Introduction
The article is devoted to the Soviet-German relations of the 1920s – the end of the 1930s. It considers the issues which are organically included in the general context of the European situation of the interwar period. The most important normative acts of those years – the Versailles Treaty, the Locarno and Rapallo agreements – are investigated. The influence of the core document of Hitlerism – Mein Kampf – and its influence on the formation and development of foreign policy doctrines of Nazi Germany is analyzed. The position of the Soviet Union with regard to the Weimar Republic before and after the National Socialists came to power in 1933 is assessed. The response to the strengthening of revanchist tendencies to solve problems generated by Versailles, was the Soviet Union’s search for the best options for the creation of a Europe a system of collective security. Particular attention is paid to the initial stage of Hitler’s aggressive course – the annexation of the Saar, the militarization of the Rhineland, the anschluss of Austria.
Research Questions
- How strong was revanchist sentiment in Germany after World War I?
- How great was the influence of the newly formed USSR state on postwar Germany?
- Why did Germany decide to go to war not only with the Allies, but also with the USSR?
Primary Source Review
Treaty of Versailles
The leader of Soviet Russia, V. I. Lenin wrote of the Treaty of Versailles, calling it a treaty of “predators and robbers, that “it is an unheard of predatory Peace, which puts tens of millions of people, including the most civilized,” in the position of slaves. It is possible to debate the degree of cruelty of the Versailles peace of 1919 in comparison with the peace treaty with Bolshevik Russia. But there is no doubt that the Versailles system established in Europe in 1920 was an extremely humiliating form of postwar order, above all for Germany, which had temporarily lost its status as a great power as a result of its defeat in World War I.
The ruling circles, the so-called elites of the country, which included the large financial and industrial oligarchic bourgeoisie as well as the army generals, experienced it most severely and painfully. For them, what happened was perceived as a disaster, and the desire to overcome it stimulated the development of right-wing political attitudes and sentiments in a large part of the German oligarchic military elites. The way out of the impasse they saw in the the revival of a strong authoritarian German state, capable of becoming an effective instrument for the revival of military and economic power in order to fight on the world stage to regain lost ground on the world stage.
Treaty of Rapallo
On April 16, 1922 during the Genoa Conference in Rapallo, Soviet Russia and the Weimar Republic signed a pact to restore diplomatic relations and resolve disputed issues. The parties renounced compensation for war expenses and losses, prisoner-of-war expenses, and introduced the principle of favorable treatment in trade and economic relations. Germany recognized the nationalization of German state and private property in the RSFSR and the cancellation of the tsarist debts. It was the first treaty between Russia and Germany after World War I. It was confirmed and expanded by new treaties, such as the Berlin Treaty of 1926. With the Treaty of Rapallo, the internationally isolated parties hoped to strengthen their position in the political arena. The signing was also important for the economies of the two countries: Russia was a market for German industrial products; cooperation with Germany was the only way for Russia to industrialize.
Hitler and the Nazi Ideology
It was not surprising that in this country, deprived of many sovereign rights, nationalist and revanchist forces became active, with the National-Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany becoming their main spokesman. In April 1920, the party published its “25 points” program document. It is from this year we can begin the history of Hitlerism. Especially because Adolf Hitler, along with A. Drexler and H. Feder was a compiler of this document. It clearly stated the need to abolish the Treaty of Versailles, to unite all German-speaking Europeans and give them new territories for the development of the German nation. Many points of the nationalist program were clearly racist and anti-Semitic. In the social part of the “25 points”, there was an eclectic mix of demands addressed to the proletariat, as well as appeals to the small and medium-sized bourgeoisie, without accentuating criticism of big German capital.
The “25 Points” were a kind of application for a National Socialist vision of Europe and the world. The book Mein Kampf, which appeared in 1924 while Hitler and his associates were imprisoned after the so-called beer coup in Munich, became the “gospel of Nazism” for the next two decades or more. In his work, Hitler put forward the core idea of Nazism: the conquest of living space, which should not be based on colonial acquisitions inherent in the geopolitics of the Kaiser period and trade expansion, but on obtaining living space for Germans directly in the Old World. “The only possibility of a sound territorial policy for Germany lies in the acquisition of new lands in Europe itself.” Hitler urged the Germans to seek new territories, to create for themselves a living space in the eastern part of Europe, primarily in Russia and in those peripheral states that are subordinate to it.
Hitler called France the main opponent of Germany in Europe. It is necessary, above all, “to destroy the desire of France for hegemony in Europe. It is necessary to move from “passive defense” in relations with this state to a final “active calculation” with the French: “the first thing to do is to take Alsace away from them. In this way it will be possible “to provide the German people with the possibility of further expansion. Considering France to be the main culprit of the Versailles diktat, the main military opponent of Germany, Hitler believed that it was Russia that would become the geopolitical reservoir from which the new Germany would emerge. “The gigantic state in the East is ripe for collapse, we are chosen by fate itself to witness a catastrophe that will bring a decisive confirmation of the correctness of racial theory.” Germany alone, however, cannot meet the challenge. It must find allies with whom to defeat the ‘eastern monster,’ for a coalition whose aim is not war has no price or meaning.” In the years that followed before he came to power, Hitler repeatedly returned to Themes raised in Struggle on several occasions.
In the summer of 1932, a few months before his victorious Reichstag elections, the future Führer in a conversation with like-minded H. Rauschning developed his geopolitical strategy. “We will never achieve world domination unless a powerful, steel-hard core of 80 or 100 million Germans is created for our development.” In this nucleus, in addition to Germany itself, Hitler saw Austria, Czechoslovakia, and part of Poland. Vassal states in the Baltics, Finland, Hungary, Serbia, Croatia, Romania, Ukraine, and a number of territories that were part of the USSR were to group around the German nucleus. In his revelations of the late 20s and early 30s, Hitler repeatedly returned to the subject of the Allies in My Struggle. Joseph Goebbels, who shared a prison cell with Hitler, recalled one of the future Führer’s statements: Italy and England are our natural allies.
He did not deny that the Treaty of Versailles was largely the work of London. However, the latter was anti-Soviet, which objectively brought the Nazis closer to the British ruling elite. Hitler’s geopolitical ambitions also included using the Hungarian fascists against his unsympathetic Czechs and Romanians and using the then dictator of Spain, Primo De Rivera, as a deterrent against France. All Hitler needed to realize his Nazi geopolitics was to come to power. That sad historical event took place after the electoral victory of the National Socialists in December 1932 and the transfer of power of the chancellor by German president Hindenburg on January 30, 1933 to the leader of the Nazi party.
Toward the Munich deal and World War II
The coming to power of the German National Socialists was in a way surprise for the political beau monde of Europe. The leaders of Great Britain and France were confident that, as in previous parliamentary elections, the winners would be the German bourgeois parties or the Social Democrats. The Soviet leadership believed in the success of the German Communists, whose leader, Ernst Thaelmann, in his speeches at Comintern congresses, assured them that the working class in Germany would not tolerate the establishment of a Nazi regime in the country. Stalin and his entourage did not take seriously the possibility of the establishment of Nazi power in Germany. When this happened, however, it soon became clear – the spirit of Rapallo was irrevocably gone and one should look for ways to maintain a relatively peaceful climate in Europe. Especially since Hitler left no doubt in his revelations: anti-Bolshevism would become the alpha and omega of his policy.
Already in his New Year’s speech of 1933 in the pages of the Nazi press, while still Hitler declared his desire to destroy both Marxism, as well as “the great danger of Bolshevism.” The Treaty of Versailles, he said, was a misfortune not only for Germany but also for other nations. In his opinion, the revision of the documents of 1919 should have been demanded not only by the Germans, but also the whole world. He spoke favorably to France for the first time if the latter proposed to revise the Versailles and Locarno treaties. To England and the United States he promised to pay German debts and hinted at the possibility of disarmament on a global on a global scale.
The Nazis were not stingy with statements about a “new partnership” with these countries. Even Bolshevism, which was unacceptable to him, was not primarily seen by him as a state policy of the USSR, but as an intra-German phenomenon. However,
After Hitler provoked the Reichstag fire and the prohibition of the Communist Party, the Communist danger was again projected onto the Comintern and the Soviet Union. Hitler’s explicit anti-Soviet and anti-communist escapades clearly defined the boundary between the former, Rapallo period of relations between the two countries and the new confrontational format of these relations. In this fundamentally new situation, the Soviet leadership made an emphasis on the international legal formalization of the repulse to aggression, the main exponent of which was Hitler’s Germany. The question of the USSR’s accession to the League of Nations, to The Soviet Union had been very skeptical about the League’s activities since the founding of this supposedly important forum of world politics.
Note that Germany left the League in the fall of 1933 and the Soviet Union became a full member a year later. Subsequently, representatives of the Soviet Union in the League of Nations actively used its rostrum not only to criticize any actions incompatible with the principles of peaceful existence. They put forward initiatives that could at least partially defuse the European situation that had become increasingly explosive after Hitler’s accession to power. The Soviet Union also used other forums to articulate its proposals aimed at preventing a possible aggressor.
Thus, in February 1933, Soviet proposals for defining an aggressor were made public at the already mentioned international conference on disarmament. The meaning of this initiative was to bring international legal norms under the possible actions of the alleged aggressor. Five points were put forward for discussion at the conference, relating to possible acute conflict situations. In order of priority there were the following: declaration of war on another state; invasion of the territory of another state by one’s own armed forces without a declaration of war; attack of armed forces on the sea or airspace of another state, its naval blockade, support of armed bands invading its territory.
1935 was an important milestone in the confrontation of different strands of European politics. In January Hitler organized a plebiscite in the Saarland, bypassing all international legal norms, which resulted in full German control of the Saar coal basin. In the following month, the Wehrmacht was significantly increased. These events stimulated France, to some extent, to seek a counterbalance to the apparent German onslaught. In May, the Soviet-French treaty was signed, which suggested some measures to repel possible aggression. In the same month a very similar document was signed with the USSR by Czechoslovakia, which really felt Hitler’s expansionist plans for the Sudetenland. Note that Great Britain considered the rapprochement of both countries with the USSR untimely, allegedly giving extra trumps in the hands of Nazi Germany. Meanwhile, these treaties had no specific framework agreement on the military cooperation between the three countries, which in the critical situation of the autumn of 1938 made them ineffective.
These agreements meant a certain shift in the public mood in Europe. Already in the summer of that year, at the Seventh Congress of the Comintern, the idea of cooperation between communists and social-democrats was first fixed in a special resolution and the line between bourgeois-democratic and fascist regimes was marked. The concept of the Popular Front was introduced in the practical work of the Communist Party, which was realized in France and Spain as early as the following year, 1936. But pro-fascist forces were also joining forces. In October 1936, the German-Italian alliance (Berlin-Rome axis), which was being prepared for a long time, was formed.
As for the Soviet Union, it, as it followed from the speech of the then M.M. Litvinov, then Commissar of Foreign Affairs, at a meeting of the Council of the League of Nations 1936, it really saw both the tactical and strategic objectives of this adventure. For the USSR, said Litvinov, it was clear that although the immediate task of the Rhenish zone is to prepare aggression against neighboring states, but the Soviet Union remains the main object of its prospective aggressive actions. The occupation of the Saarland and the militarization of the Rhine zone became an important part of the Nazi strategy of creating a “German living space” in Europe. Having encountered no real resistance from the West, Hitler was able to begin to realize his most important geopolitical task – increasing the territories of neighboring countries with a German-speaking population.
Conclusion
Strong revanchist sentiments were caused by a number of factors. The first was Germany’s exorbitant ambitions, which were initially fueled by military, economic and political successes. The second component of revanchism is the outcome of World War I. First of all, these are the provisions of the Versailles Treaty of 1919, which were particularly humiliating for Germany. The third is the unconditional support for German revanchism by financial injections from the United States and England in the interwar period. Financial support helped Germany not only to rebuild its national economy, but also to start World War II. Now, almost a century later, it is obvious that the situation in which Germany found itself after World War I and such a humiliating peace could not but cause the growth of radical sentiments in society.
It is a well-known fact that the Germans, in reviving their fighting power, cooperated closely with the Red Army of Soviet Russia. Germany regarded Russia as a natural ally of Germany and did not regard it as an adversary. The Treaty of Versailles was a major impetus for bilateral cooperation between Russia and Germany. Since the end of World War I, Europeans have pursued an ambiguous policy toward Germany. On the one hand, it was in international isolation under the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, and this inevitably pushed it on the path of rapprochement with Soviet Russia, which was also a rogue state. On the other hand, the West was wary of a rapprochement between Germany and Soviet Russia and sought to push the two states together. The exchange of military equipment, goods, and economic and political ties made cooperation multifaceted, as well as allowed for the strengthening of the German Communist Party, indicating the high influence of the USSR.
The Dawes Plan and the cooperation of the USSR made possible the strengthening of Germany and a new, bloodier war involving a large number of countries. Thus began Germany’s preparations to take revenge in World War II. On the one hand, Soviet Russia and Germany were prompted to cooperate by the humiliating and onerous Versailles agreements; on the other hand, huge financial contributions from Western countries helped to strengthen German revanchism. Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 was also possible for these reasons. In the end, this led to a clash of revanchist Germany not only with the Soviet Union, but also with Europe. For the U.S., this state of affairs was beneficial because they saw Europe as a natural rival and wanted to weaken Hitler at her hands. The Treaty of Versailles and Western policy towards Germany, as well as internal changes in Russia were the catalyst for the tragic events of 1939-1945.
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