Word: stalins
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Unlike Chamberlain, Churchill was determined to go on the attack and persuaded his Cabinet colleagues to stage a spectacular landing in northern Norway. His original scheme was to intervene in the Russo-Finnish war, which Stalin had launched on Nov. 30, 1939. Finland's well-trained and determined army of 300,000 had fought the Red Army to a standstill. Churchill's plan was to land a British expeditionary force at the northern Norwegian port of Narvik, cut across to the Swedish iron mines at Gallivare (which provided Hitler with almost 50% of the iron he needed...
Despite all the German troop movements, despite sharp words between the two regimes, the supposedly crafty and suspicious Stalin foresaw nothing. The very night before the attack, Foreign Minister V.M. Molotov called in the German ambassador, Count Friedrich von der Schulenberg, and said the Soviets were "unable to understand the reasons for Germany's dissatisfaction." Schulenberg said he would try to find out. A few hours later, at dawn, he returned to the Kremlin with a message from Berlin. It accused the Soviets of violating the Nazi-Soviet pact, massing their troops and planning a surprise attack on Germany...
...part, too, it was a matter of paranoia. Hitler suspected that Churchill fought on largely because he hoped to inveigle Stalin into joining him. And Hitler was himself so treacherous that he could not believe Stalin was not planning to betray him. Stalin intensified those suspicions by his own aggressiveness. On virtually the day the Germans occupied Paris, the Soviets seized the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. A few weeks after that, they demanded and got Rumania to give up its provinces of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. Hitler saw this as a threat to his access to Rumania...
...knew nothing of the secret protocol between Hitler and Stalin that contained provisions for the attack on Poland. German newspapers were full of reports of Polish violence and provocations against the German minority. Who knew whether the reports were correct? Most were believed...
Before the main feature, as usual, the weekly newsreel was shown. The camera showed Moscow. A troop parade on Red Square. Stalin appeared in close-up. I watched Hitler intently looking at Stalin's face. Hitler interrupted, asking the projectionist to repeat the sequence two or three times. Visibly excited, he commented, "I rather like the way this man looks. I believe one could come to terms with him." Then he rose and retired to his room...