rise-and-fall-of-the-third-reich-william-shirer-pdf

728 THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH4. That Japan renounce her rights to concessions for coal and oilin northern Sakhalin. 966In all Stalin asked for five, instead of two, secret protocols embodying his newproposals and, for good measure, asked that, should Turkey prove difficult aboutRussian bases controlling the Straits, the four powers take military measuresagainst her.The proposals constituted a price higher than Hitler was willing even to consider.He had tried to keep Russia out of Europe, but now Stalin was demandingFinland, Bulgaria, control of the Straits and, in effect, the Arabian and Persianoil fields, which normally supplied Europe with most of its oil. The Russiansdid not even mention the Indian Ocean, which the Fuehrer had tried to fob offas the center of ”aspirations” for the U.S.S.R.”Stalin is clever and cunning,” Hitler told his top military chiefs. ”He demandsmore and more. He’s a cold-blooded blackmailer. A German victory hasbecome unbearable for Russia. Therefore: she must be brought to her knees assoon as possible.” 967The great cold-blooded Nazi blackmailer had met his match, and the realizationinfuriated him. At the beginning of December he told Haider to bringhim the Army General Staff’s plan for the onslaught on the Soviet Union. OnDecember 5 Haider and Brauchitsch dutifully brought it to him, and at theend of a four-hour conference he approved it. Both the captured OKW WarDiary and Haider’s own confidential journal contain a report on this crucialmeeting. 968 The Nazi warlord stressed that the Red Army must be brokenthrough both north and south of the Pripet Marshes, surrounded and annihilated”as in Poland.” Moscow, he told Haider, ”was not important.” Theimportant thing was to destroy the ”life force” of Russia. Rumania and Finlandwere to join in the attack, but not Hungary. General Dietl’s mountain divisionat Narvik was to be transported across northern Sweden to Finland for an attackon the Soviet arctic region. ∗ Altogether some ”120 to 130 divisions” wereallotted for the big campaign.In its report on this conference, as in previous references to the plan toattack Russia, General Haider’s diary employs the code name ”Otto.” Lessthan a fortnight later, on December 18, 1940, the code name by which it will godown in history was substituted. On this day Hitler crossed the Rubicon. Heissued Directive No. 21. It was headed ”Operation Barbarossa.” It began:TOP SECRETThe Fuehrer’s HeadquartersDecember 18, 1940The German Armed Forces must be prepared to crush Soviet Russiain a quick campaign before the end of the war against England. † Forthis purpose the Army will have to employ all available units with thereservation that the occupied territories will have to be safeguarded∗ Sweden, which had refused transit to the Allies during the Russo-Finnish War, permittedthis fully armed division to pass through. Hungary, of course, later joined in the war againstRussia.† The italics are Hitler’s.