Hitler & Stalin: Laurence Rees On Tyrants At War | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra
"‘I wanted to examine this overarching theme that I perceived, which was that both of them actually, despite their many number of similarities, many differences, both of them had one overarching similarity, which was this belief that they could create a utopia on earth. And that was this extraordinary concept that linked them actually fundamentally together.’
‘And was that utopianism, was that common to other dictators? Or is that what sets these two apart from say, Mao, Ho Chi Minh. Mussolini?’
‘I’m not even convinced it’s necessarily, either or, I mean, it's clearly some kind of, of scale, if you like, but if you look at for example, Saddam Hussein, Saddam Hussein, is a thug, is a brutal kind of mafia-like dictator. If you look at someone like Pol Pot, then actually they also have this utopian vision that they're seeking to, to build here. And I think that there is a difference between a dictator who is simply kind of in it for the personal aggrandizement, who’s in it to benefit his family, is in it almost as a kind of quasi mafia boss, and some, and a tyrant who is, who has come to power, actually convinced they have uncovered the secret of existence. And it's their mission to try and create the world that's in their imagination almost, here on earth. And once you've got a tyrant who's doing that, it seems to me you have the, the potential for levels of human disaster that are almost unfathomable...
The central belief of Adolf Hitler was that the world is understood through racism, that, that the world is a brutal, desperate place, ruled by laws of nature, primal laws of nature, and then the most primal of all of them is that victory goes to the strongest. So, and the strongest, you understand, by in racial terms...
[Stalin] comes at it from a from a Marxist perspective, he comes at it from the belief that, that what he is trying to do is to eliminate all of the evils of society that he has seen happen, which are fundamentally that you have a group of people who are controlling the levers of power, controlling the means of production, owning vast estates, and have done nothing to deserve it, they've certainly been born in the right place. And now they're in a position to essentially persecute the people who are working, working for them and deny them all sorts of rights. And that the way through that is following the dictates of Marx. The way through that is to create this perfect society. Initially, a socialist society moving on to a communist society, but a perfect society in which people are living as far as possible, equal lives. People are living as far as possible lives where they understand that, that that that what's important is that they contribute to the state, and that the state will then organize through, through various systems, will organize, equality of opportunity, equality of education, elimination of all private ownership, because by definition that's unfair and unjust, and create a society that gets rid of all those previous abuses.
And that initially that will be socialism as a way through to ultimately communism and the ultimate end game of communism, as as, as seen by Marx, I say this, this is a simplification because there's a huge element of complexity within Marx that scholars still argue about rather like, I always think, Christians would, particularly in previous times, would argue about very detailed elements of the, of Christian belief, and there would be various heretics on one side or the other within the Christian, within the broad Christian belief structures. But so, but broadly, Stalin is looking, at least he claims to be looking, to create a world in which the state will wither away. And then what will happen is everyone will live together in this extraordinary dreamlike utopia, where we don't really need much government of any kind, and everybody's equal, everybody's happy. And it's this wonderful kind of paradise on earth.’
‘Now, I realize the consequences were horrendous in both cases. But certainly from what you're describing, is it fair to say that Stalin's vision was a little more I don't know, if you’d say idealistic, more positive, less, less imbued with hatred than that of Hitler's?’
‘That's a really fascinating question. Because that was initially, I remember 30 years ago, when I kind of started on all this work, I remember this one of the scholars I was talking to who had a kind of a, kind of relatively common view for then, which was, well, Hitler. And he summarized it as if, you know, he was saying, that he said, when I was talking to a child, he said, I would say this, I would say that Hitler was somebody who had a very, very, did very, very bad things, and had a very bad goal inside. And Stalin was a person who did very, very bad things, but had a rather noble goal inside. I don't agree with that at all.
Where I've come to is to believe that both of them are bad people with bad goals. And the reason that that the, Stalin's goal is bad is because I do not, for two reasons. First, I don't necessarily believe that he believed that this was ever a possibility. That this, this kind of extraordinary, wonderful, utopian paradise state is going to be wonderful. And it's going to be even conceivable. I mean, how is that ever actually going to happen? And I came across a speech that he made just before the war, it, which I think is of huge significance. And I haven't seen much as, as much emphasis on that speech, as I think it should have, in which he himself admits that this is a, this is a goal that will be incredibly hard to achieve. And he says, essentially, in this speech, and I paraphrase, he says, well, we're all, we all know we're aiming for the goal of this extraordinary utopian state, where we don't really need government and so on. But what we've got to understand is that that's only possible if the whole world goes communist. Because how can we do that and get rid of our, as he called them security organs, by which he means the secret police and all the apparatus around that as well as the armies and so on? How can we divest ourselves of that, if other people have it, because then they're just, we're putting ourselves massively at risk? So we can't we can't do that. So these these institutions, these oppressive institutions, he didn't use the word oppressive, but that's what they are, these will have to stay.
So he's admitting that, that actually, in order to get to this, this, this ultimate goal, the whole world will have to go communist. Well, does anyone seriously think, how on earth, how is that going to be achieved, or conceived or it? So it's kind of like an impossible goal? That’s my first point. My second point is, even if the impossible goal was achieved, if you, if you can argue that it's conceivable. Supposing I live in this wonderful new utopian state, where there's no real government, everyone's really happy, but I actually passionately believe that we ought to have a form of, of liberal democracy and we ought to have some form of of local government or whatever, I believe things that aren't compatible with the idea of the extraordinary utopian state. As soon as I believe that I have to be repressed, because I'm a danger to the broader state. So actually, even within this utopian world, there has to be oppression, there has to be the putting down or the, either through prison or any form, but the putting down of people who don't subscribe to that vision. So therefore, it's going to be oppressive, which is why I end the introduction to the book by saying, oppression is not a part of this system in either system, Nazism or Stalinism, oppression is the system.’...
‘On a personality level, how did the two differ as humans, as people to encounter?’
‘I think they were, they were incredibly different… Hitler was enormously fond of the sound of his own voice. So he would just, he would talk. It would be a problem in a meeting with Hitler, if you said certain trigger words, you know, if you said, well, well, of course, you know, there's a problem with this or that and he went, yes. And then he would be off, you know, he'd go, and you had a real problem, because he would just, as a modern day parlant to go off on one. But I don't believe that anybody who was a member of the Nazi state and took a meeting with Hitler was ever, or I'm not not aware of it, may have been, but I'm not aware of it, ever took that meeting, as a normal functionary within the state and was frightened. Because Hitler actually, had very, very set areas that he was focused and targeted on. And you really, as a general rule, you had to be plotting against him, in order for there to be a real, problem. The famous Night of the Long Knives, where Ernst Röhm his chief of staff was caught, was caught and killed, he was allegedly plotting, it's never been absolutely established. The extent to which Rohm was plotting, that the stormtroopers take over and move through and have functions of the army, and, and so on. That's the argument around that. But nonetheless, nonetheless, Hitler was, was pushed into a position, or at least felt he had was in a position where he had to take action. There were a number of people killed in that. A former chancellor’s wife, who was totally, had no role in this, and she was killed as these assassins came in. And so there were, those numbers of people people who suffered utterly unjustly, but it's not the same as the as, as the kind of thing that's going on with Stalin. So as a broad general rule, he was safer, if you're a normal functioning estate in a meeting with Hitler than you are with Stalin.
Stalin, you, you were always at risk. If, even if you are a loyal functionary of the state, if he feels, if he feels that you are, if he's got any suspicions about you, you are in, you are in possibly fatal trouble. And the other thing about Stalin in that context is that he doesn't, go off on one. He doesn't talk and talk and talk and talk. On the contrary, he watches. He's an extremely aggressive listener. And he's watching all the time. And that, must have been a pretty terrifying experience for some of these people to be in those meetings. The problem with Stalin was that you had to be very careful, you had to be extremely careful. If he felt you were lying, if he felt you were in any way, not being, not not delivering, if he felt you were in any way responsible for, in your past, you'd met people who he’d turned against and so on. It was a very, very, very different scenario...
[On Hitler] During the 30s, a number of people comment on how he doesn't seem to be doing much dictating as it were. And as my great mentor, Sir Ian Kershaw, you know, once said to me, you've got a dictator, who doesn't seem to be spending a great deal of time during this period dictating so what's, what's going on? And the answer is, because then the way that the reason that it can have this dynamism is because what he's doing is very, very clear, he has enormous clarity of vision. And he has a number of people who are then competing against each other, to come up with ways of fulfilling that vision. So, for example, you see that he is the one who is driving in autumn of 1939, and spring of 1940, the decision to invade Western Europe. And he’s, a number of his generals think this is absolutely ridiculous idea, that they're bound to fail, and yet he pushes and pushes and pushes them. And in the end, he starts picking a plan that arguably comes from this guy, an officer called Manstein, which eventually pushes through and defeats France and the other countries of Western Europe that are invaded.
So and this is and there isn't as much focus, I don't believe on the decision making process that leads to the conquest of Western Europe, land based Western Europe, not obviously Britain. That he, the process through which he actually, that happens is quite extraordinary. I mean, that is one of the single greatest military triumphs, again, arguably of all time, overshadowed completely, by the way, it all goes wrong for the Nazis in, in the Soviet Union. But. That, and the way that that works, is a function of how his leadership works and how he is able through his charismatic leadership to operate...
[Stalin']s so desperate to believe that Hitler isn't going to invade, that he starts trying to create around in this alternate universe in which oh, it's not really going to happen. And then once they do invade June 1941, he has, if not a breakdown, and again, there's a lot of debate about exactly how he, he goes through those those first few weeks, if not a breakdown, certainly, he's not in a good place, as one might put it colloquially. He makes a series of terrible military decisions culminating in the loss of the Battle of Kiev in the autumn of 1941, where hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers are captured or killed. And he's making terrible decisions. He’s making terrible decisions, because unlike Hitler, who ultimately is setting a vision and then trusting his functionaries, his generals, or his other functionaries to carry this through, Stalin is interfering at a very, very, very detailed level in what his generals are doing on the ground and saying, no, you can't retreat. You can't do this. You can't do that. And it's catastrophic. So in that initial period of the war, you have, I think, a huge difference between the two in terms of their own leadership tactics... As you get more towards the end of 42… you begin to see that Stalin actually understands that he has to, particularly I think, with Zhukov, he actually has to give more latitude to these people, otherwise, he's going to lose the war… the first sign of that change, I think, is his decision, his decision not to leave Moscow, because in many ways, the pragmatic bureaucratic decision, this would have been to leave. And he doesn't go because he actually, I think, understands that the message that sends, the message that sends, have a strong leader, essentially fleeing would be, would be catastrophic.'"
We are told one factor Germany lost was because Hitler micromanaged too much, but it seems Stalin was worse, at least at first
The tankies will be really upset that Stalin had so much in common with Hitler. But then they also pretend the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact never existed and that the USSR was opposed to Nazi Germany from the start