Why the west likes neither Molotov, nor Ribbentrop 15 страница
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Who made Hitler attack Stalin
Hitler was having his revenge for the humiliating Versailles treaty by signing France’s capitulation in the Compiиgne Forest, in the same rail carriage (the Compiиgne 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 Compiиgne 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 capitula-tions. There can be no other capitulation signed: Adolf Hitler ordered to have the wagon blown up1.
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…
Preparata, G. D. Hitler Inc. How Britain and the USA made the Third Reich.P. 375.
Adolf Hitler’s fatal love
I want England under no circumstances
to lose face. Anyhow, I want no such
peace that would derogate from Eng-
land’s prestige
Adolf Hitler 1
When Adolf Hitler realized that his origi-
nal 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 2
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
Ribbentrop, J. von. Memoirs of the Nazi Diplomat. P. 345.
Ibid. P. 303.
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Who made Hitler attack Stalin
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…
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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 Expedition-ary 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 ap-pealed to Churchill asking for permission (!) to sign an armistice with Hitler, although separate peace was banned by the British-French pact1.
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 enemy2. No great power could accept such a humiliating proposal, though it came from the former ally. Then, to sugar the pill, Eng-land suggested the two countries merging to form a union3. 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 offi-cially decided in London. For France that would mean the loss of sovereignty. “Rarely has so generous a proposal encountered such a hostile reception”4, writes Churchill in his book. Why didn’t France want to become England?
France capitulated, and the French combat ships were subject to disar-mament in their harbors. They signed no documents on the terms of turn-ing 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
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Taylor, A. The Second World War: Two approaches. P. 419.
Churchill, W. The Second World War. P. 208.
Taylor, A. The Second World War: Two approaches. P. 419.
Churchill, W. The Second World War. P. 186.
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Adolf Hitler’s fatal love
wanted to wage war against Great Britain and France. Even now, after crush-ing 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 ever1. “He was so certain that the Brit-ish 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
Ribbentrop, J. von. Memoirs of the Nazi Diplomat.
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Who made Hitler attack Stalin
Operations Staff of the Armed Forces High Command handed Hitler a memo that said: the war with England must be finished by political means1. 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.
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So what were the British worried about? Didn’t their much-vaunted intel-ligence 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 pro-pria their geopolitical rival they are forced to share the world supremacywith 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 neces-sary — alone”2. So the Empire had to secure itself from all possible and evenimpossible 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”3, — 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
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Proektor, D. M. The blitzkrieg in Europe: The war in the West. P. 270–271.
Churchill, W. The Second World War. P. 197.
Ibid. P. 207.
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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”1. 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-Kйbir and Dakar. Early on the morning of the 3rd of July2 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 andthe ships under British control;
‰ to sail the warships into the French West Indies or scuttle them with6 hours3.
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 in-formed 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”4.
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 Lon-
Gaulle, Ch. de. The War Memoirs. The Call-up of 1940–1942. P. 110.
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.
Pulman, K. Arc Royal / The first gun salvos of the British Navy. M., 2004. P. 531.
Ibid. P. 531.
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Who made Hitler attack Stalin
don that his squadron was in action1. 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”2.
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 perished3. In response to this act of perfidy the French government, without declaring war on England, ruptured diplomatic rela-tions 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 Toulon4. 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
Pulman, K. Arc Royal / The first gun salvos of the British Navy. P. 532.
Gaulle, Ch. de. The War Memoirs. The Call-up of 1940–1942. P. 321.
Taylor, A. The Second World War: Two approaches. P. 421.
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.
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cutters, 60 transports, minesweepers and tugboats1. 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 “Opera-tion 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-Kйbir, 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, be-ing 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.
Gaulle, Ch. de. The War Memoirs. The Call-up of 1940–1942. P. 59.
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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 trans-ferred 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 hourI 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”1.
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 clas-sical 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”2, — is one of Hitler’s numerous utterances concerning the miracle of British colonialism.
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