Stalin

To achieve anything like the attack posture in the preemptive plan, the Red Army would have needed many months of very intensive preparation from that point forward.²⁶¹ In any case, Stalin did not approve the general mobilization or force concentrations necessary for preemption. There was no aerial reconnaissance of German positions to be struck.²⁶² The despot held fast to the idea of forward defense and counterattack, but in his mind general mobilization made war unavoidable, foreclosing his diplomatic and stalling options. If Hitler was not so mad as to voluntarily open a two-front war—as Stalin said often—then the Führer would have to negotiate a separate peace with Britain to attack the USSR. That was why Stalin desperately wanted to know the details of Hess’s “peace proposals.” After all, the despot might be able to offer his own terms to Germany, and Hitler, being smart, would want to see what he could obtain from each side before making a choice. Even if the Nazis made the mistake of voluntarily opening a two-front war, Stalin assumed that any German attack would be preceded by demands for far-reaching concessions, negotiations that Stalin could drag out.

Strikingly, though, almost everything in the May 15 war plan except the preemptive strike was being implemented. Stalin had summoned Timoshenko and Zhukov to the Little Corner on May 10 and 12, and on May 13 the general staff had been able to order deployment to the western frontier of interior reserves—four armies (28 rifle divisions) from the Urals, Volga, North Caucasus, and Baikal military districts—by July 10, with more readied for future transfer.²⁶³ Stalin had also allowed Timoshenko and Zhukov to introduce “covering plans” in frontier military districts, which would enable hidden troop concentration.²⁶⁴ Stalin was enabling implementation of the approved 1940 war plan, the massive left hook below the Pripet Marshes, should the Wehrmacht attack. As a result, the Soviet Union was as vulnerable to a deep German penetration as it was incapable of launching a preemptive attack.

DISINFORMATION, CONFIRMED

On May 14, “Zeus,” out of Sofia, reported further on the concentration of German divisions. On May 17, two weeks prior to the onset of Soviet military maneuvers—which were publicly advertised—Stalin terminated the German tours of his weapons factories, and the very next day an exhibit at Moscow’s State Historical Museum cataloging Napoleon’s defeat, 1812 Fatherland War, had its grand opening. On May 19, “Dora” reported from Zurich that Nazi attack plans had been finalized. The next day, “Extern” reported from Helsinki on a pending attack. Out of Bucharest, on May 23, “Mars” reported that “the American military attaché in Romania said to the Slovak ambassador that the Germans will attack the USSR no later than June 15.”²⁶⁵

Talk of secret negotiations was rife. Dekanozov, following his third breakfast with Schulenburg, departed for Berlin (he arrived May 14), but he could not obtain an audience with Ribbentrop to follow up. The envoy appealed to the good graces of Otto Meissner, who had run the office of the president throughout the Weimar Republic, remained in that post when Hitler became head of state, and was viewed as especially close to the Führer, attending to the ceremonial side of the chancellery.²⁶⁶ The old-school Meissner happened to speak Russian, having spent considerable time in the country, and beginning in mid-May Dekanozov met with him about once a week—four times altogether. They discussed Iraq, Iran, and Turkey, as if the Wehrmacht troops deployed in Eastern Europe would be attacking the British positions in the Near East. “Otto Meissner quickly became his best friend,” recalled Berezhkov, who worked under Dekanozov at the Soviet embassy. “Meissner, also short and stocky, regularly joined the ambassador for lunch a few times a month and, slouching in a chair over cognac and coffee, would tell his host ‘in confidence’ that the chancellery was working on important proposals for the upcoming meeting between Hitler and Stalin.”²⁶⁷

Rumors spread beginning around May 25 that Germany was manufacturing Soviet flags for a state visit to Berlin. “The rumors we spread about an invasion of England are working,” Goebbels wrote in his diary that day. “Extreme nervousness reigns in England. As for Russia, we were able to organize a vast flow of false information. The newspaper ‘plants’ make it such that those abroad cannot figure out where is the truth, and where is the lie. This is the atmosphere that we need.”²⁶⁸ German intelligence reported to Ribbentrop that many in the diplomatic corps in Berlin were convinced Germany and the USSR had already reached a secret agreement, putting off the war.²⁶⁹ Pravda (May 25) published a satirical essay on the wild rumors among foreign diplomats.

Also on May 25, Stalin had in his possession an extraordinary report out of Berlin, where Berlings (“Lycée-ist”) had told Amayak Kobulov that, although there were 160 to 200 German divisions on the Soviet frontier, “war between the Soviet Union and Germany is unlikely, although it would be very popular in Germany at a time when the present war with England is not approved by the populace. Hitler cannot take such a risk as a war with the USSR, fearing a breach in the unity of the Nazi party.” “Lycée-ist” uttered the canard that “Hitler expects Stalin in connection with this to become more accommodating and end all the intrigues against Germany, and above all, to grant him more goods, especially oil.” Most remarkable of all, in connection with supposed Soviet plans to relocate the government to the interior, “Lycée-ist” issued a bizarre olive branch inside a threat: “The German war plan has been worked out in the greatest detail. The maximum duration of the war is 6 weeks. During that time Germany would conquer almost the entire European part of the USSR, but the government in Sverdlovsk would not be touched. If after that Stalin would desire to save the socialist system, Hitler would not interfere.”²⁷⁰

Even the most spectacular feats of Soviet espionage boomeranged. NKGB counterintelligence was headed by Pyotr Fedotov (b. 1900), the son of an orchestra conductor, who had acquired long experience in counterinsurgency in the North Caucasus against Chechen fighters, before transferring to Moscow in late 1937 when terror vacancies had to be filled. He targeted the German embassy, which had perhaps 200 employees, including 20 under military attaché General Ernst Köstring, who spoke nearly perfect Russian and traveled far and wide, proving to be a talented observer of the combat potential of the Red Army, Soviet military industry, and Soviet mobilization status.²⁷¹ Köstring resided in a single-story detached house at Bread Lane, 28, and appears to have assumed that it was secure (the NKGB could not employ microphones placed in adjacent apartments, as it usually did). During one of his absences, Fedotov’s team managed to tunnel a very considerable distance from a neighboring building, on the pretext of pipe reconstruction, and into the mansion’s basement, then entered Köstring’s office, opened his safe, photographed its contents, and installed listening devices, while managing to erase all traces of their penetration.²⁷² Thus could the NKGB eavesdrop on discussions among the Germans and their allies (Italians, Hungarians, Finns, Japanese, Slovaks), which went straight to Merkulov, and from him to Stalin’s desk.²⁷³ On May 31, 1941, Fedotov evidently played a recording for Stalin of Köstring’s conversation with the Slovakia ambassador: “Here what we need is to create some kind of provocation. We must arrange for some German or other to be killed and by that means bring on war.”²⁷⁴

Such chatter offered yet more substantiation for the felt imperative to avoid handing the Germans a casus belli, but despite the military attaché’s desire to ingratiate himself, Hitler needed no such provocation to invade. “The transfer of troops according to the mobilization plan is proceeding successfully,” General Halder recorded in his diary (May 30). “The Führer decided that the date for starting the operation ‘Barbarossa’ remains as set—June 22.”²⁷⁵

STREAM OF VISITORS

Richard Sorge (“Ramsay”) passed on to the Germans as well information he picked up from Japanese government circles, in line with long-ago-issued Soviet permission.²⁷⁶ He so impressed the German ambassador with his knowledge of Japan (based on his secret cabinet source, Ozaki) that Ott gave him the cipher codes for communication with Berlin, allowing Sorge to learn everything known to the embassy about Hitler’s plans.²⁷⁷ But the embassy was receiving information from Berlin late (the pouch was no longer being sent via the Trans-Siberian Railway across Soviet territory) and, even more important, it was not given firsthand information about Barbarossa. On the contrary, Ribbentrop’s foreign ministry knowingly disinformed Ott. Sorge’s dispatches, meanwhile, were transmitted via smuggled microfilms or, far faster, via wireless to Khabarovsk by the skilled shortwave operator Max Clausen, a German Communist residing in Japan, who built his transmitter from scratch. Clausen did the coding himself, using onetime pads (which worked via a secret, random key), making them effectively unbreakable but requiring a prodigious amount of time. Unbeknownst to Sorge, Clausen appears to have passed on only about half of the dispatches. On top of being busy running his own blueprint machinery and reproduction business, which Clausen made profitable, he had begun to suffer from heart trouble, doubt Marxism-Leninism, and resent Sorge’s condescension and personal cluelessness.²⁷⁸

Unlike Sorge’s reports on Japan, which were based on direct knowledge of government decisions, those on Germany were mostly gossip and speculation.²⁷⁹ In early May 1941, Clausen had sent a radiogram (coded bursts of data) with three of Sorge’s messages. They noted that “Ott declared that Hitler is full of determination to destroy the USSR and take the European part of the Soviet Union in his hands as a grain and natural resource base for German control over all of Europe.” Sorge also wrote, citing the opinions of Ott and the naval attaché, that, “after the conclusion of the sowing campaign, the war against the USSR could begin at any moment, and all the Germans will have to do will be to gather up the harvest.” The messages continued: “The possibility of an outbreak of war at any moment is very high because Hitler and his generals are sure that a war with the USSR will not in the least interfere with the conduct of war against England. German generals assess the Red Army’s fighting capacity as so low that the Red Army will be destroyed in the course of a few weeks. They consider that the defense system on the German-Soviet border is extraordinarily weak.” Much of this information came from Colonel Oskar Ritter von Niedermayer, of the high command, who had been sent to Tokyo to brief Ott, and with whom Sorge also spoke at length. Sorge further wrote that “the decision on the start of the war against the USSR will be taken only by Hitler either already in May or after the war with England.”²⁸⁰

On May 21, Clausen transmitted another Sorge message from two days earlier, stating that “new German representatives arriving here from Berlin declare that war between Germany and the USSR could begin at the end of May, since they received an order to return to Berlin by that time,” and that “Germany has 9 army corps consisting of 150 divisions against the USSR.” That was far beyond estimates at HQ, and betokened an invasion. But these visitors also said that “this year the danger might pass.” Sorge’s report added that “the strategic plan for an attack on the Soviet Union was taken from the experience of the war against Poland.”²⁸¹

Stalin continued to view Sorge as a double agent working for Germany.²⁸² Golikov forwarded the spy’s reports to the despot (who showed familiarity with them), while withholding them from his own immediate superiors, Timoshenko and Zhukov.²⁸³ There was considerable bad blood between Golikov and Zhukov, dating from the terror, when Golikov had been sent to destroy Zhukov.²⁸⁴ But Stalin’s skepticism was the key factor.

Two messages from Sorge on May 30 stated flatly that “Berlin has informed Ott that the German offensive against the USSR will begin in the second half of June. Ott 95 percent sure war will start.”²⁸⁵ The next day, a new German military visitor said that 170 to 190 German divisions were massed on the Soviet border and that war was imminent. “The expectation of the start of a German-Soviet war around June 15 is based exclusively on information which Lieutenant Colonel [Erwin] Scholl brought from Berlin,” Sorge wrote in a new message, adding, “Ott told me that he could not obtain information on this score directly from Berlin, and that he only has the information of Scholl.” Clausen transmitted both sets of dispatches on June 1, without reconciling the different dates. In the second, Sorge noted that he, too, had spoken with Scholl, an old friend, who in early May had departed Berlin to take up the post of German military attaché in Bangkok, and that Scholl told him the Soviets had committed “a great tactical mistake. . . . According to the German point of view, the fact that the USSR defense line is located, fundamentally, against the German line, without major offshoots, constitutes the greatest mistake. This will enable the smashing of the Red Army in the first big engagement.”²⁸⁶

Golikov requested clarifications, but he wrote on the document, “Add to the list of Ramsay’s dubious and disinformational communications.”²⁸⁷

PRESSURE

German intelligence picked up word that on June 1, 1941, Stalin received British and American ambassadors, returned Litvinov to the foreign affairs commissariat, reached an agreement with the United States, and was being pressured by his top brass to oppose Germany militarily. But this was disinformation spread by the Soviets. The Germans had Berlings (“Peter” to the Germans) check on rumors of Soviet-British negotiations, which he verified did not exist.²⁸⁸

As German war preparations grew ever more intense, so did the warnings from Soviet intelligence networks. Beria reported to Stalin and Molotov (June 2) that Hitler, accompanied by Göring and Grand Admiral Raeder, had observed maneuvers of the German Fleet in the Baltic Sea, near Gdynia, and traveled to Warsaw and East Prussia.²⁸⁹ That same day, Goglidze reported from Soviet Moldavia that the commander of Romanian border units had, two full weeks prior, “received an order from General Antonescu immediately to clear mines from bridges, roads, and sectors close to the border with the USSR—mines that had been laid in 1940–41. At present all the bridges have been cleared of mines and they have begun to clear them in the sector along the River Prut.” The Romanians, Goglidze concluded, were eagerly expecting to be sent into battle shortly.²⁹⁰ The next day, Golikov asked frontline NKGB stations for assistance in verifying numbers of German troops, tanks, armored vehicles, combat aircraft, transport aircraft, and explosives, and the locations of German field headquarters in East Prussia, occupied Poland, and Romania. “Try to obtain data on the plans for military operations against the USSR (in any form, documentary or oral etc.),” he wrote to the NKGB station in Berlin, as if they had not been straining every nerve to do this.²⁹¹

Germans were observed taking “samples of [Soviet] oil, motor vehicle and aviation petrol and lubricants,” presumably to determine whether they could be used with German equipment.²⁹² Military intelligence in the Western military district, in an internal memo to commander Dmitry Pavlov (June 4, 1941), noted that reliable sources on the other side of the border had observed immense increases in German artillery, tank, and armored troops, influxes of weaponry through the Warsaw train system and aerodrome, upgrading of railroad stations for nighttime unloading, the takeover by the military of all civilian medical installations, the guarding of bridges by military personnel, and mobilization of bureaucrats to govern occupied territories, and concluded that it was “not excluded” that war would commence in June.²⁹³ On June 5, Golikov reported to Stalin, the entire politburo, Timoshenko, and Zhukov that “the Romanian army is being brought to full combat readiness.” Among the details: “In May officers of the Romanian army were given topographical maps of the southern part of the USSR,” and schools had their exams early “so that their buildings could be used for military barracks and hospitals.”²⁹⁴ That same day, the NKVD established an affiliate of its central archive in the Siberian city of Omsk to prepare for a possible evacuation of files.²⁹⁵

Goebbels, in one of his regular conferences for the Nazi press on June 5, stated, “The Führer has decided that the war cannot be brought to an end without an invasion of Britain. Operations planned in the East have therefore been canceled. He cannot give any detailed dates, but one thing is certain: the invasion of Britain will start in three, or perhaps five weeks.”²⁹⁶ The next day, the British foreign office recalled Cripps to London for “consultations.”²⁹⁷ Berlin was worried that something was up; London, for its part, was still fearing a last-minute new Hitler-Stalin pact against the UK. That day, Stalin signed decrees “on measures for industry’s preparedness to switch to the mobilization plan for [producing] ammunition” and for possible wartime mobilization of all industry from July 1.²⁹⁸ Between June 6 and 10, the Wehrmacht sent its tank and motorized divisions right to the border (until then, the advanced troops were mostly infantry), kicking up prodigious earth and dust and making exceptional noise, a massive, unmistakable change in border concentrations. “Alta,” on June 7, 1941, reported, “It is a fact that the date for the start of a campaign against Russia has been moved to after June 20, which is explained by the large material losses in Yugoslavia. No one doubts from informed circles that military action against Russia will be conducted.”²⁹⁹

Also on June 7, Colonel General Grigory Stern, chief of air defenses, was arrested, one of more than 300 officers incarcerated that month, 22 of whom had earned the highest military decoration, Hero of the Soviet Union.³⁰⁰ Under torture, Stern admitted to being a German spy since 1931.³⁰¹ Stalin had been angry for some time about the loss of two to three planes daily from crashes in training.³⁰² He also scapegoated air defenses for the border violations by Germany, precipitating a frenzy of mutual denunciation. Others arrested included a deputy chief of the general staff to Zhukov, Lieutenant General Yakov Smushkevich, who was taken into custody (June 8) while in the hospital for a major operation (he was conducted to prison on crutches), and armaments commissar Boris Vannikov (his nemesis, Marshal Kulik, was soon forced to step down but not incarcerated).³⁰³ The former head of the air force, the thirty-year-old Lieutenant General Pavel Rychagov, who had been sacked at Zhukov and Timoshenko’s insistence, was also arrested (June 8). Although a flying ace who had won the Hero of the Soviet Union, the Order of Lenin, and three Orders of the Red Banner, Rychagov was not fit for such a top post, but Stalin had murdered all the others. He was beaten with rubber truncheons but refused to confess to treason.³⁰⁴

Amid the arrests, Golikov (June 7) advised Stalin that, besides mobilization in Romania and the German right flank, “special attention should be given to the continuing reinforcement of German troops on the territory of Poland.”³⁰⁵ On June 8, the German foreign ministry received word that the Soviet envoy to Romania had said that there would likely be no war but instead negotiations, which could fail if the Germans put forth excessive demands.³⁰⁶

Soldiers in full combat kit and completely full fuel tanks saturated the German side of the border, as the NKGB knew.³⁰⁷ On June 9, Bogdan Kobulov forwarded to Stalin, Molotov, and Beria a memo from Fitin based on communications from “Elder” and “Corsican,” noting that the rumors about negotiations and an ultimatum “were being spread systematically by the German ministry of propaganda and the German army high command. The goal is to mask the preparations for an attack on the Soviet Union and maximize the surprise of such an attack.” This was correct. But the report also quoted the Soviet section head of the German air force staff that Hitler would present the Soviet Union “with a demand to turn over to Germany economic management of Ukraine, to increase the supplies of grain and oil, and to use the Soviet navy—above all, its submarines—against England.”³⁰⁸

That same day, Japan’s ambassador in Moscow, Lieutenant General Tatekawa, warned Tokyo in a telegram, which the Soviets intercepted and decoded, that Germany “could not conquer or crush the Soviets in 2 to 3 months,” and that “the possibility cannot be excluded that Germany would find itself stuck in a prolonged war.”³⁰⁹ In the Little Corner, also on June 9, Timoshenko and Zhukov unfolded maps of German troop concentrations and a packet of military intelligence reports predicting war, which Stalin leafed through, having already seen them and more. Trying to be droll, the despot, according to recollections by Timoshenko, alluded to a Soviet agent in Japan who was predicting a German attack—“a shit who has set himself up with some small workshops and brothels.”³¹⁰ This was Sorge, of course, who had indeed cuckolded nearly the entire German community in Tokyo (while finding comfort most often in the bosom of his Japanese consort, Hanako Ishii). But neither Timoshenko nor Zhukov knew of Sorge’s existence, let alone his hearsay reports predicting war.

From Berlin on June 9, Ribbentrop telegrammed an order to the embassy in Moscow to secure its archives and organize the “inconspicuous departure of women and children.” Two days later, Bogdan Kobulov reported to Stalin, Molotov, and Beria on the evacuation directive and verified that documents were being burned.³¹¹ Also on June 11, Kobulov wrote that, based on information from “Elder,” in the air ministry, the decision to invade “has been definitively taken. Whether there will there be any prior demands to the Soviet Union is unknown, and therefore it is necessary to take into account the possibility of a surprise strike.” He further noted that “Göring’s HQ is moving from Berlin likely to Romania.” Germany’s battle plan was said to be an invasion from East Prussia in the north and Romania in the south, to create pincers to envelop the Red Army in the center.³¹² In fact, Germany’s main strike force was in the center.

DESPERATION

On June 10, Germany’s high command issued a supersecret order confirming the invasion for June 22, at 3:30 a.m. It stipulated that “June 18 is the latest for a possible delay,” and that a signal would be issued on June 21 at 13:00 hours—either “Dortmund” (attack on) or “Alton” (attack delayed).³¹³ On June 11, NKGB intelligence chief Fitin reported from a source in Helsinki to Merkulov that, at a meeting of the Finnish government two days earlier, Finnish president Risto Ryti had said that Germany was forcing him to order a partial mobilization, but that “the question of whether or not there will be a war between Germany and the USSR would be answered June 24. Maybe there will be no war, since Hitler and Ribbentrop are against a war with the USSR, but the German generals and general staff desire it.”³¹⁴ On June 12, Tupikov (“Arnold”), in Berlin, based on information from Scheliha (“Aryan”), told Moscow military intelligence that the invasion would occur “June 15–20.”³¹⁵

German mapping for the bombing campaign intensified. “Violations of Soviet borders by German planes are not accidental, as confirmed by the direction and depth of the flights above our territory,” Beria wrote to Stalin on June 12. “In a few instances they had penetrated 60 miles or more and in the direction of military installations and large troop concentrations.”³¹⁶ In parallel, the Luftwaffe began moving its attack planes to frontier aerodromes in occupied Poland, a massive concentration of fighters that could not be missed—they were jammed into a very narrow space, right up against the Soviet frontier, which would make them highly vulnerable unless they were about to go into combat.³¹⁷ That same day, Berlings (“Peter”) reported to the Ribbentrop bureau that Ivan Filippov—nominally the TASS correspondent in Berlin, and the go-between who had introduced Berlings to Amayak Kobulov—had been ordered “to clarify whether or not Germany is actively pursuing peace negotiations with England and whether or not to expect an attempt in the longer term to secure a compromise with the United States.” Filippov was also now directed to convey the impression that “we are convinced it is indeed possible to maintain our peace policy. There is still time.”^{318, 319}

Stalin tried to seize the initiative, composing a TASS bulletin, read out over Moscow radio at 6:00 p.m. on June 13 and published in Soviet newspapers the next morning. The impetus appears to have been the intensified speculation of a German-Soviet war that accompanied Cripps’s recall to London. In issuing the bulletin, Stalin was effectively following the suggestion Schulenburg had made to Dekanozov that the Soviet leader write to Hitler, but the despot decided on the form of an open letter. “Germany is also, just as consistently as the USSR, observing the terms of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact,” it stated. “In view of this, according to Soviet circles, rumors of Germany’s intent to break the Pact and to attack the USSR are utterly groundless.” Stalin aimed not only to refute the rumors of war, again blaming them on British provocations to cause that very war, but also to elicit a German denial of any intentions to attack—or, failing that, a German presentation of its anticipated demands, which the rumors said the USSR had already received and rejected, bringing the countries to imminent military confrontation. “Germany,” the bulletin noted, “has not presented any demands to the USSR and did not propose any new, even closer agreement, in view of which negotiations on this subject cannot be taking place.”³²⁰

Nazi foreign ministry officials had already instructed the management of the Schloss Bellevue, where Molotov had stayed during his Berlin visit, to prepare for Soviet dignitaries in the near future, while the Anhalter Station had been closed to the public at the beginning of June so it could be outfitted with a large electric red star and Soviet banners. Staff were told not to mention anything, prompting gossip. Rumors absolutely engulfed Berlin that Stalin would arrive at any moment by armored train, or that he and Hitler would meet at the border, or that Hitler was secretly discussing the scope of Germany’s imminent demands. One German woman recorded in her diary that her milkman had assured her that hundreds of women were sewing Soviet flags.³²¹ Some people assumed that the TASS announcement had been published with German agreement.³²²

The foreign affairs commissariat had handed the text to Schulenburg, who relayed it to Berlin.³²³ But the German press did not publish it. The press secretary of the German foreign ministry, on June 14, refused to comment on it, despite insistent questioning by foreign journalists.³²⁴

At the very moment of Stalin’s gambit, Hitler was holding a massive war conference (June 14) in the Parliament Chamber of the Old Reich Chancellery, with reports by all commanders of army, naval, and air force groups on their Barbarossa preparations. The number of invited attendees was so large that they were directed to arrive at different times and use different entrances. “After luncheon,” General Halder wrote in his diary, “the Führer delivers a lengthy political address, in which he explains the reasons for his intention to attack Russia and evolves his calculation that Russia’s collapse would induce England to give in.”³²⁵

The Germans knew, of course, that the Soviets had been calling up reserves, moving forces to the frontier, furiously building border defenses, and stepping up patriotic propaganda.³²⁶ The Wehrmacht’s main worry was that, given its absurdly dense concentration of forces and weaponry smack up against the Soviet frontier, the Red Army could inflict great damage by striking preemptively—or, what might be worse, adjust their forward defense posture and move their own extremely vulnerable troops back away from the frontier, removing the danger of being wiped out in a lightning strike and preserving themselves for the counterstrike. Back on June 13, Timoshenko, in Zhukov’s presence, had phoned Stalin to request authorization to have frontline Red Army troops brought to a war footing. The despot refused, citing the forthcoming TASS bulletin, but the text baffled many Soviet military men, especially those in the field.³²⁷ Stalin did allow the general staff to order the western military districts to begin moving divisions of the second echelon, under the pretext of military exercises, up to within twelve to fifty miles of the frontier by July 1. This was suicidal.³²⁸

“The Führer estimates that the operation will take four months. I reckon on fewer,” Goebbels wrote in his diary (June 16), after yet another audience. “Bolshevism will collapse like a house of cards. We face victories unequaled in human history. We must act. Moscow intends to keep out of the war until Europe is exhausted and bled white. Then Stalin will move in and Bolshevize Europe and impose his own rule. We shall upset his calculations with one stroke. . . . The alliance with Bolshevism was always a blemish on our honor. Now it will be washed away. . . . The TASS denial, in the Führer’s opinion, is little more than a product of Stalin’s fear. Stalin is trembling at what is to come.”³²⁹

DOOM CLOSES IN

Golikov, of Soviet military intelligence, reported the accelerated German buildup in April, May, and June, from 70 to an estimated 110-plus divisions.³³⁰ Japanese intelligence refused to believe that Hitler had the temerity to attempt to conquer the Soviet Union, an attempt that the Japanese shrank from after being defeated at the Halha River by superior Soviet weaponry and tactics.³³¹ British officials had unique, unimpeachable intelligence, yet they were exceedingly slow to understand that Hitler was planning not a campaign of intimidation and blackmail but an all-out invasion.³³² Back on May 31, 1941, the British Code and Cipher School had reviewed the data gleaned from the Enigma intercepts and—finally—concluded that the rail movements eastward involved more than a bluff. But the war office and the foreign office did not rule out a last-second, one-sided deal between Germany and the USSR (the apparent lack of German-Soviet negotiations in Moscow, they speculated, must have meant they were taking place in Berlin, so that Stalin could conceal them from his own officials). On June 7, Enigma delivered the Luftwaffe’s order of battle for the USSR: this meant war was certain, and the experts judged that Poland and East Prussia were the principal staging grounds.³³³ “From every source at my disposal, including some most trustworthy, it looks as if a vast German onslaught on Russia was imminent,” Churchill wrote to Roosevelt (June 14).³³⁴ The NKGB obtained a copy.³³⁵

British officials, however, did not relinquish the idea of an ultimatum that would allow Hitler to win without fighting, though there was debate about whether Stalin would make the necessary concessions, whatever they might be.³³⁶ The British could afford to be wrong; Stalin could not. June 15, a date for the onset of war mentioned by Scheliha (“Aryan”) from Berlin, and Sorge (“Ramsay”) from Tokyo, among others, passed without hostilities. That day, Ribbentrop instructed his ambassadors in the capitals of Germany’s allies—Rome, Budapest, Tokyo—to inform the governments there that Germany intended “to introduce complete clarity in German-Russian relations at the latest at the beginning of July and in this regard to put forth certain demands.” The directive went straight to Stalin.³³⁷ Also that day, Sorge composed a message (transmitted two days later) that “a German courier told the military attaché that he is convinced that the war against the USSR is delayed, probably, until the end of June. The military attaché does not know whether there will be war or not.”³³⁸

From Berlin on June 16, Tupikov (“Arnold”), of military intelligence, transmitted the latest message from the Soviet Union’s best spy, “Aryan,” reporting that in Germany’s high command, people were now talking of “June 22–25.”^{339, 340} Also on June 16, the NKGB’s Amayak Kobulov (“Zakhar”), in Berlin, again reported that “Elder” had relayed that “all military measures by Germany in preparation for an invasion of the USSR have been utterly completed, and that the strike can be expected at any moment.” “Elder” did not mention an ultimatum (his report five days earlier had still suggested it as a possibility).

Details on the imminent attack specified that German planes would in the first instance bomb Moscow factories producing parts for airplanes—but these, as Stalin knew, were beyond the range of German aircraft. The report added that “in air ministry circles the TASS communiqué of June 6 [sic] was being treated very ironically. They stress that the declaration can have no significance whatsoever.” And it stated that “in the economics ministry they say that at a meeting of managers designated for ‘occupied territories of the USSR,’ [Alfred] Rosenberg also spoke, and declared that ‘the concept of the “Soviet Union” should be wiped from the geographical map.’” Fitin sent a summary to Merkulov. “Late on the night of June 16–17 the commissar called me at my office,” Fitin would recall, “and said that at 1:00 p.m. he and I had been summoned to see I. V. Stalin.”

In the Little Corner, Stalin did not invite them to sit. Fitin noticed a pile of intelligence reports on the felt table, with his latest on top. As he reported, the despot paced the office. Then, complaining intemperately of disinformation in the reports of imminence of war, Stalin ordered that they go back and recheck all the messages from “Corsican” and “Elder.”³⁴¹ “Despite our deep knowledge and firm intention to defend our point of view on the material received by the intelligence directorate, we were in an agitated state,” Fitin would later recall. “This was the Leader of the party and country with unimpeachable authority. And it could happen that something did not please Stalin or he saw an oversight on our part and any one of us could end up in a very unenviable situation.”³⁴² Stalin’s displeasure was indeed severe. “To Comrade Merkulov,” he wrote in bright green pencil across the commissar’s cover note accompanying Fitin’s report, “you can send your ‘source’ from German aviation HQ to his fucking mother. This is not a ‘source’ but a disinformationist.”³⁴³

• • •

WHEN CRIPPS HAD LEFT MOSCOW FOR LONDON, Nazi officials feared the worst: a trip to finalize details of a British-Soviet agreement.³⁴⁴ Germany’s anxieties testify to the potential of this option, which Stalin never pursued. Cripps, for his part, at a June 16 British cabinet meeting, was still expecting the German ultimatum to the USSR, which had never been part of Hitler’s intent.³⁴⁵ Once apprised of the secret Enigma intelligence, however, Cripps changed his mind and lunched with the Soviet envoy. “Hitler cannot embark on the final and decisive attack against Britain before the potential threat to Germany from the East is eliminated,” Maisky wrote of their conversation in his diary (June 18). “The Red Army is a powerful force, and by 1942, when all the shortcomings revealed by the Finnish campaign have been eradicated, it will be too late for the Germans to attack the Soviet Union. . . . Cripps is certain that [Hitler] will strike. Moreover, Cripps is in possession of absolutely reliable information that these are Hitler’s plans. . . . The members of the British Government with whom Cripps has spoken think that before an attack against the USSR, Hitler would present us with an ultimatum. Cripps does not share these views. Hitler will simply fall on us without warning, because he is not interested in this or that amount of food or raw materials which he can receive from the USSR, but in the complete destruction of the country and the annihilation of the Red Army.”³⁴⁶

On June 18, General Köstring, knowing Hitler’s eagerness to learn of any Soviet general mobilization (which could serve as a convenient pretext), nonetheless reaffirmed to Berlin the truth: the Soviet Union remained calm.³⁴⁷ Stalin saw the world in the darkest hues, as shaped by unseen sinister forces, with enemies lurking everywhere and no one’s motives to be trusted. But in what was by far the grandest challenge of his life, his pathological suspiciousness undermined him. In the machinations during 1941, he perceived two games: a British effort to entangle him in a war with Hitler and a German effort to intimidate and blackmail him. Neither was the game that was actually on. Ironically, the extensive penetration of Germany by dedicated antifascist agents became another weapon in Nazi hands, thanks to astute German disinformation and Stalin’s credulousness. Of course, the despot was far from alone in his misperceptions. But here was the greatest irony of all: even if he had been able to find the signal in the noise, it might not have done him much good. Stalin had allowed the Germans to see firsthand that he had forced into existence an army of colossal size, loaded with modern weaponry. But the Red Army’s forward defense posture, the core of Soviet military doctrine, which both Stalin and the high command fully shared, meant that deep German penetration was a foregone conclusion. That deadly vulnerability would have held even in the event of a preemptive Soviet strike.³⁴⁸ For all that, however, into the third week of June, Stalin had one option left—and it worried Hitler.