Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm
Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm
fascinating to read how russia was drifting totaly into the nazi orbit. if hitler had kept stalin on side, he would have won the war.
also seems like russia and japan might have never gone to war either.
no way england/france, and even the US would have beat germany/russia.
i read a book about the german invasion of russia. they thought the russians had 150 divisions of troops. 4 weeks into the invasion they had counted 350. oops.
"Owen Chadwick: "Britain and the Vatican during the Second World War"
page 86: ii. The German conspiracy:
"Josef Müller was a Bavarian lawyer who at the outbreak of war was taken into the German intelligence, the Abwehr. He was a devout Catholic. The well known leader of the conspirators, Colonel Oster, spotted him and told him that his function was to strengthen the bonds between the Vatican and the German opposition."It was easy to send him to Rome on an Abwehr mission, to use his Vatican contacts to report on Italian and other defeatism, Italian relations to the democracies and whether Italy would enter the war. From Rome he made perfectly straight reports on these matter to Berlin.
"In Rome lived the old leader of the Centre Party, Monsignor Kass, whose role in making the party vote for Hitler's Enabling bill of march 1933 is still one of the most controversial acts of German history. Kaas was an exile in Rome. He earned his living as the Secretary of the Congregation which looked after St. Peter's. Josef Müller knew Kaas. He asked him for advice on how to use the Pope as an intermediary to the British.
"The German conspirators started by thinking to use the Vatican as a safe place to meet western representatives and did not think of bringing in the Pope. But when the first news came from Rome that discussion in the Vatican might be profitable, someone in the German group asked what guarantee could be got that if the Germans overthrew Hitler the western Allies would not force a Carthaginian peace like Versailles upon Germany. From the widow of one of the conspirators, von Dohnanyi, we have evidence that her husband suggested a secret guarantee of the proposed conditions of peace by the Pope. This guarantee was to be got through Müller.
"Early in November 1939 Müller came again to Mosignor Kaas, who put him into touch with Father Leiber the Pope's secretary. Not without doubts whether he was doing what was right, Father Leiber put the plan personally to the Pope. The Pope was to be asked to tell [British Ambassador] Osborne, for the British government, that the German opposition to Hitler existed in strength. He was asked to elicit honourable peace terms from London, to be negotiated with a new and upright German government after the overthrow of Hitler; and he was himself to be asked to guarantee certain articles of the peace terms beforehand, so as to make the overthrow of Hitler an easier work for the conspirators. Probably at least the Müller-Kaas proposal, which Father Leiber passed to the Pope, was couched in such general terms.
"The Pope was being invited to engage in a conspiracy to overthrow a tyrant, and incidentally to put himself and his aides into those dire risks which attend conspirators.
"Not surprisingly, he took a day for quiet reflection. From many situations during the later life of Pius XII we have evidence that he found it difficult to make up his mind on any weighty decision. Therefore he astonished Father Leiber at the end of his day of mediation, by a decision cast (according to Leiber) in resolute form, to do what the German conspirators asked. He said, 'The German opposition must be heard in Britain', and he was willing to do what he could to see that it was heard. On 6 November 1939 Father Leiber assured Joseph Müller that the Pope was ready to do 'all he can' for peace..."
This plot will continue to thicken, over the next six months, until Hitler's western invasion ended it.