Stalin

335. Trial of the Major War Criminals, VII: 254 (Paulus); Weinberg, Germany and the Soviet Union, 137. Between May 1939 and Dec. 1940, Soviet military intelligence received more than two dozen warnings from its agents of German invasion planning; during the same period, military intelligence prepared more than one dozen summaries for the top brass and political leadership (Stalin and Molotov). Lota, Sekretnyi front, 129.

336. Gor’kov, Kreml’, 30–5.

337. Similarly, electricity consumption in 1932 badly missed its target—13.4 instead of 22 billion kilowatt-hours—but by 1940 was reported at 48.6 billion. Coal extraction, which had been 35. 4 million tons in 1927–28, rose to a reported 140.5 million in 1940. Nove, Economic History of the USSR (1989), 183, 217; Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR za 70 let, 161, 163–4; Stone, Hammer and Rifle, 108–9.

338. Mass production of the famed T-34 began in June 1940, but that year the Soviet Union managed to turn out just 115 T-34s, as well as 243 KV tanks.

339. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 137 (Nov. 25, 1940).

340. Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/I: 286–96 (TsA FSK). See also Simonov, Voenno-promyshlennyi kompleks SSSR, 100; Ken, Mobilizatsionnoe planirovanie, 335. Conscripts’ food was irregular, and bathing and laundry infrequent, to put it mildly; housing was the sorest point of all.

341. Staff who had been gathering the statistics went to prison or into unmarked graves. Katz, “Purges and Production.” See also Khlevniuk, “Economic Officials in the Great Terror,” 38–67. Problems in the Great War, such as severe shortages of artillery shells that had undermined the tsarist war effort, were common knowledge in Stalin’s time. Manikovskii, Boevoe snabzhenie russkoi armii, 111; Barsukov, Russkaia artilleriia, 161.

342. Sokolov, Ot voenproma k VPK, 361–78.

343. In 1940, military outlays represented more than the entire 1934 state budget. Plotnikov, Ocherki istorii biudzheta Sovetskogo gosudarstva, 260–1. The Soviet Union had 218 military factories when the defense industry commissariat was established in 1939 (versus 45 in the late 1920s). Harrison and Davies, “Soviet Military-Economic Effort,” 372, 377 (citing RGAE, f. 2097, op. 1, d. 1051, l. 17–8: Nov. 15, 1929); Simonov, Voennyo-promyshlennyi kompleks SSSR, 38–41. See also Werner, Military Strength of the Powers. The Soviets had also built in extra capacity for rapid switch in wartime. Davies and Harrison, “Defence Spending,” 90; Harrison, Accounting for War, 110. An earlier scholar calculated the peacetime share of Soviet military spending as 2 percent in 1928, 6 percent in 1937, and 15 percent in 1940. Bergson, Real National Income, 46; Gregory, Russian National Income, 57.

344. Bruce Menning, private communication. See Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 160 (TsA FSB, ASD P-4574, t. 1, l. 53).

345. Abelshauser, “Germany,” 138.

346. Khrushchev, Memoirs, I: 271. “Stalin is afraid of Hitler—and not for nothing,” Trotsky had thundered in 1939. Other perspicacious observers, such as Hilger, also recognized that “there is not the slightest doubt that a deep fear of Hitler’s Germany was the essential guide to all Soviet foreign policy in the 1930s.” But Hilger, unlike Trotsky, grasped that this fear “made the Kremlin bend every effort and strain every muscle to render the country strong politically, economically, ideologically, and militarily.” Biulleten’ oppozitsii, no. 79–80, Aug.–Oct. 1939, 14–6. Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 276.

CHAPTER 14. FEAR

1. Molotov continued: “Stalin, as a cold-blooded person, took this matter very seriously when discussing grand strategy.” Chuev, Sto sorork, 45–6; Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 34.

2. Weinberg, Hitler’s Table Talk, 9.

3. Chuev, Sto sorok, 28–9.

4. Barros and Gregor, Double Deception, 49 (citing Liudas Dovydenas and J. Edgar Hoover: OSS Papers, RG 266 NA, file 10532: Hoover to Donovan, Jan. 27, 1942); Naumov, 1941 god, I: 455–7 (AVPRF, f. 082, op. 23, pap. 95, d. 6, l. 268–72).

5. Molotov would pass Dekanozov’s Dec. 7 report to Stalin only on Dec. 24. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 440–1 (AVFRF, f. 06, op. 3 (dop.), pap. 36, d. 467, l. 1–4); “Nakanune voiny (1936–1940 g.): doklady i zapiski v TsK VKP (b),” 220–2; Voiushin and Gorlov, “Fashistskaia agressiia,” 15–6.

6. Soviet intelligence reports about Hitler’s intention to seize Ukraine (“the bread-basket of Europe”) had become more or less regular from early 1939, and continued after the signing of the Pact. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 25–6.

7. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 449 (TsA FSB: Dec. 14, 1940). Varga sent Stalin a report from his Institute of World Economics and Politics, with detailed tables of “the resources Germany is receiving from its occupied territories,” information that “might be interesting for you.” Cherkasov, IMEMO, 33 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 716, l. 28: Dec. 16, 1940).

8. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 455–7; Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 20; Berezhkov, At Stalin’s Side, 211–2. Pavlov, not Berezhkov, accompanied Dekanozov on the visit to Hitler. On Dec. 13, 1940, The Siberians, a children’s film by Lev Kuleshov, premiered in Moscow. It featured a Buryat hunter who, on New Year’s Eve, tells two boys the story of how a hunter had once helped Stalin escape from Siberian exile, and how Stalin had given him his pipe as a memento, but the hunter had died in the civil war and left the pipe to another hunter/red partisan. The two boys decide to try to track down the pipe and return it to Stalin (played by Gelovani).

9. The directive stated that it was “of decisive importance that the intention to attack should not become known.” Hubatsch, Hitlers Weisungen, 84–92; Naumov, 1941 god, I: 452–5; Butler, Grand Strategy, III/i: 540.

10. Fabry, Der Hitler-Stalin Pakt, 365–7.

11. Berghahn, Germany and the Approach of War, 191–2. “Backward Russia constituted a vulnerable yet provocative target for its European competitors,” one scholar argued. “Huge and lumbering, Russia always seemed an immense threat, but one that could be neutralized by a bold stroke aimed at one of its innumerable weak points . . . At the same time, the sharp fluctuations in Russian power, linked to the stop-and-go nature of its efforts to catch up to the West, created strong incentives for preventive war initiated by Russia’s foes.” Snyder, “Russian Backwardness.”

12. Photostat: http://ww2db.com/photo.php?source=all&color=all&list=search&for eigntype=D&foreigntype_id=168. “One of the more remarkable facts in the history of the German Supreme Headquarters is that from the end of June to the beginning of December 1940 the highest-level staff of the Wehrmacht and its Supreme Commander played only a very small part in the preparations for the greatest campaign in the Second World War,” wrote Warlimont. “There was no carefully thought-out plan as a basis for action against Russia such as would have been made in the old days by the Prussian-German General Staff.” Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters, 135, 138–9. In Dec. 1940, Beria’s NKVD drafted a decree to get all code and decoding departments—foreign affairs commissariat, foreign trade, defense, and fleet—moved into NKVD state security; Stalin approved. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 359–60.

13. “Nakanune voiny (1940–1941 gg.),” 219; Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 498–9 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 22424, d. 4, l. 537); Naumov, 1941 god, I: 466; Lota, “Alta” protiv “Barbarossy,” 451 (facsimile). Scholars have access only to what Soviet intelligence archives themselves have published. Frederick Barbarossa, who led the third crusade through Asia Minor, drowned on June 10, 1190, a failure. His corpse was never found.

14. “A large portrait of Marx hung in the office, and in a glass case there was a bust of Lenin,” recalled Mgeladze. “The simplicity and modesty caught one’s eye, and, looking around, we could not help but think that the offices of some commissars in the republic had more lavish appointments.” Stalin stood next to the long felt-covered table smoking a cigarette, which surprised Mgeladze (all the portraits had him with a pipe). In front of Stalin sat a glass of tea and a lemon, which during the discussion he squeezed into his tea. Mgeladze recalled the meeting as taking place in Jan. He also remembered the presence of Molotov, Beria, and Voznesensky, all of whom appear in the logbook for the one day that Mgeladze appears (Dec. 23, 1940). Mgeladze, Stalin, kaki a ego znal, 25–9; Na prieme, 321.

15. Shakhurin, Krylia pobedy, 186–7; Na prieme, 321. See also Patolichev, Vospominaniia, 105–7.

16. Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence, 46–52.

17. The 1939 field service regulations had stated: “The Red Army will be the most offensive-minded of all the attacking armies that ever existed.” Stalin had told a Central Committee plenum on Jan. 19, 1925: “Our banner remains the banner of peace. But if war breaks out, we will not be able to sit with folded arms—we will have to take action, but we will be the last to do so. And we will do so in order to throw the decisive weight into the scales.” Meltiukhov, almost alone, correctly has the arrows moving west on maps illustrating Soviet war plans. Mel’tiukov, Upushchennyi shans, 256–7.

18. One Soviet agent reported that France had expected a number of tactical engagements with Germany, not a surprise knockout blow with massed German forces, and that France compounded this error by forward deployment at the Belgian-German border, rendering those units unable to respond quickly to German flanking maneuvers. Roberts, “Planning for War” (citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1302, l. 180, 185–6); RGVA, f. 33988. op. 4, d. 35, 1. 287–292: June 3, 1940; Simonov, “Zametki k biografii G. K Zhukova,” 53; Zhukov, Vospominaniia, I: 324. A book published in early 1940 argued that the German experience in Poland had reconfirmed that the only way to defend against a surprise attack by secretly massed, highly mobile mechanized forces was to preempt the enemy by achieving one’s strategic deployment first. Krasil’nikov, “Nastupatel’naia armeiskaia operatsiya,” 487–96.

19. On May 14, 1938, Yezhov sent Stalin a report laying out an analysis by the incarcerated Vasily Lavrov, who noted that in early 1937, during war games, Tukhachevsky, playing the southern attack variant of the blues (Germany, Poland, Finland, and Balts) on the Lvov-Donetsk axis, had proven that the Germans could deliver a deadly strike against Soviet military industry. The precondition for this outcome was a German occupation of Czechoslovakia (with its military industry) as well as of Romania (with its oil and food). Lavrov put together charts and maps showing the extent of the possible catastrophe. On July 29, 1938, he was executed. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 205 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 5, d. 343, l. 28–48); Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 378. In Dec. 1937, when Stalin received “testimony” from Lavrov implicating Lieutenant General Yakov Smushkevich, the aide for aviation to the chief of the general staff, the despot wrote on it, “He lies, the swine,” a rare instance in which he appears to have rejected an interrogation protocol. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 208 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 329, l. 59). See also the call by General Jan Strumis, known as Zhigur, in a denunciation of Alexander Yegorov (July 20, 1937), for reexamination of all war plans to take account of recent war games. He was arrested in Dec. and executed on July 22, 1938. RGVA, f. 33987, f. 3, op. 10, d. 1046, l. 209–29; Samuelson, Plans for Stalin’s War Machine, 188; Zakharov, General’nyi shtab, 125–33.

20. Verkhovskii, Ogon’, manevr, i maskirovka, 131.

21. Tukhachevskii, “O strategicheskikh vzglyadakh Prof. Svechina,” 3–16.

22. Timoshenko had asked twenty-eight generals to sketch their views on the future war, and he chose five to report at the meeting, including Zhukov, commander of Kiev military district, on offensive operations; Ivan Tyulenev, head of Moscow military district, on defense; and Dmitri Pavlov, commander of the Western military district, on mechanized warfare. See also Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia Otechestvenaia, XII (I): 13–29 (Meretskov), 129–51 (Zhukov); Golubev et al., Rossiia i zapad, 99 (citing RGASPI, f. 77, op. 116, d. 97, l. 12: Zhdanov, Nov. 20, 1940).

23. Cynthia Roberts notes that Isserson was not alone. Colonel A. I. Starunin published an article in early 1941 explaining that Germany’s victories had undone the theory that the initial period of war would see “armies of incursion” attempting to seize various objectives as the main forces completed mobilization in the rear. Starunin, however, blunted the force of his argument, proposing that the Red Army could attain air superiority and disrupt German rail lines to inhibit the enemy’s mobilization, after proving that no such mobilization would be necessary. Starunin, “Operativnaia vnezapnost’.”

24. Isserson’s text, dated June–July 1940, had not taken up the German campaign in France, but had concluded with an oblique reference: “Only six months later in the West, events transpired that further showed the development of the new military art to a higher level of large-scale modern European war.” Isserson, Novye formy bor’by, 28; Anfilov, Doroga k tragedii, 74; Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia Otechestvenaia, XII (I): 15 (Meretskov), 152–4, 247–9 (Klyonov); Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/i: 56. See also Harrison, Architect of Victory, 228–34. Isserson (b. 1898) had been shown up by the Finnish War (during which he headed the staff of the Seventh Army). He would be arrested on June 7, 1941, and condemned to death, but reprieved to ten years in a camp in northern Kazakhstan.

25. As early as 1936, Soviet military analysts argued that a frontal assault-style war would not work in the East. Erickson, “Threat Identification,” 396–8 (citing Krasnaia zvezda, May and June 1936).

26. Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia Otechestvennaia, XII (I): 204–5 (RGVA, f. 4, op. 18, d. 57, l. 70–3). Khryunkin had led a bomber squadron that had sunk a Japanese aircraft carrier, been given China’s highest military award, and went on to complete the General Staff Academy and lead an army in the Winter War. Timoshenko, in his concluding summary, which was published as a brochure for internal use, giving it the character of a general directive, acknowledged that the leaders of the air force disagreed on the best ways to employ air power and urged them to think more about achieving air supremacy. Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia Otechestvennaia, XII (I): 173–82 (RGVA, f. 4, op. 18, d. 57, l. 1–24), 164–7 (d. 56, l. 85–92), 338–72 (op. 15, d. 27, l. 575–607).

27. Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia Otechestvennaia, XII (I): 339–40.

28. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 498n2 (citing APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 437); Lota, “Alta” protiv “Barbarossy,” 262. “I read your ‘In the steppes of Ukraine,’” the document-centric despot wrote to Korneychuk (Dec. 28, 1940). “It came out brilliantly—artistic and complete, cheery and joyous. . . . By the way: I also added some words on page 68. That was for greater clarity.” The words he inserted specified that, despite some changes, the collective farm tax would essentially stay the same. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 4674, l. 1–2; Gromov, Stalin, 223–4; Sochineniia, XVIII: 209. In the book Subversive Activity of Foreign Intelligence in the USSR, published in Dec. 1940, the author wrote that “as the main method of masking they chose hypocritical-sham ‘devotion’ to the cause of proletarian revolution and socialist construction.” Loyalty, in other words, was a sign of disloyalty. Minaev, Podryvnaia deiatel’nost’ inostrannykh razvedok v SSSR.

29. Fesiun, Delo Rikharda Zorge, 111. On Dec. 27, 1940, at a meeting of the high command, Raeder once again insisted on concentrating all forces against Britain, the main enemy, and “expressed the most serious doubts in the possibility of a war against Russia before England was destroyed.” Trial of the Major War Criminals, XXXIV: 714.

30. Golikov circulated this message to List no. 1. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 527 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24119, d. 3, l. 6–7); Lota, “Alta” protiv “Barbarossy,” 449–50 (facsimile). In early 1941, the NKVD, military intelligence, and naval intelligence were ordered to submit their reports to the ambassador, who would coordinate them and inhibit rivalries. Neither the coordination nor the tamping down of rivalries happened.

31. SD chief of counterintelligence Schellenberger was not officially informed of Barbarossa until late Jan. 1941. Senior German field commanders would only be told that the deployments were a precaution against Soviet massing of forces. Both the high command and the foreign ministry would issue documents with false information. Hitler would oversee three major war conferences between Jan. and March 1941, the first two in Berchtesgaden, the third in Berlin. Warlimont, who had had a hand in drawing up Barbarossa, claims that on Jan. 18, at the Berchtesgaden, he had to ask General Jodl, the principal military adviser in Hitler’s entourage, whether Barbarossa was even still on. Jodl replied affirmatively, adding, “The Russian colossus will prove to be a pig’s bladder; prick it and it will burst.” Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters, 140. See also Whaley, Codeword, 133. By the March 30 conference, 250 commanders were in the know. The Wehrmacht had 320,000 officers, including at least 3,000 generals.

32. Lota, “Alta” protiv “Barbarossy,” 275–6; Lota, Sekretnyi front, 42. Tupikov arrived in Berlin on Jan. 8. His appointment reflected the recent report out of Berlin on Dec. 29 (and its follow-up on Jan. 4) about a supersecret war directive against the Soviet Union signed by Hitler. Before Tupikov, Maxim Purkayev (“Marble”), a village-born (1894) ethnic Mordvin on his first assignment abroad, had been in over his head, a circumstance Hitler himself had noticed at their initial meeting (Sept. 1939). On Feb. 14, 1940, German military counterintelligence had made an effort to compromise Purkayev to get him to work for them. He was replaced in Berlin by his deputy for aviation, Skornyakov, until Tupikov’s arrival. Lota, “Alta protiv “Barbarossy,” 210–25; Na prieme, 292–3.

33. Sipols, Tainy, 395.

34. Erickson, Road to Stalingrad, 1–9; Erickson, “Threat Identification,” 375–423. The immediate pre-Pact war plan, drawn up by Shaposhnikov in March 1938 and approved in Nov. of that year, had assumed a combined German-Polish assault, with Minsk-Smolensk-Moscow as the main axis, although a variant assumed a less likely thrust farther south, toward Kiev. Naumov, 1941 god, II: 557–71; Zakharov, General ‘nyi Shtab, 1.

35. An Aug. 1940 revised war plan under Shaposhnikov’s supervision, authored by Vasilevsky, who had become deputy chief of the operations department in April 1940, had anticipated that a German attack would most likely come north of the Pripet. It did not rule out enemy targeting of Ukraine (the southern axis), but proposed concentrating 70 percent of the 237 Red Army divisions on the Western frontiers north of the Pripet. Shaposhnikov dutifully wrote of “inflicting defeat on German forces” on their own soil (East Prussia and the Warsaw region), yet indicated that the Red Army would not finish mobilization until thirty days in. He implied that only surpassing intelligence on Germany and prewar covert Soviet mobilization could enable the Red Army to halt a deep German penetration that would preempt any Soviet counterattack and push the fighting entirely onto Soviet territory. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 181–93; Mikhalev, Voennaia strategiia, 309–11; Alt, “Die Wehrmacht im Kalkül Stalins,” 107–9. Shaposhnikov was removed before the plan was approved; an update (again authored by Vasilevsky) was submitted by Timoshenko and Meretskov on Sept. 18, 1940. Stalin evidently rejected their supposition, carried over from the previous plan, that the main German thrust would be north of the Pripet, insisting instead that the main German strike would occur to the south, because “Ukrainian grain and Donbass coal have special importance for the Germans.” Stalin had the politburo approve this plan on Oct. 14, 1940. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 236–53; Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/1: 132–5 (citing TsAMO, f. 16, op. 2951, d. 242, l. 84–90); Roberts, “Planning for War,” 1315–6 (citing TsAMO, f. 16. op. 2951, d. 239, l. 197–244); excerpts published in Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, 1992, no. 1: 24–8; Vasilevskii, Delo vsei zhizni, 102–5. Zakharov unpersuasively attempts to blame Meretskov and not Stalin for the shift toward the southern axis. Zakharov, General’nyi shtab, 219–25. Vasilevsky would recall that Georgy Anisimov had twice in 1940 brought the top secret operational plan (in its only copy) to the Little Corner for discussion. Both times, according to Vasilevsky, the plan was returned without any markings, changes, or an official stamp. The staff officers of the Leningrad, Baltic, Western, and Kiev military districts in the second half of 1940 and first half of 1941 were summoned to Moscow to work on the detailed operational plans for their theaters. Murin, “Nakanune,” 8–9 (memoirs of Vasilevsky).

36. Roberts, “Planning for War,” 1313–4 (citing RGVA, f. 37977, op. 5, d. 563, 564, 565, 568, 569, 570, 577); Bobylev, “Repetitsiia katastrofy”; Bobylev, “K kakoi voine gotovilsia General’nyi shtab RKKA,”; Bobylev, “Tochky v diskussii stavit’ rano,”; Menning, “Soviet Strategy,” I: 224–5.

37. Zhukov was named chief of staff on Jan. 14, 1941. The day before, Stalin and the Main Military Council heard the results of the war games. Meretskov gave the main report, but the date had been moved up a day and the written materials had not been finished, so he extemporized, badly. Stalin rebuked him. Kulik held forth about infantry divisions of 18,000 troops supported only by horses, ignoring mechanization, which infuriated Stalin still more. Shaposhnikov, one witness recalled, “sat there gloomily, glancing from time to time at the people next to him or toward the members of the politburo.” “Nakanune voiny: iz postanovlenii vysshikh partiinykh i gosudarstvennykh organov (Mai 1940 g.—21 Iiunia 1941 g.),” 197–8; Bialer, Stalin and His Generals, 141–5 (M. I. Kazakov), 146–51 (A. I. Eremenko). On Jan. 23 at the Bolshoi, Stalin, spotting Meretskov, said to him in front of others, “You are courageous, capable, but without principles, spineless. You want to be nice, but you should have a plan instead and adhere to it strictly, despite the fact that someone or other is going to be resentful.” Stalin also said: “Voroshilov is a fine fellow, but he is no military man.” Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 145.

38. Zhukov, Vospominaniia, I: 296. See also Sokolov, Georgii Zhukov, 20 (citing a 1930 assessment).

39. In 1941, Soviet counterintelligence reported that many foreign diplomats in Moscow concluded that the Nazi regime’s need for imports from the Soviet Union excluded a military confrontation. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 256 (TsA FSB, f. 3os, op. 8, d. 5, l. 169).

40. Sipols, “Torgovo-ekonomicheskie otnosheniia mezhdu SSSR,” 37.

41. Ericson, Feeding the German Eagle, 150–3, 160; Ziedler, “German-Soviet Economic Relations,” 108. Stalin also settled a border dispute in Lithuania with Germany on German terms, paying RM 31 million ($7.5 million) for the sparsely inhabited Lithuania strip abutting East Prussia that the Red Army had unilaterally occupied. The border was formally set between the Igorka River and the Baltic Sea. DGFP, series D, XII: 560–1; Sipols, Tainy, 387; Read and Fisher, Deadly Embrace, 608; Kaslas, “Lithuanian Strip.” See also McSherry, Stalin, Hitler, and Europe, II: 50–66; and Weinberg, Germany and the Soviet Union, 159–63. In Feb. 1941, German paid 22 million marks in gold for cereals from now Soviet Bessarabia.

42. Halder, Halder Diaries, I: 751 (Jan. 16, 1941); Halder, Kriegstagebuch, II: 243–6; Erickson, Road to Stalingrad, 57–8 (German Naval Conference, Jan. 8, 1941); Fuehrer Conferences, 1941, I: 1–4 See also Lota, “Alta” protiv “Barbarossy,” 259 (no citation).

43. Kuznetsov, “Voenno-morskoi flot nakanune Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny,” 68; “Iz istorii Velikoi otechestvennoi voiny,” 202.

44. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 144 (Jan. 21, 1939).

45. On Feb. 14, 1941, Samokhin reported Yugoslav general staff estimates of 250 German divisions total, while specifying their locations. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 528–9 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24119, d. 4, l. 65–6), 532 (l. 106–7). One scholar has argued that revolutionary states end up in war because the revolution exacerbates existing security dilemmas with neighbors, so that one side or the other comes to view offense as a form of self-defense. Walt, “Revolution and War.” This was a case of two revolutionary states heightening each other’s security dilemma.

46. DVP SSSR, XXIII/ii, 343–5 (AVPRF, f. 06, op. 3, p. 1, d. 4, l. 37–41). On Jan. 21, 1941, the Iron Guard in Romania rebelled against its own government, and lashed out at Jews. “The stunning thing about the Bucharest bloodbath,” one observer noted, “is the quite bestial ferocity of it.” Ninety-three persons were killed. Friedlander, Years of Extermination, 166.

47. Attendees, besides Zhdanov, Molotov, Beria, Voroshilov, and Kaganovich, included Mikoyan, Voznesensky, Bulganin, Pervukhin, Kosygin, and Malyshev—effectively, the economic group. Na prieme, 323.

48. Malyshev, “Dnevnik narkoma,” 114 (APRF, f. 3, op. 62, d. 131, l. 2–91).

49. Malyshev, “Dnevnik narkoma,” 114–5 (APRF, f. 3, op. 62, d. 131, l. 2–91).

50. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 146. “The Soviet Union,” boasted a Red Army political instruction pamphlet of 1941, “has been transformed into a heavy-duty socialist great power exerting enormous influence on the entire course of international development.” Airapetian, Etapy vneshnei politiki SSSR, 93.

51. “My program was to abolish the Treaty of Versailles,” Hitler stated in Berlin (Jan. 31, 1941). “It is nonsense for the rest of the world to pretend that I did not reveal this program until 1933, or 1935, or 1937 . . . No human being has declared or recorded what he wanted more often than I.” Prange, Hitler’s Words, 216.

52. Tooze, Wages of Destruction.

53. Miller, Bankrupting the Enemy.

54. “You are expressly instructed to treat all questions concerning the United States with even more caution than hitherto,” Goebbels instructed the press in 1939. “Even statements made by Mrs. Roosevelt are not to be mentioned.” Friedlander, Prelude, 50.

55. Gallup polls accurately forecast the outcome, and indicated that without a war in Europe, voters would have preferred the Republican candidate, Wendell Willkie. Katz, “Public Opinion Polls.” General Georg Thomas of Germany’s high command received directives to prepare for a long war mere days after Roosevelt won re-election. Friedlander, Prelude, 158.

56. Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, IX: 633–44; Sweeting, “Building the Arsenal of Democracy.”

57. Tooze, Wages of Destruction, 407, 410, 420. The Soviets noted that the British aviation industry had the capacity to mass produce 60,000 planes annually. Erickson, “Threat Identification,” 397, 399. By 1941, some 40 percent of German steel production came from outside the Reich’s 1937 borders. Murray, Change in the European Balance of Power, 13.

58. Hillgruber, Hitlers Stategie, 192–397.

59. The “peripheral” strategy in the Mediterranean was never fundamental, and never a substitute for the invasion of the Soviet Union. Leach, German Strategy, 72–3. See also Feuhrer Conferences, 1941, I: 1–4.

60. Domarus, Hitler: Reden, II: 1663; Förster and Mawdsley, “Hitler and Stalin in Perspective,” 65n8a: Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, N 664/2 (Captain Karl Wilhelm Thilo diary).

61. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 169 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 1, d. 3, l. 14). See also Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 112–3.

62. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 181.

63. An excerpted summary report of NKGB foreign intelligence for 1939 through April 1941 appears in Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 130–2 (TsA FSK).

64. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 278 (f. 3, op. 7, d. 1732, l. 156). The Soviets had the Italian cipher codes since 1936. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 276.

65. Murphy, What Stalin Knew, 102 (no citation); Naylor, Man and an Institution; Cairncross, Enigma Spy, 85–93. On Stalin’s knowledge of the German inability to mount “Sea Lion,” see Vishlev, Nakanune, 37 (citing Spravka KGB SSSR, 219); and Chuev, Sto sorok, 32.

66. West and Tsarev, Crown Jewels, 214. As Andrew observes, their recruiter, Arnold Deutsch, offered a siren call of liberation that had both sexual and political appeal: “Burgess and Blunt were gay and Maclean bisexual at a time when homosexual relations, even between consenting adults, were illegal. Cairncross, like Philby a committed heterosexual, later wrote a history of polygamy.” Andrew, Defence of the Realm, 35. See also Knightley, Master Spy, 35. In 1940, Krivitsky, the Soviet defector, was invited in by Jane Archer of MI5 and claimed there were sixty-one Soviet agents in Britain, and gave descriptions that fitted Philby and Maclean, but his revelations were not followed up. Blunt gave Gorsky a secret copy of Krivitsky’s debriefing in Jan. 1941. Krivitsky died in mysterious circumstances in a Washington, D.C., hotel on Feb. 9, 1941. Kern, Death in Washington, 264–5; Costello, Mask of Treachery, 351; West and Tsarev, Crown Jewels, 145 (quoting KGB archives, without citation). John King, the cipher clerk in the foreign office, had been exposed as a Soviet spy in fall 1939.

67. Borovik, Philby Files, 167 (quoting KGB archives, without citation). German disinformation (about not attacking the USSR until after Britain’s fall) appears to have started early. Pavlov, “Sovetskaia voennaia razvedka,” 54 (no citation), Jan. 16, 1941.

68. Voskresenskaia, Pod psevdonimom Irina, 48–9.

69. Korotkov was evidently recommended to move up from the maintenance department by Venyamin Gerson, Yagoda’s personal secretary, who had met him in the exercise room at the Dynamo sports club. In 1939 Korotkov was discharged for ties to Gerson, among others, but he fought back and got reinstated. For a time he was returned to Moscow over fears that his cover had been blown. He handled Lehman as well as Schulze-Boysen and Harnack. Petrov and Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD, 491; Pavlov, Tragediia sovetskoi razvedki, 364; Gladkov, Korotkov. Korotkov might have been involved in assassinations abroad. Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 48. The NKVD foreign department had 81 people; in 1940, 225. But central Soviet intelligence lost most of its Latvians, Poles, Jews, and other nationalities, who were replaced in almost every instance by Russians and Russified Ukrainians, with the usual notation “from the peasantry,” “from workers,” but often without foreign languages. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 24; Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 156–7.

70. “If Zakhar [Kobulov] is ever mentioned Sudoplatov and Zhuravlyov simply wave their hands,” read a note in Kobulov’s personnel file. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, 441n30 (TsA SVR, delo “Zakhar,” no. 15952, t. 1., l 41); Izvestiia, May 5, 1990.

71. Pavlov, Tragediia Sovetskoi razvedki, 353.

72. Höhne, Kennwort; Primakov, Ocherki, III: 414–32; Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, 77–80. Another member of the Soviet spy circle was Martha Dodd, daughter of the U.S. ambassador in Berlin.

73. Lehmann, head of Gestapo counterintelligence for Soviet espionage, was said to have transmitted to his Soviet handler the contents of a report by Himmler (June 10, 1941) that revealed that the Germans did not know the depth and breadth of Soviet spying. This report has not been published. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 340. Hitler supposedly intuited that Soviet intelligence services were “much more thorough and probably much more successful” than those of other states, such as the British. Walter Schellenberg, Labyrinth, 321.

74. The British also noted that Russian speakers were being recruited into the German army and Russian émigrés into German intelligence units. Hinsley, “British Intelligence and Barbarossa,” 52.

75. Read and Fisher, Deadly Embrace, 593–601; Ivanov, Nachal’nyi period voiny, 191–96, 206, 209–13. In 1938, Goebbels’s wife, Magda, kicked up a fuss about his affair with the Czech actress Lida Baarova, and Hitler told Goebbels he would have to choose loyalty to the cause over his mistress. Hitler esteemed Goebbels’s propaganda wizardry, but not his political advice—a sore point for Goebbels, but also a spur for him to prove himself to the Führer. Hitler encouraged the rivalry between Goebbels and Ribbentrop. Longerich, Goebbels.

76. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence, I: 437–8, 446–7.

77. Kuznetsov, Nakanune, 288; Tippelskirch, Geschichte des Zweiten Weltkriegs, 165; Vishlev, Nakanune, 38–40. The Soviets considered as possible the deployment of German troops to Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and a strike at the USSR from the south. Meretskov, Na sluzhbe, 207; Shtemenko, General’nyi shtab, 20. On May 9, TASS denied foreign news reports that the Soviet fleet was being fortified on the Black and Caspian Seas.

78. Vinogradov et al., Sekrety Gitlera, 15.

79. Guderian, brought into confidence already in Nov. 1940, shortly after Molotov’s visit to Berlin, would recall surmising that the plan, which he deemed militarily inappropriate, could only be part of a bluff. Guderian, Panzer Leader, 142.

80. Sipols, Tainy, 393–4. Fitin, commenting on yet another report from Philby about a possible German attack, would write: “German planes are daily bombing London and other cities of Great Britain. Is a German invasion of the Soviet Union possible in these conditions or have England’s secret services deliberately chosen to deceive Moscow through Philby?” Antonov, “Na pol’skom napravlenii.”

81. The German High Command spelled out the disinformation themes in directives of Feb. 15, 1941, and May 12, 1941. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 661–4 (Deutsches Militärarchiv, Potsdam, W. 31.00/5, Bl. 114–7); II: 195–6 (Bl. 256–7); Whaley, Codeword, 247–51. See also Ribbentrop, Memoirs, 152–3.

82. Zhukov, Vospominaniia, I: 313–16, 342–3, 367, 377. See also Zakharov, Nakanune velikikh ispytanii, originally a limited circulation secret work, reprinted in Zakharov, General’nyi shtab, 420. “Recalling how we military men made demands of industry in the last months before the war,” Zhukov would admit, “I see that at times we did not take into account all the real economic possibilities of the country.” He would further note that in Feb. 1941, General Pavlov (head of the Western military district) sent a report to Stalin requesting many defense actions and that Timoshenko was told by Stalin that “notwithstanding the justice of his [Pavlov’s] demands we do not have the possibility today to satisfy his ‘fantastical’ suggestions.” Zhukov, Vospominaniia, I: 331–2.

83. Shakhurin, Krylia pobedy, 98–100.

84. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 149 (Feb. 20, 1941). Stalin had dressed down Golikov’s predecessor, Proskurov, exactly the same way, warning that a spy “should not believe in anyone.” Rzhevskii and Vehviläinen, Zimnaia voina, II: 206. German counterintelligence was well aware of the tensions between Soviet civilian and military intelligence. Schellenberg, Labyrinth, 143–4. The 18th party conference also sought to impart renewed impetus to the publishing of Stalin’s Collected Works. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 526 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 905, l. 18–9: Mitin, Feb. 20, 1941).

85. Varga would recall Shcherbakov as “one of the worst representatives of the uncurbed bureaucracy.” Varga, “Vskryt’ cherez 25 let,” 157.

86. Beria was named a deputy chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, with oversight for the NKVD, NKGB, and the commissariats of timber, nonferrous metals, oil, and river fleet. Merkulov’s new first deputy was Ivan Serov; another deputy was M. V. Gribov (for personnel). Fitin headed the new NKGB First Directorate (foreign intelligence), and Fedotov headed the Second (counterintelligence). The guards department (Vlasik) fell under the NKGB. Beria’s new first deputy at the NKVD was Sergei Kruglov; other deputies were Abakumov, Chernyshov, Maslennikov, and B. P. Obruchnikov. The NKVD retained control of the border guards and the Gulag.

87. According to Sándor Radó (“Dora”), a Hungarian Communist and Soviet military intelligence officer in Geneva who posed as the owner of a cartographic enterprise and led an intelligence network encompassing 97 agents, the Swiss general staff estimated the number of German divisions in the East at an astonishing 150. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 676 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24122, d. 1, l. 49). See also Radó, Pod psevdonim “Dora.”

88. The document is only excerpted, and in the form presented shows Soviet military intelligence in a very good light. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 683 (TsAMO, op. 7279, d. 4, l. 30–1); Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 536–7. Stöbe (“Alta”) handed “Aryan” 30,000 German marks. She evidently disliked the aristocratic “Aryan,” because of his laments over his still unrealized grandiose diplomatic career and his thirst for money (she lived exceedingly frugally). “Aryan” informed “Alta” that he would also supply information to the British and the French. Around this time, she became ill and requested re-posting to a German spa town to undergo treatment; her request was denied (she was too valuable in Berlin). But as of Jan. 1941, she had lost her plum job in the German foreign ministry (press bureau), though she kept her six agents there. Lota, “Alta” protiv “Barbarossy,” 277–9, 305 (no citation).

89. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 704 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24119, d. 4, l. 160–1).

90. Welkisch had joined the German Communist party in 1930, worked at the Breslauer Zeitung from 1934, and been recruited into Soviet military intelligence by Herrnstadt in Warsaw. He married Margarita Welkisch, a photographer, in 1937; she had already been recruited into Soviet military intelligence by Herrnstadt.

91. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 706–8 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24119, d. 1, l. 296–303). The Geneva Convention legally allowed military attachés to gather information about the armed forces of the country in which they were accredited. Many other Soviet military attachés also served as military intelligence representatives, such as Major General Ivan Susloparov (“Maro”) in Paris, Nikolai Nikitushev (“Akasto”) in Stockholm, and I. A. Sklyarov (“Brion”) in London. Their reports are omitted here.

92. Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/i: viii. “Annihilating his own intelligence apparatus, Stalin cut down a bough, on which he sat, and became a victim of the disinformation of German intelligence,” Golikov’s deputy later wrote. Novobranets, “Nakanune voiny,” 171.

93. Vishlev, “Pochemu zhe,” 70–2; Warlimont, Im Hauptquartier der deutschen Wehrmacht, 164;

94. Between Feb. and June 1941, the Soviets fed disinformation to Ivar Lissner, a Baltic German journalist, in Harbin, Manchuria, which purported to be from Russian consulates and embassies, and were designed to impress upon the Germans the costs of deeper involvement in the Balkans. Barros and Gregor, Double Deception, 52–60.

95. Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 44–5 (TsA FSK); Primakov, Ocherki, III: 472 (TsA FSB).

96. Golikov requested clarification from “Sophocles.” Gavrilov, Voennana razvedka informiruet, 548 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24119, d. 4, l. 199); “Nakanune voiny (1940–1941 gg.),” at 219. On March 9, “Corsican,” who had seen the German air reconnaissance photos of the USSR, including of Kronstadt, conveyed that he had been told the “military attack on the USSR is an already decided issue.” Bondarenko, Fitin, 195–6 (citing FSB archives). On March 11, “Ramsay” reported out of Tokyo that Germany was still urging Japan to attack British Singapore. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 563–4 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24127, d. 2, l. 195–6); Fesiun, Delo Rikharda Zorge, 113 (March 10, 1941), 114–5 (March 15).

97. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 564–5 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24119, d. 1, l. 394–5). On March 26, 1941, “Yeshenko” reported that “a German attack against Ukraine will occur in two to three months.” Lota, Sekretnyi front, 40.

98. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 770.

99. Halder, Halder Diaries, II: 91 (April 30, 1941); Halder, Kriegstagebuch, II: 386–8. On April 2, 1941, Hitler informed Rosenberg of the coming invasion, without specifying the date; Rosenberg immediately formed an office that would become the Ministry for the East.

100. Lota, “Alta” protiv “Barbarossy,” 303 (no citation); Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 577 (no archival citation). At the end of March 1941, Germany had about forty divisions on the frontier. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 515.

101. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1304, l. 150–1.

102. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 346. Evidently, complaints against Molotov were reaching Stalin, many a result of Beria intrigues.

103. Friedlander, Prelude, 199.

104. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 607–40, 641–50. See also Zakharov, General’nyi shtab, 226–30. The Red Army had been expanded by creating new divisions, which, by design, were partially manned, rather than by filling out the many existing partially manned divisions. After the onset of a war, all divisions were to be brought to full strength by summoning 5,000 or so reservists for each. But this approach, which had failed under the tsars, did not foresee the constraints that would prevent reservists from reaching their assigned units in time, did not foster unit cohesion in the meantime, and increased the number of required experienced officers, who were in insufficient supply. Reese, Stalin’s Reluctant Soldiers, 36–9.

105. Mawdsley, “Crossing the Rubicon,” 822–3, 831, 863. This was the southern variant of the approved fall 1940 war plan.

106. V. N. Kiselev, “Upriamye fakty nachala voiny,” 18–22; Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 50–2 (excerpted); Gor’kov, “Gotovil li,” 35; Gor’kov, Kreml’, 61. The plan has not been published in full. See also Vasilevskii, Delo vsei zhizni (6th ed.), Politizdat, 112. See also Gareev, Neodnoznachnye stranitsy, 93, 99.

107. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 731–2 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 273, l. 27–8: March 8, 1941); “Nakanune voiny (1941 g.),” 198: April 26, 1941); Zhukov, Vospominaniia, I: 307; Gor’kov and Semin, “O kharaktere voenno-operativnykh planov,” 109; Na prieme, 328.

108. MP-41 specified two kinds of mobilization, regular or open and “hidden” under the guise of training. “Mobilization is war, and we cannot understand it in any other way,” Shaposhnikov had written in the 1920s. Shaposhnikov, Vospominaniia, 558. “There were reasons enough to try to delay the USSR’s entry into the war, and Stalin’s tough line not to permit what Germany might be able to use as a pretext for unleashing war was justified by the historic interests of the socialist motherland,” Vasilevsky would state. “His guilt consists in not seeing, in not catching, the limit beyond which such a policy became not only unnecessary but also dangerous.” Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/ii: 242.

109. Lota, Sekretnyi front, 129.

110. Jervis, “Strategic Intelligence and Effective Policy,” 165–81.

111. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/i: 125–48. This would be Khrushchev’s self-defense in the secret speech.

112. TsAMO, f. 23, op. 7272, d. 1, l. 693–793 (March 15, 1941); Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 591–6 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 7277, d. 1, l. 140–52); Lota, “Alta protiv “Barbarossy,” 285–93. According to a top defector’s memoir, Tupikov came to the conclusion that about 180 German divisions were being concentrated on the frontier, but Dekanozov dismissed “it airily as a figment of someone’s imagination.” Akhmedov, In and Out of Stalin’s GRU, 145. In fact, Dekanozov reported to Moscow (March 16), 1941: “every day trains are heading east with weaponry (equipment, shells, vehicles and construction materials).” “Kanun voiny: preduprezhdeniia diplomatov,” 71.

113. Golikov noted that the main German thrust would supposedly not be for Moscow but Kiev and the riches of Ukraine. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 776–80 (TsAMO, op. 14750, d. 1, l. 12–21); Pavlov, “Sovetskaia voennaia razvedka,” 56; Sipols, Tainy, 395.