(4 of 10)
Still, it was a very difficult step to take. Here we were -- communists, antifascists, people who were philosophically opposed to Hitler -- suddenly joining forces with him in this war. Stalin thought he was buying time. The % treaty wouldn't save us from a German attack -- it would only give us a chance to catch our breath. The day he signed the pact with Ribbentrop, Stalin said, "Well, for the time being at least, we've deceived Hitler" -- showing he understood the inevitability of war.
When Hitler moved with such lightning speed against France in 1940, it was clear that the war in the West was a rehearsal for one in the East. Stalin was extremely nervous. Even in normal times he had the habit of pacing during a meeting. On this occasion, he was racing around, cursing like a cabdriver. He cursed the French and the English. How could they allow Hitler to roll over them this way? Now it was our turn. Stalin understood that.
No one with an ounce of political sense should buy the idea that we were caught flat-footed by a treacherous surprise assault. Yet to this day some of Stalin's lackeys are trying to whitewash his failure to prepare us adequately by saying Hitler fooled us by breaking the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
I remember coming to see Stalin at the beginning of the war at the High Command Headquarters on Myasnitskaya Street. He was by then a sack of bones in a gray tunic. He asked me, "How's it going?"
"Badly," I replied. "We've got no weapons."
Stalin answered slowly, in a low voice. "Well, everyone talks about how smart Russians are. Look how smart we are now." On another occasion, early in the war, he said, "Lenin left us a state and we turned it to shit."
As an illustration of how desperate he was, Stalin tried to make a very secret approach to Hitler during the war. I think it was in 1942. Stalin wanted to reach an agreement that would let the Germans keep the territory they occupied in the Ukraine, Belorussia and even certain areas of the Russian Federation. One of our people was sent to Bulgaria and instructed to inform a German contact there that the Soviet Union was willing to make some territorial concessions. There was never any answer from Hitler. Apparently, he felt the Soviet Union's days were numbered. Why enter into negotiations when everything was practically his anyway?
Of course, Stalin would say that he was just stalling for time so that he could build up our forces and eventually win back what he had given away. But to gain time at the cost of such concessions!
That was the Stalin I remember during the war. Yet after the victory, there he was, strutting around like a rooster, his chest puffed out and his nose sticking up in the sky.
I still feel the pain of these memories. I still experience an ache for the people of Russia. Those who shield Stalin from blame are nothing but ass kissers.
Waging the Cold War