Stalin

75. Naumov, 1941 god, II: 414–5 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 3, pap. 1, d. 5, l. 8–11), 416 (l. 1: text of the protest); Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 370–1; DGFP, XII: 1070–1; Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 355–6 (Schulenburg account); DVP SSSR, XXIII/ii: 751–2; Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 335–6; Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 310 (citing AVP RF, f. 06, op. 3, pap. 1, d. 5, l. 6–7). Schulenburg’s summary reached the foreign ministry in Berlin at 2:30 a.m. on June 22. See also Vishlev, “Pochemu zhe,” 80; and Fel’shtinskii, Oglasheniiu podlezhit, 371–6.

76. Molotov’s departure to receive Schulenburg was not recorded. Na prieme, 337.

77. Kumanev, Riadom so Stalinym, 409–10 (Chadayev); Kuznetsov, Nakanune, 355.

78. Zolotarev et al., Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia otechestvennaia, XIII (II/i), 282 (TsAMO, f. 48–A, op. 1554, d. 90, l. 257–9); Naumov, 1941 god, II: 423; Pospelov, Istoriia Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, II: 11; Zakharov, General’nyi shtab, 224–5; Zhukov, Vospominaniia (1971), 233–4; Zhukov, Vospomininia (1995), I: 387. See also Erickson, Road to Stalingrad, 110; and Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 311.

79. Beria at some point left and came back, but only his re-arrival was recorded in the logbook. Others present might have come and gone without their movements having been recorded.

80. Erickson, Road to Stalingrad, 114–5; Bialer, Stalin and His Generals, 193 (Kuznetsov).

81. DGFP, series D, XII: 1061–3; Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 353–4; Vishlev, “Pochemu zhe,” 80; Taylor, Goebbels Diaries, 423. Precisely when Dekanozov informed Moscow of his failure remains unclear. Berezhkov, the Soviet embassy employee who claimed he had been tasked with phoning the German foreign ministry to obtain the meeting with Ribbentrop, wrongly implied that no meeting had been arranged until the German foreign ministry itself called back at 3:00 a.m. Berlin time (5:00 a.m. Moscow time) with a summons for Dekanozov. Bialer, Stalin and His Generals, 215–6 (Berezhkov).

82. “Stalin sought by the condition and behavior of troops in the border military districts to make it clear to Hitler that we had a quiet atmosphere, bordering on carelessness,” recalled army general Semyon Ivanov. He characterized this as a form of criminal self-demobilization. Ivanov, Shtab armeiskii, 104–6.

83. Lieutenant General Nikolai Klich, head of artillery in the Western special military district, told Colonel Ilya Starinov of Pavlov’s phone calls to Moscow about every ominous development: “Always the same reply—‘Don’t panic! Keep calm! “The Boss” knows everything.’” Bialer, Stalin and His Generals, 222–3 (Starinov).

84. The defector was Alfred Liskow. (Nekrich writes that he crossed the border around 11:00 p.m.) The NKGB established that he was a lance corporal, thirty years old, a furniture joiner and Communist (before Hitler’s rise), who said that his unit had been told they would cross the Bug River on boats and pontoons in a few hours. Liskow was still being held by the NKGB when the German attack commenced. Naumov, 1941 god, II: 422; “Nakanune voiny (1940–1941 gg.),” 218; Nekrich, 1941, 22 iuinia, 197.

85. Germany continued to send military equipment to the Soviets in June, with Göring and others reasoning that the Soviets would never be able to make full use in time of the advanced technology that was delivered. Von Strandmann, “Appeasement and Counter-Appeasement,” 171 (citing HA Krupp, WA 40, B, C 381); Schwendemann, Wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit, 265–79.

86. Pavlov, in testimony after his arrest, would not mention Timoshenko mentioning Directive No. 1, but he would note that when he hung up the phone, he (Pavlov) had ordered all units to combat readiness. http://liewar.ru/tragediya-22–iyunya/178–protoko ly-doprosa-d-g-pavlova.html (Pavlov testimony, July 7, 1941, with commentary). Pavlov might have spoken with Timoshenko earlier, from the theater, by a special telephone brought in for just such a contingency.

87. “Itinerar Hitlers vom 1.9.1939–31.12.1941,” 691. Hitler had written to Antonescu on June 14. Supposedly, already on June 12 Antonescu was let in on the closely guarded secret of the precise date of attack. Schmidt, Statist auf diplomatische Bühne, 233.

88. Goebbels added: “Feverish activity begins.” Fröhlich, Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, IX: 393–7 (June 22).

89. Pospelov, Istoriia velikoi otechestvennoi voiny, I: 478–9; Sechkin, Granitsa i voina, 54.

90. Zoller, Hitler Privat, 142–3 (Frau Christa Schroeder). Hitler was said to have told Below before retiring: “This will be the hardest struggle that our soldiers have to endure this war.” Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant, 279.

91. Mertsalov and Mertsalova, Stalinizm i voina, 164–7.

92. Gorodetsky, whose account of Stalin’s approach to foreign policy stands above all others in English, overreacted to attributions of Soviet expansionism to ideology. “Stalin was little affected by sentiment or ideology in the pursuit of foreign policy,” Gorodetsky wrongly imagined. “His statesmanship was rooted in Russia’s tsarist legacy, and responded to imperatives deep within its history . . . Stalin’s policy appears to have been rational and level-headed.” Obviously, Sovietization of the Baltic states, eastern Poland, Bessarabia, and Bukovina, or Stalin’s obsession with Trotsky and his terror, had nothing to do with realpolitik or level-headedness. Indeed, Gorodetsky himself writes, two pages on, of the “paranoiac atmosphere in the Kremlin.” Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 316, 318.

93. Hillgruber, Hitlers Strategie.

94. Hitler had expected Britain, as he told one of his top military men already back on June 23, 1940, to “knuckle under,” conceding Germany’s free hand on the continent. Förster, “Hitler Turns East,” 117 (citing Notizen des Wehrmachtsführungsamtes, BA-MA, RW 4/v. 581).

95. Hitler had also misunderstood British anti-Communism. The phlegmatic British had always been interested only in containment, not an anti-Bolshevik crusade, since the latter, even if successful, would just bring Nazi domination of the continent, so London took a similar approach to Moscow as to Berlin: engagement to try to “moderate” the regime. Waddington, “Idyllis and Unruffled Atmosphere.”

96. Hubatsch, Hitlers Weisungen, 129–39. See also DGFP, series D, XII: 1012–6.

97. Overy, Why the Allies Won, 1–24.

98. To carry the consequences to their conclusion: Hitler would have either gone on to conquer the USSR, or been vanquished by the latter, which could have enveloped all of Europe. Catherwood, Balkans in World War Two, 170.

99. Schramm, Hitler, 125.

100. “The analyst can choose which problem he wishes to study, whereas the statesman’s problems are imposed on him,” Kissinger wrote. “The analyst can allot whatever time is necessary to come to a clear conclusion; the overwhelming challenge to the statesman is the pressure of time. The analyst runs no risk. If his conclusions prove wrong, he can write another treatise. The statesman is permitted only one guess; his mistakes are irretrievable.” Kissinger, Diplomacy, 27.

101. Gerwarth, Bismarck Myth, 128.

102. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 135–9.