Page 202 - The Chief Culprit

Destruction of the Buffer States between Germany and the Soviet Union y 163

capitalist world was forced to tremble and cede to our will. We, the fighters of the Red Army,
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should not be content and stop at what has been attained!” is was not the speech of a poli-
tician and not the announcement of a journalist. It was an official decree for the Red Army.
But to the west of Soviet borders there was only Germany, or her allies; and a pact had been
signed with Germany
Stalin made no secret of how a true Communist should view promises and pacts: “ e
question of struggle . . . needs to be examined not from the standpoint of fairness, but from
the standpoint of demands of the political moment, from the standpoint of the political
demands of the [Communist] Party at each given moment.” “A war can turn upside down
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each and every pact.” Here are the “political demands”: “History says that when any country
wants to fight against another country, even one that it does not neighbor, it begins to seek
out borders, through which it could reach the borders of the country it wants to attack,”
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Stalin wrote.
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Stalin needed a situation in which “capitalists gnaw at each other like dogs.” e
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact created precisely that situation. Pravda’s tone was excited: “Each
war like this one brings us closer to that happy period, when there will be no more killings
among people.” Lieutenant General S. M. Krivoshein describes a conversation with his dep-
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uty, P. M. Latyshev (at that time Krivoshein commanded the 25th Motorized Corps): “We
made a deal with the Germans, but this does not mean anything. . . . Now is the best time for
a final and constructive resolution to all of the world’s problems.”
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Before the war, the main Communist Party newspaper, Pravda, did not call upon the
Soviet people to build defenses. Pravda’s tone was different: soon the entire world will belong
to us. “Our country is great. e globe itself needs to rotate nine hours in order for our huge
Soviet country to enter the new year of its victories. ere will be a time when it will need for
this not nine hours, but a whole twenty-four. . . . And who knows where we will be greeting
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the New Year in five or ten years: along what time belt, on what new Soviet meridian?” With
the date of the Soviet break-in into Europe approaching, Pravda became more and more
straightforward: “Divide your enemies, temporarily satisfy the demands of each of them, and
then crush them one by one, without giving them an opportunity to unite.” 12
Hitler decided that he should wait no longer. He made the first move without waiting
for the blow in the back from the liberating axe. But even having started the war in the most
favorable circumstances that had ever existed for an assailant, he was unable to win. Even in
the most unfavorable of circumstances, the Red Army managed to “liberate” half of Europe
and dominate Eastern Europe for half a century. One wonders what the outcome would
have been if the best German forces had left the European continent to go to Africa and the
British Isles, and, behind their back, the Red Army had destroyed the only German oil source
in Romania?