A Sense of the Enemy: The High Stakes History of Reading Your Rival's Mind (15 page)

Stalin did try to understand Hitler’s main drivers by reading a translated edition of
Mein Kampf
. The Nazi leader was, if nothing else, unsubtle; Hitler stated plainly that the primary aim of German foreign policy had to be the acquisition of land and soil. National borders, he insisted, could always be changed. According to Hitler, a nation’s existence depended on sufficient living space, not merely for the production of food but also for military and political needs. As a nation grows, its need for land follows. From Hitler’s perspective, the acquisition of territory was inextricably bound to great power status: “Germany will either be a world power, or there will be no Germany. And for world power she needs that magnitude which will give her the position she needs in the present period and life to her citizens.”
¹⁷

Regarding Russia, Hitler made his views equally plain. He wrote,

The Russian state was not formed by the Slavs, but by the German element within Russia. Today Russia is dominated by Jews. The giant empire in the east is ripe for collapse. And the end of Jewish rule in Russia will also be the end of Russia as a state. We have been chosen by fate as witnesses of a catastrophe which will be the mightiest confirmation of the soundness of the Volkisch theory.
¹⁸

As for his opinion of Soviet leaders, Hitler characteristically pulled no punches:

Never forget that the rulers of present-day Russia are common, blood-stained criminals, that they are the scum of humanity, which, favored by circumstances, overran a great state in a tragic hour, slaughtered
and wiped out thousands of her leading intelligentsia in wild blood lust. And now for almost ten years have been carrying on the most cruel and tyrannical regime of all time. Furthermore, do not forget that these rulers belong to a race which combines in a rare mixture of bestial cruelty and an inconceivable gift for lying, and which today more than ever is conscious of a mission to impose its bloody oppression on the whole world.
¹⁹

For Hitler, Russia represented the perfect enemy. Ruled by Marxist Jews, it sought to impose its ideology upon whomever it could control. Germany, he believed, was its prime target: “Do not forget that the international Jew, who completely dominates Russia today, regards Germany not as an ally, but as a state destined to the same fate.”
²⁰
Germany, therefore, had a mission to save itself by simultaneously destroying Jewish Bolshevism and liberating the Russian soil for use by the German race.

Stalin read these declarations by Hitler and discussed
Mein Kampf
with his close colleague, Andrei Zhdanov, but the knowledge that Hitler dreamt of conquering Russia’s vast lands could not override Stalin’s simulation process.
²¹
A realist simply would not invade Russia when a two-front war would ensue.

Stalin’s Foreign Minister and close colleague, Vyachaslav Molotov, also tried to read his way into Hitler’s mind. One source he engaged was Hermann Rauschning’s best-selling study,
Hitler Speaks
.
²²
Unfortunately for Molotov, the book was mostly fabrication. Rauschning claimed to have spoken with Hitler on 100 occasions. In fact, postwar scholarship determined that they had only met four times. Most historians today consider Rauschning’s book a largely illegitimate source.

To his credit, Stalin did employ multiple methods for getting into Hitler’s head. In addition to reading Hitler’s own words, he fell back on his favorite pastime: consuming histories and searching for lessons. He found one main principle and latched onto it. It was never wise for Germany to fight a two-front war, and the fear of this scenario haunted German generals and statesmen alike. Unfortunately for Stalin, he assumed that Hitler would be constrained by the weight of historical precedence. He projected a rational, realist worldview onto Hitler, imagining that the Führer would not violate this cardinal rule of German military strategy.
²³

Stalin saw clearly that Hitler wanted war. He expected a German attack at some future time and hoped to forestall it as long as possible. But by the close of 1940, Stalin still did not yet have a clear sense of Hitler’s more immediate plans or timeframe. Reading histories only offered general lessons. There were no guarantees that the Führer would obey them.
Mein Kampf
, for its part, revealed a racist worldview, the dogma of a fanatic, and, at points, the thinking of a realist. The underlying driver lay somewhere therein.
Mein Kampf
presented Stalin with the classic problem of a great mass of information. It seemed impossible to determine from its rambling tracts and turgid prose precisely what Hitler’s underlying motivations were. Looking back, it seems all too clear that acquisition of living space and extermination of Slavs and Jews were paramount. But at the time it could also have been read as the demagogic rants of a man bent on seizing power. Stalin needed a heuristic for determining whether racism or realism was Hitler’s prime driver.

Despite confidence in his own analysis of the enemy, Stalin still harbored some qualms about Hitler’s intentions prior to Barbarossa. To uncover the riddle wrapped in a mystery, Stalin would enlist one other method. He would send his colleague, Foreign Minister Molotov, to meet with Hitler and attempt to glean his thoughts.

The time was right for another high-level meeting between Soviet and German officials. With Japan’s entry into the Axis on September 27, 1940, the Soviets could easily be encircled if the Germans and Japanese should jointly attack. For the time being, the Japanese had been deterred thanks to Marshall Zhukov’s skillful leadership during clashes with the Japanese army at Nomonhan in Mongolia. With their noses bloodied, the Japanese turned southward for expansion. As for the Germans, the Nazi–Soviet pact kept Stalin’s western front safe only as long as Hitler intended to honor it. Molotov therefore needed to gain some sense of Hitler’s intentions, or better still, a sense of the Chancellor’s key drivers.

Before we examine Molotov’s mission, we need to explore a similar attempt to read Hitler’s mind. Across the Atlantic a rather different type of world leader was about to attempt the same method of dispatching a personal envoy to probe Hitler’s plans. President Roosevelt possessed a firm grasp of Hitler’s basic character and the nature of the Nazi regime. Despite this understanding, FDR did not know Hitler’s intentions
regarding the Soviet Union or the course of the war. By the early months of 1940, with Germany occupying part of Poland and at war with England and France, Roosevelt would not have been so naïve as to suspect that a peace initiative could succeed.
²⁴
Nonetheless, the President enlisted his most trusted foreign policy advisor, Sumner Welles, to hold talks with the highest-ranking German officials, including an audience with the Führer himself.

5
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A Rendezvous With Evil

How Roosevelt Read Hitler

STALIN’S EFFORTS TO UNDERSTAND
and predict Hitler’s actions stood in contrast to President Roosevelt’s approach most notably in three distinct ways. First, Stalin tried to read his way into Hitler’s mind by studying
Mein Kampf
along with German military histories. He tended to dismiss or disparage the information sent to him by his Soviet representatives in Berlin. Roosevelt, conversely, placed stock in the information he received from American officials in Germany. He took pains to establish back-door channels through which information would flow directly to him from his chosen representatives. Second, whereas Stalin simulated what he would do in Hitler’s place, Roosevelt mentalized by asking what Hitler would do based on a theory of what made Hitler tick. Third, Stalin assumed that the behavior of past German leaders could serve as a useful guide to predicting the current German leader’s actions. FDR may not have used the pattern break heuristic precisely, but it is clear that his image of the Führer was shaped in part by the information he obtained during pattern-break moments. By examining the data that Roosevelt received, we can gain a glimpse into how the American President formed a picture of Hitler’s mind, and we can contrast that with Stalin’s approach.

Franklin Roosevelt came to office in 1933 facing an extraordinary economic crisis. The widespread unemployment, hunger, and privation across the nation made revolution seem like a genuine possibility. As a result, we would not expect foreign affairs to have been foremost in
FDR’s thoughts during his first term. Nonetheless, Roosevelt took care to stay informed of German and European developments. Hitler’s more violent actions certainly caught the President’s attention.

Although Stalin praised Hitler’s first pattern break, the mass shootings of SA leaders in 1934, Franklin Roosevelt was less sanguine about the affair. It is unclear precisely what Roosevelt thought about the Night of the Long Knives, though he clearly found it disturbing. One day after the mass murders occurred, in a private correspondence to his personal secretaries who were traveling to Europe, FDR warned them not to go to Germany and to avoid riots and revolutions. “The U.S.A. needs you,” he added affectionately, “and so do I.”
¹
Nevertheless, he did not consider the killings sufficiently distressing to warrant remaining in Washington. That evening, FDR departed for a previously scheduled summer vacation, though he continued to request information on the unfolding events. In fact, he steadily sought out both official and back-door channels to gauge the nature of Hitler’s young regime.

At Secretary of State Cordell Hull’s request, the American Ambassador to Germany, William E. Dodd, telegrammed his analysis of the rapidly changing situation in Berlin. Given the confusion, fear, and propaganda surrounding the purge, it is understandable that the Ambassador could not report with full accuracy. He did, however, grasp that the SA was finished as a military organization. Lutze, who replaced Röhm as SA chief, was not appointed to the Cabinet as Röhm had been. Dodd correctly concluded that the Reichswehr’s power had been greatly enhanced as a result of what occurred on June 30.
²

On July 12, the director of America’s National Recovery Administration, retired Army General Hugh S. Johnson, delivered bold, honest, and obviously inflammatory remarks on the purge. General Johnson’s role atop that organization made him a well-known public figure. He had been
Time
’s “Man of the Year” in 1933. Given his status, Johnson’s comments naturally garnered attention. In a public statement, General Johnson declared that the events of June 30 had made him physically ill: “The idea that adult, responsible men can be taken from their homes, stood up against a wall, backs to the rifles and shot to death is beyond expression.” Then Johnson remarked that he had witnessed such savagery in Mexico by semicivilized drunks, but he could not comprehend how
such barbarity could happen in a supposedly civilized and cultured nation like Germany. Naturally, the German Charge d’Affaires visited Hull to make an official protest. Hull took the standard diplomatic line: General Johnson was speaking as an individual citizen and not in any official capacity as a representative of the U.S. government. It was to be regretted that his remarks were misconstrued as an official U.S. position.

The following day Hull cabled all of this information to FDR, who was traveling aboard the
USS Houston
. Hull stated that he hoped the President approved of his actions. Roosevelt replied simply, “Cordially approved.”
³

Germany was not FDR’s primary concern in the summer of 1934. Recovering from the Depression and furthering the New Deal occupied more of his attention at that time. Yet the Röhm purge helped to form Roosevelt’s early impressions of Hitler and his regime. Hitler’s brutality was evident. Less obvious were the German Chancellor’s longer-term objectives in elevating the Reichswehr over the SA. Though the purge signaled a meaningful pattern break, it is doubtful that Roosevelt recognized this at the time. Nonetheless, in sharp contrast to Stalin, FDR could not identify himself with Hitler’s actions. When mentalizing about Hitler, it would be necessary for Roosevelt to construct a theory of how the Führer thought. FDR could not readily project himself into Hitler’s head, especially because the Nazi regime increasingly revealed itself to be bent on racist ends

FDR frequently circumvented the standard diplomatic chain of command by engaging in direct communications with key ambassadors, undoubtedly to the annoyance of Hull and other Foreign Service officials. On August 15, 1934, Ambassador Dodd wrote directly to the President, summarizing his impressions of the German situation. Dodd observed that displays of militarism were increasing across the country, despite Hitler’s protestations of peaceful intentions. He reported that in an audience with Hitler, the Chancellor had assured him that Germany would never go to war. The only way a war could be triggered, Hitler insisted, would be if violent SA men acted against his commands. Yet Dodd could not help noticing that Hitler’s assurances were frequently contradicted by his government’s actions. In particular, Dodd had sought to assure Jews in the United States that they were not threatened by the Nazi regime. Soon thereafter Dodd read a speech by Propaganda
Minister Joseph Goebbels calling Jews “the syphilis of all European peoples.”