Why the west likes neither Molotov, nor Ribbentrop 16 страница
Shirer, W. The rise and fall of the Third Reich. P. 220.
Hitler’s speech of April 28, 1939 (source: Sarkisyants, M. The British roots of the German fascism. SPb., 2003. P. 30).
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It was not by the courage of its soldiers that the British Empire withstood the German aggressor.
It was not the heroic struggle of the British pilots and sailors that saved the Empire from the Nazi regime.
It was not the right cause, or the ideals of freedom the British Empire fought for that prevented the Empire’s vanishing from the earth.
The point was that Britain’s main opponent was its ardent admirer. No one was waging a real war against England. No one pursued the aim of annihilating the British as a nation. No one intended to make slaves of
them. No one was going to occupy English territories and take away their bread, coal and other resources. No one was willing to measure their heads by means of compasses to make sure if they were Aryans or not. No one was prepared to burn English villages with their inhabitants. No one planned to take away the objects of their culture, such as pictures and sculptures to the Reich.
All these things Adolf Hitler was ready to do, but not at the expense of the British people. He was going to punish us, the Russians, the citizens of the USSR. It was us that the Nazis would call an inferior (deficient) nation and start annihilating with enviable perseverance, us, together with the Jews and the Gypsies. They would achieve remarkable results in the matter of slaughter: 27 million people — our brothers and sisters — would perish in the ghastly war with fascism. Hitler would be at war with other opponents, too: the USA, Great Britain and others. But the German propaganda would never call these enemies deficient. Up to the end of the war the Nazis would be dividing their enemies into those equal to themselves, i. e. human beings, and “subhumans”. Human beings would be treated well. In 1940 the Nazis would take prisoner 1.5 million French soldiers and then scores of thousands of British and American servicemen. Most of them would go back home. They were fed and given medical treatments and never exposed to inhuman experiments. However, the overwhelming majority of the 2 million Soviet prisoners of war captured in the summer and autumn 1941 would die in the winter of hunger and privations in the Nazi concentration camps.
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What is more, in the POW camps the Germans allowed the captive
British and American pilots to play such a board game, as “Monopoly”! The British intelligence service took advantage of it. They sent special sets of
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that game to the camps with secretly contained maps of the area to facilitate escape from captivity…1
What about “Operation Sea Lion”? What about the bombing campaign of London? Doesn’t it prove that Hitler wanted to invade the Foggy Albion and that the British put in real fighting?
No, it doesn’t. All that “fighting” was only one episode, one milk-and-water film shot in the background of an hour-long gory film that the Nazis would start later to shoot in the East.
First things first. On July 13, 1940, i. e. 6 days before his “peaceful” ap-pearance in the Reichstag the German fuehrer issued letter of instruction №16 to start working out military plans against England. This letter of instruction begins with stating the fact that England, “despite its hopeless military situation does not yet show signs of goodwill to make peace”2. The German fuehrer did give the command to make plans of invading Britain, but it looked more like staging a performance, when the rehearsing actors were confident that the project would never be realized. That was why the actors are rehearsing their lines in a slip-shod manner, knowing quite well that the stage manager was not really going to put on the show. What was the idea? Hitler did not want any landing operations in the mother country of the British Empire. That explains why he had earlier disbanded 50 divisions and ordered peace establishment for 25 other divisions3. What reasonable leader would skeletonize the army in the heat of fighting? It may be only a leader who is certain of negotiated war termination.
Following his personal contribution to saving the lives of 300 thousand British servicemen in Dunkirk, Hitler thought that England would come to the negotiating table and, instead of expecting the fight to go on, expected its termination. The German generals knew about Hitler’s admiration of England and worked over the “Operation Sea Lion” also in a slip-shod man-ner. They were all sure that an invasion of Britain would never take place. “The proposal of invading Britain was absurd, because Germany did not have a sufficient number of vessels… We all looked on it as a kind of game…
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It seems incredible, but on a Western history channels the author of this book has seen a documentary film about heroic British pilots playing “Monopoly” in a German concentration camp.
Proektor, D. M. The blitzkrieg in Europe: The war in the West. P. 275.
Taylor, A. The Second World War: Two approaches. P. 423.
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I had the impression that the Fuehrer was never seriously going to carry out the invasion plan”1, — said General Rundstedt to the allied investigators in 1945. His colleague, General Blumentritt also claimed that in their milieu the German generals referred to the “Operation Sea Lion as bluff”2,
In August 1940 William Shirer, an independent American journalist that quoted German generals in his post-war book, visited the French shore of the English Channel to find no signs of any preparations of the German army to invade the British isles3. Hitler put off the date of the invasion from September 15 to September 21, then September 24 and, finally, to October 12. But instead of the order of beginning the operation October 12 saw quite a different document: “The Fuehrer has decided that from now to springtime the preparations for invading England should remain as a means of political and military pressure on England”4.
But how should one interpret the famous air “Battle of Britain”? Why did Hitler order to start an intensive bombing campaign against the Foggy Albion? The right interpretation of Hitler’s strategy is inseparable from comprehending his aims. He does not want to fight England, but the British Empire does not intend to conclude a peace treaty. What is the German leader supposed to do under the circumstances? He may either accept the British terms (that would be stupid and unacceptable for the victor), or try to persuade the British to make peace. So the only way is to persuade, not defeat or annihilate the enemy. Hitler will not be able to benefit even from a successful landing operation in England. In case the Island is occupied the Royal Family and the British elite will just step aboard warships and go to Canada, without giving in and without signing a peace treaty. What comes next? It looks that Germany will have to wage an endless war, be-cause the Germans have no Fleet. What will the invasion of England bring to Germany? It will gain absolutely nothing. But Hitler hopes against hope that simulated war preparations and deliberate exposure of war atrocities on the territory of England will bring the British leadership to peaceful compromise. All Germany needs to do is to make it clear to the British, by means of a bombing campaign and bluff, that if they go on keeping a stiff
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Shirer, W. The rise and fall of the Third Reich. P. 229.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid. P. 247–248.
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upper lip, the consequences will be no joke. To this end, they will start an air attack on the Island, “the Battle of Britain”, which is supposed to be the first stage of “Operation Sea Lion”. This battle lasted only two months: from July 10 to September 15, 1940…
The man in the street is constantly enchained by myths and stereo-types. Suffice it only to ask anyone who started the bombing of peaceful cities; the answer will be: the Nazis. Though, actually it was not Germany, but the British Air Force that started bombing the enemy targets, civilian targets, at that. On May 11, 1940 Winston Churchill, who was appointed prime-minister shortly before, ordered to bomb the German city Freiburg (in Baden). Why? That was because on the 10th of May Hitler launched an attack on France, and Britain wanted to intimate to the German fuehrer that she would go on fighting in contempt of all rules of warfare. It was contrary to the statements from London, Paris and Berlin on September 2 that air bombardment would be implemented strictly with reference to “military objects in the narrowest sense of the word”. On February 1940 Chamberlain, the then premier of Great Britain, said that no matter what other parties did, the British government would never meanly attack women and other civilians in order to terrorize them1.
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But England adhered to principles only during “the phony war”. As soon as it became clear that all hopes of working Hitler to attack the USSR are dashed to the ground and that Hitler, instead, was attacking the West, the English bombs began to fall on the peaceful German city of Freiburg. Adolf Hitler who was eager to conclude an agreement with Britain did not respond to that air attack. Only after two months of continued British air raids, on July 10, 1940, the German Luftwaffe would make its FIRST air raid on the British territory. That date marked the beginning of the “Battle of Britain”2.
So it is quite clear who was the first to bomb a peaceful city (the Brit-ish), but the question of “priority” in bombing the enemy capital uptown is more complicated. Sources provide contradictory and intricate information. “The sporadic raiding of London towards the end of August was promptly
Warfare without rules // Vokrug Sveta. №2771. 2004. December.
Yakobsen, G. A. 1939–1945. The second world war // World War II: TwoApproaches. P. 288.
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answered by us in a retaliatory attack on Berlin”1, — writes Churchill. This is a lie. There were no “air raids” on London; there was a tragic mistake. On the 24th of August one German plane went off course and accidentally dropped the bombs on the English capital2. It happened only once and by no means at the order of the German Command. But the British responded to this act by making systematic night air raids on the German capital.
During “the Battle of Britain” the German aces mostly attacked the enemy military objects. As for the British, they alternated military objects of the enemy with German peaceful cities. On the 25th, 26th, 29th of August the British planes bombed Berlin3. On September 4, 1940 in Berlin Adolf Hitler spoke about that air warfare: “…Seeing faintly visible lights on the ground the Englishman…bombs uptowns, farms and villages…I waited three months, hoping that this madness would come to an end. But Mis-ter Churchill mistook it for our weakness. Now we will act eye for eye”4.
Only September 7 saw the beginning of regular German air raids on London, while British military objects were left alone. This fact seems to clearly corroborate the idea that Hitler did not intend to invade the Island. Otherwise it looks absolutely idiotic to stop repelling the British aviation and start making raids on civilian objects. If the Germans had really pre-pared to invade Britain, they would not have bombed the English capital, instead of bombing out aerodromes and military objects impeding the German invasion.
There is one phenomenon that characterizes Germany’s fashion of fight-ing Britain: Germany is pulling a punch and fights by way of counterpunch-ing. It is impossible to win a war like that. But Hitler never intended to win it, he intended to cease it, which is a different thing…
Were those German air raids devastating and horrifying? Accord-ing to official data, during “the Battle of Britain” 842 people were killed and 2,347 wounded5. The best known air raid of the German Luftwaffe on Coventry (November 14, 1940) claimed the lives of 568 citizens6. No
Churchill, W. The Second World War. P. 302.
Taylor, A. The Second World War: Two approaches. P. 430.
Ibid. P. 253–254.
Shirer, W. The rise and fall of the Third Reich. P. 255.
Ibid. P. 255.
Shepova, N. To bomb Germany out of war // Voyenno-promishlenniy Kurier (“Themilitary-industrial Courier”). №21 (137). 07.06.2006.
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doubt, the death of every human being is a tragedy; yet these figures pale when compared with millions of lives of our compatriots. Along similar lines, the contribution of Great Britain to the cause of annihilating Hitler-ism looks just as insignificant. During the whole world war England lost 388 thousand people including 62 thousand civilians1. It means that the number of victims of the German air raids during World War II amounts to 62 thousand British people. Is this a high number? Cognition comes through comparison. The French territory occupied by the Germans was not considered the number one target for the allied air forces. That was why the air raids of the allied aviation (from the summer 1940 to the sum-mer of 1944) killed 30 thousand people. But after Normandy landings the frequency rate of the British and American air raids on French cities and villages to liquidate the German troops grew incomparably high. As a result, over the 3 summer months of 1944, with the Germans being knocked out of France, the friendly aviation killed off 20 thousand more of the French population (all in all 50 thousand)2.
The civilian casualties of Germany from the enemy air raids are a sealed book. No one knows the precise figures, because they are staggering. If Germany had won the Second World War, Churchill, Roosevelt and the commanders of the allied air forces would have found themselves in the dock expecting guaranteed execution for hundreds of thousands of vic-tims. But history is written by victors. That was why the Nuremberg trial sentenced to death other criminals guilty of other crimes, while those who responsible for destroying German cities with their inhabitants just quietly retired…
The first victim of the British strategic aviation was Hamburg. “Op-eration Gomorrah” was carried out on the night of July 24/25, 1943. The British aviation had made raids on German cities before. But this raid was unprecedented in the number of the bombers (700) and an incred-ible number of fire-bombs dropped on the city. Thus the new appalling phenomenon called “fire storm” went down in the history of mankind. A mass of local fires concentrated in one place warmed the air to such a degree that colder airstreams beyond the fires were soaked by the heat source forming vortex cavities around. The temperature difference reached
Bullock, A. Hitler and Stalin. P. 4 (cover).
Gaulle, Ch. de. The War Memoirs. The Call-up of 1940–1942. P. 189–190.
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600–1,000 degrees and created tornados which do not occur in nature, because a natural difference in temperature does not exceed 20–30 degrees. The hot air streamed down the streets at a great speed carrying sparks and tiny pieces of burning wood which kindled structures and sizzled people getting into such fire-storms. There was no stopping this fire typhoon. The fire raged in the city several days, plumes of smoke, each up to 6 kilometers high, billowing into the sky.
The bomber pilots also dropped phosphorus bombs. There is no dousing burning phosphorus that glues to the body: thanks to the constant air intake the fire never dies out. The city inhabitants were roasted alive, and no one was able to help them. “Witnesses saw asphalt seething in the streets and sugar burning in the depots, and windowpanes melting in trams. Civilians burnt alive and turned to ashes or suffocated from poisonous gases in the cellars of their own houses, trying to hide away from the bombs”1. No sooner had they managed to put out the fires, than new raiders came on and on. Over one week the raiders killed off 55 thousand inhabitants of Hamburg, which nearly equals the number of the British victims during the whole of the world war2.
Have you ever visited Hamburg? If you go there, make inquiries why there is nothing left from the old Hanseatic city. You will come to know the following: 13 square kilometers of the historic downtown were burnt out, with 27 thousand apartment houses and 7 thousand public buildings razed, including the antique monuments of culture and architecture; 750 thousand people of the then Hamburg with its two million population were left without a roof over their heads3.
But it was only the beginning. The second in human history fire-storm was made on October 22, 1943 in the German city of Kastel. It was Doomsday for 10 thousand people, the whole urban population reaching 250 thousand. The same thing happened in other cities, such as Nuremberg and Leipzig. All in all 61 German cities inhabiting 25 million people were seriously damaged; 600 thousand of them died and 8 million people were
Warfare without rules // Vokrug Sveta (“Round the world”). №2771. 2004. December.
Westphal, S. Between two crucial battles // Fatal Decisions. M., 1958. P. 82.
Shepova, N. To bomb Germany out of war // Voyenno-promishlenniy Kurier (“Themilitary-industrial Courier”). №21 (137). 07.06.2006.
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made homeless1. Among them were thousands of children, old people, women and quite a few men, because most of the men were on the front…
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