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So Stalin may have feared something worse than Hitler – namely, Hitler's replacement:
A plan to attack Hitler's bunker in 1943 and a 1944 plot involving an assassin who had gained the trust of the Nazi leadership were both cancelled on Stalin's orders, General Anatoly Kulikov told a historical conference in Moscow on Tuesday.
Stalin blocked two attempts to kill Hitler, Russian general says
Had Hitler been killed, his replacement might have sued for a separate peace with the Western Allies and that was something Stalin feared more than Hitler alone.
Had Hitler been killed, his replacement might have sued for a separate peace with the Western Allies and that was something Stalin feared more than Hitler alone.
Stalin was correct. Even Hitler believed he could negotiate a separate peace with the Western Allies if his "wonder weapons" worked. In 1944 at an awards ceremony he told fighter ace Eric Hartmann that the war was lost militarily and expressed the above hope. That also was a goal of those who attempted the 1944 assassination plot.
Had Hitler been killed, his replacement might have sued for a separate peace with the Western Allies and that was something Stalin feared more than Hitler alone.
I totally agree with your statement here : Stalin's plans were different, if not opposed, than the Western's ones; the best example being the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939, a Treaty of Non-Aggression but also dividing Northern and Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence.
The fly in the ointment of a separate peace is the often stated intention of accepting nothing less than the unconditional surrender of Germany. The allies had jointly stated their unconditional surrender demand in the war against Japan in 1943 and would do the same for Germany after the Yalta Conference in Feb 45. Added to that is that both Churchill and Roosevelt had repeatedly stated prior to the Yalta conference that the only acceptable war-ending solution against Germany was unconditional surrender.It is logical when you think about it because the "stab in the back" theory was one of the things Hitler used to get into power. Why would any of his opponents want to give Germany even more grist by accepting less than unconditional surrender? The truth about the Final Solution would have come out even sooner if he had concluded a separate peace and that alone would have been enough to get the US and UK back into war with Germany.Killing Hitler would not have ended the war. Germany was too far gone into killing the Jews to think anyone would have let their regime stand once the truth came out. Someone would have eventually asked where all the Jews were. If anything killing Hitler in 43 or 44 would have prolonged the war, even Goebbels was not as megalomaniacal as Hitler, he would have let the generals fight the war. Goebbels knew when he did not know something. The realistic alternatives to take over on the death of Hitler would have been Speer, Doenitz, or Bormann. Any of them in charge is a scary prospect indeed.
The conspirators of the July Plot were indeed naieve in their belief they could obtain a negotiated peace with the West once they removed Hitler because of the Allies' demand for unconditional surrender. But remember, Stalin saw everyone as a potential enemy and as such could believe that FDR and Churchill would betray him and make a separate peace. I remember hearing throughout the war ( I was born in 1932) that the Allies would not make the same mistake as in 1918. This time they would conquer all of Germany to let the Germans know they had been defeated.
