I am profoundly grateful to Professor Sir Michael Howard, who kindly read the whole manuscript and offered valuable criticism and advice; to Jon Halliday and Jung Chang who went through the Sino-Japanese war passages and corrected many mistakes; and to Angelica von Hase who double-checked my translations from the German. I once again owe her and Dr Lyubov Vinogradova a very great deal for all their research work for me in Germany and Russia. Needless to say, any mistakes which remain are entirely my responsibility.
I owe a great debt, as always, to my old friend and literary agent Andrew Nurnberg, and particularly to Alan Samson, the publisher of Weidenfeld & Nicolson, who encouraged the project from the very start and provided excellent advice at every step of the way; also to Bea Hemming, the editor who calmly guided everything and thus removed the stress of the whole process; and to Peter James who amply justified his reputation as the greatest copy-editor in London. Once again my wife Artemis Cooper interrupted her own work to go through the whole manuscript and improved it enormously, to my eternal gratitude, and our son Adam helped me with the bibliography and documents.
Inside the British Army
Crete: The Battle and the Resistance
Paris After the Liberation
(with Artemis Cooper)
Stalingrad
Berlin: The Downfall
The Mystery of Olga Chekhova
The Battle for Spain
D-Day–The Battle for Normandy
A Bibliography can be found at
www.antonybeevor.com
.
ABBREVIATIONS
AMPSB | Arkhiv Muzeya Panorami Stalingradskoy Bitvi (Archive of the Panoramic Museum of the Battle of Stalingrad), Volgograd |
AN | Archives Nationales, Paris |
BA-B | Bundesarchiv, Berlin-Lichterfelde |
BA-MA | Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg im Breisgau |
BfZ-SS | Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Sammlung Sterz, Stuttgart |
CCA | Churchill College Archives, Cambridge |
DCD | Duff Cooper Diaries (unpublished private collection, London) |
DGFP | Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945 , Series D, Washington, DC, 1951–4 |
Domarus | Max Domarus (ed.), Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, 1932–1945 , 2 vols, Wiesbaden, 1973 |
ETHINT | European Theater Historical Interrogations, 1945, USAMHI |
FMS | Foreign Military Studies, USAMHI |
FRNH | Final Report by Sir Nevile Henderson, 20 September 1939 , London, 1939 |
FRUS | Department of State, The Foreign Relations of the United States , 23 vols, Washington, DC, 1955–2003 |
GARF | Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (State Archive of the Russian Federation), Moscow |
GBP | Godfrey Blunden Papers (private collection, Paris) |
GSWW | Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (Research Institute for Military History), Germany and the Second World War , 10 vols, Oxford, 1990–2012. ( Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg , 13 vols, Stuttgart, 1979–2008) |
IMT | International Military Tribunal, Trial of of the Major German War Criminals , Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, London, 1946 |
IWM | Imperial War Museum sound archive, London |
JJG | Journal of Joan Gibbons, unpublished diary of the assistant to Sir Nevile Henderson (private collection) |
KTB | Kriegstagebuch |
KTB OKW | Kriegstagebuch des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht (Wehrmachtführungsstab), 1939–1945 , Frankfurt am Main, 1965 |
MP | George C. Marshall Papers, Lexington, Va |
MPW | Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego (Warsaw Rising Museum), Warsaw |
NA II | National Archives II, College Park, Md |
NHHC | Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC |
OCMH-FPP | Office of the Chief of Military History, Forest Pogue Papers, USAMHI |
PDDE | The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower , vol. iii: The War Years , ed. Alfred D. Chandler, Baltimore, Md, 1970 |
PP | Papers of Lord Portal, Christ Church Library, Oxford |
RGALI | Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Literatury i Iskusstva (Russian State Archive of Literature and the Arts), Moscow |
RGASPI | Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsialno-Politicheskoi Istorii (Russian State Archive for Social-Political History), Moscow |
RGVA | Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Voennyi Arkhiv (Russian State Military Archive), Moscow |
RGVA-SA | The ‘Special Archive’ of captured German documents in the RGVA |
SHD-DAT | Service Historique de la Défense, Département de l’Armée de Terre, Vincennes |
SOAG | Sir Charles Webster and Noble Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive against Germany, 1939–1945 , 4 vols, London, 1961 |
SWWEC | Second World War Experience Centre, Walton, W. Yorks. |
TBJG | Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels , ed. Elke Fröhlich, Munich, 29 vols, Munich, 1992–2005 |
TNA | The National Archives, Kew |
TsAFSB | Tsentralnyi Arkhiv Federalnoi Sluzhby Bezopasnosti (Central Archive of the FSB, formerly KGB), Moscow |
TsAMO | Tsentralnyi Arkhiv Ministerstva Oborony (Central Archive of the Ministry of Defence), Podolsk |
TsKhIDK | Tsentr Khraneniya i Izucheniya Dokumentalnykh Kolletsii (Centre for the Conservation and Study of Historic Document Collections), Moscow |
USACMH | US Army Center of Military History, Washington, DC |
USAMHI | US Army Military History Institute, US Army War College, Carlisle, Pa |
VCD | Vasily Churkin diary, Voennaya literatura: dnevniki i pisma , http://militera.lib.ru/db/churkin |
VIZh | Voenno-Istoricheskii Zhurnal |
VOV | Velikaya otechestvennaya voina, 1941–1945 , Moscow, 1984 |
Introduction
‘
the original catastrophe
’: a term attributed to George Kennan; see Stephan Burgdorff and Klaus Wiegrefe (eds),
Der Erste Weltkrieg. Die Urkatastrophe des 20. Jahrhunderts
, Munich, 2004, pp. 23–35, quoted Ian Kershaw,
Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World, 1940–1941
, London, 2007, p. 3
here
‘a boring tome’: quoted in Denis Mack-Smith,
Mussolini
, London, 1983, p. 200
‘
European Civil War
’: Ernst Nolte,
Der europäische Bürgerkrieg, 1917–1945,
Frankfurt am Main, 1988
Michael Howard, ‘
A Thirty Years War? The Two World Wars in Historical Perspective
’, in his
Liberation or Catastrophe? Reflections on the History of the Twentieth Century
, London, 2007, pp. 35, 67; Gerhard Weinberg,
A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II
, New York, 2005, p. 2
here
For the demise of the rule of law in Germany, see Michael Burleigh,
The Third Reich
, London, 2000, pp. 149–215; Richard J. Evans,
The Coming of the Third Reich
, London, 2005; and Ian Kershaw,
Hitler, 1889–1936: Hubris
, London, 1998
Bismarck on German moral cowardice
: Sebastian Haffner,
Defying Hitler
, London, 2002, p. 72
‘
The Jews must get out
’:
TBJG
, part I, vol. iii, p. 351. The best analysis of research into the origins of the Holocaust and the historical disputes engendered can be found in Ian Kershaw’s
The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation
, London, 2000, pp. 93–133, and Kershaw,
Hitler, the Germans and the Final Solution
, New Haven, 2008
‘
People of the same blood
’: Adolf Hitler,
Mein Kampf
, Mumbai, 1988, p. 1
here
Hitler’s plan to invade in October: see Adam Tooze,
The Wages of Destruction: The Making and the Breaking of the Nazi Economy
, London, 2006, p. 264
‘
violent energy
’ and plate glass:
ibid.
, p. 274
‘
The British and the French
’: Sebastian Haffner,
The Meaning of Hitler
, London, 1979, p. 18
‘
I am now fifty
’:
ibid.
, p. 19
Hitler’s speech of 30 January 1939
: Domarus, vol. ii, p. 1058, quoted Ian Kershaw,
Hitler, 1936–1945: Nemesis
, London, 2000, pp. 152–3
‘
had never met
’: CCA, Duff Cooper Papers, DUFC 8/1/14, quoted Richard Overy,
1939
:
Countdown to War
, London, 2009, p. 29
1: The Outbreak of War
Zhukov’s summons to Moscow
: Otto Preston Chaney,
Zhukov
, Norman, Okla., 1971, pp. 62–5
‘
For you I have this request
’: quoted Ella Zhukova, ‘Interesy ottsa’, in I. G. Aleksandrov (ed.),
Marshal Zhukov: Polkovodets i chelovek
, 2 vols, Moscow, 1988, vol. i, p. 38
‘
mediocre, faceless, intellectually dim
’: Dimitri Volkogonov, in Harold Shukman (ed.),
Stalin’s Generals
, London, 1993, p. 313
‘
the biggest bag of shit in the army
’: quoted Robert Edwards,
White Death: Russia’s War on Finland, 1939–1940
, London, 2006, p. 96
For the development and course of the growing conflict, see Alvin D. Coox,
Nomonhan: Japan against Russia, 1939
, 2 vols, Stanford, 1985; and Katsu H. Young, ‘
The Nomonhan Incident: Imperial Japan and the Soviet Union
’, in
Monumenta Nipponica
, vol. 22, no. 1/2, 1967, pp. 82–102
‘
field initiative
’: Mark R. Peattie, ‘The Dragon’s Seed’, in Mark Peattie, Edward Drea and Hans van de Ven,
The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945
, Stanford, 2011, p. 55
here
Zhukov’s deception: Chaney,
Zhukov
, pp. 69–70
here
For detailed accounts of the battle see Edward J. Drea,
Nomonhan: Japanese–Soviet Tactical Combat, 1939
, Fort Leavenworth, 1981; Coox,
Nomonhan: Japan against Russia
; and Georgii Zhukov,
Marshal Zhukov: Kakim my yego pomnim
, Moscow, 1988
‘
because of our indecisiveness
’: quoted Chaney,
Zhukov
, p. 73
Red Army casualties at Khalkhin Gol
: G. F. Krivosheev,
Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century
, London, 1997, p. 53
‘
Jewish democracy
’:
GSWW
, vol. i, p. 685
‘
mischievous
’: David Dilks (ed.),
The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan
, London, 1971, p. 175
‘
with the Germans
’: quoted Terry Charman,
Outbreak 1939: The World Goes to War
, London, 2009, p. 46
‘
There is no problem
’: Raymond James Sontag and James Stuart Beddie (eds),
Nazi–Soviet Relations, 1939–1941
, New York, 1948, p. 38
‘
Purge the ministry
’: quoted Simon Sebag Montefiore,
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar
, London, 2003, p. 269
‘
very self-confident
’: JJG, 17.8.39
Grossadmiral Raeder’s orders
:
GSWW
, vol. ii, p. 153
‘
I’ve got them!
’: Albert Speer, quoted Gitta Sereny,
Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth
, London, 1995, p. 207