Joseph Stalin: Waiting For Hitler (Part 2)

joseph stalin and adolf hitler with us today a guest who can talk about the relationship of both with deep knowledge stephen cotkin on uncommon knowledge now welcome to uncommon knowledge i'm peter robinson the son of a factory worker stephen cotkin attended rochester university then came to the university of california at berkeley where he learned russian developed a fascination with soviet history and earned a doctorate dr kotkin is now and has been for three decades a professor of history at princeton he is also a fellow here at the hoover institution at stanford university i should add by the way that we're shooting here today in the auditorium at the treytel building a new building of the hoover institution here at stanford in 2014 dr cotkin published stalin paradoxes of power 1878-1928 the first volume of his projected three-volume biography of joseph stalin now he has published the second volume stalin waiting for hitler 1929-1941 in part one of our conversation we talked about collectivization and the great terror now we come to joseph stalin and adolf hitler hitler becomes chancellor stephen in 1933 and it becomes clear within months that he is rearming and aggressive you write in stalin waiting for hitler stalin was defiant toward the western powers and solicitous toward hitler's germany but fearful of an anti-soviet coalition incorporating nazi germany too the resulting padre twa chamberlain and great britain hitler in nazi germany and joseph stalin in the ussr became in effect a chamberlain versus stalin contest to win over adolf hitler close quote hitler comes to power 1933 and much of the rest of the 30s stalin is competing with chamberlain for hitler's good graces yes explain that thesis so we have to go back momentarily briefly to the versailles treaty of 1919 which is the treaty the the main treaty it's not the only one it's the main treaty from world war one and that treaty is a harsh punitive treaty towards germany which is labeled the aggressor in the first world war and has to pay punitive damages and many restrictions are put on germany the size of its army is very small you can't have this it can't have that the soviet union is not a party to the treaty at all they don't even invite them to the treaty negotiations so you have this anomalous moment the only time post bismarck since the unification of germany that both germany and russia are flat on their back that's why the british and the french along with the americans are able to impose this versailles treaty on germany without any russian participation this treaty can't last even if the british and the french have the willpower to enforce it it's going to come at some time it's going gonna happen that germany and or russia rises up from its back again and becomes a power it it so happened that both of them germany and russia has the soviet became great powers again within a single generation so here's the problem what do you do with the treaty that was imposed at this anomalous time and now you have these two great powers that were either not part of the treaty at all or were the object of the treaty and they want to revise this treaty so the british spend the entire interwar period attempting to revise their own versailles treaty the french are opposed to the revision and this complicates the factor the french live next to germany and suffered most of the damage of world war one which was fought not on british soil but on french soil and then hitler comes into the picture in 1933 and further complicates the story because he begins to violate the versailles restrictions and what are the british going to do they themselves have been trying to get germany inside a european security agreement a kind of new deal where germany is motivated to be part of this they're incentivized to behave properly and help uphold the international order rather than to try to revise it but then hitler comes to power and he begins proactively defiantly to work against the versailles order stalin on the other hand has a different motivation from the british the british want a deal that brings germany back into europe with a tweak a slight revision of her side stalin is against the entire international order ipso facto because it's imperialist capitalist or imperialist as he calls it but he's fearful that all the imperialist powers will form a coalition and gang up on him to invade and overthrow his regime and so he spends all his time trying to prevent an imperialist or all-capitalist coalition he wants to drive a wedge between the british and the french and germany so he spends a lot of time recruiting germany away from the british and the french this happens before hitler comes to power in 1933 but it continues even after hitler's come to power hitler is spouting the most venomous in his speeches the most venomous anti-communist anti-soviet anti-russian anti-bolshevik verbiage imaginable and yet stalin still because he's motivated by this geopolitical understanding of preventing an all-imperious coalition stalin believes that if he can avoid an attack on himself and he can somehow get the imperialists that is the capitalist powers to go to war against each other he can get a socialist revolution in germany or in france so his motivation and chamberlain's motivation coincide in the sense that both are attempting to recruit hitler away from the other and to to their side but obviously for different motivations and on august 23rd 1929 1939 i beg you no uh i beg your pardon yes of course august 23 1939 right thank you uh it's amazing i can i can put my my pen down on any page in this book and you can make sure i've got i've got the date right that's the fact that you can lift that book along is already impressive august 23rd 1939 joachim ribontrop yes is in moscow yes and he signs and vyacheslav molotov the soviet foreign minister co-signs a pact a non-aggression pact yes between nazi germany and the soviet union stalin is standing in the background the pictures show looking quite contented yes he was this is the high point of his diplomacy he's got hitler promising not only that it won't invade but that the soviet union may have bits of poland yes september 1st 1939 the nazis invade poland 17 days later the soviets invade they also with within a period of months they pick up the baltic states south of poland they move into best arabia yes so they move westward across a whole front yes they do as a result of this non-aggression pact so i guess what i'm the puzzle here is to what extent stalin knows that hitler hates him that hitler has been talking about slavic subhumans he writes a phrase similar to that in minecon yes yes stalin wants to defeat the entire west and yet he's willing to he's willing to make this agreement with nazi germany on behalf of what the old czarist impulse to the impulse to retake old zara's territory what is going on here and how does it fit with in part one you stressed again in a part one of this conversation you stressed again and again stalin is a communist true believer how does that pact fit with his communist true belief you're right the communists were shocked at the pact and in fact many of them repudiated their communist beliefs because they thought that communism was anti-fascist to the core and the idea of doing a pact with hitler the nazi whom they called a fascist was beyond belief it was very disillusioning for many true believers especially particularly or at least in part in this country the communist party in this country was a terrible moment for them it was a blow right it was an emotional psychological blow i have to say the pact among the nazis was also a blow because nazis were committed against what they call judeo-bolshevism or the communist regime and the idea of doing even a temporary marriage of convenience with the communists was anathema to the nazi rank and file also but hitler and stalin didn't have to stand before the voters and so they could impose these packs which seemed to vitiate the ideological precepts but here's the thinking once again in the competition with chamberlain for hitler's favor stalin won and what does that mean that meant that stalin had been able to turn hitler westward when hitler invaded poland on september 1st 1939 a few days after following some hesitation britain and france declared war on nazi germany so stalin had his intra-imperialist war it couldn't have been more brilliant from his point of view he would gain just as you rightfully said new territories which the czarist empire had controlled but he had lost the soviet union had lost during the revolution and civil war they became independent the three baltic countries part of poland that part of what became romania known as bessarabia he recovered all those territories moreover there was an economic dimension to the pact whereby stalin would trade raw materials like grain and oil and manganese and other minerals metals to nazi germany in exchange for the latest prototypes of the best weapons germany was producing so stalin was getting a cornucopia of machine tools and armaments which he could then reproduce in his own factories reverse engineer sometimes he even got the blueprints and he didn't have to reverse engineer so the pact was extremely beneficial to stalin hitler had given up his leverage in the negotiation he wanted to invade poland and britain and france had said that they would defend poland's sovereignty so hitler was facing the possibility of a coalition against himself of britain and france on one side and the soviet union on the other which would have been a two-front war so hitler desperately needed to eliminate that possibility and he gave stalin a wonderful deal stalin essentially dictated the terms the big gain of all the gains was that france and britain became the object of nazi invasion of nazi warfare so stalin looked like he won in the pact a great geopolitical victory and so from a communist point of view peter it does make sense preventing the all-capitalist coalition turning the capitalist war against themselves and then standing on the sidelines and waiting to benefit because the destruction will enable a socialist revolution in the west all right hitler moves west he invades he goes through belgium he takes france he drives the british expeditionary and the movie dunkirk presents that retreat across the english channel is a great british victory in fact it was a retreat they've been driven from the continent of europe but then the game the game shifts or at least hitler's thinking shifts and he decides he's going to open a second front after all and of course as we know this book this book ends on june 21st 1944 deep into the night hours just a few hours before the nazis invade which of course will open volume three we want that volume quickly please so do i but so we know as we read this book we know what's going to happen that these nazis are going to put three million troops against the soviet union they're gone three different they're going to go to drive to the south they'll drive straight at moscow they'll drive up toward leningrad and stalin will reel and reel and reel and 20 million soviets are going to die in this conflict we know all that what this book shows is that stalin misses all the signals we know what's going to happen he misses the signals he does you you close again it's absolutely fascinating and thrilling although tremendously annoying that you can't turn the page and get on to the invasion we have to wait for volume three but you close with the night before the invasion and you make the the german invasion of the soviet union and you make the point stalin is almost grudgingly his commanders see all kinds of german activity and he grudgingly permits the commanders to to raise the combat readiness of his troops but under strict instructions to avoid anything that might serve as a provocation for the nazis and a few hours after the germans give the signal to deploy and begin the invasion there's a soviet train that crosses the border carrying supplies for the germans how did stalin miss it we have to remember that's the great question and it's very difficult we have to remember though that stalin built a military power he spent a lot of time in his office known as the little corner inside the kremlin meeting with officials about military factories about new armaments about the latest and the greatest tanks and planes and artillery and even small arms and so he had prepared this was the greatest military in size of any the soviet military in 1941 in history it had the most troops it had the most tanks and planes not all of them however were up to date part of soviet militarization because it had started so early in the early 1930s was that they had an obsolete tank park and obsolete planes meaning they had been built years earlier the technology had improved but they still had those older ones in their tank park or on their airfields nonetheless he had prepared to fight a war however he was afraid he was afraid of the german army he had watched them overrun poland overrun like you said the low countries and then smash france six weeks france fell here's stalin's thinking the germans are going to become embroiled in a war in the west after all world war one lasted four years in a couple of months the idea that this would happen in six weeks that a great power like france and france was a great power with a gigantic military and great technology the idea that france would fall so quickly was really unthinkable to stall so things had shifted on him and the pact was no longer as brilliant after the fall of france the entire thing was predicated on all the capitalists remaining at war for a long period of time destroying each other but instead the germans destroyed their french enemy and were still fully intact and began to move their troops to the eastern border with the soviet union let's remember when stalin's borders moved west in all that land he acquired the result was now a border with nazi germany and the german buildup was right it was impossible to conceal and soviet intelligence reported on the build-up the storing of gasoline near the border the movement of tanks towards the border the number of troops up and down the border this was information stalin was receiving you have you have a document you have a photocopy of a document in here where stalin receives an intelligence report that there's trouble coming that the germans are moving in and he writes across it in the top you can send this tell this your officer that this to send it to his and then there's an expletive mother yeah uh this he's not this is not information this is disinformation one of the things about intelligence is that it's always contaminated with information which is not true known as disinformation right so we sweep up electronically everything imaginable in russia today and we think that that electronic surveillance of their cell phones and their internet and their landlines we think that that's firsthand knowledge but the russians are deliberately putting false information into that stream in order to confuse us and a little bit of disinformation can distract from accurate information that you've required so this is what the nazis did to stalin as well they inserted obviously false information into the intelligence so he was getting unbelievably good intelligence stalin was but it was contaminated by falsehoods that he could recognize and so this led him to disbelieve the veracity of the entire report he couldn't pick out what was the disinformation and what was the accurate information this contamination process was extremely successful on the german side moreover the germans planted fake stories that were plausible knowing stalin's psychology how to explain the troop buildup the first explanation was that it was there on the soviet eastern border in southeastern europe in order to attack british positions in the middle east because the british had still not capitulated they couldn't dislodge nazi germany from the continent from the occupation of france but the germans couldn't invade across the channel so the british were holding out so the germans told stalin by implanting the information let's remember the soviets had the best spy network in the world which the germans suspected and so by allowing whispering of information they knew that it would get back to stalin so they told stalin that those troops in southeastern europe on his border were not to attack him but they were to attack the british positions in the middle east and undermine forced british capitulation that way then they came up with a second story the second story was that oh there won't be an invasion there's gonna be blackmail the troops are there to intimidate so that hitler can get what he wants without fighting so for example he wants ukraine stalin will have to hand over the bread basket and industry of ukraine and so and if he doesn't the troops will invade so the blackmail theory so let me capture stone so the book the book ends i have one i have one more question which is dear to me because i really want to hear what you have to say about this so i want to get to this one last question in part two of our conversation but the book ends this wonderful apart from anything else highly dramatic but in the collectivization part and then the section on the great terror you be you can begin to get the feeling that this man is just omnipotent but as the book closes and he's confused by the german disinformation yes and he's believing what he wants to believe yes you see a human being uncertain well trapped so to speak by his own patterns of thought yes he's not omnipotent and he's about to reel as volume three over yes but here are my last my last couple of questions about volume two stalin waiting for hitler this question he pushes the country through famine and collectivization then comes the great terror when he eliminates over 800 000 kills over 800 000 people who are with him yes how does he do it at the human level and i have two two two specific examples vyacheslav molotov molotov's own wife is arrested and she's sent into internal exile and she stays there yes until stalin dies stalin keeps her in internal exile yes and vyacheslav molotov remains style loyal to stalin and to stalin's memory molotov is one of the last of the old bolsheviks to die he lives until 1986 and never utters a word of regret or disloyalty to joseph stalin you're right stalin's personal assistant the one who sits in the ante room and controls who's going to go in to see him chef thank you for pronouncing it alexander poscrobishev you got it stalin permits his wife roscolbychev's wife to be imprisoned and executed yeah and postrobi's chev remains loyal to stalin during the second world war he is working 20 hours a day with stalin and again he dies he dies in the 60s as i recall not a word of regret not a word of disloyalty this is just incomprehensible how yes to us it's very difficult to understand but let's remember once again stalin is a communist he's midwifing historical necessity he doesn't have time nor should he devote himself to worries about morality pangs of conscience individual victims who will forgive him if if the revolution is overthrown who will forgive him if he fails to build a communist state he will be guilty before history for having failed in his historical duty so everything becomes subsumed to this and mass murder becomes justified because it's part of the movement of history and the supposed greater good of humanity we don't have any documents that show second thoughts that show stalin wondering if he should have killed so many people or feeling guilt about the peasants who starved the documents we have and they're very voluminous are about stalin not wanting to fall short in building a great communist power and being angry at those who criticized him for doing so his minions they were in awe of him stalin had capabilities that they didn't have he had a diligence he worked long hours he read hundreds of documents a day he was in charge of culture the economy the political regime international relations right imagine if you are responsible for washington d.c new york city and hollywood all at the same time one person and he was able to put in the time to be on top of his brief sure blunders mistakes limited horizons but he was able to do it he was a dictator of immense aptitude and they saw that firsthand that he was advancing the cause he had no harem few mistresses he was utterly devoted to the destruction of capitalism sure a big story is what what the costs are the tremendous costs of eliminating markets and private property and how what we think what some leftists think is the solution is worse the elimination of markets and property doesn't get you to freedom yeah that's part of the story but for stalin it was necessary historically and for those around him they shared that view with him and they were in awe of his power i am also i don't have very much admiration for stalin in many ways he was this murderous mendacious murderous and mendacious are too too they don't even begin to describe what he's like but if you're interested in power you're interested in how power is accumulated and exercised and what the consequences are the subject of stalin is just unbelievably deep it's bottomless i've learned so many lessons about power evil power power that kills but power that also was motivated by ideals and those around him look like opportunists and cynics but they too believed in this dream of a better world it was a false god a false dream and the world wasn't better and we know that now and some of them figured that out along the way but in the meantime this guy stalin was carrying all of this on his back stephen cotkin the author of waiting for hitler 1929-1941 thank you for part two of our conversation by the way i said that was the last question it's not what's the publication date of volume three you were right the previous question was the last question stephen thank you thank you for uncommon knowledge on the hoover institution i'm peter robinson you

Channel: Hoover Institution

Views: 249,465

Rating: 4.8858752 out of 5

Keywords: Stalin, Stephen Kotkin, Hitler, WWII, USSR, Germany, World History, Military History, Communism, Fascism

Id: Fq5Q6YfJtC0

Length: 29min 31sec (1771 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 25 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/zombiesingularity]

What's weird about this guy Kotkin is for all his research on Stalin he never seemed to really learn about Marxism-Leninism. In Part 1 he said Communists think Capitalism is "evil", and that is the motivation to move to Socialism/Communism. Totally incorrect, Marx himself spoke of Capitalism as "progressive" compared to Feudalism. He also said the USSR "declined while the rest of the world moved forward" in 1917-1920s, and he made it seem like the source of decline was simply collectivizing 1% of agriculture. Totally ignores the massive civil war and invasions by other nations during this period. He also compared collectivization to serfdom, which is so absurd a thing to say on a Marxist analysis of history!

He says a lot if misleading things like this, and seems to intentionally or ignorantly paint half a picture so as to spread whatever agenda he seems to be pushing (Hoover Institute is a right wing capitalist organization).

That's not to say everything he says is wronf or without value, but it sure is incomplete and misleading. For a counter to the notion that Stalin was a "mass enslaver/murderer/criminal" see Grover Furr's talks online or his books, really impressive "revisionist" historian (revisionist historian is not a bad word to serious historians, history needs to be revised often).

[u/Sateloco]

I enjoyed this lecture, thank you for posting it! 😀

[u/westlib]

Peter Robinson is such a suck-up in this interview, it's painful to watch. Kotkin won't have to wipe his ass for a month.