#10 - JRL 6597
RFE/RL Security and Terrorism Watch
Vol. 3, No. 37, 22 October 2002
Victor Yasmann (ed.)
DECLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS INDICATE STALIN PROPOSED ALLIANCE WITH HITLER AGAINST U.S., BRITAIN. Soviet dictator Josef Stalin secretly offered Adolf Hitler a separate peace in February 1942 and proposed that the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany join forces against the United States and the United Kingdom, "Komsomolskaya pravda" reported on 17 October, citing recently declassified Soviet intelligence documents published in a new book by veteran military-intelligence officer Vladimir Karpov. In a document dated 19 February 1942, which was one of the lowest points of the war for the Soviet Union, Stalin offered a complete truce on the Eastern Front. Furthermore, he offered to undertake a joint military offensive against the other Allies "to restructure the world" by the end of 1943 under the pretext of accusing "world Jewry of warmongering." In a second document, dated 27 February 1942, Vsevolod Merkulov, a chief of the Soviet security apparatus, reported on a meeting with a high-ranking Nazi figure, SS General Karl Wolf, in Mtsensk, in Belarusian territory that was occupied by German forces. Merkulov reported that Wolf elaborated German counterproposals under which Stalin should "solve the Jewish question" in the Soviet Union before Germany would agree to an alliance against the Allies. Wolf reportedly said that Berlin would be willing to make territorial concessions to the Soviet Union in Europe and to change the color of the swastika on the Nazi flag from black to red. Merkulov also reported that Berlin was insisting on "unacceptable" demands, including German control over Latin America, the Arab world, and North Africa and Japanese control over China. Despite these revelations, Karpov's book, "Generalissimo," comes across as a panegyric to Stalin, as the author refrains from criticism and ignores the victims of Stalin's repression, "Komsomolskaya pravda" commented.
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