The Problem of Projected Rationality
BY THE SUMMER OF 1941, 3 million soldiers were preparing for the largest invasion in history. For months German aircraft had been flying reconnaissance over Soviet airspace, noting the position of Russian planes and military installations. German troops had been boarding trains headed east and not returning. Soviet spies were sending back to Moscow a steady stream of warning signs that attack was soon to come. Then, just five days before the assault, the head of Soviet foreign intelligence delivered a report from a source inside Hermann Göring’s Air Ministry. All preparations for the invasion of Russia were complete. The strike was imminent. Yet when Stalin received the intelligence, he scratched across it: “You can send your source from the headquarters of German aviation to his fucking mother.” The Soviet leader simply refused to believe what was obvious to everyone else.
In fact, Stalin had been receiving reliable intelligence, and lots of it, since 1939. It increased after December 1940, when Hitler issued Directive Number 21, ordering his generals to prepare to conquer Russia. On May 19, 1941, Richard Sorge, the posthumously famous German who spied for the USSR from Japan, reported that a massive German invasion would happen by month’s end. Sorge’s network had penetrated the Japanese General Staff as well as the high-ranking German officials in Tokyo, and his information was typically reliable. Yet Stalin dismissed the reports as disinformation, calling Sorge “a little shit who has set himself up with some factories and brothels in Japan.”1
When war came, Russia was utterly unprepared. The initial German onslaught, dubbed Operation Barbarossa, was so effective it almost seemed as though the entire campaign would be over in weeks. Much of the Soviet Air Force was destroyed before its planes ever left the ground. The poorly led troops on the western borders were slaughtered by the thousands. Stalin’s purges, which had cut deep into his officer corps, left the nation vulnerable, just as Hitler had expected. Eventually, the Russians would regroup, reorganize, and retaliate without mercy, though they would lose an estimated 20 million citizens before the war was won.
Why did Stalin fail so spectacularly to recognize that Hitler planned to invade Russia in June 1941? Numerous scholars have attempted to fathom Stalin’s seemingly inscrutable behavior on the eve of war. Gabriel Gorodetsky,2 David Murphy,3 Dmitri Volkogonov,4 Geoffrey Roberts,5 and David Holloway,6 to name only a few, have all combed the historical record for clues. This chapter does not attempt to unearth new archival findings that will definitively settle the mystery. Instead, it reexamines the question of Stalin’s failure in order to further illuminate this book’s two key questions: what produces strategic empathy, and how has its presence, or absence, affected international history.
Much of the scholarship on Operation Barbarossa has centered on Stalin’s intelligence before the attack. Some have argued that the Soviet leader received all the information he needed to make defensive preparations and that his failure to do so leaves him squarely to blame for the debacle. Others have countered that no body of intelligence is ever pure. All accurate reports arrive amid a background of noise—inaccurate information, rumor, and speculation—that makes it impossible or extremely difficult to discern the true signals from the false. Still others have pointed out that, beyond mere noise, Stalin also received intentionally false signals as part of the German disinformation campaign. The Germans hoped to convince Stalin that their military buildup in the east was intended for use against Great Britain. Their disinformation campaign rested on the notion that Eastern Europe provided a safe haven where Nazi forces could be assembled, free from British bombing raids. Stalin’s failure therefore lies less in his personal behavior and more in the craftiness of German counterintelligence.
Each of these interpretations emphasizes what Stalin actually knew. The problem with this approach is that it downplays the fact that statesmen must typically choose between divergent interpretations of intelligence reports. In this case, Stalin had to choose to believe in one of two conflicting sets of views: namely that the German forces on Russia’s border were preparing to attack Britain or, alternatively, that they were preparing to attack Russia. What Stalin knew, therefore, is important, but it is far less crucial than what he believed. If we want to understand why Stalin so stunningly lacked strategic empathy for Hitler on this crucial occasion, we have no choice but to explore how he developed a sense of his enemies.
The international historian John Lewis Gaddis has observed that history is largely about the process of getting into and back out of another person’s mind, “and then arguing among ourselves about what we saw there.”7 Gaddis’s reflections on how we discern a historical figure’s character are useful springboards to a discussion of how the historical figures themselves assessed their opponents. Gaddis observes that historians typically seek patterns of behavior across scale. For example, in one anecdote about the Soviet leader, Stalin removed his pet parrot from its cage and remorselessly crushed the bird’s skull. Some see Stalin’s brutal treatment of Ukrainians as merely the extension of his ruthless character. In the micro and the macro, many historians perceive a consistent streak of cruelty toward others.
While we can easily conclude the obvious about Stalin’s character—that his emotional empathy was commensurate with that of a psychopath—we can also say that in many respects he also lacked strategic empathy. Like the Slumdog Strategist from the Introduction, Stalin employed Jamal’s heuristic “trust no one,” but to very ill effect. He decimated his officer corps and Party faithful, consistently misperceiving threats from those around him, especially, of course, when it mattered most, in the summer of 1941.
Stalin’s lack of both emotional empathy and strategic empathy dramatically affected his behavior, yet those traits do not suffice to explain his underlying drivers. These traits were prominent aspects of his character; they were not motivating forces in and of themselves. His Marxist ideology did indeed shape his actions, yet neither was it at the root. Despite his early adoption of Marxism, his years of bank robbing and imprisonment in the name of the cause, and all the ideological rhetoric he espoused, Stalin was a fair-weather fanatic. By this admittedly provocative statement I do not mean that Stalin was not a devoted Marxist. Although he may have been a true believer, many of his actions while in power suggest that fulfilling Marxist ideological aims proved secondary to his primary goal of preserving his own power.
Like all individuals, Stalin held multiple, fluid identities. Changing contexts brought one or another to the fore. Also like many notable leaders, Stalin possessed a single underlying driver of greater salience than his other traits. He sought power, for himself and for his nation.
Throughout his career, many of Stalin’s excesses were committed to protect or enhance his own power. His early purges of Party rivals were not designed to achieve any ideological purity within the Party ranks. They were primarily to eliminate threats to his own advancement. The same was true of his purges of the military, which cut deep into his own officer corps. Those soldiers were victims of Stalin’s fear of losing power in a coup d’etat. Their murders had nothing to do with dogma. Even the mass murders of the Great Terror from 1937–1938 can be seen rooted in power considerations, not ideological ones. The historian Norman Naimark makes this point, concluding that although Stalin used the threat of sabotage by internal traitors to justify the killings, the ultimate aim was to preserve his position as dictator.8 Naimark wisely observes that multiple factors combined to produce Stalin’s genocides, and ideological convictions were just one factor among many.9
The historian Geoffrey Roberts put it well when he wrote that Stalin was “blinkered by his ideology, but not blinded by it.”10 Though Roberts was commenting on the Russo-Finnish War of 1940, his point was that Stalin’s military leadership style was not driven exclusively or even primarily by Marxist doctrine. This was equally true of his domestic and foreign policy. Early evidence of this came when Stalin began to consolidate his power soon after Lenin’s death.
Trotsky’s yearning for worldwide revolution demonstrated his unyielding devotion to Marxist dogma. After Lenin named him foreign minister, Trotsky infamously quipped that he merely intended to issue a few proclamations and close up shop. Lenin’s replacement of Trotsky with Chicherin evidenced the need for precisely the traditional diplomatic niceties that Trotsky’s worldview abjured.
Following the Trotsky–Zinoviev push for a German revolution in 1923, and the revolution’s dramatic failure, Stalin was able to oppose a policy of global revolution and instead argue for socialism in one country. This had the benefit of distinguishing him from his chief rivals for power atop the Soviet hierarchy. Stalin subsequently supported the growing cooperation with the German military, arming forces on the German Right, not the Left. Of course he believed in the historical inevitability of a worldwide communist victory, but because he was exceedingly patient and clung to no timetable of events, he never needed to behave recklessly by advancing ideological ends to the detriment of his own power. Advancing his own position always came first. Marxist dogma lingered ever-present in the background, and often rose to the foreground, but never supplanted his hunger for power.
Hitler, like Stalin, had multiple, competing motivations, and, like Stalin, he could compromise his views when it proved expedient. But unlike Stalin, Hitler was not driven ultimately by a thirst for power. Instead, he strove to achieve power in order to fulfill his perceived mission—even if the attempt to achieve his ideological ends would cost him his power and his life. The aim was simple: to ensure the German people their rightful place atop a hierarchy of world races. The means to achieve this were more complicated. Based on a social Darwinistic notion of competition, the German people would need to test their mettle in battle. If victorious, their place atop the pyramid of races would have been earned. If they failed, then, just as Hitler wrote in his final testament, the German people were not ready. Along the course of this epic struggle, it would be necessary to exterminate as many of the Untermenschen as possible. The war in Russia was not solely a war of expansion; it was a war of extinction, designed to obliterate the Slavs and Jews. As cruel as Stalin had been, it is not hard to grasp why the Russian people supported him during the Nazi invasion: Their alternative was even worse.
One of the clearest signs of Hitler’s devotion to dogma can be seen in his relentless pursuit of the Jews, both within and beyond German borders. At a time of war, it was not efficient to divert resources away from military objectives and channel them into extermination campaigns. The ongoing operation of concentration camps as well as the use of Einsatzgruppen—those units designated for killing noncombatant Jewish men, women, and children in occupied territories—strongly suggests that the Führer’s ideology superceded his other objectives. Stalin, for all his barbarity, would not have focused on killing Ukrainians, for example, if by doing so it risked a possible loss of his power. Hitler was naturally concerned with attaining and protecting his power but primarily as a means of fulfilling his racist mission.
Stalin, like many others at the time, recognized a pattern in Hitler’s behavior whereby his pragmatism trumped his ideology. Hitler had repeatedly indicated that, despite his racist rhetoric, in foreign affairs realism came first. In 1934, Hitler violated his oft-stated hatred of the Poles by forming a nonaggression pact with Poland.11 In 1939, Hitler showed that he could easily discard his anti-Slavic, anti-Bolshevik pronouncements by forging an accord with Soviet Russia. The Führer again overrode Nazi racial dogma in 1940 by forming an alliance with the Japanese because the Tripartite Pact would cripple Britain’s access to raw materials in the Far East. Stalin observed this pattern, misread Hitler’s key driver—his ideology—and failed to scrutinize the pattern breaks.
Without recognizing Hitler’s key driver, it was impossible for Stalin to predict the Führer’s actions in June 1941. But prior to the invasion, how could Stalin have grasped that Hitler was willing to take extraordinary risks in order to accomplish his racist mission? There were, in fact, some clues. They were to be found among the pattern breaks.
For more than a decade following his membership in the German Nazi Party, Hitler had been building up the Sturmabteilung, a paramilitary band of thugs variously known as the SA or Brown Shirts. Atop this rapidly expanding organization of ex-World War I soldiers and unemployed young men stood one of Hitler’s few close friends, Ernst Röhm.
Röhm possessed two salient traits. He exuded an aggressive toughness, exemplified by the scar he bore on his right cheek, the remnant of an earlier fencing duel. Hitler saw in his friend a reliable machismo, a quality essential for building the Nazi movement. Both men believed that strength should be tested in battle and that the worthy would always prevail. Röhm’s other notable trait was his flagrant homosexuality. The fact that Hitler overlooked this behavior evidenced the degree to which Hitler depended on his SA chief. But by the fall of 1933, Röhm had grown overconfident in his newfound power.
Having assembled such a massive paramilitary force, Röhm expected that he could subsume the small German military within the SA’s ranks. The Reichswehr naturally resisted. Though the bulk of the professional officer corps were not Nazi Party members, they possessed the skills and training that Röhm’s brown-shirted bullies thoroughly lacked. Reichswehr commanders complained that former soldiers who had been dishonorably discharged now held prominent positions in the SA. Seeing no other option, War Minister von Blomberg decreed on September 19, 1933, that all Reichswehr members must offer the Nazi salute when encountering SA men. Soon thereafter, a Reichswehr lieutenant in Giessen failed to salute an SA flag. The stormtroopers attacked him. Rather than coming to his lieutenant’s defense, General von Blomberg confined the young officer to three days of room arrest.
On December 1, Hitler elevated Röhm to a Cabinet position, which only exacerbated Röhm’s sense of self-importance. The following month Röhm pushed the issue too far. He wrote to Blomberg: “I regard the Reichswehr now only as a training school for the German people. The conduct of war, and therefore of mobilization as well, in future is the task of the SA.”12
Tensions between the SA and the military had reached a breaking point. The Reichswehr could not abide Röhm’s high-handed attempts to subvert them. Hitler would have to make a choice. He could continue to back the Nazi paramilitary force that had helped bring him to power, or he could support the non-Nazi professional military. In an episode known as the Night of the Long Knives, Hitler chose the Reichswehr. On June 30, 1934, Hitler ordered Röhm arrested. He had hoped that Röhm would commit suicide with a pistol left in his cell. When Röhm refused, a guard shot him dead.
In the bloodbath that followed, Hitler, with the aid of Himmler’s SS and Göring’s police force, rounded up all of the leading SA officials and had them shot. Hitler replaced Röhm with Röhm’s own deputy, the squeaky-voiced Viktor Lutze, a man unlikely to intimidate anyone, and the SA never again played a meaningful decision-making role in the Nazi regime. It was Lutze who had informed Hitler that Röhm had insulted the Führer and was plotting a coup against him. The government portrayed the mass killings as a necessary countermeasure to crush a plot against the regime. However much of Lutze’s report was fabricated for his own benefit, the tension between the SA and the Reichswehr was undeniable. Hitler could not escape a choice between the increasingly uncontrollable Nazi Brown Shirts and the disciplined officer corps.
Hitler’s liquidation of his old friend, and his demotion of the SA from a position of influence, represented a meaningful break in his behavior pattern. By choosing the vastly smaller, non-Nazi Reichswehr, Hitler revealed that he was committed to a long-term plan, one that required the skills of a professional military. It meant that he intended to use that military, and soon. If foreigners wanted to gauge Hitler’s underlying drivers, this episode should have caught their attention.
Correctly interpreting the Röhm purge presented a legitimate challenge to any foreign observer. On its surface, the events seemed to represent a choice for realism over racism. Hitler sided with the non-Nazi Reichswehr and against his ideological compatriots. It looked as though Hitler had acted to crush a potential threat to his power—nothing more. That is, in fact, precisely how Stalin understood the affair.
Stalin was watching. He learned about Hitler’s actions and spoke of them in admiring tones. “Some fellow that Hitler. Splendid,” Stalin remarked to his close colleague, Anastas Mikoyan. “That’s a deed of some skill.”13 Stalin no doubt saw himself in Hitler, or at least some aspects of himself. Despite their dramatically opposing ideologies, Stalin viewed Hitler’s violent power play as a mirror of his own behavior. The Night of the Long Knives was merely a small-scale version of the deep and wide mass murders that Stalin himself would soon unleash upon his country. There was, however, a crucial difference between Hitler’s and Stalin’s actions. Stalin’s purge of the Soviet officer corps reflected a madly paranoid desire to protect his own power. Hitler’s purge of the SA, in contrast, was motivated by a long-range ideological plan. Hitler recognized that the SA could never substitute for a highly trained, professional military, and such a disciplined military would be essential for executing his ideological agenda: the acquisition of Lebensraum (living space) for the German people and the extermination of subhuman, inferior peoples from the Reich. Hitler was dependent on his military to bring his racist plans to fruition. The tensions between the two organizations impelled him to choose one over the other. Tellingly, after the coup, Hitler did not elevate Röhm’s replacement to the Cabinet, and he confined the SA to less consequential matters, not the decisive affairs of party or state. Had Hitler acted solely to prevent a putsch, he could have simply eliminated Röhm and his supporters but kept the SA in a position of high influence as rivals to the Reichswehr. Instead, Hitler backed the non-Nazi military because it was essential to his future plans.
Two questions immediately arise from this analysis. First, could Stalin have read Hitler’s drivers correctly at the time, without the benefit of hindsight? The answer is almost certainly no, given Stalin’s particular proclivity for projecting his own reasoning processes onto others. Second, how did Stalin try to enter Hitler’s mind? By what means did he attempt to understand the German chancellor?
In the Introduction I briefly mentioned that cognitive psychologists have developed theories about how all of us try to understand how others think. The scientists in this field have coined the term “mentalizing” as shorthand for the act of placing ourselves into someone else’s head. Much of this vein of exploration centers on the theory of mind. Within the theory of mind literature, two principal theories stand out. The first of these is called, rather awkwardly, theory-theory. It holds that we construct a theory about what another person believes, based on what we know about that person’s attitudes and experiences. We then use that theory to predict his behavior. For example, if you believe that John is driven mainly by greed, then in a situation where he would be able to steal money and get away with it, you would expect him to steal.
The second prominent theory of how we get into another person’s head is called simulation theory. It suggests that we ask ourselves, “What would I do if I were she?” Simulation theory suggests that we imagine ourselves in the other person’s position. It is, unfortunately, the worst approach to empathy because it assumes that others will think and act as we do, and too often they don’t. Simulation theory essentially says that we project our own motivations onto someone else, assuming that her motivations will resemble our own.14
Although psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists debate which approach is more common, most likely we all engage in both types of thinking at different times. Stalin, however, may well have been different. He appears to have engaged in simulation theory most of the time. Viewing Stalin’s thinking in this light makes his behavior far more comprehensible.
Stalin typically asked himself what he would do if he were in another’s shoes, and being a distrustful, violent person with no regard for the feelings of others, he naturally assumed that others were likely to behave in disloyal, violent ways. This explains Stalin’s destruction of his own officer corps in the Great Terror of 1937–1938 and the subsequent murders of his intelligence officials. Stalin believed that others were more than merely against him. He was certain that they would depose or destroy him. He believed this about his officer corps not simply because they had the weapons, the organization, and therefore the power to remove him. He believed they were a threat because he asked himself what he would do in their position. Since Stalin himself would have sought to overthrow the leader and install himself atop the hierarchy, that is what he assumed his officers would do. This is, in fact, what Stalin did do after Lenin’s death. He consolidated his power base, isolated his rivals, and ruthlessly destroyed them. In fact, immediately after the Nazi invasion, when it was plain to all that his judgment had utterly failed and now imperiled the Soviet Union’s existence, Stalin despondently awaited his colleagues from his home. When they arrived, he appears to have assumed that they had come to arrest and depose him. Only gradually could they convince him that they actually sought his leadership.15 That his subordinates did not, in fact, arrest him at this moment is a testament to Stalin’s strategic empathy toward those he knew best. Attuned to the greed, corruptibility, and fear in others, Stalin managed for decades to manipulate his colleagues with exceptional aplomb. But this skill betrayed him when it came to reading Hitler.
From 1940 through June 1941, Stalin confronted two contradictory bodies of intelligence. The first indicated a German invasion of Russia; the second suggested a German invasion of the British Isles. Stalin’s generals, and his competent intelligence officers, recognized that a German invasion of Russia was likely. They suggested to Stalin that they make all reasonable preparations. But Stalin refused to let them prepare. He insisted that this might provoke a war, believing that a split existed within the German leadership between those who favored war with Russia and those who wanted to conquer England. Stalin feared that by putting Russia on a war footing, the Germans could interpret this as justification for launching preemptive strikes, making war inevitable.
Stalin interpreted all incoming information about the German buildup through this filter. When in April 1941 he received a direct communication from Churchill warning him of the coming invasion, Stalin had to dismiss it as a British provocation. After reading the letter, Stalin smiled and declared that Churchill would benefit if they entered the war as soon as possible, but it would benefit them to remain on the sidelines.16 When the Soviet Ambassador to Germany, Vladimir Dekanozov, provided intelligence on Germany’s intensifying preparation for a Soviet invasion, Stalin remarked that Dekanozov was not clever enough to recognize that he was being fed disinformation. Even when Germany’s own ambassador to Moscow, Werner von der Schulenburg (who would later be hanged for his part in a plot to assassinate Hitler), informed Dekanozov that Hitler was preparing to invade, Stalin still could not accept the truth. No matter the source, be it a British ally, a Soviet colleague, or a German anti-Nazi ambassador, Stalin assumed a trap. He did so not simply because he trusted no one. It is obvious that Stalin was paranoid, but that is irrelevant in this case. His paranoia could just as easily have led him to conclude that Hitler was indeed planning to invade, despite Hitler’s repeated assurances to the contrary. Stalin’s distrustful nature cannot explain his interpretation of the evidence surrounding Barbarossa. Instead, the explanation must be found in Stalin’s particular reasoning process, namely his projected rationality.
As a consummate simulator, Stalin would have asked himself what he would do in Hitler’s place. Stalin’s own underlying driver, the force that ruled him above all others, was power—the desire to attain it and the fear of losing it. Had he been in Germany’s position, with Britain still undefeated and the Americans drawing closer to the British war effort via Lend-Lease, he never would have risked fighting a two-front war. Stalin was a realist not out of some philosophical conviction that pragmatism was the sine qua non of sensible statecraft. It was much simpler than that. Stalin was a realist because adventurism abroad could jeopardize his power. From Stalin’s perspective, the sensible move for Hitler in 1941 would have been to finish off Britain before turning on Russia.
The problem, of course, was that Hitler never thought this way. Hitler’s underlying driver was to accomplish his mission, the one he believed fate had enabled him to achieve. That mission was the destruction of Jewish Bolshevism and the conquest of Russian lands to provide living space for Germans. Conquering Britain was never part of his vision. Quite the opposite—Hitler consistently desired an alliance with Britain, and he wrote about this in Mein Kampf.
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.