June 1941: Hitler and Stalin

182 Pages·2006·0.468 MB·English

by  John Lukacs

June 1941
Hitler and Stalin
books by john lukacs
The Great Powers and Eastern Europe
Tocqueville: The European Revolution
and Correspondence with Gobineau (editor)
A History of the Cold War
Decline and Rise of Europe
A New History of the Cold War
Historical Consciousness
The Passing of the Modern Age
A Sketch of the History of Chestnut Hill College, 1924–1974
The Last European War, 1939–1941
1945: Year Zero
Philadelphia: Patricians and Philistines, 1900–1950
Outgrowing Democracy: A History of the
United States in the Twentieth Century
Budapest 1900: A Historical Portrait of a
City and Its Culture
Confessions of an Original Sinner
The Duel: 10 May–31 July; The Eighty-Day
Struggle Between Churchill and Hitler
The End of the Twentieth Century and the End of the Modern Age
Destinations Past
George F. Kennan and the Origins of Containment,
1944–1946: The Kennan-Lukacs Correspondence
The Hitler of History
A Thread of Years
Five Days in London, May 1940
A Student’s Guide to the Study of History
At the End of an Age
Churchill: Visionary. Statesman. Historian.
A New Republic
Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred
Remembered Past: A John Lukacs Reader
June 1941
Hitler
and
Stalin
John Lukacs
yale university press ∏ new haven and london
Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of
Amasa Stone Mather of the Class of 1907, Yale College.
Copyright ∫ 2006 by John Lukacs.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in
any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S.
Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written
permission from the publishers.
Designed by James J. Johnson and set in Carter and Cone Galliard Roman type by
Keystone Typesetting, Inc., Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lukacs, John, 1924–
June 1941 : Hitler and Stalin / John Lukacs.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn-13: 978-0-300-11437-9 (alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-300-11437-0 (alk. paper)
1. World War, 1939–1945—Campaigns—Russia. 2. World War, 1939–1945—
Russia. 3. World War, 1939–1945—Germany. 4. Hitler, Adolf, 1889–1945.
5. Stalin, Joseph, 1879–1953. I. Title.
d764.l817 2006
940.54%217—dc22
2005057464
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability
of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity
of the Council on Library Resources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is dedicated
to Robert Ferrell

Contents
Limitations. Acknowledgments.
ix
o n e
A Historical Perspective
1
pa r t i
Hitler and Stalin
t w o
Hitler
7
t h r e e
Stalin
43
Contents
pa r t i i
The Twenty-Second of June
f o u r
Berlin
89
f i v e
Moscow
95
s i x
London
101
s e v e n
Washington—and Across the World
109
pa r t i i i
Unintended Consequences
e i g h t
The Immediate Crisis
117
n i n e
Unintended Consequences
129
a p p e n d i x
The Mystery of Hitler’s ‘‘Letter’’ and the Courier Plane
147
Documents, Books, and Articles Consulted
159
Index
165
viii
Limitations.
Acknowledgments.
This book is less than a monograph but more than a narra-
tive summary. I have been fascinated with German-Russian
relations and with Hitler’s and Stalin’s relations and reac-
tions to each other, especially in 1939–1941, and wrote in
some detail about them in my The Last European War, 1939–
1941 (New York, 1976). For that book I had access to Ger-
man and other archives but not to Russian ones. For this
book my limitations include my inability to read Russian,
whereby I was also bereft of the at times pleasurable experi-
ence of finding and reading all kinds of things in foreign
archives. I was, however, able to read many of the Russian
documents that have come to the surface during the past
twenty years: some of them in their published forms, some
of them in German and other translations. A fair amount of
the latter I was able to read in the library of the Institut für