Chapter Thirteen – Hitler Orders a Genocidal Racist Invasion of Russia and Extermination of Jews in the Largest Land Invasion in History – Hitler Led Nazi Anglo-Saxon Affinity – UK Allies With the Soviet Union, an Alliance To Avoid War Previously Rejected by Britain
On June 22nd 1941, Germany, supported by Italy and Romania, and shortly thereafter Finland [181] and Hungary, invaded the Soviet Union constituting the largest land invasion in history. The invading Axis armed forces would eventually include those of Bulgaria and Albania and a Spanish contingent. The invasion was code named Operation Barbarossa.
As early as 1925, Adolf Hitler had indicated in his political manifesto and autobiography Mein Kampf that he would invade Russia, that the German people needed Lebensraum (“living space”) [182]
The Hitler led racial policy of Nazi Germany portrayed the Soviet Union (and all of Eastern Europe) as populated by non-Aryan Untermenschen (“sub-humans”), ruled by Jewish Bolshevik conspirators.[183]
Hitler claimed in Mein Kampf that Germany’s destiny was to “turn to the East,” as it did six hundred years ago.” [184]. At times to certain high officials it was a stated Nazi policy to kill, deport, or enslave the majority of Russian and other Slavic populations and repopulate the land with Germanic peoples, under the Generalplan Ost…. [185]
Evidence from a speech given by General Erich Hoepner indicates the nature of Operation Barbarossa and the Nazi racial plan. Hoepner informed the 4th Panzer Group that the war against the Soviet Union was “an essential part of the German people’s struggle for existence” (Daseinskampf), referring to the imminent battle as the “old struggle of Germans against Slavs” and even stated, “the struggle must aim at the annihilation of today’s Russia and must therefore be waged with unparalleled harshness”.[48] Hoepner lectured that the Germans were fighting for “the defense of European culture against Moscovite–Asiatic inundation, and the repulse of Jewish Bolshevism … No adherents of the present Russian-Bolshevik system are to be spared.” Commander-in-Chief Walther von Brauchitsch also told his subordinates that troops should view the war as a “struggle between two different races and [should] act with the necessary severity”.[186]
Hitler Led Nazi Anglo-Saxon Affinity
Notice how Adolf Hitler’s classification of Jews, Russians and other Slavs as sub-human contrasted with his attitude toward ‘fellow Aryan’ English and the part Aryan’ French.
Hitler had frequently expressed admiration for Britain, and during the Battle for Britain air war, he continually sought neutrality or a peace treaty with Britain. [186a] Hitler’s Mein Kampf of 1923 expressed only admiration for ordinary German World War I soldiers and Britain, which he saw as an ally against communism. In 1935 Hermann Göring had welcomed news that Britain (as a potential ally) was rearming. In 1936 he had promised assistance to defend the British Empire, asking only a free hand in Eastern Europe. He reported this to Lord Halifax in 1937. [186b] .
When Churchill came to power, May 10, 1940, there was still wide support for Halifax, who as Foreign Secretary was openly arguing for peace negotiations to secure British independence without war. In May, Halifax secretly requested a Swedish businessman to make contact with Göring to open negotiations. During the May War Cabinet Crisis, Halifax argued for negotiations involving the Italians, but Churchill rejected this with majority support. January 1941 Hitler expressed continued interest in negotiating peace with Britain. [186c] In June, Swedish ambassador reported to Hitler, making peace negotiations seem feasible. Throughout July, as the battle began, the Germans made further attempts to find a diplomatic solution. [186d]
By way of another example of Hitler’s affinity towards fellow Western Europeans, notice the near camaraderie in Hitler’s careful announcement of the advent of German troops needing to pass through Vichy France territory in 1942.
“Frenchmen, officers and men of the French Army:
On Sept. 3, 1939, the British government without cause or reason declared war upon Germany…The German people, who then had to face this aggression while sacrificing the blood of its sons, never felt any hatred for France. Under the armistice Germany asked nothing which might be incompatible with the honor of the French Army. …Germany had no intention whatsoever of humiliating France or of infringing on the integrity of the French Empire. …The German Army does not come as an enemy of the French people nor of its soldiers, nor does it intend to govern these territories. It has a single aim-to repel together with its allies any landing attempt by the Anglo-American forces. …The German forces have been ordered to see to it that the French people are inconvenienced as little as possible.” (Adolf Hitler’s November 10, 1942 Appeal to the French on the Entry of German Troops into Unoccupied France.) [186e]
At 3AM on 22 June 1941, the Nazi led Axis Powers had begun their undeclared war and invasion of the Soviet Union bombing major cities in Soviet-occupied Poland[185] and Kronstadt near Leningrad, Ismail in Bessarabia, and Sevastopol in the Crimea, as ground troops invaded accompanied in some locations by Lithuanian and Ukrainian fifth columnists.[187] Roughly three million soldiers of the Wehrmacht went into action, initially along with Finnish and Romanian units.[188]
The initial momentum of the German ground and air attack severed all Soviet organized command and control of their forces within the first few hours, paralyzing all levels of command from infantry platoons up to the Soviet High Command in Moscow.[189]
By end of June the invading Germans had captured 324,000 Soviet troops, 3,300 tanks, 1,800 artillery pieces.[223][224] and destroyed some 2,000 Soviet planes on the ground. but, according to the war diaries of the German High Command, the Luftwaffe by 5 July had lost 491 aircraft with 316 more damaged, leaving it with only about 70 percent of the strength it had at the start of the invasion. [189a]
Within weeks Nazi Germany occupied Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and the Third Reich incorporated the Baltic territory into its Reichskommissariat Ostland.
By July 8, a Panzer Group had advanced about 450 kilometres (280 mi) since the start of the invasion and was now only about 250 kilometres (160 mi) from its primary objective Leningrad. Finland stopped its advance just short of Leningrad. Finnish attacks on Leningrad itself remained limited. From central Finland, there was a German-Finnish advance on the Murmansk railway. [189b]
UK Allies With a Badly Battered Soviet Union, An Alliance To Avoid War Previously Rejected by Britain
In July 1941, the UK and the Soviet Union formed a military alliance against Germany and invaded neutral Iran to secure the Persian Corridor [189c] and Iran’s oil fields. Three years earlier the British Empire had continued to refuse such an alliance with a Soviet Union menaced by the Nazi Germany Britain had assisted in rearming for war.
In August, United States Senator Gerald Nye denounces the “Yiddish controllers” of American theater and movies. U.S. Senator Burton Wheeler attacks Jews in the movie business as “Hollywood Hitlers.” U.S. Senator Champ Clark sponsors an investigation into Hollywood’s “unpatriotic” Jewish filmmakers. (Unpatriotic because their films advocate involvement in the European war.) Other congressmen express antisemitism. Many Americans agree with these sentiments. Many Americans also believe that should the United States go to war, it must be against the Soviet Union, not against Germany.
Same day, six hundred Soviet prisoners of war and 300 Jews are “euthanized” at Auschwitz.(jewishvirtuallibrary.org/holocaust-chronology-of-1941)[189d]
The Battle for Moscow
In September, in spite of the exhaustion of some German units, the defeat of the Soviets at Kiev and the Red Army’s huge losses during the first three months of the invasion caused the Germans to assume that their attack on Moscow could still succeed.[190] Once operations at Kiev were concluded, German Army Group South, which contained the Romanian III and IV Armies advanced to the east and south to capture the industrial Donbass region and the Crimea.
By early November Moscow’s first line of defense had been shattered. With over 500,000 Soviet new prisoners, the total since the start of the invasion had reached three million. The Soviets had only 90,000 men and 150 tanks left for the defense of Moscow.[191] The German government publicly predicted the imminent capture of Moscow and many foreign correspondents expected a Soviet collapse. By the 2nd day of December, some German Infantry had advanced to within 24 km (15 mi) of Moscow, and a reconnaissance battalion had managed to capture the bridge over the Moscow-Volga Canal as well as a railway station only 8 km from the Soviet capital, but by then the first blizzards of winter began.[192] The Wehrmacht was not clothed nor equipped for such severe winter warfare, the deep snow hindering equipment and mobility. Weather conditions had largely grounded the Luftwaffe.[193][191] On 5 December, the Soviets, strengthened with over half a million men from new units from around Moscow and over 1,000 tanks and 1,000 aircraft that arrived along with Siberian forces, launched a massive counterattack. as part of the Soviet winter counteroffensive.[193] When the counteroffensive halted on 7 January 1942, the German armies found themselves pushed back 100–250 km (62–155 mi) from Moscow. The Wehrmacht had lost the Battle for Moscow, and their invasion had cost the German Army more than 830,000 men. [194][195]
An estimated two million Soviet prisoners of war died of starvation during Operation Barbarossa alone.[195a] By the end of the war, 58 percent of all Soviet prisoners of war had died in German captivity.[196]
Simultaneous With Exterminating Slavs – the Jewish Holocaust
September 13 1941, Charles and Anne Lindbergh, members of the America First Committee, attend a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, at which Lindbergh blames the Jews for “agitating for war…for reasons that are not American….Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government.”
As a reprisal for the September 24 booby-trap deaths of German troops at the hands of Soviet soldiers in Kiev, Ukraine, 33,771 Jews are shot to death in a ravine at Babi Yar, Ukraine. In the following months, German units shot thousands of Jews, Gypsies and Soviet prisoners of war at Babi Yar
During the first six months of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, units of the Nazi security forces composed of members of the SS, the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police), and the Ordnungspolizei (Order Police, ‘Orpo’) acting as mobile killing units had already murdered more than 500,000 Soviet Jews. [197]
In occupied Soviet Union special mobile German killing squads–Einsatzgruppen–, had begun killing Jews on the spot wherever they were found, and often with the help of local antisemites.
In late June, American radio commentator Father Charles Coughlin celebrated Hitler’s invasion of Russia as “the first strike in the holy war on communism” and attacked “the British-Jewish-Roosevelt war on Germany and Italy.”
July 1-3. Hundreds of Jews were exterminated by the Nachtigall battalion, a Ukrainian militia directed by the Gestapo.
In August, tens of thousands of Jews were murdered throughout the western Soviet Union, Lithuania, Romania, and Latvia. Their killers were German Einsatzgruppen, Romanian troops and militia, Ukrainian peasants, and Lithuanian civilians.
By the spring of 1943, more than a million Jews and an undetermined number of partisans, Gypsies, and officials of the Soviet state and Soviet communist party had been killed. In 1941-1942, some 70,000-80,000 Jews fled eastward, evading the first wave of murder perpetrated by the German invaders.[199]
End Notes – Germany invades Russia Nazis Condemn All Jews to Death
- Second Soviet-Finnish war, was a conflict fought by Finland and Nazi Germany, against the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1941 to 1944, as a part of World War II. In Soviet historiography, the war was called the Finnish Front of the Great Patriotic War. Germany regarded its operations in the region as part of its overall war efforts on the Eastern Front and provided Finland with critical material support and military assistance, including economic aid.[5]
The Continuation War began 15 months after the end of the Winter War, also fought between Finland and the USSR. There have been numerous reasons proposed for the Finnish decision to invade, with regaining territory lost during the Winter War being regarded as the most common. Other justifications for the conflict included President Ryti’s vision of a Greater Finland and Commander-in-Chief Mannerheim’s desire to annex East Karelia. Plans for the attack were developed jointly between the Wehrmacht and a faction of Finnish political and military leaders with the rest of the government remaining ignorant. Despite the co-operation in this conflict, Finland never formally signed the Tripartite Pact, though they did sign the Anti-Comintern Pact. Finland’s leadership justified their alliance with Germany as self-defence.
In June 1941, with the start of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Finnish Defence Forces launched their offensive following Soviet airstrikes. By September 1941, Finland had regained its post–Winter War concessions to the Soviet Union: the Karelian Isthmus and Ladoga Karelia. However, the Finnish Army continued the offensive past the pre-1939 border with the conquest of East Karelia, including Petrozavodsk, as well as halting only around NaNkm 147 miles from the centre of Leningrad, where they participated in besieging the city by cutting its northern supply routes and digging in until 1944. In Lapland, joint German–Finnish forces failed to capture Murmansk or cut the Kirov (Murmansk) Railway, a transit route for lend-lease equipment to the USSR. The conflict stabilised with only minor skirmishes until the tide of the war turned against the Germans and the Soviet Union’s strategic Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Offensive in June 1944. The attack drove the Finns from most of the territories they had gained during the war, but the Finnish Army halted the offensive in August 1944.
Hostilities between Finland and the USSR ended with a ceasefire, which was called on 5 September 1944, formalised by the signing of the Moscow Armistice on 19 September 1944. One of the conditions of this agreement was the expulsion, or disarming, of any German troops in Finnish territory, which led to the Lapland War between Finland and Germany. World War II was concluded formally for Finland and the minor Axis powers with the signing of the Paris Peace Treaties in 1947.
“Continuation War Explained,” https://everything.explained.today/Continuation_War/
- 182. Roderick Stackelberg, (2002). Hitler’s Germany: Origins, Interpretations, Legacies. (London; New York: Taylor & Francis). ISBN 978-0-203-00541-5
- (PDF) Andreas Hillgruber, (1972). “Die “Endlösung und das deutsche Ostimperium als Kernstück des rassenideologischen Programms des Nationalsozialismus”. Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte(in German). 20 (2): 133–153.
- The majority of settlers moved individually, in independent efforts, in multiple stages and on different routes as there existed no imperial colonization policy, central planning or movement organization. Many settlers were encouraged and invited by the Slavic princes and regional lords. Ostsiedlung – ein gesamteuropäisches Phänomen.(GRIN Verlag). (a general phenomenon in European high middle ages) Retrieved July 25, 2020.
- Roderick Stackelberg, (2007). The Routledge Companion to Nazi Germany. (December 20, 2007)(New York: Routledge). ISBN 978-0-41530-861-8;
“Order of Battle for Operation Barbarosa”, last modified on 26 May 2016, Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core https://infogalactic.com/info/
- Christian Ingrao, (2013). Believe and Destroy: Intellectuals in the SS War Machine. (Malden, MA), p.140: Polity. ISBN 978-0745660264; Jürgen Förster, “Barbarossa Revisited: Strategy and Ideology in the East”(PDF) Jewish Social Studies. (Winter 1988). 50 (1/2): 21–36; Pohl Dieter (2011) Die Herrschaft der Wehrmacht : Deutsche Militärbesatzung und einheimische Bevölkerung in der Sowjetunion 1941-1944 (Publisher: Oldenbourg Wissensch.Vlg) (January 1, 2008) Language: German ISBN-10 : 3486580655 ISBN-13 : 978-3486580655
186a. Stephen Bungay, (2000). The Most Dangerous Enemy : A History of the Battle of Britain, p. 27, (London: Aurum Press), ISBN 978-1-85410-721-3
“Battle of Britain,” Alchetron The Free Encyclopedia, https://alchetron.com/Battle-of-Britain
186b. Bungay, S, pp. 27–31 Battle-of-Britain
186c. Richard J. Overy, (2001). The Battle of Britain: The Myth and the Reality. ISBN 978-0-393-02008-3
186d. Bungay, S.
186e. Adolf Hitler: Appeal to the French on the Entry of German Troops into Unoccupied France (November 10, 1942) Jewish Virtual Library
- Albert Seaton, (1972).The Russo-German War, 1941–45, p. 98. ISBN 978-0891414919.
- Pohl, Dieter (2018). “War and Empire”. In Robert Gellately (ed.). The Oxford Illustrated History of the Third Reich,p. 246, (New York: Oxford University)
Press. ISBN 978-0-19872-828-3
- David Glantz.Operation Barbarossa: Hitler’s invasion of Russia 1941, p. 31-33,
(The History Press 2012). ISBN 978-0752460703.
189a. Glantz, Ibid
189b. Historical Society of German Military History – Historische Gesellschaft der Deutschen Militargeschichte
189c. The Persian Corridor was a supply route through Iran into Soviet Azerbaijan by which British aid and American Lend-Lease supplies were transferred to the Soviet Union during World War II.
189d https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/holocaust-chronology-of-1941
- Stephen Fritz, (2011). Ostkrieg: Hitler’s War of Extermination in the East,p. 145, (University Press of Kentucky), ISBN 978-0813134161.]
- David Glantz, Jonathan House,When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler,p. 343, (1995) (University Press of Kansas). ISBN 978-1906033729.
- [Shirer 1990, p. 1032
- 193.John Mosier, J. Cross of Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German War Machine, (1918–1945, p. 184, (New York: Henry Holt & Co. 2006) ISBN 978-0-80507-577-9.
- Fritz, Stephen.Ostkrieg: Hitler’s War of Extermination in the East.(University Press of Kentucky, 2011),
- 209, ISBN 978-0813134161
- Christian Hartmann, (2013).Operation Barbarossa: Nazi Germany’s War in the East,
1941–1945. (Oxford University Press). ISBN 978-0-19-966078-0.
195a. Hartmann, Christian, Operation Barbarossa: Nazi Germany’s War in the East-1941–1945. Oxford University Press 2013). ISBN 978-0-19-966078-0.
- David Glantz, (2012).Operation Barbarossa: Hitler’s invasion of Russia 1941. The History Press. ISBN 978-0752460703.
- Mobile Killing Units/Facing History and Ourselves
https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-9/mobile-killing-units; Kershaw, Ian. Hitler, 1936–1945: Nemesis. (New York; London: W. W. Norton & Company 2001). ISBN 978-0-393-32252-1.
- Marle Klooz; Evelyn Wiley, (1944),“Events leading up to World War II – Chronological History,” 78th Congress, 2d Session – House Document N. 541, Director: Humphrey, Richard A., Washington: US Government Printing Office, p. 310
- www.holocaustchronicle.org/staticpages/218.html
189d https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/holocaust-chronology-of-1941
- Stephen Fritz, (2011). Ostkrieg: Hitler’s War of Extermination in the East,p. 145, (University Press of Kentucky), ISBN 978-0813134161.]
- David Glantz, Jonathan House,When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler,p. 343, (1995) (University Press of Kansas). ISBN 978-1906033729.
- [Shirer 1990, p. 1032
- 193.John Mosier, J. Cross of Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German War Machine, (1918–1945, p. 184, (New York: Henry Holt & Co. 2006) ISBN 978-0-80507-577-9.
- Fritz, Stephen.Ostkrieg: Hitler’s War of Extermination in the East.(University Press of Kentucky, 2011), p. 209, ISBN 978-0813134161
- Christian Hartmann, (2013).Operation Barbarossa: Nazi Germany’s War in the East,
1941–1945. (Oxford University Press). ISBN 978-0-19-966078-0.
195a. Hartmann, Christian, Operation Barbarossa: Nazi Germany’s War in the East-1941–1945. Oxford University Press 2013). ISBN 978-0-19-966078-0.
- David Glantz, (2012).Operation Barbarossa: Hitler’s invasion of Russia 1941. The History Press. ISBN 978-0752460703.
- Mobile Killing Units/Facing History and Ourselves
https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-9/mobile-killing-units; Kershaw, Ian. Hitler, 1936–1945: Nemesis. (New York; London: W. W. Norton & Company 2001). ISBN 978-0-393-32252-1.
- Marle Klooz; Evelyn Wiley, (1944),“Events leading up to World War II – Chronological History,” 78th Congress, 2d Session – House Document N. 541, Director: Humphrey, Richard A., Washington: US Government Printing Office, p. 310
- www.holocaustchronicle.org/staticpages/218.html
J. Jankovsky-Novak aka Jay Janson spent eight years as Assistant Conductor of the Vietnam Symphony Orchestra in Hanoi and also toured, including with Dan Tai-son, who practiced in a Hanoi bomb shelter. The orchestra was founded by Ho Chi Minh, and it plays most of its concerts in the Opera House, a diminutive copy of the Paris Opera. In 1945, our ally Ho, from a balcony overlooking the large square and flanked by an American Major and a British Colonel, declared Vietnam independent. Everyone in the orchestra lost family, “killed by the Americans” they would mention simply, with Buddhist unaccusing acceptance. Jay can be reached at: [email protected] .
