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978-0-521-85254-8 - Visions of Victory: The Hopes of Eight World War II Leaders

Gerhard L. Weinberg
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Visions of Victory

Visions of Victory explores the views of eight leaders of the major bel-
ligerents in World War II Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Chiang Kai-shek,
Stalin, Churchill, de Gaulle, and Roosevelt and compares their visions
of the future assuming their side emerged victorious. While the leaders pri-
marily focused their attention on strategies for ghting and winning the
war, these strategies were often shaped by their aspirations and hopes for
the future. Weinberg assesses how subsequent events were impacted by
their decisions and examines how their visions for the future changed and
evolved throughout the war. What emerges is a startling picture of post-
war worlds: Besides the extermination of the Jews, Hitler intended for all
the Slavs to die off and for the Germans to inhabit all of eastern Europe.
Both Mussolini and Hitler intended to have extensive colonies in Africa.
Churchill hoped to see the reemergence of the British and French Empires.
De Gaulle wanted to annex the northwest corner of Italy (but Truman
forced him to back down). Stalin wanted control of eastern Europe, and
he got it. Roosevelts vision of the future was the closest to being fullled,
including, importantly, the establishment of the United Nations. Aston-
ishing in its synthesis and scope, Weinbergs comparison of the individual
portraits of the wartime leaders is a highly original and compelling study
of history that might have been.

Gerhard L. Weinberg is Professor Emeritus of History at the University

of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author of numerous books and
articles on the origins and course of World War II, including A World at
Arms: A Global History of World War II (Cambridge, 1994), which won
the George Louis Beer Prize of the American Historical Association, and
Germany, Hitler, and World War II (Cambridge, 1995).

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Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-85254-8 - Visions of Victory: The Hopes of Eight World War II Leaders
Gerhard L. Weinberg
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Visions of Victory
the hopes of eight
world war ii leaders

Gerhard L. Weinberg
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

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Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-85254-8 - Visions of Victory: The Hopes of Eight World War II Leaders
Gerhard L. Weinberg
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cambridge university press

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, S ao Paulo

Cambridge University Press

40 West 20th Street, New York, ny 10011-4211, usa
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521852548

C Gerhard L. Weinberg 2005

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2005

Printed in the United States of America

A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Weinberg, Gerhard L.
Visions of victory : The Hopes of Eight World War II Leaders / Gerhard L. Weinberg.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 0-521-85254-4 (hardback)
1. World War, 19391945 Biography. 2. Heads of state Biography. i. Title.
d736.w46 2005
940.53 092 2dc22 2005000785

isbn-13 978-0-521-85254-8 hardback

isbn-10 0-521-85254-4 hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for

the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or
third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this book
and does not guarantee that any content on such
Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Gerhard L. Weinberg
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To my students

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Gerhard L. Weinberg
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CONTENTS

List of Maps ix
Preface xi
Maps xvii
Introduction 1
1. Adolf Hitler 5
2. Benito Mussolini 39
3. Tojo Hideki 57
4. Chiang Kai-shek 77
5. Josef Stalin 95
6. Winston Churchill 135
7. Charles de Gaulle 161
8. Franklin D. Roosevelt 175
9. The Real Postwar World 211
Notes 235
Bibliography 267
Index 285

vii

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Gerhard L. Weinberg
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LIST OF MAPS

European Frontiers 191939 page xvii

Northern Europe June 1941 xviii
Polish-Soviet Border xix
Polish-German Border xx
Africa 1939 xxi
Pacic Area in 1939 xxiixxiii
Division of Asia xxiv

ix

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Gerhard L. Weinberg
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PREFACE

When working on my general history of World War II, I was in-

trigued by what appeared to me at the time to be a highly un-
usual concept of Charles de Gaulle, the leader of the Free French
movement. He evidently wanted the southern portion of the Ital-
ian colony of Libya annexed after victory to what was then French
Equatorial Africa. The area involved is desert, with one oasis. At
the time, France already controlled most of the Sahara Desert; why
acquire more desert? Into what sort of vision of the postwar world
held by de Gaulle did such an annexation t? It was this question
that led me to the idea of looking at the postwar visions of major
leaders of World War II.
In my work on this project, I have again been indebted to the
William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust. A period as scholar in resi-
dence at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum provided
time and support for my work, though nothing in this book repre-
sents the views of the museum or its council. The librarians at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have been as patient
and helpful as always. Any errors and shortcomings are, of course,
my own.

xi

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xii Preface

To assist the reader who would like to pursue the issues touched
on in the text further, I have tried to provide sources in English
wherever possible. If it looks at rst as if numerous citations are
to a collection with a German title, the big series Dokumente zur
Deutschlandpolitik, it is important to note that the documents from
British and American archives reproduced in this collection invari-
ably appear in the original English and with proper archival refer-
ences. The broader context of the war can be followed in my A World
at Arms: A Global History of World War II, where relevant published
and unpublished sources are provided in considerable detail and my
many debts to institutions and individuals are acknowledged. In the
text, the spellings and names of places are generally those used at
the time. Thus, the colonies of European powers appear under their
old names, Chinese names have not been altered to the new sys-
tem, and Japanese names are in the Japanese form, with the family
name rst.
If the focus in this work is on a small number of individuals at
the top of their respective states, there are two reasons for this. The
rst is what I would call the intrinsic fascination of the leaders of the
major powers involved in the greatest war in history. There are many
biographies and other studies of them and their activities, but none
that compares their views of the future assuming their side of the war
emerged victorious. The second reason is that, especially in wartime,
the urgent demands of the conict almost automatically make the
individual at the top more important and, in terms of the society
that the individual leads, more powerful. This was most certainly
the case during World War II.
Whatever rivalries existed in National Socialist Germany, there
can be no doubt that the major decisions on policy were made
by Adolf Hitler himself. Benito Mussolini was obliged to defer

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Preface xiii

minimally to those elements that had enabled him to assume power,

but not only did he resent them, he generally kept them out of the
decision-making process until they succeeded in removing him
from ofce. Tojo Hideki, as Chapter 3 demonstrates, was not in the
dictatorial position that Hitler and Mussolini held, but he played an
important role in the complicated way decisions were arrived at in
Tokyo all the same. After the great purges, there was certainly no
one in the Soviet Union who could imagine an internal challenge
to the absolute dominance of Josef Stalin. It should be remembered
that when assuming the ofce of prime minister, Winston Churchill
also insisted on creating and holding the ofce of minister of de-
fence. He did this so that he could work either directly with the
military chiefs of staff or do so through an intermediary, General
Hastings Ismay, whom he had chosen himself. Charles de Gaulle in
a real sense personied as well as led the Free French movement.
Franklin D. Roosevelt carefully emphasized his constitutional role
as commander-in-chief, and no one in the political or military hi-
erarchy of the United States had any doubts about that. When he
agreed with proposals submitted to him, he would note in the mar-
gin, after the initials of the proposer, OK FDR. But if he disagreed,
the typed indication of his disapproval would be followed by his full
signature with Commander-in-Chief typed underneath.
The leaders of World War II belligerents were in practice limited
by the human and material resources at their disposal as well as by
the geographic factors that often made some choices either impos-
sible or especially inviting. What I have found striking is the ex-
tent to which each of the leaders examined here tended to assume
that limitations of human and material resources could be coped
with by careful planning, the assistance of associated powers, and,
in the nal analysis, by sheer determination and will-power. The

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Gerhard L. Weinberg
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xiv Preface

occasionally voiced view that the Allies won the war by sheer num-
bers of men, planes, ships, and tanks would have come as astonish-
ing news to the British pilots in the Battle of Britain, the Red Army
soldiers ghting in the streets of Stalingrad, and the sailors on the
three American aircraft carriers coping with the six Japanese car-
riers in June of 1942. The English Channel was equally wide and
stormy for the Germans at the height of their victories in 1940 as it
was for the Allies as they planned an invasion of northwest Europe
in 1943 and 1944. Certainly both resources and geography had to be
taken into account; what is so interesting is that in the urgencies of a
desperate war all leaders concentrated on aims rst and strove to har-
ness resources and strategic decisions to them. It was the hundreds
of millions of ordinary people across the globe who fought, suffered,
labored, and died in the war, and they were the ones who had to
live, and work out the best adjustments that circumstances allowed,
in the postwar world that was so largely not of their own making.
It was also by no means precisely the postwar world that the leaders
studied here wanted or expected, but the aspirations that they held
during the great conict are surely worthy of some attention.
The world created by the war is still very much the world in which
we live. Decisions and the outcomes of battles in places that few
can identify today have shaped our world. In many ways the suc-
cesses and the failures of the years of ghting have created the issues
that confront the governments of our own time. It is true that one
can now travel under the English Channel on a train, but the her-
itage of choices made by World War II leaders continues to affect
the relations of Britain with France and other states on the conti-
nent. The position of the United States in the world and the mul-
titude of newly independent countries in the United Nations it-
self a wartime creation are both examples of developments that

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Preface xv

cannot be understood unless their origins in World War II are taken

into consideration. This book is designed to assist in that process of
understanding.
Over a period of forty-ve years of teaching, my students, both
undergraduate and graduate, have inspired, challenged, and cheered
me. It is to them that this book is dedicated.

Eand, North Carolina, July 2004

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 NORWAY

European Frontiers 191939 Frontmatter

SWEDEN ESTONIA
More information
Gerhard L. Weinberg

LATVIA
DENMARK
GREAT Memel
BRITAIN Danzig LITHUA

Cambridge University Press

NIA
Cambridge University Press

HOLLAND U.S.S.R.
GERMANY
BELGIUM POLAND
L.

CZ Tesin
EC
HO
SLO
VA K
IA

xvii
FRANCE IA
D AU S T R Y
LAN GAR
ZER HUN
SWIT
YU ROMANIA
G

I
O

L
SL

T
AV

GA
IA
SPAIN

TU
BULGARIA The Axis

POR
Y ALBANIA Occupied by Germany
T
U

193839
R
K

GREECE
Occupied by Poland
EY

1938
Occupied by Hungary
193839
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Gerhard L. Weinberg
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Northern Europe June 1941

Arctic Ocean

North Cape
Altafjord
Tromso

Bardufoss Banak
Harstad Kaafjord Petsamo
LOFOTEN Murmansk
Arc ik
tic C
ir cle
ISLANDS
N arv KOLA

D
PENINSULA

Bodo
Y

N
Glomfjord Gllivare
Norwegian
Sea Mosjoen
A

Kemi
A
Atlantic Lulea
Ocean KARELIA
N

Namsos Suomussalmi
W

Kuhmo
R

Alesund Trondheim
N
ni a

Andalsnes
Maloy
h

SHETLAND
Bot
O

ISLANDS
I
Gulf of

BRITISH
ala

Bergen Lake
rkk
F

Ladoga
N

Hamar
E

Po

oo

Taelvag Viip
rv

uri
Po

Oslo Turku Helsinki

Haugesund Lake Rjukan Terioki
Tinnsjo F i n la n d
nin dt
W

Hang lf of
Le nsta
gra

Stavanger Vermork Gu
Stockholm
rva
o

Tallinn
Kr
Na

Arendal Haapsalu
S

Kristiansand ak Prn
err
Skag Gothenburg
Ka

Backebo
tteg

Riga
at

North Sea Aarhus

Vederso se Libava
en
o

Se
a
alm

DENMARK ic
B a lt
Od

Memel SOVIET
Co

pe BORNHOLM
Vo

nh UNION
ge

age e
HELIGOLAND n ndnde
lsa

nem em Gdynia
ng

Kiel
L
Ro PeeSwin Knigsberg
sto Kolberg
Ve H b ck
Da

ges am eck
St zig

Rastenburg
n
ut

a
Bre ck urgb Stettin
ND

th

me
o f

n
A

L
H OL Berlin
BE
LG
IU GREATER GERMANY
M

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Gerhard L. Weinberg
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The Polish-Soviet Border

International boundaries to September 1, 1939

Curzon Line, with
A B Extensions into Eastern Galicia
Demarcation line established by the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression
Pact, August 23, 1939 (Molotov-Ribbentrop Line)
Polish-Soviet boundary since 1945
Memel
HUANIA
LIT
A
E

S
IC
B A LT

Tilsit Wilno
M

Kaliningrad
(D ansk
ig)

(Vilnius)
ari

(Knigsberg)
anz

am
Gd

EAST
po

Minsk
le

PRUSSIA r
ve

Ni i
em en R

Bialystok
R

Vistula R Pinsk
S
ive

Bu

Warsaw Brzesc
r

g Rive

(Brest) S
P O L A N D
r

U
Lublin

S
an

i ve
R

r A
Krakw
Lvov
B

A
AKI
L OV
H OS CA
RPATHO- U
KR
Z EC AI
NE
C
HUNGARY
R OMANIA

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Gerhard L. Weinberg
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The Polish-German Border

Polish-German Boundary 192139 since 1945

Memel

A
S E Tilsit
B A L T I C
Shipsk Gdynia Kaliningrad
(Knigsberg)
Rgen (Stolpmunde) Gdansk
(Danzig)
Kolobrzeg A EAST
(Kolberg) I
P N PRUSSIA
O A
M E R

Szczecin
(Stettin)

G E R M A N Y
P O L A N D
Berlin
Poznan
Oder River
sse River
L u s a a n Nei
ti

Zgorzelec
(Grlitz) Wroclaw
(Breslau) Opole
S I r (Oppeln)
ive

WER L E UPP
s se R

LO S
I
ER
Eastern

C Z Ne i
A
E Katowice
C
H
O
S

L
O Cieszyn
V (Teschen)
A K I A

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Gerhard L. Weinberg
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SP. MOROCCO
MOROCC
CO E U R O P E

1923 international
zone TUNISIA
Ifni (Sp.) C North A S I A
OC
O

1925
M
1919

ALGERIA
R LIBYA EGYPT
O 1922 independent
E
D

kingdom

1919
South
O
RI

19
19
1919 REA
MAURITANIA
RIC A

1924

French 1920 MALI

NIGER ANGLO-
L AF

SENE
NE
NEGAL
EGYPTIAN
GA Chad
RIA

U SUDAN
V
TO

FR AB
1920 Br.
UA

SIERRA
A IVORY Ethiopia)
EQ

LEONE COAST
C T
LIBERIA
A
GOLD

Princip
p
(Port.)
Sao Tom
(Port.)
TO Cabinda (Port Pemba

Zanzibar
Africa, 1939 Alabra Is.
(Br.)
British Possessions Comoro Is.
(Fr.)

French Possessions E
R
CA

Spanish Possessions
AS
AG

guese Possessions Walvis Bay

AD

(to U. of S.Afr.)
M

n Possessions

Independent states UNION AZILAND

OF
Former German territories placed by SOUTH AFRICA
S LAND
League of Nations under mandates, 1920 Dominion

1919 Boundary with date of establishment

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Gerhard L. Weinberg
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Pacific Area in 1939

A
ATK
CH
UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS Sea of

KAM
Okhotsk
SAKHALIN
ISLAND

DS
AN
A
RI O)

SL
I
OUTER MONGOLIA
C HU KU RI
L
U U
AN H

K
Sinkiang M NC
A
(M Sea of Hokkaido
Japan
Honshu
CHINA KOREA JAPAN
Yellow Tokyo
Sea Shikoku
Tibet Chungking Shanghai Kyushu
East RYUKYU
AD

China ISLANDS
O

R Sea Okinawa
A
INDIA Mandalay R M Canton Formosa Iwo Jima
BU
BURMA (Taiwan)
Hong Kong Wake
Hainan MARIANA Island
Luzon ISLANDS
THAILAND
FR. Manila Rota. Saipan
INDO-CHINA PHILIPPINES
Saigon South Guam Eniwetok
Str
ait

China Mindanao CAROLINE ISLANDS

of

Ceylon Sea Ponape

M
ala

PALAU
MALAYA
cca

Celebes Sea
Singapore BISM
A
Borneo ARCH RCK New Ireland
Su

I P EL
ma

AGO Rabaul
tra

NEW
NEW Bougainville
DUTCH EAST GUINEA
GUINEA New SOLOMON
INDIES Java Britain ISLANDS
Timor
Port Guadalcanal
in Moresby
Darw
Coral Sea NEW
I N D I A N O C E A N HEBRIDES
New
Caledonia

AU S T R A L I A
Brisbane

Perth

Sydney
Melbourne

Tasmania

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Gerhard L. Weinberg
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Alaska

Bering Sea

CANADA
S
ND
Attu IS L A
A L E U TIA N
Kiska

PACIFIC OCEAN
Ca
UNITED STATES
lifo
rni
San Francisco
a
Los Angeles

Midway
Islands

Oahu HAWAIIAN MEXICO

ISLANDS
Pearl Harbor

MARSHALL
ISLANDS
Kwajalein
Tarawa
GILBERT Christmas
ISLANDS Is.
PACIFIC OCEAN

Samoa

Tahiti
FIJI
0 500 1,000 miles

0 500 1,000 kilometers

Auckland

NEW ZEALAND

xxiii

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KUZBASS YENISEI RIVER

COAL

URAL
IRON ORE

xxiv
C H I N A
I R A N
AN
ST
PROPOSED DIVISION OF A NI
GH
AF
OPERATIONAL ZONES
DECEMBER, 1941
Japanese proposal
O K W proposal I N D I A
Furthest German and
Japanese advances
during the war.
Scale in miles
0 500 1000
BG
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