Feeding the German Eagle

Submitted by Anon on 30 September, 2001 - 12:35 Author: Matt Heaney

The bulk of this volume is an examination of the economic talks between Nazi Germany and Stalin’s USSR in 1939-41, while Stalin remained “neutral” and Hitler was at war with the West. They ended with the German attack on the Soviet Union, on 22 June 1941. As Ericson puts it, “Nazi Germany turned to bite the hand that had fed it for the past twenty-two months.”

Hitler described the signing of his pact with Stalin on 23 August 1939 as “the saddest day” of his life. But without his trade deals with Stalin, the Nazi war machine would have been in extreme difficulty. For example, Nazi Germany relied on the USSR for supplies of rubber, without which there would have been no tyres for aircraft or other military equipment.

As Ericson concludes: “Without Soviet deliveries of… four major items (oil, grain, manganese and rubber)... Germany barely could have attacked the Soviet Union, let alone come close to victory. Germany’s stockpiles of oil, manganese, and grain would have been completely exhausted by the late summer of 1941. And Germany’s rubber supply would have run out half a year earlier.... Hitler had been almost completely dependent on Stalin to provide him the resources he needed to attack the Soviet Union.”

Stalin thought he could buy off Hitler by providing all he asked for: “[in June 1941]… the Soviets were doing just about everything they could to meet the German demands. Warehouses... were filling up faster than the German and Soviet transportation systems... could handle.” “The pace continued until the eve of battle with a Soviet express train, carrying 2,100 tons of desperately needed rubber, crossing the border only hours before the invasion began!” German technicians and engineers were also working on the Soviet naval fleet right up to the German invasion, when they were allowed to leave.

The Soviet negotiators, however, were hard bargainers. They were in a better position. The USSR had other trading options, whereas Germany had nowhere else to turn. The Russians were difficult for the Germans to deal with because their orders came from the Kremlin, often directly from Stalin himself. Frequently they had to wait for the next telegram from Moscow. The Nazi state left its representatives more relaxed and autonomous — largely free to argue as they wished, and afterwards to “sell” the results of the discussions to Hitler on their own terms.

Karl Schnurre, the chief German Foreign Office negotiator was discussing with the Soviet Trade Commissar Anastas Mokoyan, in December 1939 when: “Mikoyan said he couldn’t take a decision — ‘it was a matter for Molotov’ — at which point Molotov himself suddenly emerged from a curtained-off archway in Mikoyan’s office. After a short discussion, Molotov, in turn, said he could not decide, it was really a matter for Stalin… “; who then appeared, smoking his pipe, from behind a curtain, and negotiated with the Germans himself.

The book’s main use for socialists is to dispel any remaining myths regarding the “anti-fascist” role of Stalinism. The author’s occasional description of the Stalinists as “Bolsheviks” does grate somewhat.

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