Page 167 - The Chief Culprit

128 y e Chief Culprit

same time, the shipyards of the Narkomat all began to operate on two extended shifts, which
practically meant a regime of wartime production. e result of this was that by June 22,
1941, the Soviet Union possessed 218 submarines in its ranks and 91 more in shipyards.
Surface warships were also being built, as well as bought from abroad. For example,
right before the war a ship of amazing gracefulness of form and an unusual coloring appeared
on the Black Sea. People who did not know what type of ship this beauty was nicknamed
it the “blue cruiser.” In fact, the ship was a destroyer leader, not a cruiser. It was called the
Tashkent. e Soviet Military Encyclopedia says of most noteworthy ships that they were “built
at one of the domestic shipyards.” However, this is not said about the Tashkent; only the year
it was accepted into the fleet is mentioned—1940. e usual words are absent because the
pride and beauty of the Black Sea fleet, the leader Tashkent, was built in fascist Italy and sold
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to Stalin.
e Tashkent was purchased without weapons. Mussolini would have sold Stalin the
weapons as well, but at that time there was nothing in the world that came remotely close to
the Soviet 130-mm ship cannon. erefore, the Tashkent was armed with Soviet cannon in
the shipyards of Nikolaev.
Italy was not the only country that sold warships to Stalin. On May 31, 1940, the un-
finished German cruiser Lutsow, renamed the Petropavlovsk, arrived in Leningrad and was de-
livered to the shipyard of shipbuilding plant #189. A cruiser is a huge and complex structure,
the building of which would have taken several years to complete, and there was not enough
time to introduce changes into its design and to equip it with Soviet weapons. It was decided
to build it completely according to German designs and equip it with German weapons, and
Germany supplied the weapons.
All this seems unbelievable: May 1940, the heat of the German blitzkrieg in Western
Europe, the British fleet blockading the German navy. Hitler had only two options left—
either to fight against Britain, for which he needed a powerful fleet, or to seek peace with
Britain, for which he also needed a powerful fleet: an enraged Britain would obviously not
negotiate with a weak Germany, but instead would demand its immediate withdrawal from
all occupied territories. Hitler lagged far behind Britain in the number of above-water ships,
and in this critical time he was selling his unfinished, most modern ship to Stalin!
Stalin’s behavior is also surprising: he declared neutrality, but continued to build a
gigantic fleet and, moreover, bought warships from countries already at war. e answer to
this riddle is simple: in 1940 Germany was already suffering from a terrible deficit of raw
materials because her naval routes were blockaded, so Hitler could only buy large enough
quantities and assortments of materials from Stalin. In exchange for this, Hitler was forced to
sell his technology and weaponry, including his newest planes, cannon, ships, communica-
tions devices, firearms, and so forth.
Stalin knew that the German economy was facing a crisis, and he could have chosen
not to sell raw materials to Hitler. In that case, the war in Europe would have quickly died
down. But Stalin wanted the war to gain strength, so that France, Britain, Germany, and all
the other countries would expend themselves. Stalin planned to use their weakened position
and establish his own regime in Europe. For this Stalin was building up his fleet, buying mili-
tary technology from everywhere possible, and feeding Hitler the raw materials he needed.
Some might ask why Stalin’s two hundred submarines and the rest of his navy could not
give the kind of resistance that was to be expected from the most powerful underwater fleet