Why did Hitler listen to Soviet radio in awe

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

On September 28, 1939, a month after the conclusion of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union and Germany signed a friendship and border treaty. The unexpected warming of relations with the recently hostile Nazi Germany caused bewilderment and confusion among many citizens of the USSR. How did pre-war Soviet propaganda explain to the population sudden turns in Stalin's foreign policy?

Why did it negatively affect the mood of the Soviet people before the Great Patriotic War? Why did Stalin personally censor the Soviet press? All this was told by a postgraduate student of the Department of Russian History of the Russian State Pedagogical University. A. I. Herzen Mikhail Tyagur. Direct Action Advocacy

How strongly did the Soviet government in the pre-war period control the press and the entire propaganda apparatus?

Of course, the authorities closely monitored this area. There was preliminary censorship in the press, which was further tightened with the outbreak of World War II. In October 1939, by a resolution of the Council of People's Commissars, all central newspapers were additionally subordinated to the press department of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, they were obliged to coordinate all publications on international topics. Stalin himself paid much attention to propaganda. Sometimes he personally edited the articles of Pravda and Izvestia, he himself composed some of the TASS reports.

What was the main mouthpiece of Soviet propaganda in the pre-television era - print, radio or art?

The party-state leadership used all possible means, including theater, cinema, literature and radio. But the main tools were printing and oral propaganda. At the same time, sometimes their content could not coincide.

How were they different?

Let me give you an example. In January 1940, the editor of the magazine "Communist International" Peter Wieden (real name - Ernst Fischer) gave a lecture in Leningrad on the labor movement in Europe. We are interested in it because the lecturer spoke about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and its consequences. He immediately told the audience that “German imperialism … remained German imperialism,” that is, it retained its aggressive essence. Then Wieden began to talk about the alignment of forces in the ruling elite of the Third Reich, where two groups were allegedly formed. In one, he said, they retained the desire to attack the USSR and wanted to annul the non-aggression pact as soon as possible. And in the other (and Hitler joined her), they were cautious, believing that the Soviet Union was too strong an enemy, Germany was not yet ready for a war with the USSR.

According to the lecturer, the non-aggression pact is useful for the German communists. Now German workers could read Molotov's speeches in newspapers and even cut out photographs of Stalin from them (meaning the famous photographs of Stalin, Molotov and Ribbentrop, taken during and immediately after the signing of the pact) and hang them on the walls without fear of the Gestapo. Wieden convinced the audience that the treaty was helping the German communists to campaign inside Germany.

The signing of a non-aggression pact between the USSR and Germany, August 23, 1939

German communists? In 1940, when for several years their leader Ernst Thälmann was in dungeons?

They, of course, existed, but the plots told by Wieden are clearly fabulous. The question is, why did he tell this. The agreement with Hitler caused confusion among many Soviet people. Agitators and propagandists in their reports reported that they were often asked questions: will Hitler deceive us, what will now happen to the German communist movement and Thälmann, how all this is generally consistent with the communist ideology. And Wieden, along with other propagandists, tried to explain the benefits of the treaty from the standpoint of the class struggle and the interests of the international communist movement.

This was an important feature of oral propaganda - it sometimes claimed some frankness (more precisely, portrayed it). She tried to answer difficult questions that were not touched upon in print. Much of what was said from the rostrum in oral speeches could not be discussed in Soviet newspapers.

Adventurer propagandists

Why not?

Because the central Soviet press was carefully read in foreign embassies, including the German one. Diplomats quite rightly saw in her the mouthpiece of the top party leadership and Stalin personally.

Did the authorities control oral propaganda as strictly as they did the press?

The control was weaker there. The lecturer could suddenly suffer some kind of ad-libbing. For example, in March 1939 in Pskov, an employee of the regional department of public education Mironov gave a lecture on the international situation in Europe. He stated that out of nine members of the German government, one is a secret anti-fascist and an agent of Soviet intelligence. Hitler, he said, feeling the instability of his position, transferred money to banks in England and Norway, and is generally going to flee Germany. He listened with trepidation to Soviet radio and closely followed the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, at which, he thinks, they might announce the start of a campaign against Nazi Germany.

The audience was probably very surprised?

Certainly. Moreover, the lecture was attended by the local party bosses. The head of the propaganda and agitation department of the Pskov city committee asked Mironov where he got such information. The lecturer, without a shadow of embarrassment, replied that he personally communicated with the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Litvinov and his deputy Potemkin.

Among the oral propagandists there were even peculiar adventurers. In 1941, Pravda published an article about a former employee of the Leningrad Regional Lecture Hall who lectured on international topics. At some point, he just quit his job and began to travel around the country. He came to some provincial town, reported that he was working in Leningrad, that he was a candidate of sciences and an assistant professor; said that he was on a business trip or vacation and offered to give several lectures for a fee. Sometimes he took an advance and left, sometimes he still spoke, hammering the listeners' heads with his own speculations about the situation in Europe, "up to the date when one or another power should be expected to enter the war." The author of the article pointed out that this "looks like a typical guest performer who turned propaganda work into easy money, into hack". That is, it was a common phenomenon.

The text of the statement of the Soviet and German governments, September 28, 1939

Who believed the propaganda

How effective was Soviet propaganda? How did the population of the USSR perceive it?

It is difficult to say for the entire population of the USSR, the country was very different. Much depended on age and social status, on life experience. For example, young people were more inclined to believe propaganda, because it was processed from childhood. In various memoirs, as well as in interviews collected by Artem Drabkin (for the books of the series "I fought" and the site "I remember"), the motive is constantly encountered: I and my peers sincerely believed in the might of the Red Army and believed that the future war would be fast - on a foreign land and with little blood; when the Germans attacked the USSR, many were afraid to be late for the war.

But people of the older generation, who survived the Russo-Japanese, World War I and the Civil War, were often skeptical about the hapless rhetoric. From the reports of the NKVD on the mood of the population, you can learn that sometimes older people drew parallels between Soviet propaganda and newspapers during the Russo-Japanese War, they say, then they also promised that we would quickly defeat the enemies, and then everything went differently - it will be so now. The mood was very different. In the reports of the NKVD, one can find the widest range of assessments: some approved the actions of the authorities from positions that coincided with the official ideology, and others from positions clearly anti-communist. Someone scolded the leaders of the state, proceeding from anti-Soviet attitudes, and someone based on Soviet slogans.

But even if the Soviet people did not believe the official propaganda, they treated it with curiosity if it concerned international politics. Many reports of oral propagandists for the years 1939-1941 said that it was the international situation and the war in Europe that caused the greatest interest of the population. Even paid lectures on these topics invariably attracted full houses.

How did the workers of the ideological front themselves relate to their activities? Did they believe in what they wrote and talked about?

It is difficult to give any generalized estimates. There were propagandists who were sincerely loyal to the Soviet regime who truly believed in communist ideals. But there were also quite a few unprincipled opportunistic cynics. It is known that some of the editorial staff of the newspaper "Pskov Kolkhoznik", who ended up in the occupation in 1941, went to work in German propaganda bodies, for example, in the collaborationist publication "For the Motherland".

Rumors and the image of the enemy

How did Soviet propaganda influence the spread of various rumors?

In the most direct way. First, the differences in the content of printed and oral propaganda in themselves contributed to the emergence of different interpretations of the actions of the authorities. Secondly, the lack of official information could become a breeding ground for rumors. For example, in the first two weeks of the war with Finland, the Soviet press covered in detail the course of hostilities, making it clear that they would soon end victoriously. But then the Red Army came up against the Mannerheim line, and the flow of publications from the front was sharply reduced. Apart from individual refutations of foreign publications, there are scanty summaries that sometimes fit into two or three lines.

The text of the treaty of friendship and the border between the USSR and Germany

As a result, there was a surge of various rumors in Leningrad. They talked about the Finnish fortifications, about the sabotage of higher command personnel. Sometimes fantastic stories were spread. So, they argued that all the electricity (there were interruptions in the city) goes to the front, where, with the help of some mechanisms, Soviet troops are digging a tunnel under Vyborg. People looked for alternative sources of information, even listened to Finnish radio broadcasts in Russian, and sometimes the military did the same. Historian Dmitry Zhuravlev reports on a senior political instructor of the railway troops who organized a session of collective listening to such a Finnish program for the soldiers. Another political instructor, who served on the island of Gogland, took notes of these programs, and then retold their content to the commanders of his unit.

What role did the enemy image play in Soviet propaganda?

To create the image of the enemy, the so-called class approach was used. Regardless of what kind of state (Germany, Poland, Finland) was discussed, it has always been weak due to an internal split. There were oppressed workers who were ready to quickly go over to the side of the Soviet Union (if they are not yet on its side, then as soon as they hear our commanders and political instructors, the Red Army soldiers, they will immediately understand on whose side the truth is and take a revolutionary position). They were opposed by oppressors, exploiters - the bourgeoisie, landowners, officers, fascists.

Why did I say "so called"? The class approach can be different. It can be quite a serious and scientific tool for studying society (and after all, Soviet propaganda claimed to spread the scientific picture of the world). But instead of a real society with real classes, their real position and consciousness, you can slip an abstract scheme. This is exactly the scheme proposed by the propagandists. It doesn't matter what life really is in the country of a potential enemy, what the workers and peasants of this country know about the Soviet Union - they are always our potential allies. Even if they do not know anything about the USSR, they must somehow feel that they must be on its side.

Somersaults of Soviet propaganda

How did the rhetoric of the Soviet press change in 1936-1941 in relation to Nazi Germany?

The Soviet press was hostile to Germany until the signing of the non-aggression pact. Even in August 1939, anti-fascist materials appeared in the Soviet press. For example, "Pravda" on August 15 published a feuilleton "Dictionary of Cannibals" about a German-Polish phrasebook for Wehrmacht soldiers.

But immediately after the conclusion of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the tone of the Soviet press changed dramatically. The newspapers were full of phrases about friendship and cooperation between the two great powers. But when the Germans attacked Poland, at first the hostilities were covered in a neutral manner.

At some point, an anti-Polish campaign unfolded. On September 14, Pravda published the editorial "On the Internal Reasons for Poland's Defeat." It was unsigned, but it is known that the author of the article was Zhdanov, and Stalin edited it. When the Polish campaign of the Red Army began on September 17, Molotov said nothing about Germany in his speech on the radio. For a couple of days, the Soviet people were at a loss, not understanding what we were doing in Poland: are we helping the Germans or, on the contrary, are we going to fight them. The situation became clear only after the Soviet-German communique (published on September 19) that the tasks of the two armies "did not violate the letter and spirit of the treaty," that both sides were striving to "restore peace and order violated as a result of the collapse of the Polish state."

How did Soviet propaganda explain such unexpected somersaults in the foreign policy of the USSR?

These tasks were mainly performed by oral propaganda. I have already given the example of Wieden. He tried to explain the treaty with Hitler from the class positions familiar to Soviet people. Although in the case of too sharp turns, such as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact or the signing of a peace treaty with Finland, the propagandists did not receive instructions in advance and were disoriented. Some of them, in response to the listeners' questions, referred to the newspapers and said that they themselves did not know anything else. Desperate requests from these propagandists went upstairs asking them to urgently explain what and how they should say.

I. Ribbentrop's statement to TASS after the signing of the treaty on friendship and border

Was such a benevolent tone towards Nazi Germany retained in Soviet propaganda until June 1941?

No, this lasted until about the second half of 1940. At the same time, the Soviet press furiously scolded Britain and France for "attacking workers' rights" and persecution of communists. In November 1939, Stalin declared in the pages of Pravda that "it was not Germany that attacked France and England, but France and England attacked Germany, taking responsibility for the current war." Although at this time, texts with a slight anti-Hitler tinge were sometimes published. For example, in December 1939, after the outbreak of the Winter War, Soviet newspapers published a short article accusing Germany of supplying arms to Finland.

The tone of the Soviet press changed markedly in the second half of 1940. Although sometimes there were still materials that were positive for Germany - for example, a short communique about Molotov's trip to Berlin in November 1940. Then Pravda placed on the front page a photograph of Hitler holding Molotov by the elbow. But on the whole, the attitude towards Germany in the Soviet newspapers was cool. When Berlin, together with Rome and Tokyo, signed the Tripartite Treaty, the editorial in Pravda interpreted this event as a sign of "expansion and further incitement of war", but at the same time emphasized the neutrality of the USSR. At the beginning of 1941, the military confrontation between Germany and Britain was generally neutralized. The anti-German bias intensified in April.

A. Hitler receives V. Molotov in Berlin, November 1940

"So them, the fascists!"

What was the reason for this?

On April 5 (the official date, in fact, on the night of April 6), 1941, the USSR and Yugoslavia signed a treaty of friendship and non-aggression. And then Hitler invaded Yugoslavia. Soviet newspapers had to report these two events at the same time. And although they described the hostilities as a whole neutrally (military reports of both sides were published), sometimes phrases about the bravery and courage of the Yugoslav troops flashed in the press. An official statement of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs was published condemning Hungary, which entered the war with Yugoslavia on Hitler's side. That is, Germany itself has not yet dared to criticize for this aggression, but its ally was reprimanded.

On April 30, 1941, a directive letter was sent to the troops from the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army. There, in particular, it was said: "It is not sufficiently explained to the Red Army men and junior commanders that World War II is being waged by both belligerent sides for a new division of the world" and that now Germany "has moved on to conquests and conquests." On May 1, Pravda published the editorial "The Great Holiday of International Proletarian Solidarity", which mentioned that in the USSR "a dead ideology, dividing people into" higher "and" lower "races, was thrown into the dustbin of history.

In the leading article "To the Glory of the Motherland" of the second May issue of the Bolshevik magazine, there was a similar passage: "The world war has already exposed all the rottenness of the dead bourgeois ideology, according to which some peoples, some" races "are called upon to rule over others," inferior. " This dead ideology belongs to outmoded classes. " It is clear who was hinted at here. And then there was Stalin's famous speech to graduates of military academies on May 5, 1941, where he compared Hitler with Napoleon, who first waged just wars, and then began to seize foreign territories and eventually lost.

And in other spheres of Soviet propaganda at this time, there was also an anti-German tilt?

You can refer to the example of the film "Alexander Nevsky". It was released on screens in 1938, when relations between the USSR and Germany were, to put it mildly, strained. After the conclusion of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, it was immediately removed to the shelf, and in April 1941 it was shown again. There is an interesting episode in the memoirs of Marshal Ivan Baghramyan. He (then still a colonel) came to the film show and described the reaction of the audience in this way: “When the ice on Lake Peipsi crackled under the knight-dogs, and the water began to swallow them, in the hall, amid loud enthusiasm, a furious exclamation was heard:“So them, the fascists ! " A storm of applause was the answer to this cry that escaped from the soul. " It was back in the spring of 1941, as Baghramyan wrote, "on one of the April evenings."

Atrocities of the German crusaders in Pskov

Propaganda harm

How then did the infamous TASS report of June 14, 1941 come about that Germany was not going to attack the Soviet Union?

I believe that this was a diplomatic maneuver of the Soviet side, an attempt to probe the intentions of the German leaders. Berlin, as you know, did not react to the TASS report in any way, but it disorientated many Soviet propagandists. However, one should not exaggerate its negative role and associate with it the subsequent failures of the Red Army, which had other reasons.

How, in your opinion, did such manipulations of the mass consciousness with the help of Soviet propaganda influence the mood of people on the eve of the Great Patriotic War? Can we say that the inconsistency of propaganda contributed to the disorientation of the population of the USSR?

I think the harm was not at all in the fact that propaganda changed the object of attacks, not in the fact that its spearhead was directed now against Germany, now against Poland, Finland or England with France, and then again against Germany. It was her consistency that did the most harm. Soviet propaganda instilled in the minds of the masses of people a false image of a future war.

What do you have in mind?

I am talking about the already mentioned image of a class divided and weak enemy. This approach led to a capricious attitude, to hopes for a quick and easy war. This was clearly manifested already in the war against Finland, when the newspapers talked about the oppressed Finnish workers who rejoice at the arrival of the Red Army liberators. As you know, the reality turned out to be not quite the same. Those who led the propaganda understood: something needs to be changed. The head of the Political Directorate of the Red Army, Mekhlis, spoke about "a harmful prejudice that, supposedly, the population of countries entering the war in the USSR will inevitably and almost without exception rebel and go over to the side of the Red Army." In the newspapers, phrases flashed in the spirit of "war is a difficult business, requiring a lot of preparation, great efforts," but there was no serious change, no serious changes.

Partisans listen to the next message of the Soviet Information Bureau on the radio

And this attitude that the war will be easy and quick, and the potential enemy is split and weak, at the first stage of the Great Patriotic War really disorientated many Soviet people both in the army and in the rear. There was a sharp contrast between this image and how the war actually began. It took a lot of time to overcome the confusion, to come to terms with the idea that the war would be long, hard and bloody, in order to morally tune in to a difficult and stubborn struggle.