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p In their drive for world supremacy the German imperialists attached the prime importance to conquering the Soviet Union, destroying the Soviet system and enslaving the Soviet people. Naturally, they kept these intentions secret for a long time. In the meanwhile, nazi leaders issued assurance upon assurance that they were only thinking of " protecting" Western civilisation and culture from Bolshevism. Yet if world civilisation and culture needed protection, it was from the nazi vandals.

p The leaders of fascist Germany did not intend to give up their plans, despite signing a non-aggression treaty with the Soviet Union. Adolf Hitler, fascist dictator and supreme commander of the Wehrmacht, said so plainly on November 23, 1939. "I was not sure for a long time whether I should first strike in the East and then in the West___It so happened, of necessity, that the East was left out for a time___Moreover, we have the treaty with Russia. But treaties are observed only for as long as they are = useful."  [62•1 

p Initially, he planned to attack the USSR in the autumn of 1940. Strategic deployment of troops from France to Poland began soon after the former’s defeat. The drafting of the war plan was speeded up.

p Hitler’s intention of attacking the Soviet Union was revealed by him to a conference of German generals on July 31, 1940. "Once Russia is beaten,” he said, "England’s last 63 hope will vanish. Germany will then be master of Europe and the Balkans. The conclusion: for this reason Russia must be done away with."  [63•1  The dictator did not, however, set out all the war aims. He held that the generals and admirals knew them: the ultimate objective was to conquer the world for the German monopolies.

p The conference examined the first variants of the operation plan and put off attack day to the spring of 1941. The war plan against the USSR (Directive No. 21, Plan Barbarossa) was approved on December 18, 1940. Its operational guideline was formulated as follows:

p "The German Armed Forces must be prepared, even before the conclusion of the war against England, to crush Soviet Russia in a rapid campaign."  [63•2  On April 30, 1941, the date of the attack was tentatively set for June 22, and the final order to jump off on that day was issued on June 17.

p The nazis meant to destroy the Soviet state and enslave its people. "The war is to be one of extermination,” said Hitler on March 30, 1941. "Unless we look at it that way, we may’defeat the enemy, but the Communist danger will reappear 30 years hence. We do not make war to preserve an adversary.... In the East firmness is a boon for the future."  [63•3 

p So the German imperialists would destroy not only the Soviet state, which they hated, but also the bulk of its population. "The war against Russia,” Hitler told his generals, "will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented unmerciful and unrelenting harshness — German soldiers guilty of breaking international law... will be excused."  [63•4  And OKW, the Wehrmacht command, accepted Hitler’s admonition as mandatory.

p The crimes against the Soviet people were planned in advance. Through their generals, the German monopolies ordered the total extermination of all protagonists of the Soviet system, all who came under the head of "Bolshevist commissars and communist intellectuals".  [63•5 

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p On May 13, 1941, the German Government issued a decree concerning the exercise of military jurisdiction in the Barbarossa area and concerning special measures of the troops. The decree required "complete lack of mercy to the civilian population" and execution of all partisans and citizens rendering the least resistance or suspected of contact with partisans. “Suspects” were to be shot at once, without a trial. German soldiers and officers Were relieved of responsibility for crimes committed against prisoners of war and peaceful citizens. The decree envisaged punitive operations against the population, introduced the criminal hostages system, wholesale repressions and unbridled violence.  [64•1 

p No less disgraceful a document was the OKW directive to exterminate captured Red Army political officers and employees of Soviet government institutions, issued on May 12, 1941. It classified all political officers and employees of government, municipal and economic offices as especially dangerous to the plan of colonising the Soviet Union. Political officers were not to be treated as prisoners of war and were to be killed on the spot. It was considered needless to bring them to any rear area. Some government employees were to be allowed to live for a time, for they could be useful in implementing orders of the occupation authorities. Subsequently, they would also be destroyed.  [64•2 

p A brutal routine was devised for POWs whose life would at first be spared. It was a routine that doomed them to a slow death. Hermann Reinecke, a Lt.-General and Chief of the POW Affairs Department of the High Command, was the man who worked it out on orders of the German authorities. Briefing his subordinates in a secret conference in Berlin in March 1941, he said camps for Russian POWs would best be situated in the open. On August 6, 1941, the High Command issued a directive that had been drawn up in advance, "Food Ration of Soviet Prisoners of War”, which read: "We are not obliged to supply Soviet prisoners of war with food.”  [64•3 

p Not prisoners only, but the entire Soviet people, were to be deprived of food. Speaking behind closed doors on June 20, 1941, A. Rosenberg gave the following instructions: 65 "The southern territories and the Northern Caucasus will have to serve... for the feeding of the German people. We see absolutely no reason for any obligation on our part to feed also the Russian people with the products of these territories."  [65•1 

p Rosenberg was put in charge of a bureau to solve the question of Ostraum (eastern space). The bureau, founded in early April 1941, worked in two main directions: a) it plotted the partitioning and colonisation with Germans of the Soviet territory and b) planned the extermination of the Soviet civilian population. On July 17, 1941, the bureau was converted into a Ministry for the Eastern Occupied Areas.

p Rosenberg’s initial plan was to set up a number of Germancontrolled puppet states, which Berlin rejected as too liberal. A new plan was drawn up and adopted, lacking even this fictitious appearance of statehood. Under it the entire territory of the Soviet Union would be Germany’s colonial "Eastern space”. Elucidating it, Rosenberg declared: "The Soviet Union will no longer be the subject of European politics; it will become the object of German Weltpolitik."  [65•2 

p For administrative convenience the Soviet Union would be carved into four Reichskomissariats: “Moskau”, “Ostland”, “Ukraine” and “Kaukasus”. A fifth, “Turkestan”, was also contemplated.  [65•3  Anticipating events, Berlin appointed the Reichscommissars (Siegfried Kasche for Moscow) and 1,050 junior commissars for the regions.

p By special order, Gestapo chief Himmler drew up a general Plan Ost (East Plan) for the subjugation by fire and sword of all peoples in Eastern Europe. The plan was ready long before the attack on the Soviet Union and envisaged the total extermination of Poles, Ukrainians and other Slav nations. All education, save for primary and “special” schools, was to be wiped out in order to eradicate national cultures. In the “special” schools pupils would be taught counting (at most up to 500), signing their name, and the divine commandment to obey the Germans, to be honest, diligent and obedient. Learning to read was considered superfluous.

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p Commands and requisite equipment were created- in advance’for the wholesale extermination of the civilian population. "We,” Hitler declared, "are obliged to depopulate as part of our mission of preserving the German population. We shall have to develop a technique of depopulation__If I can send the flower of the German nation into the hell of war without the smallest pity for the spilling of precious German blood, then surely I have the right to remove millions of an inferior race that breeds like vermin."  [66•1 

p Another nazi programme outlined the procedure of plundering the Soviet Union. Goering was appointed -to control the seizure of the Soviet economy. A detailed programme was drawn up, named Directive for the Operation of the Economy in the Newly-Occupied Eastern Territories.

p To attain these secret aims Hitler planned a piratic attack. In the meantime, the plans and preparations were thoroughly camouflaged.

p The German imperialists inveigled their allies—Hungary, Rumania, Italy, Finland, Croatia and Slovakia—into taking part in the war, and came to terms with their friends in Bulgaria and Spain, and in the unoccupied part of France. To obtain the support, or at least the neutrality, of Britain, Rudolf Hess, a top-ranking nazi leader, went on a special mission to contact the British Government.

p The German economy was on a war footing long before the war. The German imperialists and generals had a ramified war economy, which experienced only slight strain in the early period of the war. The territorial seizures, the occupation of country after country and the enlistment of other countries as satellites, added to the economic potential of the nazi war machine, with the shortage of manpower compensated by the use of foreign labour forcibly shipped to Germany. By December 1940 as many as 1,300,000 foreigners were put to work in German factories.  [66•2 

p Military production in 1940 was 76 per cent up on 1939 and as much as 22 times up on I933-  [66•3  Production of tanks, tractors, warplanes and naval vessels increased spectacularly. The armed forces had huge dumps of arms and materiel. The stockpiles were so great that some months after the 67 attack on the Soviet Union production of shells and cartridges was even deliberately somewhat reduced. These days West German researchers blame Hitler for not expanding war production before attacking the USSR. But, in fact, war production soared and the drop in the output of shells and cartridges only speaks of the vastness of the stocks.

Mobilisation and deployment offerees for the war against the USSR was largely completed before June i, 1941. Germany had more than twice as many troops and warplanes as at the beginning of the Second World War, as shown in the following table.

Germany’s Arrne d Forces  [67•1  Sept. 1, 1939 May 1, 1940 June 1, 1941 Divisions, total 103 156 214 Panzer 6 1O 21 Motorised 8 8 14 Panzers (in service) 3,200 3,387 5,640 Warplanes (in service) 4,405 5,900 10,000

p By June 21, 1941, as many as 190 divisions were poised along the Soviet border, of which 153 German, including 17 panzer and 13 motorised, and two brigades and support units (24 divisions, the General Headquarters reserve, were en route), and 29 allied divisions and 16 allied brigades. All in all, troops deployed against the Soviet Union totalled five million men and officers. Warplanes added up to 4,940 and tanks to 3,410. Eighty-five warships, 109 special-purpose vessels and 86 submarines were massed for action in the Northern seas.  [67•2 

p The German army, mobilised and armed to the teeth, had nearly two years of combat experience and consisted of superbly trained men and officers conditioned in the fascist spirit.

p The troop masses deployed along the Soviet border were prepared to strike in key strategic directions, where the German generals had built up a considerable numerical 68 advantage and superiority of arms. Never in history were such colossal masses of men and equipment concentrated before the war to discharge strategic assignments. The generals thought they would thus make short work of the Soviet Union. In a conversation with his army commanders on December 5, 1940, Hitler said: "... It is likely that the Russian army, once hit, would face a still more disastrous collapse than France."  [68•1 

p The self-confident German command drew up on June n, 1941 Directive 32 on what was to follow the conquest of the Soviet Union, envisaging the invasion of Britain, seizure of Gibraltar and all British support points in the Mediterranean and Middle East, the invasion of Iraq, Syria and Iran, and the conquest of Egypt. This was estimated to take a matter of weeks, after which Germany’s war effort would extend to other parts of the globe.  [68•2 

p German imperialism envisaged a drive across Afghanistan into India as a stage in its battle for world supremacy. The decision to draw up a plan of this operation was taken by Hitler on February 17, i94i.  [68•3  Capture of India, coupled with operations in the Middle East and the Mediterranean, was expected to sluice off Britain’s armed forces, sap resistance and cause her collapse.  [68•4 

p The nazis expected Britain to surrender without an invasion. But they would strike if necessary, and continued preparations. The Luftwaffe was cast in the main role for the destruction of Britain and, eventually, of the USA. This was spelled out in the so-called Goering Programme, which envisaged a spectacular increase in planes production.  [68•5  A steep expansion was also envisaged of the navy and, chiefly, of the submarine force. On March 30, 1941, Hitler said that following the Operation Barbarossa "it is necessary to start sweeping construction of naval vessels".  [68•6 

p Air raids on US cities were to begin in the autumn of 1941. Hitler mentioned this on May 22, i94i.  [68•7  On July 25 he told 69 his generals that he "intended to take vigorous action against the United States".  [69•1 

p Brutal treatment of the population of the British Isles was outlined’in a plan drawn up by the summer of 1940, and a similar plan was envisaged for the people of the United States.

p The vast store of documents left behind by the Hitler government and German military Command reveal a sinister secret: the German monopolies’ plans for winning world supremacy and the way they were going to go about it. We now see how the German industrialists and their generals, driven by a thirst.for more wealth, arranged the sequence of military actions that would win them the world. Concentration and death camps scattered all over Europe, were also to be set up across the ocean. Prison barracks would be the main type of architecture in all countries, with the smoke from the cremation furnaces to hang over the globe.

The peril that menaced the Soviet Union was a peril also for all states and nations. For all of them the German fascists planned the same fate—a colonial regime, slave labour, the overseer’s gun and asphyxiation in gas chambers. The only way to thwart this monstrous scheme was to destroy the gigantic nazi war machine that had already overrun 15 countries. Could the Soviet Union do it? Could it deliver mankind, its culture and civilisation from the 20th-century barbarians armed not with arrows and spears, but with tanks, planes and automatic firearms? This was the question — a question of life and death —for all the people on earth.