undoubtedly severely shaken by Hitler’s victory in
France, but he did not show it. On the contrary,
he was in June 1940 unexpectedly tough, de-
manding that Romania return Bessarabia to Russia
and, for good measure, the province of Bukovina.
He wished to anticipate German dominance in a
strategic region bordering on the Soviet Union.
Hitler put pressure on Romania to comply. But
secretly he had already made his plans for the
invasion of Russia.
Fears in the Kremlin of German dominance in
the Balkans led to a sharp deterioration of good
relations. This became evident when Molotov,
the Soviet foreign minister, visited Berlin in
November 1940. Molotov’s demands infuriated
Hitler and reinforced his determination to ‘smash’
Russia. Yet at the same time Stalin was anxious not
to give Germany any pretext for attack and loyally
fulfilled to the bitter end all Russia’s economic
undertakings to deliver war materials. When the
Germans struck on 22 June 1941, the Soviet
forces were totally unprepared. Despite all the
information on the impending German onslaught
reaching Stalin from spies and from the Allies, he
either disbelieved it as an Allied plot to involve the
Soviet Union in war or was afraid to take precau-
tionary military counter-measures for fear of pro-
voking the Germans. His failure in June 1941 was
one of the most extraordinary displays of weakness
by this hard and ruthless dictator.
Hitler’s decision to launch his war on Russia
marks the second turning point in the Second
World War; the first was Britain fighting on and
made his ultimate defeat certain when he failed to
destroy Russia militarily in this new Blitzkriegdur-
ing the first few months. Previous German military
successes had made him overconfident. The war
with the Soviet Union repeated the ‘war of attri-
tion’ that had brought the First World War to an
end. The Russian war from 1941 to 1945 was a
war of dramatic movement, unlike the trench war-
fare on the Western front – but its effect in
destroying millions of soldiers and huge quantities
of material, in the end, bled the Third Reich to
death. Why did Hitler attack the Soviet Union?
After the fall of France, Hitler hoped Britain
would sue for peace. After the failure of the
Luftwaffe in the battle of Britain, Hitler for the
time being abandoned the alternative of subjugat-
ing the British Isles militarily. He also failed in
October 1940 to win Franco’s and Pétain’s sup-
port for a joint Mediterranean strategy for destroy-
ing Britain’s Mediterranean power. Hitler now
reasoned that the war against Russia, which he had
all along intended to wage as the centrepiece of his
ideological faith and territorial ambition, should be
launched before Britain’s defeat. It was to serve the
additional, though not primary, purpose of con-
vincing Britain that it was useless to continue the
war any longer. Hitler gave the order to prepare
Operation Barbarossa on 18 December 1940.
A series of brief Balkan campaigns in the spring
of 1941 ensured that the invasion of Russia would
be undertaken on a broad front without any pos-
sibility of a hostile flank. Fear of Germany,
together with hostility to Russia, had turned
Romania, Hungary and Slovakia into more or less
enthusiastic junior German partners who all
declared war on Russia, as did Italy and Finland.
They felt safe under Germany’s military umbrella.
Bulgaria, though practically occupied by German
troops, remained neutral. Hitler thought Yugo-
slavia too was in the bag when the Regent, Prince
Paul, signed a treaty with Germany in March- But there was a revolt against the Regent
and the new government repudiated the German
alignment. Yugoslavia’s resistance did not last
long. The Germans attacked on 6 April and the
Hungarians faithlessly joined in three days later.
In less than two weeks Yugoslav resistance was
overpowered. Did the diversion in the Balkans,
though minor for Germany, have momentous
consequences by delaying the attack on the Soviet
Union – a delay that meant the Wehrmacht
ground to a halt in front of Moscow in the bitter
winter of 1941–2? The campaign was too slight
to affect significantly the time it took to assemble
the huge build-up of men, equipment and sup-
plies for the Russian invasion. In the early hours
of 22 June 1941 the Germans launched the attack
with approximately 190 German and satellite divi-
sions. The Soviet Union had no choice but to
enter into an alliance with Britain and, later, into
alignment with the US as well. The consequences
of this new war unleashed by Hitler proved
momentous for the course of world history.