Stalin

45. Gal’ianov, “Kuda idet Pol’sha.” Already in Feb. 1938, Potyomkin had told the Bulgarian envoy to Moscow that there might well be a new partition of Poland. Lipinsky, Das geheime Zusatzprotokoll, 24. See also Sluch, “Pol’sha v politike Sovetskogo Soiuza,” 162–3 (citing AVPRF, f. 05, op. 18, pap. 148, d. 158, l. 30: April 4, 1938); and Raack, “His Question Asked and Answered.”

46. Ragsdale, Coming of World War II, 81–2, 112–126, 166–7, 185.

47. The Romanian military did not oppose granting transit rights to the Red Army, but King Carol vetoed the idea. Ragsdale, “Soviet Position at Munich,” 35–72; Ragsdale, Coming of World War II, 81–2, 90–1; Hochman, Failure of Collective Security, 56–77, 144–69. No airlift of troops of the necessary magnitude for aiding Czechoslovakia took place even during World War II. See also Ragsdale, in “Munich Crisis,” who demolishes the assertions in Pfaff, Die Sowjetunion und die Verteidigung der Tschechoslowakei, 392–7.

48. RGVA, f. 33 987, op. 3, d. 1144, l. 150–5, 160, 183; 158–94; Seaton, Russo-German War, 56n16.

49. Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence, 254; Jackson, France and the Nazi Menace, 291; Jackson, “French Military Intelligence,” 88–9. Churchill (March 23, 1938) had put the question squarely to Maisky about the Red Army’s self-annihilation. Maisky suggested to Litvinov that Churchill be permitted to observe Red Army maneuvers to put to rest the impression derived from the terror. No such visit took place. DVP SSSR, XXI: 151–3; Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, 107; Steiner, “Soviet Commissariat of Foreign Affairs,” 755.

50. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 65 (no citation). Successive French military attachés had been reprimanded by superiors in Paris for “exaggerating” the USSR’s military capacity. Young, In Command of France, 145–49; Coulondre, De Staline à Hitler, 129.

51. On Sept. 2, 1938, Jean Payart, long-serving French chargé d’affaires in Moscow, asked Litvinov what assistance the USSR could render to Czechoslovakia, given the reluctance of Poland and Romania to allow Soviet troops and aircraft to pass through; Litvinov reminded him that it was France that was under treaty obligation in the first instance, and that if France came to Czechoslovakia’s aid, the Soviet Union would fulfil its obligations “utilizing every means at our disposal.” Litvinov repeated the Soviet proposal for an immediate conference of Great Britain, France, and the USSR with military representatives, but Payart left the last part out of his report to the French foreign ministry, and instead managed to incite the idea that the Soviet answer had been “evasive.” Steiner, “Soviet Commissariat of Foreign Affairs,” 763–5. Litvinov repeatedly warned Alexandrovsky in Prague to make sure the Czechoslovaks did not expect unilateral Soviet assistance.

52. Weinberg, Hitler’s Foreign Policy, 398; DDF, 2e série, IX: 394–5 (July 16, 1938), 402–4 (July 17), 437–8 (July 20), 487n2; Adamthwaite, France, 197–9.

53. Young, “French Military Intelligence,” 271–309 (at 287).

54. Tooze, Wages of Destruction, 246, 255–6, 271–2.

55. Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, IX/i: 751–6; Mueller, Das Heer und Hitler, 361.

56. Moorhouse, Killing Hitler, 79–104, at 99, citing Helmuth Groscuth, Tagebücher eines Abwehroffiziers 1938–1940 (Stuttgart, 1970), 35.

57. See, for ex., the characteristic letter of Viscount Halifax to Sir Neville Henderson, July 28, 1938, in DBFP, 3rd series, II: 17.

58. Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement, 174–81.

59. Weinberg, “Germany, Munich, and Appeasement,” 115–6.

60. Young, Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, I: 402.

61. Dilks,”‘We Must Hope for the Best,” 329 (Sept. 11, 1938).

62. Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 185.

63. Sorge had reported (Sept. 3, 1938) Tokyo’s preference for an alliance with Germany directed solely against the USSR. Eleven days later Sorge’s radio man transmitted another of his dispatches about Japanese commitment to planning war against the Soviet Union. Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 650n8.

64. Glavnyi voennyi sovet RKKA, 142–52 (RGVA, f. 4, op. 18, d. 46, l. 191–4), 145–8 (l. 195–200), 149–51 (l. 201–5).

65. Zemskov, Novye dokumenty iz istorii Miunkhena, 98–100; Dokumenty i materialy kanuna vtoroi mirovoi voiny, I: 240; DVP SSSR, XXI: 498–9, 500; Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Evropa, 363–4 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 24, l. 5–6); DVP SSSR, XIX: 498–9, 500.

66. Ragsdale, Coming of World War II, 121–2; Dokumenty i materialy po istorii sovetsko-chekhoslovatskikh otnoshenii, III: 515–17 (Voroshilov’s mobilization order, Sept. 21, 1938), 518 (implementation, Sept. 22, 1938); Spáčil and Mal’tsev, Dokumenty po istorii Miunkhenskogo sgovora, 254–6. See also Grylev, “Nakanune i v dni Miunkhena,” 220–7; Grechko et al., Istoriia Vtoroi mirovoi voiny, II: 104–7; Zakharov, General’nyi shtab, 112–5; Jukes, “Red Army.”

67. See Litvinov’s appeal to Stalin from Geneva to seize the moment: DVP SSSR, XXI: 520 (Sept. 23, 1938). In Geneva since early Sept., Litvinov repeatedly urged Stalin toward a more activist policy over Czechoslovakia while vowing that his recommended actions would not increase the USSR’s obligations, an implied reading of Stalin’s concerns. Steiner, “Soviet Commissariat of Foreign Affairs.”

68. Dullin, Men of Influence, 261 (citing SHAT, 7N3123: report of attaché, Oct. 18, 1938).

69. “Prime Minister on the Issues,” The Times, Sept. 28, 1938: 10. See also Chamberlain, In Search of Peace, 393.

70. Weinberg, Foreign Policy, II: 378–464. See also Wendt, Grossdeutschland, 150–2.

71. The Soviets, Churchill later wrote of the Munich Pact, “were not brought into the scale against Hitler, and were treated with an indifference—not to say disdain—which left a mark in Stalin’s mind.” He added: “Events took their course as if Soviet Russia did not exist. For this we afterward paid dearly.” Churchill, Second World War, I: 305. See also Eberle and Uhl, Hitler Book, 30–4.

72. Overy, “Germany and the Munich Crisis”; Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, 113–25. On Aug. 2, 1938, British ambassador to Germany Neville Henderson had envisioned exclusion of the Soviet Union from a Four Power Conference supposedly for want of time. DBFP, 3rd series, III: 35–6 (Henderson to Strang).

73. Chamberlain had written (Sept. 13) to King George VI about the pending trip to meet Hitler. Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security, 188. See also Crozier, Causes of the Second World War, 144.

74. Fry, “Agents and Structures.”

75. Gunsburg, Divided and Conquered, 66–7.

76. Girard de Charbonnières, La plus évitable de toutes les guerres, 159–63; Thomas, “France and the Czechoslovak Crisis.” Daladier told American ambassador Bullitt (Oct. 2) that Munich had been an “immense defeat for France and England.” Haight, American Aid to France, 13 (citing Bullitt Papers).

77. Lukes, Czechoslovakia between Hitler and Stalin, 237.

78. Murray, Change in the European Balance of Power; Hauner, “Czechoslovakia as a Military Factor.” Wilhelm Keitel, head of the High Command in 1938, when interrogated at Nuremberg in 1946 about whether Germany would have attacked Czechoslovakia in 1938 if the Western powers had come to Prague’s aid militarily, would reply, “Certainly not. We were not strong enough militarily.” Fritz Erich von Manstein, another general, would state under interrogation, “had Czechoslovakia defended itself, we would have been held up by her fortifications, for we did not have the means to break through.” Similarly, Alfred Jodl would say that, after an invasion of Czechoslovakia, it would have been “militarily impossible” to hold out against a French move from the West. International Military Tribunal, X: 572, 600, 772. See also Churchill, Second World War, I: 392.

79. Deutsch, Hitler and His Generals; Steiner, Triumph of the Dark, 575–9.

80. Parssinen, Oster Conspiracy, 162.

81. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 247 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 4, d. 297, l. 50).

82. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/i: 17 (citing TsAMO, f. 5, op. 176703, d. 7, l. 431).

83. Herwarth, Against Two Evils, 123. The German invasion plan (Fall Grünn) excluded Soviet intervention because of the upheaval in the Red Army. Hochman, Failure of Collective Security, 140.

84. Hochman, Failure of Collective Security, 162–3, 166–7.

85. Because Stalin did not take his southern holiday, there are none of the instructional letters to Moscow that are revealing of his thinking. In addition, Comintern General Secretary Georgi Dimtrov, who kept a diary on Stalin’s thinking, was away on holiday (in Kislovodsk and Crimea) through Oct. 19, 1938.

86. Lukes, Czechoslovakia between Hitler and Stalin, 224.

87. Alexandrovsky wrote in his diary: “I confess that I felt uncomfortable, as I could say nothing.” “Miunkhen,” Mezhdunarodnaia zhizn’, 1998, no. 11: 138–40.

88. Lukes, “Stalin and Beneš,” 41. Stalin had to think about Japan’s obligation in the Anti-Comintern Pact to assist Germany if the USSR and Germany clashed militarily over Czechoslovakia, as pointedly noted in Izvestiia (Sept. 30, 1938) in a TASS report on speculation in London newspapers. Koltsov had been dispatched to Czechoslovakia, whence he filed many evocative stories on the crisis—“Alarming Days of Prague,” “Czechoslovakia on the Eve of New Tribulations,” “Aggressors Mangle Czechoslovakia”—illuminating the Stalinist line.

89. DVP SSSR, XXI: 516–7 (Potyomkin, Sept. 23, 1938), 523 (conversation of Jankovski and Potyomkin, Sept. 23).

90. Cienciala, “Foreign Policy of Józef Piłsudski,” 143, citing Polskie dokumenty dyplomatyczne 1938 (Warsaw: Polski Instytut Spraw Miçdzynarodowych, 2007), docs. 297, 317.

91. Coulondre, De Staline à Hitler, 165. On Sept. 26, the Soviet military attaché in Paris had claimed that thirty infantry and cavalry divisions, along with tanks and airplanes, had been positioned along the frontier with Poland. Gamelin, Servir, II: 356.

92. Landau and Tomaszewski, Monachium 1938, 462 (Beck to Lipski, Sept. 28, 1939).

93. For indirect evidence of Stalin’s designs on Poland’s eastern territories, see Raack, “His Question Asked and Answered.”

94. Pons, Stalin and the Inevitable War, 134–5 (citing RGASPI, f. 495, op. 73, d. 61a, l. 1); DVP SSSR, XXI: 738.

95. On Sept. 28, Potyomkin was in the Little Corner from 3:15 a.m. to 3:25 a.m., in the presence of Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Zhdanov, and Yezhov, all of whom were there from 2:00 a.m. to 4:15 a.m. Na prieme, 241.

96. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 77–8. On Sept. 30, Timoshenko and Poliakov gave an overview of Poland’s military posture on the Soviet border to Voroshilov. Duraczyński and Sakharov, Sovetsko-Pol’skie otnosheniia, 82–3 (RGVA, f. 33797, op. 5, d. 479, l. 199–200).

97. Maslov, “I. V. Stalin o ‘Kratkom kurse istorii VKP (b)’”; APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1122, l. 28–11; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1122, l. 54ff.

98. In the early and mid-1930s, the regime had tried but failed to publish an official four-volume and then a two-volume history of the party. Yaroslavsky and Pyotr Pospelov (b. 1898), a graduate of the Institute of Red Professors, began work on a new text. In the meantime, Yaroslavsky’s wife, Kirsanova, was expelled from the party, and his son-in-law, Marcel Rosenberg, was arrested. Finally, on April 3, Yaroslavsky and Pospelov presented Stalin with a text. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1217, l. 2–24; Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 252; Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 193; Zelenov and Brandenberger, “Kratkii kurs,” I: 213–8 (d. 1219, l. 1–6). Stalin had the draft circulated among the retinue and, with Zhdanov in tow, received Pospelov (without Yaroslavsky) in the Little Corner on March 4 and 5, 1938, during the Bukharin trial. Stalin made many changes: he transformed all leftist parties other than the Communists into counterrevolutionaries already before Oct. 1917, and all oppositionists (left and right) into foreign agents. From late May 1938, he was engaged in proofreading the revision, then decided to rewrite the text himself. On the author page, he replaced the names of Yaroslavsky and Pospelov with “party commission.” “Of the twelve chapters,” Stalin reported on Aug. 16, 1938, to the inner circle and the authors, “it turned out to be necessary to revise eleven.” (Chapter 5 had been deemed acceptable.) RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1219, l. 36–7.

99. In his summary speech at the Feb.–March 1937 plenum, too, Stalin had included a reference to Antaeus and how Hercules defeated him. Pravda, April 1, 1937. See also Krivitsky, In Stalin’s Secret Service, 121.

100. Istoriia Vsesoiuznoi Kommunisticheskoi partii, 291–2. See also Deutscher, Stalin, 540; and Tucker, “Stalinism as Revolution from Above,” 77–110. The expression “revolution from above” had first appeared as a characterization of Germany’s unification in the “Bismarck” entry in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia published in 1927, a fact now forgotten.

101. Zelenov, “I. V. Stalin v rabote,” 6. A collective farmer would write asking for more biographical detail on Stalin to be inserted in the book. Brandenberger, Propaganda State in Crisis, 210 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 1, l. 5: I. Shabarov, collective farmer from Rostov). Tucker wrote that if Stalin had written memoirs, they would have amounted to nothing more than a second edition of the Short Course of the History of the Communist Party. Tucker, Stalin in Power, 533, 539.

102. Zelenov, “I. V. Stalin v rabote,” 3, 6, 10–1, 25–7. Stalin deleted extended passages, including on his supposed leading party work in the South Caucasus before 1917.

103. Shestakov, Kratkii kurs, 291. See also Lih, “Melodrama and the Myth.”

104. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1122, l. 3–4. Stalin would elaborate this core axiom two weeks later at the politburo. Khlevniuk et al., Stenogrammy zasedanii politbiuro, III: 693; “I. V. Stalin v rabote nad ‘Kratkim kursom,’” 19.

105. Na prieme, 239–40; Zelenov and Brandenberger, “Kratkii kurs,” I: 373–4 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1219, l. 37); Zelenov, I. V. Stalin, Istoricheskaia ideologiiia, I: 312–91. See also Medvedev, “How the Short Course Was Created”; and Avrich, “Short Course and Soviet Historiography.”

106. Zelenov and Brandenberger, “Kratkii kurs,” I: 375–81 (RGASPI, f. 77, op. 3, d. 159, l. 338–78).

107. Zelenov and Brandenberger, “Kratkii kurs,” I: 425 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1002, l. 12: Sept. 19, 1938). It would be translated into the languages of Union and autonomous republics the next year and, eventually, reach 42.8 million copies in 67 languages. “Izdanie proizvedenii I. V. Stalina v Sovetskom Soiuze c 7 noiabria 1917 goda na 5 marta 1953: statisticheskie tablitsii,” Sovetskaia bibliografiia: sbornik statei i materialov, vyp. 1 (Moscow: Vsesoiuznaia knizhnaia palata, 1953), 224; Maslov, “‘Kratkii kurs istorii VKP (b)’—Entsiklopediia kul’ta lichnosti,” 51. In 1937–38, the censor withdrew from circulation 16,435 titles, amounting to 24 million volumes. This was a partial accounting (the main censor lacked jurisdiction over military publications). Brandenberger, Propaganda State in Crisis, 222 (citing GARF. F. 9425, op. 1, d. 5, l. 66; d. 11, l. 61).

108. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1122, l. 1–18, 28–111. Stalin’s speeches at the meeting can also be found in Zelenov, I. V. Stalin, Istoricheskaia ideologiiia, I: 394–9 (Sept. 27, 1938), 401–24 (Oct. 1) .

109. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1122, l. 58–9.

110. During Pravda’s publication of the Short Course, Stalin phoned the editors, according to the journalist Brontman, and reiterated, over and over, the need to publish more material on the “white collar.” Brontman noted: “It’s a new matter.” Brontman, Dnevniki (entry for Sept. 20, 1938).

111. Back when battling the Georgian Mensheviks before 1917, Stalin had advocated for working-class party members, but in power he offered ambiguous views. Chuev, Tak govoril Kaganovich, 31; Graziosi, “Stalin’s Antiworker Workerism, 1924–1931”; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 219. The secret circular he had dispatched after Kirov’s assassination warned that Bolsheviks with worker origins sometimes turned out to be provocateurs (citing Roman Malinowski, whose secret spying for the okhranka had put Stalin back in prison before the revolution). Yezhov, in 1935, had complained, “look, this veneration for the worker is completely un-Bolshevik and un-Marxist.” Davies and Harris, Stalin’s World, 198 (citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1118, l. 56–60); “Zakrytoe pis’mo Tsk VKP (b),” 97; Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 201.

112. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1122, l. 10.

113. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 307, l. 7–11, 68–72, 80–5, 113–4.

114. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1122, l. 3–4. “I am not a theoretician [teoretik], but a practitioner [praktik] who knows theory,” Stalin explained, adding, “such are the kind of people we want to have: practitioners with knowledge of theory.” See the prompt from Yaroslavsky: Zelenov and Brandenberger, “Kratkii kurs,” I: 419–20 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1219, l. 101).

115. Hochman, Failure of Collective Security, 166.

116. Telegrams had to be sent directly from the telegram office; there were also phonegrams transmitted by special telephone. Moscow received the first message around 5:00 p.m., and the second at 5:15; each had to be decoded. DVP SSSR, XXI: 549–50 (Potyomkin, Sept. 30, 1938); Lukes, “Stalin and Beneš,” 37–9. Beneš’s moods vacillated, according to Alexandrovsky (one of the few envoys to see the Czechoslovak president regularly). Alexandrovskii, “Munich Witness’s Account,” 129, 132. See also Steiner, “The Soviet Commissariat of Foreign Affairs,” 772–3 (citing AVP RF, f. 0138, op. 19, pap. 128, d. 6, l. 161–75: Alexandrovsky’s diary, written Oct. 1938).

117. DVP SSSR, XXI: 548–9 (Alexandrovsky, Sept. 30, 1938), 549 (Sept. 30, 1938), 549–50 (Potyomkin, Sept. 30, 1938), 552–3 (Alexandrovsky, Oct. 1, 1938).

118. Lukes, Czechoslovakia between Hitler and Stalin, 262; Lukes, “Stalin and Czechoslovakia,” 14–6.

119. Soon he would add “cultural-educational” organization to the list of the state’s functions. Pravda, March 11, 1939, reprinted in Sochineniia, XIV: 394.

120. Zelenov and Brandenberger, “Kratkii kurs,” I: 452–66 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1122, l. 28–9, 34–42, 44–9, 51, 53–61, 63, 65–70, 77–88).

121. Wandycz, Twilight of French Eastern Alliances, 452, 478; Prażmowska, Eastern Europe, 144.

122. Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 25–28, at 28 (Lipski to Beck, Oct. 1, 1938).

123. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 28. Churchill would famously call interwar Poland a “hyena” for its actions over Těšín (Cieszyn). Churchill, Second World War, I: 311. Soviet intelligence evidently reported rumors from Riga (Oct. 10, 1938) that Poland had also demanded Latvia’s ethnic Polish regions (such as Daugavpils/Dźwińsk-Dyneburg). Sotskov, Pribaltika i geopolitika, 56 (no citation).

124. DVP SSSR, XXI: 599. Stalin possessed a manuscript on German-Polish relations by the émigré Alexander Guchkov, one of the two Duma representatives in 1917 who had been sent to obtain Tsar Nicholas II’s abdication. Pilfered in Paris, the text discussed the possibility of Poland handing Danzig over to Germany, with the thinking that this would satiate German claims and redirect German aggression against Stalin’s Soviet Union. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 234. See also Tokarev, “‘Kará panam! Kará.’”

125. On Oct. 2, Soviet ambassador to London Ivan Maisky telegrammed Moscow reporting that, on Sept. 30, he had gone to see Tomáš Masaryk, the Czechoslovak representative in Britain, to express condolences. “They sold me into slavery to the Germans,” Masaryk was reported to have told Maisky through tears, “the way that once the Negroes were sold into slavery in America!” Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 29–31 (AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 278, d. 1931, l. 53–6: Oct. 2, 1938); God krizisa, I: 41–3. On Oct. 5, 1938, Beneš would resign under German pressure and, seventeen days later, go into exile in London.

126. Craigie, Behind the Japanese Mask, 67–8. Craigie served as Britain’s ambassador to Tokyo.

127. Von Hassel, Die Hasseltagebücher, 51; Genoud, Testament of Adolf Hitler, 84–5; Fest, Hitler, 742. Not for Hitler the ancient Sun Tzu’s wisdom: “the greatest victory is that which requires no battle.”

128. Jackson, “End of Appeasement,” 237 (citing SHAT, 7N 2515 [Oct. 10–16, 1938] and 2605 [Oct. 11, 1938], 2602–1 [Nov. 9, 1938]). Hitler and his minions even felt that Munich had somehow reconfirmed the Western powers’ objections to Germany’s assumption of its rightful place, which justified Germany’s forcing through even greater expenditures on the military, railways, highways, and other infrastructure. Tooze, Wages of Destruction, 288.

129. The Times, Oct. 1, 1938. The Soviets were in difficult trade negotiations with Italy at this time. The Italians were demanding additional oil deliveries; Litvinov recommended offering grain. Sevost’ianov, Moskva-Rim, 454 (APRF, f. 3, op. 65, d. 246, l. 128: Litvinov to Stalin, Oct. 15, 1938), 455 (l. 127: Oct. 22, 1938, politburo decree).

130. DGFP, series D, IV: 602–4 (Tippelskirch, Oct. 3, 1938).

131. Sochineniia, XVI: 118.

132. Pravda, Sept. 18, 1938. See also Pravda, Nov. 4, 1938 (Zhdanov) and Izvestiia, Nov. 10, 1938 (Molotov).

133. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 235 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 5, d. 81, l. 140); Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 305. Surits, in Paris, wrote to the foreign affairs commissariat in Moscow that “any Frenchman” could see that for France the Munich Pact constituted “a most terrible defeat” equivalent to a “second Sedan” (when Germany crushed France in Bismarck’s wars of unification). Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 35–6 (“excerpted”: Oct. 12, 1938). Following the Munich Pact, the British agent in Salamanca, Robert Hodgson, told Eberhard von Stohrer, the German ambassador to Franco’s regime, that Britain intended to mediate the conflict in Spain. Franco, at dinner with Stohrer on Oct. 1, rhapsodized over Hitler’s triumph at Munich. DGFP, series D, III: 754–60; Thomas, Spanish Civil War, 555–6, 827–8.

134. Passov, appointed on March 28, 1938, had remained head of civilian intelligence with the formation of the NKGB in Sept. 1938, but would be arrested on Oct. 23 for anti-Soviet conspiracy. Sudoplatov served as acting chief of NKGB espionage until Dec. 2, 1938, when Vladimir Dekanozov would be appointed. Passov would be executed on Feb. 14, 1940. Abramov, Evrei v KGB, 260–1; Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 7; Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 252 (TsA FSB, f. H-15014, t. 2, l. 90); Kolpakidi and Prokhorov, Vneshniaia razvedka Rossii, 106–7.

135. Khlevniuk et al., Stenogrammy zasedanii politbiuro, III: 694–6; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1217, l. 51–2. Only after publication of the Short Course would Stalin relinquish formal control over ideology in the Central Committee secretariat, giving the portfolio to Zhdanov on Nov. 27, 1938. Khlevniuk et al., Stalinskoe politbiuro, 171.

136. Zelenov and Brandenberger, “Kratkii kurs,” I: 494–5. Stalin added: “Comrade Khrushchev thinks that to this day he remains a worker, when in fact he is an intelligent.”

137. Eugene Lyons would write that “only another war, and a catastrophically losing one, could effectively challenge Stalin’s ascendancy.” Lyons, Stalin, 290. See also Kuromiya, “Accounting for the Great Terror.”

138. Pons, Stalin and the Inevitable War; Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 4. Yefim Dzigan’s feature film If War Comes Tomorrow, which had premiered earlier in the year, had made the Red Army seem invincible, mixing documentary footage of paratroopers during maneuvers with a catchy, reassuring song with words by Vasily Lebedev-Kumach: “If war comes tomorrow, if tomorrow it’s into battle, be prepared today!”

139. Dokumenty i materialy po istorii sovetsko-pol’skikh otnoshenii, VI: 366 (Grzibowski telegram to Warsaw, Oct. 9, 1938). Following a secret gathering of German military brass on Aug. 19, 1938, at the special SS complex in Yuteborg, Soviet intelligence reported on Nazi Germany’s aggressive designs on the Soviet Union, noting that a major general on Göring’s chief of staff had said that “the main goal of the Führer is a struggle with our real enemies, the Soviets, who have paralyzed Japan in the East and could defend Ukraine only with weak forces. The Führer’s goal is to avoid conflicts with England and France and attain a European pact of the four. Germany needs colonies, not in Africa, but in Eastern Europe, she needs a breadbasket—Ukraine.” A Soviet military intelligence analysis of Germany in Jan. 1939 would conclude that, whereas “Czechoslovakia had served as a barrier to German expansion toward the southeast, now, on the contrary, it serves as a trampoline.” But the report would also quote the Manchester Guardian to the effect that “a shortage of oil might turn out to be the fateful weakness of the German war machine.” Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 21–2 (RGVA, f. 25888, op. 11, d. 86, l. 15), 25–6.

140. On Oct. 31, Litvinov told the Polish ambassador their nonaggression pact remained in force. This would be confirmed bilaterally on Nov. 26, 1938, and announced by TASS the next day.

141. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 253, 309–10 (TsA FSB, f. 3 os, op. 6, d. 8, l. 13).

142. “Vospominaniia Nikity Sergeevicha Khrushcheva,” 87; Pavliukov, Ezhov, 470; Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 179–80; Khlevniuk, Khoziain, 344. It seems that at Stalin’s direction, Yezhov had called Uspensky and summoned him to Moscow—Uspensky drew his own obvious conclusions.

143. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 24, l. 62.

144. Kostrychenko and Khazanov, “Konets Kar’ ery Ezhova,” 125–8 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1003, l. 85–86); Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 607–11 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 6, l. 85–7); Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 532–7. On Yezhov’s anger at being accused of lawlessness, when he was following Stalin’s instructions, with which Vyshinsky had colluded, see Ushakov and Stukalov, Front voennykh prokurorov, 70–2.

145. “The fear of war had spawned mass terror,” wrote Ulam. “But terror in its turn increased Stalin’s fear of war.” This appears to be exactly backward: Stalin’s fear of war seems to have ended the mass terror. Ulam, Stalin, 491–2. On Oct. 16, 1938, the politburo resolved to demobilize and return the forces called to the western borders: 330,000 troops, 27,500 horses, and 5,000 vehicles. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 24, l. 17.

146. Kissinger, Diplomacy, 333. E. H. Carr also portrayed Stalin as the embodiment of Russian realpolitik in his forced industrialization and foreign policy. The Carr student Gabriel Gorodetsky has asserted that “Machiavelli rather than Lenin was Stalin’s idol,” a dubious claim that does not diminish the value of the treasure trove of evidence that Gorodetsky brought to the fore. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 317; Haslam, “Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia,” 134. See also, on Carr, D’Agostino, “Stalin Old and New.”

CHAPTER 10. HAMMER

1. Chuev, Sto sorok, 414–5. Stalin, in the name of the politburo, had removed A. M. Mogilny, head of Molotov’s secretariat, on Aug. 17, 1937; he removed M. Khlusser, another top Molotov aide, eleven days later. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 990, l. 54, 72.

2. Shpanov, Pervyi udar; Shpanov, “Pervyi udar.” The fantasy novella had been completed back in 1937, under the title Twelve Hours of War, and slated for publication by the Union of Soviet Writers publishing house, but the main censor had blocked it on the grounds that it was aesthetically “hopeless.” “Dokladnaia zapiska agitpropa TsK M. A. Suslovu po povodu izdaniia knigi ‘podzhigateli’ N. N, Shapnova” (April 20, 1949): http://alexanderyakovlev.org/fond/is sues-doc/69631. It would be republished with other stories in summer 1939 by Sovetskii pisatel’. See also Ulam, Stalin, 492.

3. Vishnevskii, “Kniga o budushchei voine.”

4. Yezhov had tried to take Litvinov down. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 184–5. On Jan. 1, 1939, in verification of 22,000 people with access to classified materials in people’s commissariats and central agencies of USSR and RSFSR, more than 3,000 were fired. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 361–2.

5. DVP SSSR, XX: 579 (Litvinov to Maisky, Oct. 29, 1937).

6. The perspicacious British envoy Chilston observed “bitter disappointment” in Moscow over Munich, noting that the Kremlin “would like more than ever to pursue a policy of isolation if they could safely do so, [but] realize that, after Munich, they can afford to risk isolation even less than they could before.” Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia, 257 (citing Chilston to FO, disp. 442 Oct. 18, 1938, FO 371/22289/N5164/97/38: minute, Collier, Oct. 28, 1938).

7. Edwards, British Government and the Spanish Civil War, 130 (July 5, 1938).

8. George Kennan, “The War Problem of the Soviet Union” (March 1935), George F. Kennan Papers, Box 1, Mudd Library, Princeton University, reprinted in Hochman, Failure of Collective Security, 176–83 (at 176).

9. One group of analysts has argued that he began with a genuine commitment to achieve “collective security” with the West, only to sour on this option as a result of Anglo-French behavior. Haslam, Struggle for Collective Security. Diametrically opposed, another group of analysts has insisted Stalin was bent all along on a deal with Hitler. Hochman, Failure of Collective Security. Stalin pursued both options. What neither group fully appreciated was the extent to which he was not the driver of events.

10. The British especially had looked to non-Nazi members of the German cabinet such as Baron von Neurath (foreign minister), General von Blomberg (war minister), and Hjalmar Schacht (economics minister), all of whom were gone by 1938. Then the British elevated Göring to the role of presumed restraining influence on the Nazi “wild” men around Hitler. Watt, “British Intelligence,” 249.

11. Bond, Chief of Staff, I: 155–6 (Aug. 8, 1938).

12. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence, I: 47, 68, 80.

13. Hitler, because of its association with Bolshevism, had rejected the term “dictator” and preferred to be known as the Führer of the German race, viewing democracy, dictatorship, and Judentum as of a piece. Nolte, “Diktatur,” I: 922; Schmitt, Die Diktatur; Cobban, Dictatorship. Baehr, “Dictatorship.”

14. Krivitskii, “Iz vospominaniia sovetskogo kommunista.”

15. In 1933, Hitler had arranged that all private documents concerning his childhood and youth were confiscated. These would be destroyed in April 1945. Ullrich, Hitler: Ascent, 17.

16. Ryback, Hitler’s Private Library. Some 1,200 volumes of Hitler’s 16,000-volume library are in the Library of Congress.

17. Hitler had met Mari Reiter, a pretty blonde, in Berchtesgaden in fall 1926; he was thirty-seven, she was sixteen. Her father was a founding member of the local Social Democrat Party and she ran a clothing shop. He called her “my dear child”; she called him Wolf. Their intimacy was episodic. Hitler met Eva Braun in Hoffmann’s Munich studio. He was then forty; she was seventeen, middle-class, pretty. He took her for sausages and beer under a false name (Herr Wolf), but initially she rebuffed him. Hitler’s main affections were directed at his niece, Geli Raubal, a girl with dark, wavy brown hair who resided in his Munich apartment, but in Sept. 1931 she was found dead there, shot with a revolver, and scandal rocked Munich. But Hitler was absent from the city that day. Geli’s demise proved Eva’s opening: in fall 1932, still living in Munich but despairing over her infrequent access to Hitler, she shot herself with her father’s pistol, but survived. She tried and failed to kill herself again in 1935. By early 1936, she and Hitler had become a regular, if non-public unmarried couple. At the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, the company was almost all male, but at the Berghof alpine sanctuary, Hitler had afforded Eva a private apartment, next to his bedroom, and she presided as mistress of the retreat, present at meals (seated to his left) and at his ramblings on race and global conquest. Kershaw, Hitler: 1889–1936, 353; Görtemaker, Eva Braun.

18. Speer, Erinnerungen, 116.

19. Ullrich, Hitler: Ascent, 380–411; Hanfstaengl, Zwischen Weissem und Braunem Haus, 165; Speer, Spandauer Tagebücher, 523; Joachimsthaler, Hitlers Liste, 362; Ribbentrop, Zwischen London und Moskau, 48.

20. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 140, 154. When films were shown, bodyguards and some of the female staff were admitted.

21. Fröhlich, Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, II/ii: 251 (March 29, 1932).

22. Neumann, Behemoth; Hayes, “Polycracy and Policy,” 190–210; Broszat, Hitler State; Broszat, Der Staat Hitlers. See also Trevor-Roper, Last Days of Hitler, 54; and Overy, Göring, 4.

23. On Oct. 28, 1938, the Head of the Reich Chancellery (Lammers)—the link between Hitler and state ministers—had written to Hitler’s adjutant begging to report on urgent state matters, adding that he had not spoken with the Führer for more than six weeks. Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, II: 245.

24. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 145.

25. Wiedemann, Der Mann, 69; also available, translated, in Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, II: 207–8. After 1933, Hitler almost never wrote anything either. The important exception was perhaps his “Four Year Memorandum” (1936), written in anger and frustration at the 1935–6 economic crisis; Hitler passed copies of the memorandum only to two people, both in the military: Göring and Blomberg. (Much later, a third copy went to Speer.) The Economics Minister did not get a copy. Kershaw, “Working towards the Führer,” 90.

26. Stalin “enjoyed settling . . . trivial issues,” one biographer has noted. He “got used to the idea that people couldn’t manage without him, that he must do everything.” Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 147.

27. Kershaw, Nazi Dictatorship, 70.

28. Ullrich, Hitler: Ascent, 397 (citing BA Koblenz N 1340/384); Speer, Erinnerungen, corrected ms. (2nd version), chapter 1; and Schroeder, Er War Mein Chef, 78–81.

29. Shirer, Rise and Fall, 275–6. As Bracher noted, “among the men closest to the Führer, all joined long before the big wave of newcomers in March 1933.” They were distinguished by “the right of immediate access.” Bracher, German Dictatorship, 277; Bracher, Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung, 607.

30. Kershaw, “Nature of the Hitler Dictatorship,” 117; Kershaw, Hitler: 1889–1936, 527–91; Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, II: 207. Adolf Eichmann would testify that, “No sooner had Hitler made a speech—and he invariably touched on the Jewish question—then every party or government department felt that it was up to them to do something.” When it came to specific incidents—such as the pogrom known as Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), on Nov. 8–9, 1938, which would leave around 100 Jews dead and 7,500 Jewish businesses vandalized—Hitler explicitly approved the action. On Dec. 6, 1938, Göring warned the Gauleiters against initiatives predicated upon the Führer’s presumed wishes. Von Lang, Eichman Interrogated, 59; Fröhlich, Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, VI: 179–81 (Nov. 10, 1938); Friedlander, “Path that Led into the Abyss.” See also Rebentisch, Führerstaat und Verwaltung. Kershaw presented the concept very broadly—a small businessman besting a competitor by questioning his Aryan credentials; ordinary people perniciously denouncing neighbors to the Gestapo to settle private scores—and in that guise, it could be tantamount to just living under Nazi rule. Kershaw himself writes, moreover, that “there was never any suggestion that Hitler might be bypassed or ignored, that anyone but he could make a key decision. And, once he finally decided to act, he did so . . . with ruthlessness.” Kershaw, Hitler: 1889–1936, 328. See also Kershaw, “Uniqueness of Nazism”; and Mommsen, “Hitler’s Position,” 163–88; Kershaw, Nazi Dictatorship (4th ed.), 59–79. The basic idea that minions were in competition to gain the favor of the Führer, creating a dynamic that radicalized policy, appears in Hannah Arendt. Seweryn Bialer had called this phenomenon “preemptive obedience.” Bialer, Stalin’s Successors.

31. Zhuravlyov’s denunciation followed the formation of the commission on the NKVD. Beria had passed the letter to Stalin on Oct. 13, 1938. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 249–50; Na prieme, 245–6. See also Shreider, NKVD iznutri, 237. Zhuravlyov briefly got a promotion to Moscow, but Beria would send him to run the Karaganda camps. Yezhov’s response—accepting guilt, claiming poor health, confessing he “had taken badly the appointment of Beria as my deputy. I saw in this an element of lack of trust towards me,” and requesting to resign—is misdated as Sept. (rather than Nov.) 23, 1938. Kostrychenko and Khazanov, “Konets Kar’ery Ezhova,” 129–30 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1003, l. 82–4); Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoie upravlenie, 552–4 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1003, l. 82–4); Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 355–9 (RGASPI, f. 671, op. 1, d. 265, l. 16–26ob.). See also Sudoplatov and Sudoplatov, Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness, 59. This is another example where Sudoplatov’s memoir comports with archival materials.

32. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinskii pitomets, 355–9, at 357 (from APRF, f. 57, op. 1, d. 265, l. 16–26ob.).

33. Kostrychenko and Khazanov, “Konets Kar’ery Ezhova,” 131 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1003, l. 34–5); Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 611 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1003, l. 34–5).

34. Petrov and Jansen, Stalinski pitomets, 354–5 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 58, l. 61–2); Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 611–2; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1003, l. 35 (appointment of Beria). The last of the infamous execution lists for 1938 was dated Sept. 29: APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 409–19: http://stalin.memo.ru/images/intro.htm. But Volkgonov, citing military archives, claimed that Stalin, having received some 383 extended lists of names for execution in 1937–38, received yet another on Dec. 12, 1938, containing 3,167 names, albeit without even the charges or the results of any “investigation.” Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, I/ii: 301 (citing TsAMO, f. 32, op. 701323, d. 38, l. 14–6).

35. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 255–6. Of the 14,500 new NKVD employees in 1939, around 11,000 came from the party apparatus or Communist Youth League. Of the 3,460 newcomers in the central NKVD, 3,242 were party apparatchiks and Komsomol. Petrov and Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD, 491–502. There was no hint of societal rebellion. In early 1939, the police discovered a self-styled “fascist organization” in Moscow. Evidently, its handful of youthful members had fashioned a flag and put up seventy posters on the eve of Red Army Day, drew some graffiti, and wrote poems. They also seem to have discussed Nazism, anti-Semitism, and Russian nationalism. Four arrests were made; three of them turned out to have been nineteen years old when they joined the group, and the organizer was seventeen. The NKVD produced five volumes on the case. Rittersporn, Anguish, 174 (citing GARF, f. 5446, op. 81a, d. 335, l. 109–14).

36. Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 332 (citing RGVA, f. 9, op. 39, d. 54, l. 114, 119, 154).

37. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 146 (TsA FSB, f. 3os, op. 6, d. 11, l. 185). Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 629–30 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1004, l. 22). See also Knight, Beria, 91. Another 1,960 operatives in the NKVD would be arrested in 1939, including border guards and Gulag. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 151; Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 259. Some 7,372 NKVD personnel were let go in 1939, not all of whom were arrested. Petrov and Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD, 501; all told, some 60 percent of NKVD personnel would turn over between Oct. 1936 and the end of 1939, while 21,088 new people were promoted to operative positions in 1939. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 259.

38. Petrov and Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD, 495.

39. As of Oct. 1, 1936, of the 110 most senior operatives in state security, 43 had been Jews (declared), and 42 had been eastern Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians), along with 9 Latvians, 5 Poles, and 2 ethnic Germans; by Sept. 1938, of the 150 most senior ranks, 98 were ethnic Russians and 32 Jews, with no Latvians and 1 Pole. By 1939, there would be 122 Russians, 6 Jews, and 12 Georgians. Petrov and Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD, 492–500.

40. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, 58 (dated Feb. 27, 1979).

41. The Georgia NKVD was given to Avksenti Rapava, Beria’s minion who had helped pulverize Abkhazia. Guruli and Tushurashvili, Correspondence, 89 (Beria to Stalin, Oct. 21, 1937).

42. The transfer took place in Aug. 1938, with Beria’s promotion. Merkulov: RGANI, f. 5, op. 30, d. 4, l. 76–7: letter, to Malenkov, July 23, 1953; “‘Khochetsia prokliast’ den’ i chas moego znakomstva s Beriia,’” 101 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 465, l. 2–28); Tumshis, VChK, 211.

43. Kuromiya and Pepłoński, “Stalin und die Spionage,” 29. Amid Stalin’s self-inflicted chaos, NKVD operatives placed one foreign ambassador’s perlustrated letter into the envelope of another. Plotnikova, “Organy,” 77, 79.

44. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 162–3 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 7, d. 4, l. 14).

45. Kochik, “Sovetskaia voennaia razvedka,” (Dec. 13, 1938). Khaustov writes that “by the results of the special reports that came to Stalin during the second half of the 1930s, one can judge that we did not succeed in recruiting valuable sources of information in European representative offices.” Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 292.

46. Jacobsen, Nationalsozialistische Aussenpolitik; Maser, Hitlers Mein Kampf; Hildebrand, “Hitlers Mein Kampf, Propaganda oder Programm?”

47. Jackel, Hitler’s Worldview, 47–66. Hitler did not use anti-Semitism as a vote-gathering or scapegoating ploy to come to power, but was using power to realize a deeply held anti-Semitic agenda. Kershaw, Nazi Dictatorship (4th ed.), 93–132.

48. Heiden had been the correspondent for the liberal Frankfürter Zeitung in his hometown in the 1920s, watching Hitler’s rabble-rousing, then in 1933 had gone into exile in the Saarland, before moving to Switzerland and eventually France. “The ‘hero’ of this book is neither a superman nor a puppet,” he wrote in the preface (dated 1935). “He is a very interesting contemporary and, viewed quantitatively, a man who has stirred up the masses more than anyone else in human history.” He depicted Hitler as both the reflection of and the antithesis to Europe, which, he argued, was a community of shared interests and of democracy that provided for freedom and peace. He called for a new “people’s parliament, constituted by freely elected representatives of all nations,” to replace “the conference of diplomats and bureaucrats in Geneva.” Heiden, Hitler, I: 6, 330; Heiden, Hitler, II: 267, 369. Volume 1 was translated as Hitler: A Biography (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1936).

49. Yaney, “War and the Evolution of Russian Government,” 302–3.

50. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 30–2.

51. “If there is any fighting in Europe to be done,” British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin had told a group of parliamentarians in 1936, “I should like to see the Bolsheviks and the Nazis doing it.” He also remarked: “If he [Hitler] moves East, I shall not break my heart.” Middlemas and Barnes, Baldwin, 947; Carley, “Soviet Foreign Policy.”

52. Bullard also complained of his colleague, the British ambassador to Moscow, that “the dishonesty of the Soviet leaders does not disgust him.” Bullard and Bullard, Inside Stalin’s Russia, 144, 151.

53. Carley, 1939.

54. “We are in the remarkable position of not wanting to quarrel with anybody because we have got most of the world already, or the best parts of it, and we only want to keep what we have got and prevent others from taking it away from us,” Admiral Sir A. E. Chatfield had observed privately in mid-1934. “We are a very rich and very vulnerable Empire and there are plenty of poor adventurers who are not far away who look on us with hungry eyes,” Chamberlain had written in a private letter (Jan. 16, 1938). Thorne, Limits of Foreign Policy, 397–8 (letter to Warren Fisher, June 4, 1934); Freiling, Life of Neville Chamberlain, 323 (Chamberlain to Mrs. Morton Prince).

55. Haas, Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics, 105–45. See also Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia.

56. Overy, Twilight Years.

57. Gibbs, Ordeal in England, 409–10.

58. Schroeder, “Munich and the British Tradition.”

59. Caputi, Neville Chamberlain and Appeasement; McDonough, Neville Chamberlain; Mills, “Chamberlain-Grandi Conversations”; Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement.

60. Layne, “Security Studies”; Peden, Arms, Economics, 127, 138; and Reynolds, In Command of History, 99.

61. McKercher, “Deterrence,” 119.

62. Kennedy, “Tradition of Appeasement,” 195.

63. Carley, 1939, 108; Haslam, “Soviet-German Relations,” 792 (citing a 1982 lecture by Lord Home, an eyewitness to the Munich Pact).

64. Tooze, Deluge.