meeting of the Politbureau were my chief, General Berzin; Maxim Litvinov. Commissar for Foreign Affairs; Karl Radek, then director of the information bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party; and A. C. Artusov, chief of the Foreign Division of the Ogpu.
The emergency meeting of the Politbureau had been called to consider the probable consequences of the Hitler purge, and its effects upon Soviet foreign policy. Confidential information in our possession showed that two extreme wings of Hitler’s opponents were involved. There was the group led by Captain Roehm, consisting of Nazi radicals dissatisfied with Hitler’s moderate policies. They were dreaming of a “second revolution.” The other group was composed of officers of the German army, under the leadership of Generals Schleicher and Bredow. This circle had looked forward to a restoration of the monarchy. It joined hands with the Roehm wing for the purpose of unseating Hitler, each side hoping to emerge triumphant in the end. Our special bulletins from Germany brought the news, however, that the garrisons in the metropolitan centers remained loyal to Hitler and that the main body of army officers was true to the government.
In Western Europe and America, Hitler’s purge was widely interpreted as a weakening of the Nazi power. In Soviet circles, too, there were those who wished to believe it foreshadowed the collapse of Hitler’s rule. Stalin had no such illusions. He summed up the discussion at the Politbureau as follows:
“The events in Germany do not at all indicate the collapse of the Nazi regime. On the contrary, they are bound to lead to the consolidation of that regime, and to the strengthening of Hitler himself.”
General Berzin came back from the Kremlin session with this dictum of Stalin.
In my anxiety to learn the decision of the Politbureau I had stayed up all night awaiting Berzin’s return. We had a strict rule that no one, not even the Commissar of War himself, could take confidential state papers home with him, and I knew that Berzin would have to come back to the department.
The course of Soviet policy toward Nazi Germany followed from Stalin’s dictum. The Politbureau decided at all costs to induce Hitler to make a deal with the Soviet government. Stalin had always believed in coming to terms early with a strong enemy. The night of June thirtieth convinced him of Hitler’s strength. It was no new course for Stalin, however. It marked no revolutionary departure in his policy toward Germany. He only decided to redouble his past efforts to appease Hitler. His whole policy toward the Nazi regime during the six years of its existence had lain in that direction. He recognized in Hitler a real dictator.
The idea prevailing up to the recent Russian-German pact that Hitler and Stalin were mortal enemies, was pure myth. It was a distorted picture, created by clever camouflage and the vapors of propaganda. The true picture of their relations was that of a persistent suitor who would not be discouraged by rebuffs. Stalin was the suitor. There was enmity on Hitler’s side. On Stalin’s there was fear.
If one can speak of a pro-German in the Kremlin, Stalin has been that figure all along. He favored cooperation with Germany right after Lenin’s death, and he did not alter this basic attitude when Hitler rose to power. On the contrary, the triumph of the Nazis strengthened him in his quest for closer bonds with Berlin. In this he was spurred on by the Japanese menace in the Far East. He had a profound contempt for the “weakling” democratic nations, and an equally profound respect for the “mighty” totalitarian states. And he was guided throughout by the rule that one must come to terms with a superior power.
Stalin’s whole international policy during the last six years has been a series of maneuvers designed to place him in a favorable position for a deal with Hitler. When he joined the League of Nations, when he proposed the system of collective security, when he sought the hand of France, flirted with Poland, courted Great Britain, intervened in Spain, he was calculating every move with an eye upon Berlin. His hope was to get into such a position that Hitler would find it advantageous to meet his advances.
A high point in this Stalin policy was reached late in 1936 upon the conclusion of a secret German-Japanese agreement, negotiated behind the smoke screen of the anti-Comintern pact. The terms of that secret agreement, which came into Stalin’s possession in the main through my efforts and those of my staff, incited him to a desperate attempt to drive a bargain with Hitler. Early in 1937 such a deal was actually pending between them. Nobody knows to what extent the recent treaty of August, 1939, was anticipated at that time.
It was two years before Stalin began to disclose to the world his friendly attitude toward Germany. On March 10, 1939, he made his first pronouncement following Hitler’s annexation of Austria and occupation of the Sudeten areas, giving his answer to these world-shaking Nazi conquests. The world was astounded by Stalin’s friendly overtures to Hitler. It was dumbfounded when, three days later, Hitler marched into Czechoslovakia.
The record of Stalin’s policy of appeasement toward Hitler—both the open and the secret record—reveal that the more aggressive Hitler’s policies became, the more Stalin pressed his courtship. And the more strenuously Stalin wooed him, the bolder were Hitler’s aggressions.
Long before the rise of Hitler, or even of Stalin, Soviet-German cooperation had been dictated by the pressure of events. A Moscow-Berlin tie had been formed more than ten years before Hitler in the Rapallo pact of 1922. Both the Soviet Union and the German republic were then being treated as outcasts; both were in disfavor with the Allies; both opposed the Versailles system. They had traditional business bonds and mutual interests.
It is now common knowledge that during those ten years there was a secret arrangement between the Reichswehr—the German army—and the Red Army. Soviet Russia permitted the German republic to evade the Versailles prohibitions against training artillery and tank officers, and developing aviation and chemical warfare. These things were done on Soviet soil. The Red Army, on the other hand, got the benefit of expert German military knowledge. The two armies exchanged information. It is also common knowledge that trade between Soviet Russia and Germany flourished during that decade. The Germans invested capital and operated concessions in the Soviet Union. The Soviet government imported machinery and engineering personnel from Germany.
Such was the situation when Hitler’s menacing figure arose. Some seven or eight months before his ascent to power, in the early summer of 1932, I met in Danzig one of the high officers of the German general staff, a confirmed monarchist who came from Berlin expressly to meet me. He was an old-school military man and believed in the restoration of the German Empire in cooperation with Russia.
I asked this officer for his opinion on Germany’s policy in the event Hitler became the head of the government. We discussed Hitler’s views as outlined in his book, Mein Kampf. The German officer gave me his analysis of coming developments, and concluded: “Let Hitler come and do his job. And then we, the army, will make short work of him.”
I asked the officer if he would be good enough to submit his views in writing for me to forward to Moscow, and he agreed to do so. His report created a stir in Kremlin circles. The prevailing view there was that military and economic ties between Germany and Russia were so deep-rooted that Hitler could not possibly disregard them. Moscow understood Hitler’s fulminations against Bolshevism as a maneuver on the road to power. They had their function. But they could not change the basic interests of the two countries, which were bound to make for cooperation.
Stalin himself derived much comfort from the report of the German officer. Although fully alive to the Nazi doctrine of “pressure toward the east,” he was habituated to the tradition of collaboration between the Red Army and the Reichswehr, and had a wholesome respect for the German army and its leadership under General Von Seckt. The report of the German staff officer dove-tailed with his own views. Stalin looked upon the Nazi movement primarily as a reaction to the Versailles peace. It seemed to him that all Germany would do under Hitler was to throw off the shackles of Versailles. The Soviet government
