and now the Germans refuse to settle the bill and give their partners the brush-off”. Stalin spoke on March 10, 1939. Four days before the declaration of Slovakia’s independence (March 14) Stalin foretold and accurately estimated Hitler’s conduct! Was he a clairvoyant? Did this remark in Stalin’s official speech make Hitler change the scenario? Most likely, the quiet diplomacy had born fruit, and Joseph Stalin already knew that Hitler was going to disappoint his friends in London and Paris. The West, as it turned out later, did not manage to respond, because Hitler’s moves at first fully fitted in “the deal” and only later showed a change of the scenario.
   On the night of March 15, 1939 the German troops crossed the border of Czechoslovakia and occupied the whole territory, except Transcarpathia. Instead of deploying the troops near the Soviet borders, Germany detaches itself from the USSR by the territories of the independent states of Slovakia and Hungary that shared Transcarpathia!
   According to most modern historians and contemporaries the British and French political circles estimated Hitler’s decision of March 15 as a fatal mistake [357 - “Early in the fatal day of March 15, 1939” is a typical assessment (source: Schmidt, P. Hitler’s translator. P. 164).]. No one can realize the genuine tenor implying this phrase.
   The West took a tough line toward Hitler not because of his annexation of Czechia, but because of his “non-annexation” of Slovakia and “non-occupation” of Transcarpathia! It blighted the plans of a prompt aggression against the USSR. The West encouraged German Nazism, and agreed that Hitler should hold the Olympic Games, and closed the eyes to Germany’s large-scale rearmament and involvement in the Spanish war, and ceded to Hitler the territories of sovereign states. But its aim was not just to strengthen Germany in the political and military way.

   As a matter of fact, Hitler played a trick on everybody: he joined Bohemia and Moravia to the Third Reich, subordinated Slovakia economically and made a territorial gift to Hungary. France lost an ally and its prestige. Czech labor went to the Reich for better payments: by June 1, 1939 there were 40,000 thousand such workers. The same number of German workers could get into khaki and join the German Wehrmacht that included three tank divisions fitted out by Czech tanks and trucks [358 - Bullock, A.P. 212–213.].

   It is necessary now to analyze the situation in Zakarpatye. At first sight, there was nothing out of the ordinary, the mighty German Reich encouraging the local separatists and friendship burgeoning between Ukrainian nationalists and German Nazis. All that was supposed to result in incorporating a territory into Germany that might further extend at the expense of Kiev, Poltava and Kharkov.
   The preparation of the “Ukrainian bridgehead” began in due time. On October 27, 1938 in less than a month after joining Sudetenland, Augustine Voloshin was made the new premier of Zakarpatye. On November 9, 1938 he founded “The Organization of People’s Defense – the Carpathian Sich” (OPDCS), a force of local militants. The aim of these guerillas was not to defend their towns and villages from the Czechs, but to form something in the nature of a guerilla army to bring “freedom” to the inland of Soviet Ukraine. This explains the attitude to the OPDCS. Prague did not prevent from forming guerilla groups. More so, the Czechs even reached an agreement with Augustine Voloshin about training these groups by Czech officers. To arm the guerillas working for separation from Czechoslovakia the central government supplied them with weapons of the local Czech National Guards (Domombranstvo). The ball was set rolling so nicely that the 2nd Congress of the OPDCS was a military parade of 10,000 militants marching across the town of Hust. Now that they had formed the main body of the Ukrainian army it was time to form state bodies for the sake of legitimacy.
   The first thing to do was to name their country. On December 30, 1938 A. Voloshin’s government made a pleasant surprise to the German fuehrer: Carpathian Ukraine – that was the official name of the autonomy. Before that, Zakarpatye “tried on” a few names, such as Podcarpathian Rus, Carpathian Rus, Zacarpathian Rus, Ugorskaya Rus, Podcarpatye. All of them were no good, because the aim of the expedition was Soviet Ukraine, and the name of the autonomy was to be associated with Ukraine, not Rus (Russia) [359 - Zakarpatye is, indeed, Carpathian Rus. But the issue concerning the ethnic status of its population has not been settled, so, it is not clear which term – Ukrainian, or Russian, or Russinian – is more appropriate. In modern “democratic” Ukraine they deny such a nationality as Russinian.].
   In February 1938 the process of legitimation is in progress: they hold elections and form local administrative bodies which consist of only adherents of separation from Czecho-Slovakia [360 - On November 22, 1938 Prague recognized the autonomies of Zakarpatye and Slovakia, and Czechoslovakia was renamed into Czecho-Slovakia. But the hyphen in the country’s name did not save it from separation. What could have saved it was political determination that Prague lacked.]. There is no doubt about Augustine Voloshin’s partisanship. The head of the autonomy ordered that Main Kampf should be circulated about Zakarpatye. All the political parties, except Ukrainian National Union headed by Voloshin, were banned [361 - Prohibition on the activities of the political parties clearly points to the father of this method. First of all they banned the communist party (“the hand of Moscow”) and social democrats (“the hand of the West”).].
   Zakarpatye’s leadership had a special leaning toward the Germans. “All the citizens of the German nationality are allowed to join the German Party… form normal structures within this party and carry insignias and banners with the swastika emblem” [362 - Kiyevsky telegraf. №234.]. On February 2, 1939 this “top secret” decree signed by Voloshin reached all the government branches. Formally, plurality and multiplicity were still there, because the political system admitted two parties: UNO (Ukrainian Nationalist Organization) and NSDAP, the party of German nationalists.
   Only Ukrainian nationalists had a right to nominate a candidate for parliament. There were 32 candidates for 32 parliamentary seats sanctioned by “monsignor” (Voloshin). To adapt the poll to the system of “the elder German brother” Voloshin set up his own concentration camp Dumen near the town of Rakhov. That was “a solution” for all dissidents and political opponents.
   It is black and white that Voloshin rendered obedience to Hitler. When the German fuehrer gave Zakarpatye away to Hungary instead of supporting the independence of Zakarpatye, Augustine ran away to Romania and then to Yugoslavia. He could have gone to any country, but finally he chose Germany. For some time he stayed in Berlin and then left for Prague that was to a great extent a German city. An absolutely free man, he worked as a lecturer at UFU (Ukrainian Free University). When Germany attacked the USSR, he appealed to Hitler for taking the position of the president of Ukraine. He also recommended the German fuehrer to liquidate the Orthodox Church and replace it by the Catholic Church. At the end of the war this “champion of freedom” was arrested by the Soviet intelligence service and died in prison.
   Naturally, such “democratic” elections in the spirit of German National Socialism bore the expected fruit. The “Parliament” in the town of Hust declared the independence of Zakarpatye on March 14, 1939 following Slovakia’s separation. But the events that happened later did not fit in the scenario. The German fuehrer made believe to be a sworn friend of Ukrainian nationalists to betray them as soon as he no longer needed to play-act before the West. The pro-German Zakarpatye worshipped and swore allegiance to Adolf Hitler as if he were their “father” and God.
   Yet, Hitler who supported the Slovaks did not support the Ukrainians. Right after the declaration of independence the first president of Zakarpatye went on the run, because the 150 thousand-strong Hungarian army encroached upon Transcarpathia [363 - The all-Ukrainian newspaper “Dien” (“Day”). №69. 16.04.1999.]. The state friendly to Germany had not been long-lived; it took only 100 hours to be liquidated by another state friendly to Germany!
   To avoid bloodshed the Hungarian government sent their parliamentarian to Hust with the bid for disarmament. The German ambassador von Voinovich demanded that The Ukrainians capitulate, but they refused. The armed groups of nationalists put up heroic resistance preventing the Hungarians from entering their “capital” to let “the government” run away. The militants were rather numerous – about 15 thousand men, with 15 tanks in the inventory [364 - Chuyev, S. The cursed soldiers: the traitors on the side of the Third Reich. M., 2004. P. 328.]. But most Ukrainians were armed only with rifles and pistols. They held the front against Hungary’s standing army well equipped with artillery and other weaponry. Notwithstanding that, the Hungarian troops got bogged down in fighting, as they never expected the Czech military training to have turned the Ukrainian militants into an impressive force.
   Unexpected succor came from the Polish army that struck the militants in the back. Why? Because an independent Ukrainian state was a threat, as West Ukraine made a considerable part of Poland and the Poles were apprehensive about losing this territory. This strike from behind the rear of the Ukrainian guerillas put an end to the warfare. Their defeat was partly due to the fact that the Hungarian army was supported by the Czech armed forces including even the police. The splintered militants began to retreat to Romania and hide in the local woods, but it did not help. The Romanian frontier guards chased and stripped them to the buff, like Ostap Bender, the hero of a famous Russian novel, and handed out to the Hungarians. The Hungarian citizenry armed with Czech weapons and assisted by the regular troops chased the hideaways and killed them on the spot extrajudicially. Those who surrendered to the Poles were shot down without exception. Ukrainian citizens of Poland, inhabitants of Galicia, came to help the militants of Zakarpatye, which caused the Poles “to clean up” the anxious nationalists. After the engagement the Hungarian troops handed out some Polish gunmen to the Polish frontier guards, and no one handled the war prisoners with kid gloves. The following day they were all shot down according to the “no trial, no record” principle [365 - Ibid. P. 331.]. In only six months such “outrages” against the law would be repeated with Polish army men, and the Germans would handle these prisoners of war still less softly…
   It is worthwhile analyzing the events and the eventful dates of March 1939 to make sure that Adolf Hitler had become “an aggressor” not because he had annexed the helpless Czechoslovakia, but because he had broken his agreement with his Western partners.
   March 14, 1939. Slovakia declares its independence and appeals to Hitler for protection. Augustine Voloshin declares the independence of the Transcarpathian region, informs the German Foreign Ministry of this act and also appeals for protection of the newly-born pro-German state. The Czech president Gaha goes to Berlin.
   March 15, 1939. President Gaha signs the agreement on incorporating new Czechia under the name of Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia into the German Reich and saves his position as president of the country. At 6 a.m. the Hungarian army attacks Zakarpatye without any motive or explanation.
   England was fully informed of the events 4 days in advance. So, the attitude of Great Britain towards “the aggressor” was that of patience and amity. It was expressed in Britain’s premier Chamberlain’s speech: “The parliament of Slovakia declared Slovakia an independent state. This declaration puts an end to the internal dissipation of the state whose boundaries we intend to guarantee. So, the government of His Majesty cannot, therefore consider itself committed to this guaranty” [366 - Ribbentrop, J. von. P. 160.]. In other words, the Munich treaty has not been violated. Thank God!
   The same day the British ambassador Henderson hands a note to the German government: “The government of His Majesty has no intention of interfering in the affairs concerning the governments of other countries…” [367 - Falin, V. The second front. The anti-Hitler coalition: conflict of interests. P. 69.]
   Thus, England expresses no dissatisfaction, the tortuous phraseology suggesting an attempt to preserve appearances. It means that the current events are taking place in full conformity with the scenario.
   March 16, 1939. Hitler responds to Slovakia’s appeal for protection, but refrains from signing a treaty with them. Thus, the essential points for the Western diplomacy with reference to the annexation of Zakarpatye and Slovakia become foggy.
   March 17, 1939. The German government declares holding a protectorate over Bohemia and Moravia. The fog over Germany’s intentions is thinning. Hitler has incorporated only Czechia. Slovakia does not so far have any agreement with Germany on protection except the German fuehrer’s promise to take the Slavs under protection. The situation with Zakarpatye is more obscure: the encroachment of the Hungarian troops, combat actions and Hungary’s declaration of incorporating this Ukrainian region. These developments are no longer based on the elaborated scenario, and the stance of Germany is getting more and more elusive. So, the leaders of the Western world are beginning to worry.
   In the morning Hitler received a warning in the diplomatic form. The first diplomat to file a note of protest was the French ambassador Coulondre. C.F. Weizsacker, the German diplomat that received him, did something unacceptable: he put the note back into the envelope, gave it to the ambassador and said that he would not accept any protest concerning the events in Czechoslovakia. He also advised that monsieur Coulondre should revise the text of the note!
   The episode that followed might be described as funny but for World War II that broke out half a year later. The French ambassador insisted that Weizsacker should accept the note, as there was no reason why the French government should revise it. The German still refusing to accept the note, the Frenchman reminded him that it was common practice to voice the sentiments of some country to other countries. “In the end, Weizsacker left the note on the table with a comment that he would treat it as a mail item” [368 - Shirer, W.P. 328–329.].
   The British ambassador was the second one to follow suit. Naturally, the German diplomat treated him differently: he accepted the note and refrained from giving lip. “The British government has asserted that “it cannot help regarding the latest events as a complete retreat from the Munich agreement” and that “the military activities of Germany are fully illegitimate” [369 - Ibid.].
   The US government also filed a protest note.
   At that time “a brilliant idea” struck Britain’s premier Chamberlain. In his Birmingham speech he recanted his statement made two weeks before [370 - Ribbentrop, J. von. P. 160.]. It was radiocast and everybody could hear that the leader of a Great Power commented on the disappearance of Czechoslovakia in the opposite way.

   It is common knowledge that during World War II the governments of all the countries occupied by Germany found refuge in London. The government of Czechoslovakia was no exception. It is interesting to note the date of its “emergence” in the British capital: July 1940! In other words, the exile government emerged after 16 months of being wiped off the political map of Europe. Why did it take Britain so long to sanction the government of a country that was “the victim of German aggression”? The reason was that Britain cherished hopes of making an agreement with Hitler and made efforts not to irritate him. Only after June 22, 1940, when France signed its capitulation in the Compiègne forest, England actually got into a mess and started looking for allies. It was then that Britain provided the government of Czechoslovakia with a seat, time and money.

   But nothing new happened in the period between the 15th and the 17th of March. Hitler swallowed Czechia, but the British prime-minister and his Foreign Office saw no “crime” in the fact. Two days later Chamberlain had to apologize for his “very reserved and discreet… somewhat cool and objective statement”. Then he changed tune and said: “We asserted that any question concerning our two countries must be solved through consultation on a case-by-case basis. If it is so easy to find substantial reasons for neglecting solemnly and repeatedly proclaimed guarantees, it is only natural to pose the question, whether all other assertions from the same source are trustworthy” [371 - Schmidt, P. Hitler’s translator. P. 171–172.].
   What happened within the two days affecting the interests of Great Britain? It could not concern Czechia, because the country was no longer on the map even at the time of signing the first peaceful note. It could not concern Slovakia either, because the country would not withdraw from the idea of independence after its public declaration. Was it possible that England should be concerned about the fate of Augustine Voloshin’s self-appointed government? Or was the mutual amity between Britain and Germany threatened by the encroachment of the Hungarian troops into Zakarpatye? What did Hitler do to cause the head of the British government to sing another tune? Could it be for the sake of the Carpathian militants adoring the German fuehrer and his party that Neville Chamberlain was about to put at stake the friendship with the Third Reich?
   Naturally, the reason for that radical change had nothing in common with the Ukrainian separatists. It was a matter of principle. FOR THE FIRST TIME Hitler had his own way disregarding the mutual agreement. The West was no longer assured that Hitler would attack the USSR at an early date!
   But Hitler still had a chance to mend the situation by annexing Slovakia according to the joint plan. That was why, though Chamberlain’s statement was voiced in a tough note, it was not a break-off. It was a warning.
   March 18, 1939. Hitler goes to Vienna to celebrate the anniversary of the Anschluss. The Hungarian army occupies Hust, the capital of Zakarpatye.
   March 19, 1939. London and Paris are actively analyzing the situation. R. Coulondre, the French ambassador in Berlin, writes to his chief, the foreign minister G. Bonnet: “Following the Reich’s annexation of Bohemia and Moravia and introduction of the protectorate regime in Slovakia I would like to characterize the present situation, which has radically changed the map of Europe, and discuss the directions of development of the German dynamism, focusing on the question, if we can still believe that this dynamism is aimed only at the East, and trying to make some practical conclusions for our leadership. The facts testify that while planning the Bohemia and Moravia operation Hitler’s circle considered the possibility of moving farther to the east in the near future. According to the latest intelligence, the German army was going to occupy the whole of Slovakia and even Zakarpatye” [372 - Documents and materials on the eve of World War II. M., 1948. V.2. P. 49–50.]. This is what Coulondre writes in his letter.
   Thus, there is hope that Hitler will go east. He only needs to come to heel.
   March 20, 1939. The US government recalls its ambassador from Berlin in protest against splitting Czechoslovakia – the event that took place 5 days (!) before.
   March 21, 1939. The Lithuanian government is notified from Berlin that tomorrow its plenipotentiary must take a special flight to the German capital to sign a document on cession of the city of Memel to Germany [373 - The other name of Memel is Klaipeda.]. Refusal will cause the use of force on the part of the German government. Lithuania cannot wage war against Germany, while England and France refrain from any declaration in the defense of Lithuania.
   At present the European diplomats have no spare time to deal with the Lithuanian question, because it is becoming evident that Hitler has got out of hand. The president of the French Republic accompanied by the Minister of Foreign Affairs pays an official visit to London. “Chamberlain proposed that Britain, France, Poland and the Soviet Union make an official declaration of their intention to meet at high level for consultation on further measures to curb aggression in Europe” [374 - Shirer, W.P. 337–338.].
   “At one time the leaders of Europe have become aware of Hitler’s aggressive nature and realize now that he can be stopped not by concession, but by force”, – this is how historians assess the behavior of the British and French diplomats. They seem to ignore the following fact: three days before (March 18) the Soviet Foreign Minister Litvinov proposed holding a European conference with the participation of France, England, Poland, Russia, Romania and Turkey [375 - Ibid. P. 338.]. Thus it was then that the Soviet Union had already proposed what Great Britain proposed now. But then Chamberlain thought this idea “premature”, and the French government vouchsafed no answer to Moscow’s proposal [376 - Sipols, V.Y. The diplomatic struggle on the eve of World War II. M., 1979. P. 226.]. Why did the British premier reject the proposal of the Soviet diplomats? Why didn’t the French leadership respond to it? They had three days at their disposal to take some determined action after Hitler had swallowed the remnants of Czechoslovakia. What did the head of the British government wait for? Did he expect the German troops to withdraw from the occupied country overnight? Nothing of the kind. Chamberlain gave Hitler a chance to change his mind and… annex Transcarpathian Ukraine.
   March 22, 1939. In the evening a Lithuanian delegation comes to Berlin, with Hitler on board the battleship “Deutschland” cabling to Berlin to order that the German squadron under his command will take Memel, either peacefully or by force.
   March 23, 1939. In the rush hours of the morning (1.30) Lithuania signed the agreement on the cession of Memel to Germany [377 - Bullock, A.P. 219.]. By way of compensation, Lithuania “obtained” a free zone in their one-time own port. London and Paris did not respond to this new annexation, though England and France were the guarantors of the security of Klaipeda.
   It made no sense then to delay solving the Slovakia question. Shortly after signing the agreement with Lithuania, Germany signs the “Treaty on Defense” between Berlin and Bratislava. The strange inertia of the German fuehrer, normally lightning-like in decisions, was due to his strategy of making an ambiguous situation. Hitler plays so artfully that his Western partners are puzzled. On the one hand, he does not break his agreements; on the other hand he does not coordinate his actions with the West. While the West was busy trying to figure out his doings, he joined to Germany the last territory it had lost by losing World War I.
   Hitler placed England and France before an accomplished fact prior to beginning a new round of talks with his partners. But in the new situation he would demand new terms. He had good grounds to believe that Germany would benefit from the talks with the West. Notwithstanding high-flown talk about the fate of the miserable Czechoslovakia, the Bank of England promptly transferred to Germany the Czech gold holdings of 6 million pounds stored away in London [378 - Preparata, G.D. P. 355.].
   On May 30, 1939 Weizsacker, the state secretary of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Astakhov, the Soviet Charge d’Affaires in Berlin, that there was a possibility to improve the Soviet-German relations. The German diplomat pointed out that Germany had refused the idea of annexing Zakarpatye, which meant annulling casus belli…
   The backstage negotiations brought about the following result: the USSR and Germany began to move toward concluding the “Non-aggression Pact” that irritates modern historiography in the West.
   Why did Stalin choose to conclude that agreement with Hitler? Why did Hitler go back on his anticommunist politics?
   The reason is as follows: England and France knew well enough how to hold negotiations…

Why the west likes neither Molotov, nor Ribbentrop

   No one will ask the winner after his victory if he has been honest.
   In warfare, what matters is not the truth, but the victory.
Adolf Hitler

   It is necessary to defend one’s homeland honestly or, at least, dishonestly.
   All means are acceptable, as long as Homeland’s integrity is ensured.
Niccolo Machiavelli

   The true motive powers feeding the conflict between Germany and Poland that led to World War II are invested with a thick coat of lies. Many a historian, a journalist, or a researcher has a finger in the pie. To cover up the mean policies of the West they brought into play a plain myth that Hitler was a maniac obsessed with the idea to conquer the whole world. That was why, due to his aggressiveness, he attacked his neighbors, one by one, until the progressive mankind put an end to his regime. The reader has already made sure that Hitler’s annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia and involvement in the Spanish Civil War cannot be accounted for by his great lust for power. Hitler’s logic characterizes a reasonable politician that has stair-work with some circles of the West establishment anxious to crush the Soviet Union.
   Adolf Hitler is the greatest criminal of all times and nations condemned by the humankind’s earthly court and, sure enough, the Supreme Court that will try each and every one of us. But there is no sense in painting him too black and drag through all the mire and muck of the then politics just to whitewash the other masters of string pulling, because it is their concerted action that took a toll of over 60 million people. Let every politician be appraised according to his/ her share in the build-up of the Nazi military machine. Up to now, the major criminals responsible for the horrible bloodshed of 1939–1945 are flying under false colors of “peace-lovers” and “peace-makers”.
   All the mysteries of the Second World War may be unraveled, provided the logic underlying the actions of the major players is clarified. Historians wonder, why Germany had so few submarines at the beginning of the war against England, with the Reich’s shipbuilding program to be completed only by 1944–1945. The answer is as follows: it was determined by Adolf Hitler. In May 1938 he informed the German Navy Minister Admiral Raeder that England was Germany’s potential enemy [379 - Dönitz, K. The Reich’s submarine Force. Smolensk, 1999. P. 38.]. Does it suggest that Germany was going to attack England? No. In the modern world both the USA and the NATO military block, as well as China are Russia’s potential adversaries. Potential means possible. Consequently, the General Staff of the Russian Army must have plans against the possibility of a conflict situation. Does it suggest Russia’s aggressiveness? Not at all. Because Russia is also considered to be a potential adversary for the USA, Great Britain and China, and their General Staffs also have plans in preparation for war against this power. It is common practice of all the states in the world.

   By August 1, 1939 the major Western powers had superiority over Germany in the Navy military hardware: aircraft carriers: England – 7, France – 1, Germany – 0; large cruisers: England – 15, France – 12, Germany – 2; destroyers: England – 183, France – 59, Germany – 22; torpedo boats: England – 0, France – 12, Germany – 20; submarines: England – 65, France – 78, Germany – 57; patrol torpedo boats: England – 27, France – 9, Germany – 20; monitors: England – 3, France – 0, Germany – 0 [380 - The protracted blitzkrieg: German generals on the war in Russia. M., 2006. P. 292.]. Gross-Admiral Raeder informed the German fuehrer that to wage a war with England it was necessary to have 300 submarines, but when the war broke out, Germany had only 23 submarines ready to go to the Atlantic Ocean as compared to 57 it had later! In other words, Germany had 13 times as few submarines as was necessary according to the estimates of the German admirals! Is this the proper way to prepare for war against the sea powers, such as England and France? Of course, not! Hitler did not prepare for war on the sea which is indispensable for crushing Britain, the “Mistress of the Seas”. Hitler did not even think of preparing for war against England and France! This hardly depicts Germany as an aggressor striving to conquer the whole world.

   To assess the degree of Hitler’s aggressiveness one has to look at the missions he assigned his generals and plans he ordered them to work out. This may give the reader a bit of a surprise. After the German fuehrer’s outspoken remark about England as a potential adversary Admiral Raeder submitted two variants of developing the German Navy.
   • The first variant provided for intensive construction of submarines on a tough schedule.
   • The second plan (Plan “Z”) based on a longer period of implementation due to the assumption that “war is excluded within the nearest 10 years” [381 - Nimitz, Ch., Potter, A. War on the sea in 1939–1945. Smolensk, 1999. P. 11.] envisaged building a great number of large surface ships. The period of implementation was 10 years (up to the year 1948), but Hitler demanded that it be carried out in 6 years. Thus, Hitler had not intended to be engaged in warfare with England before 1944–1945. But the war broke out in 1939! Submarines were used as the striking force, although Hitler banned their large-scale construction. The question is: why did Hitler opt for Plan “Z”?
   Here is the evidence of Anglo-American sources: “It is hard to explain this erroneous decision in the light of the subsequent developments. Probably, Hitler thought that large surface ships could make a political impact” [382 - Ibid.]. According to the Western historians, Hitler simply “forgot” that way back during the First World War England was as good as on the rocks due to the operations of the German submarines which sank hundreds of English ships. England is an island, so it has to draw supplies by sea. But it was no good to rival the British surface ships, because Britain kept a sharp lookout for shipbuilding in other countries and responded to any new foreign vessel by building two vessels of its own. At that period, the shipbuilding facilities of the British Empire excelled those of any other country.
   Hitler’s shipbuilding plan for “conquering the whole world” envisaged quite an asymmetric ratio of surface ships (maximum) and submarines (minimum). The time period for doing the work (1944–1945) is a surprise, too. Is Hitler in his right senses? A year’s lapse between adopting the plan and the outbreak of the war in September 1939 is fantastic for building the required number of surface ships! How is the German fuehrer going to defeat the English Navy, if he actually rules out submarines and has no time to build surface ships?
   It is quite a treat to read Western historians: it looks that they do not read what they write; otherwise they would not be riddled with errors and clangers. For instance: “Hitler made constant mistakes in determining the date of unleashing war – September 1, 1939” [383 - Kershaw, I. Hitler. P. 218.].
   Just think of it: the chief aggressor “of all times and nations” makes mistakes in the date of the war that he himself unleashed! How can it be? The idea is really insane! Only an attacked country may be in the dark about the date, while an attacking country cannot make such a mistake, because it fixes the date itself. It was Hitler’s decision to attack Poland on September 1, 1939, and so he did, or to strike the USSR on June 22, 1941, and so he did… Is there any mistake? Disreputable historians advance mutually exclusive ideas, suggesting that Hitler had a well-elaborated war plan to conquer the world, but made a mistake with the date and started the war too early. In their phrase-mongering they overlook the principal fact: oddly enough, unleashing the war by an onslaught on Poland, Germany was not prepared for warfare. Why did Hitler start the war, being unprepared? This is where historians make a point of his idiocy and excessive bellicosity, and this seems to be an exhaustive explanation. A maniac is a maniac; such a person can’t be called to account.
   Dear historians, please, explain, how this belligerent idiot managed to win the elections polling 40 % of votes, to create an army that it took the whole world 6 long years to defeat, to win back all the German lands without firing a shot? Why was he named “person of the year” by the American magazine “Time” in the last peaceful year of 1938? [384 - Time. 02.01.1939 (source: Martirosyan, A.P. 400).]
   To discover the horrible truth of the then events and find the names of true malefactors responsible for the colossal human catastrophe termed “World War II” it is necessary to look facts in the face. It is a bad idea to confuse oneself with cock and bull stories and fables. Adolf Hitler was no idiot. He was a German state figure that had been quite cleverly rebuilding his country until 01.09.1939. But later this unusually successful politician “makes a mistake” concerning the date of the war. Why? Because, while he was in office, he was preparing for another war (against the USSR), not for the Second World War that actually took place later. He learned by diplomatic mail he received from England and France that these Western countries would not interfere. It was essential information that earlier helped him to foresee the international events as “a clairvoyant”. Hence his “mistakes” and “whims” historians are talking about.

   Submarines were Germany’s major striking force in the war against Great Britain. Why did Adolf Hitler ban their mass production on the eve of World War II?

   To show their worth the German submarines needed a worthy adversary, or an adequate victim. To sink great numbers of trade and combat ships it was necessary that the potential adversary should have these ships. Hundreds of submarines would be at work if they had a stated objective – to sink the joint Navy of Great Britain and its allies. There is no other world power that might come up with the British Royal Navy. The USSR did not have a sufficient number of vessels, in other words, targets for German submarines. The Soviet Navy had only 3 battle-ships, 4 large cruisers, 5 light cruisers, 31 destroyers, 19 torpedo vessels, 156 submarines, 120 torpedo boats [385 - The delayed blitzkrieg… P. 295.].
   The inadequate number of the Soviet Navy would show later, in the naval actions. All the enemy ships sunk by the German submarines during World War II totals 2,759 [386 - Dönitz, K.P. 443–444.]. Karl Dönitz does not specify the state identity of the sunken ships; so, the total number of the Soviet sea fight losses is unknown. It is possible, though, to sum up the losses of the Soviet ships on all the seas where they fought during the war. Thus, the Soviet losses should include the vessels sunken in the Black Sea (26), in the Baltic Sea (18), in the Arctic Ocean (99); the ships sunken in the coast waters of Norway, in the Barents Sea. Losses in the Northeast Passage may be also accounted as the Russian losses (though, naturally, the ships lost in Norway’s coast waters, especially in the convoys going to Murmansk, might be British or American). It turns out that during the war the German submarines sunk 143 Soviet ships.
   This definitely oversized estimate nevertheless points to a petty percent (5 %!) of the Soviet losses attacked by the German submarines. That is why it was clear from the very beginning that Germany did not need a great number of submarines to fight the Soviets. A war against England was a different story: the more submarines – the better. But Hitler was preparing to wage a war against Stalin and therefore he banned building submarines in large numbers. Why squander hard-to-find steel and India rubber, why strain the capacities of the German docks?
   Here is the production schedule of the German submarines: 1935 – 14 boats, 1936 – 21 boats, 1937 – 1 boat (!), 1938 – 9 boats, 1939 – 18 boats [387 - Ibid. P. 32–33.]. This launching schedule characterizes a country that never proposed to wage a war against England! In the first two years they build submarines just to have them on hand, in another two years they minimize production and resume it only when a conflict with England begins to loom large. Eighteen submarines in 1939 – is this many or few? Compared to one boat in 1937 the production increases 18 times. Yet, the subsequent production gives one the impression that before then Germany has hardly been producing any submarines. Starting the war with only 57 submarines, Germany produces the total number of 1,095 boats [388 - Dönitz, K.P. 443.] (in the period between January 1, 1940 and May 8, 1945), i.e. 200 submarines annually. It beats anything…
   As for Hitler’s plans of building aircraft carriers and battleships, they prove the same thing: Hitler was not going to wage a war with England. This becomes clear after analyzing the figures of Plan “Z”. It does not pay to pester the reader with figures: an enthusiast can look things up for himself [389 - Ibid. P. 38–39; Kuznetsov, N. On the eve. P. 390.]. But there is an evident fact to be pointed out: had Hitler’s plan for making battle-ships and aircraft carriers been fulfilled, the German Navy would not have come up to the British Navy, to say nothing of the joint Anglo-French Navy. Besides, with Plan “Z” being realized, the British dockyards would not have stood idle…
   It is the right time now to turn back to the Anglo-American historians. What did they say? Hitler thought that “large surface ships could make a political impact”. Yes, the German fuehrer had them built to make an impact on his English friends, to win their respect, to gain advantage in negotiations with them, to join “the club of world leaders”. But not to wage war against them! It is not “impact”, but ammunition that makes war. But the Western historians do not see the difference. The question is: can’t they, or won’t they “see” – for the benefit of money, academic titles, degrees, sale and popularity?
   In 1939 Hitler did not think about any big war. In a conflict with Poland he hoped to draw upon his own resources and got involved into a world war without a reliable ally. The Soviet Union could not be an ally to side with Germany. Even Italy was not going to war on Germany’s side! Mussolini was shocked to learn about Hitler’s plans on the 20th of August 1939, i.e. 11 days before the world war. As early as the following day Italy’s Foreign Minister made up a memorandum to remind Germany that the union between Italy and Germany (“the Steel Pact”) envisaged starting warfare no sooner than in two or three years. But a two weeks’ notice was by far worse! In response, to relieve the Italian leader’s embarrassment, the Germans asked him to specify acceptable conditions for an earlier war. Italy demanded such off-balance amounts of procurement that Germany could never satisfy them. Yet, Mussolini insisted that without indicated items and amounts of supplies Italy would not be able to make a war partner. What did Hitler do after losing HIS ONLY ALLY at that time? He did nothing. Did he intend to do without allies? [390 - Italy did not take part in the world war until the summer of 1940, a few days before France laid down arms. Thus, Germany got the worst of the war alone. Is this the proper way to prepare a large-scale aggression?] Was he determined to wage war against the whole world? After all, they say that it was Hitler that unleashed a world war and that he fought long enough.

   Germany was at war with 52 states in a span of six years between 1939 and 1945 [391 - The Second World War: two view-points. P. 341–342.]. Here is the schedule of their participation in the war.
   1939:
   September 1 – Poland;
   September 3 – Great Britain, Australia, India, New Zealand and France;
   September 4 – the South-African Union;
   September 7 – Canada;
   1940:
   April 9 – Norway;
   April 10 – Denmark;
   May 10 – the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg;
   1941:
   April 6 – Yugoslavia and Greece;
   June 22 – the USSR;
   December 8 – China;
   December 11 – the USA, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Haiti, Honduras and El-Salvador;
   December 16 – Czechoslovakia (the in-exile government, London);
   1942:
   January 13 – Panama;
   May 28 – Mexico;
   August 28 – Brazil;
   October 9 – Abyssinia (the war was declared by the newly-formed government);
   1943:
   January 13 – Iraq;
   April 7 – Bolivia;
   September 9 – Iran;
   October 13 – Italy (the government of Marshal Badoglio)
   November 29 – Columbia.

   Did Hitler really intend to crush and occupy all these countries? Would he have had enough soldiers to station troops in all the occupied countries? On top of that, Germany was not prepared for the war that would last 6 years against these and other states, such as the states that entered the war in 1944: Liberia, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and even the little proud state of San-Marino. In 1945 still more countries opposed Germany, including Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Finland. The last state that entered the war on March 27, 1945 was Argentina.
   The Western historians do not seem to understand the political framework, origin and development of Nazism, as well as the motives of Hitler’s “strange decisions”. The “heretical” idea that Hitler never wanted to rule the world explains everything. The German leader wanted to become an equal partner of the Anglo-Saxon world and did not intend to fight against it. But it is not easy to be admitted to the exclusive club of the world leading powers. “The entrance ticket” was by abolishing the USSR (Russia).
   Having started an involuntary war against England and France, Hitler tried to gain that ticket on June 22, 1941…
   March 1939 was a hot month for diplomats of all the countries! It saw telephones ringing off the hook, typewriters with jammed keys, packages of pills for insomnia and headache thrown into paper trays. The carefully designed, sophisticated plan of creating the Third Reich to be used as an instrument for crushing the Soviet Russia was going up in smoke. The new reality might poison the mind of anyone who knew what it should be like. In the center of Europe was prosperous Germany that had collected all the lands of the German Kaiser’s empire with the best lands of the Habsburgs’ empire. The Western leaders had to solve the problem of Hitler running wild. Now that he had twisted the West round his little finger by “non-annexing” Ukraine, there were only two alternatives: 1) to hold negotiations for changing the old scenario on Hitler’s conditions; 2) to bring pressure on the hard-bitten German fuehrer to make him return to the old scenario. The West chose the second alternative.
   It was not because the West had suddenly regained confidence. The Western diplomats knew well enough something that was a sore point for the German leader: the might of the German Reich was phony. Germany with her inflated military budget could not exist without external resources and financing. For Hitler, war was the only solution of the country’s economic problems. Here was the situation that could let the leaders of the Western democracies take a sunshine view of things.
   The dog they have reared is loose and snarling like a hunted beast at bay. It is bad, but one must suffer fools gladly. The dog will get hungry with no one to feed it. What will it do then? It will start looking for food. If the master takes a rifle or a big stick and stands at the doorway to defend his locked house, the hungry beast will not dare to attack him. Not to die of famine the hungry dog will have to tear someone else to pieces…
   How should Hitler act, “running wild”? Would he “bite” England and France for having “nourished” him? Not likely! Germany is not prepared for war against England and France, because such war will not be waged only on land, and, as is known, the German naval forces could not be compared in the same breath with either the British Navy or the French Navy, to say nothing of the combined naval units of these countries. How could Hitler resolve to fight the powers that have “made” him? Would it be serious to get to grips with gigantic colonial empires, each enjoying the full support of the “neutral” United States that would never let anyone raise a finger against Britain. The British and French colonies, as well as the Commonwealth countries, such as Canada, South Africa and Australia, were spread about the whole world, and it was clear as daylight that Germany was unable by any stretch of imagination to grasp all the sea routes!
   This fact gives rise to certain conclusions. The scenario of the First World War deeply affected the minds of the then European politicians and generals. The idea up in the air was that in case of warfare the German economy would be ruined by the British naval blockade. Land communication from the East would not save Germany, because its neighbors, Poland and Romania, were the true allies of England and France. These countries had not been ceded to Hitler yet. As Hitler does not control Romania’s oil deposits he has no guaranteed sources of oil supplies! Consequently, Hitler cannot go to war, because Germany will soon run out of fuel, without which modern war is impossible. Thus, the leaders of England and France felt optimistic, because there were on firm ground of reality. They only had to make it clear to Hitler, in distinct terms, that he had no other way but follow the old scenario.
   It should be borne in mind that in the period between March and September 1939, when World War II broke out, the diplomatic maneuvers of the West were not intended to prevent the war. The West applied the carrot and stick approach to make Germany attack the USSR. They had to bring the German fuehrer down to earth, because success had turned his head. It was necessary to tell him firmly that, given the dependent economy of Germany, all of her political initiatives would fail without the approval from London and Paris. That was the end of Hitler’s triumphant march.
   “The period of success is over” – that was the key note that the Western diplomats tried to bring home to Hitler. They suggested that Germany would be in for it, unless it obeyed the master. If the German dog attacked the master, he would ensure a war against the whole world, like in the First World War – with only a slim chance of winning. The only alternative was to dust off “the old friendship”.
   Thus, the West takes a tough new police toward Germany. The leaders of England and France demonstrate their recalcitrance denouncing Hitler’s aggressive nature. The allies of London and Paris assume a proud air and become recalcitrant, too. The proudest of all are the Polish leaders. So far Poland had kept up friendly and cordial relations with Hitler’s Germany, because they had the same collective “creator” – England, France and the USA. Besides, Poland and Germany had the same mode of governance – dictatorship. They had other things in common, as well, for example, anti-Semitism. But this question will be discussed a little further…
   To follow up the “navel cord” of Poland that came into the world [392 - 1795 saw the so called third division of Poland resulting from an agreement between Prussia, Austro-Hungary and Russia. Thus, Poland was territorially split between the participants to the treaty. The Russian Empire acquired part of the Baltic territories, West Byelorussia and central regions of Poland. It was only after World War I that an independent Polish state appeared on the European map.] after the first global war one has to see her date of birth: November 11, 1918. It was then that Poland was declared an independent state.
   History is a peculiar discipline in the sense that dates play a major role in it. Teachers cram their heads with dates and make students memorize them. But it so happens that no one ever compares dates, although comparison may reveal the tenor of the current events. For instance, one may read to learn when Poland emerged on the political map, but the average reader never correlates the date with the event of concluding Armistice between Germany and the Allies in the Compiègne forest. This armistice looked very much like an uncommitted surrender! [393 - The magic of figures: Germany signed a document of her own defeat in the First World War on the 11th day of the 11th month at 11 o’clock. Is this pure coincidence?]
   Suffice it only to remember the thumpers that Max von Baden had to tell about the German Kaiser’s abdication for the sake of signing this armistice. One should also recall all that muck of mean treachery associated with the 1918 November Revolution in Germany and think of the Polish “freedom fighters” who declared the independence of Poland on that same day, neither later, nor earlier. Who told them that Germany would be no more, because her leaders had betrayed both their Kaiser and the whole nation? Who could predict the further developments? Wasn’t it more sensible to wait and see what was going to happen next? They might just as well declare the independence of Poland two days or three days later, on the 14th of November (because 13 is the devil’s dozen). But the Poles were anxious to establish their state on that very day!
   It means that they had been warned and waiting for the occasion, because they knew that the armistice was not just a break in the hostilities, but the end of the war. Who knew the nuts and bolts of this policy was busy persisting with such policies. The question “who arranged the Russian and the German revolutions” was already answered in the previous chapters of this book. The Polish “patriots” derived their information from the intelligence services of the Allies. As for their politics, one would find the painfully familiar portrait of these patriots: they were all Social Democrats, members of the Party of Polish Socialists (PPS)…

   The founder of the modern Polish state was the PPS leader Józef Pilsudski. Another “freedom fighter”, Viktor Chernov, the leader of the Russian Social Revolutionary Party, writes in his memoirs that Pilsudski was a clairvoyant and could foretell the future. It sounds fantastic, but the memoir writer means what he says. He writes that on the eve of the First World War, about half a year before its outbreak, when no one could know about it, Pilsudski gave a talk, making a surprisingly accurate prediction. He predicted a military conflict before long, as well as its participants, and described in detail the whole course of events: “Pilsudski put the question squarely about the winners and the losers in the war. He said: “Austria and Germany will beat Russia, but in their turn will be beaten by the English and the French (and, possibly, by the Americans, too). East Europe will suffer defeat from Central Europe that will be defeated by Western Europe. This shows the Poles their line of operations” [394 - Chernov, V.M. Before the storm. Memoirs. Minsk, 2004. P. 294–295.]. This is no prediction. This is knowledge, the source being the British intelligence service. That is why Pilsudski declares the independence of Poland on THAT day!”

   The next day after Poland was declared an independent state, it was recognized by England, France and the USA. The process of rebuilding the country was pretty heady. Before half a year passed, the Poles began to frame “the Great Poland” of the 16th century. This necessitated cutting off a good piece of the Russian territory, and there were more than enough advisers and sponsors. The Americans undertook providing military supplies. Thus, the Polish army got all the necessary outfit and allowance. Over six months in 1919 the USA provided Poland with 260 thousand tons of provisions worth 51 million dollars, a king’s ransom at the time. The list could go on! Still more imposing were the supplies of ammunition. In the spring of 1920 England, France and the USA provided Poland with 1,494 pieces of ordnance, 2,800 machine guns, 385.5 thousand rifles, 42 thousand revolvers, about 700 planes, 200 armored vehicles, 800 trucks, 576 million cartridges, 4.5 thousand carts, 3 million uniforms, 4 million pairs of boots, communication equipment and medicines [395 - The civil war and intervention in the USSR. Encyclopedia. M., 1987. P. 556–557.].
   An officer holding a kind of “investigatory experiment” may contrast these figures with the amounts of supplies England, France and the USA delivered to the Russian White Guard. It becomes quite clear that the West can always find resources to munition an army fighting against Russia, apart from an army fighting for Russia. This situation has not changed since…
   No wonder, at the outset the Poles pushed back the Red Army, occupying a considerable part of Ukraine and Belorussia. But, being not competent enough, they were unable to take advantage of their modern ammunition. That was why their Kosciuszko squadron that fought Budenny’s army was formed from American pilots commanded by an American, Colonel Fauntleroy. France made her contribution to building the independent Polish state in July 1919. Her territory was used as a base to form a 70 thousand-strong army that consisted of ethnic Poles from the American army or from war prisoners of the Austrian and German armies [396 - The commander-in-chief was General Haller, and his soldiers were called “hallerchiks”.].
   On August 1919 the Poles seized the city of Minsk. But this was, so to say, “a frontier incident”. The date of the official outbreak of the Polish-Soviet war was April 25, 1920, marked by an advance of the Polish troops towards Kiev. The aggression was followed by pogroms of Jews and executions. Thousands of Jews were killed in the massacres near Rovno and Tetievo. Mass murders of the civilians took place in a number of villages: Ivanovtsi, Kucha, Sobachi, Yablonuvka, Novaya Grebla, Melnichi, Kirillovka. The Ukrainian papers of the day are full of field reports from where the Polish soldier booted in American boots set foot: “On May 4 they brought to Cherkassi 290 casualties from the settlements occupied by the Poles, – one of the reporters writes, – women and children. The children vary from 1 to 2 years old. All the wounds are inflicted by cold steel”.
   Nowadays this is called ethnic cleansing. The Poles called it “liberation from bolshevism”…
   On May 7, 1921 the capital of Ukraine was “liberated” [397 - Meltyukhov, M.I. The Soviet-Polish wars. The political and military opposition in 1918–1939. M., 2001. P. 38.]. Then the Red Army struck a powerful blow, and the aggressor rolled back. The retreating Polish army passed, like whirlwind, burning and ravaging the Jewish settlements: Pinsk, Luninets, Vasilevichi, Gorodeya, Koydanovo, Nesvizh, Pesochnoye, Mir, Uzda, Stolbtsi, Urechye. This is not the whole list of Belorussian pogroms made by fighters for “Great Poland”. The Jewish Regional Committee reported 350 thousand war-battered Jews (120 thousand children and 80 thousand grown-ups), at the least, during the Polish retreat from Belorussia in the summer of 1920 [398 - The State Archive of the Russian Federation. F. 1318. Op. 24. D.4. L.4.].
   The hostilities in the Soviet-Polish War (more adequately: the Russian-Polish War) gradually moved to the walls of Warsaw that would have been captured by the Red Army but for the Entente and some errors on the part of the Red Army commandment. As a consequence, they concluded the Riga Peace Treaty, according to which Poland came into possession of West Belorussia and West Ukraine. Compared to the wants of Warsaw, the result achieved by the Poles can hardly be called successful. Unlike “Great Poland”, the actually great Soviet Union would appear on the map quite soon. Oddly enough, the Riga Peace Treaty is still considered Russia’s diplomatic failure…
   But the Poles kept on their warlike attitude. After their setback in the East they transferred their pirate raids to the West. In October 1920 they outraged the Suvalk Treaty and annexed Vilno (Vilnius) and the Vilno district from the newly-independent (like Poland) Lithuania. Seven months later Poland began an intervention against Germany that was in a state of anarchy and chaos, the aim being to seize High Silesia abundant in coal mines and industrial enterprises. This aggression has an interesting prehistory. The Versailles Treaty envisaged a peaceful solution to the German-Polish territorial dispute – by referendum. Poland made things hum in the ethnic Polish milieu and even arranged rebellions trying to place Germany and the world community before an accomplished fact – the seizure of this region by Poland. But the putsch was put down by the German police and volunteers, and the referendum did take place on March 20, 1921. The “yes” part that voted for annexation to Germany turned out to be twice as many.
   But the results of voting do not signify, when it comes to coal mines and steel works. So, losing the plebiscite, Poland raised a revolt in Silesia, which was supported by an intervention of the Polish Army on May 3, 1921. England, France and the USA took the side of Poland and informed the Weimar government that Germany must not interfere. They announced that in case of the Reichswehr’s interference the Allies would support Poland. That was why the German Army was sitting tight, while German volunteers (“Freikorps”) stood up to the Polish aggression. In the end, the Germans retreated and part of the province was captured. In October 1921 the Allies held a conference, ignoring the results of the referendum, and legalized the aggression by turning over 30 % of High Silesia to Poland. It is no wonder that this 30 % included 95 % of the coal mines of that land… [399 - Trotsky, L. Problems of the proletarian revolution. The Communist International // Works. V. 13. Moscow-Leningrad, 1926. Reference 119.]
   There is one chapter in the history of Poland concerning the attitude of the Poles to the prisoners of war. These were soldiers of the Red Army taken captive during the Soviet-Polish war. The exact number is unknown, but according to the Polish sources, about 100 thousand Red Army servicemen were captured, and part of them (16–18 thousand) died in prison. According to the Soviet and Russian sources, these are conservative estimates: out of 157 thousand captive Red Army soldiers 60 thousand died from diseases, starvation and bad conditions [400 - Matveyev, G.F. On the number of the Red Army men in Polish captivity in 1919–1920. The New and Newest History. 2006. №3.]. Some other experts give still higher figures.
   What killed the captive Russian soldiers in Poland? They died from the same cause that killed their brothers and sons held captive by the German Reich 20 years later, in the terrible summer of 1941. This cause is outrageous treatment!
   80 thousand captive Russian soldiers died in Polish concentration camps [401 - Pospelov, P. The Poles want us to repent of the occupation, while we expect them to repent of Strzalkow and Tuchola // Nezavisimaya gazeta. 10.04.2007.]. The public at large is not acquainted with the names of these concentration camps that came to be set up two decades earlier than the analogous German camps. Auschwitz (Oswiecim) was only a continuation of the Polish extermination camps of Strzalkow and Tuchola. Sadists are alike, no matter what country. That is why the objects of abuse on the part of Germans and Poles are the same: communists, Jews and those suspected of being communists and Jews [402 - The Poles had a peculiarity, too: ethnic Germans among the Red Army servicemen were shot down on the spot.].
   The prisoners were beaten and humiliated. The Poles harnessed them instead of horses and made them carry “passengers”. According to the Russian ambassador in Poland, “every day the exhausted captives had to go out and – at the word of command – they would run around, fall on the muddy ground to rise again and so on. If someone refused to lie in the mud, or was unable to get up again, they were clubbed” [403 - Nezavisimaya gazeta. 10.04.2007.].
   There is evidence of the crimes committed by the Polish troops, for which the officers of the German SS-divisions were tried in 1945. They were tried for mass executions of war prisoners and orders “to take no captives”, which, in fact, is the same thing [404 - Ivanov, Y. The tragedy of the Polish imprisonment // Nezavisimaya gazeta. №127 (1698). 16.07.1998.].
   Aggression and violation of treaties are the breeding grounds of the new Poland. Such a bad record, together with concentration camps, does not correlate with the idea of a truly democratic country. Of course, Poland, the future victim of Hitler’s aggression, was not that. It is necessary to remind those who shed crocodile tears over a nice country ruined by Nazi Germany, that the dictatorship the Poles had set up in their own country was only slightly better than the Nazi regime. On May 12, 1926 Józef Pilsudski, the founder of the Polish state, captured Warsaw by the use of force and seized power. After the Silesian conflict the relations between Germany and Poland were far from being good-neighborly and warm. But the situation changed after Adolf Hitler came to power on January 30, 1933. Poland was the first country with which the new chancellor signed an important treaty: the non-aggression pact for the term of 10 years (January 26, 1934). Many more bilateral talks would follow, all characterized by discussions of joint actions against the Soviet Union.
   Those who have doubts may turn to the works of reputed Polish historians, such as Professor Pawel Wieczorkiewicz from the Institute of History at Warsaw University, an author of numerous books and articles. He specializes in the history of Russia and the USSR, war history and the newest history of Poland. On September 28, 2005 in an interview to the official newspaper “Rzechpospolita”, he displays straight speaking, as is proper for a soldier, to answer the question of the friendship between Hitler and his future victim: “We (Poland. – N.S.) might have had a position on the side of the Reich, equal to that of Italy and certainly better compared to the status of Hungary or Romania. As a result, we would have got to Moscow where Adolph Hitler, together with Rydz-Śmigły, would be reviewing the victorious troops of the joint German-Polish army” [405 - inosmi.ru – put online on September 28, 2005.].

   Edward Rydz-Śmigły was a marshal and commander-in-chief of the Polish Army in 1939. He was one of the major figures responsible for the crushing defeat of Poland, after which he ran away to Romania. Yet, one must do justice to the marshal who behaved as is right and proper for an officer. He stripped himself of his title and on October 30, 1941, returned to the occupied Warsaw to fight the Germans as an ordinary soldier. But he did not manage to take part in hostilities, having died of a heart attack on December 2, 1941, five weeks after his comeback to Poland. He was buried in Warsaw under an alias (Adam Zawisza). Only in 1994 a tombstone with his real name was set on his grave.

   They talked about a joint expedition against Russia, but that did not seem real until Hitler approached the frontiers of the USSR. Their working partnership resulted in the split of Czechoslovakia, with Poland annexing the Teshin region. In the same cooperative way, they planned to settle territorial disputes between Germany and her neighbor in the East. “As early as in 1938 the Allies agreed that Poland would become a German satellite”, – A. Taylor, a British historian, casually comments in his book [406 - Taylor, A. The Second World War. P. 395.]. In other words, the “honeymoon” between Germany and Poland took place during the “post-Munich” period (late 1938 – early 1939). This is worthy of note…
   Indeed, with Hitler in office, Germany changed her attitude toward Poland. Organizations of ethnic Germans, such as “The Union of Germans in Poland”, “The Party of Young Germans” began to expand. Besides, there was a legal (!) branch of the National-Socialist Party of Germany in Poland. The Nazi ideas were circulated and popularized among the local Germans. In 1937 Poland issued 105 newspapers and magazines in German; 20 of these were daily productions. An overwhelming majority of the press was controlled by the Reich’s Ministry of Propaganda headed by Josef Goebbels [407 - As Goebbels once said, “it is difficult to ascertain where our propaganda ends and espionage begins” (source: Riss, K. Total espionage. M., Voyenizdat NKO USSR, 1945. P. 107–108).].
   Interstate relations, including high-level ties, were improving, too. Polish state representatives would pay friendly visits to the Reich, while the Nazi leaders visited “fraternal” Poland. In January 1938 Warsaw saw SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer Kurt Daluege, the personality that two months later would find himself in Vienna to organize “a referendum”. As chief of the German Police (SIPo) he was likely to discuss the details of his major profession during his conversations with General Kordin-Zamorski, the chief of the Polish police. The Polish general also had something to tell. The methods of work applied by the Polish police were even more radical than those of the German police: house-checks, battery and confinement. Firearms were used in any case of resistance or attempt to flee. They resorted even to summary execution. Whom did the Polish police officers treat so cruelly? Were these pickpockets and burglars? No, these were political opponents of the regime, communists and Ukrainian nationalists…
   The exchange of ideas and experience was so successful that Mr. Kordin-Zamorski was invited to attend as a guest (!) a forthcoming conference of the Nazi Party in Nuremberg and meet Hitler. One must agree that few foreigners “had the honor” of being invited to the NSDAP conference and having a one-to-one interview with Hitler. But the Polish “Genossen” were always welcome by the German fuehrer and his minions. The dashing Polish policemen were praised and respected not only by Nazi Germany. A month later General Kordin-Zamorski visited Berlin again. On October 7, 1938 he went to see his buddy Kurt Daluege… on his way to a conference of the fascist police in Rome, Italy!
   The German-Polish amity was not reduced to the relationships between the chiefs of the security services. December 1938 saw Germany’s Minister of Justice Frank Hermann in Warsaw and in a year (February 1939) Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer SS, visited the Polish capital. The Nazis’ entrenched anti-Semitism did not embarrass the Polish authorities, nor stand in the way to the German-Polish friendship. The Polish professor Pawel Wieczorkiewicz holds forth in his interview: “The holocaust, certainly, makes one feel sad. But when you come to think of it, you may conclude that, given Germany’s rapid victory, there might have been no holocaust at all, because it was, to a great extent, the consequence of the German military defeats” [408 - See all the quotes from the interview of professor Wieczorkiewicz online: inosmi.ru.].
   It follows that Poland ought to have helped Hitler and attacked Russia in cooperation with Germany – then the Jews would have been safer! Does it mean that the future victims of Majdanek and Buchenwald should also have cooperated with Hitler, like the Poles? If the Jews had helped Hitler to win the war, there would have been no holocaust – this is how the Polish historian reasons. No comment is necessary…
   Apart from this, a well-known event that shows common views of Poland and Germany, including the attitude toward the Jews, needs a lengthy commentary. Oddly enough, the close relations between these countries became manifest due to a conflict that developed at the high noon of their “honeymoon” period. It was a futile conflict that did not influence the bilateral relations between Warsaw and Berlin. Yet, its consequences went down in the history of mankind as a stigma named the “Crystal Night”…
   On the night of November 9–10, 1938 Germany saw a race riot that derived its romantic name (“Crystal Night”) from the splinters of glass of the shop windows and window panes of the Jews’ houses shattered by Nazi pogrom-makers. Thousands of Jewish shops and synagogues were looted and demolished. About a hundred people perished, many found themselves in concentration camps. These were not yet the notorious death camps with crematory furnaces and gas chambers “invented” be the Nazis later, but many Jews sent there “to be reformed by labor” never returned home…
   Right after coming to power the Nazi leadership of Germany made the driving of the Jews out of the country their policy. With this end in view Germany passed a number of laws degrading the Jews and excluding promotion both in business and state service. But the Jews did not leave Germany en masse. Only a few did, and they thought themselves lucky and far-sighted when, only some years later, the Nazis began exterminating the Jews as a nation.
   Why didn’t the Jews leave the country that treated them with ever growing racial hatred? They did not, because they had nowhere to go. No country was ready to give shelter to the debased and prosecuted people. On the contrary, the authorities of other European states tried to block the Jewish emigration from Germany [409 - Bullock, A.P. 209.].
   To be able to understand the tragedy of the then Europe one should read the books by Erich Maria Remarque, a fine German writer. In his novels he nicely depicts the appalling game of “ping-ponging” live people. The Jews, as well as all those trying to escape from Hitler’s Germany, did not manage to get the necessary documents and visas to enter Austria and Czechoslovakia, formally sovereign states, as well as Switzerland and other countries. So they had to cross borders illegally. Beyond the borderline, there were vigilant guards and policemen who arrested the illegals. At worst, they palmed the illegals off to Germany; at best, they had them deported into some other country, where the procedure was repeated. The poor wretches crossed the borders nearly every day in the vain hope of getting lost in the new country, but all the same they were tracked down, detained, imprisoned and deported over and over again…
   Why didn’t the USA, England and France grant them political asylum? [410 - This clearly shows the dependence of the state policies of most countries on the political solutions of the leading powers, such as Great Britain, France and the USA. As the superpowers did not care about refugees and forced migrants, the “minor states” just followed suit.] They did not, because they needed an excuse to attack Germany in the rear, after her attacking and crushing the USSR. They needed an excuse to enter in the war. They wanted some big idea to be glorified by historians, writers and film-makers, a mission that war veterans and politicians would be proud of. Seizure of Russian mineral resources and developing the wide open spaces of Russia would not work, just like crushing a geopolitical adversary. Neither looks respectable and quote-worthy. In the meantime, the motto of crushing the bloodthirsty Nazi butchers burning children and women in furnaces and poisoning innocent people in gas chambers hits the mark!
   Extermination of the Jews was a sacrifice planned by those who wanted to fight cocks, playing Germany and Russia against each other in a terrible war, and then step in to dictate their terms of peace. That was why no one was in a hurry to save these victims of violence; on the contrary, efforts were made to keep them within reach of the Nazi regime and, in the end, let them die. It is easy to confirm this frightful hypothesis. Suffice it only to remember, how readily all modern European countries grant political asylum. At that time, no one granted such protection to the German, Austrian and Czech Jews who were political refugees in their own countries. No country invited, nor received them, though all the Jews of the Third Reich were deprived of citizenship, so that they were prepared to receive citizenship of any country…
   Now it is necessary to get back to the question of the “Crystal Night” and the German-Polish amity. The anti-Jew regulations (the Nuremberg laws) were adopted in September 1935, but there were no large-scale pogroms in Germany until November 1938. Shattered shop windows, demolished stores, burned synagogues and corpses came about by surprise. What caused this German pogrom?
   Practically every book devoted to the Second World War makes reference to the “Crystal Night”. Half these books do not analyze the cause, while the other half claims that the pogrom followed the murder of the German diplomat von Rath committed by a Jewish youth. In fact, no author explains, why this 17-year-old young man, living in Paris (not in Berlin!), triggered off his pistol…
   At an early hour of November 7, 1938 Herschel (Hermann) Grynszpan came up to the entrance of the German embassy in Paris. He told the guard at the gate that he had some important message for the ambassador Johannes von Welczeck. The ambassador was not available at the moment, and the young man was ushered into the study of his secretary, Ernst von Rath. Instead of delivering the message, Grynszpan took out a pistol and shot away at the diplomat. The German got a gutter wound in the shoulder and a penetrating wound in the abdominal cavity. All the German press went mad from indignation, and Hitler sent Professor Brandt to Paris to provide qualified medical assistance to the wounded man. The German leader even let the German doctors avail themselves of his plane to fly to Paris.
   What happened next is obscure. On the morning of November 9 Doctor Brandt ordered to prepare von Rath for chemotherapy. But they “mistakenly” transfused the wrong blood type, and the patient died after the third transfusion [411 - Fintushal, M. The murder of von Rath: an attempt or provocation? // Alef. The Jewish International Monthly Magazine. 21.11.2005.].
   After arresting Grynszpan the French police found his letter to his parents and a postcard from his father. At the police station the murderer claimed that he had killed an officer of the German embassy in protest against the humiliating treatment of his nation. What was it that excited the young Jew so much that he decided to commit murder?
   Historians avoid describing the back-story of this tragedy [412 - Here is a typical account by a well-heeled Western historian of the cause of the murderous assault that resulted in the “Crystal Night”: “It was a desperate protest against the unexpected deportation of his parents and 50 thousand more Polish Jews back to Poland, an act accomplished by Gestapo” (source: Bullock, A.P. 205). That is all. Why Gestapo “unexpectedly” deported the Jews to Poland the Western authors do not like to write about. Still less do they like to explain the meaning of the expression “deportation back”.]. There is a reason for this: given the objective account Poland, the future “victim of Hitler’s aggression”, would be plainly at fault. Well, unlike a Western historian, the author of this book has nothing to lie about and no difficulty to wriggle out of. In 1938 there were half a million German Jews and about 50 thousand Jews with Polish passports on the territory of Germany. Like Nazi Germany, Poland tried hard to get rid of her Jewish population. It suited nicely the British masterminds of Hitler’s rise to power in order to have grounds to accuse the Third Reich of inhuman practices, a charge to be filed at a later period of time. To this end it was necessary to provoke the Nazi government into repressions against the Jews. Hitler also needed an excuse to start a new wave of racial harassment. Thus, both England and Germany were interested in repressive crackdown against the Jews. But Britain always uses others to do her own dirty work. As the English proverb runs, don’t keep a dog and bark yourself.
   The Polish Jews did nicely for the role of the harassed individuals. Poland would have hardly ventured on such an outrageous abuse of power, but for approval from London secured in advance. The act of the Warsaw authorities was too cruel and lawless. On March 31 the Polish president signed a law enabling the Ministry of Home Affairs to expatriate Polish citizens staying abroad for a period longer than 5 years and “having lost ties with the Polish government”. Thus, Poland made a real problem of returning home for her Jewish citizens. That was a preliminary stage, while the further stage was like a blitzkrieg, leaving “the enemy” no chance for survival. October 15, 1938 saw a new amendment to the Polish citizenship law that envisaged only a fortnight’s notice (!) to revalidate the passports for traveling abroad. Over 14 days about 50 thousand people were supposed to visit a Polish consulate in person, which was impossible. Those unable to get a special stamp in their passports before October 30 were to get into a fearful mess, related to expatriation by default and inability to return to Poland. The Polish government’s desire to expel 50 thousand Jews from the country was quite obvious, because the sacred stamp was not a pure formality, and the Polish functionaries were in a position to refuse anyone admission to their country. It goes without saying that only the Jews were at hazard…
   Warsaw’s act of law put the authorities of the Third Reich in a dilemma. Hitler’s regime took great pains to expel their “own” Jews from the country, but considering the “alien” Jews from Poland, the situation was still worse. Thanks to the flagrant violation of civil rights by Poland, dozens of thousands of her citizens were deprived of their IDs and homeland, with a dash of the pen. Poland shifted the responsibility for the fate and fortunes of these people onto Germany. But Germany was in no position to deport stateless people, because at that time there was no such practice anywhere. One has the impression that someone was trying hard to incite the Nazi leadership that lacked morality, as it was, to extermination of the Polish Jews, their “headache department”, and the German Jews, if that was the case…
   After all, the Germans determined that the Polish Jews whose passports had not been revalidated before October 30, 1938 were illegal immigrants on the territory of Germany. Such a problem would be likely to be viewed in the same way by any modern European state, if the government of another state had expatriated her citizens at a stroke. The German Nazis had committed appalling crimes over the 12 years of their rule, but there is no need to assign blame to them for something they were not guilty of. Therefore it should be stressed that the crisis related to the Polish Jews lies at the door of the Polish authorities! That is what makes Western historians sidestep this issue…
   What would the US administration do with 50 thousand Mexicans, if Mexico City had suddenly cancelled their passports, each bearing a long-awaited American visa in the right place? The answer is clear: immediate deportation. That was what the leaders of the Third Reich decided to do. So they acted accordingly: on October 28 and 29 all those with cancelled passports were arrested and trained to the Polish border. The idea was clear: while there were still citizens of Poland, they could be deported from Germany. About 18 thousand unlucky creatures were hustled toward the frontier posts. But the Polish frontier guards did not let the Jews with cancelled passports into the country, so they clubbed and hustled them back to Germany!
   This victimization took place in the Polish border settlement Zbonsin (the Zbonsin incident). Among those hurrying and scurrying across the neutral zone for nearly three days were the relatives of Herschel Grynszpan. There is evidence that the frontier guards on both sides even opened warning machine-gun fire. Finally Poland backed out and acceded to extend the deadline of confirming the Polish citizenship until July 31, 1939 in exchange of Germany’s cessation of violent deportation of the Jews.
   Thus, the attempt to provoke The Nazi Germany to massacre failed; though the motive for assassinating a German diplomat was found (his life was attempted later by Grynszpan). It means that an excuse for the upcoming “Crystal Night” was found, too. In all likelihood, the 17-year-old boy that got a letter from his parents describing this travesty of the law was properly instructed. How? There are a lot of ways, for example, he may have received a fake letter with an exaggerated description of the real event, or a description with falsified, though ghastly details. But thanks to the Polish government, Znonsin gave a just cause of offence even without purposefully painting it too black. All that was left to do was to supply the Jewish youth with a pistol and show him the way.
   As a matter of fact, the story of this murder is a mystery. It is interesting to follow both the inquest and the young man’s further life. 20 thousand dollars had been raised for the defense of the accused by the Writers Association of America which made it possible to hire Frenkel, the best French counsel for the defense of the day. The murdered German diplomat Ernst von Rath was a homosexual, and that was the detail on which the counsel built the line of defense. There was no mention of harassing the Jews, or any other political motive that might have appealed to the French servants of Themis. The defense brought to mind a second-rate detective story of a young man who was having a love affair with the German diplomat and attempted his life to revenge himself for his lover’s “unfaithfulness”.
   In spite of the apparent simplicity of the case with the murderer, the victim of the murder and the crime instrument, the inquest was hardly in progress. An open trial of that obscure case was so much undesirable that by September 1, 1939, when the Second World War began (10 months after the murder), the proceedings had not begun yet! The young murderer was sent to juvenile prison where he was captured by the Germans when they occupied France, in the summer of 1940. In Germany H. Grynszpan was not imprisoned, but sent to the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen where they provided him with good conditions. The murderer of the German diplomat had not been seen since. He just disappeared. Only in the 60-ies of the 20th century a German court informed his parents in response for their inquiry that their son had died… on May 8, 1945. Who liquidated the undesirable witness is still in the clouds…
   This story triggers a number of questions. It is within reason to suggest, as most historians do, that the German special services had masterminded the murder of their diplomat to have an excuse for racial repressions in the Reich. That is a probability.
   But why should the German intelligence service stage a provocation on the French territory? Why complicate the task, whereas the German government has a lot more servants of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or any other ministry in Berlin, than anywhere else? Anyone can shoot a desired number of Germans until hell freezes over! Why should they tackle a simple problem in such a complicated way? A person like von Rath could be killed in any Berlin street, with a Jew’s corpse nearby, pistol in hand, to point to the person protesting against the Nuremberg act of law. Any victimized person, like an abused and harassed Jew, has a motive for protesting and killing a Nazi official. It should be noted that 10 years later Hitler wanted a motive to accuse Poland of aggressiveness, and the SS-men concocted it without batting an eyelid [413 - The incident in question is a notorious armed seizure of a radio station in the German border town of Gleiwitz. A group of SS-men in Polish uniforms invaded the radio station, opened fire and even went on the air with a proclamation in Polish. In a while another group of SS-men came to the “captured” building and drove “the Poles” from their positions. To camouflage their actions the intruders left a few corpses of some earlier shot prisoners in Polish military apparel.]. Did they fail to do what they had managed so well before?
   It is worthy of note that the German intelligence service chose France as a locus in quo. That suggested pursuing the following inquiry by the French police that could hardly be pushed into an agreement. Besides, there was the murderer. Did the Germans want him alive? Suppose the interrogating officer scared him into blurting out the truth? A corpse with a note in his pocket seemed much safer than a live terrorist in the hands of a foreign investigation. It was no problem to organize return fire on the part of the embassy guards. A security officer instructed beforehand hears the shooting and kills the shot. Nobody will be a penny the wiser.
   There are other curious particulars, too. The German intelligence that is evidently fond of solving problems keeps Grynszpan in confinement until the end of the war – to the last day!
   If the Moor has done his duty, why not let him go? Why keep a witness alive, though it makes more sense to cover tracks, like any intelligence service does? Is the Germen intelligence an exception? Are they sorry for the Jewish boy that, according to the Nazi ideology is a “subman” (Untermensch). Most likely, if the Germans spare a person who knows something important, they design to play this person against someone else. The question is: what is it that the youth provoked to assassination by the German intelligence knows? Could it be that it was not the German intelligence that engineered the assassination? The Germans may have spared a valuable witness of their Western partners’ operation to the last day, his SS-guards executing an instruction punctually: to liquidate Grynszpan at the last moment. That is a probability.
   There is also a probability that the German special services were not involved in the affair. Then the secret services of the Allies may have gained access to any place and liquidated Grynszpan, because it was the 8th of May, when Germany signed its capitulation. But why kill him? The answer is: the youth was a witness of how the West had incited the Nazis to commit anti-Jew crimes in order to disguise their future war against Germany as a humanitarian mission. The version of engineering this provocation by the British and French special services fits the facts of the “wrong” blood transfusion (in a French hospital, too!) and the dragging of the case as long as possible to prevent the accused from blurting out the truth. But this is only a version. Hopefully, some future historians will be able to pour some light on the dark business that took place in Paris…
   It is time to turn back to the Polish-German amity. Such “trifles’ as the Zbosin incident could not torpedo the good-neighborly relations between the countries. While Hitler was so far ready to honor his agreement with the West, in his relations with Poland he was set on two major objectives: 1) to return the territories annexed by Poland after World War I, 2) to render military support to the Polish army before attacking the USSR. As the second objective was more important, he treated the first, rather sensitive question as tactfully as he could. Later on Adolf Hitler would be demonized by historians who would emphasize his aggressive and insidious nature. This is quite true: the head of Nazi Germany was aggressive and insidious toward Russia. But Poland he treated like a gentleman – until the Poles – on command from London – plagued their relations with Germany in the most outrageous manner.
   The above-quoted Professor Wieczorkiewicz agrees with this interpretation of events: “On October 24, 1938 during the talks between Ribbentrop and Lipski the German side presented the demands which I would rather call a package, because initially they did not have the nature of an ultimatum. The aim was to tie Poland with the Reich’s policies. If Rzeczpospolita accepted these demands, she would not have suffered any considerable damage. Gdansk (German Danzig) was not then a Polish city, and a highway across the corridor was the idea of Polish diplomacy of the 30-ies with the aim of smoothing the bilateral relations between Poland and Germany, though few people remember about this. In exchange for this concession, Germany proposed extending the non-aggression pact and Poland’s joining the Antikominternpakt signed between Germany and Japan” [414 - The newspaper Rzeczpospolita. 28.09.2005.].
   In preparation for a joint German-Polish expedition against the USSR the German leadership proposed a peaceful and civilized solution of the territorial problem. To settle this problem the Germans wanted to hold a referendum on the disputed territory. If the inhabitants of the so called corridor decided to return the German citizenship, Poland was supposed to acquire both an exterritorial railway and a highway to have access to the Baltic Sea. In case Poland held the corridor, Germany was supposed to have such exterritorial facilities. Besides, it was not for nothing that Hitler asked Poland to return Danzig. He intended to guarantee Poland’s new borders, to extend the non-aggression pact and to ensure the exclusive rights of Poland in Danzig [415 - Bullock, A.P. 217.]. Ukraine was supposed to make good with a vengeance the territories that Poland was going to lose. It was a good deal, but Poland refused, which grieves modern historians.

   Danzig (Gdansk) had the status of a free town. In diplomatic practice this term applies to a temporary freeze of territorial disputes between states. The victors in World War I chose this method to avoid a military conflict between Germany and Poland. The status of Danzig was a kind of moral compensation to Germany for forming the enclave of East Prussia separated from the major part of the German land by the borders of New Poland. The city with a population of 407 thousand turned into a sovereign state under the aegis of the League of Nations. Danzig enjoyed great autonomy and, in point of fact, became Germany’s other enclave mainly populated by ethnic Germans. Even its monetary unit was not the Polish zloty, but the local mark that was equal to the German 100 pfennigs. The state of Poland was represented in Danzig by a commissar in charge of running all Polish affairs in the city and the surrounding area, rendering assistance to the citizens of Poland in Gdansk, supervising observance of their rights, maintaining communication between the Republic of Poland and the High Commissioner of the League of Nations.
   A great number of documents testify to the desire of the Poles to seize as much Ukrainian land as possible. For example, Mr. Karszo-Siedlewski, Poland’s ambassador in Iran, said to a German diplomat: “The political perspective for the European east is clear. In a few years Germany will be at war with the Soviet Union… The best solution for Poland would be to take a definite stand on the side of Germany before the conflict, because her territorial interests in the West and political aims in the East, namely in the Ukraine, may be guaranteed only by means of an early agreement between Poland and Germany” [416 - Source: The Crisis Year of 1938–1939: Documents and materials. M., 1990. V.1. P. 162.].

   With Hitler so far acting according to the scenario of attacking the USSR, the Polish leaders behaved in a nice and friendly way. January 1939 saw Ribbentrop’s visit to Warsaw where the Polish and German Foreign Ministers exchanged speeches, in which they confirmed the phase of “definitely establishing good-neighborly bilateral relations”. Making a speech in Berlin on January 30, 1939, Hitler called the German-Polish amity during the disturbing time of splitting Czechoslovakia “a decisive factor in the political life of Europe” and said that the Pact [417 - The Polish-German non-aggression pact, signed in 1934.] was “essential for preserving peace in Europe”.
   One may compare the relations between Poland and Germany with ball-room dancing. In the period of late 1938 – early 1939 “the male partner”, Mr. Germany, was cuddling his “female partner”, Miss Poland. At first, as befits a decent girl, the Polish female put on some airs; she would not consent at once, but gave to understand that the partner suited her. Then suddenly Miss Poland rudely pushes off her partner and goes as far as to give him a slap in the face. How could it have happened? Why did the friendly relations between the “male” Germany and the “maidenly” Poland come to a military conflict?
   The relations between Poland and Germany after Hitler’s coming to power were really very good. But the political solutions of Warsaw were controlled by English and French diplomats. That was why the degree of Poland’s “love” of Germany was measured far beyond the Polish borders…
   When did the Poles change their attitude to Germany? The historians give an unambiguous answer: March 21, 1939. It was on that day that Germany allegedly presented an ultimatum insisting on immediate cession of Danzig and “the corridor” [418 - The historians cunningly refrain from giving the reader the essence of the German proposition. Danzig did not belong to Poland and was governed by the “international community”. That is why Poland was expected to give her consent not to stand in the way for the “independent state” of Danzig to join Germany.]. But it was a lie. The Germans did not propose anything new to the Poles and expected the Poles to respond to their old reasonable proposal. They expected a response from Mr. Beck, Poland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs who was being waited for in Berlin. But instead of the minister, the ambassador Lipski came. The German Minister of Foreign Affairs Ribbentrop was concerned about two questions: 1) Was Warsaw prepared to accept the German proposal? 2) Why had Minister Beck who was to have arrived in Berlin on an official visit to finalize the bilateral pact left for London, instead of Berlin? [419 - Ribbentrop, J. von. P. 164–168.]
   The Polish ambassador answered neither of these questions. But the answers are evident. No sooner had Hitler had the cheek to handle the Slovakia and Ukraine questions the wrong way, than the voice of the British policy changed. As a result, the “independent” Polish gentlemen changed their kindly manners. On March 21, 1939 England “unexpectedly” proposed that the USSR and France should sign a declaration concerning immediate consultations on measures of curbing “further aggression in Europe”. On that same day the Western leaders met in London to decide what to do with Hitler who had got out of control. “Independent” Poland’s Minister Beck was also there. He did not go there in vain, as he was instructed there on the subject of “the party’s new policy”. Now, the policy of soft-handling in relation to Germany was to be replaced by the toughest possible line. To encourage Poland England guaranteed her military defense, though Poland had not asked for that [420 - Ribbentrop, J. von. P. 168–169.].
   Five days later, on March 26, 1939 the ambassador Lipski handed Ribbentrop a memorandum of the Polish government that “brusquely declined the German proposition concerning Danzig [421 - Ibid. P. 169.]. Lipski dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s, getting on Germany’s bad side by the following utterance: “Any further efforts to fulfill the German plans, especially those concerning the cession of Danzig to the Reich, will lead to war with Poland” [422 - Ibid. P. 169.].
   This meant a complete change in Poland’s diplomacy. The intimate friendship between the two nations vanished into thin air. The point was that Hitler was given to understand that Poland would no longer consent to negotiations with his regime and was prepared to stand to her guns and, at worst, go to war. Warsaw took some unmistakably hostile actions to deprive Berlin of any illusions: most officers of the Polish embassy in Berlin sent home their families; the Polish students staying in the German capital also went home; all the Polish consuls were ordered to burn secret papers and archives. Besides, on March 23 Poland declared partial mobilization [423 - Meltyukhov, M. Stalin’s lost chance. P. 63.]. The next day after the Germans received the “brusque” memorandum (March 27, 1939), the Polish president issued a decree on supplementary appropriations for the national defense equal to the amount of 1.2 billion zlotys.
   All that was done by a country that had a non-aggression pact with Germany! It was the Poland that only a month before (even a week before!) was regarded to be the German fuehrer’s main team-mate in his journey to the East. But as soon as the journey was put off, Poland declared partial mobilization. That was a signal that presupposed war! It is noteworthy that Germany did not actually threaten Poland: there was no mobilization, nor warlike whoops against Warsaw. The Germans had no campaign plan to wage a war against Poland! Even those who most ardently accuse Hitler of aggressiveness have to admit that he gave an order to work out the first strike against Poland only on April 1, 1939 [424 - Ibid. P. 63.]. The draft plan was ready by mid-April 1939 [425 - The Nuremberg Trials. V.1. M., 1955. P. 343.].
   What motivated the leader of Nazi Germany to unleash his first war? It became quite clear to him that it was a mistake to leave the “London-run” Poland in the rearward. That Polish “plug” jamming the way to the East was turning into a pistol held to Germany’s head. If an enduring friendship might be sacrificed by the Poles overnight (!), at a whistle from London, they could not be trusted, indeed. But Hitler could not help fighting; it was not because he was a maniacal aggressor, but because the country was extremely militarized. Now it was time for him to get his bearings, to determine his further movement. But wherever he went, East or West, Poland might strike Germany any time that London would find fit. At that, it is essential to realize that the Poles were working contrary to their own interests. The brusque form with which their high officials chose to communicate with Hitler’s ministers could only provoke Germany into a conflict with no political dividends for Poland.
   On March 31, 1939, i.e. 16 days after Hitler occupied Prague, Britain was ready to fight Germany. Britain that had not heretofore “noticed” Hitler’s aggressiveness, the power that even had ceded to him Austria, Czechoslovakia, Rheinland and Saarland without a grumble, now was in a bellicose mood. On that day the Premier Chamberlain made a statement to emphasize that “in the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence, and which the Polish Government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces”, Britain would feel bound to lend Poland all support in her power [426 - The USSR in its struggle on the eve of World War II (September 1938 – August 1939). Documents and materials. M., 1971. P. 290.].
   The Poles were more surprised to hear of such a turn in politics than anybody else. England had always tried to avoid making commitments, but at that moment it did something unasked for. Here is how Winston Churchill comments on Britain’s foreign policy reversal: “Yet now at last the two Western democracies declared themselves ready to stake their lives upon the territorial integrity of Poland. History, which, we are told, is mainly the record of the crimes, follies, and miseries of mankind, may be scoured and ransacked to find a parallel to this sudden and complete reversal of five or six years’ policy of easy-going placatory appeasement, and its transformation almost overnight into a readiness to accept an obviously imminent war on far worse conditions and on the greatest scale” [427 - Churchill, W. The Second World War. P. 311.].
   A truer word was never spoken. But Churchill leaves out one essential point: England and France never intended to wage a real war against Germany. As a result of incredible political pressure, Hitler was just obliged, as the leaders of England and France might have thought, to let them put a choke collar on him and make him “the watchdog” of the West.
   A week later Chamberlain’s statement turned into an agreement between Poland and England. The author of this book is far from trying to whitewash the Nazi aggressors and defend the murderers of many millions of Soviet people by presenting them as victims of circumstances. But it is essential to understand the chain of events that led this country to her most terrible night in history – the small hors of June 22, 1941. That is why speaking the truth is preferable, though it may go against the grain of some personalities.
   It was not Germany, but Poland and England that violated their treaties! Poland broke the Polish-German Treaty by declaring mobilization and broke it again by accepting the English guarantees of her security. The treaty between Poland and Germany excluded any bilateral conflict, and the signing of an agreement with England bound the Poles to fight the Germans in case of war between England and Germany. Besides, this agreement including the provision of guarantees of security contradicted the German-British Pact, the “insurance” paper that Chamberlain was waving in his hand on his return home from Munich. As the reader remembers, the Munich amendment agreement pointed out that neither Germany, not England could make any political commitments without mutual consultations. As is known, Britain undertook the commitment to declare war on Germany in case of its military conflict with Poland!
   At one stroke the European diplomats violated their treaties with Germany and thus displayed the necessary degree (as they thought) of hard line in order to suppress him, which, in fact, was nothing but political delusion of all diplomatic measures. With the first change of a political situation, the whole system of interstate treaties goes down the drain with dispatch. Hitler would act accordingly later, but it should be borne in mind that he was no pioneer in this sphere. The peculiarity of the situation was that England was now ready to go to war not only for the sake of Poland. It was not the security of only Poland that England guaranteed, but that of Romania, too [428 - April 13, 1939. The guarantees to Romania blocked the oil supplies to Germany. It was impossible to go to war without oil, and it was dangerous to put pressure to bear on Romania, because it might at best lead to war with England, France and even Romania. What was left to do? The only way was to consent to the British “dog-collar” (Bullock, A.V. 2.P. 224).]. Following Britain France also gave her guarantees of security. This meant that both the powers had blocked the German foreign policy in all directions. Germany could not make a move in any direction without asking for permission from London or taking a chance of war with England. Yet, there was one available direction, the most acceptable one for the gentlemen at 10 Downing Street.
   But the hard line with Hitler gave the contrary effect. In his famous speech on April 28, 1939 Hitler tore up the non-aggression pact with Poland and the naval treaty with England. It was not because Hitler was after “seizing the whole world”, but because de facto Poland and England had already denounced their agreements with Germany and concluded an agreement with one another.
   Instead of consenting to the British “tutelage”, Hitler launched a challenge against his “boss” and determined to liquidate Poland as a hostile and unpredictable force. But he had no further aggressive plans so far. He had no step-by-step plan of “conquering the world”. He had no campaign plan of crushing the USSR. The German headquarters had no campaign plans to attack France and England. The Germans had only one worked-out military plan – to strike Poland (Fall Weiß) – and was launching the Polish campaign without having elaborated operations in the West [429 - Falin, V.P. 108.]. The German leader “of genius” was leaning into the wind rather than running with it, trying to respond to the changing international situation. One might just as well hazard the following guess: the whole world war on the part of Germany was one big improvisation!
   What aim did the West set trying to persuade Poland to take a tough line with Germany? The aim was to provoke a conflict between Germany and the USSR. That was supposed to happen, no matter what Hitler did. If he is in a funk to fight with the West and attacks Stalin instead, that’s good. If his heart does not fail him and he attacks Poland, that’s good, too. Bearing in mind what the Third Reich had been reared for, the Soviet leadership would hardly sit idle, watching the German Army nearing the Soviet borders. The most sensible way out for Stalin in a conflict with Germany would be to deploy the troops on the Polish territory to prevent the German Army from drawing near the frontier.
   Thus, the Polish-German conflict would naturally turn into a war between the USSR and Germany, which was a strategy. Every power was involved in this problem: England, France, Germany and the Soviet Union. But the goals of diplomats from different countries were diametrically opposite. The following half a year, before Germany attacked Poland, would be a period of scramble between diplomats and spies.
   What challenges did the diplomats of different countries meet?
   • Hitler’s primary objective was to prevent the USSR from entering a European war. Hoping that England and France would betray their ally (Poland) again, he intended to liquidate Poland without the risk of coming to grips with the Russians. Then he could afford to come to terms with Britain again, this time standing on dignity and equal treatment.
   • Stalin’s primary objective was to keep Germany from attacking the USSR. The execution of this objective might require that Poland be sacrificed, so be it. What “remorse” could Stalin feel? Poland was an enemy indeed, anxious to march into Moscow hand-in-hand with Hitler. Now he had a chance to let one aggressor do the dirty work of liquidating another aggressor. Why would the Russian leader refuse?

   Yet, Stalin had another variant. By concluding an agreement with England, France and Poland he could lean on a joint effort to crush the aggressor in case of war. But it is clear as daylight that the leaders of the West democracies would never conclude such an agreement. Indeed, such a plan was never realized. Even when it was evident that German aggression was inevitable, Poland that obediently followed London’s instructions refused to conclude a treaty of union with the USSR. Consequently, Stalin had no alternative, except concluding a treaty with Hitler.

   • The primary objective of England and France was to play Germany against Russia. In the situation of Hitler’s new mode of behavior they introduced a minor variation, but basically the scenario had not changed. They decided to provoke Hitler into attacking Poland, which implied the outset of a conflict between Germany and the USSR. But Hitler was no idiot. He remembered the world war too well and would never make up his mind to attack Poland, because in an upcoming war this might lead to fighting on two fronts: against the USSR on one front and against England and France on the other front. To encourage Hitler to attack Poland it was necessary for his Western partners to assure him that they would not intervene on behalf of Poland. At that, both England and France were supposed to remain in the shade and, in accordance with their old plan, enter into the war after the Germans and the Russians had exhausted each other…
   Now that the reader fully understands the objectives of all the participants of that political game, it is possible to estimate their decisions. On April 16, 1939 Stalin attempted to propose that Europe should take joint actions to stop Hitler. The Soviet Foreign Minister Litvinov told the British ambassador that the USSR was ready to conclude a mutual assistance treaty with Britain and France [430 - Meltyukhov, M.P. 65.]. The USSR had concrete proposals, and that was why they went unanswered. The Soviet Union found it necessary to determine firm mutual commitments of all the parties concerned. Instead of this, England suggested that the USSR should just express support of her Western partners in case of attack [431 - Poland was west of the USSR. So if Stalin undertook to support “the western neighbors”, i.e. the Poles, it would make an excuse for waging a war with Germany.]. When Litvinov suggested that Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia should enjoy security guarantees, England did not give any definite answer [432 - Meltyukhov, M.P. 68.]. Why? One should remember that the Baltic territory was necessary to deploy an army for attacking Russia. Given the guarantees, how can Hitler occupy this territory? And if he cannot do this, how can the German troops be arrayed for attack? That was why the British diplomats preferred to keep their mouths shut…
   In late April it was possible to avert an upcoming war. On April 30, 1939 Hitler took some unofficial steps to find common ground with his former English “friends” by warning them, that unless an agreement was made with them, he would have to negotiate with the Kremlin. But the English diplomats did not believe that the Bolsheviks could come to an agreement with the Nazis. It was no coincidence that they had tried to place in power the bitterest enemy of the communist regime.
   The tactic of the English, as well as the French diplomacy was quite simple: to drag on the negotiations with the USSR, without concluding any agreements, to give Stalin the impression that such agreements would be soon reached. That was one side of the British diplomatic game. The other side was related to making Hitler attack Poland. It was a convenient situation with England and France, having no commitments, and Germany at the doorstep of the USSR. Later they would only have to stir one of the parties to the conflict so that it might start the ball rolling, and a Russian-German war would be secured.

   Out of 75 days devoted to the “exchange of opinions” between the Soviet and Western diplomats 16 days had been spent to prepare the answers to the questions, the other 59 days wasted on delays and procrastination on the part of the Western powers. The British and French diplomats piled up difficulties out of thin air even in discussing trifling matters. Had they really had good will, all such questions could have been easily settled. Like a winning soccer team, they were trying to run out the clock [433 - Volkov, F.D. Behind the scenes of World War II. P. 256–257.].

   As for Poland, it was destined to repeat the annexation story of Austria, or Czechoslovakia. The Poles were to be sacrificed for the sake of political rationale. England had provoked Poland to sever friendly relations with Germany, and the further objective was to sustain the acute state of the German-Polish crisis. Poland was going to get nothing but promises. Of course, the treaty between England and Poland contained the provision that England would act on the side of Poland in case of Hitler’s attack. There is a sophisticated notion in diplomacy – ratification; it suggests good will and, at the same time, reluctance of responsibility, for the time being. Britain chose a temporizing policy in ratifying the Polish-British treaty! It was signed on April 6, 1939, but came into effect, i.e. was ratified only on August 25 [434 - England held back on ratifying the treaty till the last moment and did it only on April 25, 1939, because on April 23 the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was signed. Otherwise, England and France would never have ratified their treaties with Poland.]. Had Germany attacked Poland earlier, England would not have been liable to it.
   The trustful Poles were ready to discuss peculiarities of routing the German Army. On May 23, 1939 a British delegation headed by General Clayton arrived in Warsaw for negotiations. No concrete decisions were taken, no commitments made on the part of England. Things proceeded in this train till the beginning of the war. The treaty only provided for British military assistance to Poland without concretizing how, when and where. The French acted in the same fashion. They led the Poles up the garden path, and the Poles just could not believe that their country would be betrayed in the same way as Czechoslovakia, a short while before. The Polish-French cooperation was initialed on May 19, 1939 by General Gamelin and General Kasprzycki [435 - To initial an international treaty means confirming the authenticity of the text of a treaty in each language by the initials of the Authorized Representatives of the parties concerned. There is nothing more to it. It does not mean ratification (executive force) of a certain treaty.]. According to this agreement, the French Air Force was to strike Germany, as soon as the war broke out, and the ground troops were to be engaged on the 15th day after declaring mobilization [436 - Meltyukhov, M.P. 67.].
   All is plain to see. And that is why it is no good. The French government would later refused to confirm this military agreement on the grounds of the absence of a political agreement between France and Poland. As a result, England and France got a good hand: now it was up to them to decide how to assist Poland. Stated differently, they gave her no assistance at all. This “assistance” has gone down in history by the meaningful phrase the Phony War. It will be discussed a little below.
   Stalin soundly estimated the probability of fair play on the part of his Western partners as zero. This caused him to make an important conclusion that it was vital to make an agreement with Hitler. On May 3, 1939 the Foreign Minister Litvinov was discharged, his position being taken by Molotov. Thus, Moscow gave a signal to Berlin. It was not because Litvinov was a Jew, whereas the new minister was a Russian. To understand Stalin’s job swap it is necessary to look over Comrade Litvinov’s biography. It will make things clear…
   Maxim Maximovich Litvinov (Meher-Genoh Moiseyevich Filkenstein, or Max Vallakh) was no ordinary Bolshevik. A member of the Bolshevik Party since 1898, he specialized in purchasing and trafficking arms to Russia. It is no exaggeration to say that traffic in arms is a specific business that required contacts in some spheres involving careful treatment, such as special services of different countries. Looking over Comrade Litvinov’s activities, one could notice a peculiarity: all his revolutionary work was oddly connected with Great Britain. For one thing, this “champion of a happy life for all working people” was married to an English woman that had kept her British citizenship all her life, including the period when her husband headed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union! [437 - At that time the purge of the apparatus involved the whole territory of the USSR. Even a charwoman from a railway station refreshment room could be imprisoned for “contacts” with foreigners from a train running by. Thus, the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs married to a foreigner was something extraordinary.]
   It was from London that the English steamer “John Grafton” loaded with arms set out for Russia in the summer of 1905. Luckily, running aground, she did not deliver the awesome cargo for the purpose intended. No one knows how many such ships had arrived at their points of destination. But it is well known that the arms were shipped by Comrade Litvinov…
   After the first Russian revolution he found himself in exile again. In 1908 Maxim Maximovich was arrested in France in the legal case of an armed robbery of the CIT vehicle. If someone thinks that a desperate and hungry émigré attacked cash-in-transit providers in Paris, one is in error. Comrade Vallakh did not suffer from dearth of money. This gentleman was arrested following an armed robbery in Tbilisi, arranged by Kamo, a famous Bolshevik expropriator. The Leninists tried to change 500-rouble notes, but the bank note numbers were communicated to all European banks. The French police seized the future MFA head with such a bank note.

   The Russian 500-rouble note looked like a large piece of paper (13 ∙ 28 cm). There were no wallets this size at the time, so they carried paper money in bags. The lower right corner of a light-green note showed the series and the serial number: two red letters and six figures. These figures also showed under the colored denomination – 500 – in the white background. When examined in the light, the background showed a watermark – a well-drawn portrait of Peter I. Such a pack of anti-counterfeiting measures brought about a situation disappointing for the Bolsheviks, because it was impossible to change a prodigious sum of money (340 thousand roubles) in 500-rouble denominations.

   What was a penalty for hustling stolen property, according to the then French legislation? It may have been imprisonment. But Comrade Litvinov was not imprisoned. Did he have a good lawyer? It was possible. But he also had good connections with special services and, consequently, with governmental structures of European states. If all the Russian revolutionaries were imprisoned in Europe, who was supposed to make a Russian revolution? France could not extradite Maxim Maximovich to Russia because of Russian imprisonment in store for him. So they found a way out: he was extradited to England!
   He stayed in England 9 years – till the beginning of the Bolshevik revolution. Since June 1914 Comrade Litvinov had been a representative of the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks’ party in the International Socialist Bureau and a member of London’s fraction of his party. In other words, as a party functionary he received a salary in English pounds. This is not surprising. Russian revolutionaries were all pros; so they professionally spread chaos, confusion and crackpot ideas and could not do anything more. Nobody knows what Comrade Litvinov was busy doing in England the first six years of his sojourn (from 1908 to 1914). He was unlikely to just wear out the seat of his trousers in London pubs all this time! Somebody was certain to be supplying him with money for sustenance. This period of time between the two Russian revolutions was financially the most difficult one for Lenin’s party. By that time Maxim Litvinov’s running expenses had increased, too, because he married a beautiful Englishwoman. So who paid for his bunches of flowers and sweets and theatre-goings hand-in-hand with his bride? Did the Party pay for his entertainments? But an English merchant’s daughter is not an artless village girl. You can’t make do with only a bottle of liqueur and tales about life abroad. But let the reader get things straight himself…
   When the Bolsheviks came to power, Lenin named Litvinov Plenipotentiary Envoy of Soviet Russia to England. The reason was simple: he had proved a reliable man purchasing and trafficking arms due to his connections with the British intelligence service and spent a long time in Britain. So it would be easier for him to come to terms with the state bodies of that country. At the very beginning of the Bolshevik rule they did not discuss cultural contacts, or oil and gas supplies. The Bolshevik rule was at stake. It was up to England to define the winner in the Civil War. In the final analysis, the White Guards did not get relevant assistance, which predetermined the Bolsheviks’ victory. Litvinov deserves credit for this.
   From then on all Litvinov’s energy would be used exclusively in the diplomatic service, starting with the post of Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. Comrade Chicherin, the minister, had never been a Trotskyite; yet, when Leo Trotsky was exiled from the USSR in 1929, Litvinov was directly placed in Chicherin’s position. He was at the head of the ministry until May 3, 1939, when he was discharged by Stalin for the sake of rapprochement with Hitler. Historians make a mistake in interpreting this event. The main factor is not the minister’s Jewish nationality, but his pro-English political orientation! Stalin discharged England’s “best friend” to give Hitler an unequivocal signal. Besides, the dismissal of the “pro-English” Litvinov was aimed at causing England to take some more active contacts with the USSR, if the English really wanted to keep Moscow from making a treaty with Berlin.
   But Litvinov’s career had not stalled. His further appointments justified his contacts with British politicians and British special services. After being removed from office, he lived in his country-house near Moscow. But as soon as Hitler attacked the USSR, Stalin made him ambassador in the USA in order to arrange American supplies of military equipment vitally important to the USSR. Litvinov spent the whole crucial period of the war till 1943 overseas; he got back home, with a clear conscience, only when the star of the Third Reich was set.
   Hitler appreciated the “reshuffle”. “Following Litvinov’s dismissal the Kremlin’s interest in reconsidering its relations with Germany had enhanced lately, which gave me a chance, after some successful preparations, to send my Minister of Foreign Affairs to Moscow to conclude a treaty. This is going to be the broadest possible non-aggression pact that will be revealed to public. The pact will not be confined to terms and includes the commitment to consult on all questions affecting the interests of Germany and Russia. I can tell you, Duce, that this agreement will guarantee Russia’s benevolence in case of any conflict” [438 - Source: The USSR – To be made public: The USSR – Germany in 1939–1941: Documents and materials / Compiling editor Y. Felshtinskiy. M., 1991.], – Hitler wrote to Mussolini in a letter of August 25, 1939.
   The Germans were determined and persistent. Their requirements were clear and their moves showed that they were eager to eliminate a threat from the East. Hitler had a good reason to hurry, having fixed the date of attacking Poland: August 26, 1939. So The Germans had to sign the German-Soviet Pact before that date, and the sooner – the better. So Germany was pursuing a definite and accurate policy as to her aims. The essence of the German proposals and her approach to the situation may be comprehended from the cable of August 14, 1939 of the German Minister of Foreign Affairs Joachim von Ribbentrop to Germany’s ambassador in Moscow Count von der Schulenburg.
   “I ask you to contact Mr. Molotov in person and tell him the following: Ideological difference between the National Socialist Germany and the Soviet Union is the only thing that has previously polarized Germany and the USSR… The period of hostility may terminate once and for all; the road to a new future is open for both countries… The living space of Germany verges on that of the USSR, but there is no natural need for conflict… Germany has no aggressive plans directed against the USSR. The Imperial Government is of the opinion that there are no problems between the Baltic and the Black Seas that cannot be settled to the reasonable satisfaction of both the states… There is no doubt that the present state of German-Soviet relations has come to the turning-points of history. The decisions concerning these relations which will be made in Berlin and Moscow tomorrow will be crucial to the German and the Soviet peoples… It is true that in the result of the longstanding ideological antagonism Germany and the Soviet Union are suspicious of each other. Much rubbish must be removed… Thanks to their experience, the Imperial Government and the Soviet Government must take account of the fact that the capitalist democracies of the West are irreconcilable enemies of both National-Socialist Germany and the Soviet Union. Today, by concluding a military alliance, they are trying to involve the USSR into a war against Germany. In 1914 this policy resulted in a catastrophe for Russia. It is in the interests of both countries to safeguard the existence of Germany and the USSR forever, while the collapse of each country would only play into the hands of the West democracies. The crisis in the Polish-German relations stirred up by the Britain’s policies, as well as the British propaganda aimed at establishing an [anti-German] block, offer an incentive to normalize the Soviet-German relations in the shortest time possible…” [439 - Izvestiya. №228. 15.08.1989.]
   What was going on in London and Paris, while the German diplomacy was actively working for rapprochement with the USSR? Both London and Paris decided to conclude a treaty with the USSR with the view of thwarting a German-Soviet pact that was in the making. The English intelligence was well aware of Germany’s imminent onslaught against Poland [440 - It is worth mentioning that in autumn 1938 during the Munich confederacy a group of German generals shared their proposal to kill Hitler with their British colleagues. By the autumn of 1939 these high-standing German generals were opposed to war against England and they kept communicating information to Britain. The well-known chief of the German intelligence Admiral Canaris was executed by the Nazis for cooperation with the British intelligence. On the eve of Germany’s onslaught against Poland he conveyed the particulars of the German plans to Britain through the counselor of the German embassy in London Th. Kordt (source: Falin, V.P. 105).]. If Stalin and Hitler did not manage to come to agreement at that moment, then war between Russia and Germany was very likely. To this end, the main tactic for the Western diplomats was “to buy time”…
   The joint delegation of Paris and London went to Moscow long before the German delegation that signed the Pact on August 23, 1939. A month earlier, on July 23, 1939 Halifax informed Maiskiy, the Soviet ambassador in Great Britain, that the Government of His Majesty was ready for negotiations. All the delaying tactics were used. For example, the joint delegation went to Russia by sea, not by plane. It would be a mistake to suggest that the military mission representing two major maritime nations decided to board a fast cruiser. The delegation preferred the “City of Exeter”, a slow-speed passenger ship. It looks like a trifle, but it took the ship five or six days to reach Russia…
   As a result, the negotiations began only on August 11. The composition of the delegation is noteworthy, too. The USSR was represented by the highest military ranks: Minister of Defense K.E. Voroshilov, the Chief of General Staff B.M. Shaposhnikov, the Naval Force Commander N.G. Kuznetsov and the Air Force Commander A.D. Loktionov. Britain and France were represented by “second-rate” generals. This is no coincidence. The minister of defense was not the same as General “Asshurl”. The delaying tactics of the delegation might be even more “efficient”, if it had no subscription right. The French General Doumenc had credentials “to make agreements concerning all questions related to cooperation between the armed forces of both the sides”, while the British Admiral Reginald Drax… had no letter of authorization at all! [441 - A letter of authorization is no mere formality. Normally, ambassadors hand in their letters of credence when presenting themselves. The absence of such a letter is equal to that of the passport of a person who wants to get a driver’s or a marriage licence.]

   Molotov and Ribbentrop signed the Non-aggression Pact that cancelled the efforts of the West to nourish Nazism for crushing the USSR. That is why historians of “progressive mankind” dislike this document, as well as the parties to the agreement

   Why did the admiral come to Russia? One may learn about this in item 8 of his instruction: “Hold negotiations as slowly as possible” [442 - Volkov, F.D. Nothing is secret that shall not be made manifest. P. 13.]. Other items are peculiar, too: “hold negotiations in the hope that they will become a deterrent in their own way” and “strive for a situation which makes it possible to reduce the subject to general statements” [443 - Bezymenskiy, L. The Special file “Barbarossa”. P. 67.].
   Time flies, and the German Army is winding up its preparation for invading Poland. What the Germans want is do a snow job on the Russians within only two weeks, and after that things will straighten out. That is why the head of the British delegation keeps smiling and proposes that the talks… be transferred to London. Then he will be able to submit his letter of authorisation! By the way, it was not Germany alone that was going to attack the USSR, because since the spring of 1939 the threat of Japanese aggression was increasing. The Japanese regular troops set out to invade Mongolia on May 11, 1939. London did not respond to it [444 - Falin, V.P. 88.].
   In the summer of 1939 the Pact was concluded. On that occasion the Soviet and the German delegations drank champagne to their hearts’ content. But that summer there was also Khalkhin-Gol. So the Soviet Union was greatly interested in negotiations. Who did the USSR want to negotiate with? The Soviets were ready to conclude an agreement, no matter what country, to prevent an aggression against the USSR.

   According to the treaty of March 12, 1936, the Soviet Union was bound to defend the territory of Mongolia in the same way, as if it were the Soviet territory. The hostilities lasted all summer, while the diplomats held their multilateral negotiations, trying to outsmart each other. Finally, on the eve of signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet troops went into the offensive on August 20, and by August 24 the Japanese forces were surrounded. In spite of the hot and strong resistance, the 6th Japanese army was crushed.

   The Western historians and political analysts like to dilate upon Stalin’s responsibility for unleashing World War II, but they do not like to mention facts. They appeal to the reader’s emotions. At present any person is well aware of the atrocities and cruelty of the Nazis. Hence, they make the conclusion that the USSR is not worthy of respect, because she concluded an agreement (non-aggression pact) with such brutes. It is common knowledge that the next week after signing the agreement Hitler attacked Poland. Hence they make the conclusion that Hitler is not the only one responsible for the aggression. It sounds fair enough, unless one remembers some “less significant” things.
   1. Not only the USSR, but England, France and even Poland had signed their own “non-aggression pacts” with Hitler’s Germany. This is a normal practice in international politics.
   2. If the Soviet Union had not concluded the treaty with Germany, the German-Polish war would have broken out all the same. And the USSR would have inevitably been drawn into war in a few weeks, in the autumn of 1939 (in the same way, the USSR had to be involved after Japan’s onslaught on Mongolia).
   3. In a situation like that Japan, having suffered only a local defeat, was capable of resuming hostilities. If someone doubts such a chain of developments, then it is necessary to turn back to the previous chapters of this book.
   Having rid the mind of idle talk and moral abstraction supplemented with adulterated facts one can get “a cold turkey”. Stalin was bound to conclude an agreement with Hitler to avert aggression from his country. No politician of any time or epoch would oppose this statement by suggesting that in this situation another country may become a victim of aggression. Hitler unleashed the war not leaning on some document that he did not care a darn about, but thanks to an elaborate and long-term strategy of financial, political and diplomatic assistance that not only brought about a second birth of the previously stunted Germany, but also boosted an unprecedented growth of its might. It was not the USSR, or Stalin that rendered this assistance. But there is a great desire to go down in history as prominent peace-makers, pacifists and democrats! That’s what causes misinterpretation of historical events and shifting responsibility from the organizer (England, France, the USA) on the victim (the USSR).
   Stalin had no choice. But England and France, having sent a joint delegation to Moscow for negotiations long before Ribbentrop, did have it. What they did not have was good will to conclude a treaty with the USSR, so it was not concluded. Suffice it only to look through the transcripts of the talks to make sure that the delegation was trying to buy time. There are a few key points.
   On the first day they discussed the order of the day. The British and the French missions came up with a joint proposal that the morning session should last from 10.30 to 12.30 and the evening session should last from 17.30 to 19.00. Thus, out of 24 hours they proposed to use only 3.5 hours for negotiations. Why hurry, if the world war was going to break out only in 18 days?
   The Soviet party immediately expressed its willingness to marshal a definite amount of forces against the aggressor at a definite time [445 - Documents and Materials on the eve of World War II. M., 1981. V.2. P. 247.]. The partners were supposed to follow suit. The position of the USSR was aimed at clearing up, what country at what time was supposed to mobilize a certain number of troops. But the French General Doumenc put forward 3 principles that would form the basis of a military convention:
   • the formation of two stable fronts – in the West and in the East;
   • the permanence of these fronts;
   • the use of all forces against the enemy [446 - Bezymenskiy, K.P. 64.].
   One can hardly make up a more indeterminate strategy. There is nothing concrete at all: Who forms these fronts? What are the time limits? What military forces are supposed to be used? Will these forces maintain defense or pursue an offensive? One would also wonder at the meaning of the odd expression “all forces” used by a grown-up and supposedly sensible Western military expert. Suppose the USSR raises an army of 120 divisions and England only raises 6 divisions? [447 - During the negotiations the French delegation proposed to raise 110 divisions, The USSR proposed 120 divisions and Britain proposed only 6 divisions (source: Kuznetsov, N. On the eve. P. 304).] So, when asked, the British experts would only make a helpless gesture to suggest that they have no more forces! This is equal to seeing a tag in a shop with a price on it to say that a certain commodity is worth “all the money that the customer has”!
   The nice phrase about “stable fronts” is also meaningful. When in 1941 the Nazis went for Moscow and Leningrad, the whole country suffering multimillion losses, the USSR hardly got any military assistance from England. But if Stalin had signed such a ridiculous convention, no one could have reproached the British gentlemen: their fronts were quite “stable”, because they were actually not engaged in hostilities. These hostilities would be “permanent” to the effect that “all” the 200 British tanks and 300 British planes were engaged, while the USSR would lose thousands upon thousands of units of weaponry…
   Naturally, the Soviet Union was not satisfied with such fuzzy “principles”. But her attempts to make things clear were of no avail. The Soviet delegation could receive no definite answer as to what troops England and France would send to the Western front.
   Here is a typical piece of dialogue in the negotiations.

   – Our program suggests mobilizing one out of 16 divisions designed for the first stage of the war. In case war breaks out tomorrow, the number of troops won’t be considerable, but in half a year the situation will change, – says the head of the British delegation.
   – 16 divisions…When will they be mobilized after declaration of war? – Vorosholov asks.
   – In the shortest time possible, – the British admiral says.

   This sounds bombastic and too abstract. A military convention ought to specify a concrete period of time relayed to the outbreak of war and the declaration of mobilization. If the USSR signed a document with the phrase “the shortest time possible”, that period of time might take years.
   Here is another piece of dialogue between Voroshilov and the representative of the French mission.

   – In case an attacked country is not Poland, but France, Poland will have to do for us what we are ready to do for her, – says General Doumenc.
   – Could you make yourself more explicit, please, – the Soviet marshal asks.
   – I personally don’t know the figures of the troops to be mobilized by Poland. All I know is that the Commander-in-chief of the Polish Army is bound to render us assistance by means of all available forces [448 - Documents and materials… P. 224–229.].

   Thus it goes on, day in and day out, twice a day, with a meal period: Voroshilov asks a question after which the Frenchman or the Englishman “skates around the rink”, pleading ignorance and promising to demand an explanation from the government.
   Yet, these questions were not of paramount importance. Whatever the forces mobilized by the Allies against Hitler in the West, they might take the field immediately via the German-French and the German-Polish borders. To make contact with the enemy the Russian Army would have to enter into the territory of Romania or Poland. That was why the key issue was related to consent of the Poles or the Romanians to let the Red Army pass through their territories. Voroshilov raised that question at once. What was the answer of his negotiating partners?
   If “all progressive mankind” had only a desire to stop Hitler, the Soviet troops on the territories of Poland and Romania would be a sine qua non condition to fight the aggressor. What alternative steps could be taken to help these countries? It was clear that neither Warsaw, nor Bucharest should oppose such a course of events. Otherwise, the treaty loses its significance. In case British and French governments are after triggering off a conflict between Germany and the USSR, the appearance of Soviet troops in Poland and Romania will be undesirable. In this case Hitler might be stopped far off the Soviet borders by a joint effort of the Polish, Romanian and the Soviet troops. Consequently, it is necessary to refrain from giving an official permission to the Red Army to enter into a country to be invaded by Germany. Deprived of the right to introduce the Soviet troops into Poland, Stalin will be either idly watching the Germans ravaging the country, or will have the cheek to cross the borderline. In the latter case he may be accused of aggressiveness; as a consequence, Stalin’s partners in the West will be at liberty not to fulfill their obligations to fight Germany.
   One may come to a conclusion which is rather offensive to England and France. The main condition of Hitler’s onslaught on the Soviet Union was a preliminary defeat and occupation of Poland by the German army! England and France were not interested in annihilating the armed forces of aggressive Germany. What they cared about was Hitler’s resounding defeat of Poland, their ally. It was supposed to be a lightning rout, with as few German losses as possible. A long-lasting war was out of the question, because Germany did not have enough weaponry for such a war; and the Germans could not afford heavy losses either, so that they might attack Russia without let-up. With heavy losses in Poland, Germany would not be able to wage a war against the USSR. The fewer Nazi soldiers perish in Poland – the more of them will be able to go for Moscow. Simple arithmetic!
   England and France did not steer their policies to organize the resistance that would make Germany easily defeated; on the contrary, their policies were directed at defeating Poland by Germany. It was the desire to ensure Hitler’s victory over Poland that would cause “the phony war” that amazes modern historians.

   – I ask you to answer my direct question… Do the General Staffs of England and France presuppose a transfer of the Soviet troops to East Prussia and other areas for fighting the common foe? – asks Marshal Voroshilov.
   The Soviet delegation received no definite answer. Vague generalities replaced a clear-cut official statement.
   The British Admiral Drax: “If Poland and Romania do not demand assistance from the USSR, they will soon turn into ordinary German provinces, and then the USSR will resolve what to do with them”.
   The French General Doumenc: “I think, Mr. Marshal, Poland and Romania will beg you to come to their assistance”.
   The British Admiral Drax: “In case the USSR, France and Britain are allies, I personally think that Poland and Romania, without doubt, will appeal for help” [449 - Documents and Materials… P. 230–239.].

   But this is A PERSONAL OPINION, not an official standpoint! This is the opinion of the admiral who has no authorization and the opinion of the general who has no credentials “to discuss”. What can Stalin and Molotov say, when the Germans start their onslaught on Poland and the Poles bar the Red Army from entry into their territory? Will they say: “Admiral Drax has given his promise” or: “General Doumenc has assured us”? Of course, it is impossible. That is why Voroshilov insists on hearing an official standpoint on the issue of letting the Soviet troops enter into the territories of Poland and Romania. Each of the Western negotiators makes an enquiry to his government on August 15, 1939. It was already the second day of the negotiations started on August 12, but the basic question – how the Red Army was going to come to grips with the common foe – was not clear yet.
   Another couple of days passed. “I would like to ask General Doumenc and Admiral Drax, when they expect the answer to our question from their governments”, – asks Voroshilov on August 17, 1939, trying to keep a cool head. One can easily imagine the answer of the negotiating partners. “In the shortest time possible”, – says General Doumenc. The negotiations had to be adjourned, as it made no sense to continue the debate without the response of the British and the French governments. The recess lasted 4 (!) days – till August 21, 1939.
   It goes without saying that on August 21 there was no response from London and Paris. They resumed not because the participants had received information from London and Paris, but because the Soviet Union insisted on getting the talks back on course. The meeting was opened by Admiral Drax. The German onslaught on Poland was to start in less than five days. What does the British gentleman say? He tries to buy time again. “First of all, I must tell the marshal (Marshal Voroshilov. – N.S.) that we have gathered today in accordance with his urgently expressed wish. In my opinion, we ought to adjourn the debate for three to four days more…” [450 - Documents and Materials… P. 239.]
   It was clear that a treaty with England and France would not be concluded. The USSR made the last attempt to make an agreement with “the civilized world”, not with the aggressor. But England, France and even Poland did not want it. So the USSR had to make an agreement with Germany. The German ambassador von der Schulenburg handed the draft pact to Molotov as early as on August 19.
   On August 21 at 17.00 Molotov delivered Stalin’s letter to Schulenburg. The letter was concluded by the phrase that changed the course of history and thrown the Anglo-Saxon plan of Hitler’s aggression into the gutter: “The Soviet government has missioned me to inform you of its consent to receive Mr. Ribbentrop in Moscow on August 23” [451 - The letter of the CPSU Central Committee J.V. Stalin to the Reichschancellor of Germany A. Hitler. AVP USSR. F. 0745. OP. 14. P. 32. D.3. L. 65.].
   It was the answer of the USSR’s leader to the German Chancellor’s letter received at 15.00. The road to the Pact was clear.
   At that time France and England made the last attempt to torpedo the imminent German-Soviet treaty [452 - The governments of England and France came to know about Ribbentrop’s visit in next to no time and tried to change their position at the Moscow negotiations. This follows from a telegram of the Soviet ambassador in England Maiskiy: “The message concerning Ribbentrop’s upcoming flight to Moscow for signing a non-aggression pact was received in London on August 21 late at night. It caused quite a stir in the political and governmental circles. The predominant emotions were surprise, confusion, irritation and fear. Today in the morning the general mood was close to panic” (The telegram of the special representative of the USSR in Great Britain I.M. Maiskiy to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, 22.08.1939. Source: The USSR in the struggle for peace on the eve of the Second World War \'7bSeptember 1938 – August 1939\'7d Documents and materials. P. 631).]. On the evening of August 21 at 23.00 Paris sent a telegram that authorized General Doumenc to sign a military convention envisaging entry of the Soviet troops into the territory of Poland. But it was only an attempt to buy time, not a genuine desire to sign a treaty with the USSR. This may be proved by the following transcript. On the morning of August 22, 1939 General Doumenc, the French representative, met with Marshal Voroshilov.
   – I ask General Doumenc to acquaint me with your government’s document that I’ve come to know about from a letter. I would also like to know, if the English mission has received their government’s official statement concerning the same question.
   – I have no such document, but I have received the government’s message that gives a positive answer to the main, cardinal issue. In other words, the government has authorized me to sign a military convention [453 - AVP USSR. F. 06. OP. 1a. P. 25. D. 12. L. 118–126 // The USSR in the struggle for peace… P. 635.], – said the Frenchman.

   The signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Moscow. August 23, 1939

   Nothing is asserted definitely, there are no documents, and the British representative is missing. The trilateral type of negotiations has turned into the bilateral one. So the British party can always disown the results of such talks. Voroshilov wonders, if the British government will consent to sign a military convention.
   – I do not know, if Admiral Drax has received any such consent from his government, but I know that the admiral agrees that the conference may go on [454 - Ibid. P. 636.], – General Doumenc said.
   So, it is not clear, if England agrees to let the Soviet troops cross the Western borders. Voroshilov asks Doumenc, if Poland and Romania do not object to passage of the Soviet troops into their territories. It appeared that France was tackling the question of letting foreign troops into the territories of her allies without getting the approval of their governments. It would give the Poles an opportunity to disclaim responsibility, if necessary, because they did not sign anything.
   Once again General Doumenc gives a vague answer:
   – I am not aware of any negotiations between the governments; I only know what my government has informed me of [455 - AVP USSR. F. 06. OP. 1a. P. 25. D. 12. L. 118–126 // The USSR in the struggle for peace… P. 635.].
   Reading shorthand notes of proceedings, as well as cablegrams from ambassadors and other documents of the day, one cannot divest oneself of the idea that the Western diplomats were making efforts to confuse the Soviet leadership to achieve their aim. Something came amiss…
   Poland was doomed by England and France to annihilation in order to make Hitler start his big war and steer in the right direction. In half a year France, in her turn, will experience the trappings of the British policy, its treachery and perfidy.
   But before Hitler entered Paris, there was Warsaw…

The betrayed Poland

   The Englishmen claim that they have never lost wars. They have lost quite a number of wars, and in each they fought to the last ally.
Adolf Hitler [456 - The speech of the Reichschansellor Hitler on an anniversary of the “beer putsch”. Munich, November 8, 1942.]

   An enemy does not betray.
French proverb

   The history of the Second World War knows nothing more short-sighted, irrational and surprising than the conduct of the Polish government in 1939. In fact, that government did all it could to ensure Hitler’s aggression against Poland and her resounding defeat.
   The Polish leaders
   • took a hostile attitude to Germany, brusquely rejecting all her proposals;
   • flatly refused the chance to make an agreement with the USSR [457 - On May 11, 1939 the Polish ambassador in Moscow Grzybowski made the following statement: “Poland does not find it possible to conclude a mutual assistance pact”.];
   • ignored the latest German proposals to negotiate the discord between Germany and Poland.

   Hitler tried not to quarrel with his British patrons and hoped, right to the end, to settle the Polish conflict peacefully. On August 29, 1939 he demanded that an authorized representative of Poland should urgently come to Berlin. But nobody came on the 30th and the 31st of August. Yet, on the 31st the Polish ambassador Lipski came to see Ribbentrop. Asked if he had authorization to hold negotiations, the Pole answered negatively. “Then it is no use to continue the conversation”, – said the Minister of Foreign Affairs and said good-bye to the ambassador. The German invasion was to begin in about 10 hours… [458 - Ovsyany, I.D. The secret of the war trigger assembly. P. 301.]

   Didn’t the Poles realize that the situation might lead to war with the Third Reich? Certainly, they did and were preparing for war. But they meant a different war…
   In spite of the evident menace of a bilateral conflict, the Polish army did not make any military defense works on the German border. There was nothing to prevent Hitler’s armored spearhead from splitting, surrounding and routing the Polish Army [459 - The Germans thought that Poland had been defeated as early as on the 5th day of the war (September 5, 1939). On that day General Halder had a conference with General von Brauchitsch and General von Bock. After analyzing the current situation, they came to the conclusion that “the enemy was defeated”. General Halder made a corresponding entry into his famous diary (source: Shirer W. The Collapse of the Nazi empire. P. 43)].
   Why were there no military defense works? There were none, because the Polish generals had been preparing for war not against Germany, but for Germany in her attack on the Soviet Union [460 - Meltyuhov, M. Stalin’s lost chance. P. 97.]. That was why all the Polish fortifications were on the eastern border, i.e. against the Red Army. Poland’s western border was meant to be the home front, apart from the battlefront in the east. “had no fortifications, but was full of ware-houses and depots. Besides, in the West of the then Poland, there were engineering structures of the military and economic nature, the center of Polish industry…Thus, in the West, the area where the Poles deployed for action against Germany was their back, not the front” [461 - Isserson, G.S. The new forms of fighting. M., 1940. P. 29–30.].
   The Poles made an error in identifying their enemy. It was not the USSR, which had never attacked Poland, but the friendly Germany that decided to wipe Poland off the map of Europe. Didn’t Poland notice that before? Of course, she did. But all the same, she did not take care of any defensive installations in the West; nor did she withdraw eastward her warehouses and industrial objects located close to the German border. Warsaw never took this sort of things into account. “The Polish Army was trained for war in the East, because it was the Soviet Union that had been for a long time the potential adversary. Warsaw began to work out its Western war plan in haste, only in the spring of 1939” [462 - The newspaper Rzeczpospolita. 28.09.2005.], – says Pawel Wieczorkiewicz, the Polish historian quoted in the previous chapter. The modern Russian researcher M. Meltyukhov draws the reader’s attention not only to the name of Poland’s basic war plan (Zachod), but gives a more precise date of elaborating the Polish military designs – March 1939 [463 - Meltyukhov, M. Stalin’s lost chance. P. 97.]. Apart from other historians, the author of this book can give an even more precise date of changing the Polish military doctrine: March 21–22, 1939. It is clear what political wind changed the heading angle of Poland from a sworn friend into a sworn enemy of the Third Reich.
   “They had not even attempted to take care of field fortification at the pre-war time, before hostilities. The Polish General Staff declared with complete unconcern, that there was no need to do that, because the forthcoming war would be a war of maneuver” [464 - Isserson, G.S. The new forms of fighting. M., 1940. P.4.], – writes Isserson, a Soviet commander, in his research. The conduct of the Polish military decision-makers is really surprising. What war of maneuver did they mean? Was it the German blitzkrieg? Did they try to do their utmost to help the German Wehrmacht rout the Polish Army?
   The Poles talked about “a war of maneuver”, because they were themselves going to enter into the territory of Germany!
   It turns out that “it was the offensive strategy that underlay the Polish strategic posture aimed at seizing Danzig and East Prussia” [465 - Ibid. P. 33–34.]. So instead of defense, the Polish Army was going to execute an offensive! It is not even funny. At the time when Germany’s giant military machine was going to pounce on Poland, the Polish leadership is planning to invade the German territory! Winston Churchill was careful to take note of that peculiarity of the Polish military planning in his memoir: “In numbers and equipment the Polish Army was no match for their assailants, nor were their dispositions wise. They spread all their forces along the frontiers of their native land. They had no central reserve” [466 - Churchill, W. The Second World War. P. 396.].

   The German aggression against Poland was a success, because the Poles counted on their Western friends. The German soldiers demolishing a frontier bar

   Poland’s pre-war behavior was characterized by a great number of blunders. The blunders were in everything: estimation of the adversary’s might, military plans, resources and directions of attack. Why were the Polish generals mistaken in literally all the aspects of the forthcoming war with Germany? The point is that from the spring of 1939, when war-clouds began to gather over Poland, until August 1939, it was possible to do something to strengthen the defense. The Poles did nothing at all. How can it be explained?
   “The consolidation of the German forces was growing from month to month, from week to week” [467 - Isserson, G.S. P. 34.]. The decision-makers in Warsaw knew about this, but, oddly enough, did not worry. Either the military and political leadership of Poland came from the same lunatic asylum, or the Poles in their strange passivity took into account some other important factors. These factors were relations of alliance between Poland, on the one hand, and England and France, on the other hand, and these factors caused the Poles to make the silliest and fatal mistakes. Poland had blind faith in her “friends”, while England and France slowly, but surely led the Poles to their national catastrophe. So the oddity of the Polish political course is no mystery. England and France undertook such commitments to the Poles with reference to military assistance that they never feared Germany’s aggression.
   Britain used Poland in the same way fishermen use bait fish in order to catch a large predator. The First World War clearly showed that the Kaiser’s Germany was unable to efficiently fight on two fronts. Hitler’s Germany did not possess great natural resources and munitions, so it could not withstand a double whammy: from Poland, on the one hand, and from England and France, on the other hand [468 - “Out of the required amount of munitions for four months only 25 % was available. The anti-aircraft service ammunition and air bombs sufficed only for three months… and fuel inventories supplied a need of only four war months”, – the German historian G.-A. Yakobsen writes (source: The Second World War: two approaches. P. 11).]. That was what caused an incredible feeling of optimism among the Poles. They were under the impression that with such allies any war with the Germans would, for sure, end in Germany’s defeat.
   Earlier (at the bidding of London) and later (on the basis of their own war plans) the Poles looked on their task as not being too complicated: to withstand the first German blow and then launch a counteroffensive [469 - Meltyukhov, M. Stalin’s lost chance. P. 97.]. As the French army was a real military force, the Germans were expected to leave a considerable number of troops on the Western front, to oppose the French. Warsaw did not doubt that only part of the German Army would be deployed against Poland. Why? The point is that on the border with France there is the Ruhr industrial area that was vitally important for Germany. Having seized this area, the French Army might easily win the war. Adolf Hitler fell in with such an interpretation. Speaking to his generals in the Chancellor’s office on November 23, 1939, he explained quite frankly how to efficiently rout the German Reich.
   “We have a chink in our armor, – said the German fuehrer, – this is the Ruhr area. The course of war depends on controlling Ruhr. If France and England strike a blow at the region, we are in extreme peril. The German resistance will come to an end” [470 - Bezymenskiy, L. The Special file “Barbarossa”. P. 159.].
   The reader should not be puzzled by the date: both in 1939 and in 1940 the Ruhr area was a fairy tale egg that contained the death of “Kashchey the Deathless”. Germany’s vulnerable place has always been Ruhr. As early as in 1923 France occupied that territory to cause Germany to make reparations more actively. So the French were quite aware of the geographic peculiarity and significance of the Ruhr area. That is why Poland, an ally of France, looked to the future with optimism. Hitler could hardly have left his industrial pearl without adequate protection. If his troops were insufficient, the French would occupy Ruhr and end the war; if he left too many troops to protect Ruhr, he would not have enough military force to attack Poland. At any rate, the Polish generals did not see, why they should be scared of Hitler…
   The Polish leadership acted the way that excluded any peaceful settlement of the crisis, because they were sure that England and France would really stand up for their allies. That was why Poland exposed her stubborn blindness, estimating the situation so inadequately. London and Paris kept feeding Warsaw with promises of assistance, but it was all a pack of lies. Poland did not worry about German planes and tanks, because England had already promised Poland to deliver 1,300 planes and start bombing Germany in case of war [471 - Ibid. P. 159.]. The French party undertook an analogous commitment to initiate air raids on Germany. The Poles thought that in such a situation the Germans would not be in the mood for fighting Poland. Such were war perspectives in the minds of the Polish leadership lulled by the promises of their western allies. They thought that if the Ruhr area could not be occupied, it might just as well be bombed out…
   The Polish government thought that Hitler’s attack on Poland would be the beginning of his rapid and complete defeat and ignored the obvious signs of the imminent war. The first sign, as usual, was the economic one. For example, The “Gazeta Polska” announced that Germany had stopped paying for food stuffs and mineral resources supplied by Poland. Some German credits successfully negotiated earlier were blocked. Instead of delivering machinery, Germany increased supplies of beads, harmonicas and other “consumer goods”.
   Following the increase on supplies of harmonicas and other “strategic goods” instead of machinery and provision, the international crisis concerning Danzig deteriorated. As is known, Poland had declared that all attempts to annex Danzig would lead to war and fanning tensions by Germany related to that delicate question indicated its readiness for a large-scale military conflict. On August 22, 1939, at the same time when Ribbentrop came to Moscow to sign the non-aggression pact with the USSR, the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein paid “a courtesy visit” to Danzig (Gdansk). The Polish government had not been informed of this visit in advance, for the reason that the visit of the battleship was the starting point of a “mild coup d’état”. On the following day the members of the City Council who were nearly all of them ethnic Germans declared Gauleiter Forster the head of the city [472 - The administrative areas in Hitler’s Reich were Gaus; hence gauleiter means literally “gau-manager”.]. Though Danzig was not yet officially included into the German Reich, its leadership, now loyal to Hitler, was introduced into the Nazi power system. It suggested that the head of the “free-town” was one of German official figures subordinated personally to Hitler, which de facto meant annexation [473 - This camouflage lasted till the beginning of the war. On the morning of September, 1 Forster ordained the law of annexing Danzig into Germany. On the same day the German Reichstag voted for including Danzig into the German Reich. The battleship Schleswig-Holstein, without leaving the harbor, began to shell the Polish fortress Westerplatte…].
   Naturally, the Poles had good reasons for being worried. Three days later the least doubts of the Polish leadership concerning the war ought to have vanished into thin air. One should remember that the first attack date planned by Hitler was the 26th of August. But the German fuehrer decided to put off the invasion at the last moment, because Great Britain responded to the Soviet-German pact by concluding an agreement with Poland. Hitler, who by no means wanted to be at war with England, waivered and decided to resort to diplomatic measures. But some units of the German Wehrmacht had not managed to receive the order that recalled the attack on Poland. As a result, one of the raiding parties began to carry out the earlier order. At dawn, on August 26, 1938 a subversive group of 14 men headed by Lieutenant Heinzel penetrated into the territory of Poland at the settlement of Silen near the former Polish-Czechoslovak border. Their task was to seize a strategically important tunnel between Silen and Krakow, as well as the local railway station, and control these objects until the arrival of the 7th infantry division. The Germans carried out their mission splendidly: over a hundred Polish soldiers and frontier guards were disarmed and detained in the basement structures of the station. A few hours passed waiting for the division before Lieutenant Heinzel suspected something wrong and decided to contact his commander by radio. He learned that except himself and his 13 men no one was fighting against Poland. It is unknown whether the German officer apologized to the Polish guards for this imbroglio or not. What remains a fact is that the German raiders returned home without losses, having stayed on the territory of Poland nearly 24 hours!
   It must be clear to every military specialist well aware of this strange operation by the German commandos that the German Army was in the last readiness phase before the aggression [474 - According to some sources, on the 1st of September, when the war really broke out, Lieutenant Heinzel’s group began to carry out the same task: they seized the same Polish railway station, disarming the same Polish soldiers.]. What conclusion did the Polish General Staff make from this information? Did they take measures to announce mobilization?
   The defeat of Poland was really a blitzkrieg. German armored columns easily breached Polish defenses and rushed forward. On September 8, the eighth day of the war, General Hoth’s tanks approached the Polish capital. Warsaw put up a heroic resistance till September 27 and then gave in. But the ruling figures that entangled the country into the massacre were no heroes. On receiving the earliest information of tank columns rushing to Warsaw, the Polish government escaped to Lublin (the 5th of September) and then crossed the Romanian border (the 17th of September). The chief commanders of the army and the General Staff followed suit. About 500 Polish planes flew off to Romania, Latvia and Lithuania, instead of bringing down and ramming the enemy planes… [475 - Isserson, G.S. The new forms of fighting. P. 63.]
   They did not announce mobilization. Strictly speaking, two days before the war, on the 29th of August the government decided to do this, but they changed their decision immediately: the pasted posters informing of the mobilization were removed from the walls of the Polish cities and villages. Why did they behave so strangely? They did so, because the ambassadors of England and France officially requested the Poles to put off the mobilization till August 31 [476 - Meltyukhov, M. Stalin’s lost chance. P. 98.]. At the same time the Western leaders were quite aware of the fact that the German invasion would take place early in the morning of the 1st of September. The official request of the Western diplomats was aimed only at enhancing the efficiency of the German army’s strike.
   This aim was realized: the delay in Polish mobilization gave the German army effectual help [477 - Poland had about 3 million soldiers, and over half of them had been trained after 1920. But a great number of these trained soldiers were not recruited: about 50 % of army potent males in September 1939 were beyond the Army (source: Isserson, G.S. The new forms of fighting. P. 5).]. Polish men would start to be recruited only when the country was being bombed out by the Germans. The railways and earth roads would be jammed by non-regulars, while the retreating troops moving in the opposite direction badly needed reinforcement.
   The Polish “morning after” came on. On the 1st of September Poland’s Foreign Minister Beck, the diplomat that had suddenly left for London, while being expected at the talks in Berlin, called up Kennard, the British ambassador in Warsaw, to say that the war between Poland and Germany had broken out. Warsaw expected an immediate response from its allies. The response was a note to the German government both from England and France, warning that unless Germany stopped the intervention, the Allies would meet their obligations towards Poland. In the meantime, London and Paris assured Berlin that the note was only a warning, not an ultimatum [478 - Volkov, F.D. Nothing is secret that shall not be made manifest. P. 27.]. The foreign ministries of the Allies carried on making Hitler believe that they would not enter into the war on Poland’s side. Their main goal was not to stop the German aggression, which might lead to negotiations, but to step up hostilities with the view of Germany’s easy triumph over Poland and advance toward the Soviet border. Although the British king signed the mobilization decree concerning the Army, the Navy and the Air Force, and the same was done by the French premier, Hitler was confident that the Allies would not declare war or, at least, would not open hostilities. He was anxious to defeat Poland as soon as possible, because it would liquidate casus belli. Even if they declared war, Hitler hoped that he would be able, once again, to come to some agreement with the West, once Poland was routed.
   That was how Germany’s leader estimated the situation. He was not the only one misled by the maneuvers of the Western diplomats. The Polish leadership slowly began to realize that the pre-war pledges of England and France were just lip-service. Where are the planes they promised? Why don’t the allies bomb Germany? Why doesn’t France render assistance to Poland according to the agreement? When will France declare war on the aggressor?
   The Polish ambassador in Paris posed these and other questions to the Foreign Minister of France Bonnet. Bonnet’s response makes clear that Paris wanted to give Hitler a few days start, so that the German Army could crush the Polish Army. Bonnet said that the French government would be able to deliver an ultimatum only after “the vote in parliament that would be in session in late afternoon” [479 - Ovsyany, I.D. The secret of the war trigger assembly. P. 61.]. And the ultimatum that was to be delivered to Germany would expire only in 48 hours. Only then war might be declared.
   This response horrified the ambassador. It was easy to understand the despair of the Poles: they did everything they were told to do, now they were being beaten all to pieces, and there was no help coming. The desperate Poles changed from request to demand, insisting that the Allies’ commitments be fulfilled. On the evening of September 2, after the session of the French parliament, the Polish ambassador appealed to Bonnet again. The minister said that the question of the ultimatum was to be discussed at the session of the Council of Ministers. “Then the Polish ambassador lost patience and gave Bonnet a piece of his mind and demanded that an ultimatum be urgently delivered to Germany” [480 - Ibid. P. 62.]. The similar episode took place in the British capital. On the night of September 3 the Polish ambassador was instructed to meet Lord Halifax and remind him of the commitments of the British government…
   Thus, for three whole days Germany was at war with Poland that did not receive any military assistance…
   The help pleas of the Polish government to England and France grew more and more persistent from hour to hour. What they needed most of all was the air force of the Allies. Now the Poles began to realize all their mistakes they were caused to make due to “the guidelines” of their friends from London and Paris. Most of the Polish planes were destroyed at the air fields, and the Germans fully dominated in the air, bombing the Polish troops and obstructing mobilization that Warsaw had already delayed at the advice from London and Paris. Even a few air squadrons of the Allies over Germany might have radically changed the situation, but there was not a single plane, nor was it clear, if England and France would ever declare war on Hitler!
   It was the beginning of the vile and dirty political game on the part of the West that has come down in history as “the phony war”. On September, 3 England and France did declare war on the Third Reich. A Polish military mission urgently left for London. Naturally, the Polish generals intended to discuss joint efforts for crushing the aggressor. One can be hazy about the sentiments of these Polish patriots, because they had been kept waiting a whole week till General Ironside, the Chief of the General Staff received them!
   When he received the Poles, he said at once that the British General Staff had no plan of military assistance to Poland and advised the visitors to buy weapons in neutral countries! [481 - Volkov, F.D. Nothing is secret that shall not be made manifest. P. 34.] On hearing the reaction of the angry Poles, he cushioned the blow by offering 10 thousand outdated Hotchkiss rifles, with 15 to 20 million cartridges. With German tanks tearing up to Warsaw and planes interminably raiding to finish off the surrounded Polish divisions, England suggested that Poland should resist the German tanks and planes with the help of outdated rifles.
   That was not all! The depth of perfidy is, indeed, limitless! Even the outdated rifles were supposed to be delivered… in 5 or 6 months! As a matter of fact, the whole war of Germany against Poland lasted less than a month [482 - The last major object of the Polish defense – the fortress Modlin – capitulated on the 28th of September, while the defenders of the port of Hel gave in on October 2, 1939.]. London’s help meant full absence of the promised help. Poland was flagrantly betrayed by its allies. This betrayal will not seem the result of sheer stupidity or blindness, should the real goal of London and Paris be estimated properly. On the contrary, this betrayal resulted from the whole logic of the pre-war diplomatic maneuvers of the western governments and was the appropriate consequence of England’s and France’s policies.
   Pawel Wieczorkiewicz, the Polish professor of history, touches on this delicate matter in his interview: “Britain received early information on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact secret protocol received from von Gherwart, an officer of the German embassy in Moscow, which explains the British policy best of all. Of course, they did not share this information with the Poles, because it might have prevented the outbreak of war. However, it looks that if Warsaw had known about the German-Soviet pact, Poland would have had nothing to do, but surrender. In this situation to wage a war would be senseless. I mean, senseless from the point of view of Poland, not Great Britain” [483 - The newspaper “Rzeczpospolita”, September 28, 2005.].
   But, perhaps, England and France were unable to deliver their armaments and planes to Poland, because these weapons including planes were needed at other seats of war? As a matter of fact, that is how the British leadership explained their policy to the indignant Poles. Halifax, the British Foreign Secretary, condoling with Raczynski, the Polish ambassador, said that England “could not afford to piecemeal forces needed for resolute actions” [484 - Ovsyany, I.D. The secret of the war trigger assembly. P. 66–67.].

   There is no doubt that Poland fully realized the vile behavior of her allies. It is noteworthy that the Polish government in exile (in London) was composed of state servicemen quite different from the pre-war government. The point was that those betrayed by the British no longer wanted to cooperate with the betrayers. It was also more convenient for the British to communicate with people whom they had not promised anything.

   But it was another pack of lies. The English and the French did not intend to undertake any military operations. The promised offense of the allied troops never took place. The mobilized French Army, together with the British troops, occupied their field works on the German border and stopped. True, some French military units advanced a few kilometers in the Saar area, but only after the Germans left, having mined the abandoned positions [485 - With Poland defeated, in October the French Army left the previously occupied square foot of German land, without any military pressure from the German troops, just not to provoke Hitler by hurting his feelings.]. “Since mid-September the French Army had stayed on their defensive positions fortified in advance” [486 - De Gaulle, Ch. The War Memoirs. The Call-up of 1940–1942. M., 2003. P.9.].
   More so, the French High Command ordered that the German positions not be gunned [487 - Volkov, F.D. Nothing is secret that shall not be made manifest. P. 33.]. The British leadership also gave a command not to fire at the Germans. The giant British Navy was also inactive, in spite of a good opportunity to prevent the German ships from shelling the Polish positions at the Baltic coastline. To be quite candid, England and France really were unable to send their squadrons to Poland. The allied planes were busy… airdropping leaflets (instead of bombs) on Germany! [488 - Ibid. P. 33.] On the morning of the 8th of September the English planes airdropped about 3.5 million leaflets over North Germany. On the night of the 10th of September they airdropped the same colored sheets of paper, instead of blast bombs, over North and West Germany. On the whole, in the period of time from September 3 to September 27 the British Air Force airdropped 18 million leaflets on the heads of the German citizenry. At the same time no bomb was dropped on the Ruhr industrial area. A French writer recruited into the army made the following note in his diary: “Not a single air raid on Germany. Not a single attack, no matter how insignificant, on German field positions. The daily communiqué says that “nothing serious has happened”, or that “during the night the front was quiet” [489 - Grenie, F. The Journal of “the phony war”. M., 1971. P. 47.].
   By the way, this was jotted down on September 18, 1939. Thus, it was the 18th day of Hitler’s aggression…
   The only problem the leaders of Poland’s allies were faced with was trying to explain to their straightforward and straight-talking subordinates the reasons for such a strange behavior on the part of England and France. Later on the Western historians would come across the same difficulty – to explain, in a reasonable way, too, the incredible, yet typical, scene: French servicemen on one bank of the Rhein, doing one thing and another, in plain view of German servicemen on the opposite bank.
   No shooting. There is no one trying to hide. The artillery is silent. No bombing…
   A little time later the French government concerned about the leisure time (!) of the soldiers on the front would set up a special service of “entertainment” in the army. The boys in the trenches had really nothing at all to do, so the government decided to abolish a tax on playing cards “designed for the Regular Army”. The French War Department went as far as to buy 10 thousand footballs for “the Army Field Forces”. While the French soldiers played football, the German officers were watching them on the other side through wonderful Zeiss lenses of their binoculars and scope sights of their sniper rifles. But the Germans did not fire, because they followed the order: to refrain from active hostilities. They allowed only limited activities of military patrols and reconnaissance air force. Watching football matches played by the enemy was not forbidden…

   While the German planes were bombing Poland, the English planes were airdropping leaflets over Germany instead of bombing the enemy territory

   Like the French soldiers, the English soldiers occupied their trenches. They had no problem of disembarking on the continent. The German Navy was instructed to conduct a peaceful policy; so the British Expeditionary Force quietly, without any obstruction on the enemy’s part, disembarked in the French ports and began… to play football.
   The first war loss of the British army happened only three months and a week after the war began: the first English soldier was killed on December 9, 1939 [490 - Shirer, W. The rise and fall of the Third Reich. P. 55.]. The odd thing was that by October 11, 1939 there were 4 British divisions (158 thousand men) [491 - Ibid. P. 55.]. It is easy to see that there was only one casualty within 4 months of war against Germany. And the British historian Fuller justly wrote that “the world has never known such a bloodless war”.
   It was rather difficult to find a rational explanation of such an idyll. That was why some high-ranking gentlemen could mouth obviously stupid things. When the Minister of the British Royal Air Force was suggested that they should drop fire-bombs on the German forests, he said: “No, it’s impossible. Do you understand that it is private property?” [492 - Preparata, G.D. Hitler Inc. How Britain and the USA made the Third Reich. P. 373.]
   Could it be that England and France were not strong enough to fight Hitler, as some proponents of “the phony war” claim? Yes, they were. The military potential of each of these states was sufficient to organize an all-out offensive. The allies had four times as many soldiers and five times as many guns as Hitler’s army. Their armies had 3,286 tanks and about 1,500 planes, while second-rate worse-armed German divisions consisted of reservists of mature years with war munitions and spare rations for only 3 days, and there were no tanks and planes at all [493 - Taylor, A. The Second World War: Two approaches. P. 400.].
   After the war the German generals admitted at the inquest interrogations and in their memoirs that if the Allies had passed to the offensive at that early period of time, they might have easily advanced into the territory of Germany and occupied Ruhr, which would mean a complete end to the war only a month after its beginning.
   “When war experts thought about the possibility of a French offensive right at the beginning of the war, their hair stood on end”, writes General Westphal [494 - Volkov, F.D. Nothing is secret that shall not be made manifest. P. 34–35.]. General Halder was still more point blank: “In September 1939 the Anglo-French troops, without any serious resistance, could have crossed the Rhein and threatened the Ruhr area which, for Germany, is a decisive factor of fighting a war” [495 - Shirer, W. The rise and fall of the Third Reich. P. 55.]. Field Marshal Keitel was also perplexed, as he spoke at the Nuremberg trial: “We, the military order, kept waiting for a French offensive during the Polish Campaign and were very surprised that nothing was happening…If the French had advanced, they would have run into a covering operation instead of a real German defense” [496 - Ibid. P. 56.].
   The situation was obvious: the Allies were quietly giving Poland away to Hitler, so that the triumphant German fuehrer could pass from the Polish-German War to Soviet-German warfare. This fully explains the “odd” behavior of England and France at that period of time. All the rest is nothing but eye-wash explanations invented by historians, politicians and authors aimed at disguising the impolite truth.
   The most important moment of the Polish campaign was coming on. The key moment was related to the military entry of the Red Army into Poland envisaged by the German-Soviet Pact. In spite of the Pact, it was impossible to exclude occasional or purposeful armed conflicts between German and Soviet soldiers with consequences leading to a large-scale warfare. The question is: why did Stalin introduce the troops into East Poland on August 17, 1939, not a day earlier or later? The date of the Soviet interference into the Polish affairs indicates how unstable the relations between Germany and the USSR were. The Soviet troops marched in only after Stalin became confident that there was no threat of fighting on two fronts, because on September 16, 1939 the Soviet conflict with Japan in Mongolia came to an end! It was on the following day after the news of Japan having officially announced of the end of military operations that the Red Army entered into the territory of Poland.

   The Polish Army put up a “furious” resistance. The return of West Belorussia and West Ukraine had cost Russia 795 dead and 2019 injured with 59 missing. The Red Army captured 452,500 Polish servicemen, and Stalin’s “atrocious regime” sent most of them home. 125,400 men found themselves in the NKVD concentration camps; 15,131 of them were later found to have been shot down in Katyn. Up to now no one can be dead certain that the Poles had been shot down by the Russians, not the Nazi Germans [497 - Meltyukhov, M. Stalin’s lost chance. P. 132.].

   Stalin tried to make assurance double sure, because no one could have guaranteed that Hitler would make good his commitments. But the head of Germany realized that no confrontation with the USSR was necessary at the time. Apart from it, amity with the Soviet Union was a more interesting variant. All the more so, because he could always flop over to the camp of his former patrons, i.e. England and France…
   For the Western diplomats the situation was still worse. When the powder fume had vanished away, the fatal mistake became evident to everybody. Poland, having been loyal to her allies up to the end, disappeared from the map of Europe. The Third Reich and the USSR now had a common borderline and opposite ideologies. But they were not going to fight each other. The Polish campaign being over (September 28, 1939), the potential adversaries concluded an agreement of mutual friendship and came to an amicable division of the Polish territory.
   Estimating the events of the then time, it is necessary to focus one’s attention on the following detail. Poland had been given the Allies’ guarantees of security, and the Allies seemed to meet their commitments, but not with reference to the USSR. England and France declared war on Germany for invading Poland, Stalin, using nice diplomatic rhetoric about defending the working people of West Belorussia and West Ukraine from the chaos of war, did absolutely the same thing. His army entered into the territory of Poland without any permission from the Polish government. But no one declared war on Stalin. Why not? Historians and politicians cannot give an unequivocal explanation; instead, they allege that the West did not want to see Stalin in Hitler’s boat, as his ally. This is a half-truth, or a lie. If they had declared war on Stalin, Moscow and Berlin would have involuntarily become comrades-in-arms. But it was not the Red Army stopping Hitler’s aggression that the West wanted; instead, the West wanted the German Wehrmacht to crush Russia. War on Stalin was not declared, because the West did not want to see Hitler in Stalin’s boat, not the other way round! They wanted to give the German fuehrer a chance to change his mind. And, ultimately, he would really change his mind and attack this country…
   But let me not jump ahead of myself, because much water passed under the bridges between September 1939 and June 22, 1941…

How England left France to sink or swim

   Remember: every time, when we have to choose between Europe and high seas, we will always choose high seas.
Winston Churchill [498 - Gaulle, Ch. de. The War Memoirs. The Call-up of 1940–1942. P. 248.]

   One failure on the continent was enough for England to be absorbed with the problem of home defense.
Charles de Gaulle [499 - Ibid. P. 78.]

   Hitler’s speech lasted an hour and a half. It was a long speech, the longest of his public speeches. A good speaker, Hitler realized that he was unable to hold the attention of the audience indefinitely long. That was why he tried each time to be convincing, interesting and laconic. But on that day, October 6, 1939, Adolf Hitler broke his own rule. The topic was so important that he decided to sacrifice his style to the subject. Two weeks after the fall of Warsaw and the end of the Polish Campaign the head of Nazi Germany spoke about peace…

   “Germany has no claims to France… I will not even touch on the Alsace-Lorraine problem. I have more than once expressed my wishes that France and Germany should bury our old feud and bring together our nations, each of which has such a glorious history… I have gone through the equivalent effort of reaching an accord, and more so, amity between Germany and England. I have never acted against the interests of England. Even today I believe that lasting peace in Europe and the whole world may be ensured in case England and Germany come to mutual understanding” [500 - Shirer W. The rise and fall of the Third Reich. P. 64.].

   It is a funny thing reading this transcript of Hitler’s speech. You’d think that the author is not the main criminal in the history of humanity, but the main peace-maker of all times and nations. During the time of his political career Hitler often and verbosely spoke about peace, while preparing for war. But this speech in the Reichstag on October 6 contains some overtones never heard before. Hitler sounds as if he were trying to convince his invisible interlocutors in London and Paris of his righteous cause and to make them change their decision of which he undoubtedly was aware.
   What was Hitler’s aim? Was it to provide an alibi for himself in the face of the future generations? Did he want to display phony peacefulness to Germany, so that he could expose the German nation, without scruples, to the hardships of the most terrible war on earth? This is a probability. Yet, it is hard to get rid of the impression that he addressed his speech to a few dozens of English gentlemen who determined the British policy and, correspondingly, the current events in the world.

   “Who wants this war in the West? Is it wanted to restore Poland? The Poland of the Versailles Treaty will never be restored… It makes no sense to murder millions of people and destroy property worth millions to restore the state that was a stillborn child from the very beginning, and this is recognized by all non-Poles. What are other reasons? If they want to wage this war only to impose a new regime on Germany… then millions of lives will be wasted… No, this war in the West cannot solve any problems…” [501 - Ibid. P. 64–65.]

   It is blasphemy to call Adolf Hitler a consistent “champion of peace” after what he has done to this country. Even the most odious admirers of the demoniac German fuehrer do not think so. But it is possible to try to explain his activities by making up a more or less verisimilar logic of his moves. This is exactly what western historians do, together with some compatriots who, either purposefully or unconsciously, are trying to justify the monstrous crimes of the Nazis on the territory of the USSR.
   They explain that Hitler willfully tried to crush “the island of freedom and justice” represented by England and France by entering into collusion with the real “enemy of mankind”, i.e. the Soviet Union. They claim that Hitler, a feeble-minded German corporal that rose to the position of chancellor, was just a tool of the boss, i.e. Joseph Stalin, the real aggressor that threatened the world in the name of the communist ideology. They go on saying that once upon a time Hitler opened his eyes and realized the danger over Germany and the whole “civilized world” from the barbaric Bolsheviks – the Russians. Then June 22, 1941 came on, but the Germans cannot be to blame for that, because they meant only to defend themselves by forestalling Stalin a few days.
   This is the logic of a great number of books published in the pursuit of cheap sensation, money and satisfying the ambitions of authors. Few scribblers realize that accusing the USSR of preparing an attack on Hitler suggests that this country is the main culprit of the Second World War, though, in fact, it was supposed to become the main victim. That is why this research aims at considering the catastrophe that happened to this country not on June 22, 1941, or even on August 23, 1939, but on September 12, 1919, when Adolf Hitler came for the first time into a Munich alehouse to attend a political meeting. It is worthwhile reminding those who believe the conception of Stalin’s attack on Europe of one fact. The phony accusation of this country of all deadly sins of the Second World War first appeared in the book of Suvorov-Rezun, a talented author. He wrote his famous “Ice-breaker” in London. How did he find himself there? He changed sides and established contact with the British intelligence service. Is it clear now who dictated the works that he wrote? The aim of these “historic works” is also transparent.
   The whole history of Hitler’s ascent to power, related to the sources of the Nazi German economic “miracle”, indicates the real culprit of the Second World War. Besides, indicative is Hitler’s love of England and his admiration of the English way of managing subjugated territories. This culprit must by right share “the ignoble laurels” for murdering millions with the Third Reich that had been so carefully nurtured on the site of fire of the First World War. This culprit is by no means the Soviet Union (Russia)…
   Turn once again to Hitler’s speech. “Who wants this war in the West?” asks the German chancellor. He answers this question himself: no one wants this war. He really does not want anything from France; as early as in “Mein Kampf” he wrote that Alsace and Lorraine might just as well be left to France. Now he makes this point again.
   “I have never acted against the interests of England”, says Hitler. This does sound strange on the part of the German leader. Why should he try to justify himself before those who declared war on his country? The leader of Germany must act in the interests of Germany, just like the leader of France takes care of French interests and the leader of Holland places the Dutch interests above all. To ensure the national interests of a state is the main obligation of any national leader. This is what policy is for – to pursue national interests by resorting to the most ingenious methods, even at the expense of other nations and territories and sometimes contrary to their interests.
   Hitler kind of apologizes: I have never acted against the interests of England and have respected the interests of France, too! The leader of an independent state cannot talk like that. “The German interests do not contradict the interests of France and England” – this is the implication of the German leader’s speech content. Yet, there is one “if”: if Adolf Hitler had come to power unassisted, with no one to give him a leg up except the captains of German industry. But the role of England, France and the USA in establishing the Nazi regime has already been revealed in this work. That is why Adolf Hitler, “having broken loose”, is trying to justify himself before his English patron saints. He is trying to get across the following message: in spite of what has happened, he will not encroach on their empires and just wants to be on equal footing with them. This accounts for his rhetoric about the unnecessary war in the West.
   Hitler’s speech is not an appeal for peace, not at all. It is an attempt to shake the will of the stubborn English and French politicians who would not see Germany as an equal partner in the world political arena. The cause of the discord is quite plain: Hitler wants to make sure that he is treated as an equal and only then deliver a blow against Russia that he had always hated. But the Western leaders refuse to share a meal with Hitler before fulfilling Berlin’s commitment to crush the USSR.

   “To prolong the current situation in the West is inconceivable. Soon every day the bell will toll for more and more victims. The European national wealth is going to be wasted by bombs, and the force of each nation shall be exhausted in the battlefield… One thing is quite clear. In the course of world history there have never been two victors at once, but very often only losers. Let the peoples, who share this viewpoint, as well as their leaders give their answer today. And let those, who consider war as the best method of solving problems, disregard my offered hand” [502 - Shirer, W. The rise and fall of the Third Reich. P. 65.].

   Both the West and Hitler must make a decision now. The Phoney War cannot last forever, after all. It can end either in a peace agreement or in a “real” war, there is no third option. Why did the West decline peace with Hitler? Was it because he was a war criminal? Certainly not – at that point in time he was Chancellor of Germany and no Western politician could possibly accuse him of war crimes. There was quite a different reason behind the inflexibility of London and Paris.
   Why did these countries refrain from a full-blown campaign against the Nazi? They would really have had no difficulty striking the enemy in its very heart. They could have bombed the Ruhr district to dust – that key region of the Reich situated conveniently on the border. Instead, the Phoney War on the France-Germany frontier dragged on not for two weeks and not even two months – but some eight months (from September 3, 1939, to May 10, 1940)!
   Why such procrastination? What good ground could the British and French have for not acting as they should have acted? Was it that the mobilization procedures took longer than expected? You must be kidding – one could have mobilized and disbanded an army several times over during that time! Or did they spare they troops? Well, in that case, they could have used nothing but aviation, as they have done in Yugoslavia in our days. Could have used their bombers to do the job. But no air bombings actually took place!

   During the entire Phoney War, the only military operation carried out by the British Air Force was the bombing on September 4, 1939, of Wilhelmshaven where the German fleet was harboured. Why just one air attack and why Wilhelmshaven, one may ask? Most likely, it was an attempt of Britain, that has always been jealously alert about other countries’ marine power, to undermine the German fleet, even during the Phoney War. The war being indeed “phoney”, any further attacks would have been “against the rules”. That is why the British bombers shot down during that brief attack were for a long time afterward the only ones hit in World War II.

   One may fancy that the peace-mongers that according to some weird logic “formed” the majority of all Western governments cut down expenses on flying their planes and for that reason did not bomb Germany. But then they might have applied their favorite methods, applying the famous British intelligence service. British “James Bonds” could have resorted to sabotage, raids and other subversive acts on the German territory. But the history of the Second World War knows no such examples… in the first months of the war. Later, when it became clear that it was impossible to come to terms with Hitler, the acts of sabotage were as many as flies. But there were none during “the phony war”. But it was not because of lack of experience on the part of English special services. They had a lot of experience. One can make sure of this by turning to an interesting book by William Mackenzie: The secret history of SOE: Special Operations Executive, 1940–1945.
   This is quite a sizeable volume which evokes natural respect: 900 pages in small print. There are so many glorious operations carried out by the British raiders that it was rather difficult to describe all of them in one voluminous book. It appears that SOE (Special Operations Executive) was set up in addition to the main branches of the English espionage and counter-espionage exclusively for the war period of time to do all kinds of dirty work. After the victory they broke up and burned all the archives. But the author, William Mackenzie, had had an opportunity to work with the archives. The book was published in England, but long before that its material had been highly classified. It appears, though, that after the security label was no longer relevant, the British censors had made some excisions in the text and introduced some inclusions: “Part of the text has been removed for the security reasons”. Such inclusions are abundant, but normally only names are missing, while the facts have remained intact.
   The title shows a strange deliberation of the British special services: the book tells about operations carried out by agents beginning with the year of 1940. What about 1939? It was the year when the war began. Why did the English delay their activities? Were they unprepared for the war or did they love peace too dearly and trust too much in humanity? No. As it follows from the text, they started to develop their operations long before the war with Germany. The author points out the concrete date, when they started to work out acts sabotage against Germany: March 20, 1939 [503 - Mackenzie, W. The secret history of SOE: Special Operations Executive, 1940–1945. London, 2002. P. 38.]. It was then that it became clear that Hitler had occupied Czechoslovakia “the wrong way”, because he had not occupied Zakarpatye. On March 21, 1939 the leaders of the Western world gathered in London in order to decide what to with the disobedient Adolf. As William Mackenzie writes, on March 23, 1939 Lord Halifax, the British Foreign Secretary, discussed with a pair of high-ranking spies projects of disorder, sabotage and provocations in the German rear [504 - Mackenzie, W. The secret history of SOE: Special Operations Executive, 1940–1945. P. 39.].
   The spies were sober-minded, down-to-earth people. In case of war with Germany they suggested a way of bringing Germany to heel at one stroke. How could it have been done? The idea was to “shut off the air supply” to Germany by striking at two vulnerable places that the German economy had: Romanian oil and Swedish ironstone [505 - Ibid. P. 48.]. The German industry was supplied with these essential resources in sufficient quantities, but if oil could be imported from the USSR, the desired quantities of iron ore were to be imported only from Sweden. Before the war Germany imported ironstone from France (Lorrain), Spain and Sweden. After the declaration of the war France stopped its iron ore deliveries to Germany; the Spanish source was also unavailable, because the ore was normally carried through the territory of France, whereas at sea the German transports were blocked by the British and the French Navies. If England blocked the last Scandinavian channel, it would be the end: all the German blast furnaces and armament works would come to a stand, and the German army that had no (!) substantial quantities of munitions in stock would be unable to carry on war. But if Hitler were prevented from manufacturing arms at the very beginning of the Polish campaign, how was he supposed to crush Poland and arm the soldiers for the further attack on Russia? That was why before the war the British leadership did not issue instructions concerning detailed plans of sabotage operations. The situation did not change after the Polish campaign, either. Only in October 1939 they began to plan the operation related to scuttling a ship on the berth and blocking all work in the port where they filled ore into vessels [506 - Ibid. P. 51.]. At that time Poland was no more.

   Mackenzie writes about amazing things in his “secret history of SOE”. In March 1939 the British sabotage experts proposed a complex plan of subversion that included operations in Romania, Denmark, Holland, Poland, Bohemia, Austria, Germany, Libya and Abyssinia. It should be noted that the war had not begun yet! To realize the plan Colonel Grand suggested allocating budget of 500 thousand pounds and workforce of 25 officers. What surprises most if the following quote from his report: “If this proposal is adopted, it will be possible to finalize preparations related to Romania within three weeks and other preparations (see the list of the countries above. – N.S.) – within three to four months, i.e. by July a date will be determined when disturbances will break out simultaneously in the territories occupied by Germany” [507 - Mackenzie, W. The secret history of SOE: Special Operations Executive, 1940–1945. P. 39.]. “July” here stands for July 1939, when none of the above mentioned countries was occupied. More so, the German command did not even have any plans of invading these countries! But Great Britain was already in the know concerning their future occupation. The proficiency level of the British experts was so high that to arrange disturbances (successful disturbances would be later termed “revolutions”) they only needed money and a little time. Where had the British experts in sabotage upgraded their skills to such a high level? It is easy to answer this question; suffice it only to remember Russia in 1905 and February 1917 and Germany in November 1918.

   A SOE operation that had never taken place proves the fact that England had no intention to fight Hitler. The chief of the operation is playing for time: they choose the tactic of carrying out the operation only in December 1939 after “thinking it out” two months. On January 2, 1940 Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, approved the plan. But Sir Winston at that time did not take charge of key questions, his time would come later. And those who were in charge – Premier Chamberlain and the Foreign Secretary Halifax – forbade their commandos to execute a subversive act against the Swedish mines. On February 15 the saboteurs tried to get approval for the planned act. But Halifax refused again, because it might easily render Hitler’s soldiers armless [508 - Ibid. P. 52.].
   So, it was not Poland that the Western diplomats cared about, rejecting Hitler’s peace initiative. Yet, to speak candidly, “the Polish component” in the position of the West that did not want to make up with Hitler was quite essential. But this component is not the one that historians are talking about. The West put forward the following condition for normalizing relations with Hitler – withdrawal of all the German troops and reinstatement of Poland. But no historian puts the following simple question:
   How was Poland to be reinstated, once it was officially divided between Berlin and Moscow?
   Part of the Polish territory was integrated into the Third Reich, and West Belorussia and West Ukraine became part of the USSR. Suppose Hitler agrees to reinstate Poland and gives back all the captured polish territories except Danzig and “the Polish corridor”. Does it mean that Stalin must also give back what he had got? How can it be done, if the new territories are officially integrated into the Soviet republics?

   When Hitler pronounced his “peace-loving” speech, the new territories were not yet officially included into the USSR. But the process was set in motion: on October 1, 1939 the Politburo adopted the program of “Sovietizing” West Ukraine and West Belorussia. In the period between October 5 and October 12 the Red Army troops were stationed along the new borderline. On the newly-integrated territories they started to organize the polls for electing new state bodies. They were elected on October 22. In a week’s time (October 27–29, 1939) each territory declared the Soviet power and appealed to Moscow for inclusion. On November 1–2 the USSR Supreme Soviet satisfied the appeals. The process of negotiations between England and France, should Hitler had agreed to reinstate Poland, would have taken no less time. So by the time of a hypothetic agreement between England, France, Poland and Germany all the newly-won parts of Ukraine and Belorussia would have officially joined the USSR, and the casus belli to fight the main aggressor, i.e. Russia, would have been prepared.

   Can a self-respecting power that has annexed a territory push it back to its former status after a couple of weeks? The integration of a new territory into a state is not as easy as switching on the light. One can switch an electric device on and off, but there is no “turning” a country on and off, like electricity. No one can respect a country that will change its own decision under someone else’s influence. The West did not declare war on the USSR, so Stalin had no reason to turn what had been officially acquired back to Poland “for the sake of peace”. How could he explain the change of his policy to the army welcomed by Byelorussian peasants with flowers in hands? Could he afford to admit that he’s gone too far?
   Hitler had a different situation. He can normally include into the Reich German ancestral territories and give back the rest to Poland. And the people of Germany can understand this, unlike the people of the USSR, because the Polish campaign was begun to return the last German territories torn away according to the Versailles treaty. Germany’s world view treats this as follows: Germany has returned all its lands, and the world community displays understanding and agrees to make peace. The new reinstated Poland makes an agreement with Germany and guarantees inviolability of borders. Everybody is a true angel, unlike the Soviet Union that will look like a real aggressor that ought to be punished…
   Eventually, if Hitler had backtracked and consented to reinstate Poland, it would inevitably have led to war with the USSR that was unable to return the Polish territories. That is the real cause of the West’s “reluctance” to make peace. It bears no relation either to peacefulness, or adherence to treaties, or the desire to curb the aggressor. It is only the continuation of the primordial Western policy aimed at stirring up confrontation between Germany and Russia. The glamorous condition of “reinstating Poland” foreboded no peace on the European continent; it simply marked changing from “phony” war to another, i.e. “real” war.
   The logic of authors writing history books is amazing. No one accused the serial killer Chilatilo of violating the Highway Code in court. His disgusting crimes are sufficient grounds to send this inveterate rogue into eternity. Hitler, who is a much more disgusting criminal, is still being accused of all kinds of things. For example, they accuse him of perfidy and treachery. It is as ridiculous as charging a serial murderer with non-payment of community facilities. Hitler is responsible for taking the lives of millions. His atrocities are good grounds, over and above, to sentence him to death. But why attribute to him what he did not do? There is but one reason for this: to conceal those who helped him to come to power and pushed him to unleashing war. In any history volume one can find phrases about Hitler’s perfidy, judging by the fact that in his speech on October 6, 1939 he offered peace to the West and three days later ordered to draft a plan of attacking France. Thus some authors write about Hitler’s perfidy, without understanding what they are talking about, while other authors borrow this conception that travels from book to book. However, Hitler’s logic was quite normal…

   The letter of instruction (№9) concerning the war in the West, signed by Hitler, quite accurately predicts the future defeat of the French army. This document is still currently important: “They (tank divisions. – N.S.) should by no means be thrown deathwards into the interminable warren of streets in Belgian towns”. Those who sent Russian tanks deathwards to assault the city of Grozny on New Year’s Eve in 1995, naturally, had not read Hitler. But after Hitler’s instruction General Guderian, treated as the best tank commander in Hitler’s army, also wrote in his works about the impossibility of a tank assault of urban structures, and then this idea was borrowed by war chiefs of all the countries. Didn’t Pasha Grachev know about such elementary things that the science of warfare has known about for over 50 years?

   In his General Staff (on September 12, 1939) Hitler for the first time advanced the idea that he repeated two weeks later that it was possible to rout France the way Poland was routed, by blitzkrieg [509 - Falin, V. The second front. The anti-Hitler coalition: conflict of interests. P. 145.]. He did not go into detail, so far. On October 6 he made his “peaceful” speech. In Reichstag, he publicly mouthed the proposals that had already been secretly communicated to the leaders of England and the USA. On September 26, 1939 he personally instructed Göring that it was necessary to establish contact with London via Dalerus, the Swedish intermediary [510 - Ibid.]. In the meantime, via Davis, an American petroleum producer, the German fuehrer communicated his proposals to President Roosevelt [511 - Ibid.]. So Hitler’s peaceful proposals were to reach “the fertile ground”, which meant a possibility of the West changing its policy and coming to terms with Hitler on Germany’s equal position in the house that Jack the Englishman built. That was why Hitler’s speech was so peaceful that it could have done credit to any “champion of peace all over the world”. On the following day all the newspapers came out with meaningful headlines: “We do not pursue any military aims against England and France”, “No revision of demands except colonies”, “Arms limitation” and so on [512 - Shirer, W. The rise and fall of the Third Reich. P. 66.].
   Now, in the German fuehrer’s opinion, the governments of England and France could afford to stretch out friendly a hand to Germany without losing face. It was not the West that requested peace, it was Germany itself. It suggests that the peace offered by Hitler to the West was in real earnest. But the German fuehrer received no response to his initiative, or, rather, it was a negative response. On the following day the French premier Daladier told Hitler that France would not lay down arms until there was a guarantee of “genuine peace and general security” [513 - Shirer, W. The rise and fall of the Third Reich.].

   Stalin positively distrusted his German partner in the non-aggression pact. While Hitler called on the world for peace, the USSR was quick in marching into the Baltic countries, having concluded with them corresponding agreements. It was done with the sanction of Germany. But it did not lessen the significance of the appearance of the Red Army in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The Baltic territories were vitally important for a would-be aggressor to deploy its troops for attacking the USSR. Now such a scenario was impossible. October 1939 marked also the beginning of negotiations between Finland and the USSR. The aim was to guarantee the security of the Leningrad direction and to take control of the entry into the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic sea for the Soviet Navy.

   Yet, the main decision was to come from London, and it never came. However, judging by the tone of English, American and French newspapers it was getting clear that the West would not make peace with Hitler. On October 10 in Berlin’s Sportpalast Hitler made a short speech, trying once again to address Britain. He emphasized that Germany had “no reason to fight against the Western powers” and stressed his “peaceful” attitude once again. Britain answer came two days later, on October 12, 1939. Earlier Berlin saw street disorders later called “peaceful” disorders by historians. Early in the morning Berlin’s broadcasting network reported the collapse of the British government, saying that the new government of England would immediately start negotiations. The Reich’s capital felt exultant and powerful, but shortly the general mood was changed by disappointment [514 - Ibid. P. 67.].
   Why the state radio of the Nazi regime resorted to spreading false information is still a mystery. On the next day the British premier Chamberlain called Hitler’s proposals “vague and indefinite”. What the Englishman said further needs to be rightly understood. The head of England said that if Germany wanted peace, it must prove this by “deeds, not words alone”. Germany was to afford “convincing proofs” of striving for peace. The English premier called on Hitler to leave Poland and Czechoslovakia and guarantee his further peaceful behavior. This is what all historians say about Chamberlain’s speech. But it is a lie! The English premier called on Hitler to attack the USSR and, in such a way, afford “convincing proofs”. It was such “deeds, not words alone” that London expected from Hitler.
   What was left for Hitler to do? He offered peace, but it was rejected. He had to prepare for fighting. So, in three days he ordered that a plan of crushing his closest enemy, France, be made. That was all his “perfidy”, or, rather, its absence. I do not mean to whitewash the murderer of millions of our people, I just want to clarify the logic of his actions.

   The fact that the German fuehrer gave an order to make a plan of attacking France on the 9th of October and that the negative response from London came on October 12 does not signify any perfidy or aggressiveness on the part of Hitler. For one thing, to order that a plan be made does not mean to launch an offensive, because a plan should not necessarily be fulfilled, and an order, too, may be cancelled. For another thing, the 12th of October saw an “official reply” from London, while a non-official one could have come earlier. Judging by the headlines in the “independent” British press one can easily understand from what quarter the wind blows.

   Adolf Hitler’s conduct was caused not by the crazy ambition of the inveterate aggressor to conquer the whole world, but by the logic of a politician compromiser who did not want to fight his former patrons in real earnest. It should be stressed again: due to its geographic and economic situation Germany could not win a long-term war. It just had no resources for this. The situation with the “phony war” could neither last too long, because Britain would have strangled the Germans by imposing a blockade. To begin with, England was only mildly “palpating Germany’s throat”, but they could proceed to stifling Germany from breathing any moment. A scuttled ship in a Swedish port, together with “public unrest” in Romania resulting in destruction of the railway traffic, together with a couple of tankers with Romanian oil sunk on the Danube, and farewell to war.

   The British intelligence service really had such a plan of torpedoing the German navigation. At first, the government naturally did not approve it. But after Germany brought troops into Romania, either invading or otherwise subordinating all the states of the Danube river basin, this method of sabotage became a real thing. The point is that when Hitler attacked the USSR demolishing the Romanian oil fields became irrelevant again. The Royal Air Force had never attempted to bomb out this only available to Germany oil resource. How else was it possible to fuel the tanks tearing along toward Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk?

   So far the British government is not “strangling” Germany, but England’s demands cannot be ignored, because England will not tolerate this situation for a long time. It is necessary to be active and resolute. “The Englishmen will give in only after a couple of attacks” – this is what Hitler said (quote in General Halder’s diary) [515 - Shirer, W. The rise and fall of the Third Reich. P. 73.]. One should not wonder, why, preparing to attack France, Hitler mentions England, because he is well aware of who really pulls the strings in world politics…
   So in October 1939 Hitler sees no way out except an assault on France. The firs variant of the war plan was made only on the 19th of October, i.e. 13 days later than Hitler’s “peaceful” speech. The reaction of the Reich’s top brass to their chief’s plan of waging a real war against the French soldiers sitting behind the Maginot line was untold terror. General von Brauchitsch and General Halder were against the assault in principle. General von Leeb was also against violating the neutrality of Belgium and Holland. Recollections of the First World War tugged at his heart: Verdun, Marne, Somme. It was a terrible massacre: hundreds of thousands of dead and injured on a square foot of land furrowed by shells. Was that to be repeated?
   One would never come to know what Adolf Hitler really wanted, in other words, how serious he was in his intention to crush the French army. But there are some facts to suggest that his genuine idea was to come to terms with the West. What are these facts? If Hitler really wanted to fight England and France, he ought not to have prevented the German seamen from sinking the enemy ships, which was their direct duty. The German Navy started their combat operations so actively that Hitler had to interfere in order to deter his ardent captains. Only during the first war week the Germans sank 11 ships of 64,595 tons displacement. If they had carried on like that, there would have been only German submarines near the British Isles. A mysterious phenomenon happened: the total tonnage of the British ships was less in the second week (51,561 tons), still less in the third week (12,750 tons) and the least in the fourth week (4,646 tons) [516 - Shirer, W. The rise and fall of the Third Reich. P. 57.].

   The German tanks in France. No one in London and Paris expected Hitler to strike a real blow against the West. That is why it did not take long before they were defeated

   What was it that so radically reduced the efficiency of the German submarines? Had the British captains learnt to sink them, or had they become more cautious and experienced? No, the British seamen were surprised themselves at the statistics. But the key to the “mystery” was quite simple: Hitler asked his captains not to sink the English and French ships. Admiral Reder wrote in his diary that the general political line was “exercising restraint until the political situation in the West cleared up” [517 - Ibid.]. In one episode the captain of a German submarine taking vantage position before the French military ship “Dunkirk” asked for permission to attack it, but was ordered not to [518 - Speer, A. Recollections. P. 238]. The German fuehrer personally forbade the attack!
   The history of the German attack on France was just as incredible. The first date of the operation that Hitler fixed was November 12, 1939 [519 - Halder, F. The military diary. The daily notes of the Chief of General Staff of ground forces. 1939–1942. M., 1971. P. 147.], but in reality the attack took place on May 10, 1940. Hitler put off the date 20 times! [520 - Yakobsen, G.A. 1939–1945. The second world war // World War II: Two Approaches. P. 13.] One can take a calendar to make sure that the period from November 12 and May 10 includes 24–25 weeks. Hitler postponed the event occurrence date almost every week!
   Why? Historians say: bad weather. Do you believe it? Was it possible that Hitler and his generals could not cope with weather between Germany and France for seven (!) months? Did they inspect the sky every day to see, if the wind was blowing off the clouds for the sun to come out at last? Wasn’t it more reasonable to fit the date to the weather suitable at this or that particular season? That would have saved the trouble of stupidly changing the date all the time. The army had been on the rack for half a year, with no one being able to say, if the German fuehrer would fix a different date again or not. Was it in the nature of the punctual Germans? The explanation is as clear, as daylight: the assault was constantly postponed, while there was hope to come to terms. When the last hope died, Germany struck a blow.
   How did the Western democracies respond to Hitler’s peace proposals? Formally, their leaders rejected them. But there was one more response, although one can hardly relate it to the German fuehrer’s peace proposals…
   Annually, to celebrate the anniversary of his “beer putsch” Hitler spoke in Munich’s bar “Bürgerbräukeller”to his old Party comrades. It was a traditional event. But this time the meeting with the fuehrer’s old friends ended rather unusually. Thirteen minutes after Hitler was gone, a bomb exploded in the bar, with 8 people dead and 63 injured. On the same evening the German carpenter Johann Georg Elser was detained on the border between Germany and Switzerland. He owned up after a few interrogations. “The heart talk” between the prisoner and “daddy” Müller, an Oberst-Gruppenführer made it possible for the German propaganda to link the explosion with the British espionage. But even now some authors tend to think that the attempt had been staged by GESTAPO that was eager to prove its importance. There is still another version that considers Elser as an independent figure striving to annihilate the German dictator. Both versions, like in the history with the Jewish terrorist Grynszpan, hold no water.
   What is to happen to a terrorist after arrest? Elser confesses to the crime. If he were a GESTAPO agent or an individual patriot, he would be promptly tried and executed. Then no one is the wiser, no truth will come out, and the grateful fuehrer will award brand-new iron crosses to the GESTAPO chiefs. Why save the life of a crazy person that has attempted the life of the German fuehrer? But, oddly enough, Elser, like Grynszpan, was sent to the concentration camp Sachsenhausen and later was transferred to Dachau. He was shot down only on April 9, 1945. His life, as well as Grynszpan’s life, had been saved for them to witness in a post-war court trial. After the war Hitler wanted to hold a show trial to expose the perfidy and cruelty of the enemy special services [521 - “European Express” (the German newspaper in the Russian language), №45 (401). 7.11.2005.]. To meet this end he needed proofs – life evidence of the activities of the British intelligence service. This accounts for the prisoners’ long imprisonment in the concentration camps. There is only one problem: to be a witness at the trial one has to be a real terrorist. It would not do to take to substitute real witnesses by dummies and let them say whatever they are told to say about the British intelligence service. But such evidence is not worth a brass farthing.
   Walter Schellenberg also writes about the connection of Elser, “an individualist”, with the British agents in his post-war memoirs: “Under the weight of evidence he confessed that he had placed his explosive timing device inside one of the columns of the bar… Elser said that he had been helped by two strangers who had promised to take care of him later abroad” [522 - Schellenberg, W. Labyrinth. P. 91.]. To check his evidence the Nazi investigators brought a hypnotist, but Elser stubbornly talked away about two strangers…
   What did that attempt mean? It was a warning. On November 9, 1939 at 6 p.m. Hitler was to take a decision concerning at attack on France. A bomb was blasted, and following the explosion Hitler put off the fate of the attack from November 12 to November 19, and then to November 25. This started the confusion with the dates of attacking France, and history had known nothing of the kind before. Those who wanted to launch an offensive were on the march the day they wanted. Only Hitler’s reluctance to break off relations with his patrons caused the ludicrous 20-fold time extension of the attack date.

   The British secret service was, as usual, in the know of all Hitler’s plans. What were their sources of information? During the Munich crisis some German generals constantly leaked information to England, trying to prevent war, and they carried on in 1939. When they came to know about Hitler’s plan to attack France, they were terrified and made efforts to catalyze the process of deposing Hitler. Doctor Josef Müller went to Rome to establish contacts with the English ambassador in Vatican. The Roman Pope himself consented to play intermediary between Britain and a future non-Nazi Germany. Another source was Bern, the capital of Switzerland. That was where the German diplomat Theodor Kordt went [523 - Shirer, W. The rise and fall of the Third Reich. P. 73–78.].

   It was characteristic that the political leaders in London and Paris did not think Hitler to be dangerous. Of Hitler was a devil incarnate, why not liquidate him? He neglected elementary safety instructions, going around unescorted and in an open car. Why was he so unconcerned? Hitler just knew that England would not benefit from his death! In the whole period of the war THERE WAS NO ATTEMPT ON THE LIFE OF THE MAIN CRIMINAL OF ALL TIMES AND NATIONS! [524 - The famous attempt on the part of von Stauffenberg who exploded a bomb in Hitler’s General Headquarters on the 20th of July 1944 was made by the Germans themselves, without any participation of Britain. What I mean is attempts to liquidate Hitler by foreign special services. There was much talk, and plans were numerous, too. But all the projects were rejected by the leadership of the British secret service. The latest article in the modern press headlined “MI 5 did not allow its agent to blow up Hitler” was issued on 09.01.2008 (http://www.lenta.ru/news/2007/o01/09/mission/).]
   The main factor of Germany’s aggressive policy was, no doubt, the personality of its leader. If Hitler had perished from the explosion, the regime might have changed radically. More so, it would have been impossible for the Nazi leaders to retain power, because none of Hitler’s henchman had his charisma and authority to rule the country. The German army gave an oath of allegiance personally to Adolf Hitler, and to no one else. Hess, or Himmler, or Göring would never have won such support. The most probable scenario would be a government of generals who had long, since the Munich crisis, waited for a chance to overthrow the regime that pushed Germany to a new terrible war. Was England interested in Hitler’s death? Beyond the sphere of emotions, the answer is: no, it was not. If the principal aggressor of the planet had been liquidated, it would have been next to impossible to seduce Germany to go to the East, because the new government would not have known, why they must do it. The point was that all the territories lost by Germany after the First World War had been returned. Everyone would like to enjoy life instead of fighting for Ukraine that was too far away. Why go to war?
   At that point the reluctance of the West to make peace with Hitler matches splendidly with its reluctance to liquidate Hitler. Only this German fuehrer could unleash the war for the sake of which he had been brought to power. For the West to conclude peace with Hitler meant sitting down for the talks with their own “mad dog” at the time that was most advantageous for that “dog”, on its terms and to its benefit. What could England and France benefit from the end of the “phony war”? They would gain nothing. To sign a peace treaty meant a legal appearance of a new independent political player – the German Reich. Besides, the head of the Reich would not be Kaiser Wilhelm, a relative of the English king, but a cynical, shrewd politician that endured the hardships of political strife in all its forms, from the tap house to the chancellor’s office, enjoying the great support of the German nation. Why would England and France want such a peace? Peace with Hitler would signify the dismal failure of their longstanding operation aimed at unleashing a war between Germany and Russia. Of course, there was a chance to induce Hitler to attack the USSR after making peace. But there was the question of what Hitler would demand for that! Wouldn’t the price of liquidating Bolsheviks and gaining control of the Russian natural resources be too high?
   It seemed more reasonable not to conclude peace with Hitler and, in this indefinite situation. Impel him to attack the USSR. The main bargaining chip would be a peace treaty between Germany with England and France. Go to crush Russia, Herr Hitler, then come back to “the letter and the spirit” of the old agreements and you will have the long-awaited peace, sir! But a customer pays only after getting what he wants. First crush the USSR, and stay alive. Thus, all anti-Hitler conspiracies find no support in the USA and Britain. The German generals (Beck, Canaris and Oster), as well as “the civilians”, such as Goerdeler, Schacht and Hassel establishe contacts with the American and British secret services. They held high-level negotiations, offering to depose Hitler and demanding from the West guarantees of the loyal attitude to and immediate peace with Germany. The Americans and British politicians showed their interest and even defined the external signal of starting the operation of deposing Hitler – repeal of measures to ensure the blackout [525 - Falin, V. The second front. The anti-Hitler coalition: conflict of interests. P. 169.]. As is known, the German fuehrer was safe and sound till April 1945…
   But before Hitler stopped playing his strange game of time extension of the attack date, a real war between England and Germany broke out, at last. Germany had to carry out one more aggressive act, and the German army was involved into one more military operation of its General Staff. On the 9th of April the German troops started invading Norway. Unlike the Danish army that had not prevented the Germans from occupying their country, the Norwegian army put up resistance. It was different in Denmark: the German divisions just marched across the borderline and peacefully took control over its strategic objects.
   Why did Adolf Hitler occupy these Scandinavian countries? Was he again subject to his craving to conquer the whole world? No, he was not. During the whole period of the war Denmark and Norway did not suffer from the cruel occupation regime, and the Resistance movement there, if any at all, only vaguely resembled the heroic struggle of Belorussian and Ukrainian partisans. Germany marched into Scandinavia with the only view of ensuring supplies of iron ore that was vitally important for Germany.

   The logic of the militarized economy demanded that Germany should occupy Norway to ensure the deliveries of Swedish ore. The neighboring Denmark was occupied for the same reason. In such cases, the other participants of the world war showed no more scrupulousness. For example on May 10, 1940 England occupied Iceland that did not have its own army. Officially this act was motivated by the necessity to prevent Germany from occupying Iceland, but if the Germans had really wanted that, they might have occupied the island long before, because there was no one to defend Iceland. Bur Germany did not need it. But England did need it, because Iceland was located midway between America and England and was strategically significant to maintain the continuous flow of supplies. Iceland was a neutral state and declared a protest against the occupation, but London ignored it. The history paradox: The Germans occupy a country for the needs of their economy; the Englishmen occupy another country for the same reason. But the former are impudent aggressors, while the latter are fighters for the freedom of mankind. What is the difference? History is written by victors.

   The Swedish mines are mainly located in two regions: south of Stockholm and in the north of the country. Normally, the iron ore was delivered by sea: in the south through the port of Ukselezund and in the north through the port of Luleo. But from December to May Luleo was closed, as the sea was frozen, and at times Ukselezund was also closed, too. That was why the only fail-safe port was Norway’s Narvik [526 - Mackenzie, W. The secret history of SOE: Special Operations Executive, 1940–1945. P. 49.].
   The Reich’s leaders knew that Britain was preparing an operation to occupy Norway [527 - Bullock, A. Hitler and Stalin. P. 292.]. Germany jumped ahead of Britain in its intention to occupy Norway, coming a day (to be more precise, only a few hours) earlier, than the enemy [528 - Yakobsen, G.A. 1939–1945. The second world war // World War II: Two Approaches. P. 14.]. It should be borne in mind, that British soldiers would have been treated by the population as occupants; because the King of Norway gave it to understand that he would not allow on his territory any foreign military presence and involve his country into the world war. But his position did not bewilder Britain. As early as in September 1939 Churshill recommended that the neutral status of the Scandinavian countries should be ignored and these states should be involved in the military operations of Great Britain. In his note of December 16, 1939 sir Winston expressed himself even more definitely: he suggested that Norway and Sweden should be occupied in order “to meet the German invaders in the Scandinavian land” [529 - Falin, V. The second front. The anti-Hitler coalition: conflict of interests. P. 149–150.]. The English lord was not at all worried about the fact that the English invaders would meet the German invaders. Great Britain, just like its German opponent, was prepared to trample down the treaties signed with Norway and Sweden [530 - On the 11th of October Britain made an agreement with Norway on freighting the most and best part of the Norwegian fleet. On the 7th of December Sweden concluded a trade treaty with Britain and leased out 50 % its merchantmen. The contract validity period of each treaty was till the end of the war. But Sweden, a neutral country, was not going to do business only with Britain: on December 22, 1939 the Swedish concluded an agreement with the Germans to ensure their deliveries of iron ore to Germany (source: Meltyukhov, M. Stalin’s lost chance. P. 139).].

   The supreme judge is our conscience. We are struggling to restore the domination of law and to protect the freedom of the minor countries… We have a right – and, more so, God orders us – to temporarily abandon conventional laws that we are striving to restore and strengthen. The minor countries must not tie us hand and foot, while we are struggling for their rights and freedoms. At the hour of formidable challenge we cannot let the letter of the law stand in the way of those who are called to defend and abide by it” [531 - Falin, V. The second front. The anti-Hitler coalition: conflict of interests. P. 150.].

   This is not a quote from Adolf Hitler’s speech, as he was preparing to commit one more act of aggression. It is the same memorable note signed by sir Winston Churchill, a freedom fighter. The point was that he was going to do the same thing that the German fuehrer was about to do: to involve the neutral states into the war, though these states, naturally, wanted to avoid such involvement. Of special interest is the English reasoning for violation of all the treaties signed by England: England is a good state, so it is allowed to do anything it chooses, whereas Hitler is a bad boy, he is trying to conquer the whole world, so he has no right to do anything. The paradox was that the freedoms of the Norwegians and the Swedish were endangered, when Great Britain undertook to defend them!
   At present, too, one can often hear the “song” about what is allowed to “good boys” and not allowed to “bad boys”. For example, the USA does the tapping for the sake of freedom, so it is a positive thing. But in the Soviet epoch the KGB was flagrantly violating human rights – by tapping. As is known, the American and British troops invaded Iraq, ruining this prospering country. But they marched in to struggle for freedom and to prevent Saddam Hussein from striking the West with the help of his chemical weapons. Saddam is no more, and Iraq had never had chemical weapons; at the same time about a hundred dead bodies are daily found in the streets of Bagdad. But there are no reasons for worry and indignation, because the USA and Great Britain cannot be treated as aggressors, not at all! For there is a new government and a new election system in Iraq; as for corpses usually found in refuse bins, these are just excesses related to the transition period from the totalitarian regime to democracy. In the early 1990-ies the terrible dictator of Iraq invaded Kuwait which was, of course, an impertinent act of aggression. Blood turns to ice on hearing about atrocities following the invasion, for example, Saddam Hussein declared the annexation of Kuwait to Iraq. Were there any corpses in the streets? Not a hundred a day, like in Bagdad, and the Iraqi Air Force did not bomb the capital of Kuwait. But the aggressor committed a much more terrible crime: he annexed the neighboring territory without holding a plebiscite, with one stroke of the pen. How terrible…
   Let me come back to the terrible situation of the Hitler’s period of time. It is noteworthy that on February 15, 1940 the British leadership did not allow its SOE agents to sabotage the delivery of the Swedish ore. However, in about two months (April 10) Britain was going to make a lodgment in Norway. Does it make sense? Yes, it does; the sabotage will withdraw Germany from the war, while the occupation of Norway will make it possible for Britain to dictate its terms to Hitler. Besides the potential front to fight the Bolsheviks was ready, as was a pretext for starting hostilities against them: on November 30, 1939 the Soviet-Finnish war broke out. England and France organized a diversified operation in the Norwegian fiords. They brought in troops under a specious excuse of defending the proud Northern nation from the Russian savages. Later on Germany might make its own contribution, as long as it was interested in importing Sweden’s iron ore and following the tradition of German politicians to render help to Finland.

   After the Russian October Revolution in 1917 and granting independence to Finland a German task force played the main role in suppressing the Red movement in that northern country. But shortly after the November revolution in Germany lost its pro-German orientation. The Finns changed from staunch royalists into convinced democrats and gave an oath of allegiance to the Entente. When Yudenich’s army attacked Petrograd, British planes and ships, stationed on the territory of Finland, came in for air and maritime support. But the real aim of the British task force was to destroy the Russian Navy. At that time Stalin was in charge of the city defense and memorized how convenient it was for the potential aggressor to attack the second Russian capital that was near at hand from south Finland.
   A thorough research into the Soviet-Finnish war is beyond the scope of this book, but some information should be mentioned. England made great efforts to cause this war. On the 17th of September the USSR, marching into Poland, declared its neutrality towards Finland. In ten days, as Poland was routed, on the 28th of September Germany and the USSR conclude a friendship and border treaty. Britain responds a little earlier: on the 27th of September Britain “advises” the Finns to resist “the pressure from the East”. On the 5th of October the USSR invites Finland to negotiate the problem of bettering relations. The Finns immediately turn to the West for support. Germany advises not to strain relations with Moscow, but the USA, England and France, on the contrary, want Finland to take a tough position. The West reckons that the tension in the relations between Finland and the USSR will provoke a crisis in the relations between Germany and the USSR. Finland is trying to buy time and then suddenly (October 6) appeals for reservists to report and. On the 8th of October Finland says that it will not come to the negotiating table. On October 12 Finland declares full mobilization and evacuation from the largest cities. Thus, the Finns were rushing for war against their mighty neighbor. Did they hope to win the war? No, they could not be victorious all alone. But they relied on the interference of “progressive mankind”. That was why the Finnish delegation refused to discuss the treaty on mutual assistance suggested by the USSR. Then the Soviet Union suggested a treaty on a joint defense of the Gulf of Finland. The point was that if the USSR was deprived of the right to control the entry into the gulf, any aggressor could easily enter it or block its entry from the outside, thus depriving the Baltic fleet from entering into the Baltic Sea. But, naturally, the Finns rejected this proposal at once. Then the USSR proposed one more variant: Finland would lease the USSR a sea base in the port of Hanko and exchange part of its territory for a greater part of the Soviet land.
   The Finnish delegation left for Helsinki. On the 17th of October Mannerheim was appointed Commander-in-chief of the Finnish army. On the 23rd of October the Finns consented to remove the borderline a little westward, but refused to lease Hanko. On October 24 their delegation returned to Helsinki and carried on to fight a delaying action. On the following day Finland finished laying mines in the gulf and deployed their army in the frontier area. The Soviet Union started to move troops to the Karelian Isthmus. It is noteworthy that the Finnish government had not informed their parliament the whole aggregate of the Soviet proposals for fear of their acceptance, because the parliament might proceed from the assumption that “there never was a good war or a bad peace” and that to make peace with the USSR was better than going to war against it for the interests of England and France. On the 3rd of November the last round of the talks began. The Finnish delegation was instructed to come to an agreement exclusively on the own terms and to reject compromise. The last session took place on November 9, 1940 and on the 13 of November the delegation went home. When they were crossing the border, the Finnish frontier guards opened fire at the Soviet guards on the other side! It was an obvious provocation aimed at tough measures on the part of the USSR. On the 26th of November at 15.45 the state broadcasting agency TASS reported that at 15.45 the Finnish artillery shelled the Soviet territory resulting in 4 dead and 9 injured soldiers. There is still no clear-cut explanation of this episode. On the 30th of November war broke out [532 - Meltyukhov, M. Stalin’s lost chance. P. 142–151.].

   The landing operation in Norway turned out a bloody job for the Germans. They were engaged in combat operations against the Norwegians and the British and French landing forces from April 10 to June 8, 1940 to gain control of the country. Hitler was really worried. In fact that was the first war in which Britain and France gave the German army no “give-away” advantage. The German fuehrer was slowly realizing the fact that his Western partners in negotiations would not yield an inch. In March two American envoys came to meet with him, and only a month later a British task force nearly overtook Hitler in Norway [533 - Sumner Welles, the US deputy state secretary held negotiations with the Nazis on March 1–3, 1939, and on the 4th of March Hitler received the American businessman Mooney who allegedly stood close to President Roosevelt (source: Falin, V. The second front. The anti-Hitler coalition: conflict of interests. P. 165–175).]. It was impossible to wait any more. Hitler did not want to and fixed the date of attacking France: May 10, 1940…
   How did England and France prepare to repel the aggression? One has the impression that they did not believe to the last moment that Hitler would go to the length of attacking one of the Great Powers. Even during the fierce fighting in Norway, the British Royal Air Force was inactive and sanctioned the air raids of individual planes – at first in the daytime and later mostly in the nighttime. During the raids the British planes carried on air-dropping propaganda leaflets on the heads of the Germans [534 - The protracted blitzkrieg. German generals on the war in Russia. P. 384.]. Such an idyll went on until May 1940, i.e. the beginning of the German assault against France. It was then that the air forces of the allies began to drop real bombs, not ideological substitutes.
   It took Hitler only 44 days to defeat France that had to lay down arms. In a month and a half the German army managed to do what could not have done in four years during the First World War. How did the German Wehrmacht manage to do what seamed absolutely impossible to the majority of contemporaries? No doubt, the wonderfully rapid debacle of the French army was mainly due to Manstein’s brilliant military plan supported by Hitler. Fearful of the war with Britain and France most German generals were concerned about deposing their fuehrer, than about a possible victory in the French campaign. That was why their original plan was timorous; it suggested forcing the enemy back from the German border and occupying Holland and Belgium in order to make safer the strategic Ruhr area [535 - Taylor, A. The Second World War: Two approaches. P. 412.]. Hitler rejected this plan, and Manstein came forth with his proposals. Did Hitler like them? The plan, suggested a long-range penetration by large tank units across the Ardennes, and if it was successful, the result would be obliteration of the enemy. There was but one hindrance: The Ardennes, a mountain mass in Belgium that the German generals thought impassable for tanks. So did the French decision makers, as they did not expect a blow from that side.
   The most surprising thing about the German plan of routing France was that such an idea occurred to Hitler after reading… a French book on the art of warfare. The author of that book was none other but Charles de Gaulle. On the eve of the war he had a few books published on the subject of the role of mobile army groups in a future moving warfare [536 - “La Discorde Chez l’Ennemi” (in French), “The Edge of the Sword” (English translation), “The Army of the Future” (Vers l’Armée de Métier) (English translation).]. Hitler thoroughly hammered away at these works. “I repeatedly turned to and reread the book by colonel de Gaulle on the potential of modern warfare by motorized forces and had a lot to learn from it” [537 - Speer, A. Recollections (Inside the Third Reich). P. 245.]. It appears to be de Gaulle that lent his idea for routing his own country. Apart from Hitler, the French military experts did not hold in high esteem the work of their colleague, the future president of France. So the Germans did just what the French colonel suggested.

   De Gaulle not only wrote books. He met with the premier Leon Blum in 1936 and proposed what Hitler would create three years later: a motorized army with mighty tank divisions meant to crash into the enemy’s defense. The leader of France heard de Gaulle, but did nothing. Why take care of such costly projects, if according to the agreement with Hitler, Germany would go to fight in the east. France was not about to wage war, at any rate, it might sit out behind its fortifications. But after Hitler ran out of control, it was too late to change anything.

   The German offensive started on the 10th of May, but it was a spoiling attack. On the 15th of May 1,300 tanks of Guderian and Kleist cracked the line in the Ardennes. After the German breakthrough toward the sea over a million French, English and Belgian soldiers were cut off the main forces. The situation for the allied troops became critical at once, but it was not hopeless yet. Analyzing the causes of the incredibly fast debacle of France, it is necessary to emphasize the role of General Manstein’s splendid plan. But of no less importance is… the British contribution to France’s capitulation.
   The English troops, subordinated to the French commander-in-chief in charge of the joint forces, never cared about saving France, but suddenly stopped obeying his orders. Churchill does not hesitate to refer to the French premier Reynaud’s telegram of May 24, 1940: “…The British Army had carried out, on its own initiative, a retreat of twenty-five miles towards the ports at a time when our troops moving up from the south are gaining ground towards the north, where they were to meet their allies” [538 - Churchill, W. The Second World War. V. II. P. 62.].
   The diplomatic phraseology represents quite a simple situation. The German armored fist cut the allied forces, and Hitler’s tanks poured into the gap. But defeat might have been turned to victory. General Weygand of the French High Command had a rather straightforward plan. It was agreed that two counterattacks from the north and the south would defeat and liquidate the penetrating German divisions and then unite the separated groups of the allies located from 50 to 90 kilometers from each other. If this counteroffensive was a success, the imminent debacle of France would be impossible, and Hitler would have lost his armored ram.

   Neither General Gort, nor the Commander of the Royal Aircraft Forces were present at the discussion of the plan. There was not a single Englishman there, which was no coincidence, because Britain was about to abandon their allies. As early as on the 19th, in the daytime, Gort informed London that he was examining the possibility of a retreat to Dunkirk. Staying away from a meeting unties one’s hands for not fulfilling the decisions adopted at the meeting.

   So when the French troops launched a counterattack, the English troops, on the contrary, retreated! “In the evening of the 25th Lord Gort took a vital decision. His orders were still to pursue the Weygand plan of a southerly attack toward Cambrai, in which the 5th and 50th Divisions, in conjunction with the French. Were to be employed… Gort now abandoned the Weygand plan” [539 - Churchill, W. The Second World War. P. 74.].
   So simple – he just “abandoned the plan”! He might have thought the plan wrong or hard to execute. But there is no army in the world where they it is acceptable. Orders are not debated! One can easily imagine what happens, if every general, colonel, or lieutenant takes the liberty to decide, whether his commander’s order is possible or impossible to fulfill. Thus, finding the mission improbable, can an army officer refuse to fulfill it? What is in store for such an army?
   At the crucial moment Gort, the British general, committed an offense for which any army officer should be court-martialed. But his offense was even more serious: he not only failed to fulfill the order, he undertook actions which contradicted the letter and the spirit of the instructions that he received! The most surprising thing is that it is not a French author writing about this in his memoirs, but Churchill himself: “The action of the British Army is in direct opposition to the formal orders renewed this morning by General Weygand. This retreat has naturally obliged General Weygand to change all his arrangement, and he is compelled to give up the idea of closing the gap and restoring a continuous front. I need not lay any stress upon the gravity of the possible consequences” [540 - Ibid. P. 63.].
   Why did this British general break his oath, when it came to the crunch? But he did not! He received the command to advance from his French chief and the command to retreat from his chief in London. Thus, General Gort did not abandon a place to the enemy of his own free will; he just complied with the order of his English commander. “Gort’s giving up the fight was approved by Churchill. But later the English premier [541 - Churchill became the prime-minister on the 10th of May, soon after the German offensive that started the same day.] made believe that he supported Weygand’s plan that envisaged the participation of the English expeditionary force in the counter-attack. To save the face leaving an ally to his fate was the policy of the English Cabinet” [542 - Proektor, D.M. The blitzkrieg in Europe: The war in the West. M., 2004. P. 253.].

   Winston Churchill ordered to leave France to its own fate

   It is possible to compare the dates in order to resolve doubts: on May 22, 1940 the English premier Churchill came to France; on the 24th the British expeditionary force began to retreat toward Dunkirk. Could anyone believe that General Gort had not contacted the head of the government to inform him that he had decided to sign the death-warrant to France?
   The treacherous decision of the English Cabinet cannot be justified by discussion of the strategic context. Oddly enough, the French generals, apart from their English colleague, considered Weygand’s plan quite feasible. But because one part of the Allied Armies began to retreat, the whole plan went down the drain, and so did the last hope to stabilize the front. Yet, why did the British ally of France behave so reproachfully.
   This is one mystery of that war that needs puzzling out. To do this it is necessary to keep in mind where the British divisions were retreating. They were retreating to Dunkirk! Why? Churchill himself gives an exhaustive answer to this question, and a mass of historians repeat him: for “a sea evacuation under the bombs of the enemy air force”. It was reasonable, as Dunkirk was the only port from which the British troops were able to get home [543 - Volkov, F.D. Nothing is secret that shall not be made manifest. P. 43–44.].
   The surprising thing was that the British troops would not have been able to evacuate, but for the help from… the Germans, or, to be more precise, from one German whose name was Adolf Hitler. The military the situation was as follows: at the time when the British expeditionary force was pulling out toward Dunkirk, there were already German tanks at the approaches to the city. They had approached Dunkirk two days before the British troops and were only 16 kilometers from the city, while the expeditionary force was 60 kilometers away [544 - Ibid. P. 44.]. It was not worth a whistle for the Germans to enter into the helpless city and occupy the last harbor that could ensure evacuation of the retreating British troops. But Hitler gave his famous “stop-order” that stalled the German advance. “We were robbed of the power of speech”, General Guderian recalled later. No wonder! At the time, when they were only faced with the task of occupying a city that was not too big and thus set the fate of the enemy force group, the head of Germany clearly forbade them to do it. Things came to such a pitch that General Halder began to challenge the German fuehrer’s decision, trying to explain, why it was vital to occupy the last free port on the coast. But Hitler was inexorable: “The excited discussion finished with a definite order by Hitler, to which he added that he would ensure execution of his order by sending personal liaison officers to the front” [545 - Churchill, W. The Second World War. V. II. P. 68.].
   Historians find different reasons for Hitler’s strange decision:
   • Hitler was worried about his tanks, as he wanted to save the armor divisions for “the battle for France” [546 - Proektor, D.M. The blitzkrieg in Europe: The war in the West. M., 2004. P. 279.];
   • Hitler apprehended a catch from the enemy [547 - Taylor, A. The Second World War: Two approaches. P. 417.];
   • Hitler failed to understand the intention of the British army to evacuate from Dunkirk [548 - Bullock, A. Hitler and Stalin. P. 730.].

   These fabulous reasons invented by historians are both funny and distressing. It was not hard to puzzle out the intention of the British army to evacuate by sea: the British have always and everywhere left their allies to their fate and always evacuated their forces under threat of defeat. It happened at Walcheren in 1809, at Gallipoli in 1915, in Norway in 1940. One does not have to be a clairvoyant to predict the action of the British in 1940. Their intention to take to their heels from Dunkirk was self-evident, because there were no variants! Hitler gave his “stop-order” early on the morning of May 24, and, according to Churchill, on the same day the British started to retreat. But they managed to approach Dunkirk only on the evening of the 25th, and the Germans had to wait for them nearly 48 hours. Without focusing on these dates, the reader would hardly, if ever, comprehend the causes of all those mysterious events, being comfortably confident that the proud English nation never entered into secret collusions with Hitler, but always fought against this “devil incarnate” to the last ditch.

   Only a few researchers venture to advance the non-conventional idea that Hitler purposefully built “the golden bridge” for the enemy to retreat with the view of having an opportunity to enter into negotiations with England later [549 - The best known proponents of the idea of “the golden bridge” were… the German generals: Rundstedt, Blumentritt and Jodl. After the war they wrote memoirs and bore evidence to the victorious allies. In the Soviet epoch many a historian wrote, that Hitler deliberately let the British Army go home. But these statements, usually not grounded on the analysis of important dates were mainly non-substantial and tenuous and focused on “the aggressive nature of imperialism”.]. But there is no one to connect the sudden and treacherous retreat of the British army with their subsequent miraculous evacuation granted by Adolf Hitler!
   No one explains the content of the “stop-order”. Everybody just says: Hitler stopped the tanks. So the reader may have the impression that the strange fuehrer wanted to save the lives of his soldiers and for that reason forbade them to storm the English positions at Dunkirk. But the city was as good as vacant! The Germans stood at Dunkirk for a couple of days waiting for their fuehrer’s order to advance. In his turn, Hitler waited for the retreating British troops to occupy the port. Only on the 26th of may he let the army go ahead, but by that time the British had dug in and repelled all the German attacks. When did the British army officially start their evacuation? According to my conjecture, it was before Hitler’s order to advance. Indeed, a day before, on the 25th Churchill ordered to start the evacuation… [550 - Volkov, F.D. Nothing is secret that shall not be made manifest. P. 44.]

   None other but Adolf Hitler ensured the evacuation of the British troops from Dunkirk

   Britain took advantage of the granted opportunity on Hitler’s part and, on the 27th of May executed Operation “Dynamo”, evacuating 338 thousand soldiers. There were 215 thousand British soldiers, the rest being the French, the Belgians and the soldiers of the other allied countries. Why were the French so few? They were few, because the British soldiers were embarked first of all and only then the allied troops were allowed to embark [551 - Ibid. P. 57–58.]. So there was no cross-national camaraderie and mutual readiness to help…
   Here is a good example of behind-the-scenes politics. Realizing that the French campaign was lost, the British got in touch with Hitler via one of the channels still available to communicate with him. Britain’s condition was simple enough: that the allied troops should be able to evacuate from the continent. Why was Hitler supposed to accept it? For one thing, he was a real Anglophil, for another thing, he never wanted to crush England, and, last, but not least, they explained to him that London would never forgive him annihilating the British army. What was, probably, more important, Washington would neither forgive Hitler for that. Such an unheard-of defeat of Britain was tantamount to a direct call on the USA for entering the war against Germany, until it was too late. And then a real mighty struggle against Germany would be inevitable, and it would be a war of extermination. But there is another variant, with the British Army going home, with saving human lives. This will be appreciated. Yes, the French campaign is lost, but Great Britain has saved the face, and the road to peace negotiations is not closed [552 - Falin, V. The second front. The anti-Hitler coalition: conflict of interests. P. 183.]. There are some vague allegations that the situation presented to Hitler was something like that may be found in the books of some Western historians. For example: “The significance of the Dunkirk evacuation became clear later when Hitler realized that the British were going to continue the war” [553 - Bullock, A. Hitler and Stalin. P. 730.].
   Thus, Hitler resolved to let the British Army go home. But why did he decide that they would not continue the war? Who promised him that? What person had such influence with Hitler that he acted against common sense, not annihilating his enemy that had so far persistently refused to come to the negotiating table? Wasn’t it more reasonable to crush the whole British Army in Dunkirk and deprive Britain of the possibility to carry on the war? It gas to be repeated again and again: if some actions of a politician seem to lack logic, it means that the information the politician had, taking his decision, is now missing. Politics is not a straight line; it is a sine curve with abrupt ups and downs…
   One of the conditions of successful evacuation of the British Army was giving Hitler a free hand for crushing France. Hitler could take the liberty to do whatever he chose to, as the French generals were not supposed to get assistance from their British allies. England cynically wrote France off, the way they had written off Czechoslovakia and Poland a year before. At the critical hour of the German offensive, when all the might of the Allies should have been thrown into the scale of the common cause, the British thought only about themselves, not about the common victory. This has been Britain’s typical policy over centuries. Great Britain has always been ready to fight “to the last soldier”, as long as it was not her own soldier. When the logic of a struggle requires severe losses, England is never prepared for sacrifice. Like an insurance company, England likes its allies only while they pay their subscription by the lives of their soldiers. When Britain’s ally is in a crunch and badly needs help, the office of “the English insurance company” closes down and it vanishes into the fog over the English Channel, leaving its partners to their problems…
   The most characteristic example of such a typical British conduct is the situation in May-June 1940. Britain left France to its fate: the ground force fled and was not going to return. Meanwhile, the French High Command, oddly enough, pinned its hopes on their British allies. The French expected help, they counted on it. “…Our situation is almost hopeless, – said the Commander of the French Army General Weygand to de Gaulle. – We only have some chance, if the current situation does not change too fast, if I manage to return to the ranks the French that have broken away from Dunkirk, if I manage to arm them, if the newly fitted out British troops reenter into the war, if, finally, the British consent to bring into action considerable units of their Air Force to fight on the continent” [554 - Gaulle, Ch. de. The War Memoirs. The Call-up of 1940–1942. P. 70.].
   During the first hours of attacking France the German Air Force struck at the French airdromes, liquidating the major part of the planes. Since then they had had air superiority in the French sky. Britain ought to have dispatched their air squadrons to the front to improve the situation, as the crashed planes would not be able to threaten England.
   But there is no changing the British mentality. So should not be surprised to read the following words by Sir Winston: “It was vital that our metropolitan fighter air force should not be drawn out of Britain on any account. Our existence turned on this” [555 - Churchill, W. The Second World War. P. 45.].
   Further on the British began to deceive their French allies in the most impudent manner. And Winston Churchill personally participated in this deceit: “I immediately took Ysmay off with me to M. Reynaud’s flat and <…> told him the favorable news. Ten fighter squadrons!” [556 - Ibid. P. 46.]

   Adolf Hitler in the prostrate Paris

   But these squadrons never came to France, because the British did not give them [557 - Taylor, A. The Second World War: Two approaches. P. 415.]. Charles de Gaulle writes about it with bitterness in his heart: “After the evacuation from Dunkirk the British Air Force took part in the fighting only occasionally… Their squadrons based in the territory of Great Britain were too far to render efficient assistance to our troops… Churchill declined straight-out my urgent plea that at least some part of the British aviation be relocated to the airdromes south of the Loire” [558 - Gaulle, Ch. de. The War Memoirs. The Call-up of 1940–1942. P. 78.].
   …Any citizen of Russia can easily remember the date of the fall of France: June 22. France signed its capitulation on June 22, 1940. Almost the whole French Army (1,547 men out of 2.5 million of the metropolitan army) was imprisoned. France’s casualties totaled only 84 thousand dead, which suggests that the army had offered only weak resistance to the enemy. The German Wehrmacht suffered much lighter losses: 28 thousand. It may be compared with the Kaiser’s army casualties during World War I that amounted to 1.8 million servicemen, though that army never managed to rout the French… [559 - Bullock, A. Hitler and Stalin. V.2. P. 296.]
   Under the terms of capitulation part of France with Paris included was occupied by the Germans. The rest of the formally independent territory was governed by French authorities [560 - The occupied zone included North and West France extending over 300 thousand square kilometers out of the total French territory of 550 thousand square kilometers (source: Gaulle, Ch. de. The War Memoirs. The Call-up of 1940–1942. P. 10).]. The French government, headed by Marshal Pétain, a hero of the First World War well advanced in years, came into office on June 16, 1940. The government moved to Vichy [561 - Marshal Pétain was elected the head of the French state by members of the democratically elected French parliament with a majority vote of 569 in favor, 80 against, and 17 abstentions (source: Churchill, W. The Second World War. P. 407).], a resort town in the south of France. In historiography, this legal government of France is usually referred to as the Vichy government, and the state itself is termed the Vichy France.
   Under the influence of the incredibly rapid overthrow of the French Army Marshal Pétain’s regime decided not to be involved in the war. But the irrepressible and unpredictable de Gaulle opted for the variant of fighting to the end. It was his name that would become the symbol of resistance to Nazi Germany. Having left for London, de Gaulle headed all the forces of French resistance and thus saved the honor of France…

   De Gaulle had remained unpredictable all his life, even in the capacity of president. One of his best known deeds as president of France was secession from the NATO block in 1966. Why is the HQ of this organization located in Brussels? Because, France no longer a NATO-member, de Gaulle asked his former colleagues “to clear” the French capital from leading NATO organizations based in Paris. So they had to move to a new place and chose the neighboring country, Belgium. De Gaulle was punished for his act. In less than two years Paris saw barricades with posters: “It’s time to go, Charles!” The student disorders in the French capital, indeed, marked the end of de Gaulle’s political career – on April 28, 1969 he resigned the post of the French president. One only has to remember what country’s intelligence service can ensure an uprising practically in any state of the world on condition of a considerably small sum of money allocated to this effect…

   Hitler was having his revenge for the humiliating Versailles treaty by signing France’s capitulation in the Compiègne Forest, in the same rail carriage (the Compiègne wagon), in which the Germans had signed the 18th of November “armistice” that caused havoc in Germany and opened a door to Hitler. After the First World War the Compiègne wagon was made a museum and a historical monument. No Frenchman could have thought that it would be used “according to its function” once more, but this time for confirming France’s capitulation. One wagon witnessed two capitulations. There can be no other capitulation signed: Adolf Hitler ordered to have the wagon blown up [562 - Preparata, G.D. Hitler Inc. How Britain and the USA made the Third Reich. P. 375.].
   But the ways of History are inscrutable. The blow-up of the historical wagon did not save the Third Reich. Why not? This day next year, despite all logic, on June 22, 1941 Hitler attacked the USSR. And many interesting events took place during this year…

Adolf Hitler’s fatal love

   I want England under no circumstances to lose face. Anyhow, I want no such peace that would derogate from England’s prestige
Adolf Hitler [563 - Ribbentrop, J. von. Memoirs of the Nazi Diplomat. P. 345.]

   When Adolf Hitler realized that his original idea of creating a mighty state for all the Germans based on alliance with England was impracticable, he tried to set up and secure this state by means of its own military power. At long last this generated a whole world of his enemies.
Joachim von Ribbentrop [564 - Ibid. P. 303.]

   One of the best known photos of the simmer 1940 is dancing Hitler who is happy after the great success in France. Indeed, the German chancellor had good grounds to rejoice. The same fact that roused Hitler’s triumph made the leaders of Great Britain feel pessimistic about the future. On September 3, 1939 two superpowers declared war on Germany. In a little over 9 months one of them was no more. Yes, of course, there was the French state there, but what a wreck of its former self it was! Under the terms of capitulation the French were to demobilize their armed forces: there was nothing left of the French Army. But it was not the worst. The French Fleet was also to be demobilized, which caused the greatest anxiety in London. What happens, if the French combat ships are captured by the Germans? If the Fleet that is the second largest in the world falls into Hitler’s hands…
   History books are full of such shockers. Are they justified? To find it out it is necessary to transfer into the past, just a week prior to the capitulation of France. The treacherous retreat and evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk had a logical continuation. France was left by her London friends to her own fate and without aviation and British assistance could no longer fight alone. On the 13th of June the French leadership appealed to Churchill asking for permission (!) to sign an armistice with Hitler, although separate peace was banned by the British-French pact [565 - Taylor, A. The Second World War: Two approaches. P. 419.].
   Britain’s reaction was surprising. Britain consented only on the condition that the French Fleet should be sent to British ports to prevent it falling in the hands of the enemy [566 - Churchill, W. The Second World War. P. 208.]. No great power could accept such a humiliating proposal, though it came from the former ally. Then, to sugar the pill, England suggested the two countries merging to form a union [567 - Taylor, A. The Second World War: Two approaches. P. 419.]. One must not hurry to estimate this proposal as a noble gesture of England. If Paris had accepted this proposal, the question of war and peace would have been officially decided in London. For France that would mean the loss of sovereignty. “Rarely has so generous a proposal encountered such a hostile reception” [568 - Churchill, W. The Second World War. P. 186.], writes Churchill in his book. Why didn’t France want to become England?
   France capitulated, and the French combat ships were subject to disarmament in their harbors. They signed no documents on the terms of turning over the ships to the Germans. “… In the situation of the armistice the Germans did not attempt to encroach on the property of the French Navy”, writes Charles de Gaulle. The only commitment that France had to undertake was not to be at war with Germany. But, maybe, Hitler was treacherously going to capture the French ships? For certain, he was not. The demands of triumphant Germany were quite moderate, unlike the Entente’s demands in Versailles, an outright plunder. Why? The reason was that Hitler never wanted to wage war against Great Britain and France. Even now, after crushing France, he was not preoccupied with plundering the country; he was more concerned about winning the defeated country over to his side, which was supposed to bring a long-awaited peace with Great Britain. Hitler did not plan any further military operations in the West. On the contrary, he was going to conclude a peace treaty with Foggy Albion. The terms he was about to offer were absolutely acceptable for the British, because Hitler was not going to bleed them dry and deprive them of the title of the Lord of the world. The German fuehrer was going to lay the foundation of Germany’s union with Great Britain for ever and ever [569 - Ribbentrop, J. von. Memoirs of the Nazi Diplomat.]. “He was so certain that the British would agree to his proposal that after the fall of France he did not make any plans of carrying on the war with England”, – writes William Shirer, an American journalist who was working in the Third Reich.

   Hitler dancing his famous jig of joy following the fall of France, June 1940

   All speculations about the head of Germany’s desire to conquer freedom-loving Britain, after France, are nothing but a figment of fevered imagination. Apart from Hitler, no one in the High Command of Germany’s Wehrmacht was going to fight the British after France was defeated. On June 20, 1940 Admiral Raeder asked Hitler the question: “How are we going to deal with the Germans?” He got no answer. Ten days later Alfred Jodk, Chief of the Operations Staff of the Armed Forces High Command handed Hitler a memo that said: the war with England must be finished by political means [570 - Proektor, D.M. The blitzkrieg in Europe: The war in the West. P. 270–271.]. Jodl, hanged after the Nuremberg trial, in Hitler’s regime was responsible for strategic planning of the Armed Forces. Thus, the main German military planner proposed to Hitler concluding an immediate peace with England and ceasefire in the West.
   So what were the British worried about? Didn’t their much-vaunted intelligence service know what degree the German peacefulness had reached? Yes, the British secret services were still worth their salt. But, apart from the plans of Germany, the British leadership bore in mind its own plans, too, and these plans excluded making peace with their creation, Adolf Hitler. In the summer of 1940 the principles of the British policy did not change: billions of pounds can’t have been spent only for making Germany an equal partner of London’s gentlemen. There was still no warfare between Germany and Russia, and that was the point.
   To make peace with the German fuehrer for England meant losing the status of the world leader in the most stupid way: after creating manu propria their geopolitical rival they are forced to share the world supremacy with him. The British did not want peace at such a price. They were going to fight and fight fiercely. When it comes to the question of world supremacy, feelings have to step aside. The British determination was well expressed in their premier’s lapidary phrasing; “If necessary – for years, if necessary – alone” [571 - Churchill, W. The Second World War. P. 197.]. So the Empire had to secure itself from all possible and even impossible problems…
   Operation “Catapult” had been prepared by the British with an unheard-of speed and was executed 11 days after the fall of France. The peculiarity of the situation was that this time Britain was going to strike at her ally, not the enemy. There were scenes of utmost revulsion on the decks of the ships in the ports of Portsmouth, Plymouth and Devonport. Naturally, the French sailors did not expect an assault on the part of their comrades-in-arms. “The action was sudden and necessarily a surprise” [572 - Ibid. P. 207.], – writes Churchill. All the ships including 3 battleships, 4 cruisers, 8 destroyers, 12 submarines and about 200 minesweepers and chasers were taken over by the British early on the morning of July 3, 1940. The attack was so unsuspected that only the crew of the submarine “Surcouf” managed to offer armed resistance. The French crews were disembarked and interned “not without blood incidents” [573 - Gaulle, Ch. de. The War Memoirs. The Call-up of 1940–1942. P. 110.]. The warships captured in such a brigandish way were all included into the British Navy…
   But the main tragedy was acted not in the ports of Great Britain, but at the berths of the French Fleet at Oran, Mers-el-Kébir and Dakar. Early on the morning of the 3rd of July [574 - The British assaulted the French ships in all the ports synchronically, otherwise they would not have capitalized on surprise – the guarantee of success in destroying ships.] the British squadron under the command of Admiral Sommerville approached Oran. Admiral Gensoul who commanded the French squadron received the following ultimatum:
   • to continue fighting against Germany and Italy in the British Navy;
   • to sail the warships into English ports, with the crews repatriated and the ships under British control;
   • to sail the warships into the French West Indies or scuttle them with 6 hours [575 - Pulman, K. Arc Royal / The first gun salvos of the British Navy. M., 2004. P. 531.].
   If Gensoul did not find fit any of the variants, he could disarm right at the moorings, but “efficiently”. It meant that the French were supposed, under the British supervision, to destroy their ships themselves, with the “quality” and the “degree” of destruction being determined by the British. How would the commander of the most up-to-date and mighty ships of the independent French state respond to such proposals on the part of, though yesterday’s, comrades-in-arms?
   Admiral Gensoul rejected the British ultimatum. Churchill was informed of this, and at 18.25, when the ultimatum expired, the British squadron commander received the last order of his premier: “The French ships must comply with our terms or sink themselves or be sunk by you before dark” [576 - Ibid. P. 531.].
   But Admiral Sommerville did not wait for the ultimatum to expire and opened fire in order to capitalize on surprise! At 18.00 he reported to London that his squadron was in action [577 - Pulman, K. Arc Royal / The first gun salvos of the British Navy. P. 532.]. Something the French seamen never expected happened: the British ships opened fire! But that was no battle, no naval engagement; it was the shooting down of the French quite unready for resistance. “The ships in Oran were incapable of fighting. They were anchored and had no chance for maneuver or spreading. Our ships gave the British ships a chance to discharge the first volleys, which is crucial in naval battles at such a distance. The French ships perished in a fight, but it was not a straight fight” [578 - Gaulle, Ch. de. The War Memoirs. The Call-up of 1940–1942. P. 321.].
   The battleship “Brittany” harbored at Oran was blown up by a direct hit at the gunpowder magazine and within a few minutes disappeared in the depths of the sea. The battleship “Provence”, heavily damaged, was cast ashore. The battleship “Dunkerque”, due to the conditions of limited maneuver, took the ground. The battleship “Strasbourg” together with five destroyers and a few submarines, though damaged by British torpedo-planes managed to break through the British squadron and fight their way to the native shore.
   The British Admiralty could be pleased: all the up-to-date battle-ships of France had been wrecked. The last of them, “Richelieu” harbored at Dakar was attacked by British torpedo-planes from the aircraft-carrier “Hermes” and badly damaged. In consequence of the “Operation Catapult” 1,300 Frenchmen perished [579 - Taylor, A. The Second World War: Two approaches. P. 421.]. In response to this act of perfidy the French government, without declaring war on England, ruptured diplomatic relations with England.
   And yet, could the Germans have captured the French Fleet, or not? Only on November 26, 1942, two years after the “Operation Catapult” The Germans attempted to do it for the first time, when they occupied Toulon [580 - Shortly before that the British and American forces disembarked in Algeria, the African territory of France. After a stubborn resistance to the Anglo-American troops the French admiral Darlan turned his coat. That was why Germany had to occupy the rest of the French territory (“independent” France) to avert an assault landing of the British and American troops there.]. At the order of the Vichy government the French Fleet harbored at Toulon was scuttled. The sacrificed fleet included 3 battleships, 8 cruisers, 17 fleet destroyers, 16 torpedo-boats, 16 submarines, 7 patrol boats, 3 cruising cutters, 60 transports, minesweepers and tugboats [581 - Gaulle, Ch. de. The War Memoirs. The Call-up of 1940–1942. P. 59.]. It is evident that the French made this sacrifice without a qualm. Why? They had never been German dummies and were never going to turn over their ships to either the Germans or the British. On the eve of the treacherous British “Operation Catapult” France assured Churchill that the French ships would by no means fall into hands of the Germans…

   The French squadron taking fire of the British Fleet, Mers-el-Kébir, July 3, 1940

   Two weeks passed after the treacherous British strike at the French Fleet, and the world was discussing another event. Adolf Hitler mounted the rostrum of the German Reichstag. The hall gathered the elite of the Third Reich: deputies of the German parliament, generals, SS leaders and diplomats. Each bent an ear to their fuehrer. What did he speak about? He spoke about the brilliant success of the German army that crushed France with an unprecedented speed. Then Hitler began to talk about… peace. It was not some abstract idea of “peace all over the world”, but a concrete peace with the power that he idealized. Hitler was an Anglophile and, being in the heyday of one’s glory, he offered Britain peace. The victor offered peace to the defeated party. Hitler’s speech, synchronously translated into English, was all over.

   Today from Britain I can hear only the screaming. It is not the screaming of the people, but of politicians who demand that the war should be continued. I don’t know, if these politicians know what the continuation of the war will cost them. True, they claim that they will carry on fighting, and if England falls, they will carry on fighting from Canada. I cannot believe that they imply the situation when the English nation will have to move to Canada. Evidently, only the gentlemen interested in the continuation of the war will go to Canada. I am afraid that the people will have to stay in Britain and see the war in a different way, different from the view of their so called leaders in Canada.
   Believe me, gentlemen, I detest such unscrupulous politicians who are ready to sacrifice entire nations. The one idea that I have been chosen by Fate to have to strike the last blow at the structure already staggering due to the activities of such people pains me, almost physically… By this time mister Churchill… will have got to Canada where those who are interested in the continuation of the war, no doubt, have already transferred their money and children. But incalculable suffering is in store for millions of common people. I think that mister Churchill ought to heed my prediction when I say that the Great Empire will fall, although I have never intended to destroy or even damage this empire… At this hour I think it my duty to my conscience to appeal once again to the reason and sense of Great Britain and other countries. I think that my position enables me to address the world in such a way, because I am not the defeated party asking for mercy, but the victor speaking from the view-point of common sense. I see no reason why this war should continue” [582 - Shirer, W. The rise and fall of the Third Reich. P. 220.].

   On July 22, 1940 Lord Halifax, the British Foreign Secretary, rejected Hitler’s call for peace. Once again Hitler’s idol-country, the only power that he would like to have a union with, a union both plausible and useful for Germany, refused the outstretched hand. This was a blind alley. Not for Germany that had become so mighty at such a trivial price. It was a blind alley for Adolf Hitler, a politician who was eager to do away with communism and build a new state and who, instead, had signed a peace treaty with the Bolsheviks and was at war with those who long before him had built a classical empire. It was the empire that Hitler himself thought ideal. “I admire the English people: they have done something unheard-of in the matter of colonization” [583 - Hitler’s speech of April 28, 1939 (source: Sarkisyants, M. The British roots of the German fascism. SPb., 2003. P. 30).], – is one of Hitler’s numerous utterances concerning the miracle of British colonialism.
   It was not by the courage of its soldiers that the British Empire withstood the German aggressor.
   It was not the heroic struggle of the British pilots and sailors that saved the Empire from the Nazi regime.
   It was not the right cause, or the ideals of freedom the British Empire fought for that prevented the Empire’s vanishing from the earth.
   The point was that Britain’s main opponent was its ardent admirer.
   No one was waging a real war against England. No one pursued the aim of annihilating the British as a nation. No one intended to make slaves of them. No one was going to occupy English territories and take away their bread, coal and other resources. No one was willing to measure their heads by means of compasses to make sure if they were Aryans or not. No one was prepared to burn English villages with their inhabitants. No one planned to take away the objects of their culture, such as pictures and sculptures to the Reich.
   All these things Adolf Hitler was ready to do, but not at the expense of the British people. He was going to punish us, the Russians, the citizens of the USSR. It was us that the Nazis would call an inferior (deficient) nation and start annihilating with enviable perseverance, us, together with the Jews and the Gypsies. They would achieve remarkable results in the matter of slaughter: 27 million people – our brothers and sisters – would perish in the ghastly war with fascism. Hitler would be at war with other opponents, too: the USA, Great Britain and others. But the German propaganda would never call these enemies deficient. Up to the end of the war the Nazis would be dividing their enemies into those equal to themselves, i.e. human beings, and “subhumans”. Human beings would be treated well. In 1940 the Nazis would take prisoner 1.5 million French soldiers and then scores of thousands of British and American servicemen. Most of them would go back home. They were fed and given medical treatments and never exposed to inhuman experiments. However, the overwhelming majority of the 2 million Soviet prisoners of war captured in the summer and autumn 1941 would die in the winter of hunger and privations in the Nazi concentration camps.
   What is more, in the POW camps the Germans allowed the captive British and American pilots to play such a board game, as “Monopoly”! The British intelligence service took advantage of it. They sent special sets of that game to the camps with secretly contained maps of the area to facilitate escape from captivity… [584 - It seems incredible, but on a Western history channels the author of this book has seen a documentary film about heroic British pilots playing “Monopoly” in a German concentration camp.]
   What about “Operation Sea Lion”? What about the bombing campaign of London? Doesn’t it prove that Hitler wanted to invade the Foggy Albion and that the British put in real fighting?
   No, it doesn’t. All that “fighting” was only one episode, one milk-and-water film shot in the background of an hour-long gory film that the Nazis would start later to shoot in the East.
   First things first. On July 13, 1940, i.e. 6 days before his “peaceful” appearance in the Reichstag the German fuehrer issued letter of instruction №16 to start working out military plans against England. This letter of instruction begins with stating the fact that England, “despite its hopeless military situation does not yet show signs of goodwill to make peace” [585 - Proektor, D.M. The blitzkrieg in Europe: The war in the West. P. 275.]. The German fuehrer did give the command to make plans of invading Britain, but it looked more like staging a performance, when the rehearsing actors were confident that the project would never be realized. That was why the actors are rehearsing their lines in a slip-shod manner, knowing quite well that the stage manager was not really going to put on the show. What was the idea? Hitler did not want any landing operations in the mother country of the British Empire. That explains why he had earlier disbanded 50 divisions and ordered peace establishment for 25 other divisions [586 - Taylor, A. The Second World War: Two approaches. P. 423.]. What reasonable leader would skeletonize the army in the heat of fighting? It may be only a leader who is certain of negotiated war termination.
   Following his personal contribution to saving the lives of 300 thousand British servicemen in Dunkirk, Hitler thought that England would come to the negotiating table and, instead of expecting the fight to go on, expected its termination. The German generals knew about Hitler’s admiration of England and worked over the “Operation Sea Lion” also in a slip-shod manner. They were all sure that an invasion of Britain would never take place. “The proposal of invading Britain was absurd, because Germany did not have a sufficient number of vessels… We all looked on it as a kind of game… I had the impression that the Fuehrer was never seriously going to carry out the invasion plan” [587 - Shirer, W. The rise and fall of the Third Reich. P. 229.], – said General Rundstedt to the allied investigators in 1945. His colleague, General Blumentritt also claimed that in their milieu the German generals referred to the “Operation Sea Lion as bluff” [588 - Ibid.],
   In August 1940 William Shirer, an independent American journalist that quoted German generals in his post-war book, visited the French shore of the English Channel to find no signs of any preparations of the German army to invade the British isles [589 - Ibid.]. Hitler put off the date of the invasion from September 15 to September 21, then September 24 and, finally, to October 12. But instead of the order of beginning the operation October 12 saw quite a different document: “The Fuehrer has decided that from now to springtime the preparations for invading England should remain as a means of political and military pressure on England” [590 - Ibid. P. 247–248.].
   But how should one interpret the famous air “Battle of Britain”? Why did Hitler order to start an intensive bombing campaign against the Foggy Albion? The right interpretation of Hitler’s strategy is inseparable from comprehending his aims. He does not want to fight England, but the British Empire does not intend to conclude a peace treaty. What is the German leader supposed to do under the circumstances? He may either accept the British terms (that would be stupid and unacceptable for the victor), or try to persuade the British to make peace. So the only way is to persuade, not defeat or annihilate the enemy. Hitler will not be able to benefit even from a successful landing operation in England. In case the Island is occupied the Royal Family and the British elite will just step aboard warships and go to Canada, without giving in and without signing a peace treaty. What comes next? It looks that Germany will have to wage an endless war, because the Germans have no Fleet. What will the invasion of England bring to Germany? It will gain absolutely nothing. But Hitler hopes against hope that simulated war preparations and deliberate exposure of war atrocities on the territory of England will bring the British leadership to peaceful compromise. All Germany needs to do is to make it clear to the British, by means of a bombing campaign and bluff, that if they go on keeping a stiff upper lip, the consequences will be no joke. To this end, they will start an air attack on the Island, “the Battle of Britain”, which is supposed to be the first stage of “Operation Sea Lion”. This battle lasted only two months: from July 10 to September 15, 1940…
   The man in the street is constantly enchained by myths and stereotypes. Suffice it only to ask anyone who started the bombing of peaceful cities; the answer will be: the Nazis. Though, actually it was not Germany, but the British Air Force that started bombing the enemy targets, civilian targets, at that. On May 11, 1940 Winston Churchill, who was appointed prime-minister shortly before, ordered to bomb the German city Freiburg (in Baden). Why? That was because on the 10th of May Hitler launched an attack on France, and Britain wanted to intimate to the German fuehrer that she would go on fighting in contempt of all rules of warfare. It was contrary to the statements from London, Paris and Berlin on September 2 that air bombardment would be implemented strictly with reference to “military objects in the narrowest sense of the word”. On February 1940 Chamberlain, the then premier of Great Britain, said that no matter what other parties did, the British government would never meanly attack women and other civilians in order to terrorize them [591 - Warfare without rules // Vokrug Sveta. №2771. 2004. December.].
   But England adhered to principles only during “the phony war”. As soon as it became clear that all hopes of working Hitler to attack the USSR are dashed to the ground and that Hitler, instead, was attacking the West, the English bombs began to fall on the peaceful German city of Freiburg. Adolf Hitler who was eager to conclude an agreement with Britain did not respond to that air attack. Only after two months of continued British air raids, on July 10, 1940, the German Luftwaffe would make its FIRST air raid on the British territory. That date marked the beginning of the “Battle of Britain” [592 - Yakobsen, G.A. 1939–1945. The second world war // World War II: Two Approaches. P. 288.].
   So it is quite clear who was the first to bomb a peaceful city (the British), but the question of “priority” in bombing the enemy capital uptown is more complicated. Sources provide contradictory and intricate information. “The sporadic raiding of London towards the end of August was promptly answered by us in a retaliatory attack on Berlin” [593 - Churchill, W. The Second World War. P. 302.], – writes Churchill. This is a lie. There were no “air raids” on London; there was a tragic mistake. On the 24th of August one German plane went off course and accidentally dropped the bombs on the English capital [594 - Taylor, A. The Second World War: Two approaches. P. 430.]. It happened only once and by no means at the order of the German Command. But the British responded to this act by making systematic night air raids on the German capital.
   During “the Battle of Britain” the German aces mostly attacked the enemy military objects. As for the British, they alternated military objects of the enemy with German peaceful cities. On the 25th, 26th, 29th of August the British planes bombed Berlin [595 - Ibid. P. 253–254.]. On September 4, 1940 in Berlin Adolf Hitler spoke about that air warfare: “…Seeing faintly visible lights on the ground the Englishman…bombs uptowns, farms and villages…I waited three months, hoping that this madness would come to an end. But Mister Churchill mistook it for our weakness. Now we will act eye for eye” [596 - Shirer, W. The rise and fall of the Third Reich. P. 255.].
   Only September 7 saw the beginning of regular German air raids on London, while British military objects were left alone. This fact seems to clearly corroborate the idea that Hitler did not intend to invade the Island. Otherwise it looks absolutely idiotic to stop repelling the British aviation and start making raids on civilian objects. If the Germans had really prepared to invade Britain, they would not have bombed the English capital, instead of bombing out aerodromes and military objects impeding the German invasion.
   There is one phenomenon that characterizes Germany’s fashion of fighting Britain: Germany is pulling a punch and fights by way of counterpunching. It is impossible to win a war like that. But Hitler never intended to win it, he intended to cease it, which is a different thing…
   Were those German air raids devastating and horrifying? According to official data, during “the Battle of Britain” 842 people were killed and 2,347 wounded [597 - Ibid. P. 255.]. The best known air raid of the German Luftwaffe on Coventry (November 14, 1940) claimed the lives of 568 citizens [598 - Shepova, N. To bomb Germany out of war // Voyenno-promishlenniy Kurier (“The military-industrial Courier”). №21 (137). 07.06.2006.]. No doubt, the death of every human being is a tragedy; yet these figures pale when compared with millions of lives of our compatriots. Along similar lines, the contribution of Great Britain to the cause of annihilating Hitlerism looks just as insignificant. During the whole world war England lost 388 thousand people including 62 thousand civilians [599 - Bullock, A. Hitler and Stalin. P. 4 (cover).]. It means that the number of victims of the German air raids during World War II amounts to 62 thousand British people. Is this a high number? Cognition comes through comparison. The French territory occupied by the Germans was not considered the number one target for the allied air forces. That was why the air raids of the allied aviation (from the summer 1940 to the summer of 1944) killed 30 thousand people. But after Normandy landings the frequency rate of the British and American air raids on French cities and villages to liquidate the German troops grew incomparably high. As a result, over the 3 summer months of 1944, with the Germans being knocked out of France, the friendly aviation killed off 20 thousand more of the French population (all in all 50 thousand) [600 - Gaulle, Ch. de. The War Memoirs. The Call-up of 1940–1942. P. 189–190.].
   The civilian casualties of Germany from the enemy air raids are a sealed book. No one knows the precise figures, because they are staggering. If Germany had won the Second World War, Churchill, Roosevelt and the commanders of the allied air forces would have found themselves in the dock expecting guaranteed execution for hundreds of thousands of victims. But history is written by victors. That was why the Nuremberg trial sentenced to death other criminals guilty of other crimes, while those who responsible for destroying German cities with their inhabitants just quietly retired…
   The first victim of the British strategic aviation was Hamburg. “Operation Gomorrah” was carried out on the night of July 24/25, 1943. The British aviation had made raids on German cities before. But this raid was unprecedented in the number of the bombers (700) and an incredible number of fire-bombs dropped on the city. Thus the new appalling phenomenon called “fire storm” went down in the history of mankind. A mass of local fires concentrated in one place warmed the air to such a degree that colder airstreams beyond the fires were soaked by the heat source forming vortex cavities around. The temperature difference reached 600–1,000 degrees and created tornados which do not occur in nature, because a natural difference in temperature does not exceed 20–30 degrees. The hot air streamed down the streets at a great speed carrying sparks and tiny pieces of burning wood which kindled structures and sizzled people getting into such fire-storms. There was no stopping this fire typhoon. The fire raged in the city several days, plumes of smoke, each up to 6 kilometers high, billowing into the sky.
   The bomber pilots also dropped phosphorus bombs. There is no dousing burning phosphorus that glues to the body: thanks to the constant air intake the fire never dies out. The city inhabitants were roasted alive, and no one was able to help them. “Witnesses saw asphalt seething in the streets and sugar burning in the depots, and windowpanes melting in trams. Civilians burnt alive and turned to ashes or suffocated from poisonous gases in the cellars of their own houses, trying to hide away from the bombs” [601 - Warfare without rules // Vokrug Sveta (“Round the world”). №2771. 2004. December.]. No sooner had they managed to put out the fires, than new raiders came on and on. Over one week the raiders killed off 55 thousand inhabitants of Hamburg, which nearly equals the number of the British victims during the whole of the world war [602 - Westphal, S. Between two crucial battles // Fatal Decisions. M., 1958. P. 82.].
   Have you ever visited Hamburg? If you go there, make inquiries why there is nothing left from the old Hanseatic city. You will come to know the following: 13 square kilometers of the historic downtown were burnt out, with 27 thousand apartment houses and 7 thousand public buildings razed, including the antique monuments of culture and architecture; 750 thousand people of the then Hamburg with its two million population were left without a roof over their heads [603 - Shepova, N. To bomb Germany out of war // Voyenno-promishlenniy Kurier (“The military-industrial Courier”). №21 (137). 07.06.2006.].
   But it was only the beginning. The second in human history fire-storm was made on October 22, 1943 in the German city of Kastel. It was Doomsday for 10 thousand people, the whole urban population reaching 250 thousand. The same thing happened in other cities, such as Nuremberg and Leipzig. All in all 61 German cities inhabiting 25 million people were seriously damaged; 600 thousand of them died and 8 million people were made homeless [604 - Kiyevsky telegraf. №26 (278). Narch. 2005.]. Among them were thousands of children, old people, women and quite a few men, because most of the men were on the front…

   The air raids on peaceful cities brought about destruction and death in all the countries at war. It is extremely difficult to ascertain what country made the very first raid. But, no doubt, it was Germany that suffered the heaviest losses from the air bombs

   The most appalling fire-storm was made by the British and American aviation in Dresden. The British aviation arranged the first air raid on the city on the night of February 13–14, 1945. On the following day the strike was repeated by the American aviation. A total of 1,300 bombers were engaged which created an unprecedented fire-storm. Dresden was no more. Previously one of the most beautiful cities of Germany it lost all architectural places of interest. It is still impossible to calculate the number of the victims; according to different estimates this inferno of fire burnt from 60 to 100 thousand people. Let the reader note the date and try to answer the question: why carry out massacre in the city without any military objects or military production, two months before the end of the war, when the outcome of the war was clear? Is this an accident? Is this a mistake? One should remember who dropped the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those criminals were not punished either…

   Our compatriots are badly acquainted even with the history of the Great Patriotic War. So it is only natural that we do not know much detail about the battles of the Second World War on the other side of Eurasia. We normally derive the concept of the war between Japan and the USA from Hollywood films: the helpless Americans confronted with hosts of Japanese warplanes. However, during the whole war period the American territory had never been a target for bombing, except Pear-Harbor. But Japan was bombarded as intensively as Germany. The most formidable blow was delivered by the Americans on March 9, 1945 (about a month following the destruction of Dresden). Three hundred bombers attacked the Japanese capital, each carrying from 6 to 8 tons of napalm bombs. The Japanese historians consider this raid to be the most destructive one in history. The raving firestorm destroyed 16.5 square miles of Tokyo. Different estimates put the death toll at 80 to 300 thousand. Japan had been so fiercely that the damages resulting from the two A-bombs came only to 6 % of the general number of losses inflicted on the Land of the Rising Sun. Does anyone think that the Japanese have forgotten and forgiven that? [605 - Khorikoshi, D., Okumiya, M., Kaidin, M. Zero! The Japanese aviation in the Second World War. M.: AS. 2003. P. 394–395.]

   England did not want to come to the negotiating table. She kept on bombing the German cities in a cold-blood manner. She showed determination to fight to the end. She could be successfully fought with and even defeated, but, analyzing the situation Hitler wondered at two problems. The first problem was the price of the victory. And there was the principal question: why? Germany was faced with a hard endless struggle, while in the east the USSR, for now friendly, was successfully achieving its strategic goals. Shortly after the fall of France, Stalin solved the Baltic problem by including Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia into the USSR. In a similar way, Bessarabia, earlier captured by Romania, returned to the Soviet Union. The war in the West between Hitler and the Western democracies that had long patronized him suited the Soviet Union altogether. But did it suit Adolf Hitler? All his life he was anxious to destroy communism and form a union with Britain, and what was happening was just the other way round.
   On May 10, 1941 Rudolf Hess [606 - The flight date is no coincidence. The German General Staff was to have finished the preparations for the “Operation Barbarossa” by May 15, 1941.], Hitler’s closest associate, made a flight to England, allegedly at his own initiative. It was a desperate attempt to make peace between Germany and England. As a matter of fact, Hess’s objective was no secret: “He (Hess. – N.S.) knew and wa capable of understanding Hitler’s inner mind – his hatred of Soviet Russia, his lust to liquidate Bolshevism, his admiration of Britain and earnest wish to be friends with the British Empire…” [607 - Churchill, W. The Second World War. V.3. P. 44.]
   A month before the fixed date of attacking the USSR Hitler had to make up his mind, whether or not he would launch “Operation Barbarossa”. This attack was not predetermined. The ultimate decision to attack the USSR was adopted only after the Hess flight: “The order to attack the USSR was issued only on June 10” [608 - Sudoplatov, P. Covert warfare and diplomacy. 1941. M., 2001. P. 18.]. Adolf Hitler always refrained from fighting a war on two fronts. Then why did he start it? He started it, because at the moment of attacking the USSR he was convinced that there would be no second front! That was the mission of Rudolf Hess’s flight.
   It should be borne in mind that the secret of this deputy fuehrer’s mysterious flight to England was not Hitler’s proposal, but England’s response to it!
   The British guaranteed Hitler their favorable neutrality in his future war against the USSR. They also guaranteed a long-awaited peace for Germany following the military collapse of Russia…
   “We are not unaware of Hess that was sent to England to convince the English politicians to join a general crusade against the USSR. But the Germans backed the wrong horse. Despite Hess’s efforts, Great Britain and the USA are on the same side with the USSR against Hitler’s Germany” [609 - Stalin’s speech at the ceremonial meeting of the Moscow Council on the occasion of the 24th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. Moscow, November 6, 1941 (source: Kormilitsin, S.V., Lisev, A.V. A lie from the Soviet information bureau. P. 289).], – said Stalin in a Moscow besieged by the fascists. This is the answer. How could Hitler have miscalculated? If the British government had refused the German fuehrer’s proposal and the idea of holding negotiations with him out of hand, what could Hitler have counted on unleashing his war in the east? Why should he have counted on England’s joining the general crusade against the USSR, if he had had the British REFUSAL? In a situation when England does not agree to the talks it would be simple madness to attack the USSR. But it would be a different matter, if the British guaranteed their non-interference into the conflict and promised staying quietly on their Island, let alone siding with Nazi Germany to fight the Russians. This could be a way out. The only thing to do would be to crush Russia to endure peace with Britain.
   If Hitler decided to attack the USSR, it means that England had given her blessing. It just cannot be otherwise. It was Great Britain that systematically set Hitler’s Germany against Russia, and finally the British managed to make Hitler attack Russia. Hitler’s Anglophilia played a low-down trick with Hitler. The head of Germany made a decision contrary to common sense because he loved his British enemy and because he had been promised British neutrality. Shortly after the Hess flight Germany suddenly ceased her mighty air raids on England to resume them only in January 1943… [610 - Martirosyan, A. The tragedy of June 22: blitzkrieg or treachery. M., 2006. P. 386.]
   On August 1987 Rudolf Hess, the last survivor of the Third Reich’s leaders, went out of the world in the Spandau Prison. He was nearly 93 years old, having served 46 years in jail. All those sentenced, like himself, to imprisonment under the sentence of the Nuremberg Trial had long left the prison. Since 1966 he had been the only prisoner of Spandau. Having served 8 years out of 15, Konstantin von Neurath, a diplomat was released on the plea of poor health. Admiral Karl Doenitz and the head of “Hitlerjugend” Baldur von Schirach were also released, each having served the term of 20 years. But Rudolf Hess stayed on. Why? The reader would say: because he was sentenced to life imprisonment. But this is a mistake. Admiral Raeder served only 10 years, and the Third Reich’s Minister for Economic Affairs Walter Funk served only 12 years, though they were also sentenced to life imprisonment. They were released, because they did not know the secret that Hess did know. He was the only one to know what the British had promised Hitler and why the German fuehrer had believed them…
   Hess’s death was a mystery, too. The 90-year-old man, taking a walk, made a suicide attempt, winding an electric cord round his neck. The guards massaged his chest to make artificial respiration, but they tried too hard and… broke his chest and ribs [611 - Padfield, P. Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s associate. Smolensk, 1998. P. 524.]. The deceased’s son did not believe the medical assessment report of the autopsists from the British hospital that dealt with the dead body insisted on independent postmortem examination. In point of fact, he had good grounds for that. Hess had always been under strict supervision, and on his last day a guard left him alone just for a few minutes. “In this interval of time the senile man managed to write a suicide note, fasten an extension cord to the sash holder, run his head into the noose and fasten the noose around his neck, judging by a horizontal trace on his neck, and toss himself on the ground” [612 - Padfield, P. Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s associate. P. 535.].
   As a result of the second autopsy the German doctors spotted another trace left by the cord. It turned out that the 90-year-old man managed “to hang himself”… twice. The traces and abrasions on his neck clearly proved that Hess had been smothered after striking a blow on his head from behind, which caused a strange hematoma on his nape that cannot be exclaimed by suicide… [613 - Ibid. P. 529–530, 536, 542.]
   Why was it necessary to kill the old man and committed the murder? Wolf Rüdiger, Hess’s son, did not doubt a minute that his father had been killed by the British [614 - Ibid. P. 530.]. The terrible secret of the British diplomacy that had stirred up Hitler to attack the USSR was never to be disclosed. The immediate cause of the murder was… the chattering of Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev. This incompetent politician not only destroyed his own country, he also signed the Nazi-well-advanced-in-years’ death-warrant. Some political groups had long demanded that Hess should be released. The USSR had always been opposed to it, sticking to the policy of incarceration the Nazi war criminals. Knowing that the Soviet Union would never consent to release Hess, Great Britain tried to play the role of “benevolent investigator”, always declaring that she did not mind releasing Hess. But, with the beginning of “perestroika”, “the new thinking” approach came to dominate in Soviet politics, and Mikhail Gorbachev who did not understand anything in politics told his Western friends that he was ready to please them and release Hess. For Gorbachev it was an act of good will, just another characteristic feature of “socialism with a human face. But for London it was a source of numerous problems. Now that the British no longer had any foundation for keeping the dangerous old man in jail, they had to avert leakage by killing the source of information.

   Rudolf Hess brought Hitler’s peace proposal to the British. Britain gave fiat to his military plans against Russia and promised to ally with him, but backed out of this promise already on June 22, 1941

   All the physical evidence of the cause of Rudolf Hess’s death: the house in the garden, his furniture, the electric cord and even the Spandau Prison itself were destroyed shortly after his demise. All the log files of Hess’s case were classified by the British government till 2017. Why? What kind of information may be revealed by reading his interrogation transcripts? What does Britain have to conceal, if, as she claims, Britain had firmly refused to negotiate with the Nazi regime. On the contrary, such documents should be published in every newspaper and posted on every lamp pole. This would prove how progressive and democratic the Foggy Albion is. It would be a find for the British propaganda: we, the British nation, refused all the proposals of Adolf Hitler, the devil incarnate! Instead, they introduce the regime of utmost secrecy. Does it make sense? No, it does not, because there was no REFUSAL, there was AN AGREEMENT. That is what is being concealed from us…
   When Hitler attacked Stalin, he was given the worst of it. He was deceived on the very first day! On the evening of the 22nd of June Churchill appeared on the BBC and said: “We are full of determination to do away with Hitler and all the traces of the Nazi regime… Consequently we will render all-round assistance to Russia and the Russian people” [615 - Taylor, A. The Second World War: Two approaches. P. 455.].
   But the USSR did not get British assistance in adequate amounts. In the first hardest months of the British invasion England helped us verbally, not by way of arms supplies. This is clear, because at first Germany and Russia were supposed to exhaust each other, and then the Anglo-Saxons would come up onto the arena of the world war as victors. One would not be surprised reading the correspondence between Moscow and London after the beginning of the Great patriotic war, being aware of the ways of British diplomacy. England is always true to herself.

   CABLE: the USSR ambassador in Great Britain
   To the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR
   August 27, 1941.
   Yesterday I had a serious talk with Eden concerning British assistance to the USSR. I seized the occasion and told him the following, pointing out that this is my private opinion:
   1…In the period of 10 weeks the USSR has been fighting hard against the German war machine that has hammered us and only us, the mightiest war force that the world has ever seen… What has England been doing during all this period of time, while the USSR has been making strenuous efforts in the hardest struggle in its history?
   2. In mid-July the Soviet government proposed to the British government forming a second front in the West, but for different reasons which I am not going to discuss now the British government has declined the proposal… England will not open another front and at the same time does not supply us with planes and weapons in some serious quantities. Of course, we are grateful to the British government for those 200 “Tomahawks” given us about a month ago and not yet delivered to the USSR. Bu what is the significance of that deal compared to our losses? Another example: we asked the British government to give us large bombs and the Air Force Minister in consequence of long talks finally agreed to comply with our request. But how many bombs did he give? Only six bombs – no more, no less…
   3. What else do we have from England? We hear lot of compliments on the subject of fortitude and patriotism of the Soviet people and brilliant qualities of the Red Army. Of course, this is all pleasant to hear, but is too immaterial. How often, when I hear such compliments, I think to myself: “We would rather they told us less compliments and gave more fighter aircraft”.
   …In point of fact England at present is not so much our ally and comrade-in-arms in the deadly struggle against Hitler’s Germany, but just a sympathizing looker-on [616 - The Soviet-British relations during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945. M., 1983. P. 1, 105–106.].

   This sounds like a sad anecdote. We are helping you. We have already sent you 6 bombs, 3 submachine guns and 5 pistols. The arms will be delivered by the British Navy. When? They will be delivered as soon as possible. And now let us express our sincere admiration of the courageous struggle of the Soviet people…
   When do you think Great Britain and the Soviet Union become official allies in the common struggle against the Third Reich? He, who thinks that it happened on June 22, 1941, is mistaken. He, who thinks that it took another couple of weeks for signing the documents and other red tape, is mistaken in the same way.
   Only May 26, 1942 saw a treaty, signed in London between the USSR and England, on forming a military alliance against Germany! For eleven whole months the “allies” had not been committed by an alliance treaty! Before that, England was not obliged to help us and had the right to stop her help any moment. The cause of that delay is quite clear: the British waited for the situation on the Russian front to gain some perspective. When they realized that Hitler had no chance to win the war, they signed the treaty. Before that time the door for dialogue with the victorious German fuehrer was open. The Germans are killing the Russians – this is splendid. The Russians are killing the Germans – this is splendid, too. It is only necessary to make sure that both have an opportunity to do the killing. That was why before 1955 Britain was not engaged in air raids on the German synthetic fuel plants and the Romanian oil fields. The USSR was in a hard situation, so they supplied the USSR with arms, according to the West Lend-Lease policy. As a result, prior to 1944, when the Anglo-Americans landed in Normandy, Russia and Germany had lost millions of their citizens. For three years running Stalin had requested, insisted and demanded that a second front in Europe should be opened. But under specious excuses England and the USA did not do it. Only when it became quite clear that the USSR would be able to cope with the Reich alone, they arranged the Normandy landings…
   So did the Soviet Union lose the Second World War, as Suvorov-Rezun and his adherents claim? Not at all! This war had been cooked in London and Berlin to destroy us, and we were supposed to become its main collective victim. But the Soviet Union held out and won. Can the defeated country – Russia (the USSR) that was supposed to disappear from the world map – have triumphantly finished the war in Berlin? We won, and there is no stealing our victory!
   But there are questions than cannot be answered so far. Now we know who made Hitler attack Stalin. But this does not exhaust the list of uncertainties.
   • Why was Hitler so sure of his victory, as he prepared to attack the Soviet Union?
   • Why didn’t the German industry turn over from manufacturing pith helmets and shorts to warm overcoats and sheepskin jackets, as Hitler prepared to attack the Soviet Union?
   • Why was Operation “Barbarossa” based on the assumption that the Red Army would be passively waiting at the border to give the opponent a chance to have done away with it before letting it retreat inland?
   • Why wasn’t Stalin worried, with irrefutable evidence of deployment of the German army at the border?
   • Why did the German divisions concentrate at our border, if the Soviet leader was absolutely quiet and “did not believe” the possibility of a German invasion?
   • What did the pilot of a German “Junkers-52” tell Stalin following the violation of the Soviet airspace and landing in Moscow near the “Dynamo” stadium on May 15, 1941?
   Answers to all these questions are available. There is more to come…

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Nikolay V. Starikov Who set Hitler against Stalin?