# Why did Stalin believe Hitler? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 8, 2009, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-stalin-believe-hitler/488692 "2009-03-08T00:45:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2009, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-stalin-believe-hitler/488692/1 "2009-03-08T00:45:46Z")
In August 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a [pact](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact) whereby they agreed to be friendly and (secretly) to divide Poland between them. In June 1941, Hitler, having consolidated his hold on his half of Poland, invaded the Soviet zone and the Soviet Union itself – an eventuality which Stalin seems not to have expected and for which he was completely unprepared. Hitler went on to occupy all Russia west of Moscow, to be beaten back only when Stalin emerged from Siberia with a fresh army. Hitler was defeated, but at the highest cost imaginable. Stalin’s maniacal suspicion is legend, and Hitler by that time already had an international reputation as a liar. How could a man like Stalin possibly have believed that a man like Hitler would keep his word? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2009, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-stalin-believe-hitler/488692/2 "2009-03-08T00:48:25Z")
Possibly Stalin was anticipating attacking Germany eventually and thought the agreement would buy him some time. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2009, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-stalin-believe-hitler/488692/3 "2009-03-08T01:07:30Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Possibly Stalin was anticipating attacking Germany eventually and thought the agreement would buy him some time. Perhaps; but it’s still a case of Hitler getting the best of him. Apparently he thought he would have a lot more time than Hitler allowed him. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2009, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-stalin-believe-hitler/488692/4 "2009-03-08T01:11:56Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Perhaps; but it’s still a case of Hitler getting the best of him. Apparently he thought he would have a lot more time than Hitler allowed him. A lot of people believed that. I guess the leadership still had the mentality of the grinding-slow slog of World War I and couldn’t handle the lightning pace offered by new technologies. ---
**Author:** ![MOIDALIZE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@MOIDALIZE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MOIDALIZE)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2009, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-stalin-believe-hitler/488692/5 "2009-03-08T02:28:14Z")
I don’t know that you can say the Soviets were caught completely by surprise by the invasion. They had large numbers of personnel in the west, but Stalin was also careful not to do anything provacative to provoke Germany. Their military also had two key problems: one was that they had shortages in key military supplies, particularly ammo and modern aircraft, and the other was that the officer corps had nowhere near the experience of their German counterparts because of the purges. Combine that with poor tactics early on, and the initial invasion became a rout. If the Soviets had been better supplied and more competently led in 1940 they may have been able to stall the German advance sooner and maybe they wouldn’t have been perceived as being taken by surprise. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2009, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-stalin-believe-hitler/488692/6 "2009-03-08T02:35:40Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Possibly Stalin was anticipating attacking Germany eventually and thought the agreement would buy him some time. Stalin was caught thoroughly with his pants down. In fact, when people came to inform him of all the bad news he was a little surprised nobody came to arrest him. (Cite in my head from a history book I read 5 years ago. Perhaps someone else can back that up.) Odesio ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2009, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-stalin-believe-hitler/488692/7 "2009-03-08T03:02:40Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > Stalin was caught thoroughly with his pants down. In fact, when people came to inform him of all the bad news he was a little surprised nobody came to arrest him. (Cite in my head from a history book I read 5 years ago. Perhaps someone else can back that up.) I seem to recall that he DID imprison or execute the guy who originally warned him. ---
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2009, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-stalin-believe-hitler/488692/8 "2009-03-08T03:05:13Z")
Stalin believed because he wanted to believe. The non-aggression pact was such a sweet deal, and so obviously beneficial for both countries, that Stalin deluded himself into thinking it was legitimate. Hitler, after all, had fought in World War I. Surely he wouldn’t be so foolish as to repeat the mistake of a two-front war (or even a one-and-a-half front war, with France out but Britain still in). The non-aggression pact, and the victory in France, left Germany with everything the Central Powers had wanted in WWI. The German areas of the former Austria-Hungary were annexed to Germany, and the Balkans were left as German satellites. The Polish Corridor and Alsace-Lorraine were restored to the Reich, and Central Poland and the Low Countries were occupied. Surely Hitler would be sated, at least for a few years? ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2009, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-stalin-believe-hitler/488692/9 "2009-03-08T07:23:21Z")
I’d have to dig through a lot of books in storage, but I’m _pretty_ sure that it’s [Codeword:Barbarossa](http://www.amazon.com/Codeword-BARBAROSSA-Barton-Whaley/dp/0262730383) that I’m thinking of that presented a fairly compelling argument that Stalin believed that Hitler was going to present an ultimatum for concessions rather than invading, and chose to interpret all the intelligence indications of an invasion in this light because of his preconceived notions. Anything coming from the west, and especially England he took in his paranoia as an attempt to draw him into a fight against Germany in England’s own interest. Whether that was the reason or not, Stalin made a point of trying to avoid provoking Hitler; and while he had intelligence available to him pointing to an invasion, he didn’t believe that it was actually going to happen in the summer of '41. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Hitler went on to occupy all Russia west of Moscow, to be beaten back only when Stalin emerged from Siberia with a fresh army. I don’t mean to jump on you, but I can’t let this pass unchallenged. It’s passed into pop cultural history that the divisions released from Siberia were instrumental in saving the USSR and it’s really not the case, or at least only a small part of the case. German intelligence horribly underestimated the ability of the USSR’s mobilization to raise huge numbers of new divisions. They bit off far more than they could chew thinking that they could defeat the Soviet Union in a single summer/fall campaign and paid the price in the winter of '41 with horribly overextended supply lines and essentially no winter gear having been delivered to the troops. It’d likely have been better for the Germans to prepare winter lines in the end of fall '41 rather than try to push onto Moscow. In any event, the USSR was caught totally flat-footed by the invasion. The Luftwaffe caught the Red Air Force sitting on the runways on the morning of June 22, and the Red Army was totally unprepared and suffered extreme shock in the military sense of the word on the day of the invasion and for a long time afterwards, i.e. the messages sent from the front lines and the orders sent back to them had no relation to the actually reality on the ground. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2009, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-stalin-believe-hitler/488692/10 "2009-03-08T12:52:12Z")
> [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](#): > > Hitler, after all, had fought in World War I. Surely he wouldn’t be so foolish as to repeat the mistake of a two-front war (or even a one-and-a-half front war, with France out but Britain still in). The non-aggression pact, and the victory in France, left Germany with everything the Central Powers had wanted in WWI. The German areas of the former Austria-Hungary were annexed to Germany, and the Balkans were left as German satellites. The Polish Corridor and Alsace-Lorraine were restored to the Reich, and Central Poland and the Low Countries were occupied. Surely Hitler would be sated, at least for a few years? Right. It is ingrained in us that Hitler was a megalomaniac to an ultimately suicidal degree and that influences our hindsight enormously. It’s perhaps hard to see it from Stalin’s perspective, given that he didn’t know what we know so well now. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2009, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-stalin-believe-hitler/488692/11 "2009-03-08T13:23:21Z")
Stalin was just coming off his giant party purge of the mid-1930’s (in which he had murdered most of the Red Army’s senior officers). Stalin needed 10-15 years of peace, in which to gear up for the war he expected to fight with Hitler. This is whi Stalin was supplying Germany with raw materials, oil, and foodstuffs. In exchange, Stalin got German technology and help with aircraft design. Stalin intended to strike when he was ready, and he thought the Germans would honor the nn-agression treaty. The odd thing-Stalin had excellent intelligence in side Germany, and also the services of Richard Sorge (in Japan). A these sources reported that Hitler would attack the Soviet Union, no later than June 1941-Stalin didn’t believe it. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2009, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-stalin-believe-hitler/488692/12 "2009-03-08T15:48:23Z")
The Richard Sorge case is fascinating, and a central example in the book _The Second Oldest Profession_ by Phillip Knightley. In it, he posits the insight that no matter how excellent intelligence gathering may be, if it is offered to a leader who has already made up his mind, it is worse than useless. Odd. That rings a knell… ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2009, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-stalin-believe-hitler/488692/13 "2009-03-08T16:07:58Z")
Deep down Stalin believed Nicholas II was responsible for Germany’s assault in WWI when threatening it by placing so many soldiers on the Eastern Front. ---
**Author:** ![Bookkeeper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bookkeeper/32/281_2.png) [@Bookkeeper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bookkeeper)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2009, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-stalin-believe-hitler/488692/14 "2009-03-09T20:20:17Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > I don’t mean to jump on you, but I can’t let this pass unchallenged. It’s passed into pop cultural history that the divisions released from Siberia were instrumental in saving the USSR and it’s really not the case, or at least only a small part of the case. German intelligence horribly underestimated the ability of the USSR’s mobilization to raise huge numbers of new divisions. They bit off far more than they could chew thinking that they could defeat the Soviet Union in a single summer/fall campaign and paid the price in the winter of '41 with horribly overextended supply lines and essentially no winter gear having been delivered to the troops. It’d likely have been better for the Germans to prepare winter lines in the end of fall '41 rather than try to push onto Moscow. Personally, I think this had a great deal to do with Stalin’s disbelief in a possible invasion. He knew what the military resources of the USSR were and how difficult a German invasion would be. It never entered his mind that maybe the Germans had such piss-poor intelligence that they \*didn’t \*know all this. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2009, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-stalin-believe-hitler/488692/15 "2009-03-09T20:59:46Z")
Winston Churchill wrote that the Russians had been snubbed by France and Britain repeatedly in the 30’s when the USSR would approach them with suggestions of political alliance, particularly during the Munich crisis. Even by the middle of '39, when Hitler was making noises against Poland, Britain and France made only token gestures towards/with the USSR, with nothing more concrete than “we agree Herr Hitler is a bad man”, and practically nothing of any substance in terms of military coordination or sharing of intel. Poland absolutely refused to consider allowing the Soviet armies in her territory. There was no reason for Stalin to have any confidence in the leadership of France or Britain at that time. I’m guessing that Stalin thought that Hitler would have been lulled into thinking he had duped the USSR, and entangled in a war with France and Britain long enough for the USSR to restructure and reinforce it’s forces in the west. (_No one_ suspected France would last only 10 months. Heh. ) ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2009, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-stalin-believe-hitler/488692/16 "2009-03-09T21:36:34Z")
The non-aggression pact not only gave the USSR eastern Poland (“western Ukraine”), but also gave Stalin a free hand to conquer the Baltic republics, thus essentially restoring Russia’s pre-WW1 imperial boundaries. And it guaranteed that Germany would get into a war with France and Britain; all in all, it looked like a sweet deal at the time. But no one counted on France folding as fast and as completely as it did. Stalin must have felt like someone who discarded a card and gave their opponent a straight flush. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2009, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-stalin-believe-hitler/488692/17 "2009-03-09T23:57:42Z")
It’s also possible that Stalin – like practically everyone else at the time, including most Germans – was simply incapable of getting his mind around what kind of man Hitler was and what he intended: The utter destruction, not only of Soviet Communism, but of Russia and Poland as nations, so that a greater Germany could be built on their bones. From [_Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties,_](http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Times-Revised-Twenties-Perennial/dp/0060935502/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196390812&sr=8-3) by Paul Johnson, Chapter 10, “The End of Old Europe”: > [@](#): > > Hitler’s aims can be reconstructed not merely from Mein Kampf itself, with its stress on the ‘East Policy,’ but from his early speeches and so-called ‘Second’ or Secret Book of 1928. This material makes it clear that the ‘cleansing’ process – the elimination of the Jews – was essential to the whole long-term strategy. Being a race-socialist as opposed to a class-socialist, Hitler believed the dynamic of history was race. The dynamic was interrupted when race-poisoning took place. The poison came, above all, from the Jews. He admired the Jews as ‘negative supermen’. In his Table-Talk he said that if 5,000 Jews emigrated to Sweden, in no time at all they would occupy all the key positions: this was because ‘blood purity’, as he put it in Mein Kampf, ‘is a thing the Jew preserves better than any other people on earth’. The Germans, on the other hand, were poisoned. That was why they lost the First World War. Even he was poisoned: that was why he sometimes made mistakes – ‘all of us suffer from the sickness of mixed, corrupt blood’. Race-poisoning was a comparatively common obsession in the time of Hitler’s youth, rather as ecological poisoning became an obsession of many in the 1970s and 1980s. The notion of ubiquitous poisoning appealed strongly to the same type of person who accepted conspiracy theories as the machinery of public events. As with the later ecologists, they thought the race-poison was spreading fast, that total disaster was iminent, and that it would take a long time to reverse even if the right policies were adopted promptly. Hitler calculated it would take a hundred years for his regime to eliminate racial poisoning in Germany: on the other hand, if Germany became the first nation-race to do so successfully, it would inevitably become ‘lord of the Earth’. (Mein Kampf.) > > What distinguished Hitlerian race-theory was, first, this rooted belief that ‘cleansing’ could make Germany the first true superpower, and ultimately the first paramount power in the world; and, secondly, his absolute conviction that the ‘Jewish race-poison’ and Bolshevism were one and the same phenomenon. In 1928, when he wrote his Second Book, he did not appreciate that old-style ‘Jewish’ Bolshevism had ceased to exist and that Stalin’s Russia was in essentials as anti-Semitic as Tsardom had been. On the contrary, he believed the Soviet Union was a Jewish cultural phenomenon. Hence the object of his policy was to combat ‘an inundation of diseased bacilli which at the moment have their breeding-ground in Russia’. Thus the ‘cleansing’ fit in perfectly with the resumption of traditional German East policy, but on a far more ambitious scale. > > Hitler’s full programme, therefore, was as follows. First, gain control of Germany itself, and begin the cleansing process at home. Second, destroy the Versailles settlement and establish Germany as the dominant power in Central Europe. All this could be accomplished without war. Third, on this power basis, destroy the Soviet Union (by war) to rid the ‘breeding-ground’ of the ‘bacillus’ and, by colonization, created a solid economic and strategic power base from which to establish a continental empire, in which France and Italy would be mere satellites. In the fourth stage Germany would acquire a large colonial empire in Africa, plus a big ocean navy, to make her one of the four superpowers, in addition to Britain, Japan and the United States. Finally, in the generation after his death, Hitler envisaged a decisive struggle between Germany and the United States for world domination. > > No one since Napoleon had thought in such audacious terms. In its gigantic scope the concept was Alexandrine. Yet until he was engulfed by the war he made, Hitler was always pragmatic. Like Lenin he was a superb opportunist, always ready to seize openings and modify his theory accordingly. This has led some historians to conclude he had no master-programme. In fact, while always adjusting the tactics to suit the moment, he pursued his long-term strategy with a brutal determination that has seldom been equalled in the history of human ambition. Unlike most tyrants, he was never tempted to relax by a surfeit of autocratic power. Quite the contrary. He was always raising the stakes on the table and seeking to hasten the pace of history. He feared his revolution would lose its dynamism. He thought himself indispensable, and at least four of his phases must be accomplished while he was not only still alive but at the height of his powers. It was this impatience which made him so dangerous in the short term and so ineffectual in the long term (the very reverse of the Soviet strategists). In a secret speech to German newspaper editors in November 1938, after his great Munich triumph, he deplored the fact that his need to talk about peace had led the German nation to relax too much. He argued that for Germany to accept peace, and thus stability, as a permanent fact of international life was to accept the very spirit of defeatism. Violence was a necessity, and the public must be prepared for it. Same book, Chapter 11, “The Watershed Year”: > [@](#): > > Hitler’s ultimate aim was to create a German _Volk_ of 250 million. He said that he proposed settling 100 million Germans on the great plains to the west of the Urals. In 1941 he envisaged that over the next decade the first 20 million would move east. Though he saw the colonization process clearly, he was vague on where the settlers were to come from. Those eligible and willing to settle, the Volksdeutsche from south-east Europe, numbered only 5 million, perhaps 8 milllion at most. His colleage Alfred Rosenberg considered the idea of ‘drafting’ Scandinavian, Dutch, and English settlers, being racially approximate to Germans, when the war was won. Some aspects of this great population transfer, to be the most formidable and decisive in history, were determined in meticulous detail. There was to be polygamy and a free choice of women for servicemen with decorations. The Crimea, after being ‘cleansed’ of Slavs and Jews, was to be turned into a gigantic German spa under its old Greek name of Tauria, populated by a mass transfer of peasants from the South Tyrol. Over vast areas of the Ukraine and south European Russia, a new Volk civilization was planned. As Hitler described it: > > > [@](#): > > > > The area must lose the character of the Asiatic steppe. It must be Europeanized! . . . The ‘Reich peasant’ is to live in outstandingly beautiful settlements. The German agencies and authorities are to have wonderful buildings, the governors palaces. Around each city, a ring of lovely villages will be placed to within 30 or 40 kilometers . . . . That is why we are now building the large traffic arteries on the southern tip of the Crimea, out to the Caucasus mountains. Around these traffic strands, the German cities will be placed, like pearls on a string, and around the cities the German settlements will lie. For we will not open up Lebensraum for ourselves by entering the old, godforsaken Russian holes! The German settlements must be on an altogether higher level! > > As Hitler’s vision expanded, in the heady days of 1941, it came to embrace all Europe. Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, the whole of France north of the Somme were to be incorporated in a Greater Germany, the names of the cities being changed – Nancy would become Nanzig, Besancon Bisanz. Trondheim would become a major German city and naval base of 250,000 inhabitants. The Alps would be the boundary between ‘the German Empire of the North,’ with a new ‘Germania’ as its capital, and ‘the Roman Empire of the South’. The Pope would be hanged in full pontificals in St. Peter’s Square. Strasbourg Cathedral would be turned into a giant ‘Monument to the Unknown Soldier’. New crops, such a perennial rye, would be invented. He would forbid smoking, make vegetarianism compulsory, ‘revive the Cimbrian art of knitting’, appoint a ‘Special Commissioner for the Care of Dogs’ and an ‘Assistant Secretary for Defence Against Gnats and Insects’.’ ---
**Author:** ![sqweels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@sqweels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sqweels)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2009, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-stalin-believe-hitler/488692/18 "2009-03-10T00:12:24Z")
> [@mlees](#): > > Winston Churchill wrote that the Russians had been snubbed by France and Britain repeatedly in the 30’s when the USSR would approach them with suggestions of political alliance, particularly during the Munich crisis. > > Even by the middle of '39, when Hitler was making noises against Poland, Britain and France made only token gestures towards/with the USSR, with nothing more concrete than “we agree Herr Hitler is a bad man”, and practically nothing of any substance in terms of military coordination or sharing of intel. Poland absolutely refused to consider allowing the Soviet armies in her territory. > > There was no reason for Stalin to have any confidence in the leadership of France or Britain at that time. I’m finding this eerily remincient to recent events in our own time. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2009, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-stalin-believe-hitler/488692/19 "2009-03-10T02:43:24Z")
> [@sqweels](#): > > I’m finding this eerily remincient to recent events in our own time. Churchill remarks on how determined the British electorate was on having peace. (I assume WW1 left a deep scar on the English, even if not quite as deep as it did on the French.) The governments under Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin, and Neville Chamberlain worked hard to ensure that peace. Perhaps they assumed that Hitler, a Western Front trench-warfare Alumni, was telling the truth when he said he wanted to avoid a general war. Hitler was formed under a rather rough and tumble political system, though, where “might makes right”. (Germany 1919-1922 reads as rather unstable to me.) If Churchill describes it accurately, it was interesting in how the intellectual Neville Chamberlain was personally offended by the “stab in the back” (the partition of Czechoslovakia in March of '39), after all his hard work in reaching the Munich agreement a few months earlier. Chamberlain never trusted the USSR enough to consider a real Alliance with them, however. I wonder why Hitler seemed like a statesman, but Stalin a thug, in Chamberlains eyes, considering all the necks the Nazi’s stepped on, on their way to power. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2009, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-stalin-believe-hitler/488692/20 "2009-03-10T03:46:21Z")
> [@mlees](#): > > Chamberlain never trusted the USSR enough to consider a real Alliance with them, however. I wonder why Hitler seemed like a statesman, but Stalin a thug, in Chamberlains eyes, considering all the necks the Nazi’s stepped on, on their way to power. Perhaps because Chamberlain was a Conservative and Stalin was a Communist. As George Orwell wrote in 1941 in [_The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius:_](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part14) > [@](#): > > They [the British ruling class] could not struggle against Nazism or Fascism, because they could not understand them. Neither could they have struggled against Communism, if Communism had been a serious force in western Europe. To understand Fascism they would have had to study the theory of Socialism, which would have forced them to realize that the economic system by which they lived was unjust, inefficient and out-of-date. But it was exactly this fact that they had trained themselves never to face. They dealt with Fascism as the cavalry generals of 1914 dealt with the machine-guns—by ignoring it. After years of aggression and massacres, they had grasped only one fact, that Hitler and Mussolini were hostile to Communism. Therefore, it was argued, they MUST be friendly to the British dividend-drawer. Hence the truly frightening spectacle of Conservative M.P.s wildly cheering the news that British ships, bringing food to the Spanish Republican government, had been bombed by Italian aeroplanes. Even when they had begun to grasp that Fascism was dangerous, its essentially revolutionary nature, the huge military effort it was capable of making, the sort of tactics it would use, were quite beyond their comprehension. At the time of the Spanish Civil War, anyone with as much political knowledge as can be acquired from a sixpenny pamphlet on Socialism knew that, if Franco won, the result would be strategically disastrous for England; and yet generals and admirals who had given their lives to the study of war were unable to grasp this fact. This vein of political ignorance runs right through English official life, through Cabinet ministers, ambassadors, consuls, judges, magistrates, policemen. The policeman who arrests the ‘red’ does not understand the theories the ‘red’ is preaching; if he did his own position as bodyguard of the moneyed class might seem less pleasant to him. There is reason to think that even military espionage is hopelessly hampered by ignorance of the new economic doctrines and the ramifications of the underground parties. > > The British ruling class were not altogether wrong in thinking that Fascism was on their side. It is a fact that any rich man, unless he is a Jew, has less to fear from Fascism than from either Communism or democratic Socialism. One ought never to forget this, for nearly the whole of German and Italian propaganda is designed to cover it up. The natural instinct of men like Simon, Hoare, Chamberlain etc. was to come to an agreement with Hitler. But—and here the peculiar feature of English life that I have spoken of, the deep sense of national solidarity, comes in—they could only do so by breaking up the Empire and selling their own people into semi-slavery. A truly corrupt class would have done this without hesitation, as in France. But things had not gone that distance in England. Politicians who would make cringing speeches about ‘the duty of loyalty to our conquerors’ are hardly to be found in English public life. Tossed to and fro between their incomes and their principles, it was impossible that men like Chamberlain should do anything but make the worst of both worlds. Of course, Churchill was also a Conservative, who once declared, “Against the Bolsheviks all methods are good,” but one of greater vision than Chamberlain. When Hitler broke the Nonagression Pact, he remarked that if Hitler were to invade Hell he would offer an alliance to the Devil. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-stalin-believe-hitler/488692.md?page=2)