By Eric Vandenbroeck and
co-workers
Russia, Germany, and Poland 1917-1945
Part Thirteen
Victory over Poland came
with a cost for both Germany and the Soviet Union. Germany was now cut off from
most international trade and desperate for raw materials as the unplanned war
against Great Britain and France began. The USSR, though not formally
belligerent, soon found itself facing some of the same concerns. The United
States, the Soviet Union’s largest source of machine tools and industrial
equipment in 1939, soon barred the USSR from making armaments or related
purchases in America.1 The result was that Germany and the Soviet Union had to
reorient their economies toward greater collaboration.2
To that end,
Ribbentrop and Schnurre returned to Moscow on
September 28 to negotiate a much more substantial political and economic
settlement, intended to place Soviet-German cooperation on a more permanent
basis.3 At five in the morning on September 29, the two sides signed a new
arrangement, the Boundary and Friendship Treaty. To adjust for territories in
Poland still held by the Wehrmacht around Lublin and Warsaw, Germany ceded all
of Lithuania to the Soviet sphere of influence, with the understanding that the
Soviets would soon invade and annex Lithuania turns over a border strip around
Memel to German custody.4 The two sides made general promises about economic
collaboration, while the Soviets guaranteed transshipment of key raw materials
to Germany across their territory.5 The Germans were frustrated, however, that
Molotov refused to agree to the terms of a new, much broader economic deal to
solve Germany’s desperate resource shortages, particularly in oil and rubber.
So severe were German shortages by the fall of 1939 that some military planners
were uncertain whether the Wehrmacht would be capable of launching an offensive
against France.6
In October, Schnurre returned to Moscow for new negotiations, seeking
immediate raw material deliveries.7 Later that month, as part of the
negotiating process, forty-five Soviet officials, divided into eight working
groups, arrived in Berlin.8 Their task was to draw up lists of goods to be
acquired in exchange for Soviet raw materials. Highlighting Stalin’s aims,
three teams visited machine tools and high-technology firms, while the other
five visited armaments plants.9 Most facilities were open to these delegates,
as Hitler ordered German industrial firms to make all equipment that was
already in use in the Wehrmacht available to the Soviet visitors. He believed
that such a display of German technological superiority might frighten the
Soviets into concessions.10
On November 30, the
Soviet envoys provided a forty-eight-page list of their requested purchases,
with an estimated value of 1.5 billion Reichsmarks, a sum roughly equivalent to
10 percent of Germany’s national budget from the previous year.11 In the face
of gargantuan German demands for Soviet raw materials, the Soviets had replied
in kind. General Keitel called the Foreign Ministry to complain about
“voluminous and unreasonable” Russian demands.12 Half the value of Soviet
requests were naval in nature, including a complete cruiser and destroyer, the
blueprints for the massive German battleship Bismarck, naval guns, precision
equipment, mines, torpedoes, and enormous amounts of construction equipment for
further shipbuilding.13
These orders came
directly from Stalin. In 1934, at the XVIIth Party
Congress, Voroshilov had announced that Stalin “would now manage the build-up
of the Navy himself.”14 Over the course of the next year, more and more work
was done on acquiring capital ship designs and armament overseas, particularly
from Italy.15 On May 27, 1936, the Soviet government had approved a naval
construction program including a staggering 24 battleships, 20 cruisers, 182
destroyers, and 344 submarines, plus numerous auxiliary ships.16
Stalin’s personal
involvement and increasing obsession with massive warships made these plans
even more elaborate over the next few years. He even sent feelers out to
British firms regarding technical assistance to construct a 59,150-ton
battleship, a vessel 30 percent greater in displacement than the Bismarck, then
under construction.17 Even without the construction of such a monstrosity, by
1940, it was estimated that the Soviet battleship program likely absorbed a
third of the Soviet defense budget.18
The reasons behind
this largesse were opaque to the Soviet Navy: Admiral Nikolai Kuznetsov, commander in chief of the Soviet Navy, recalled
that the navy was not consulted on these expenditures. As to Stalin’s demands
for naval equipment from Germany, he believed that perhaps Stalin hoped to slow
down German naval rearmament by demanding so much naval equipment, thus drawing
out the war in the West between Germany and Great Britain.19 Another
possibility is that Stalin saw an opportunity to conduct the kind of
technological borrowing and espionage of German naval equipment that had been
so successfully carried out in an armored vehicle and aircraft design during
the Rapallo Era, in which the German Navy had declined to participate. The
disparity between the two sides’ demands, and Stalin’s willingness to once
again play for time, meant that no agreement was reached that fall, despite
German needs. Nonetheless, military cooperation resumed in other forms. On
September 6, 1939, within a week of signing the Nonaggression Pact, the German
ship Bremen had steamed into Murmansk harbor in northern Russia. Over the next
month, seven other German-flagged merchantmen arrived in Murmansk, where they
were welcomed.20 The Soviets even briefly considered assisting the Germans in
arming some of these former merchant ships to operate as commerce raiders
against British shipping out of Murmansk harbor.21 Realizing this might embroil
them in war with Great Britain, the Soviets would soon alter this offer, with
Molotov telling Ambassador Schulenberg that “Murmansk was not sufficiently
isolated for this purpose [for harboring German warships].”22 Instead, Molotov
suggested the possibility of using an empty bay east of Murmansk, Zapadnaia Litsa (Western Face),
for whatever purposes the Germans desired. Admiral Erich Raeder (head of the
Kriegsmarine) was thrilled by this possibility. In the words of German naval
planners, the offer “opened up entirely new operational possibilities for the
German Naval High Command.”23 During a meeting on October 12, Raeder and his
staff drew up a list of requests to be made to the Soviet Navy based upon their
offer of a Soviet harbor. The list more or less required Soviet entry into the
war on the German side. It included “the use of suitable harbors, say Murmansk
and Vladivostok” as bases for German warships; assistance in supplying German
commerce raiders in both the Atlantic and Pacific; repair and maintenance
assistance on German vessels in both oceans; the use of Soviet flags to cloak
German naval convoys as “neutrals” in the Atlantic and Baltic; and the
cancellation of “all direct or indirect Russian exports to the enemy
countries.”24 Although the Soviets would reject some of these terms, on
October 22, the German naval attaché relayed the news to Berlin that the
Soviets had agreed to put Zapadnaia Litsa at their disposal, noting that “Germany may do
whatever she wishes [there]; she may carry out whatever projects she should
consider necessary.” Any vessel would be permitted to call there, including
heavy cruisers, submarines, and supply ships.25 The offer was immediately
accepted. Admiral Raeder ordered the German naval attaché to travel to Murmansk
and select two ships for conversion as a floating submarine support base in Zapadnaia Litsa, now called
“Basis Nord” [North Base] German communiqués. A German naval officer arrived in
Murmansk on November 28, 1939, to supervise the transfer of goods and military
stores to the selected vessels, the Phoenicia and Cordillera. The arrival of
the two vessels established a German military presence at Basis Nord just two
days before a new front in the war opened less than 80 miles away. 26
On the morning of
November 30, 1939, without a declaration of war, the Soviet Union attacked
Finland. A few hours later, the Soviet Air Force launched a bombing attack on
Helsinki. The Finnish border was only 20 miles from the outskirts of
Leningrad.27 To protect the city, Stalin requested that a Finnish delegation
come to Moscow to discuss a rearrangement of the border in October 1939.28
These demands came on the heels of Soviet negotiations with Latvia, Lithuania,
and Estonia had resulted in Soviet military bases in all three countries. This
seemed to Finnish leaders, correctly, to be a prelude to Soviet occupation. The
Finnish government was split, eventually deciding against surrendering
territory, believing that any concession would mean the loss of sovereignty.
Marshal Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, a hero of the Finnish Civil War, was
appointed commander in chief in mid-October. He began a quiet mobilization of
Finnish troops and a review of the country’s defenses.
After the successful
invasion of Poland and the victory at Khalkin Gol in
the Far East, Stalin was confident in the strength of his Red Army, despite the
damage inflicted by the purges. He was dismissive of tiny democratic Finland;
there were more soldiers in the Red Army than men in their entire country.
Further, Finland was diplomatically isolated. Its traditional ally Germany was
now unlikely to intervene, Finland’s Scandinavian allies were unwilling to
assist, and the Western democracies were already embroiled in a war with
Germany. In addition, the Red Army had good intelligence, including clear maps
of the Finnish defensive systems along the border, possibly provided by German
military intelligence as part of the Pact.29 Despite enormous material and
workforce advantages, Soviet forces were badly led and poorly prepared for what
became known as the Winter War. Some Red Army units reported ammunition
shortages within a few hours of the war’s beginning, following a full month of
preparation.30 The initial Soviet attack on Finland’s half-fortified border
defenses did not get off to an auspicious start, either. Red Army officers
ordered their men to assault in close order, as if on parade, which led to the
decimation of entire companies. (According to contemporary rumors, the Red Army
may have herded recently captured Polish POWs in front to reduce the damage to
their own men.31) One Soviet officer described the anguish of his unit after
Finnish ski troops had cut it off in bitter winter conditions: “The battalion
had been badly punished when the men had lit fires to warm themselves and heat
food. From the treetops, the Finns had machine-gunned every fire, easily
picking out the dark silhouettes of the men against the snow.”32 Most of his
battalion eventually surrendered to the outnumbered Finns.
While the Red Army’s
struggles were not yet apparent internationally, Stalin moved quickly to sound
out his new German ally. Within hours of the initial attack, the Soviet Navy
requested direct military assistance from the Kriegsmarine in two forms. First,
they asked for German support in conducting anti-submarine operations off the
Finnish coast. Second, they requested that German vessels supply Russian
submarines, maintaining a blockade of Finnish ports.33
The Kriegsmarine,
despite deep sympathy for Germany’s traditional ally in Finland, immediately
and even eagerly responded to the requests. The possibility of reciprocal aid
of a similar kind, namely the resupplying of German submarines in both the
Atlantic and Pacific by neutral Soviet vessels, was immediately grasped by the
Kriegsmarine. A month after the submarine requests, the Soviet Navy and the
Kriegsmarine reached an accord for German passage through the Northern Sea
Route through the Arctic Ocean.34 This was a potentially momentous occasion.
With Soviet assistance, it would be possible to dispatch an entire fleet to the
Pacific to harass and interdict British merchant vessels. Soviet icebreaker
technology, far ahead of anyone else’s in the world, had made such a passage
possible by specially modified ships. Initially, the Kriegsmarine proposed to
send an armada of twenty-six ships to the Pacific to wreak havoc on British
supply lines.35 The difficulties of the naval war in the Atlantic and the
Kriegsmarine’s strained resources, however, diminished this number to six
vessels, then to four, and finally, to two: the Esso and the Komet. The voyage
started poorly: the Esso ran aground off the coast of Norway.
The Komet, commanded
by Konter-Admiral Robert Eyssen,
arrived off the coast of Murmansk. However, confusion and bureaucratic issues
in Moscow meant that Komet had to wait nearly a month for its Soviet
icebreakers, the Lenin and then Stalin.36 Finally, the Komet departed for its
long journey, with Lenin leading the way. After perils and more than a few
mishaps in the icepack, the Komet reached the open sea northwest of the Barents
Straits. The passage had taken twenty-three days, the fastest traverse of the
Northern Route in history to date.37 In September, after a brief stop in a
Soviet harbor, the Komet, disguised as a Japanese merchant ship, made its way
to the South Pacific. During its voyage, the Komet would sink nine ships
displacing nearly 43,000 tons and capture a tenth, which was crewed and sailed
back to Germany.38 The Komet would successfully dodge British vessels and reach
the safe harbor of Hamburg on November 30, 1941, having successfully
circumnavigated the globe. Had twenty-six German vessels reached the Pacific,
it might have spelled disaster for the British.
While the two sides
expanded their work together at sea, a new economic agreement had not yet been
reached. Some trade continued under the August credit agreement, but not at the
quantities hoped for in Berlin or Moscow. The August treaty required the USSR
to sell 86,800 tons of oil products to the Germans over the next twenty-four
months. But German military planners expected 60,000 tons of Russian oil per
month to maintain stocks at existing levels.39 As the British had initiated a
blockade, it appeared Germany might even face serious food shortages if grain
could not be purchased from the USSR. Negotiations in December and January 1940
had brought the two sides closer, but no final treaty had resulted. In growing
desperation, Ribbentrop sent a personal letter to Stalin on February 3,
pleading the German case. It called the partition of Poland a “not
inconsiderable advance payment by Germany.”40 Stalin agreed to convene another
summit in Moscow to discuss economic conditions. On February 8, Schnurre returned to Moscow and spent three days in hard
negotiations led by Anastas Mikoyan. The result was
the German-Soviet Commercial Agreement of February 11, 1940.41
This arrangement
promised far more than the August agreement. Including the earlier August
arrangement, the USSR was expected to deliver 800 million Reichsmarks’ worth of
raw materials, a list that now included a million tons of grain, 900,000 tons
of oil, 800,000 tons of iron, 500,000 tons of phosphates, 100,000 tons of
chrome, and smaller quantities of copper, nickel, tin, molybdenum, wolfram, and
cobalt.42 In exchange, the Germans would provide industrial goods and military
equipment, including modern aircraft models. Hitler was so certain that the
arrangement would mean the defeat of the British blockade that he assigned
Soviet orders higher priority even than the German military. For his part, it
seems Stalin hoped to control the flow of raw materials, particularly oil, and
thus control the pace of the war in the West. If Germany was winning, he could
cite delays and reduce the flow; if France or Great Britain, he could offer
more raw materials.43
Exports did not
suddenly start flowing to Germany, however. Particularly in key areas like
grain and oil, Soviet deliveries dropped in March rather than increasing.
Ambassador Schulenberg wrote from Moscow, “The Soviet Government is determined
to cling to neutrality in the present war and to avoid as much as possible
anything that might involve it in a conflict with the Western powers.”44
Although the Soviets had finally broken through Finnish defensive works,
British and French intervention seemed possible.45 Even more worryingly for
Moscow, in March 1940, the British Royal Air Force began conducting reconnaissance
flights over Soviet oilfields in the Caucasus.46 This was a possible precursor
for a strategic bombing raid to cut off Soviet oil production, which the
British and French believed was fueling the German war effort.47
Until the threat of
Western intervention diminished, Stalin avoided fulfilling his agreements with
his German partner. To that end, the Soviet Union rapidly concluded a peace
treaty with Finland on generous terms for the latter, leaving its sovereignty
intact and only adjusting its borders to protect Leningrad and Murmansk. On
April 9, Hitler launched Operation Weserubung (the
Weser River Exercise), rapidly overrunning Denmark and beginning the invasion
of Norway.
This opened direct
combat operations between German and Allied troops in Norway, removing the
likelihood of an attack against the USSR in the north. Molotov publicly
declared, “We wish Germany complete success in her defensive measures,” while
privately telling the Germans that any delays in shipments had been a result of
the “ ‘excessive zeal of subordinate agencies’ which would be immediately
remedied.”48 The USSR then began to open the spigots. Although still short of
German expectations, between January and May 1940, the USSR would export
155,000 tons of oil, 128,000 tons of grain, and 8,600 tons of manganese, with
most of those quantities arriving in April and May.49 Stalin had made clear
that he held the initiative throughout eight months of contentious
Soviet-German economic talks: the Germans needed Soviet raw materials more than
the USSR needed German military equipment, especially as Germany faced the
combined might of Britain and France in the west. That equation would change
suddenly.
Part One: Russia, Germany, and Poland Part One
Part Two: Russia,
Germany, and Poland Part Two
Part Three: Russia,
Germany, and Poland Part Three
Part Four: Russia,
Germany, and Poland Part Four
Part
Five: Russia,
Germany, and Poland Part Five
Part Six: Russia, Germany, and Poland Part Six
Part Seven: Russia, Germany, and Poland Part Seven
Part
Eight: Russia, Germany, and Poland Part Eight
Part
Nine: Russia, Germany, and
Poland Part Nine
Part
Ten: Russia, Germany, and
Poland Part Ten
Part Eleven: Russia,
Germany, and Poland Part Eleven
Part Twelve: Russia, Germany, and Poland Part Twelve
Part Fourteen:
Russia, Germany, and Poland Part Fourteen
Part Fifteen: Russia, Germany, and Poland Part Fifteen
1. Zeidler, “German-Soviet Economic Relations during the
Hitler-Stalin Pact,” 102–103.
2. Interestingly,
Stalin also sought to conduct trade negotiations with Great Britain in late
September through Ambassador Maisky in London, who
assured the British of Soviet neutrality and seemingly sought recognition for
Soviet seizures of territory. Stalin presumably looked forward to a long war in
the west and wanted to make sure whoever won would recognize the gains he had
made. This also may suggest that he would have seized eastern Poland had a deal
been reached with the British and French and transit rights had indeed been
granted there. “Telegramma polnomochnogo
predstavitelya SSSR v Velikobritanii
I. M. Mayskogo v narodnyy komissariat inostrannykh del
SSSR” [Telegram of the Ambassador Representative of the USSR in Great Britain
I. M. Maisky to the People’s Commissariat of Foreign
Affairs of the USSR], 27 September 1939, DVP, 131.
3. “Germano-sovetskii dogovor o druzhbe i granitse
mezhdu SSSR i Germaniyey” [German-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Border
Agreement between the USSR and Germany], 28 September 1939, DVP, 134.
4. The secret
supplementary text to the September 28 read: “As soon as the Government of the
U.S.S.R. shall take special measures on Lithuanian territory to protect its
interests, the present German-Lithuanian border, for a natural and simple
boundary delineation, shall be rectified in such a way that the Lithuanian
territory situated to the southwest of the line marked on the attached map should
fall to Germany.” Ambassador Schulenberg made clear how this was to be
interpreted, writing: “I would ask you to consider whether it might not be
advisable for us, by a separate secret German-Soviet protocol, to forego the
cession of the Lithuanian strip of territory until the Soviet Union actually
incorporates Lithuania, an idea on which, I believe, the arrangement concerning
Lithuania was originally based.” “The German Ambassador in the Soviet Union
(Schulenberg) to the German Foreign Office,” 3 October 1939, NSR, 112.
5. “The Reich Foreign
Minister to the Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Soviet
Union (Molotov),” 28 September 1939, NSR, 108.
6. “Pis’mo predsedatelya soveta narodnykh komissarov SSSR, narodnogo komissara inostrannykh del SSSR
V. M. Molotova Ministru Inostrannykh Del Germanii I. Fon Ribbentropu” [Letter from the
Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR, People’s Commissar
for Foreign Affairs for the USSR V. M. Molotov to the Minister of Foreign
Affairs of Germany J. von Ribbentrop], 28 September 1939, DVP, 137.
7. “Foreign Office
Memorandum (Schnurre),” October 1939, NSR, 119.
8. Zeidler, “German-Soviet Economic Relations during the
Hitler-Stalin Pact,” 104.
9. Ericson, Feeding
the German Eagle, 86.
10. Ibid., 88;
“Memorandum by the State Secretary in the German Foreign Office (Weizsäcker),” 1 November 1939, NSR, 127.
11. Ericson, Feeding
the German Eagle, 90; Ritschl, “Deficit Spending in
the Nazi Recovery,” Table 5.
12. “Memorandum by
the State Secretary in the German Foreign Office (Weizsäcker),”
5 December 1939, NSR, 126.
13. Philbin, The Lure
of Neptune, 47–48.
14. Jürgen Rohwer and Mikhail S. Monakov,
Stalin’s Ocean-Going Fleet: Soviet Naval Strategy and Shipbuilding Programmes, 1935–1953 (London: Frank Cass Publishers,
2001), 42–43.
15. See Tony Demchak, Reform, Foreign Technology, and Leadership in the
Russian Imperial and Soviet Navies, 1881–1941 (unpubl.
diss., Kansas State University: 2016).
16. Rohwer and Monakov, Stalin’s
Ocean-Going Fleet, 63–64. This was the ten-year building list; these ships
would have been scheduled for commissioning by 1947.
17. Donald Mitchell,
A History of Russian and Soviet Sea Power (New York: Macmillan, 1974), 373–374.
This proposal was for the Sovietskii Soyuz Class
Battleship. Philbin, The Lure of Neptune, 34.
18. Philbin, The Lure
of Neptune, 23.
19. Ericson, Feeding
the German Eagle, 86.
20. “Russo-German
Naval Relations, 1926–1941,” 38.
21. Ibid., 39.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid., 40.
25. Philbin, The Lure
of Neptune, 83.
26. Ibid., 99.
27. Ibid., 76–77.
28. Robert Edwards,
The Winter War: Russia’s Invasion of Finland, 1939–1940 (New York: Pegasus,
2008), 76–77.
29. Edwards, The
Winter War, 112–113.
30. Ibid., 118.
31. Ibid., 118–119.
32. Ibid., 165.
33. Philbin, The Lure
of Neptune, 43.
34. Ibid.,132–133.
35. “Russo-German
Naval Relations, 1926–1941,” 136.
36. Ibid., 139.
37. Ibid., 141.
38. Ibid., 108.
39. Ericson, Feeding
the German Eagle, 101, 211 (Table 5.1).
40. Ibid., 103.
41. “Foreign Office
Memorandum, Memorandum on the German-Soviet Commercial Agreement Signed on
February 11, 1940 (Schnurre),” 26 February 1940, NSR,
131.
42. Ibid.
43. Ericson, Feeding
the German Eagle, 113.
44. “The German Ambassador
in the Soviet Union (Schulenberg) to the German Foreign Office,” 30 March 1940,
NSR, 134.
45. See “Memorandum
by the German Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Schulenburg),” 11 April 1940,
NSR, 138.
46. Watt, How War
Came, 143–144.
47. See Patrick R.
Osborn, Operation Pike: Britain versus the Soviet Union, 1939–1941 (Westport,
CT: Greenwood, 2000), 137–138.
48. “The German
Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Schulenburg) to the German Foreign Office,” 9
April 1940, NSR, 138; “Memorandum by the German Ambassador in the Soviet Union
(Schulenburg),” 11 April 1940, NSR, 138.
49. Ericson, Feeding
the German Eagle, 116.
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