ON Sunday, 22nd June, 1941, M. Molotov, Soviet Vice-Premier and Foreign Commissar of the U.S.S.R., broadcast to the people of the Soviet Union:
‘To-day, at four o’clock in the morning, without giving any reason to the Soviet Government and without a declaration of war, German forces attacked our country, invaded our frontiers in many places, and raided our towns of Zhitomir, Kiev, Sebastopol, Kauna, and several others. More than 200 people were killed and wounded . . . This unheard-of attack on our country is without example in the history of civilized nations. The attack on our country has been made in spite of the fact that there is a non-aggression pact between Germany and the U.S.S.R. which was conscientiously kept in every detail . . . Now that the attack on the Soviet Union has taken place the Soviet Government has given our forces the following order: Beat back the enemies’ invasion and do not allow the enemy forces to hold the territory of our country . . . ’
Thus ended the period of ‘Strict Neutrality’. That the Soviet Government was taken completely by surprise is most doubtful. The probability of assault had already been foreshadowed in the events of the Nazi’s Balkan campaign, as I have earlier shown in the diplomatic declarations of the Soviet Government from the date of the ‘capitulation’ of Bulgaria. As soon as the battle for Crete was concluded the Nazis had to decide whether to strike through Turkey or Russia as their main line of advance to the East. Corn, oil, and strategy determined them to hasten their old and historically inevitable attack upon Russia. To make full use of the element of surprise, and also to deny to the Soviet Government a further period of inevitable speeding-up of preparations for eventualities that an attack on Turkey would have provided, they decided to submit Turkey to diplomatic pressure and strike immediately with military force against the Soviet Union. Turkey is allowed to wait its fate upon the too fragile plate of neutrality.
In the evening of the same day that Germany opened its undeclared war upon the Soviet Union, Mr. Winston Churchill destroyed, at least for the time being, any immediate prospect that Hitler may have conceived of switching the war into a general crusade against Bolshevism. In the most passionate speech he has delivered he said:
‘I have to make a declaration, but can you doubt what our policy will be? We have but one aim and one single irrevocable purpose. We are resolved to destroy Hitler and every vestige of the Nazi regime. From this nothing will turn us—nothing. Any man or State who fights against Nazism will have our aid . . . We have offered to the Soviet Government any technical or economic assistance which is in our power and which is likely to be of service to them . . . I will say, if Hitler imagines that his attack on Soviet Russia will cause the slightest division of aim or slackening of effort in the great Democracies, who are resolved on his doom, he is greatly mistaken . . . ’
Thus Hitler’s new invasion ended not merely the Soviet Union’s period of ‘strict neutrality’, it suddenly swept on one side all obstacles that had for so long stood in the way of the establishment of a common front between this country and Soviet Russia.
The proffered aid and collaboration of the British Government was promptly accepted by the Soviet Government. As foreshadowed in these pages there was no questioning of the capitalist nature of the British Government; there was no argument about the war being an ‘imperialist war’. The outcome of this great conflict is beyond the scope and purpose of further discussion here. It is surely sufficient that Soviet Russia is marching with us—marching to the task of smashing that Fascist tyranny which seeks to enslave the whole world.
J. T. M.
25th June, 1941.