Stalin

In February 1941, Pavlov, commander of the frontline Western military district (Belorussia), asked Stalin for nearly 1 billion rubles for radio work, and another 650 million for rails and for mobilization of high school and college students to replace the republic’s dirt roads. Timoshenko answered that Stalin said, “We are not in a position to meet his fantastic proposals.” Zhukov, the new chief of staff, had been summoned to Stalin’s dacha on a Saturday evening to deliver a brief report, arranged by Timoshenko. In the company of the cronies, Zhukov and Timoshenko dined on thick borscht, stewed meats with buckwheat kasha, fruit, and compote, the kind of simple meal Stalin liked. As the conversation ranged over military needs, the despot relaxed, drinking Khvanchkara, a Georgian wine, joking, and exhibiting the cheerful mood that company often brought him. “Stalin said that we should think and work on the priority issues and bring them to the government for decisions,” Zhukov recalled. “But in this connection we need to work from our real possibilities and not fantasize about what we cannot produce in material terms.”⁸²

Even while constraining the military’s limitless demands, Stalin had his secretariat on the special Kremlin phone system, driving factories beyond their limit. Where were the chassis, the motors, the trucks, the tires for the Soviet Union’s mechanized divisions? The despot, meanwhile, also summoned aviation industry bosses to the Imperial Senate’s Sverdlov Hall, the venue for Central Committee plenums, to hash out the issues with the newest aircraft. He paced, gripping his pipe, listening, waiting for the experts to finish before taking the floor to note that the old planes were easier to fly but easier to knock out. “Then Stalin went through the main military aircraft of the air forces of Germany, England, France, and the United States,” aviation commissar Shakhurin recalled. “He spoke about their weaponry, carrying capacities, rate of climb, maximum altitude. He did all this from memory, without any notes, which surprised the specialists and aviators present.” Stalin instructed them to “study the new planes. Learn to perfection how to fly them, to use in war their advantages over the old planes in speed and weaponry. That’s the only way.”⁸³

From February 15 to 20, 1941, Stalin convoked the 18th party conference, where he got behind a further force-march of production, especially of MiG-3 aircraft, as well as the T-34 and KV tanks. A party conference involved less rigmarole than a party congress, but it afforded him a semblance of legitimacy to make changes to the Central Committee that only a congress could authorize. He also inserted several army officers into that body, characterizing them as “modern military personnel, with an understanding of the nature of modern warfare, not old-fashioned,” a reference to Timoshenko and Zhukov, in words recorded by the Comintern’s Dimitrov. “Stalin: ‘It is a shame we failed to single out such people before. We did not know our cadres well.’” The despot also “said of Golikov that as an intelligence agent, he is inexperienced, naïve. An intelligence officer ought to be like the devil: believing no one, not even himself.”⁸⁴

Stalin added three new candidate members to the politburo: Malenkov and two Zhdanov protégés, Nikolai Voznesensky, deputy head of state planning, who had a doctorate in economics, and Alexander Shcherbakov, who, while remaining party boss of Moscow province and city, was promoted to a Central Committee secretary and handed Zhdanov’s portfolio as chief of the agitation-and-propaganda directorate.⁸⁵ Stalin also removed the state security directorate from the NKVD and made it a self-standing commissariat (NKGB). Beria’s literate minion Merkulov remained in charge, now as a full-fledged commissar, and among Merkulov’s subordinates were mostly other Beria minions, starting with NKGB deputy commissar Bogdan “Bakhcho” Kobulov, whose brother Amayak remained in Berlin as the NKGB’s intelligence chief there.⁸⁶

The intelligence kept pouring in.⁸⁷ On February 28, 1941, the Berlin military intelligence station reported that “Alta” had learned from “Aryan,” who had spoken to a person in Reich marshal Göring’s inner circle, that German military officials were cocksure a war against the USSR would be launched in 1941. “Aryan” had been the one to deliver early word of Barbarossa’s existence, and the details he now supplied were as accurate as any that would emerge about the German plan: three army groups for attacks on the axes of Leningrad (under the command of Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb), Minsk-Smolensk-Moscow (Field Marshal Fedor von Bock), and Kiev (Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt). Russian-speaking officers had been deployed to the general staff of each group. Armored trains of special gauge, capable of using Soviet rail lines, were under construction. “Hitler intends to export from Russia about 3 million slaves, in order to bring his productivity capacities to full tilt,” “Alta” further relayed from “Aryan” and “he supposedly intends to divide the Russian colossus into 20–30 different states, without concern for the retention of all the economic links within the country.” The likely invasion date was given as May 20.⁸⁸

That was not the only kind of report Stalin was receiving, however. On March 1, 1941, Nikolai Lyakhterov (“Mars”), in Budapest, reported to Moscow that “everyone considers an attack by the Germans against the USSR at the present time unimaginable before the destruction of England. The military attachés of America, Turkey, and Yugoslavia emphasize that the German army in Romania is in the first instance directed against an English invasion of the Balkans and as a countermeasure, if Turkey or the USSR moves.” He added, “After the destruction of England the Germans will attack the USSR.”⁸⁹ That same evening, Colonel Grigory Yeremin (“Yeshenko”), the peasant-born (1904) military intelligence station chief in Bucharest under cover of embassy third secretary, reported to Moscow about a recent trip to Berlin by the Soviet agent Kurt Welkisch (“ABC”), now serving as press attaché of the German legation in Romania.⁹⁰ “In foreign ministry circles and the headquarters of the German command, where he had the opportunity to speak to some people, uncertainty prevails in the political and military position of Germany, just as lack of information does in Germany’s future intentions in the political and military spheres,” “Yeshenko” noted. “Everyone with whom [ABC] spoke expressed a different view on the plans and future course of developments in the present war.”⁹¹

All serious intelligence work involves sifting through an overwhelming flood of noise; almost never is anything “clean.” Rumormongering aims to amplify the cacophony; disinformation, to establish a false certainty. Stalin had no filter to wring out the hearsay and scrutinize the patterns of disinformation. Nor were the voluminous Soviet intelligence reports systematized anywhere. The NKGB did not even have an analytical department; military intelligence had had its department for analysis restored, but Stalin insisted on receiving the intelligence more or less directly, leaving the analytical work to himself.⁹² He obviously suspected that his adversaries were engaged in disinformation, but that suspicion, too, failed him. One of the core planks of the German whispering campaign was that Britain was trying to escape the war by provoking an armed German-Soviet clash. Stalin had assumed that for years, but now it colored his perception of all the intelligence suggesting that Hitler would attack.⁹³

To be sure, Stalin’s intelligence service was playing its own games, exaggerating American preparations for war against Germany and British strength in the Balkans.⁹⁴ But whereas Soviet deception efforts reflected Stalin’s thinking, not his adversary’s, Hitler’s disinformation caught Stalin’s thinking to a tee. Mostly, however, Soviet intelligence was spreading genuine arguments for Germany to abide by the 1939 bilateral nonaggression pact. Indeed, Stalin had little need for his own disinformation campaign. Just as in the case of Finland, only with infinitely more at stake, he was not trying to deceive. He was not seeking to cut a deal behind Hitler’s back with Churchill. He was trying to avoid war and attain a new deal with Hitler. In that context, Germany’s instigated chatter stressed that Germany’s top leadership was divided over whether to attack the USSR, and that any provocative acts by the Soviets could play into the hands of the “militarists.”

On March 6, 1941, the NKGB in Berlin reported that German economic functionaries were calculating the mother lode of raw materials and foodstuffs that could be expected from an occupation of the European part of the USSR, while the Wehrmacht was optimistic about seizing Ukraine in two to three weeks, thanks to the rail network there, and seizing Baku oil quickly as well. “Chief of staff Halder thinks that the Red Army is in no condition to mount the requisite opposition to the German forces’ lightning attack.”⁹⁵ On March 9, Samokhin, of military intelligence, reported out of Belgrade that, based on conversations with the minister of the court and the owner of Yugoslavia’s most widely read newspaper, Politika, “the German general staff has abandoned an attack on the British Isles, and been given as its next immediate task the seizure of Ukraine and Baku, which it is supposed to carry out in April or May,” and that “Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria are now preparing for this.”⁹⁶ On March 13, “Yeshenko” reported out of Bucharest that Germany intended to attack the USSR before defeating Britain. An SS officer who had arrived in Romania was heard to have boasted, “We’ll continue the battle against England with airplanes and submarines. But we have 10 million lads who are itching to fight and are bored. They are thirsting for a serious foe. Our military machine cannot be unoccupied.”⁹⁷ But on March 14, “Mars” reported, also out of Budapest, that a Hungarian official had summoned him to remonstrate that the rumors of pending war between Germany, Hungary, and Romania against the USSR were lies. “This is English propaganda. . . . Hungary wants to live in peace with the USSR. Germany has enough with the war with England, and is economically interested in peace with the USSR.”⁹⁸

Who had it right—before or after defeating Britain?

Hitler, through March 1941, had told only a few hundred people of Barbarossa. Germany’s formula for talks with Romania, Hungary, and Finland was not pending invasion but how the “protection of the East” was essential in order to “provide against surprises.”⁹⁹ Personnel in Göring’s air ministry were among the closest to the circles in the know, while Ribbentrop and the foreign ministry had not been directly apprised. But in early March 1941, Scheliha, the foreign ministry official with excellent military contacts, provided further information to “Alta,” who reported to Moscow that “there is a basis that speaks to an attack against Russia taking place in the nearest term (dates are named of May 15 to June 15). People are talking about a concentration of 120 divisions in Poland, about the placing of bombers at previously unoccupied aerodromes in East Prussia, intensive establishment of antiaircraft defenses in the eastern cities of Germany, all of which testifies to the preparation of some sort of extraordinary events.” She wrote that “Aryan” insisted that “exceptionally well-informed circles of the leading political and military officialdom report unanimously that an attack on the USSR will happen this year, namely before June.”

“Aryan” had added the most crucial detail: “the concentration of Soviet forces at the frontiers arouses here a certain disquiet. People are asking, are the Russians not noticing that something is getting ready against them, and do they not plan to preempt the German strike? Some express satisfaction at this concentration, since they think that the Russian army will not be in a condition to retreat quickly.”¹⁰⁰

RESPONDING TO THE GERMAN BUILDUP

On March 10, amid all the contradictory warnings, Stalin created a new body, the “bureau” of the Council of People’s Commissars. It consisted of the chairman, Molotov, and his deputies and could make decisions in the name of the full council (a prerogative Stalin himself had inserted in the decree).¹⁰¹ The despot also assigned Molotov a new first deputy chairman, Voznesensky, a member of the next generation whom Stalin advanced above Mikoyan and Kaganovich. “What shocked us about the composition of the bureau leadership was that Voznesensky became first deputy,” Mikoyan would recall later in life. “Stalin’s motives in this leapfrogging were incomprehensible. But Voznesensky in his naïveté was very pleased about his appointment.”¹⁰²

The next day, Roosevelt’s latest brainstorm to help Britain was signed into American law. Unlike Nazi Germany, the UK was not de facto bankrupt and had been buying American supplies and war matériel under a program known as cash and carry (paying up front and assuming responsibility for transportation). But Britain had begun to run low on cash, and Roosevelt introduced the idea of Lend-Lease (“An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States”), which allowed him to “sell, transfer title to, exchange, lease, lend, or otherwise dispose of, to any such government [whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States] any defense article.” The law soon would be applied to China, too. Hitler ordered stronger efforts “to bring Japan into active operations in the Far East as soon as possible,” so that “the focal point of the interests of the United States will be diverted to the Pacific.”¹⁰³

Also on March 11, 1941, a long-gestating refinement of the Soviet war plan was submitted. A month before, Zhukov, following his replacement of Meretskov as chief of staff, had ordered the chief of the operations directorate, Major General Alexander Vasilevsky, to revise the main mobilization orders (which dated to November 1937) that accompanied the war plan. Known as the Mobilization Plan for 1941 (MP-41), it was based upon a wartime strength of 300 fully equipped divisions, including 60 tank divisions, and 8.7 million troops—a doubling of the already recently doubled Red Army—which were to come into existence by January 1942.¹⁰⁴ Tactically, this mobilization plan for an army that did not yet exist in this size was based upon extreme forward defense and a quick Soviet counteroffensive (approximately two thirds of the divisions were to be stationed in the western military districts). MP-41 reflected Stalin’s vision of a possible war: all offense and all in, with wishful-thinking production targets for tanks and aircraft, little allotment for second- and third-echelon strategic reserves for a protracted battle, and the war not commencing this year.

Now, the new war plan itself, occupying some fifteen pages on defense commissariat stationery, in exquisite penmanship, was marked, as per custom, “Top Secret. Very Urgent. Exclusively Personal. The Only Copy.” Following the experience of the January war games, it reconfirmed Kiev as the main axis of hostilities, making explicit, unlike previous war plans, that “Germany will most likely deploy its main forces in the southeast, from Siedlce [in eastern Poland] to Hungary, in order to seize the Ukraine by means of a blow to Berdichev and Kiev.” This conclusion reflected the accumulating Soviet intelligence reports. But the southern axis was definitively assumed to be the main thrust of the German attack because the anticipated quick Soviet counteroffensive would have a far easier time navigating enemy territory below the Pripet Marshes. It traced the Soviets’ long-standing favored strike line, the so-called Lvov protrusion, on the Kraków-Katowice salient, where German defense lines were not as formidable as in East Prussia and where the terrain was conducive to tank armies.¹⁰⁵ Massed in Ukraine, Red Army forces, after blasting through, were to encircle, from behind, the German armies concentrated farther north, while severing links with Germany’s Balkan allies, oil, and foodstuffs farther south. The text, however, admitted that “the general staff of the Red Army does not possess documentary data on the plans of likely adversaries either in the West or in the East.”¹⁰⁶

Timoshenko and Zhukov discussed the draft at length in the Little Corner on March 17, with a large number of military and industrial officials, and again on the 18th in a narrower group. They had already beseeched Stalin for authorization to summon Soviet reservists immediately, to fill out the existing divisions in frontier districts. A decree approved the call-up of 975,870 reservists during the course of 1941, in phases, through the fall, but the despot insisted it be done quietly, under the pretext of training exercises. Troops were shipped in trains boarded up with plywood, and even the commanders did not know their points of disembarkation.¹⁰⁷ Beyond wanting to deny warmongers on the German side any excuse to attack, Stalin continued to adhere to the widespread belief that even though, in summer 1914, imperial Russia’s mobilization had been defensive and precautionary, it had inexorably led the country to war.¹⁰⁸

INHIBITIONS

Stalin was the only one in the Soviet regime to receive the full gamut of intelligence reports, but even he did not see everything. In the first half of 1941, Soviet military intelligence would receive 267 reports from its agents abroad and convey 129 of these to the military and political leadership.¹⁰⁹ (Beria at civilian intelligence might have been an even more consequential filter.) Functionaries in despotic systems often shrink from supplying the despot with information they know he will not welcome.¹¹⁰ After the terror, it took special courage or naïveté to bring Stalin news he did not want to hear.¹¹¹ On March 20, 1941, Golikov sent him one of the first systematic summaries by Soviet intelligence, this one concerning German forces and their dislocation. Tupikov, in Berlin, had produced a 100-page overview of Germany’s military.¹¹² Golikov’s summary conveyed Tupikov’s analysis of a large concentration of German forces near the frontier and concluded that, “according to the report of our military attaché in Berlin, we can expect the onset of military action against the USSR between May 15 and June 15.”

Knowing the despot’s beliefs firsthand, Golikov walked a fine line, writing that an attack would likely come “after victory over England or after the conclusion with her of an honorable peace for Germany.” He also wrote that “the majority of the espionage material concerning the possibilities of war with the USSR in the spring of 1941 emanates from Anglo-American sources whose aim today is doubtless to endeavor to worsen relations between the USSR and Germany.” Nonetheless, Golikov added, “considering the origins and development of fascism, and its aims—implementing the plans of Hitler that were laid out in full and flowery [exposition] in his book Mein Kampf—a short outline of all agent material in hand for the period July 1940–March 1941 to a degree deserves serious attention.” He sketched a simultaneous assault by three German army groups along three axes: north (Leningrad), center (Moscow), and south (Kiev). Here was the accurate picture of Barbarossa that had been reported by “Aryan.”¹¹³

While Pavel Fitin, of NKGB civilian intelligence, had no access to Stalin, reporting instead to Beria and Merkulov, Golikov did have to face the despot occasionally.¹¹⁴ All five of Golikov’s immediate predecessors had been executed. His March 20, 1941, summary, mangled with caveats, nonetheless constituted a bold step. But then, in his conclusion, Golikov repudiated his report’s vital content: “The rumors and documents attesting to the inevitability of war against the USSR this spring need to be assessed as disinformation coming from English and even perhaps German intelligence.”¹¹⁵

German planes were crossing Soviet frontiers at altitudes of seven miles, out of artillery range but perfect for photographing Soviet military installations and deployments. When confronted about their violations of Soviet airspace, the Germans would point to their military schools near the border and assert that trainee pilots were losing their way. “Elder,” in Göring’s air ministry, provided unique information, however, which the Berlin NKGB (March 24) reported to Moscow, about intensive compilations of Soviet targets, including bridges to cut the movement of reserves. “Photographs of Soviet cities and other objects are regularly coming into aviation HQ,” the report stated, and the German military attaché in Moscow was traveling around by car to verify the locations of Soviet electrical stations for bombing. “Officers at HQ have formed the opinion that military action against the USSR has been set for the end of April or early May. These dates are connected to a German intention to secure the harvest for themselves, calculating that Soviet forces under retreat will not be able to burn the green wheat.”¹¹⁶

Around this time, a German printer evidently provided the Soviet embassy in Berlin with a book, scheduled for a massive print run, with Latin transliterations of Russian phrases: “Where is the chairman of the collective farm?” “Are you a Communist?” “Hands up!”¹¹⁷

On March 28, at 5:00 p.m. Berlin time, Dekanozov’s secretary at the embassy received an anonymous tip: “Around May a war will begin against Russia,” the caller, speaking in German, stated, then hung up.¹¹⁸ In Moscow that same day, Stalin sought to squeeze ever more blood from a stone, convening the chemical industry bosses—the commissar, his deputies, factory directors—in the Little Corner. The Soviet Union had still not fully mastered production of tires from synthetic rubber, even though it had invented the latter.¹¹⁹ Stalin laced into Nikolai Patolichev, a peasant’s son (b. 1908) who had been orphaned at twelve, then started working at a factory and, following the terror, in 1939, became party boss of Yaroslavl province, site of the rubber industry. Patolichev, one of Stalin’s “new people,” had just become a full member of the Central Committee. “Stalin used sharp expressions and I honestly did not know how this conversation was going to end for me,” Patolichev would recall. “Stalin paced in silence, thinking. The minutes seemed incredibly long.” Finally the despot, smiling, announced the formation of a commission of Patolichev, Khrushchev, and Nikolai Bulganin to get the chemical commissariat to ramp up production.¹²⁰

BALKAN TREACHERY

Under very intense German pressure, Bulgaria had joined the Axis, alongside Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania. This left just two nonaligned states in southeastern Europe: Greece, which was under military assault by Italy, and Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav regent, the Oxford-educated Prince Paul, who ruled for the seventeen-year-old King Petar II, was pressured into signing on to the Axis on March 25. Almost immediately thereafter, at 2:15 a.m. on March 27, 1941, Serbian air force officers overthrew him. Eden telegrammed “provisional authority” to the British envoy in Belgrade “to do what he thought fit to further a change of Government, even at the risk of precipitating a German attack.”¹²¹ But although Britain intelligence supported the coup, it was a Yugoslav initiative.¹²² A delighted Churchill, content to see the Serbs do the fighting, wrote that “Hitler had been stung to the quick.”¹²³ Golikov sent Stalin, Molotov, Beria, and Timoshenko a detailed report on March 28, 1940, claiming that “German circles were dumbfounded.”¹²⁴

Hitler fulminated against the British for pulling the strings, and in his fury, on that very day (March 27), he issued Directive No. 25, “to destroy Yugoslavia militarily and as a state.”¹²⁵ On March 30, some 250 field marshals, generals, admirals, and staff officers, seated by rank and seniority, secretly gathered for breakfast in the Great Hall of the New Reich Chancellery, where Hitler delivered a two-hour harangue laying out his case for an invasion of the USSR. “The Russian is inferior,” he stated. “The army is without leadership,” while “armament capacities [are] not very good.” Stalin, Hitler allowed, was “clever,” but the Soviet leader “had gambled on Germany’s bleeding to death in the autumn of 1939.” He emphasized that “this is a war of annihilation. If we do not grasp this, we shall still beat the enemy, but thirty years later we shall again have to fight the Communist enemy.” Captured commissars were to be “eliminated immediately by the troops.” Indeed, “one of the sacrifices which commanders have to make is to overcome any scruples they might have.”¹²⁶

German embassy staff in Belgrade were ordered to leave on April 2 (the ambassador had been recalled for consultations) and to warn “friendly” embassies to do likewise.¹²⁷ The Yugoslav minister in Moscow, Milan Gavrilović, effectively a Soviet agent, was instructed by Molotov to have a delegation come to Moscow immediately to conduct secret negotiations for a “military and political pact.”¹²⁸ Schulenburg, summoned to the Kremlin on April 4, warned Molotov that “the moment chosen by the Soviet Union for negotiation of such a treaty had been very unfortunate.” Molotov replied that Yugoslav accession to the Tripartite Pact with Germany could remain in force.¹²⁹ On April 4, “Sophocles” reported out of Belgrade on German troops massing on the border with Yugoslavia, and conversations to the effect of “Keep in mind that in May we’ll start a war against the USSR, and within seven days we’ll be in Moscow; while it is not too late, join us.”¹³⁰ Stalin knew what was coming: on April 5, “Alta” learned from “Aryan” of Germany’s imminent invasion of Yugoslavia and summoned her handler, Zaitsev (“Bine”), to a Berlin cinema; “Bine” hurried to the Soviet embassy to inform Tupikov (“Arnold”), who reported to Moscow that a German invasion of Yugoslavia would take place the next morning, April 6, and that Berlin was reckoning on the destruction of Yugoslavia in fourteen days.¹³¹

Molotov, Gavrilović, and two other members of the Yugoslav delegation, with Stalin present, signed a “treaty of friendship and non-aggression” (though not an alliance) in Molotov’s Kremlin office at around 3:00 a.m. on April 6.¹³² At the improvised banquet, which lasted until 7:00 a.m., Molotov promised armaments, munitions, and planes. When Gavrilović asked Stalin if he had heard the rumors of a pending invasion of the USSR, the despot put on a show of confidence. “Let them come,” he said. “We have strong nerves.”¹³³

Soviet radio announced the treaty that morning, and Izvestiya published it later that day, with oversized photographs. But before dawn, the Luftwaffe had already begun bombing Yugoslavia (between 3,000 and 4,000 civilians would be incinerated), and Wehrmacht ground forces—retrieved from the border with the Soviet Union—had burst across the Yugoslav frontier. At 4:00 p.m. Moscow time on the 6th, a Sunday, Schulenburg finally was able to read out to Molotov an official note regarding the German military action. “It was extremely deplorable that an expansion of the war turned out to be inevitable after all,” Molotov repeated several times, according to the German account.¹³⁴ When, a bit later that night, Gavrilović called on the foreign affairs commissar to discuss the promised war matériel—including antitank guns and aircraft—Molotov observed that there “would be a considerable delay in such deliveries as the Soviet Union might agree to make, and that there were serious transport problems.”¹³⁵

Stalin had evidently expected that a Balkan war in the rough mountainous terrain, against valiant Serbs, would last several months, bogging the Germans down long enough to render impossible a spring–summer invasion of the USSR and gifting him another year to prepare Soviet defenses.¹³⁶ By April 13, however, Wehrmacht troops had already seized Belgrade.¹³⁷ The Wehrmacht, while losing fewer than 200 dead, took more than 300,000 Yugoslav soldiers and officers prisoner. The Soviets effectively abandoned Yugoslavia’s Communists, the most powerful pro-Soviet movement remaining in Europe, to their own devices.

On April 12, the dramatist Vishnevsky was at the Kremlin in a small group to see Voroshilov for a discussion of a film based on one of his plays. Voroshilov observed that “Stalin said of the war, ‘The Germans are seizing the Balkans. They act boldly. The English send forces to the Balkans as if teasing the Yugoslavs and Greeks.’” Vishnevsky recounted, “We moved on to the Hitler theme: the guy turned out to be far smarter and more serious than we supposed. A great mind, strength. Let them fault him: a maniac, a ruffian, expansionist, and so on, but in fact, a genius, strength. We listened attentively. A sober assessment of the potential enemy.” Voroshilov continued: “There are rumors, indirect so far, that Hitler will move in the direction of Ukraine and the Caucasus. Either they are trying to intimidate or, perhaps”—here Vishnevsky noted that Voroshilov took a moment to reflect—“it is a fact. But the Red Army will present difficulties for him.” Vishnevsky concluded: “Voroshilov does not doubt our strength. But once more he underscored the complete unreliability of the English.”¹³⁸

Germany had also declared war on Greece on April 6, to rescue Mussolini’s failed invasion (launched back on October 28, 1940). German troops, pouring in via Bulgaria, halted a Greek offensive, and by April 27 the swastika rose over the Acropolis. Mussolini’s army had suffered 154,172 dead, wounded, and sick, and the Greek army about 90,000 casualties. German losses for Yugoslavia and Greece combined were 2,559 killed, 5,820 wounded, and 3,169 missing. While Italy occupied the Greek mainland and the Bulgarians hastily went into Thrace, German forces occupied Athens, Thessaloniki, central Macedonia, Crete, and other Aegean islands, taking 218,000 Greek and 9,000 British prisoners.¹³⁹ In both Greece and Yugoslavia, Hitler significantly overcommitted the forces needed to secure his right flank, adding to the impression that the German campaigns could be construed as part of a still operative “peripheral strategy” against Britain in the Mediterranean. The British position was certainly further imperiled by the Balkan conquests.¹⁴⁰ But the Soviet Union’s was even more so.

CHURCHILL TO STALIN

High frequencies had been introduced for wireless in the mid-1930s, and one result was that more and more ciphered diplomatic and military traffic was intercepted, albeit not always decoded. Remarkably, British intelligence, with valuable assistance from the Poles, had broken the German code machine, an upgrade in complexity to the commercially available Enigma system.¹⁴¹ Without letting on to his unique source, Churchill, on April 3, 1941, had seen fit to send a telegram to the British embassy in Moscow, instructing the ambassador, Cripps, to deliver it to Stalin personally. The context was the German pressure to force Yugoslavia to join the Axis. “I have sure information from a trusted agent,” Churchill wrote, “that when the Germans thought they had got Yugoslavia in the net, that is to say after March 20, they began to move three out of five panzer divisions from Romania to southern Poland. The moment they heard of the Serbian revolution this movement was countermanded. Your excellency will appreciate the significance of these facts.”¹⁴² Churchill, using terseness to maximize impact, meant to imply that Germany was much weaker than it seemed, as shown by its having to shift troops around, and that Stalin should take advantage of an opportunity to take on Germany while it was occupied in Yugoslavia and Greece (conveniently aiding the British position).¹⁴³

Cripps had long been convinced that the Germans would attack the Soviet Union, and that a British-Soviet alliance was necessary and possible. At a press conference for British and American journalists back on March 11, he had warned, off the record, that “Soviet-German relations are decidedly worsening. . . . A Soviet-German war is unavoidable.”¹⁴⁴ The NKGB, five days later, had reported his words.¹⁴⁵ Stalin also read the special “Red TASS” translations of the foreign press—available for the highest echelons of the party-state—and he could see how the British press openly mused about Ukraine serving as a “training ground” for German tanks, and the “inevitability” of a German-Soviet war.¹⁴⁶ For Stalin, Cripps’s statements, too, were yet another “British provocation” to instigate war. Cripps—despite his own stumbling—understood that Stalin would also see Churchill’s telegram in the same light, so he had not passed it on, advising London that Stalin was inundated with warnings and that Churchill’s too brief message, for a host of reasons, would be “not only ineffectual but a serious tactical mistake.” Churchill insisted he proceed.¹⁴⁷ Cripps had not been able to see Stalin since his first audience after being appointed ambassador; he could not even get to Molotov, so he handed the cryptic message to Vyshinsky, deputy foreign affairs commissar, on April 19, after Germany had effectively decided the fate of Yugoslavia and Greece.¹⁴⁸

Neither in the original cryptic text nor in the clumsy way it was communicated did Churchill “warn” Stalin of an impending German attack. On the contrary, the result proved worse than Cripps had feared, and he was the well-intentioned culprit. The day before, on April 18, Cripps, on his own initiative, had handed Vyshinsky a long memorandum addressed to Molotov (the only way he could communicate with him), which outlined the dilemmas facing the USSR, then issued a threat meant as an inducement toward rapprochement, to the effect that it was “not outside the bounds of possibility, if the war were protracted for a long period, that there might be a temptation for Great Britain (and especially for certain circles in Great Britain) to come to some arrangement to end the war.”¹⁴⁹

COUP DE MAIN

Yōsuke Matsuoka had embarked on the first trip outside the empire by a Japanese foreign minister since 1907, a six-week sojourn that brought him to Moscow (twice), Berlin (twice), Rome, and Vichy. Sorge, based on a conversation between Ozaki, Sorge’s informant, and Prime Minister Konoe, had delivered the inside story: Matsuoka was to determine whether Hitler intended to invade Britain or not—Konoe feared a German-British deal—and was given wide latitude to conclude a bilateral pact with the USSR.¹⁵⁰ Stalin found Japan’s authoritarianism difficult to fathom, with its myriad centers of power, ostensibly rogue military commanders, and a mystifying emperor system (a “god” who reigned but did not exactly rule). What he did know was that the Japanese foreign ministry was now the one offering the USSR a nonaggression pact, hoping to exact a Soviet promise to cease aiding Chiang Kai-shek. But the Soviets would agree to sign only if Japan returned Southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands; otherwise, they suggested a neutrality pact, provided Japan would relinquish its oil and coal leases on Soviet-controlled Northern Sakhalin. The Japanese had asked the Soviets to sell them Northern Sakhalin. “Is that a joke?” Molotov responded.

Having ascertained the Soviet bottom line, Matsuoka departed Moscow. In Berlin, Ribbentrop tried to dissuade him from signing any conclusive agreement with the USSR. Matsuoka, for his part, learned definitively that the Nazis would not be invading Britain—Japan would be on its own in taking on the Anglo-Americans—but that an invasion of the USSR was in the cards. He played a double game with the Germans regarding Japan’s intentions, payback for the 1939 surprise Hitler-Stalin Pact.¹⁵¹

On his way home, Matsuoka returned to Moscow on the day Nazi Germany invaded Yugoslavia and Greece. Soviet negotiators were still demanding territorial concessions. Stalin intervened, receiving the Japanese on April 12 at the Near Dacha—unprecedented for a foreigner. The two evidently shared a rant against Britain and the United States. In the Kremlin the next day, Molotov and Matsuoka signed a neutrality pact vowing “to maintain peaceful and friendly relations” and remain neutral should either of them “become the object of hostilities on the part of one or several third powers.”¹⁵² It had taken eighteen months of talks about fishing rights and territories. In a separate declaration, the USSR recognized the territorial integrity of Manchukuo; Japan, of Mongolia.¹⁵³ Stalin would continue to aid China militarily.¹⁵⁴ A lubricated feast was laid on. With the Japanese foreign minister scheduled to depart that same day (April 13), the 4:55 p.m. Trans-Siberian was held up.

After Matsuoka had arrived at Moscow’s Yaroslavl Station, Stalin, in full view of the diplomatic corps, appeared, striding down the platform in his long military-style overcoat to see him off. An evidently tipsy despot placed his arms around the German ambassador, Schulenburg, telling him, “We should remain friends, and now you need to do everything for that!” When Stalin spotted a six-foot-tall German in full dress uniform (acting military attaché Colonel Hans Krebs), he tapped him on the chest. “German?” he asked. After an affirmative reply, Stalin slapped him on the back, took Krebs’s hand in both of his, and said, “We’ll remain friends, no matter what.” Krebs answered loudly: “I am convinced of that.” The schoolmarmish Molotov, staggering a few paces behind Stalin, “kept saluting all the time, shouting the motto of the Soviet scouts: “I am a Pioneer, I am [always] ready.” Stalin, escorting Matsuoka to his carriage, was heard to say, “We shall organize Europe and Asia.”¹⁵⁵

MASTER OF CEREMONIES

On April 18, Fitin sent Merkulov a report from “Lycée-ist” out of Berlin, conveying that an inside source had told him that Göring’s inner circle “was very worried about the problem of grain reserves in Germany,” especially after supplying 2 million tons to Spain and 1.5 million to France. “On its territory Germany cannot gather the quantity of wheat necessary to meet its minimal needs in 1941–1942. . . . It must seek new sources for wheat. According to German calculations, ‘an independent Ukrainian state,’ governed by Germans, with German organization and technology, can in the next two years not only meet the needs of Germany but satisfy the needs of the European continent.”¹⁵⁶ Did this mean outright seizure of Ukraine, or a demand for a “lease”? On April 20, “Yeshenko” reported from Bucharest on the movement of German troops from Yugoslavia back toward the Soviet frontier in Romania, and Antonescu’s increasing war preparations to retrieve Bessarabia.¹⁵⁷

The next day saw the annual commemoration of Lenin’s death at the Bolshoi and the culmination of a Ten-Day festival of Tajik art (April 12–21, 1941) in Moscow, involving some 750 participants.¹⁵⁸ Stalin attended the Tajik ballet Du Gul (“Two Roses”) and the concert finale at the Bolshoi, lingering after the performance until 2:00 a.m. He hosted the Tajik delegation on April 22 at the Kremlin, regaling attendees with stories about Matsuoka and Lenin. “We are . . . the students of the great Lenin,” the despot told the Tajiks. “I, as a Bolshevik, must say it is necessary to remember this man, who trained us, forged us, led us, made us into people, taught us not to know fear in struggle.” Stalin continued: “He created a new ideology of humanity, an ideology of friendship and love among peoples, equality among races. An ideology that holds one race above others and calls for other races to be subordinated to that race is a moribund ideology; it cannot last long.” After this reference to Nazism, Stalin concluded that “the Tajik people is a distinctive one, with an old, rich culture. It stands higher than the Uzbeks and Kazakhs.”¹⁵⁹

Stalin finished with the Tajiks around midnight and proceeded to host a banquet for the winners of the new Stalin Prize. There were some seventy-five in industrial processes and design, including Alexander Yakovlev and Sergei Ilyushin (aircraft design) and Alexei Favorsky (synthetic rubber), more than forty in science, including Nikolai Burdenko (surgery), Ivan Vinogradov (mathematics), Pyotr Kapitsa (physics), and Trofim Lysenko (agricultural sciences), and more than one hundred in the arts: Grigory Alexandrov, Isaac Dunayevsky, and Lyubov Orlova (for the musicals Circus and Volga-Volga); Sergei Eisenstein (for Alexander Nevsky, which was still not being shown on screens); Mikhail Romm and his collaborators (Lenin in October); the composer Aram Khachaturyan (a violin concerto); Mark Reizen, the opera singer; Shostakovich (a piano quintet); novelist Mikhail Sholokhov; Aleksei Tolstoy for Peter the Great; Olga Lepeshinskaya, for ballet; Vera Mukhina, the hammer-and-sickle sculptor; Uzeyir Hajibeyov, for the opera Koroglu; Alla Tarasova, the theater actress; the crooner Ivan Kozlovsky (“On a Moonlit Night”); Alexander Gerasimov, for the painting Stalin and Voroshilov in the Kremlin; and Mikheil Gelovani, the actor who played Stalin. The cash components were enormous (up to 100,000 rubles for Stalin Prize “first class,” 50,000 for “second”).¹⁶⁰

The celebration lasted until 7:00 a.m. “The whole time Stalin was unusually animated, cheerful, hospitable,” according to the court dramaturge Nikolai Virtá (Karelsky), who won a Stalin Prize for his novel Solitude. “No one escaped his attention; he spoke with this one and that, laughing and joking, sharing his cigarettes with the smokers, praising one of the guests who declared he does not smoke.” Films were shown, including Volga-Volga, which Stalin knew by heart; he sat next to a Tajik actress. Alexandrov, the director, in answer to Stalin’s query, revealed that Orlova, his actress wife, had had her voice dubbed for the singing. “She has a remarkable voice; we need to think about how to afford her wide possibilities for the realization of her talent,” Stalin said. Virtá wrote that the leader “proposed that everyone dance; he listened to a famous singer and applauded his rumbling bass.” Stalin “spoke about Hamlet with the actors of the Moscow Art Theater, about politics and literature, about the construction of one factory, about films and songs, about international affairs.”¹⁶¹

AMERICA’S WARNINGS

The Americans, too, had learned the world’s most important secret. A high German economic official from Weimar days, Erwin Respondek, who had been tasked with preparing the currency for the occupied Soviet Union, arranged meetings with the U.S. commercial attaché in a darkened cinema and passed him word of the invasion planning. In early 1941, Respondek had prepared the first of several detailed memoranda for the United States outlining the steps being taken for the destruction of the Soviet Union and “a rigorous liquidation of Bolshevism, all its political and other institutions, and, in particular, the ‘extermination’ of its leaders by the SS.” Respondek, whose key contact was General Halder, had proved a reliable source till now, but officials in Washington were beginning to suspect that he was a plant. After internal debate, Roosevelt had undersecretary of state Sumner Welles tell Konstantin Umansky, the Soviet envoy in Washington, that the United States “has come into possession of information which it regards as authentic, clearly indicating that it is the intention of Germany to attack the Soviet Union.” Umansky blanched. He promised to convey the information to Moscow—and promptly informed the German ambassador to Washington (whether under Moscow’s instructions or in order to score points by anticipating Kremlin wishes). On March 1, 1941, after further secret reports prepared by Respondek, Welles tried once more to warn Umansky about the coming invasion. His last effort took place on March 20.¹⁶²