Stalin

NKVD intelligence under Beria was reporting that at least 85 infantry divisions—two thirds of the German land army—were deployed in the east, and airfields and other military installations were going up one after another.²⁰³ In October 1940, Beria suddenly became solicitous toward the few hundred Polish officers whom he had not murdered at Katyn and other sites back in spring 1940. He even had the interned Polish lieutenant colonel Zygmunt Berling retrieved from a Soviet labor camp to Moscow in first class. When Merkulov told Berling that there were plans to form a Polish army on Soviet territory, the latter assumed that the more than 20,000 captured Polish officers were in the Soviet Gulag somewhere. “We have no such people now in the Soviet Union,” Beria responded, laconically. Merkulov added: “We committed a big mistake with them.”²⁰⁴

Soon Beria informed Stalin that the NKVD had assembled some two dozen Polish officers as the basis for an anti-German army, just in case. It was a new era. Not a single one of the thirty-five Soviet films produced in 1940 would feature a principal “enemy” of domestic origin.²⁰⁵ No foreign films would be allowed onto the Soviet screen the entire year. Still, a new breakthrough musical comedy emerged: on October 8, 1940, The Radiant Path premiered in Moscow, another smash hit by Grigory Alexandrov, with music by Isaac Dunayevsky, including his “March of the Enthusiasts.” The Radiant Path would seize honors as the year’s top film. It depicted a Cinderella-like illiterate rural housemaid named Tanya (played by the blond-braided, ever radiant Lyubov Orlova), who, thanks to a party organizer, attends literacy classes, becomes a textile factory Stakhanovite weaver, earns the Order of Lenin, flies through the air in an open-top car alongside the Grand Kremlin Palace, and wins love. Tanya easily unmasks the villain, a kulak arsonist, early in the action. “A good film and . . . without a portrait of Comrade Stalin,” the despot told Alexandrov, while smiling with his eyes.²⁰⁶

Also in October, Marshal Kulik married his third wife (Olga Mikhailovskaya), a friend of his daughter’s who was in her final year of high school—he was thirty-two years her senior. Stalin, now in the eighth year of his (second) widowhood, took no such indulgences. He was adjudicating between rival screenplays for a film about a seventeenth-century Georgian military figure, Giorgi Saakadze, who had led an uprising against the Persian shah to liberate and unify Georgia. “The princes and feudalism proved stronger than the [Georgian] tsar and nobles,” Stalin explained to film boss Bolshakov in a letter on October 11, 1940, adding that Saakadze’s efforts to compensate for domestic weakness with foreign alliances had failed, for objective reasons.²⁰⁷

Hitler emerged from his alpine hideaway with a renewed push to subdue Britain, indirectly. But first, on October 12, Wehrmacht troops occupied Romania to secure the Ploieşti oil fields. “The Germans have raised a barrier,” remarked the Italian ambassador to Moscow to his confidant, Schulenburg. “The [Russian] march to the south has been stopped, the oil is at the disposal of the Germans, through Constanza the Germans have reached the Black Sea, the Danube is a German river. This is the first diplomatic defeat of comrade Stalin.”²⁰⁸ In fact, even though TASS issued a denial, Berlin had afforded Moscow forty-eight hours’ advance notice of “training troops” to be stationed on the Danube to “instruct” the Romanian army.²⁰⁹

Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator premiered in the United States on October 15, 1940, parodying Hitler (called Adenoid Hynkel) as a megalomaniacal buffoon whose dictatorship threatens a Jewish barber; Chaplin, who was neither German nor Jewish, played both roles. The reviewer in the New York Times enthused about “the feeble, affected hand salute, the inclination for striking ludicrous attitudes, the fabulous fits of rage and violent facial contortions,” adding of Chaplin’s pantomime: “He is at his best in a wild senseless burst of guttural oratory—a compound of German, Yiddish, and Katzenjammer double-talk, and he reaches positively exalted heights in a plaintive dance which he does with a large balloon representing the globe, bouncing it into the air, pirouetting beneath it—and then bursting into tears when the balloon finally pops.”²¹⁰ In one scene, Hynkel, the dictator of Tomania, meets and bargains with Benzino Napaloni, dictator of Bacteria.²¹¹

On October 17, Molotov’s deputy Vyshinsky received Cripps, who hinted at British movement in its position opposing Soviet incorporation of the Baltic states and claimed to have confidential government information for Molotov personally; when Vyshinsky insisted on a foretaste, according to the Soviet account, Cripps stated, “in connection with events over recent weeks in the Balkans, Near East, and Far East, that British relations with these parts of the world had changed, and accordingly, the relations between Britain and the Soviet Union should also change.” Cripps had convinced himself somehow that the USSR did not want Germany to win the war, and he urged de facto British recognition, until the end of the war, of the territories that the USSR had received to entice it to treat Britain and Germany with equal favor.²¹² That same day, Molotov bade farewell to the Japanese ambassador, who was returning home after two years in Moscow. Each expressed a desire for continued improved bilateral relations, although they had failed to agree to a neutrality pact. When the Japanese envoy inquired of German-Soviet relations, Molotov called them “solid” and predicted that “they would develop further.”²¹³

Ribbentrop had dispatched a nineteen-page letter to Stalin inviting Molotov to Berlin, and, also on October 17, Schulenburg managed to hand it to Molotov.²¹⁴ The text reviewed German-Soviet bilateral relations, justified German military moves in Eastern Europe, and proposed that four powers—Germany, Italy, and Japan, plus the Soviet Union—divide up the world, at British expense. Ribbentrop ingratiatingly pointed out that both the Soviet Union and Germany “were animated in the same degree by the same desire for a New Order in the world against the congealed plutocratic democracies.” What the Nazi foreign minister omitted to mention was that each power had its own “new order,” which clashed not just ideologically but physically over the same Eastern European territories. Stalin, angered over the unilateral German move into Romania, nonetheless agreed to send his top deputy to Berlin in the near future and to thank Ribbentrop for “the instructive analysis.”²¹⁵

Ribbentrop now felt confident enough to draft a German-Italian-Japanese-Soviet pact, and he mused with Hitler about confronting Britain with the most geographically expansive military coalition in history.²¹⁶ At the same time, Hitler was exploring other anti-British chess moves. Heinrich Himmler, the SS chief, was sent on a three-day visit to Spain, beginning on October 20, 1940. He was paraded through Madrid streets bedecked in Nazi swastikas, received by Franco at the Pardo Palace, and shown a special bullfight. Julio Martínez Santa-Olalla, a Spanish ethnoarchaeologist who had studied in Germany, regaled Himmler with tales of Spanish-German racial connections through the Visigoths.²¹⁷ But Himmler frowned upon Franco’s gratuitous post-civil-war massacres. To the SS chief, it made more sense to incorporate the workers into the new order, not annihilate them. (The German occupation of France had led to many Spanish political refugees being turned over to Franco.) Be that as it may, Himmler’s visit was mere preparation. Hitler himself, also on October 20, set out on what would be a journey of nearly 4,000 miles on his special train, Amerika, to persuade the French, Spaniards, and Italians to put aside their squabbles in the establishment of a continental bloc against Britain.²¹⁸

On October 23, Hitler met Franco for a one-day summit in France, at Hendaye, a railway station near the Spanish border. The caudillo arrived late, in an aged train once used by King Alfonso XIII, with his foreign minister and brother-in-law Ramón Serrano Súñer in tow. Franco and Hitler went into the parlor coach of the Führer’s train. Admiral Canaris, head of the Abwehr (military intelligence), had warned Hitler that Franco would resemble “not a hero but a little sausage.” During the talks and dinner, which lasted some nine hours, Franco made breathtaking territorial claims, mostly at French expense, as his price for entering the war on the Nazis’ side. In Hitler’s mind, Franco’s regime would never have survived had it not been for German military aid back in 1936—and yet the caudillo now saw fit to point out that even if Germany were to defeat Britain on the home isles, the British government would sail with its navy to Canada or the United States and continue the war from there. This cheek provoked a riled Hitler to his feet. “Rather than go through that again,” Hitler would tell Mussolini of the meeting, “I would prefer to have three or four teeth taken out.”²¹⁹

The next day, Hitler held a one-day summit with Marshal Pétain of Vichy France, also to explore a potential new ally for the anti-British fight. The French leader put forth a relatively more modest territorial wish list as his price to turn against France’s erstwhile ally Britain, but Pétain did not appear overly enthusiastic. The elderly marshal kept pretending not to hear Hitler very well. The conversation was vague enough that Hitler could imagine France was going to support his proposal, but nothing concrete was achieved. Only in Romania did the Führer come upon a kindred spirit: General Ion Antonescu. At the general’s insistent requests, Hitler had moved German troops into Romania, nominally to help “reorganize” its army.²²⁰ But Mussolini, Hitler’s formal ally, bristled at Germany’s “fait accompli” in Romania, and viewed inclusion of the Spanish or the French in a bloc as a threat to his own fantastic wish list of spoils. Hitler felt constrained to try to mollify the duce, redirecting his train to Florence for a summit meeting on October 28.²²¹ That very morning, Mussolini launched an invasion of Greece. “He will learn from the newspapers that I have occupied Greece,” the duce privately boasted. “This way, things will be even once again.”²²²

Franco, Pétain, and now Mussolini. Greece was already ruled by a pro-Nazi dictator who had studied in Germany, and the gratuitous Italian invasion was launched in the fall rains, on the eve of the winter snows in the Balkan uplands.²²³ Moreover, the Balkans were Germany’s jumping-off point for attacking British positions in the Near East, in the so-called peripheral strategy. Already on November 4, 1940, the Wehrmacht had been directed to plan its own invasion of Greece, via either Hungary and Romania or Yugoslavia and then Bulgaria.²²⁴ Hitler did not abandon some sort of cooperation with France and Spain against Britain.²²⁵ But Molotov committed to visiting Berlin after the USSR’s November 7 holiday.²²⁶ Ribbentrop reminded Molotov of his promise to bring along a portrait of Stalin, and Molotov eagerly agreed to do so.²²⁷ Perhaps the lunatic scheme pushed by the Nazi foreign minister of adding Stalin to the Axis, in a four-power pact, to force Britain into submission, seemed no worse than any of the other (non) options on Hitler’s table? If so, it was clear that Hitler would require German dominance of the entire Balkans.²²⁸

MESSAGE FROM BERLIN

The mass of Soviet inhabitants remained very distant from these machinations, but that was also true of almost all party and state functionaries. They, too, knew little to nothing. Valentin Berezhkov, who was working at the Soviet embassy in Germany, helping to oversee procurement related to the Nazi-Soviet trade agreement, was summoned to Moscow. Previously, he had worked in the tourist bureau in Kiev, where he held the belief that all the foreigners whom he hosted were rich, while “in the Soviet Union we were building a system that would be fair for all.” But upon arriving in capitalist Riga in 1940, on his way to Berlin, he had been shocked at the abundance and affordability of food. Berezhkov’s father had been arrested in the terror but released, so Berezhkov “came to believe that if a person was truly innocent, no one was going to harm him.” Still, having now been recalled to Moscow, he fretted about his own possible arrest. Upon reaching the Soviet Union’s side of the border, he experienced a rush of patriotic feeling, but he was subjected to a humiliating search, as if he were a foreign agent. Berezhkov was promoted, becoming one of Molotov’s two German interpreters, and instructed to prepare for a state visit to Berlin. Thus, a mere two years after having graduated with a degree in engineering, Berezhkov was set to meet Hitler. “The young people of my generation did not know about Stalin’s atrocities,” Berezhkov would recall. “We thought he was like a wise, just, and caring, if strict father of the peoples of our country.”²²⁹

Molotov, in response to Ribbentrop’s long written tutorial and invitation, had bombarded Schulenburg with accusations that Germany had violated the terms of the 1939 Pact, and with Soviet demands: immediate withdrawal of German forces from Finland; long-term Soviet military bases on the Turkish Straits (the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, promised to tsarist Russia in the Great War by Britain and France); a Soviet security treaty with Bulgaria, another key to controlling the Straits; Japan’s revocation of concession rights on Sakhalin; and recognition of a Soviet sphere south of Batum and Baku, in the direction of the Persian Gulf.²³⁰ In other words, relations with Hitler had gravely deteriorated, and Stalin’s ambitions from the relationship had soared.

The Soviet despot was following the same script as he had in August 1939: seeking an advantageous deal. But before Molotov’s arrival in Berlin, Hitler did not bother to respond to the soaring demands. NKVD intelligence reported that “in Germany preparations for improved relations with Russia were proceeding apace” and were aimed at showing the whole world, especially Britain, that nothing could come between Berlin and Moscow. The Germans were saying that Britain stood on the verge of total defeat. NKVD intelligence further reported that Germany was ready to propose a Polish-style partition of Turkey with the Soviets, awarding Stalin the Straits, and possibly a partition of the entire Near East, Britain’s colonial realm. At the same time, there were warnings of consequences if the Soviets failed to support the “Nazi New Order in Europe.” The chatter from the Germans seemed to be directed at feeding the Soviets information to the effect that Berlin was going to rewrite the rules, and from a position of strength.²³¹ Whether Stalin caught this deflating message is unclear.²³²

There were many signals of trouble: Stalin learned from NKVD counterintelligence that Germany was trying to stop Denmark and Sweden from selling machines and equipment to the USSR.²³³ Stalin even sent Gorsky back to London, with a handful of young, inexperienced operatives, to restore the USSR’s intelligence station. Gorsky arrived in November 1940, and his team set about reestablishing contact with the expansive network of agents who had been abandoned, such as Kim Philby in MI6, Anthony Blunt, nominally an officer of the British general staff but actually in British counterintelligence, and others in the foreign office. They were tasked with digging into British efforts to cut a deal with Germany.

The strain on the despot was hard to miss for the inner circle. In impromptu remarks at the end of the annual intimate banquet for the November 7 holiday, in Voroshilov’s Grand Kremlin Palace apartment, Stalin complained that during the major border war with Japan in 1939, he had discovered that “our aircraft can stay aloft for only thirty-five minutes, while German and English aircraft can stay up for several hours!” But when he summoned the aviation specialists for an account, they told him that no one had specifically tasked them with designing Soviet planes that would stay aloft longer. “I am busy at this every day now, meeting with designers and other specialists,” Stalin lashed out. “But I am the only one dealing with all these problems. None of you could be bothered with them. I am out there by myself. . . .”

On what was normally a festive occasion, the despot delivered an aggravated-assault speech. Against the background of recent publications reprising the mythology of his defense of Tsaritsyn (Stalingrad) back in 1918, he saw fit to bring up the civil-war-era conflict with Trotsky over tsarist military officers, whom he contrasted with the “people loyal to the revolution, people connected to the masses, by and large noncommissioned officers from the lower ranks.” He also asserted that Lenin had supported him in those clashes with the now assassinated Trotsky. It went far beyond defensiveness, however. “You do not like to learn; you are happy just going along the way you are, complacent,” Stalin berated the men of his regime. “You are squandering Lenin’s legacy.” When Kalinin dared interject something, Stalin became especially menacing: “People are thoughtless, do not want to learn and relearn. They will hear me out and then go on just as before. But I will show you, if I ever lose my patience. You know very well how I can do that.” The group stood silently. Voroshilov’s eyes welled with tears, according to Dimitrov, who observed, “Have never seen and never heard J. V. [Stalin] the way he was that night—a memorable one.”²³⁴

The next night, at the grand banquet in the St. George’s Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace, Stalin—unusually—was absent, provoking rumors among Western diplomats that a struggle for power might be under way.²³⁵ It was nothing of the sort, of course: he was working, likely at the Near Dacha, on his detailed instructions for Molotov’s meeting with Hitler. Point 1 would begin as follows: “To find out the true intentions of Germany and all the participants of the pact of three (Germany, Italy, and Japan) in the execution of the plan to form the ‘New Europe’ and similarly the ‘Great East-Asian Sphere.’”²³⁶

SOVIET-BRITISH FEELERS

Litvinov was living under a form of house arrest at a state dacha in the suburbs, making occasional trips to the Lenin Library, in the city center, to research a dictionary of Russian synonyms.²³⁷ Those in the know speculated that Stalin was keeping him as “insurance” against Hitler, for a possible reorientation to the West.²³⁸ But the intuitive, always prepared Beria had his most trusted minions, including the assassin Sudoplatov, prepare scenarios to make Litvinov disappear, in the event of an order to do so.²³⁹ When it came to the West, Stalin seemed unable to forgive and forget. He had observed (back in November 1939) that “in Germany, the petit-bourgeois nationalists are capable of a sharp turn—they are flexible—not tied to capitalist traditions, unlike bourgeois leaders like Chamberlain and his ilk.”²⁴⁰ By 1940 Hitler was at the height of his power, and Chamberlain and his ilk had been sacked. (On the eve of Molotov’s Berlin visit, Chamberlain died of bowel cancer.) A new, nontrivial gesture had come from Churchill that seemed to play into Stalin’s wheelhouse, but the despot had used an audience with Stafford Cripps to kowtow to Hitler. Not long after Hitler began stationing troops in Romania and making moves to station troops in Turkey, further threatening the British position in the Near East, the foreign office permitted Cripps to submit more formal proposals to Moscow for a British-Soviet pact.²⁴¹

Churchill was not a blind anti-Communist. “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia,” he had remarked in a radio broadcast not long after the Hitler-Stalin Pact and the Treaty of Friendship and the Border. “It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. But perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.”²⁴² He did not spell out how Britain, rather than just Germany, could appeal to those interests. Cripps remained deeply convinced that Nazi and Soviet interests were fundamentally inimical, in a way that British and Soviet interests were not. On October 22, 1940, after having been denied a meeting with Molotov, Cripps had handed the latter’s deputy Vyshinsky a revised offer from the British government. It vowed to treat the USSR on a par with the United States by consulting with Moscow about a postwar order, and in the meantime not to enter into an alliance against the Soviet Union, provided Moscow also refrained from hostile action (even indirectly through agitation). Cripps further communicated—exceeding his authority—that, pending a final postwar settlement, the British government could recognize de facto Soviet sovereignty in the Baltic states, Bessarabia, northern Bukovina, and “those parts of the former Polish State now under Soviet control.”²⁴³

Cripps relayed that Britain would sign a trade agreement as well, supplying the USSR with goods necessary for its defense. In return, Moscow had to promise to observe the same benevolent neutrality vis-à-vis Britain as the Soviets had adopted toward Germany. Britain was further prepared, if no complications arose with the Axis powers, to proceed to a pact of nonaggression, while asking that if Iran and Turkey became embroiled in war with Germany or its allies, the USSR would assist them in such defense measures as it had adopted toward China (against Japanese aggression) in the past.²⁴⁴ A few days later, on October 26, Cripps again saw Vyshinsky, who indicated that the Soviet government regarded the proposals as being of the greatest importance.²⁴⁵

Then, silence.

Stalin would appear at a reception on October 30, 1940, to culminate the Ten-Day cultural festival of the Buryat-Mongol autonomous republic, the ninth in the kitschy extravaganzas. “The Ten-Days cemented the friendship of peoples and gave it a deep and concrete concept,” enthused Alexander Solodovnikov (b. 1904), a former leather factory worker who had risen to overseeing all theaters for the USSR committee on artistic affairs. “The preparation for the Ten-Days facilitated the development of countless talents, hitherto hidden among the people. Members of Russian theaters actively assisted the establishment of the theaters of brotherly republics. . . . At the same time, they received the richest palette of colors and variety in artistic forms, devices, examples, and cultural traditions lavishly revealed by the peoples of Central Asia, the Caucasus, Ukraine, Belorussia.” Solodovnikov had led brigades to Minsk and to Ulan Ude, where he discovered that the local wooden theater had no heat, and that the Ukrainian-born party boss of the Buryat-Mongol republic, Semyon Ignatyev, who had survived the terror, kept a collection of bronze Buddha statues in his office cabinet.²⁴⁶

The reason for Soviet silence vis-à-vis Cripps had taken time to emerge: on November 10, Soviet newspapers suddenly announced that Molotov had accepted an invitation from Ribbentrop to visit Berlin. Cripps demanded to see the Soviet foreign affairs commissar but was again fobbed off onto Vyshinsky, with whom he exchanged heated words. When Cripps insisted that Britain’s offer could not wait indefinitely and asked whether the Soviet government had a decision to communicate, Vyshinsky told him the answer was still forthcoming.²⁴⁷

SPIES AND FOOLS

Because of Stalin’s terror rampages and Beria’s ascent, the Germans acquired a double agent with ready access to the Soviet embassy in Berlin. Whereas in 1935 the NKVD intelligence station in Berlin had sixteen operatives besides the station chief, by 1939 that number had dropped to two. For nine months after the station chief had died on the operating table with an ulcer in December 1938, he had no replacement, until finally the Beria minion Amayak Kobulov (“Zakhar”) arrived, posing as an embassy counselor. Kobulov (b. 1906) was a Tbilisi-born Armenian like his older brother, Bogdan. He had completed five years at the Tiflis Trading School, spoke no German, had no intelligence experience, and had never even been abroad. During the terror, in Gagra, he beat those he arrested himself with a pole, after having them placed on the floor. Most recently he had served as NKVD regional boss for Abkhazia (1938) and then Ukraine (1938–39).²⁴⁸ In Berlin, Kobulov fooled no one, as confirmed by the Soviet agent in Gestapo counterintelligence, Willy Lehmann (“Breitenbach”), who had fallen completely out of contact but in late June 1940 had taken the risk of throwing a letter into the Soviet embassy mailbox with rendezvous coordinates and password, thereby reestablishing contact.²⁴⁹ Kobulov was forbidden by Moscow Center to have any contact with the Soviet civilian intelligence spy networks in Germany, which were being reconstituted (see chapter 14). He needed his own.

Kobulov violated basic spycraft, visiting agents at their apartments and bringing them together in a single place. He had been recalled to Moscow HQ to defend his work; Beria complained in writing to Fitin, his underling for foreign intelligence, about the corridor whispers concerning Kobulov’s dangerous amateurism.²⁵⁰ Beria ordered Kobulov to step up the agent recruitment and, in traceable ways, the minion sought spies among the Berlin population who had past Soviet connections. He met Orests Berlings, a twenty-seven-year-old Latvian, the former Berlin correspondent for the Latvian newspaper Brīvā Zeme, who claimed to be well disposed to the USSR, well connected to the German foreign ministry press department, and penniless. By August 15, ten days after their initial acquaintance, Kobulov was already reporting directly to Stalin and Beria that Berlings had been “recruited” and put on retainer, calling him “most reliable.” Berlings told the Germans, who promptly enrolled him as their agent (code-named “Peter”).²⁵¹ Kobulov’s superiors at the NKVD, belatedly alerted, quickly established that Berlings had opposed the Soviet annexation of Latvia and disseminated pro-Nazi propaganda. But Kobulov bragged in Berlings’s presence that his information, bypassing channels, went straight to Stalin.²⁵²

MOLOTOV-HITLER

While Stalin fantasized about a new pact with Hitler, events on the far eastern flank of the USSR continued to be alarming.²⁵³ In the third Five-Year Plan’s investment allocation, the Soviet Far East received fully 10 percent, allowing for construction of strategic railroads to buttress frontiers, a secret tunnel under the Amur River at Khabarovsk, a pipeline under the sea to transport Sakhalin oil to refineries at Komsomolsk, a second port (in addition to Vladivostok) on the Tatar Strait, and roads. Despite mass deportations from the region, a combination of incentives and coercion had boosted the local population to 3.15 million by 1940, up from 2.27 million in 1937.²⁵⁴ Japan, in a dream come true for Stalin, had become stalemated in its war to conquer all of China. But, contrary to his further wishes, a domestic showdown loomed there, desired by both the Nationalists and the Chinese Communists. Mao had dispatched a coded telegram (November 7, 1940) warning of an imminent Chinese Nationalist attack on the Chinese Communists and seeking Stalin’s permission for “a preventive counteroffensive.” Mao’s telegram was received in Moscow on November 12. Dimitrov convened the Comintern executive committee, then tried to stall, instructing Mao to prepare his forces but not to act. That same day, at around 11:00 a.m., Molotov arrived at Berlin’s Anhalter train station, near Potsdamer Platz.²⁵⁵

As Molotov stepped off the train in Berlin, there were puddles everywhere. The greeting party included Ribbentrop, Keitel, Robert Ley (German Labor Front), and Himmler, but not the staunch ideologues Goebbels and Rosenberg. Molotov would be in the Nazi capital for forty-eight hours, accompanied by a sixty-five-person entourage, including Dekanozov (foreign affairs), Tevosyan (ferrous metallurgy), Yakovlev (aviation), and Alexei Krutikov (foreign trade), who would remain in-country for industrial and trade matters. Merkulov (NKVD) supervised sixteen “security” guards tasked with maintaining surveillance of the Soviet delegation (and, the Gestapo suspected, leaving agents behind).²⁵⁶ After an inspection of the honor guard, the Soviets departed the station in a sixty-vehicle convoy. “There was almost no one . . . along the streets,” according to an American correspondent.²⁵⁷ They arrived at the refurbished Schloss Bellevue, a former neoclassical Hohenzollern palace of more than 130 rooms set amid the exotic plants of the Tiergarten. Scented roses filled the opulent rooms and, as at the train station, the hammer-and-sickle flag flew alongside the swastika banner.²⁵⁸ After breakfast, cigars, and cognac, the Soviets were taken to the foreign ministry. Only Molotov and Dekanozov, with interpreters and notetakers, were received. “A luxurious study, perhaps somewhat smaller than Hitler’s own,” the Soviet interpreter Berezhkov recalled of Ribbentrop’s office, some of whose furnishings might have been trophies looted from the Low Countries and France. “Antique gilded furniture. Tapestry covers the walls from floor to ceiling, pictures hanging in heavy frames, porcelain and bronze statues on high stands placed in the corners.”²⁵⁹

A genial Ribbentrop pontificated at length about a division of the world, but he refrained from making concrete proposals. “Germany has already won the war,” he crowed. “No state in the world could alter the situation created as a result of Germany’s victories.”²⁶⁰ Molotov, demanding specifics, managed to get a few words in. Following a white-gloved lunch back at the Bellevue, the foreign affairs commissar was brought to Hitler’s grandiose new Chancellery, in an elaborately choreographed entrance designed to awe. The Führer, in a “study” the size of a congress hall, greeted the Soviet representative with the Nazi upturned palm. Invited to sit on a sofa, Molotov, who wore a rimless pince-nez and generally favored gray suits and stiff-necked white collars, was deemed by the Germans to resemble a mathematics professor. Hitler, described by an aide as “surprisingly gracious and friendly,” delivered a long monologue from his armchair. He expounded on how Germany had been compelled to “penetrate into territories remote from her,” to secure vital raw materials or prevent Britain from establishing a toehold, and acknowledged that “possibly M. Molotov was of the opinion that in one case or another there had been a departure from the conception of spheres of influence which had been agreed.” He also asserted that “as soon as atmospheric conditions improved, Germany would be poised for a great and final blow against England.” Molotov was not awed. No sooner had the monologue finished, recalled the German interpreter, than “the questions hailed down upon Hitler.”²⁶¹

The Hammer made no effort to be ingratiating (not part of his skill set anyway). His top aide had told another member of the delegation, General Alexander Vasilevsky, first deputy chief of the general staff operations directorate (responsible for battle plans), that the aims of the Berlin visit were “to determine the further intentions of Hitler, and as much as possible to delay a German aggression.”²⁶² Whereas Hitler spoke of Soviet interests in British imperial lands (which Britain still controlled), Molotov spoke of Soviet security interests up and down Eastern Europe (which Hitler eyed). Molotov stated that Stalin had given him exact instructions, enumerated the mutual benefits of the Pact, and demanded to know “What was the meaning of the New Order in Europe and in Asia, and what role would the USSR be given in it?”²⁶³ He insisted that “precision is necessary in a delimitation of spheres of influence,” and “particular vigilance is needed in the delimitation of spheres of influence between Germany and Russia.”²⁶⁴

The session lasted two and a half hours before Hitler broke it off. Ribbentrop hosted a lobster dinner, sans Führer, at the Kaiserhof Hotel, near the foreign ministry. The German state secretary, Weizsäcker, thought the Soviets, in their standard-issue dark suits and felt fedoras, resembled extras in a gangster movie. But then again, Göring sported medals across his corpulent frame, from shoulder to waist, and multiple rings of precious stones on his fat fingers. Based on a report by Berlings, the Gestapo conveyed to Hitler and Ribbentrop that “last night, after the reception in the Kaiserhof, Molotov returned to the Bellevue and gathered a narrow circle of his entourage and embassy personnel. According to our agent, he was in a brilliant mood. The length of the talks he had with the Führer and the Reich foreign minister made a major impression on him. Then he said that he had a wonderful personal impression and that everything was going as he had envisioned and hoped.”²⁶⁵

Molotov (perhaps suspecting listening devices) understood that his ingratiating words would reach his Nazi hosts.²⁶⁶ Around midnight at the Bellevue, he wrote a coded telegram for Stalin, his second such cable of the day. “Their answers in conversation are not always clear and require further clarification,” he observed of the meetings. “Hitler’s great interest in reaching agreement to fortify the friendship with the USSR and spheres of influence is evident.” Molotov’s statement to Stalin indicates, of course, that this was Stalin’s great interest. Notwithstanding the nine-page detailed charge (dated November 9, 1940) that Molotov was following to the letter, he took nothing for granted, concluding, “I ask for directives.”²⁶⁷ Molotov was the sole person in the regime to whom Stalin was willing to entrust a one-on-one with Hitler, yet Stalin was micromanaging the talks from Moscow.

Molotov’s second day (November 13) included visits to Göring at the air ministry to discuss German military goods, and to Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess at Nazi party HQ, after which Molotov cabled Stalin that “they received me well and it is evident that they want to strengthen relations with the USSR.”²⁶⁸ In the afternoon, Hitler, this time in the company of Goebbels and Ribbentrop, again received Molotov, along with Dekanozov and Merkulov, for breakfast at 2:00 p.m. The menu, spartan as far as the Soviets were concerned, consisted of beef tea, pheasant, and fruit salad. Formal discussions resumed in Hitler’s vast ceremonial study, ninety feet long and fifty feet wide, with paneling of rare woods, a massive portrait of Bismarck over the colored marble fireplace, and a white marble statue of Frederick the Great on horseback sitting atop a marble table.²⁶⁹ The discussion lasted three and a half hours. Hitler was famous as a gifted orator and actor who intuited his audience’s moods and aspirations, and adapted accordingly. In the Reichstag he was a wise statesman; at party rallies, a fanatical leader; among industrialists, a reasonable nationalist; to women, a child-friendly father figure; to foreign interlocutors, a theatrical performer, alternating between lordly and warmly intimate.²⁷⁰ With the impassive Molotov, neither the poses nor the melodrama worked.

Adhering to Stalin’s cabled corrections of him, Molotov underscored that the 1939 Pact remained in force, adding that “not without the assistance of the Pact with the USSR had Germany been able to complete its operations in Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Holland, and France so quickly and with such glory.”²⁷¹ Hitler raised concerns about Bukovina. Molotov accused Hitler of trying to alter the terms of the secret protocol regarding Finland and Romania; Hitler claimed otherwise. Molotov noted that the Soviets merely wanted to protect themselves against an attack through the Gulf of Finland, the Straits, or the Black Sea. The exchange “never became violent,” recalled Hitler’s interpreter, “but the debate on both sides was conducted with singular tenacity.”²⁷² Goebbels judged that Molotov “made an intelligent, astute impression, very reserved. One gets almost nothing out of him. He listens attentively, but nothing more. Even with the Führer.”²⁷³

Hitler rose. As he escorted Molotov and his entourage to the door, he said he “regretted that he had not yet been able to meet such an immense historical personage as Stalin, especially since he believed he himself might possibly enter history,” according to the notetakers. “Molotov agreed with Hitler’s statement on the desirability of such a meeting and expressed the hope that such a meeting would take place.”²⁷⁴

The two sides could not even agree on a follow-up visit by Ribbentrop to Moscow. Amid the inconclusiveness, scores of top Nazis—but not the Führer—attended a farewell banquet given by the Soviet ambassador (the former textile plant manager) at the Unter den Linden Soviet embassy, whose fading tsarist-era splendor was now overseen by a bust of Lenin. The vodka and caviar were prodigious. “No capitalist or plutocratic . . . table could have been more richly spread,” recalled the German interpreter. “It was a very good party.”²⁷⁵

Churchill cut the festivities short: a British bombing squadron appeared over central Berlin at around 8:30 p.m. Ribbentrop conveyed Molotov the short distance to the safety of his bunker beneath the foreign ministry (the Soviet embassy had none). As a result, additional, unplanned talks ensued, from 9:45 p.m. until nearly midnight. The Nazi foreign minister removed from his pocket and read aloud a draft text, three paragraphs in length, on converting the Tripartite Pact into a four-power pact, with secret protocols to be appended later. A four-power pact would have confronted Britain, as well as the United States, with formidable challenges: the likely fall of not just the European continent but the Mediterranean, the Near East, and the Far East into the clutches of authoritarian Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union.²⁷⁶ At the same time, it was doubtful whether the tripartite alliance could counter the combined might of the Anglo-American bloc without the Soviet Union.

Molotov, according to the German record, again insisted that a new understanding of Soviet-German relations was a prerequisite to discussions about the USSR joining a pact of four; the Soviet record indicates that Molotov demanded an explanation of the alliance between Germany, Japan, and Italy and insisted on the importance to the USSR of Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Swedish neutrality, Finland, and more.²⁷⁷ Ribbentrop resumed expounding on the pending liquidation of the British empire. “If England is defeated, why are we sitting in this shelter?” Molotov interjected, in a retort Stalin would cherish and retell. “And whose bombs are dropping so close that we can hear the explosions even here?”²⁷⁸

THE NONPIVOT

The British press descended into a frenzy over Molotov’s visit to Berlin, warning that the Soviet Union was about to join the Axis. Prior to Molotov’s return, Stalin had sent suggestions on what the despot assumed would be a joint communiqué issued in Berlin. “The exchange of views took place in an atmosphere of mutual trust,” Stalin had written, “and they established mutual understanding on all the most important questions of interest to the USSR and Germany.” He had also instructed Molotov that “it would be better if the Germans proposed their draft first.” In fact, the Germans proposed nothing, and no joint communiqué was issued. After midnight on November 13–14, Molotov had cabled Stalin and admitted that the Berlin meetings “had not delivered the desired results.” The USSR’s interests in Eastern Europe were not being acknowledged. “Nothing to boast about, but at a minimum I ascertained the current mood of Hitler, which is something we will have to come to grips with.”²⁷⁹ Molotov departed Berlin later that morning. Pravda (November 15) published the proposed joint communiqué unilaterally.²⁸⁰ But the Soviet press proved unable to name a single concrete achievement of Molotov’s visit.²⁸¹

The Germans recorded Amayak Kobulov as having stated that Molotov’s visit was a “powerful demonstration,” but that “not everything that shines is gold.”²⁸² Some members of the Soviet delegation, while still in Berlin, had voiced suspicions that with the Tripartite Pact, Germany was actually working to “encircle” the Soviet Union, while also embroiling it in conflict with Britain over imperial possessions. Soviet military intelligence would inform Moscow that Scheliha (“Aryan”) had heard high officials in the German foreign ministry conclude that, during Molotov’s November 1940 visit, “consensus was not reached on a single important question—not on the question of Finland, not on the question of Bulgaria.”²⁸³ On the German side, Dr. Otto Meissner, the head of the (ceremonial) presidential chancellery, considered an old-school adherent of the Bismarckian policy of ties with Russia, was given the impression—which, as expected, he repeated so that it reached Soviet ears—that Hitler was “very satisfied with the visit and that Molotov’s personality impressed him.”²⁸⁴ This was disinformation that the Nazi regime rightly expected would now spread. Most German insiders judged Molotov’s visit a failure. “Two things became clear in the discussions,” one of Hitler’s interpreters later noted. “Hitler’s intention to push the Soviet Union in the direction of the Persian Gulf, and his unwillingness to acknowledge any Soviet interest in Europe.”²⁸⁵

Molotov reached Moscow on November 15. There is no reliable account of the report he delivered that evening to Stalin and anyone else the despot summoned to the Near Dacha.²⁸⁶ On orders, Molotov’s interpreter (Pavlov) told a pro-Soviet American that Molotov had “thawed” in Berlin and that Hitler had made a big impression. A cable from Molotov to Maisky in London (November 17) soberly noted that the Germans were trying to push the Soviets toward India and wanted Turkey for themselves.²⁸⁷ But at a reception given by the Italian ambassador, Augusto Rosso, for representatives of “friendly countries,” the Bulgarian envoy to Moscow perceived Molotov as “swollen-headed and puffed up.”²⁸⁸ Molotov, just as Stalin instructed, had stood up to Hitler.

Back in 1939, when Stalin had understood, correctly, the emptiness of the British and French negotiating positions vis-à-vis Moscow, he had not hesitated to humiliate them. Of course, at that time, he was assiduously cultivating an alternative: Nazi Germany. In 1940, he had not pursued a genuine alternative to Germany should its negotiating position prove empty. Stalin had not gone to the British of his own accord to create leverage for his demands vis-à-vis a newly triumphant Germany; the British, in the person of Sir Stafford Cripps, had come to him. Stalin only belatedly responded to the sincere British offers of a trade-and-nonaggression pact, and not even through the diplomatic channels in which they had been conveyed. Cripps, to accommodate Stalin’s requests, had urged the British government that any talks with Moscow had to be carried out in the utmost secrecy—no small feat for an open society and leak-prone political system like Britain’s. But then, on November 16, the confidential British proposals appeared in the English-language press, as Cripps heard over BBC radio in Moscow. Irate, he suspected the British foreign office, but the source was the Soviet embassy in London.²⁸⁹ In the event, Vyshinsky’s initial reaction to the Cripps proposal—deeming it of the greatest importance—had been shamelessly disingenuous. Stalin had used Cripps, again, then hung him out to dry, in a clumsy warning-cum-ingratiation directed at Hitler.

Other British actions unintentionally worked against rapprochement: Molotov’s unplanned refuge in the Berlin bomb shelter, a result of British bombing raids, had evidently helped solidify his view that Germany was still deeply mired in a war in the west, a circumstance that he interpreted in light of his conviction that no German leader would willingly launch a two-front war by attacking in the east. “Even after his visit to Berlin in November 1940, Molotov continued to assert that Hitler would not attack,” recalled Zhukov, who added that “one must take into account that in Stalin’s eyes, in this case, Molotov had the added authority of someone who had personally visited Berlin.”²⁹⁰

BULGARIAN GAMBIT