A World at Arms (41 page)

If these factors meant that Germany attacked the Soviet Union with an army of essentially the same size as that of May 1940, the air force deployed for the new offensive was actually smaller.
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Because of heavy losses during the Battle of Britain and then the bombing of England in the winter of 1940-41, the diversions of air force units to the Mediterranean following on the Italian military disasters, and the need to maintain a substantial number of fighters to defend German-controlled Europe against British air raids, the German air force attacked the Soviet Union with two-thirds of a force which was already somewhat smaller than that unleashed against the West the year before. While no one could realistically expect the air forces of such allies as Finland, Romania and Hungary-to say nothing of the seventy Italian planes–to add a great deal of power to the new offensive, the German air force command nevertheless assumed that by the fall of 1941 the campaign in the East would have been completed, and the main thrust of the air offensive could once again be turned on England.
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The expectation of an attack on the Soviet Union also had internal economic repercussions. On the one hand, the emphasis in German war production would have to be on the army after all; priority for the navy and air force again had to be postponed. In the eyes of the German economic and business leaders of the time, whatever might be the temporary disadvantages of such a policy seemed to be offset by the economic gains and business profits anticipated from the rapid seizure of Soviet property and resources.
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On the other hand, it had to be assumed that the invasion would at least for a while interrupt the welcome flow of critical war supplies from and across the Soviet Union. Obviously there would be no voluntary deliveries from Russia and no transshipment of goods purchased in South and Southeast and East Asia across the Russian railway network.
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Since the Germans knew when they were intending to attack, they could adjust their own delivery schedule to avoid most payment by delay until after the invasion; the Soviet regime’s effort to appease the Germans, as we will see, would provide massive deliveries of many Soviet products and extra transshipment of such critical items as natural rubber from East Asia in the months immediately preceding the attack.
^c

Most of the preparations hitherto discussed gave few or no immediately obvious and visible clues of the new German policy to outside
observers. Some actions, however, could not be easily hidden; pretended reasons for them could be advanced–and some of these are still accepted by a few scholars–but the steps themselves were apparent to contemporaries. The Germans quickly began to fortify the northern coast of Norway and to move troops and equipment through Finland to get there.
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The major change in German policy toward Finland was discussed in the preceding chapter, and during the fall of 1940 it became increasingly obvious that Germany was delivering arms to that country, developing new ties with it, and generally including it in the German sphere of military, diplomatic and economic influence.
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Although an outside observer would not necessarily conclude that detailed military planning for joint German-Finnish operations against the Soviet Union was under way at least from December 1940 on,
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one did not need inside information on these general staff contacts to see that Germany was not treating Finland as a portion of the sphere allocated to the Soviet Union as had been the case a year before.
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The Germans anticipated a major role for Finland in the offensives to be launched in central Finland against the railway from Murmansk as well as from southern Finland towards Leningrad, a role which would earn Finns major territorial gains at Soviet expense; but in the far north the Germans expected to provide the spearhead forces in an offensive toward Murmansk themselves.
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Moving these forces into position for that operation involved getting the cooperation of Sweden, and, in the final stages of the deployment there, the Swedish government permitted a full German division to cross the country on its way to the front.
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At the other end of the intended front, Romania was the key country; like Finland it had lost territory to the Soviet Union with German approval and like Finland it was now to recover it and more in alliance with the Third Reich. The German shift looking toward this new development has already been discussed; in late 1940 and early 1941 the preparations here too went forward. In military affairs this meant a buildup of German forces and, in addition, assistance on a limited scale in the modernization of Romania’s own military.
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This process would be temporarily affected by the events in Greece, which were themselves the product of Germany’s sending troops into Romania, but, regardless of such details, the planning for an attack on the Soviet Union from the south proceeded even as Germany pushed for control and expansion of Romanian oil production.
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The Romanians were eventually informed and directly involved in this planning process which was also affected by two other factors in German-Romanian relations, both new and both critical in the subsequent evolution of that relationship.

Hitler met the new leader of Romania, Marshal Ion Antonescu, and
was greatly impressed by him; no other leader Hitler met other than Mussolini ever received such consistently favorable comments from the German dictator.
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Hitler even mustered the patience to listen to Antonescu’s lengthy disquisitions on the glorious history of Romania and the perfidy of the Hungarians–a curious reversal for a man who was more accustomed to regaling visitors with tirades of his own.
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Closely related to the developing personal tie between Hitler and Antonescu, but surely also influenced by the German desire for an effectively functioning military alliance with a competent leadership in this key satellite, was the suspension of German support for the Iron Guard hotheads in Romania’s internal affairs. Various ties of German intelligence and party agencies to the Iron Guard remained; but when the Guard attempted a coup in January 1941, the German government stood squarely behind Antonescu. The Germans tried to keep him from shooting too many of their spiritual kinsmen after the coup failed–as they had once frowned on King Carol’s shooting of Iron Guard leaders–but they bet on what they saw as the strong man of Romanian politics.
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Like the leaders of Finland, he too could look forward to territorial expansion at the expense of the Soviet Union.
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The other country on the southern flank of the planned attack on the Soviet Union was Turkey, which both controlled the Straits connecting the Black Sea with the Mediterranean and had a common border with the Soviet Union in fairly close proximity to the latter’s Caucasus oil fields. Turkey was nominally an ally of Great Britain and France, but hoped to keep its prior good economic relations with Germany and its generally good relations with the Soviet Union while staying out of the war-though perhaps picking up a few pieces of territory. In the years before the outbreak of war in 1939 their careful balancing acts had gained the Turks a piece of the French mandate of Syria; there was always the hope of more. In addition, there might be ways to pick up bits of Greece and/or a few islands in the Aegean. The main assets of Turkey in such efforts were her strategic location, her hardy army, and the mineral resource of chromium, a critical ingredient for the making of steel alloys, which Germany in particular had great difficulty in obtaining from anywhere else.
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As they contemplated war against the Soviet Union, the Germans reversed their earlier willingness to allow Russia control of the Straits–something they had been prepared to offer Stalin in 1939–and instead hoped at least to neutralize Turkey temporarily until they could either get her to join them in the war or, alternatively, invade the Middle East across her themselves after the defeat of the Soviet Union. In the months before their attack on the Soviet Union, therefore, the Germans worked
to deflect Soviet aspirations from the Straits and to maintain and even improve their own relationship with Ankara. In this endeavor they largely succeeded. By June 1941 they had assured themselves of Turkey’s benevolent neutrality in the coming campaign, even though the Turks had not always been as cooperative as the Germans had wanted in their efforts to dislodge Great Britain from the Middle East in the interim.
^d

It should be easy to understand that, during the months that the Germans were getting ready to attack the Soviet Union, they did not want their Italian ally to work out any new spheres of influence agreements with Russia which might encourage the latter to move forward in the Balkans. As mentioned in the preceding chapter, the Germans now reversed their earlier attempts to improve Italian-Soviet relations when that improvement threatened to go beyond a return of ambassadors to serious negotiations for an accommodation of Italian and Soviet interests in Southeast Europe. Unwilling to let the Italians know until the last moment that they were about to invade Russia, the Germans had to restrain Mussolini’s hopes of an agreement with Moscow throughout the winter of 1940–41. The Russians clearly wanted to work around the new difficulties they seemed to be having with Germany by dealing with Italy–a repeat performance of British diplomacy of 1937–39–but the Germans vetoed such projects and could make their veto stick.
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Like Italy, two other prospective allies of Germany against the Soviet Union were only informed by Berlin in the last days before the attack. Hungary had to be told both because of the need to transport troops and supplies across her territory to Romania and because of her own common border with the Soviet Union.
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The puppet state of Slovakia did not border on the Soviet Union but was also important for transportation and communication purposes; her leadership was tipped off at the last moment. Italy, too, was provided with no advance information.
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None of this was publicly conspicuous or even very significant at a time when the changes in German policy toward Finland and Romania showed Moscow that Germany appeared to be heading in new directions.

The new German policies toward Finland and Romania were both met with unconcealed Soviet grumbling. Finland was supposed to be in the Soviet sphere, and arms deliveries to that country–to say nothing of the presence of German troops–obviously violated the Soviet–German agreements.
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Protestations of innocence were not believed in Moscow; here was a clear sign of a new German policy. The guarantee of
Romania, followed soon after by a military mission and the dispatch of German troops, were also seen as unfriendly acts by the Soviet Union, especially as they appeared to be designed to block off Soviet aspirations for bases in Bulgaria and Turkey.
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These departures from the prior course of German-Soviet relations obviously required explaining.

Although these developments suggested trouble ahead, the Russians certainly did not want such trouble and showed themselves cooperative. They enabled a German auxiliary cruiser to travel around Siberia by the northern sea route so that it could enter the Pacific and prey on Allied shipping there.
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Some supplies were sent for it across Siberia by train; but by the time the ship was to return to Germany, it had to be ordered to go via the Indian Ocean and Atlantic, since the Germans were about to attack the Soviet Union.
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In the economic sphere there was also continued cooperation from the Russians who provided massive deliveries of critical raw materials; what problems there were came from Germany’s failure to make the promised deliveries designed as repayment.
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The Soviets were understandably annoyed that the Germans refused to deliver weapons of the very type they were able to send to Finland, made some trouble, but continued to aid the German war economy.
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That aid included providing transit facilities to Iran and East Asia.
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And the Soviets were always happy to assist the Germans in stirring up trouble for the British in Asia, making it possible for Subhas Chandra Bose, the extreme Indian Nationalist leader who was speculating on an Axis victory, to get to Germany from Afghanistan where he had fled from India.
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Since the Soviets had themselves crossed the lines established in the German-Soviet agreement of 1939 when they seized all of Lithuania, much attention was lavished by Moscow on settling this issue to Berlin’s satisfaction. The southwest corner of Lithuania had been promised to Germany in a secret agreement of September 1939, but the Red Army had occupied it as part of the full Soviet occupation of Lithuania in July 1940. The Soviets now offered to purchase this piece from Germany. Though acknowledging the German claim to the area, they were extremely reluctant to change boundaries once these had been set, and offered the Germans half of what Russia had been paid by the United States for Alaska in 1867.
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The Germans agreed in principle to sell their claim but stalled the negotiations and asked for vastly more. Figuring that they would conquer it in the early hours of their invasion of the Soviet Union–as in fact they did–the Germans decided to make the issue as uncomfortable and expensive as possible for the Russians in the meantime; a settlement finally being reached for the total price of Alaska (
million gold dollars) in January of 1941.
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