Peter C,
You really do have to start looking at newer books than the ones you cite, most of them a generation or two old and/or written by died-in-the wool Trotskyites. Your interpretation of Hitler’s regime and fascism sound remarkably like the ones put forward by the Comintern in the 1930s. If you think Hitler was unpopular and you don’t like my book then try Ian Kershaw’s 2 vol. study of Hitler. On Hitler’s popularity, there is now scholarly consensus, even it you cannot agree with it.
No one doubts that capitalists in Germany initially gained with the end of trade unions and so on. They benefited when the economy recovered quickly. So did the unemployed workers, for which, in spite of everything, they thanked Hitler. It did not matter that Hitler himself had not invented the make-work projects, the return of the economy to better times happened on Hitler’s watch and he got the credit. Workers thanked him for much else besides, including for tearing up the Treaty of Versailles. But I tell the full story of how the majority was won over in my book.
You suggest I have a fantasy about Stalin when it comes to why he failed to listen to those who kept warning of the German invasion – even on the day it took place. The background of my “fantasy” is in the trade relations between Germany and the USSR. These were regulated by three different trade treaties. Without going into all the details, these required mutual trade. In return for Soviet raw materials of various kinds, the Germans were to supply arms and even industrial secrets – such as how to make more efficient airplane fuel. The latter exchange was much resented by IG Farben, who did not want to share such information.
The trade volume between the two countries under these treaties was considerable and the trade kept flowing punctually right up to the outbreak of war. My point is that Stalin was doing everything possible to fulfill Germany’s “material” wishes. To illustrate the extent of the trade, we can look at just the last months. In 1941 up to April of that year alone, the Soviets delivered 632,000 tons of grain, 232,000 tons of petroleum, 23,500 tons of cotton, 50,000 tons of manganese ore, and 67,000 tons of phosphates. Moreover, by agreement, the Soviets permitted the Germans to import essential war materials (like rubber) from the Far East and to ship these across the USSR to Germany. The total of all materials was vast, whether the goods were of Soviet or Far Eastern origin. These materials were obviously essential to the German war effort – just like the food. It is likely that still more goods would have crossed the Soviet frontier, save that there was a shipping backlog because the gauge of track in the USSR was different than the one used to the west, and the goods had to be transferred to western freight trains.
Stalin’s economic appeasement could hardly have been greater. His great fear was that Hitler would use it as a “provocation” if the USSR cut shipments or even delayed them.
When it comes to why Stalin was fooled so badly about the invasion – on this you can see the great biography of Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore, if you won’t believe me – historians have put forward many explanations. These include his failure to imagine the Germans would start a war so late in the summer, to his belief that Hitler did not want a two-front war. Other hypotheses can be put forward, which is all we have, for Stalin never admitted the reasons for his grave error. Hitler definitely stated that part of his reasoning was to knock the USSR out of the war so that Britain would have no one on the continent to look to, and might “see the light.” He made these statements behind closed doors, and were not meant for public consumption.
Now to return to Stalin’s imagination: It is my opinion, based on reading everything Stalin wrote, (including Molotov’s later rationalizations) that Stalin’s lack of imagination was also colored by his Marxist-Leninist ideology. His world view tended to emphasize economic or materialistic motives to all historical actors. Hitler was different, and definitely no tool of the capitalists, in spite of what the Comintern might have asserted. Certainly Hitler was not getting everything he wanted from the east, and worried that his oil supplies could be cut, but what really drove him when all was said and done was his ideology. That was, as you suggest, essentially anti-Communist and anti-Semitic. Stalin failed to take Nazi ideology seriously, a problem that many on the Left shared.
Hitler could not be appeased by Western statesmen, nor could he be appeased by Stalin, because in principle his ideological or political aims were unlimited.
