Russia and Germany
DALLIN, ALEXANDER
Russia and Germany By Alexander Dallin Judging from past history, Germany and Russia have but two alternatives in dealing with each other: They can be friends or they can be enemies. There is no...
...It is particularly instructive on Nazi decision-making and the economic relation between the two would-be allies...
...Once the former broke loose from its Western moorings, Moscow could convert the alliance into a Diktat...
...1 German-Soviet Relations Between the Two World Wars...
...By Gerhard L. Weinberg...
...This is the theory which in Weimar days captivated wide circles in Germany that were in no sense pro-Communist...
...Brill (Leyden...
...Journal of Modern History...
...We can be certain that Moscow will woo Bonn just as it woos every other partner of the free-world coalition...
...In 1939, with both Berlin and Moscow strong, they stood to gain (however immorally) by devouring the states that lay between them and extending their influence in all directions...
...only recently, however, has an illuminating inside account of the clandestine army dealings been published.3 2 "General Hans von Seeckt and Russia," by G. W. F. Hallgarten...
...By E. H. Carr...
...This was the cul-de-sac into which Stalin had maneuvered himself in 1941...
...Ruetten & Loening (East Berlin...
...8 Offene Worte, November 15, 1952 (eited in East Europe [London], vol...
...Bowes and Bowes (Cambridge...
...A thorough study of Soviet motivations and tactics toward the Reich in the Thirties and during the war remains to be written...
...However, whenever one of them is markedly superior in strength, resources and maneuverability, an alliance between them becomes suicidal for the weaker partner...
...for, if Hitler had defeated Britain, he could have dictated to Moscow as he could not while his hands were tied in the West...
...Germany, they conclude, "can either seek security against the Soviet threat by an alliance with the Western powers, or else she can ally herself with the Soviet Union...
...The Soviets are adept at the old game of "divide and rule," and Stalin's last pronouncement on exploiting Western disunity only reiterated an old maxim of Soviet behavior...
...By Lionel Cochan...
...In post-Versailles days, the cooperation "between a blind man and a cripple" enabled them to lift each other by their bootstraps...
...5 German-Soviet Relations...
...and, while some of them shed valuable light, others merely generate confusion...
...But in the event of the latter, Western Germany, and probably the rest of Europe, would doubtless share the fate of the East European satellites...
...By Gnstav Hilger and Alfred G. Meyer...
...Regardless of the political regime in Russia, the power constellation and the two countries' economically complementary nature were held to favor collaboration—a thesis long expounded by Hans von Seeckt, chief of the German General Staff...
...7 Die Diplomatischen Beziehungen Deutschlands zur Sowjetunion, 1917-1932...
...Each of these policies—alliance and enmity—has had its advocates and myths, its successes and failures...
...Vierteljahrshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte (Munich), 1953, I. 9-45...
...Gerhard L. Weinberg's German-Russian Relations, 1939-415 aptly pulls together all the available data, making extensive use of British and Italian documentation only recently released...
...Indeed, while the assorted Ehrenburgs were preaching hatred of all Germans during Russia's darkest hours in World War II, Moscow was setting up the "Free Germany Committee" to the accompaniment of warmed-over slogans about the two countries' "traditional friendship...
...Macmillan...
...418...
...There is no third course...
...Lionel Co-chan's Russia and the Weimar Republic,4 relying largely on open sources, systematically surveys the pre-Nazi days and, in spite of some questionable interpretations, helps fill a substantial gap...
...And this, in reverse, is the situation that would arise if Bonn made a deal with the Kremlin...
...Professor George Hallgarten uses previously unknown documents2 to show how in pre-Rapallo days Berlin and Moscow (with Karl Radek and von Seeckt as protagonists) were already engaged in plotting revenge against Poland and other World War II victors...
...Johns Hopkins...
...The most comprehensive and in some ways most provocative recent volume is the memoirs of Gustav Hilger,6 former counselor of the German Embassy in Moscow...
...4 Russia and the Weimar Republic...
...1939-1941...
...The subsequent German-Soviet military collaboration, in violation of the Versailles Treaty, has long been an open secret...
...6 The Incompatible lilies...
...Hilger and Meyer touch the heart of the problem when they assess the sort of neutralism now being revived in certain West German quarters as the sheerest myopia...
...IX, no...
...Born in Russia of German parents and stationed in Moscow throughout virtually the entire inter-war era, Hilger has become widely recognized as a leading expert on Russian affairs...
...That there is ample source material on which to draw is shown by two other new studies...
...His memoirs, written with the assistance of Alfred G. Meyer, are not sensational...
...Not surprisingly, the latest additions to the literature on the subject come to conflicting conclusions...
...The varied experience of German-Russian relations shows that an alliance between the two powers can be mutually beneficial only when they are of equal strength—both weak or both strong...
...Yet, their value is considerable, for they revive the atmosphere in which the policy of rapprochement with Moscow thrived in Berlin at different moments...
...The brilliant but often unpredictable British scholar E. H. Carr, in a recent study1 that provides little new factual material, writes on the underlying assumption that German-Russian cooperation normally redounds to the benefit of both...
...Since the war, East German historiography has dutifully rewritten past relations with the Soviet Union to "demonstrate" that Russia is Germany's only reliable friend against the "predatory" West.7 Incredibly, the German Communist press now cites Moscow's secret separate-peace feelers to the Reich in 1943 as "evidence" that the Soviet Government has always been the champion of the Germans!8 This, it will be recalled, was at just the time when TASS attacked Britain for allegedly preparing to make peace with Hitler...
...they are largely impressionistic and reveal little that is not available from other sources...
...Several more factual and solid contributions have also appeared recently...
...By Fritz Klein...
...3 "Reichswehr und Rote Armee," by Helm Speidel...
Vol. 37 • August 1954 • No. 33
