“Putin’s myths hide some awful truths: Without the long-standing collaboration between Berlin and Moscow in the days and even years leading up to the invasion of Poland, history would have undoubtedly been very different.”

By Brendan Farrell 

RUSSIAN PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin seized upon a breathtakingly cynical justification for his widely condemned invasion of Ukraine.

According to Kremlin propaganda, the purpose of Russia’s so-called “special military operation,” launched on Feb. 24. 2022, was carried out to “protect the people that are subjected to abuse, genocide from the Kyiv regime,” and more specifically to “demilitarize” and “de-Nazify” Ukraine.

Of course, Ukraine’s current government could hardly be described as fascist; president Volodymyr Zelensky won power in 2019 with 73 per cent of the popular vote.

Yet for Moscow, framing its latest military aggression as a high-minded crusade akin to the Great Patriotic War is spin calculated to arouse the passions of ordinary Russians. It’s hardly a new strategy.

Putin’s jaded Second World War narrative still glories in hackneyed tropes of Soviet supremacy with the Russian people as the indomitable heroes of the era, who sacrificed so much for the Motherland.

This nostalgic mantra culminates annually in “Victory Day,” Putin’s lavish and Stalinesque May 9 celebrations. Putin believes in the historical unity of greater Russia: White Russia (Belarus) and Little Russia (Ukraine) so in his mind Ukraine does not exist.

And then there is Russia’s long-standing animosity towards its historic neighbour to the west: Poland. Indeed, since the 13 Years’ War of 1654, the Russians have had designs on Poland. Disturbingly, prior to the recent invasion of Ukraine, Putin had made several historical references to Poland, suggesting that Warsaw, not Germany and the U.S.S.R., was the aggressor in September of 1939. He even went so far as to instruct the speaker of the Duma, the Russian parliament, to call on Poland for a public apology for starting the hostilities.

To be fair, the Soviet Union without doubt endured unimaginable, incredible privations during the Second World War, resulting in the death of up to 24,000,000 individuals, 60 per cent of which were civilians. The bravery of the soldiers of the Red Army, and the fortitude of the Soviet people, is undeniable. But Putin’s myths hide some awful truths: Without the long-standing collaboration between Berlin and Moscow in the days and even years leading up to the invasion of Poland, history would have undoubtedly been very different. It’s possible the war, at least as we know it, would never have happened. Hitler would not have invaded Poland without Soviet assurances of non-aggression, and crucially without large quantities of raw materials. Certainly, without oil supplied by Stalin, the Nazi dictator would not have been able to unleash his “Blitzkrieg.”

On August 23, 1939, months after the German take-over of Czechoslovakia, Hitler’s foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, flew to Moscow to sign a treaty of non-aggression with Vyacheslav Molotov, Soviet foreign minister, acting as a proxy for Stalin himself.

The treaty, which surprised the world, became known as the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. Hidden within as a secret protocol that paved the way for the planned joint invasion of Poland just a week later, a move that would touch off the largest and most destructive conflict in history.

Following the First World War, the 1919 Treaty of Versailles had imposed harsh conditions on the vanquished Germany. In addition to laying blame for the conflict on Berlin, the treaty stripped the country of vast swaths of territory and imposed strict limitations on the size and scope of the Weimar Republic’s military. The German army would be capped at 100,000 men, while there would be an outright ban on armoured vehicles, submarines and military aircraft. Naval provisions of the treaty limited the German navy to six battleships.

Germany would soon look for ways to skirt the bans, in many cases with the help of the Soviet Union. In fact, together, the two powers would embark on a mutually beneficial 20-year program resulting in the development of the most technologically advanced war machine on the planet. The Reichswehr’s plan was to overturn the Versailles Treaty and prepare for a possible future confrontation with Germany’s historic adversary, France.

In 1919, the commander of the Reichswehr, General Hans von Seeckt sent the famously pro-German former Ottoman minister of defence, Enver Pasha, to Russia with the aim of opening dialogue with the Soviet government. The point of the talks was to explore the possibility of military cooperation. In addition to planning against France, Von Seeckt opposed the rise of a newly independent Poland on his country’s eastern border, which was made up of territory that was formerly part of Germany, complete with a population of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans.

Pasha’s first attempt ended in failure. After his plane crashed in Lithuania, he was detained and questioned. Remarkably, the highly sensitive documents that he was carrying were secured by a German officer who managed to escape and return to Berlin.

The following year, Pasha embarked on the same mission; this time he was successful.

Following a meeting with Leon Trotsky, the envoy reported back to Berlin that the rising Bolshevik party “would be willing to acknowledge the old German borders of 1914.” That would spell annihilation for the newly established Poland.  

The Soviets also had an axe to grind with Poland.

The Red Army suffered an epic humiliation at the hands of the Poles in the War of 1919 to 1921 just as they were poised to capture Warsaw – a moment remembered in Poland as the Miracle on the Vistula. 

Trotsky, the commander of the Red Army, once considered Poland to be a “bridge or a barrier between Germany and us” now concluded that the country was a barrier to collaboration with Berlin. It could only be removed by a modern, technologically advanced state with a fully mechanized army.

Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Russia’s most prominent and capable military strategist, dubbed the Red Napoleon by the foreign press, would embark on a massive program of modernization and restructuring that would aim to transform the Red Army into one of the most formidable militaries of the era.

A series of highly secretive meetings between the Soviets and Germans followed the Treaty of Rapallo in April 1922, where the framework for military collaboration between Moscow and Berlin was discussed and plans laid for a new world order.

The cooperation was considerable. German firms, with the direct approval of Lenin, took over all of the critical Soviet military manufacturing capability, including shipbuilding, aircraft production and chemical weapons.

The projects’ initial success was limited: Von Seeckt’s plan to modernize Soviet industry and effectively turn Russia into Germanys’ workshop floundered. Problems arose from the poor economic state of post-revolutionary Russia and possibly, issues with the Reichswehr’s secret funneling of money under the noses of the unsuspecting German government. Massive losses were incurred notably by the Junkers aircraft company whose owners decided to disclose their predicament to the unsuspecting German government, which promptly fell following a vote of no confidence in the Reichstag.

But despite headlines in British newspapers – like “Cargoes of munitions from Russia to Germany! Secret plan between Reichswehr and Soviets!” Manchester Guardian 1926 – the cooperation would accelerate.

It was a bizarre partnership between two regimes with opposing political philosophies.

From 1925 joint secret bases specializing in aviation, armoured warfare and chemical weapons were established in Russia, where Soviet and German officers, scientists and technicians would live, train and study side-by-side.

From 1924 – and in direct contravention of the Versailles Treaty – the Soviet air force would invite German pilots to train at the Lipetsk flight school. Located 550 kilometres from Moscow, some 1,000 German pilots and ancillary staff would pass through the facility. This group would eventually form the core of Hitler’s Luftwaffe.

Even the Blitzkrieg doctrine itself would be developed from two essential Soviet concepts pioneered by Tukhachevsky; paratroopers and dive bombers.

German plane manufacturers developed attack aircraft prototypes at Lipetsk, including the infamous Junkers Ju-87 Stuka dive-bomber, which was tested under the guidance of WWI fighter ace Ernst Udet. The Stuka with its screaming siren would become the ultimate terror weapon and the spearhead of the Blitzkrieg.

Near Kazan, 800 kilometres east of Moscow, the Karma tank school would host the cream of German engineering. Automotive and armaments experts from Daimler, Krupp and M.A.N., along with their Soviet counterparts would follow the same symbiotic relationship in their development of tanks and armoured vehicles.

Soviet and German armoured officers would likewise live, train and study together in an intimate environment with German officers often donning Soviet uniforms in a show of solidarity. The fruits of this collaboration would be the first of the formidable Panzer series. The Panzer I light tank which would be produced by Krupp from 1933.

More importantly was the development and introduction of two-way radio technology in 1929. Aided by vacuum tubes, it was now possible to coordinate mass tank movements by wireless.

Tukhachevsky was particularly interested in developments at Kazan. He was the foremost Russian warfare expert and had realized the potential of concentrated, coordinated forces facilitated by radio communication, as a key component of future mobile warfare. Presciently, he would publish an article in 1935 detailing Nazi war plans for the invasions of France, Great Britain and Russia.

Stalin would unwisely ignore Tukhachevsky’s warnings. Instead, from 1936 to 1938, the Soviet dictator embarked on a murderous purge arresting over seven million Soviet citizens and executing over a million. Before he was finished, Stalin would eliminate the elite Soviet high command. The list included most of the Red Army’s best generals; Marshal Tukhachevsky among them. It was a move that would prove to be disastrous following the 1941 German invasion of the U.S.S.R.

Putin, like Stalin, sees human life as expendable. Stalin’s inhumanity like Adolph Hitler’s was on an epic scale, his barbarous regime in an act of unbridled revenge and twisted ideology was responsible for the calculated starvation of around 3.9 million Ukrainians during the Holodomor  or “death by hunger,” of 1932 to 33.

Putin typically exhibits the same megalomaniacal murderous traits of paranoia, delusion and total lack of empathy. He is a man without a heart.  

Brendan Farrell is a writer based in County Wicklow, Ireland. When not writing about history, he owns and operates Turin Castle in County Mayo. You can follow him on Instagram @brendanjosephfarrell and on twitter @brendanjfarrell.