IHR — Institute for Historical Review By Institute for Historical Review
Two Historic Documents
Joseph Goebbels announces to the world the stunning news that German, Finnish and Romanian forces were launching an attack against the Soviet Union. Broadcasting from Berlin early Sunday morning, June 22, 1941, the Reich Minister reads the text of Hitler’s proclamation explaining the background and reasons for the attack – the largest military campaign in history.
As dawn was breaking on Sunday morning, June 22, 1941, military forces of Germany and Romania suddenly struck against the Soviet Union along a broad front stretching hundreds of miles from the Arctic Circle in the far north to the Black Sea in the south. Finland, Hungary, Italy, Slovakia, and Croatia quickly joined the campaign – the largest military offensive in history. Soldiers from those nations were soon joined by volunteers from other European countries, including France, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Spain, and Belgium.
The stunning news of this attack was announced to the world by German radio at 5:30 that Sunday morning, when Reich Minister Joseph Goebbels broadcast the text of a proclamation by Adolf Hitler to the German people that laid out his reasons for the historic offensive.
Following that was the broadcast of Germany’s declaration of war against the Soviet Union. This was in the form of a diplomatic note to the Soviet government, read by Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to a packed and hastily organized news conference of journalists representing the German press, as well as newspapers across Europe and overseas.
This Foreign Office statement explains in some detail the German government’s reasons for the momentous decision to attack the USSR. About two hours earlier, Ribbentrop had given the text to the Soviet ambassador in Berlin, while at the same time the German ambassador in Moscow was delivering a shorter version of it to the Soviet Foreign Minister.
The text of Ribbentrop’s statement, quickly distributed by Germany’s DNB news agency, appeared the next day in newspapers in Germany and abroad. An English-language text, which contained a number of errors due perhaps to the haste with which it had been prepared, appeared in The New York Times.
Although the two German statements of June 22 portrayed a grave and looming Soviet threat, they actually understated the scale of the danger. While Hitler and his generals knew that the Red Army was large and formidable, they had seriously underestimated its size and power. This miscalculation proved to be an important and probably decisive factor in the failure to crush the Soviet military by the onset of winter 1941-42, as planned – which then made possible the ultimate triumph of the Red Army in the titanic four-year clash.
By June 1941, the Soviet air force was not only the world’s largest, it was greater than the combined air forces of all other countries together. Similarly, the Soviet airborne assault force – which could be used only in offensive operations – was not only larger than Germany’s, it was larger than the combined paratroop forces of the rest of the world. The Soviet Red Army’s tank force was not only the world’s largest, it was larger than the tank forces of the rest of the world combined.
German leaders did not know that the Soviets were already producing the T-34, KV-1 and KV-2 tanks, the heaviest and most deadly in the world, and more formidable than any German model. Nor they did they know that the Soviet military had more than 4,000 amphibious tanks – which were meant only for offensive operations – while the Germans had none.
The Germans were also unaware of how the Soviets had been preparing their military commanders for war. For example, at a secret speech to military academy graduates in May 1941, just weeks earlier, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin said: “In conducting the defense of our country, we are compelled to act in an aggressive manner. From defense we have to shift to a military policy of offense. It is indispensable that we reform our training, our propaganda, our press to a mindset of offense. The Red Army is a modern army, and the modern army is an army of offense.”
It did not take long for German leaders to realize that they had greatly misjudged the scope of the Soviet military buildup. On August 11, 1941 – just eight weeks after the start of “Operation Barbarossa” – General Franz Halder, chief of the German army high command, noted in his diary: “In the situation as a whole, it is becoming ever clearer that we have underestimated the Russian colossus, which has consciously prepared for the war with the absolute lack of restraint that is peculiar to totalitarian states … At the outset of the war we reckoned with about 200 enemy divisions. Now we are already counting 360.”
A week later – on August 19 – the well informed Reich Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, similarly noted in his diary: “We obviously quite underestimated the Soviet shock power and, above all, the equipment of the Soviet army. We had nowhere near any idea of what the Bolsheviks had available. This led to erroneous decision-making …”
Hitler himself acknowledged, both in public and in private, that he had misjudged the extent and scale of the Soviet threat. “Certainly, though, we were mistaken about one thing,” the German leader told a large audience in Berlin on Oct. 3, 1941. “We had no idea how gigantic the preparations of this enemy were against Germany and Europe, and how immeasurably great was the danger; how we just barely escaped annihilation, not only of Germany but also of Europe.”
The US government responded to the news of the German-led offensive with an official statement, issued by Deputy Secretary of State Sumner Welles. Completely ignoring the points made by the leaders in Berlin, it claimed that Germany’s “treacherous” attack was part of a plan by Hitler “for the cruel and brutal enslavement of all peoples and for the ultimate destruction of the remaining free democracies.” Actually, it was the Soviet Union – the world’s most oppressive regime at the time – that was dedicated to the eradication of “free democracies” and to the ultimate triumph of “proletarian dictatorship” in all countries. Stalin had made clear his elemental hostility to “free democracy” when the Red Army tried impose a Bolshevik regime on Finland in the “Winter War” of 1939-1940. In fact, soldiers of Finland – a parliamentary democracy – were now fighting as allies of Hitler’s Germany against the Soviets.
The American public, largely ignorant of European affairs and conditioned by years of media propaganda and alarmist rhetoric by President Franklin Roosevelt, generally accepted their government’s view of the conflict. “Of course,” Roosevelt told reporters on June 24, “we are going to give all the aid that we possibly can to Russia.” In violation of its proclaimed status as a neutral country, and with disregard for international law, the US was soon providing military aid to Soviet Russia.
Influential American historians have for years accepted the official US view of the German-Soviet clash. They portrayed the German-led offensive as a treacherous and unprovoked surprise attack against a peaceable country, motivated above all by grandiose visions of empire. Typical is the view of James MacGregor Burns, a prominent US historian and specialist of twentieth century American history. In his widely acclaimed book Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom he dismissed the German Foreign Office declaration of June 22, 1941, as a “pack of Nazi lies.”
In recent years, however, a growing number of historians have assembled considerable evidence that validates key points made by Hitler and the German government, and which shows that the Soviets were preparing a massive assault. The most influential of these historians has probably been a former Soviet GRU military intelligence officer, Vladimir Rezun. In a series of books written under the pen name of Viktor Suvorov, he has presented impressive evidence to show that the Soviet regime was preparing a massive offensive against Germany and Europe, and that the German-led attack forestalled an imminent Soviet strike. It is Stalin, not Hitler – he says – who should be considered the “chief culprit” of World War II.
Numerous documents and other historical evidence have come to light in recent decades that confirm key points made in the German statements of June 22, 1941. This evidence also thoroughly discredits the simplistic portrayal of the German-Soviet clash, and indeed of the Second World War itself, that US officials and prominent historians presented to the American public during the war, and for years afterwards.
Even if the leaders in Germany, Finland, and other European countries were mistaken in believing that a Soviet assault was imminent, they certainly had ample reason to regard the Stalin regime as a dangerous threat, and to conclude that the Soviets were deploying vast military forces in preparation for attack at some point in the future. The reasons given by Hitler and his government to justify the German-led attack were not lies or pretexts.
Indeed, the German, Finnish, and Romanian leaders had more valid and substantive cause to strike against the USSR in June 1941 than American leaders have had for launching a number of wars – including against Mexico in 1845, against Spain in 1898, and against Iraq in 2003. In none of those cases did the country attacked by US military forces present a clear and present danger to the US, or a threat to vital American national interests.
Because Hitler’s proclamation of June 22, 1941, and the German Foreign Office declaration of the same day, explain at some length the reasons and motives for the fateful decision to strike against the USSR, these are documents of historic importance. The texts of specially prepared translations of these two statements are given below in full.
– Mark Weber, March 2019
Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop announces Germany’s declaration of war against the Soviet Union. At a meeting room packed with foreign correspondents and journalists representing the German press, he reads the text of the lengthy diplomatic note to the Soviet government, which explains in some detail the reasons for the decision to attack the USSR. His reading of the statement on Sunday morning, June 22, 1941, is broadcast to the world on German radio.
Hitler’s Proclamation to the German People
German people! National Socialists!
Weighed down with heavy cares, condemned to months-long silence, the hour has now come when at last I can speak frankly.
When on September 3, 1939, the German Reich received the British declaration of war there was repeated anew the British attempt to thwart every beginning of a consolidation of Europe and thereby its rise, by fighting against whatever power on the Continent was strongest at any given time. That is how, in times past, Britain ruined Spain in many wars. That is how she conducted her wars against Holland. That is how later she fought France with the aid of all Europe, and that is how, at the turn of the century, she began the encirclement of the then German Reich and, in 1914, the [First] World War. It was only on account of its internal lack of unity that Germany was defeated in 1918. The consequences were terrible.
After hypocritical declarations that the fight was solely against the Kaiser and his regime, and once the German army had laid down its arms, the annihilation of the German Reich began according to plan.
While the prophecies of a French statesman [Georges Clemenceau] that there were twenty million Germans too many – in other words, that this number would have to be eliminated by hunger, disease or emigration – were apparently being fulfilled to the letter, the National Socialist movement began its work of unifying the German people, and thereby initiating the resurgence of the Reich. This rise of our people from distress, misery and shameful disregard was in the form of a purely internal renaissance. In no way did that affect, much less threaten, Britain.
Nevertheless, a new, hate-filled policy of encirclement against Germany began immediately. Internally and externally there came into being that plot, familiar to all of us, between Jews and democrats, Bolsheviks and reactionaries, with the sole aim of inhibiting the establishment of the new German people’s state, and of plunging the Reich anew into impotence and misery.
Apart from us, the hatred of this international world conspiracy was directed against those nations that, like ourselves, were neglected by fortune and were obliged to earn their daily bread in the hardest struggle for existence.
Above all, the right of Italy and Japan, just as much as that of Germany, to share in the goods of this world was contested and in fact was formally denied. The alliance of these [three] nations was, therefore, purely an act of self-protection in the face of the egoistic global combination of wealth and power that threatened them. As early as 1936 [Winston] Churchill, according to statements by the American General Wood before a committee of the American House of Representatives, declared that Germany was once again becoming too powerful and must therefore be destroyed.
In the Summer of 1939 the time seemed to have come for Britain to begin to realize its intended annihilation by repetition of a comprehensive policy of encirclement of Germany. The plan of the campaign of lies staged for this purpose consisted in declaring that other people were threatened, in tricking them with British promises of guarantees and assistance, and of getting them to go against Germany, just as had happened prior to the [First] World War.
From May to August 1939, Britain thus succeeded in broadcasting to the world that Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Finland and Bessarabia. as well as Ukraine, were being directly threatened by Germany. Some of these states allowed themselves to be misled into accepting the promise of guarantee proffered with these assertions, thus joining the new encirclement front against Germany. Under these circumstances I considered myself entitled to assume responsibility, before my own conscience and before the history of the German people, not only of assuring these countries or their governments of the falseness of these British assertions, but also of setting at rest the strongest power in the east [the Soviet Union], by especially solemn declarations regarding the limits of our interests.
National Socialists! At that time you probably all felt that this step was a bitter and difficult one for me. The German people has never harbored hostile feelings against the peoples of Russia. However, for more than two decades the Jewish Bolshevik rulers in Moscow had been endeavoring to set aflame not only Germany but all Europe. At no time did Germany ever attempt to carry her National Socialist worldview into Russia, but on the contrary Jewish Bolshevik rulers in Moscow unswervingly endeavored to foist their domination upon us and other European nations, not only by ideological means but above all with military force. The consequences of the activity of this regime were nothing but chaos, misery and starvation in all countries.
I, on the other hand, have been striving for two decades, with a minimum of intervention and without destroying our production, to arrive at a new socialist order in Germany, one that not only eliminates unemployment but also permits the productive worker to receive an ever greater share of the fruits of his labor. The achievements of this policy of national economic and social reconstruction – which strove for a true national community by overcoming rank and class divisions – are unique in today’s world.
It was therefore only with extreme difficulty that I brought myself in August 1939 to send my [Foreign] Minister [von Ribbentrop] to Moscow in an endeavor there to counter the British encirclement policy against Germany. I did this only out of a sense of responsibility toward the German people, but above all in the hope of finally, in spite of everything, achieving lasting easing of tensions and of being able to reduce sacrifices that otherwise might have been demanded of us…
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