The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz

by Erik Larson

But he feared worse: that once America entered the war, Roosevelt and Churchill would then seek an alliance with Stalin, who had demonstrated a clear appetite for expansion and was fast strengthening his military forces. Although Germany and Russia had signed a nonaggression pact in 1939, Hitler harbored no illusions that Stalin would honor it. An alliance between England, America, and Russia would create, Hitler said, “a very difficult situation for Germany.” The solution, as he saw it, was to eliminate Russia from the equation, and thereby protect his eastern flank. War with Russia also promised to fulfill his longtime imperative, espoused since the 1920s, to crush Bolshevism and acquire “living space,” his cherished Lebensraum. His generals were still concerned about the dangers of a two-front war, the avoidance of which had always been a bedrock principle in Hitler’s strategic thinking; now, however, he appeared to cast aside his own misgivings. Compared to a cross-channel invasion of England, war against Russia seemed easy, the kind of campaign at which his forces had thus far demonstrated great proficiency. The worst of the fighting would be over in six weeks, he predicted, but he stressed that the attack on Russia must begin soon.