“167 A 22.53 6 June
“Ambassador in Moscow reports * * * Russia will only fight if attacked by Germany. Situation is considered in Moscow much more serious than up to now. All military preparations have been made quietly—as far as can be recognized only defensive. Russian policy still strives as before to produce the best possible relationship to Germany as good.” (C-170)
Entry 169 also reiterates this point:
“169 A 22.65 7 June
“From the report of the Ambassador in Moscow * * *. All observations show that Stalin and Molotov, who alone are responsible for Russian foreign policy, are doing everything to avoid a conflict with Germany. The entire behavior of the Government, as well as the attitude of the press, which reports all events concerning Germany in a factual, indisputable manner, support this view. The loyal fulfillment of the economic treaty with Germany proves the same thing.” (C-170)
The reasons, therefore, which led to the attack on the Soviet Union could not have been self-defense or treaty breaches. No doubt, as has been necessarily implied from the materials presented on planning and preparation, more than one motive entered into the decision of the Nazi conspirators to launch their aggression against the U.S.S.R. All of them, however, appear to blend into one grand motif of Nazi policy. The pattern into which these varied reasons fall is the traditional Nazi ambition for expansion to the East at the expense of the U.S.S.R. This Nazi version of an earlier imperial imperative, “Drang Nach Osten,” had been a cardinal principle of the Party almost since its birth, and rested on the twin bases of political strategy and economic aggrandizement. Politically, such action meant elimination of the powerful force to the East, which might constitute a threat to German ambition, and acquisition of Lebensraum. Economically, it offered opportunities for the plunder of vast quantities of food, raw materials, and other supplies. Undoubtedly the demands of the German War economy for food and raw material served to revive the attractiveness of the economic side of this theory while the difficulties Germany was experiencing in defeating England reaffirmed for the Nazi conspirators the temporarily forgotten Nazi political imperative of eliminating, as a political factor, their one formidable opponent on the continent.
As early as 1923 Hitler outlined this theory in some detail in Mein Kampf, where he stated, at page 641 of the Houghton Mifflin English edition:
“There are two reasons which induce me to submit to a special examination the relation of Germany to Russia:
“1. Here perhaps we are dealing with the most decisive concern of all German foreign affairs; and
“2. This question is also the touchstone for the political capacity of the young National Socialist movement to think clearly and to act correctly.”