Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941

238. Ehrenburg, Post-War Years, 276–8; Fischer, Life and Death of Stalin, 56; Phillips, Between the Revolution and the West, 166–7.

239. The rumor had been that Litvinov would be tried as a British-U.S. spy. Vaksberg, Alexandra Kollontai, 407; Gnedin, Katastrofa i votoroe rozhdenie, 148–51; Vaksberg, Hôtel Lux, 154–7.

240. Artizov et al., Reabilitatsiia: kak eto bylo, II: 499 (Beria’s Aug. 1953 interrogation).

241. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 121 (Nov. 7, 1939).

242. Cripps had continued to try to see Molotov and had finally done so on Aug. 7, 1940. But when Cripps had broached the possibility of a British-Soviet nonaggression pact, Molotov made no direct reply. Internally, Cripps continued to urge his own government to recognize Soviet annexations of the Baltic states. Gorodetsky, Stafford Cripps in Moscow, 74–90.

243. Churchill, Second World War, I: 353 (Oct. 1, 1939).

244. Halifax wrote to A. V. Alexander, the First Sea Lord at this time: “If there were reason to think that immediate recognition would cause an appreciable change in Soviet policy towards us, I might have felt inclined to recommend a derogation in this case from the general principle that political changes produced during this war and as a consequence of the war situation should not be recognized pending the final peace settlement.” Hanak, “Sir Stafford Cripps,” 65.

245. Hanak, “Sir Stafford Cripps,” 66 (citing TNA, FO 371/29464 1604: Oct. 22, 1940). “I think we have managed to avoid losing this war,” confided Harold Nicolson in a private letter of Nov. 8, 1940. “But when I think how on earth we are going to win it, my imagination quails.” Overy, Battle of Britain, 113, citing Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 126 (to Vita Sackville).

246. Woodward, British Foreign Policy, I: 492–4.

247. Solodovnikov, “My byli molodye togda,” 209. Solodovnikov deemed the Bolshoi’s Yakov Leontyev, who served as impresario at the banquets in the St. George’s Hall for the Ten-Days, “a person of tremendous charm, with vast experience, deeply cultured” (207–8).

248. Osborn, Operation Pike, 210 (citing Cripps to Distribution B, nos. 985 and 986, Nov. 12, 1940, N7165/40/38 and N7166/40/38, FO 371/24848); Woodward, British Foreign Policy, I: 495–6; Hanak, “Sir Stafford Cripps,” 66.

249. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 329. Berezhkov recalled Amayak Kobulov as “the exact opposite of Bogdan, a repulsive, short, fat, and creepy character. Amayak—a tall, slim, handsome Caucasian, sprouting a well-trimmed little mustache and a shock of black hair, urbane, even charming—was the life of any party.” Berezhkov, At Stalin’s Side, 196.

250. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 338–9, 420–1.

251. Beria wrote: “I heard that the leadership of intelligence is dissatisfied with Zakhar’s work and has simply washed its hands of him. Perhaps one should not pay attention to this chatter, but when it concerns responsible comrades with whom I personally maintain contact, such corridor conversations must not take place.” Primakov, Ocherki, III: 444.

252. Berlings first appeared in Soviet files in Aug. 1940, when Kobulov reported that through the Soviet intelligence operative posing as the TASS correspondent, Ivan Filippov (“the Philosopher”), he had met a young journalist for a Latvian newspaper and proposed paying him a retainer in German marks for secret information. Fitin warned Kobulov that because Berlings had yet to be verified, “we suggest you show reasonable caution in working with him and on no account put him into contact with any operatives of the station.” But Kobulov could bypass Fitin and report straight to Merkulov. Vishlev, “Pochemu zhe,” 74 (citing Bundesarchiw, Abt. Potsdam: Film 14467, Bl. 25091 ff.); Vishlev, Nakanune, 49 (PA AA Bonn: Dienstelle Ribbentrop. UdSSSR-RC, 7/1 (R27168, Bl. 25899–25902), 132. The SS officer Rudolf Likus, who was detailed to the Ribbentrop bureau, recruited and handled Berlings. In 1947, the Soviets would discover as a result of interrogations of the Gestapo officer Siegfried Müller that Berlings had been a plant, passing information that had been reviewed and approved by Hitler personally. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 441–51. See also Roewer, Die Rote Kapelle, 62.

253. Zamoiskii and Nezhnikov, “U rokovoi cherty.”

254. Barros and Gregor, Double Deception, 9 (citing German Foreign Ministry Archives, Rudolf Likus, Confidential Report, November 22, 1940, microfilm T120, serial 36, frames 25933, 25938–9).

255. Stephan, Soviet Far East, 235.

256. Filippov, Zapiski, 142.

257. Schellenberg, Labyrinth, 137–8. Schellenberg—Heinrich Himmler’s personal aide (1939–1942)—was responsible for security and total surveillance over Molotov’s entourage during the Berlin visit.

258. Flannery, Assignment to Berlin, 37.

259. Schmidt, Statist, chapter 21.

260. Berezhkov, At Stalin’s Side, 45.

261. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 356–61 at 357 (APRF, f. 3, op. 64, d. 675, l. 21–30); DGFP, series D, XI: 533–41.

262. DGFP, series D, XI: 541–9; Schmidt, Hitler’s Interpreter, 210–1. Schmidt did not speak Russian; he served as notetaker. Before meeting Molotov, recalled another confidant of the Führer, “Hitler totally underestimated him, declaring that he was a cipher, a typical bureaucrat.” Baur, Hitler’s Pilot, 122. The Germans had offered to send Hitler’s Condor to pick up Molotov, but the Soviets said their delegation was too large; they took the train.

263. Vasilevskii, Delo vsei zhizni, 108–9 (citing Molotov aide I. I. Lapshov).

264. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 226–34 (at 232), and DVP SSSR, XXIII/ii: 30–2 (APRF f. 56, op. 1, d. 1161, l. 147–55); Naumov, 1941 god, I: 361–6 (at 365) (APRF, f. 3, op. 64, d. 675, l. 31–41). See also Schmidt, Statist, 520–1.

265. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 224–5; Naumov, 1941 god, I: 356–61 (APRF, f. 3, op. 64, d. 675, l. 21–30); the German record has also been translated into Russian: Fel’shtinskii, Oglasheniiu podlezhit, 251–301. See also Schmidt, Statist, 517–26; Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 15.

266. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 384–5 (Politisches Archiv des Auswärtiges Amtes. Bonn, Bestand Dienstelle Ribbentrop, R 27168, bl. 25933, 25934, 25940); Lota, “Alta” protiv “Barbarossy,” 235 (no citation).

267. Berlings would pass on a supposed internal German assessment of Molotov’s visit to Berlin as marking the onset of “a new era.” Primakov, Ocherki, IV: 447–8 (interrogation of Müller).

268. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 369 (AVPRF, f. 59, op. 1, p. 338, d. 2314, l. 11–8). See also Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 323. On Nov. 12, Molotov had sent Stalin a brief cable after his first meeting with Ribbentrop, a two-hour-plus affair. Stalin replied with a correction of one of Molotov’s formulations. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 366–7 (AVPRF, f. 59, op. 1, p. 338, d. 2314, l. 5–6, 7–9).

269. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 384 (AVPRF, f. 059, op. 1, p. 338, d. 2314, l. 36). Molotov’s talks with Göring: Naumov, 1941 god, I: 370–3 (APRF, f. 3, op. 64, d. 675, l. 84–92). Ribbentrop and Himmler were present when Göring received Molotov.

270. Eberle and Uhl, Hitler Book, 36–7.

271. Ullrich, Hitler: Ascent, 386. “I was expecting a thundering Jove in his castle and what I got was a simple, gentle, possibly shy man in his country home,” French ambassador Coulondre wrote of Hitler. “I had heard the rough, screaming, threatening, and demanding voice of the Führer on the radio. Now I became acquainted with a Hitler who had a warm, calm, friendly and understanding voice. Which one is the true Hitler? Or are they both true?”

272. In response to Molotov’s cable after the first meeting with Ribbentrop, Vyshinsky had called the Berlin embassy to read a message for Molotov correcting him—eliciting a Molotov apology—for having implied that the 1939 Pact had ceased to be in force [“ischerpan”]. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 367 (AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, p. 339. D. 2315, l. 16–7).

273. Schmidt, Hitler’s Interpreter, 217.

274. Fröhlich, Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, VIII: 417–8 (Nov. 14, 1940).

275. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 234–47; Naumov, 1941 god, I: 375–83 (APRF, f. 3, op. 64, d. 675, l. 49–57); DGFP, series D, XI: 550-62. Berezhkov writes: “Perhaps more important—and Molotov informed Stalin about this—Hitler was prepared to meet him face-to-face.” Berezhkov, At Stalin’s Side, 48.

276. Schmidt, Hitler’s Interpreter, 219; Time, Nov. 20, 1940; TASS (Nov. 13, 1940), printed in Izvestiia, Nov. 14, 1940, and reprinted in Naumov, 1941 god, I: 392–3.

277. Waddington, “Ribbentrop and the Soviet Union,” 21–2.

278. DGFP, series D, XI: 533–41; Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 247–54.

279. Berezhkov, S diplomaticheskoi missiei, 48; Berezhkov, At Stalin’s Side, 44–9. The line does not appear in the official record made by Pavlov: Naumov, 1941 god, I: 385–92 (APRF, f. 3, op. 64, d. 675, l. 68–83, 92–3). British air raids deliberately coincided with Molotov’s visit to Berlin. Churchill, Second World War, II: 586. “How did he put up with you telling him all this?” Molotov recalled Stalin asking of his dealings with Hitler. Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 17.

280. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 394 (AVPRF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 339, d. 2315, l. 38–9), 393–4 (pap. 33, d. 2314, l. 41–4).

281. Pravda, Nov. 15, 1940; Degras, Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy, III: 476–7.

282. Pravda, Nov. 13, 14, 15, and 16, 1939. See also Werth, Russia at War, 106–9.

283. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 384–5 (Politisches Archiv des Auswärtiges Amtes. Bonn, Bestand Dienstelle Ribbentrop, R 27168, bl. 25933, 25934, 25940); Lota, “Alta” protiv “Barbarossy,” 235.

284. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 508 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24119, d. 3, l. 6–7: Jan. 4, 1941); Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 125.

285. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 398 (AVPRF, f. 82, op. 23, p. 95, d. 6, l. 141–2).

286. Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 324. Hitler’s interpreter would note that “just as the march into Prague on March 15, 1939, signified the decisive turn in the break with the West, so the outbreak of the fateful clash with the East . . . had its prelude in the November 1940 encounter between Hitler and Molotov in Berlin.” Schmidt, Statist, 515; Schmidt, Hitler’s Interpreter, 209.

287. The 1982 recollections of Yakov Chadayev have Molotov reporting on his Berlin trip at a meeting of the politburo on Nov. 14—but Molotov had not yet arrived back in Moscow. Chadayev’s recollections, moreover, have Stalin understanding at this point that the Pact had become worthless, a conclusion that does not comport in the least with Stalin’s actions. Kumanev, Riadom so Stalinym, 399–406 (Chadayev); Sipols, Tainy, 274–5. Molotov first appears again in Stalin’s office logbook on Nov. 18, alone, for a mere thirty minutes. Na prieme, 317–8.

288. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 395–6 (AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, p. 326, d. 2239, l. 113–4). Molotov also denied any agreement had been signed in Berlin.

289. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 76 (citing AMVnR, p. 42, op. 1sh, pop. 315, l. 34: Stamenov, Nov. 16, 1940).

290. News Chronicle, Nov. 16, 1940; The Times, Nov. 18, 1940; Hanak, “Sir Stafford Cripps,” 67n3; Gorodetsky, Mission to Moscow, 83.

291. Simonov, “Zametki k biografii G. K. Zhukova,” 49. See also Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/i: 64, 67.

292. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 357–8 .

293. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 77–8, citing DGFP, XI: 606–10, 652n2 (Nov. 19, 1940), 653–4 (Nov. 18); Filov, Dnevnik, 199.

294. Bartlett, “Embodiment of Myth”; Bartlett, Wagner and Russia, 227, 259–57, 271–2, 288–9. “Even now I can still hear the bewilderment with which Sergei Mikhailovich responded to my telephone call when, without any diplomatic ‘approaches,’ I asked him to stage Wagner’s ‘Walküre’ at the Bolshoi Theatre,” recalled the head of the Bolshoi (Samuil Samosud). “Wagner?!” Eisenstein told him. “But I’ve never put on any opera before . . . let alone Wagner.” Iurenev, Eizenshtein v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov, 310; Eizenshtein, “Tvorcheskaia vstrecha s Vagnerom,” 8. During the Wagner rehearsals, in Oct. 1940, Eisenstein had been appointed director of Mosfilm, the country’s leading studio.

295. It would, however, enjoy a mere six performances. For contrasting assessments, see Kuznetsov, “‘Val’kiriia’ Vagnera v Bol’shom Teatre SSSR,” 76–9; and Iurenev, Eizenshtein v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov, 311 (Sergei Prokofyev).

296. Eizenshtein, “Pered prem’eroi ‘Val’kirii,’” 3.3. On Wagner, see also “Voploshchenie mifa” [Oct. 1940], in Eizenshtein, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, Iskusstvo, 1964–71, IV: 23–4.

297. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 80–1 (citing AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 331, d. 2272, l. 167–8: Sobolev to Molotov, Nov. 25, 1940).

298. Na prieme, 319.

299. Dallin and Firsov, Dimitrov and Stalin, 126–34.

300. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 136; Lebedeva and Narinskii, Komintern i vtoraia mirovaia voina, 454; Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 81–2 (citing AMVnR, PREII/i/3 pap. 1, op. 2sh, pop. 1, l. 19: anonymous pamphlet, Nov. 27, 1940).

301. DVP SSSR, XXXIII/ii: 135–7.

302. Berezhkov, At Stalin’s Side, 50–1.

303. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 415–8 (APRF, f. 3, op. 64, d. 675, l. 108–14); Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 217–59; DGFP, XI: 714–5, 1124–5; DVP SSSR, XXIII/ii: 136–7 (APRF, f. 3, op. 64, d. 675, l. 108–16); McMurry, Deutschland und die Sowjetunion, 296; Degras, Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy, III: 477–8.

304. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 79–81 (citing AMVnR, d. 40, p. 34, op. 1sh, pop. 272, l. 246, 248: Stamenov, Nov. 26, 1940; l. 246: AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 331, d. 2272, l. 167–8: Sobolev to Molotov, Nov. 25, 1940).

305. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 139. “Consul General in Prague Kulikov came to see me,” Dimitrov also wrote in his diary (Nov. 27). “The Bat’a, Škoda, and other plants are working at full capacity for the German army. In the environs of Prague an enormous aviation factory is being built, which is to produce up to a thousand aircraft a month.” Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 138.

306. Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, 342.

307. Halder, Halder Diaries, I: 669–71 (Nov. 1, 1940); Halder, Kriegstagebuch, II: 157–9.

308. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 69–72.

309. Engel, Heeresadjutant bei Hitler, 91 (Nov. 15, 1940), 89–90 (Nov. 4, 1940).

310. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, III: 442.

311. Engel, Heeresadjutant bei Hitler, 91 (November 15, 1940).

312. Fabry, Die Sowjetunion und das Dritte Reich, 243.

313. For Göring’s objections to an attack on the Soviet Union (at least in Nov. 1940) on economic grounds, see Irving, Hitler’s War, 181–2; Irving, Göring, 307–9. “The Führer is still inclined towards a showdown with Russia. The Commander in Chief, Navy, recommends postponing this until after victory over Britain, since demands on German forces would be too great, and an end to hostilities could not be foreseen.” Fuehrer Conferences, 1940, II: 41 (Nov. 14, 1940). “There are serious doubts as to the advisability of operation ‘Barbarossa’ before the overthrow of Britain” [the Navy’s responsibility]. Fuehrer Conferences, II: 70–1 (Dec. 27, 1940).

314. Halder, Halder Diaries, I: 691–3 (Nov. 16, 1940); Halder, Kriegstagebuch, II: 182–3. Similar sentiments remained in the foreign ministry (Weizsäcker noted to himself on Nov. 28, “War against Russia is impossible as long as we are busy with England, and afterward it will be unnecessary”). Hill, Die Weizsäcker-Papiere, 227. See also ibid., 226 (Nov. 17, 1940).

315. Halder, Kriegstagebuch, II: 184–8 (Nov. 18, 1940).

316. DGFP, series D, XI: 606–10 (Nov. 19, 1940), 63–43 (Nov. 20). Ciano would observe that “I will immediately state that after Molotov’s visit we speak very little of Russia, and in a somewhat different tone than that used by Ribbentrop during my recent visit. . . . Russia is once again a country not to be trusted.” Van Crefeld, Hitler’s Strategy, 213n74 (citing Ciano, L’Europa verso la catastrofe, 616).

317. Schramm, Kriegstagebuch der Oberkommando, I: 179.

318. DGFP, series D, XI: 632–6 (Nov. 26, 1940).

319. Van Crefeld, Hitler’s Strategy, 82. Martin Bormann would later state that, in Feb. 1945, Hitler had told him, “my decision was made immediately after the departure of Molotov . . . I decided . . . to settle accounts with the Russians.” Trevor-Roper, Le Testament politique de Hitler, 95–6.

320. The Soviet Union’s modern technology was highly concentrated in just a few sectors. The railways remained steam-powered, not incorporating electricity on a mass scale, and the construction industry still used bricks and timber, not reinforced concrete. Above all, Soviet factories had far more workers, and lower productivity per worker, than their American or German prototypes, suffering from gigantomania and the lack of legal market mechanisms. The Soviets failed to exercise their option to purchase the Ford Co.’s V-8 engine, and Soviet trucks (the GAZ model) remained relatively primitive. Lewis, “Technology and the Transformation of the Soviet Economy,” 190. The number of women working outside the home between 1928 and 1940 increased from 2.8 million to 13.2 million and constituted 39 percent of the labor force in 1940. Drobizhev, Industrializatsiia i izmeneniia, 4–5. Nearly 20 million peasants had relocated to towns and industrial construction sites over the past decade.

321. Ganson, “Food Supply, Rationing and Living Standards,” 70.

322. Nekrich, Pariahs, 203; Weinberg, World at Arms, 201. Stalin again was privy to the German strategy in bilateral economic negotiations, thanks to Gerhard Kegel (“X”). Naumov, 1941 god, I: 334–9 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 437, l. 1–12: Nov. 2, 1940).

323. Iakovlev, Tsel’ zhizni (6th ed.), 179, 188; Berezhkov, At Stalin’s Side, 75–106. See also Sobolev and Khazanov, Nemetskii sled. Goring had again interceded to get Krupp to treat contracts with the Soviet Union as equivalent to those with the German military and to accelerate a Soviet deal for six battleship turrets and 38-cm guns, giving the impression that the overall bilateral relationship could be salvaged. Von Strandmann, “Appeasement and Counter-Appeasement,” 168–9 (citing HA Krupp, WA 40, B 381, October 4, 1940; WA 4, 2925, Oct. 8, 1940, Nov. 31, 1940).

324. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 374–5 (AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, p. 339, d. 2315, l. 35, 35 a, 36, 38, 39).

325. This was a far cry from Ribbentrop’s statement in the Pact negotiations that Germany was “politically disinterested” in southeastern Europe. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 155–63. See also Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence, 298–9. It must be said that by 1940, some in the Nazi regime feared that the Soviets could not be contained in the role of junior partner because of their leverage in being the key repository of raw materials. Halder, Kriegstagebuch, II: 20–14.

326. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 252–4; DGFP, series D, XI: 562–70. Hitler appears not to have informed Ribbentrop about his intentions at this point. Ribbentrop, Memoirs, 151–2; Waddington, “Ribbentrop and the Soviet Union,” 25–6.

327. “Two things became clear in the discussions: 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.” Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 324.

328. Der Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher, XXXIV: 469 (Hitler. Jan. 20, 1941); Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, 343. In 1940, Greater Germany produced only a quarter of the oil it consumed. By mid-1941, Germany’s oil resources would total 10 million tons; of these, 500,000 were produced by Germany proper, 800,000 by countries occupied by Germany, and 8.7 million tons by Germany’s allies, primarily Romania.

329. Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, 332. Jold evidently told Wehrmacht High Command planners on Dec. 5, 1940, following a “Führer Conference”: “The Führer is determined to carry through this operation in the East since the Army will never again be as strong as it is at this moment and Soviet Russia has recently given one more proof that she will always, whenever possible, stand in Germany’s path.” Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters, 137.

330. Ribbentrop, Memoirs, 152.

331. Trial of the Major War Criminals, X: 291, 314–5 (Ribbentrop).

332. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 80–1.

333. Nekrich, Pariahs, 229–30 (citing RGASPI, f. 77, op. 1, d. 913, l. 62, 65–6, l. 119). See also Nekrich, “Dynamism of the Past,” 232–3.

334. Mueller-Hildebrand, Sukhoputnaia armiia Germanii, 596 (Nov. 15, 1940). Reports of heavy German troop concentrations in Romania as of Nov. 1940 turned out to be fictitious, possibly part of a disinformation campaign. The actual stationing order was issued only on Dec. 13, 1940. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 492–4 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 9181, d. 6, l. 17–9).

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

336. Gor’kov, Kreml’, 30–5.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

345. Abelshauser, “Germany,” 138.

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

CHAPTER 14. FEAR

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

2. Weinberg, Hitler’s Table Talk, 9.

3. Chuev, Sto sorok, 28–9.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

16. Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence, 46–52.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

33. Sipols, Tainy, 395.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

52. Tooze, Wages of Destruction.

53. Miller, Bankrupting the Enemy.

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

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

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

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

58. Hillgruber, Hitlers Stategie, 192–397.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

71. Pavlov, Tragediia Sovetskoi razvedki, 353.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

83. Shakhurin, Krylia pobedy, 98–100.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

98. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 770.

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

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

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

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

103. Friedlander, Prelude, 199.

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

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

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

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

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

109. Lota, Sekretnyi front, 129.

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

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

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

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

114. One account claims Golikov met with the despot only twice following his appointment in July 1940. Lota, Sekretnyi front, 6, 46–7. Stalin’s office logbook lists five meetings, the last on April 11, 1941. Na prieme, 595. “It is quite true that Golikov was a misinformer—but that is not the point,” Gnedich, who delivered Golikov’s reports to Stalin, would recall. “All the ‘reliable’ parts of Golikov’s regular reports appeared in one form or another in the official press. Stalin, however, on principle, was interested in anything deemed by Golikov as ‘doubtful.’” Erickson, “Threat Identification,” 377 (citing a photostatic copy of the transcript of the discussion in the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, 1966, with Gnedich’s reminiscences); Petrov, “June 22, 1941,” 257; “Sovetskie organy gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti v gody Velikoi otechestvennoi voiny,” 27. In 1965, the historian Viktor Anfilov asked Golikov in the archives about his March 20, 1941, report. Golikov responded: “Did you know Stalin?” Anfilov: “I saw him up on the mausoleum when I stood in the parade columns.” Golikov: “Well, I was subordinated to him, I reported to him and was afraid of him. He had formed the opinion that as long as Germany had not finished its war with England it would not attack us. Knowing his character, we constructed our conclusions to conform to his point of view.” Anfilov, Doroga k tragedii, 193; Naumov, 1941 god, I: 42–3. According to Novobranets, Golikov issued imprecise orders; then later, if something went wrong, he would say, “I did not give such a directive,” or “You misunderstood me.” “We did not respect him.” Novobranets, “Nakanune voiny,” 172.

115. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 776–80 (TsAMO, op. 14750, d. 1, l. 12–21: March 20, 1941); Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 568–71; Lota, Sekretnyi front, 178–84 (citing TsAMO, op. 14750, d. 1, l. 12–21). “ABC” reported (March 26, 1941) that he had spoken with an adviser in the German embassy in Romania, who claimed Mihai “Antonsecu told me that his grandfather—the head of state, [Ion] Antonescu—already in January had a meeting with Hitler supposedly devoted by Hitler himself to plans for a war between Germany and the USSR, and that a detailed conversation about this subject also took place during a meeting between Antonescu and Göring in Vienna.” Mihai considered the month of May to be “critical.” Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 573–4 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24119, d. 1, l. 468–9).

116. Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 61–2 (TsA FSK); “Iz istorii Velikoi otechestvennoi voiny,” 207. Also on March 24, “Yeshenko” reported further information from “ABC” about a meeting in Vienna where Göring supposedly told Antonescu to coordinate mobilization of the Romanian army with the German army. Naumov, 1941 god, 788–9 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24119, d. 1, l. 452–5). That same day Stalin received Japanese foreign minister Matsuoka (791–3: APRF, f. 45, op. 1, pap. 404, l. 83–8), and Vysheinsky received Schulenburg (793–6: AVP, f. 07, op. 2, pap. 9, d. 22, l. 44–7).

117. Berezhkov, S diplomaticheskoi missiei, 79.

118. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 804 (AVFRF, f. 082, op. 24, pap. 106, d. 8, l. 307). According to a Moscow NKGB summary of a report from Berlin sent by Kobulov on April 2, 1941, “Elder” met with “Corsican,” telling him “about the complete preparation and working out of a plan for an attack on the Soviet Union by his agency.” “Elder” was conveyed numerous details of German targets, German discussions concerning the involvement of Romania and Finland, and the opinion of German air ministry officers that an attack would take place. “‘Elder’ himself is not completely sure that the action will take place.” Kobulov’s report also included conversations with “Lycée-ist.” Naumov, 1941 god, 13–5 (TsA SVR, d. 23078, t. 1, l. 236–41). On March 31, the NKGB reported that “from December 1940 to the present time the movement of German troops to our borders has strengthened.” “Nakanune voiny (1940–1941 gg.),” 208.

119. Sergeienko, Sinteticheskii kauchuk; Lewis, “Innovation in the USSR”; Sutton, Western Technology, II: vii.

120. The upshot would be a commissariat for rubber. Patolichev, Isptytanie na zrelost’, 84–5; Na prieme, 329. Patolichev had studied at a rabfak, and in 1937 graduated from the newly established Military Academy of Chemical Defense (one of his classmates was Sorge). By Jan. 1939, still only thirty years old, he was named party boss of Yaroslavl province (replacing Shakhurin) and that year earned the Order of Lenin. In 1940, General Khrulyov introduced Patolichev to Stalin—the name clicked: Patolichev’s father, Semyon, had been a friend of Stalin’s and died in the Polish-Soviet War in 1920. The son declined Stalin’s invitation to assume leadership of the Communist Youth League. Patolichev did manage to get a protégé appointed as first secretary of the Communist Youth League in the Karelo-Finish Soviet Socialist Republic formed in March 1940—a young enthusiast by the name of Yuri Andropov (b. 1914), a graduate of the Rybinsk Water Transport School and, like his mentor in Yaroslavl, an orphan.

121. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence, I: 369–70.

122. Stafford, “SOE and British Involvement.” The Soviet role in the coup remains murky. Soviet intelligence had dispatched an NKVD operations group to Belgrade headed by Solomon Milstein and including the ace Vasily Zarubin; they arrived on March 11, 1941. Sudoplatov, Razvedka i kreml’, 136–7. German military intelligence suspected Soviet collusion with Britain in the coup. Vishlev, Nakanune, 25 (PA AA Boon: I. M. Akten betr. Abwehr allgemein, Bd. 12 [R 101997], Bl. Ohne Nummer [April 15, 1941]. Geheim. Aus vertraulicher Quelle. Betr.: Russland-Juogoslavien; betr. Balkan: Politischer Stimmungsbericht; Büro RAM, betr.: Schreiben des V.A.A. beim OKH vom 28.4.41).

123. Churchill, Second World War, III: 144. As in the case of Norway, Britain had helped embroil a neutral country in the war. Unlike Norway, Yugoslavia would be dismembered and descend into civil war. Catherwood, Balkans in World War Two, 157.

124. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 804–5 (TsAMO, op. 7237, d. 2, l. 79–81).

125. This was accompanied by an admission that Barbarossa would be delayed by up to four weeks, which might have happened anyway. DGFP, series D, XII: 372–3; Halder, Kriegstagebuch, II: 248. See alsao Dedijer, “Sur l’armistice.” Erwin Rommel, head of Germany’s Afrika Corps, independently launched a desert offensive on March 31, 1941, unaware of Hitler’s Yugoslavia directive, the pending invasion of Greece, or Barbarossa, from which his successful actions drained resources. Higgins, Hitler and Russia, 104, 108–9; Goerlitz, Paulus and Stalingrad, 30–3; Rommel, Rommel Papers, 119.

126. Germany, Hitler added, could not count on its allies: the Finns were too few, the Romanians “cowardly, corrupt, depraved.” Förster and Mawdsley, “Hitler and Stalin in Perspective,” 72–8; Halder, Kriegstagebuch, II: 335–8 (March 30, 1941); Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters, 160–1.

127. Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 50–1.

128. The discussions, in which Colonel Dragutin Savić and Bozin Simić, of the air force, also took part, had begun on April 2, with Vyshinsky. On April 3, Vyshinsky denied that the Soviets had ever mentioned a political and military pact. Stalin played the role of meliorator to obtain the signing. Barros and Gregor, Double Deception, 68–9 (citing Bakhmeteff Archive, Columbia University, Prince Regent Paul papers, box 14: Gavrilović to the foreign ministry, April 4, 1941). Soviet-Yugoslav relations dated from June 24, 1940.

129. Clissold, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, 121–2.

130. Gavrilov, Voennana razvedka informiruet, 578–9 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24119, d. 4, l. 279–80).

131. Lota, “Alta” protiv “Barbarossy,” 304; Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 581 (no archival citation). “Yeshenko” out of Bucharest also confirmed the pending German invasion of Yugoslavia (581–2: TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24119, d. 1, l. 521–4).

132. Clissold, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, 122–3. Hilger speculated: “Nothing the Russians did between 1939 and 1941 made Hitler more genuinely angry than the treaty with Yugoslavia; nothing contributed more directly to the final break.” Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 326–7.

133. Gavrilović conveyed the gist of the meetings to Cripps and the American envoy Laurence Steinhardt. Gorodetsky, Stafford Cripps in Moscow, 120 (citing FO 371 29544 N1401/1392/38, Cripps’s telegram April 6, cabinet min. April 7); Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 149–51; FRUS, 1941, I: 302 (Steinhardt to Hull, April 6), 311.

134. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 316–20; Fel’shtinskii, SSSR-Germaniia, II: 156; Clissold, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, 123–4.

135. Barros and Gregor, Double Deception, 71 (citing European War 1939/9712, RG 59, NA, file 740.0011: Steinhardt to Sec. of State, no. 703, April 7, 1941; and FO/371/29544: Cripps to Foreign Office, April 6, 1941).

136. This is what Krebs reported from Moscow to Berlin. Teske, General Ernst Köstring, 296. See also Barros and Gregor, Double Deception, 75 (citing National Archives, German foreign ministry archives, microfilm T120, serial 36, frame 26013–14: Rudolf Likus, April 8, 1941; and Dept. of State Special Interrogation Mission, RG 59: interrogation of Gustav Hilger); Erickson, Road to Stalingrad, 74–7 (quoting Gavrilović, no citation); and Narochnitskii, “Sovetsko-iugoslavskii dogovor.” The defensive possibilities of the mountains were mentioned in the Pravda editorial (April 6, 1941). Churchill, too, vastly overestimated the Serbs’ fighting capacity. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence, 369.

137. The NKGB operative Sudoplatov recalled: “We didn’t expect such total and rapid military defeat of Yugoslavia. We were shocked.” Sudoplatov added that Gavrilović, presumed by all and sundry to be a Soviet agent, was not fully trusted by the Soviets; he was seen to be meeting with the British every week. Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 119. Parts of Yugoslavia were annexed by Italy, Bulgaria (Macedonia), Hungary (the Banat), and Germany, which set up a puppet government in Croatia. King Petar fled into exile, making his way to Britain.

138. Vishnevskii, “‘Sami peredem v napadenie,’” 105, 107–8; Nevezhin, “Sobiralsia li Stalin nastupat’,” 81; Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/i: 127–8. Samuilovich pleaded with Dimitrov (April 12) for instructions on how to characterize the German-Yugoslav war. Dimitrov approached Stalin, who allowed that it was a just war against German aggressors, but at the same time the larger “imperialist” nature of the war held. Lebedeva and Narinskii, Komintern i Vtoraia mirovaia voina, 524–6 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 73, d. 99, l. 23).

139. Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece, 132–3. The Nazi invasion of Greece had been planned for April 1, but was briefly delayed because of the coup in Yugoslavia. Disastrously, Britain sent a force to rescue the Greeks in Feb. 1941: the political authorities in London were moved by what they thought Britain’s Near East military commanders desired, while the latter proffered the advice that they thought the politicians in London wanted. Britain’s Balkan commitment of 1941 would become a commitment, in 1945, to defend Greece, while in parallel Britain would abandon Poland, the country for which it had gone to war in the first place. Lawlor, Churchill and the Politics of War, 165–256, 259.

140. Van Creveld, Hitler’s Strategy. On the limited, essentially defensive nature of German aims in Greece, see also Schramm-von Thadden, Griechenland, 143–4. Göring was among those who wanted to finish off Britain by continued bombing and or seizure of Gibraltar and the Suez. Overy, Göring, x.

141. Through most of the 1930s, German and Soviet ciphers remained essentially impregnable to British cryptanalysts, except for what was sent using only low-grade codes (instructions during training exercises, for ex.). The German-manufactured Enigma machine was a system of electro-mechanical rotor ciphers invented by a German engineer, which had been put on the commercial market in the 1920s, but which the German military had progressively made more secure, including going from three to five wheels, making decryption very labor- and resource-consuming. But the Poles reverse-engineered and reconstituted the Enigma, passing a replica to the British. By Aug. 1939, Britain’s code and cipher school had moved to Bletchley Park, to a secluded country house some fifty miles north of London, which was where the Enigma was brought. Finally, in spring 1940, the British broke German naval Enigma communications. The decryption was called “Ultra Secret” or “Ultra.” Hinsley et al., British Intelligence, I: 53–4, 487–95; Hinsley, British Intelligence, Abridged Version, 14–5; Bertrand, Enigma. See also Winterbotham, Ultra Secret, 10–1.

142. Woodward, British Foreign Policy, I: 604; Churchill, Second World War, III: 320–1. On March 30, the JIC concluded that the Enigma evidence indicated a large-scale operation against the Soviet Union “either for intimidation or for actual attack.” Hinsley et al., British Intelligence, I: 451–2 (citing CX/JQ/S/7).

143. Gorodetsky, “Churchill’s Warning”; Gorodetsky, Mission to Moscow, 118–9.

144. “Nakanune voiny (1940–1941 gg.),” 206–7. On March 24, Cripps advised indirect disclosure to Moscow of the coming German-Soviet war via the Turkish or Chinese ambassadors to the Soviet ambassador in London, Maisky, but his proposal was not immediately acted upon.

145. According to the Soviet report, Cripps also stated that if faced with possible U.S. entry into the war on Britain’s side, Germany might seek a peace deal with London involving the restoration of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, in exchange for German capture of the USSR. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 472–3 (TsA FSB).

146. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 155–78. Soviet self-isolation was severe: whereas in 1937, Intourist, the Soviet state travel agency, had handled just 13,000 foreign passport holders who came to the USSR and in 1938, 5,000; in 1939–41 it had 3,000 customers, the majority of them from Germany. Dvornichenko, Nekotorye aspekty funktsionirovaniia industrii turizma, 23; Orlov and Kressova, “Inostrannyi turizm v SSSR,” 163. Zhdanov noted at a meeting at Intourist that wherever foreigners could be expected to congregate, such as hotels and restaurants, “the general course of the Central Committee is not to allow Soviet inhabitants [grazhdan] into these places.” Golubev, “Esli mir obrushitsia na nashu Respubliku,” 80 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 11, l. 1).

147. Gorodetsky, Mission to Moscow, 123 (citing FO 371 29479 N1573/78/38 Cripps to London, April 12, 1941).

148. Cripps was informed by Vyshinsky on April 23 that the message had been passed to Stalin. Gorodetsky, Mission to Moscow, 124 (citing FO 371 29480 N1725/78/38 Cipps to London, April 22, 1941); Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 155–78; Churchill, Second World War, III: 316, 319–23; Woodward, British Foreign Policy, I: 606–7; Zhilin, Kak fashistskaia Germaniia gotovila napadenie, 219.

149. Cripps did write that “at the moment there is no question whatever if the possibility of such a negotiated peace as far as His Majesty’s Government are concerned.” Still, his frustration-filled unauthorized memo contradicted government policy. Woodward, British Foreign Policy, I: 607–9; Gorodetsky, Mission to Moscow, 126–7 (citing FO 371 29465 N1828/3/38); Naumov, 1941 god, II: 91–6 (AVP RF, f. 07, op. 2, pap. 9, d. 20, l. 34–6); Miner, Between Churchill and Stalin, 119–22. The Soviets, by April 26, had a copy of Eden’s telegram to Cripps (sent April 17, received at the British embassy in Moscow the 18th): Primakov, Ocherki, III: 473–5 (TsA FSB, f. 3 os, op. 8, d. 56, l. 903–6). On May 5, the NKGB sent to Stalin, Molotov, and Beria the April 30, 1941, telegrams from Cripps to the foreign office (obtained in London) in which Cripps alluded to Hitler’s likely forthcoming demands on the Soviet Union.

150. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 416–7 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24127, d. 2, l. 198–9: March 11, 1941). Matsuoka’s rivals would have seen his trip as reckless grandstanding at a dangerous moment. Such a trip was facilitated by the Trans-Siberian (otherwise a trip by boat, via the Suez, would have lasted many months).

151. Presseisen, Germany and Japan, 291, citing International Military Tribunal, XXIX: 292–3. Hitler did not inform Japan of the timing of Barbarossa and did not consider Japan’s assistance necessary. He would learn from Ott’s reports, partly based on Sorge’s information, that Japan would not fulfill his wishes of attacking Singapore. Menzel, “German-Japanese Relations,” 57; DGFP, series D, XII: 931–2 (May 18, 1941, 967–70 (June 6).

152. Izvestiia, April 15, 1941; Tisminets, Vneshniaia politika SSSR, IV: 549–51; Chihiro, “Japanese-Soviet Neutrality Pact”; DVP SSSR, XXX/i: 403, XXX/ii: 111–2, 118. Tikhvinskii, “Zakliuchenie sovetsko-iaponskogo pakta o neitralitete”; Slavinskii, Pakt o neitralitete mezdu SSSR i Iaponiei, 91–5; Slavinsky, Japanese-Soviet Neutrality Pact. In the Sino-Soviet nonaggression pact, Moscow had promised not to sign a nonaggression pact with Japan until Sino-Japanese relations were normalized. Ledovskii et al., Russko-kitaiskie otnosheniia, IV: 583 (AVP RF, f. 3, op. 65, d. 355, l. 42).

153. Japan and the USSR had signed a protocol again extending the 1928 fisheries agreement on Jan. 20, 1941, through year’s end, after Japan had made concessions. Izvestiia, Jan. 21, 1941; Tisminets, Vneshniaia politika SSSR IV: 539–42.

154. Matsuoka, according to information Sorge gleaned from German ambassador Ott, sent a telegram to U.S. secretary of state Hull inquiring about improved bilateral relations. He hoped the United States could be persuaded to cease its support for Chiang Kai-shek, and not be drawn into trade to assist Nazi Germany. The same Soviet intelligence report observed that the new German military attaché in Tokyo “is extremely pessimistic and expects open Japanese treachery, and asked to be released from his post.” Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 425 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 5840, d. 7, l. 87). On April 22, 1941, Soviet military intelligence reported to Moscow that the chief of staff of the Kwantung Army (Takahashi) told a group of journalists that “the USSR, acknowledging the might of Japan, concluded a neutrality pact in order to concentrate its forces in the West.” He added that “now Japan’s fundamental task is to conclude the Chinese war.” Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 423 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24127, d. 2, l. 321: April 26, 1941).

155. The diminutive Japanese ambassador to Moscow, Lieutenant General Yoshitsugu Tatekawa, the former head of Japanese military intelligence for the USSR, waved his handkerchief and was heard to say in Russian, “Spasibo, Spasibo (Thank you, thank you).” DGFP, series D, XII: 537; Teske, General Ernst Köstring, 300–1; Sipols, Tainy, 389; Scott, Duel for Europe, 234–7 (an eyewitness); Herwarth, Against Two Evils, 190; Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 198. See also Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, 350–1.

156. Vinogradov et al., Sekrety Gitlera, 31–2 (TsA FSB, f. 3o, op. 8, d. 56, l. 789–91). The full report from Kobulov also stated, based on another source, that Matsuoka had signed the Neutrality Pact on German orders, to win the later time. He concluded that this showed that “not only was Germany intending a march against the USSR, but also is taking all necessary diplomatic measures for it.” Naumov, 1941 god, 82–4 (TsA SVR, d. 23078, t. 1, l. 236–301: April 16).

157. “Yeshenko” wrote of Welkisch: “‘ABC’ reports: ‘people are speaking openly and without the least doubt about the pending German military actions against the USSR, Antonescu’s meetings more and more concretely concern military preparations against the USSR.’” Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 586–7 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24119, d. 1, l. 606–9).

158. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1305, l. 79; Pravda followed the activities on its front page (April 19 and 21).

159. Nevezhin, Zastol’nye, 259–61 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1125, l. 17–18); Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 155–7. Pravda (April 23) published a short notice about the Kremlin reception and a long essay (April 24), “One Thousand Years of Tajik Literature,” by Iosif Braginsky, the Persian language specialist, stressing that the Tajiks were an Iranian people and culture.

160. Izvestiia, March 15, 1941; Vestnik AN SSSR, no. 4 (1941): 15–6; “Prazdnik sotsialisticheskoi kul’tury,” Iskusstvo, 1941, no. 6: 3–10.

161. Nevezhin, Zastol’nye, 266–70 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1124, l. 15–20). The following day (April 23), in the Little Corner, at 7:10 p.m. for fifty minutes, Stalin received the Tajik party boss (Dmitri Protopopov) and government head (M. Kurbanov), as well as Khrapchenko, the head of USSR committee for artistic affairs, evidently to finalize the state wards for the artists. Kalinin, handing out the state awards to the Tajik participants in the Kremlin, quoted Stalin on Tajik culture: “ancient, with a grand reserve among the people, this culture is distinguished by special subtlety.” Pravda, April 26, 1941; Na prieme, 331.

162. Barros and Gregor, Double Deception, 38–9 (citing War Department, Military Intelligence Division, General Staff, report 17,875: Jan. 17, 1941, by Colonel B. R. Peyton, MID file 2016–1326/7, MID, correspondence, 1917–1941, box 634, RG 165, NA), 40–4; Laquer and Breitman, Breaking the Silence, 282n; Long, War Diary of Breckinridge Long, 182–4; Hull, Memoirs, II: 967–9; Welles, Time for Decision, 170–1; FRUS, 1941, I: 712, 714 (Hull to Steinhardt, March 4, 1941), 723; Damaskin, Stalin i razvedka, 262–3. Whaley has the timing and source a bit crossed. Whaley, Codeword, 37–40, 45, 227–8, 277–8. The U.S. commercial attaché, the Texan Sam Woods (b. 1892), mischaracterized as “a genial extrovert whose grasp of world politics and history was not striking,” fooled everyone. Shirer, Rise and Fall, 843n; Dippel, Two Against Hitler.

163. Boyd, Hitler’s Japanese Confidant, 21 (citing NSA, RG 457, SRH-252: 30); Damaskin, Stalin i razvedka, 262–3. See also Shirer, Rise and Fall, chapter 23. Ōshima had been recalled from Berlin in Sept. 1939, after the unpleasant surprise of the Nazi-Soviet Pact. When Laurence Steinhardt, U.S. ambassador, “very confidentially” told foreign affairs commissariat deputy head Lozovsky (April 15) that “according to trustworthy information received from the embassy in Berlin Germany’s position is getting worse and worse and it is preparing an attack on Ukraine,” Lozovsky said, “I do not think that Germany will attack the USSR . . . In any case the USSR will always be ready and will not allow itself to be captured by enemies.” Lozovsky reported that Steinhardt “pledged that in the event of a German attack on the USSR the USA would provide aid to the USSR.” Naumov, 1941 god, 80–1 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 3, pap. 4, d. 35, l. 173–7); “Kanun voiny: preduprezhdeniia diplomatov,” 80. Welles leaked to Umansky, whose government had him leak to the German ambassador in Washington, that the United States had broken the Japanese codes, and were deciphering Ōshima’s communications, on April 28, 1941. DGFP, series D, XII: 661 (Hans Thomsen from D.C. to Berlin). The Americans intercepted and decoded this message.

164. “Kanun voiny: preduprezhdeniia diplomatov,” 71–2.

165. The Germans were still demanding the plane’s return as of May 15. Fel’shtinskii, Oglasheniiu podlezhit, 330–1 (Ritter to Schulenburg); Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 342; Rokossovskii, Soldatskii dolg, 31–2; Bezymenskii, Osobaia papka “Barbarossa,” 276.

166. Fel’shtinskii, Oglasheniiu podlezhit, 344–5 (April 22, 1941).

167. Stalin suddenly began overfulfilling his trade obligations, even though the Germans had fallen way behind in reciprocal deliveries. May 1941 would be the peak month for two-way trade. DGFP, series D, XII: 282–3 (March 12, 1941), 826 (May 15); Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 318–9 (report of Schnurre, April 5, 1941); Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 326. See also Von Strandmann, “Appeasement and Counter-Appeasement,” 164. Stalin also made gestures to Hungary, returning banners and flags from the 1848 revolution (which tsarist troops had put down), and to Romania, with which he settled one border dispute.

168. DVP SSSR, XXIII/ii: 572 (April 15, 1941), 661–3, 714. But Stalin had also jacked up the freight rates for the transhipment of goods to Germany across Soviet territory, pocketing the windfall. Sipols, Tainy, 387; Barros and Gregor, Double Deception, 47 (citing Ministry of Economic Warfare, Trans-Siberian Railway: Freight Rates, April 3, 1941, FO/371/29497). See also Read and Fisher, Deadly Embrace, 608.

169. Soviet capabilities should not be exaggerated. Its advance warning system (VNOS) did not always warn of approaching German aircraft, and Soviet interceptors could not follow them across the frontier so well, while the Red Army lacked sufficient antiaircraft artillery to shoot them out of the sky.

170. Dilks, “‘We Must Hope for the Best’”; DBFP, 3rd series, II: 686 (Chamberlain to Halifax, Aug. 19, 1938); Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement, 291, 347.

171. Osokina, Za fasadom, 272–7.

172. Sipols, Tainy, 389–90. Between March 21 and April 17, a German delegation was shown the major Soviet aviation factories (Moscow, Rybinsk, Molotov). The Germans had let the Soviets see the Heinkel and Junkers aircraft production facilities in Nov.–Dec. 1940, following Molotov’s trip to Berlin.

173. Schwendemann, Die Wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit, 329; Sudoplatov, Razvedka i Kreml’, 135; Vishlev, Nakanune, 30–1.

174. Too many scholars have wrongly interpreted Stalin’s behavior in spring 1941 as abject appeasement, without acknowledging the attempted deterrence. Lisann, “Stalin the Appeaser.”

175. Teske, General Ernst Köstring, 297.

176. Naumov, 1941 god, II: 131–2; Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 122, 128. See also Herwarth, Against Two Evils, 187–8.

177. Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 117.

178. Below, At Hitler’s Side, 92.

179. Rittersporn, Anguish, 56 (citing RGVA, f. 501k, op. 3, d. 534, l. 7ob.–15); Buchheit, Der deutsche Geheimdienst, 253; Plotnikova, “Organy,” 31. The existence of a major Luftwaffe air reconnaissance program had been confirmed out of Berlin by “Elder” as early as Dec. 1940. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 550 (TsA SVR, d. 23078, t. 1, l. 199–201), I: 769–70 (TsA SVR), II: 89–91 (TsA SVR, d. 23078, t. 1, l. 269–74), II: 179–80 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24119, d. 1, l. 762–3). Stalin was also sending reconnaissance flights over German lines, with German knowledge. Whaley, Codeword, 32; DGFP, series D, XII: 602–3, 1061–3; Weinberg, Germany and the Soviet Union, appendix 3; Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 329.

180. Halder, Halder Diaries, II: 104 (May 7, 1941); Halder, Kriegstagebuch, II: 400–2.

181. Sorge noted: “in Himmler’s circles and the general staff there is a strong tendency for launching a war against the USSR, but this tendency is not yet predominant.” Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 585–6 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24127, d. 2, l. 300). On April 29, Kegel (“X”), deputy head of the economics section of the German embassy in Moscow, correctly reported that Germany intended to have transferred all the necessary synthetic rubber from Asia by May 15. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 710; Lota, Sekretnyi front, 230–4. In April 1941, Korotkov, having returned from Moscow, discussed with Kobulov setting up ciphered radio communications for “Elder” and “Corsican” in the event of war; the effort got bogged down. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, 394–6.

182. Naumov, 1941 god, II: 100 (TsAMO, op. 24122/1, l. 178), 105–4 (APRF, f. 93: April 23, 1941), 506; Mel’tiukhov, Upushchennyi shans Stalina, 330, 362–3; Gareev, Neodnoznachnye stranitsy, 115.

183. Ehrenburg, Liudi, gody, zhizn’, II: 228.

184. Baranov, Goluboi razliv, 86–7.

185. In fact, from April 1941, the German deployments shifted to a qualitatively new level. Van Creveld, Hitler’s Strategy, 150. Tupikov added: “If it happens that, in laying out these conclusions, I am pushing at an open door, this will in no way discourage me. If it happens that I am mistaken, you will correct me—and I shall be grateful.” Naumov, 1941 god, II: 113–8 (TsAMO, op. 7272, d. 1, l. 140–52); Lota, Sekretnyi front, 44, 189–97. Only on June 3, 1941, did Golikov instruct his subordinate Kuznetsov that it was necessary to answer Tupikov.

186. Schulenburg and his embassy secretary were back at the Hotel Adlon in less than an hour. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 330–2. It seems that Hans “Johnnie” Herwath, the anti-Nazi who had divulged the Pact’s secret protocols to the American ambassador in Moscow, had quit Germany’s Moscow embassy to join the Wehrmacht and through contacts had evidently gotten wind of the firm decision for an attack on the USSR. During a military leave in Berlin, he claims to have used the pretext of visiting his wife, Pussi, who was still working in Moscow, to travel back and inform ambassador Schulenburg that plans for an attack on the USSR were well under way. Herwarth, Against Two Evils, 182–4, 191; Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 328; Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 203–17; Hinsley, British Intelligence, Abridged Version, 27–8. Stalin would get word of Schulenburg’s cold reception by the Führer from (Kegel) “X,” who pointed out that in 1939 Hitler had similarly lied to his ambassador to Poland, Hans-Adolf von Moltke.

187. Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, 349 (Bernard Bracken). In March 1941, Moscow had ordered a secret police operative, Kyrill Novikov, to accompany Maisky to all official meetings. A telegram from Eden to Cripps (April 18, 1941) obtained by Soviet intelligence in London, inquired whether rapprochement with Moscow was still possible, but Soviet annexation of the Baltic states remained a stumbling block. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 474–5 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 8, d. 56, l. 903–6).

188. Stalin was sent the report the next day. Naumov, 1941 god, II: 130 (TsA SVR, d. 23078, t. 1, l. 349–51). “Elder” had asserted (April 17) that two groups existed, one, led by Göring, champing at the bit to attack the USSR, the other, led by Ribbentrop, dead-set against. This was likely true at the time. Naumov, 1941 god, II: 90 (TsA SVR RF, d. 23078, t. 1, l. 269–74). Hitler seems to have taken Ribbentrop into full confidence on Barbarossa only in April 1941. Weizsäcker would claim that he finally got Ribbentrop to admit it to him on April 21, in Vienna. Nonetheless, the foreign minister gave Weizsäcker approval to compose a memorandum, on April 28, stating that delivering a death blow to the Communist system was not in itself a necessary goal. “Only one thing is decisive: whether this undertaking would hasten the fall of England.” The memo further asserted that Britain was already close to collapse. “A German attack on Russia would only give a lift to English morale,” the memo predicted. “It would be evaluated there as German doubt of the success of our war against England. We would in this fashion not only admit that the war would still last a long time, but we could in this way actually lengthen instead of shorten it.” Weizsäcker, Memoirs, 246–7; Davidson, Trial of the Germans, 154–5.

189. Van Creveld, Hitler’s Strategy. Hitler would also shift the main thrust, ordering that following the seizure of Belorussia, Army Group Center was to pause to take the Baltics, resuming the advance on Moscow only after Leningrad and Kronstadt had been captured. He argued that it was necessary to cut the Russians off from the Baltic Sea, to deny them imports, but he envisioned the creation of a Greater Finland as well. Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters, 138.

190. Naumov, 1941 god, II: 129–30 (TsA SVR, d. 23078, t. 1, l. 352–5).

191. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 518.

192. Völkishcher Beobachter, May 5, 1941. A Russian translation of Hitler’s May 4 Reichstag speech was conveyed to Soviet front line military districts on June 10, 1941. TsAMO, f. 32, op. 11 306, d. 5 (Volkogonov papers, Hoover, container 7). Colonel Kuznetsov writes that when he reported to the deputy head of the tank forces in the general staff (Panfilov) on German force concentration, “Panfilov said to me that we are being subject to disinformation, adding that only a few minutes ago Comrade Stalin had phoned and said, ‘the Germans want to frighten us, at the current time they will not move against us, they themselves are afraid of the USSR.’” Naumov, 1941 god, II: 476 (note to CC department head Silin, Aug. 15, 1941).

193. “Mars” reported out of Budapest (May 1) that German forces were leaving Belgrade for Poland, and that German troops were talking about “the inevitability of war against the USSR in the nearest term.” Naumov, 1941 god, II: 150 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24119, d. 4, l. 381); Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 613. On May 5, “Yeshenko” from Bucharest reported on conversations by “ABC” that German forces were being relocated from the Balkans to Romania and the Soviet frontier, as well as many other signs of impending war. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 612–4 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24119, d. 1, l. 737–40, 744–5).

194. DGFP, series D, 723-5 (Ott, May 6). See also Sipols, Tainy, 392. On May 17, Weizsäcker misinformed Japanese ambassador Ōshima that “German-Russian relations were unchanged,” and that it was wrong to characterize them as “in a state of tension.” Sontag and Biddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 342. See also Trial of the Major War Criminals, XII: 165 (“The Ministries’ Case”).

195. In the same dispatch, forwarded by Merkulov to Stalin and Molotov, “Elder” reported that German officers had told him that Hitler had given a speech some days earlier at the Sports Palace during which he said “in the near future events will take place that will seem inexplicable to many. But the measures, which we will launch, are a state necessity, since the Red Menace has reared its ugly head over ‘Europe.’” Naumov, 1941 god, II: 152 (TsA SVR RF); Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 292–3 (TsA FSK); Vinogradov et al., Sekrety Gitlera, 65–6 (TsA FSB, f. 3os, op. 8, d. 56, l. 1157–8). On May 6, Admiral Kuznetsov wrote to Stalin that the Soviet naval attaché in Berlin (Vorontsov) reported that a Soviet inhabitant named Bozer (a Jew from Lithuania) told the naval attaché’s aide that according to one officer in Hitler’s HQ, the Germans were preparing to invade on May 14 through Finland, the Baltics, and Romania, but Kuznetsov added: “I suggest that this information is false and specially directed in this fashion to reach our government in order to test how the USSR would react.” Volkogonov papers, Hoover Institution Archives, container 18.

196. Pechenkin, “‘Sovremennaia armiia,’” 31n9 (no citation); Muratov, “Shest’ chasov,” 283; Nevezhin, Sindrom, 169–70; Nevezhin, Zastol’ia, 278–9. Sivkov was sacked from the military academy directorship. Nevezhin, Sindrom, 180 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1039, l. 32).

197. Kuztesova, “Nachalo voiny.”

198. Further, Stalin claimed that each division numbered 15,000 troops (twice the actual number in many cases). Pechenkin, “‘Sovremennaia armiia,’” 26. Zhukov would remind Stalin on June 15, 1941, that “even 8,000-men divisions are practically twice weaker than German ones.” Bezymenskii, Gitler i Stalin, 427–33.

199. Naumov, 1941 god, II: 160 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 3808, l. 1–12); Pechenkin, “‘Sovremennaia armiia,’” 27–8; Nevezhin, Sindrom, 170 (citing RGALI, f. 1038, op. 1, d. 2079, l. 31). Over the first six months of 1941, the Soviet Union would produce more than 1,100 T-34 medium tanks and 393 KV heavy tanks, not nearly enough to meet the general staff’s professed needs against a German adversary being supplied by all of Europe. In March 1941, Stalin was informed that industry had only enough parts to supply 30 percent of all the army’s tank and armored units. New aircraft models were running at 10 to 20 percent of the military’s needs. Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph, 375–6 (citing TsAMO, f. 15a, op. 2154, d. 4, l. 224–33).

200. Pechenkin, “‘Sovermennaia armiia,’” 28–9; Banac, Diary of Gerogi Dimitrov, 159–60; Muratov, “Shest’ chasov,” 282.

201. Malyshev, “Dnevnik narkoma,” 116. See also Anfilov, “‘Razgovor zakonchilsia ugrozoi Stalina,’” 41.

202. Bezymenskii, Gitler i Stalin, 437.

203. Muratov, “Shest’ chasov”; Nevezhin, Zastol’nye, 291–3. There is no stenographic account of the May 5, 1941, speech and no written notes by Stalin found in his personal papers. Naumov, 1941 god, II: 294n2. Malyshev and Dimtrov wrote accounts for their diaries. Nevezhin, Zatsol’nye, 273–93. Pechenkin, “‘Sovermennaia armiia.’” This is the so-called “brief record” made by K. V. Semenov, a staff person at the defense commissariat.

204. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 160.

205. Pechenkin, “‘Sovermennaia armiia,’” 29; Naumov, 1941 god, II; 161–2; Vainrub, Eti stal’nye parnii, 19; Nevezhin, Zastol’nye, 287–8, 290–1.

206. Malyshev, “Dnevnik narkoma,” 115, 116–7; Muratov, “Shest’ chasov,” 284–5; Pechenkin, “‘Sovremennaia armiia,’” 29–30; Nevezhin, Zastol’nye, 279–80.

207. Pravda, May 3, 1941.

208. Pechenkin, “‘Sovremennaia armiia,’” 29–30; Naumov, 1941 god, II; 161–2; Nevezhin, Zastol’nye, 287–9 (at 289); Muratov, “Shest’ chasov,” 285; Nevezhin, Sindrom, 174–6.

209. Muratov, “Shest’ chasov,” 287; Zhipin, Kak fashistskaia Germaniia gotovila napadenie, 224; Liashchenko, “S ognem i krov’iu popolam”; Radzinskii, Stalin, 485 (quoting Chadayev, unpublished ms., “V groznye vremena,” GARF, without detailed citation). Sivkov was sacked a few days later. Nevezhin, Sindrom, 180 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1049, l. 32). Both of Sivkov’s brothers, Alexander and Pyotr, also military men, had been executed in 1938.

210. Schulenburg would send an account of the speech to Berlin only a month later, suggesting that Stalin seemed “anxious to prepare his followers for a new ‘compromise’ with Germany.” DGFP, series D, XII: 964–5 (June 4, 1941).

211. Golubev et al., Rossiia i zapad, 111 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 60, l. 58–9). The party apparatus held conferences on May 8 and 9, 1941, with editors of the major newspapers and journals and those responsible for the TASS news agency. Zhdanov, addressing a special gathering of fifty-four invited film industry personnel, directors, cameramen, actors, and studio heads, as well as twenty-seven top propaganda functionaries and newspaper editors, on May 14–15, blustered about the Baltics, Western Ukraine, Western Belorussia, and Bessarabia, and how “if circumstances permit, we shall widen the front of socialism still more.” Alexander Zaporozhets, head of propaganda for the army’s political directorate, was ordered to revise propaganda for the troops. But draft decrees were not readied until late May or in the case of the military, June, and would not be approved prior to June 22. Nevezhin, Sindrom, 186–251; Nevezhin, “Dve direktivy 1941 g.,” 191–207; Golubev et al., Rossiia i zapad, 105–7 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 121, d. 115, l. 3–7, 124, 162). Kalinin gave a provocative closed speech (May 20, 1941) to a party and Communist Youth League meeting of the Supreme Soviet presidium staff, in which he castigated Britain and France for fighting poorly, noting “if the same thing were happening here, it would be judged a criminal unpreparedness for war.” Kalinin suggested that “the army should think: the sooner the fight starts, the better.” He received a rousing ovation. Nekrich, Pariahs, 231–3 (citing RGASPI, f. 78, op. 1, d. 84, l. 6–7, 20–1, 35–6). In May, Soviet radio broadcasts directed at German soldiers took on an antagonistic tone. Hoffman, “Podgotovka Sovetskogo Soiuza,” 27.

212. RGASPI f. 558, op. 11, d. 769, l. 176–176 ob.: April 28, 1941.

213. Stalin had the Central Committee approve the politburo recommendation by voice vote. “‘Naznachit’ tov. Stalina I. V.’ postanovelnie politbiuro TsK VKP (b) Mai 1941 g.”; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1039, l. 13; Naumov, 1941 god, II: 155–7 (RGASPI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 1a, l. 1, 3–4); Pravda, May 7, 1939; Izvestiia, May 7, 1939. The decree stated that Molotov was removed “in light of numerous declarations that he has difficulty fulfilling his duties alongside the duties of a people’s commissar.” Zhdanov arrived from Leningrad, and was the sole person Stalin received on May 5, for twenty-five minutes. A May 7 meeting in Stalin’s office evidently hashed out how a new Council of People’s Commissars would operate: present were Voznesensky, Molotov, Bulganin, Kaganovich, Mikoyan, Beria, and Shakhurin. Na prieme, 332.

214. Khlevniuk et al., Stalinskoe Politburo, 34–5 (citing APRF f. 3, op. 52, d. 251, l. 58–60); “‘Naznachit’ tov. Stalina I. V.’,” 222.

215. Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 121. See also Petrov, “June 22, 1941,” 257 (Gnedich).

216. Boelcke, Secret Conferences, 158–9 (May 7). Alexander Kerensky told the New York Times that the formalization of Stalin’s power signified his active participation in the war on the Nazi side. New York Times, May 7, 1941.

217. DGFP, series D, XII: 791. See also Akhmedov, In and Out of Stalin’s GRU, 139–40.

218. Naumov, 1941 god, II: 151.

219. Halder, Halder Diaries, II: 100 (May 5, 1941); Halder, Kriegstagebuch, II: 400–2. Halder also recorded Krebs’s opinion that the Russian upper officer corps was “decidedly bad” and that “compared with 1933, picture is strikingly depressing. It will take twenty years to reach her old level.” Krebs was also dubious about Soviet pilots.

220. Naumov, 1941 god, II: 167–9 (APRF, f. 3, op. 64, d. 675, l. 158–62). Pavlov composed his record of the breakfast that same day. Voiushin and Gorlov, “Fashistskaia agressiia,” 22– (citing AVP RF, f. 082, op. 23, pap. 96, d. 16a, l. 120–4).

221. Lota, Sekretnyi front, 59. Also in May 1941, the Germans sent a group of Berlin opera soloists to perform in Moscow, and the NKGB operative Zoya Rybkina (b. 1907), posing as a representative of the Society for Cultural Ties Abroad, attended the reception at the German embassy, where she discovered a pile of suitcases, and walls emptied of paintings. Voskresenskaia, Teper’ ia mogu skazat’ pravdu, 10–16; Voskresenskaia, Pod psevdonimom Irina, 38–44; Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 123. Vinogradov et al., Sekrety Gitlera, 166–8, 97–8 (d. 57, l. 1287–8: May 14). (“Rybkina” became a children’s writer under the name Voskresenskaya.) Also on May 7, Tito (“Walter”) sent two coded telegrams to Dimitrov reporting intensive German preparations for an attack. Lebedeva and Narinskii, Komintern i Vtoraia mirovaia voina, 536 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 184, d. 7 no. 412, l. 112), 537 (no. 423, l. 116).

222. This was forwarded by Merkulov to Stalin, Molotov, and Beria on May 14, and included additional detail about Romania’s preparations for war. Naumov, 1941 god, II: 180–1 (TsA SVR, d. 23078, t. 1, l. 388–90); Primakov, Ocherki, III: 480–1 (TsA FSB, f. 3 os, op. 8, d. 57, l. 1277–80). See also Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, 89 (citing FSB archives).

223. Hilger speculated that Hitler perceived Soviet weakness, fear. Hilger and Mayer, Incompatible Allies, 327.

224. Naumov, 1941 god, II; 181–4 (APRF, f. 3, op. 64, d. 675, l. 162–8). See also Sipols, Tainy, 403.

225. Khlevniuk, Master of the House, 243–4 (no citation); Khlevniuk, Stalin: Zhizn’, 251–2 (citing GARF, vospominaniia Ia. E. Chadaeva). On May 8, Stalin received Khrushchev, alone, for thirty minutes; nearly four hours later, he received Beria, alone, for five minutes. Those were the only people he saw that day. Na prieme, 333. As of May 10, Molotov was back in the customary position, entering the Little Corner before any other visitors. Na prieme, 333.

226. Boberach, Meldungen aus dem Reich, VII: 3374, 2380, 2394.

227. Lota, “Alta” protiv “Barbarossy,” 305.

228. Whether it was noticed in Moscow remains uncertain.

229. DVP SSSR, XXIII/ii: 654–7, 664–7, 675–9; Naumov, 1941 god, II: 193 (APRF, f. 3, op. 64, d. 675, l. 174: Molotov instructions to Dekanozov, May 12), II: 193–5 (l. 169–73: Dekanozov notes); DGFP, series D, XII: 734–5 (May 7, 1941); Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 218–21 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 64, d. 675, l. 169–73: Dekanozov notes on May 12 breakfast); Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 351. There is nonsense, from Mikoyan and Kumanev, that Schulenburg had warned Dekanozov, in the presence of Hilger and Pavlov, of the forthcoming invasion. Kumanev, “‘22ogo’ na rassvete,” 3. “He didn’t warn,” Molotov stated of Schulenburg, “he just hinted at it.” Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 29.

230. Na prieme, 332–3.

231. Hess’s flight likely was unassisted by German electronic systems. Deighton, “Hess the Aviator,” 121–38. One of the Luftwaffe’s best pilots would claim, after the war, that on May 10, 1941, Göring had called and ordered him to intercept Hess, who was already in the air. Adolph Galland, the pilot, would also claim that he implemented the order only perfunctorily, having no idea how to find Hess’s Messcherschmitt Bf 110 amid all the others in the sky at that time. Tolliver and Constable, Fighter General.

232. Fox, “Propaganda,” 88 (citing FO 1093/10: Medical Research Council report); Rees et al., Case of Rudolf Hess, 16; Pick, Pursuit of the Nazi Mind, 42. See also Hess, Prisoner of Peace, 31–8.

233. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 246–9 (citing WO 199/3288/A: May 11, 1941, and FO 1093/11 fols. 152–5).

234. Heiden, “Hitler’s Better Half.”

235. Schellenberg, Schellenberg Memoirs, 201. Churchill would later assert that Hess denied Germany was planning an invasion and asserted that Germany had certain demands the USSR would have to satisfy—i.e., the ultimatum. Churchill, Second World War, II: 46.

236. Engel, Heeresadjutant bei Hitler, 103 (May 11, 1941); Schmidt, Statist, 549; Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, 372, citing Heinz Linge, “Kronzuege Linge: der kammerdiener des ‘Führers,’” Revue, Munich, Nov. 1955–March 1956, 60; Halder, Halder Diaries, II: 117–8 (May 15, 1941); Halder, Kriegstagebuch, II: 412–5. Hess left four letters: the others were for his wife, Ilse, Willy Messerschmitt (whose plane he took), and Helmut Kaden (whose flight suit he took).

237. Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, 372–3.

238. Fest, Face, 292; Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, 375–6.

239. Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, 372. When Hitler summoned Mussolini on June 2, 1941, to the Brenner Pass they talked, among other matters, about Hess. The Führer was said to have had tears in his eyes. Corvaja, Hitler and Mussolini, 174.

240. Fröhlich, Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, IX: 309–10 (May 13, 1941). See also Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant, 274. The next day the Germans issued a fuller statement, calling Hess’s mission a result of “mental confusion” that would change nothing in German-British relations. Goebbels had objected, to no avail (“It’s rightly being asked how such an idiot could be the second man after the Führer”). Domarus, Hitler: Reden, IV: 1716; Fröhlich, Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, IX: 311 (May 14). See also Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, IV: 532 (Leipzig SD report, May 17, 1941).

241. Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, 375; Gamm, Der Flüsterwitz, 36; Vassiltchikov, Berlin Diaries, 51 (May 18, 1941).

242. The British interrogator (Ivone Kirkpatrick) concluded: “Hess does not seem . . . to be in the near counsels of the German government as regards operations; and he is not likely to possess more secret information that he could glean in the course of his conversations with Hitler and others.” See also Schmidt, “Der Hess-Flug,” 14. Goebbels (May 15) intuited that the British had chosen to “let the lies run free” and became gleeful that the British had failed to play this trump card properly, and said the German people were comparing the incident to “a razor cut on the face” that would heal quickly and be forgotten. Fröhlich, Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, IX: 317–9 (May 17, 1941); Boelcke, Secret Conferences, 165 (May 19).

243. Tsarev, “Poslednii polet,” III: 433–40. On May 18, Philby, after a conversation with a foreign office press department contact, reported that Hess had not given away any valuable information, remained loyal to Hitler, and called the German-British war a crime. Tsarev, “Poslednii polet,” III: 435–7; Naumov, 1941 god, II: 200–1 (May 14, 1941).

244. Khrushchev, Memoirs, I: 272; Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 116. The Soviets also believed the British secret services had been involved in luring Hess. Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive, 157; and Erickson, “Rudolf Hess.” Roosevelt doubted the official British story as well, and feared there was substance to the rumors of a substantive peace mission. Kimball, “Hess Distraction”; Kimball, Churchill and Roosevelt, I: 184–6; Pick, Pursuit of the Nazi Mind, 45 (citing PPF3716, letters from John Coar and Ambassador William Dodd). Dekanozov sent Molotov a comprehensive analysis (May 21, 1941) of the Hess mission, based on the German press and hearsay in Berlin, asserting that it proved the existence of divisions within the German leadership and a tendency toward an agreement with Britain. It was forwarded to Stalin on May 26. Nauomv, 1941 god, II: 261–6 (APRF, f. 3, op. 64, d. 689, l. 64–74).

245. Cripps, in some desperation back on April 23, 1941, had telegrammed London about Soviet-German negotiations (which did not exist), speculating that Hitler could get what he wanted from Moscow by blackmail without war, and that the Soviets feared a separate deal between Britain and Germany, which could be used by London to prevent a Soviet-German deal. He stressed that only the fear of a separate peace would bring the Soviets around to the British side. This had been intercepted and decrypted, and forwarded by Fitin on May 5 to Stalin, Molotov, and Beria. Naumov, 1941 god, II: 152–3 (TsA FSB, f. Zos, op. 8, d. 56, l. 1160–3). Cadogan noted in his diary (May 30, 1941), effectively repudiating Cripps, that because of British military weakness, its diplomacy was “completely hamstrung. For instance—Russia. You can’t do anything nowadays with any country unless you can a) threaten b) bribe it. Russia has a) no fear of us whatever and b) we have nothing to offer her.” Dilks, Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 382.

246. Woodward, British Foreign Policy, I: 614–5; Gorodetsky, Mission to Moscow, 134–5.

247. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 262–7 (citing AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 352, d. 2402, l. 174, and The Times, May 27, 1941). See also Görtemaker, “Bizarre Mission,” 75–101; Kettenacker, “Mishandling a Spectacular Event,” 19–38; and Fox, “Propaganda.” On June 5, Maisky insisted to Eden that no German-Soviet negotiations were under way; Eden replied that he knew they were. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 273 (citing AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 352, d. 2402, l. 149–52: Maisky to Moscow); Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, 359. Woodward gives the date of this encounter as June 10: British Foreign Policy, I: 620.

248. Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 123. See also Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 221–2. The Japanese ambassador to Moscow complained to Tokyo that Soviet counterintelligence was smothering, adding that “they steal suitcases from military attachés.” Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 289 (TsA FSb, f. 3, op. 5, d. 82, l. 51), 304 (TsA FSB, f. 66, op. 1, d. 391, l. 55). Schulenburg reported to Berlin (May 24, 1941) that he had been received by Molotov with the familiar degree of confidence and in the same office as previously, albeit with the nameplate altered (to deputy chairman), but that Molotov effectively held the same position of power as previously—Stalin’s top deputy. The ambassador added that Soviet policy remained “directed at avoidance of a conflict with Germany,” which was “proved by the attitude taken by the Soviet government in the last few weeks, the tone of the Soviet press, . . . and the observance of the trade agreements concluded with Germany.” Nonetheless, he began to resign himself to having failed in his larger mission. He had finally acquired his dream castle, the Burg Falkenberg in the Upper Palatinate, in the late 1930s, and, after Molotov’s disastrous Nov. 1940 visit to Berlin, Hitler had ordered that the count be given a humongous bribe, 200,000 reichsmarks, which the count had used to renovate it. Herwarth, Against Two Evils, 95–6; Sontag and Biddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 344–5; Fleischhauer, Diplomatischer Widerstand, 312, 404n; DVP SSSR, XXIII/ii: 521 (Soviet assessment of Schulenburg, from the former KGB archive).

249. Fleischhauer, Diplomatischer Widerstand, 194.

250. Some have speculated that the aircraft delivered a letter from Hitler for Stalin, supposedly a response to an earlier Stalin letter requesting an explanation for the German troop build-up. Zhukov, in interviews in 1966, said: “Sometime in early June I decided that I should again try to convince Stalin of the accuracy of the intelligence reports on the approaching danger. . . . Together with Defense Commissar Semyon Konstantinovich Timoshenko we brought along general staff maps with the locations of enemy troops. I reported. Stalin listened attentively but silently. After my report he sent us away without giving us his opinion . . . A few days passed and Stalin called for me. When I entered he was seated at his desk. I approached. Then he opened the middle drawer and took out several pieces of paper. ‘Read,’ said Stalin. I began to read. It was a letter from Stalin to Hitler in which he briefly outlined his concern over the German deployments, about which I had reported a few days earlier.” Bezymenskii, Gitler i Stalin, 472. Zhukov told Simonov around the same time (1965–6) that at a Jan. 1941 meeting Stalin said he had “turned to Hitler in a personal letter advising him that this was known to us, that it surprised us, and that it created the impression among us that Hitler intended to go to war with us.” Hitler’s supposed reply: Yes, there are large military formations on the frontier, but they “are not directed against the Soviet Union.” Simonov, “Zametki k biografii G. K. Zhukova,” 50–1 (published twenty-one years after the conversation). No such documents have emerged from Soviet or German archives. Hitler did have a secret archive, but in the bunker on April 22, 1945, he would order his adjutant to liquidate the contents of two safes; other such safes were found in Berghof and in his Munich apartment; their contents would be destroyed, including Hitler’s correspondence with heads of state. But even so, copies would be expected to be in Soviet archives.

251. Sontag and Biddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 339–41; Fel’shtinskii, SSSR-Germaniia, II: 164–5. That same evening, Schulenburg received instructions from Berlin to inform the Soviets that the alleged seventy-one border violations by Germans were “being investigated,” and that the investigation would “require some time.” Sontag and Biddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 341–42. According to Zhukov, sometime in May 1941 Stalin told him and Timoshenko that German ambassador Schulenburg had requested that German officers be allowed to reconnoiter the Soviet border in what they presented as a search for the graves of German soldiers who went missing in World War I. Zhukov, Vospominaniia, I: 346–7; Ivanov, Shtab armeiskii, 98–9.

252. Mawdsley, “Crossing the Rubicon,” 849–53. See also Lota, “Alta” protiv “Barbarsossy,” 309–10.

253. The proposed surprise attack of 152 divisions and 3,000–4,000 aircraft against German positions in former southern Poland carried timetables and maps of the theater (one map carried a date, the lone one on the document). Gor’kov, “Gotovil li,” 40–5; Gor’kov, Kreml’, 303–9; Naumov, 1941 god, II: 215–20 (TsAMO, f. 16, op. 2951, d. 237, l. 1–15); Bobylev, “Tochku v diskussii stavit’ rano”; Zakharov, General’nyi shtab, 219–21. A partial, misleading version of the Vasilevsky plan was published: Kiselev, “Upriamye fakty nachala voiny,” 18–22. There has also been misleading commentary: Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/i: 136. For an analysis, see Bezymenskii, “O ‘Plane Zhukova.’” Bezymensky was Zhukov’s interpreter during the war. He reproduced a facsimile of some pages of the May 15 war plan (showing the quality penmanship). Bezymenskii, Gitler i Stalin, 478–9. The April 1941 local version of the war plan stated: “The USSR does not contemplate attacking Germany and Italy. These states are probably also not contemplating attacking the USSR in the near future.” Solonin, “Tri plana tovarischa Stalina,” 45–49.

254. Anfilov, “‘Razgovor zakonchilsia ugrozoi Stalina,’” 40–1; Forster and Mawdsley, “Hitler and Stalin in Perspective,” 86. There is a third-hand account of a blow-up between Stalin and Zhukov and Timoshenko. Bezymenskii, “O ‘Plane Zhukova,’” 61–2, 62n27 (citing General Nikolai Liashchenko, a major in 1941, who recorded conversations with Timoshenko in the 1960s); Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 299 (citing the same source). A less dramatic version appears in Svetlishin, Krutye stupeni, 57–8 (interviews with Zhukov).

255. Anfilov, “‘Razgovor zakonchilsia ugrozoi Stalina’,” 41. Stalin also met with Timoshenko and Zhukov, but not Vatutin, on May 23, for two hours and fifty-five minutes. Na prieme, 333–4.

256. Molotov cautioned in connection to those such as Vasilevsky who claimed to know Stalin’s thinking: “‘Stalin believed this, Stalin thought that.’ As if anyone knew what Stalin thought about the war.” Chuev, Sto sorok, 42, 45.

257. Anfilov, “‘Razgovor zakonchilsia ugrozoi Stalina’,” 41; Anfilov, Doroga k tragedii, 166; Svetlishin, Krutye stupeni, 57–8. The document’s authenticity is beyond question, but in addition to the lack of signatures, there are no markings by Stalin on it. The document was apparently locked in the personal safe of Vasilevsky until 1948, and not kept in Stalin’s archive or Zhukov’s. From Vasilevsky’s safe it went to the military archives (TsAMO RF, f. 16a, op. 2951, d. 237). Danilov, “Stalinskaia strategiia nachala voiny.”

258. Gor’kov, “Gotovil li,” 40–1. A May 15 special communication by Golikov on the dislocation of German forces estimated 114–19 divisions in the frontier zone, and concluded: “The strengthening of German forces on the border with the USSR continues. The main territories of concentration are the southern part of the General-Gouvernement, Slovakia, and the northern part of Moldavia.” Lota, Sektretnyi front, 205–9 (citing TsAMO, op. 7237, d. 2, l. 109–13); Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 518. Vasilevsky would later show hindsight appreciation of German force concentrations, which had not been reflected in the May 15 war plan text. Kumanev, Riadom so Stalinym, 232–3. See also Anfilov and Golikov, Zagadka 1941 goda, 251; Vasilevskii, Delo vsei zhizni, 310.

259. A special inspection (May 23–June 5, 1941) of western military districts found their combat readiness unsatisfactory. Volkogonov, “German Attack,” 80.

260. Gareev, Neodnoznachnye stranitsy, 96. Only at the end of May 1941 had the general staff organized a war game to test the viability of covering plans under conditions of surprise attack. Nothing is known of the game’s results. Denisova and Tumash, Nakanune, 391. See also Murin, “Nakanune,” 9 (Arkhiv politbiuro TsK KPSS, f. 73, op. 2, d. 3, l. 30–44).

261. Mawdsley, “Crossing the Rubicon,” 836–44. Mawdsley, whose analysis is the best in print, notes that the late amendations by Vatutin were defensive, not preemptive, suggesting confusion or compromise even in the drafting, although these changes might have been written in Stalin’s presence. The assertion that Hitler’s invasion preempted an imminent Soviet attack, a baldfaced German lie circulated to justify their invasion, was shredded by Gabriel Gorodetsky, Mif “Ledokola.”

262. Preemption bordered on the preposterous. The May 15 war plan envisioned 196 Soviet divisions concentrated in the West; as of June 22, first and second strategic echelons numbered 56 rifle and cavalry divisions on the western frontier and 52 at a distance of 60–250 miles from the frontier. Many of these divisions were under-strength in personnel and equipment. Moreover, whereas MP-41 stipulated 6.5 million troops in the west, on June 22 there were 3 million. In the Western special military district—“special” meant the district was supposed to be able to battle without added reserves—a significant number of Pavlov’s divisions were made up of reservists, who had almost no training; the district had only a single mechanized corps. It relied on the civilian communications network. It was expected to complete its combat preparations in the first half of 1942. Mawdsley, “Crossing the Rubicon,” 855; Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia otechestvennaia, XII (I): 339–40 (RGVA, f. 4, op. 15, d. 27, l. 575–607); Gareev, Neodnoznachnaye stranitsy, 12; Murin, “Nakanune,” 10 (Vasilevsky); “GKO postanovliaet . . . ,” 20–1; Nekrich, Pariahs, 242–3. See also Nikulin, Tukhachevskii, 194. Soviet military districts were converted to “fronts” for war. This had happened on Sept. 11, 1939, for Poland (six days in advance); on Jan. 7, 1940, for Finland (in media res, reflecting the change in the war strategy); on June 9, 1940, for Bessarabia (nine days in advance); and in March 1941: northwest, west (central), and southwest. On May 27, Timoshenko would order that field command points be set up for the “fronts.” Vishlev, Nakanune, 29, 42–3; Vasilevskii, Delo vsei zhizni, 119.

263. One goal was to create a second strategic echelon along the Dnieper and Western Dvina Rivers but beyond the range of Luftwaffe aerial reconnaissance. (The first strategic echelon was already deployed within the boundaries of the frontier military districts at sixty or fewer miles from the border.) Gorkov, “Gotovil li,” 40–5; Zhukov, Vospominaniia, I: 345–6; Ivanov, Nachal’nyi period voiny, 211–2; Vasilevskii, Delo vsei zhizni, 114.

264. On the night and early morning of May 14–15, Stalin met with Timoshenko and Zhukov yet again, along with Kaganovich, railways commissar, a crucial aspect of mobilization. Na prieme, 333. Soviet railway capacity limits on mobilization were a long-standing subject of Soviet analysis. Naumov, 1941, god, I: 545–8 (RGAE, f. 1884, op. 49, d. 1247, l. 1–6: Jan. 17, 1941). On these problems in the Imperial Russian Army, see Fuller, Strategy and Power, 303–6. On May 24, Stalin gathered more than twenty military men and other officials in the Little Corner from around 6:00 p.m., for three and a half hours. Na prieme, 334. Almost no information on this meeting has been adduced by Soviet military historians with access to the archives. Even the politburo special files contain no information on what was discussed or decided. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 34–5. Stalin next saw Timoshenko and Zhukov in the Little Corner on June 3, and again on June 6, 7, 9, 11, 18, and 21. The regime sought to get this stance across in the provincial press and the Red Army’s army political-propaganda directorate. Golubev et al., Rossiia i zapad, 110 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 121, d. 128, l. 36). Vishnevsky had attended Stalin’s May 5 speech and the closed door sessions of the army political-propaganda directorate. He wrote in his diary (May 13, 1941): “the struggle against Germany,” . . . “against fascism, against the most dangerous military neighbor, in the name of revolutionizing Europe and, of course, Asia.” Vishnevsky also mentioned Stalin’s words at the Tajik banquet (April 22): “about Lenin, about a new ideology, about the brotherhood of peoples, about the ruinous and dead ideology of racism.” Golubev et al., Rossiia i zapad, 118 (citing RGALI, f. 1038, op. 1, d. 2079, l. 31).

265. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 628–9 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24119, d. 4, l. 435).

266. Meissner, Staatssekretär unter Ebert, Hindenburg, Hitler.

267. Berezhkov, S diplomaticheskoi missiei, 73; Berezhkov, At Stalin’s Side, 53; AVPRF, f. 082, op. 23, p. 95, d. 6, l. 141–2 (Nov. 19, 1940); Barros and Gregor, Double Deception, 150–9.

268. Fröhlich, Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, IX: 333–5. Werner Wächter, chief of staff in Goebbels propaganda ministry, would later call this “the age of whispering propaganda,” and boast about the flood of rumors, “all of which were equally credible, so that in the end there wasn’t a bugger left who had any idea what was really up.” Boelcke, Secret Conferences, 174 (1942).

269. Naumov, 1941 god, II: 270–1 (PA AA Bonn. Dienstelle Ribbentrop. UdSSR-RC, 7/1 R 27168, BI26041–26043); Vishlev, Nakanune, 153–4. Hilger would later write that “we thought the stories were being circulated deliberately, to exert pressure upon the Soviet Union” for extortion. Hilger and Mayer, Incompatible Allies, 328–9. See also Barros and Gregor, Double Deception, 198, 225.

270. Vinogradov et al., Sekrety Gitlera, 124–7 (TsA FSB, f. 03os, op. 8, d. 57, l. 1500–4); Naumov, 1941 god, II: 259–60; Primakov, Ocherki, III: 483–5. On May 27, British forces approached the outskirts of Baghdad, and German personnel prepared to evacuate. That same day the British sank the battleship Bismarck. In East Africa, Italy had capitulated to British forces (on May 18); Rommel, in North Africa, was faring poorly; Germany was suffering high casualties in efforts to seize Crete. (Of course, Germany had vast unused forces coiled to attack the USSR that were not being used against Britain.) All this could be considered to have put a definitive end to the concept of a German “peripheral strategy” attack in the Near East.

271. A Soviet counterintelligence profile (June 1940) noted: “Köstring has perfect command of Russian . . . an experienced and cunning person . . . commands an enormous tactical horizon, undergirded by rich practical experience.” The profile added: “At every occasion Köstring uses personal observations, conversations with the local population to compose wide-ranging overviews, reports and so on about the situation of the population, new construction sites etc.” Pogonii, Lubianka, 2, 225. Hitler had briefed Köstring about his intention to attack the USSR already on Sept. 3, 1940, in the company of Halder, but the specifics of Barbarossa do not appear to have been known to him. Halder, Kriegstagebuch, II: 86.

272. This account comes from Vasily Ryasnoi, a Samarkand-born (1904) ethnic Ukrainian and the head of the German department in Soviet counterintelligence (abruptly inducted in 1937 from party work). Pogonii, Lubianka, 2, 224.

273. Several examples of purported transcripts of eavesdropping in April and May 1941 have been published: Istoriia Sovetskhikh organov gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti, 313 (internal use only); Pronin, “Nevol’nye informatory Stalina,” 1–2 (citing unspecified FSB archives); Naumov, 1941 god, I: 598; Vinogradov et al., Sekrety Gitlera, 52–5 (TsA FSB, f. 3os, op. 8, d. 56, l. 1011–5: April 30), 109–12 (d. 57, l. 1346–51: May 18; a slightly different version with names omitted). NKGB counterintelligence did not know the extent to which Stalin read or extracted useful information from the bugged conversations. Pogonii, Lubianka, 2, 225. erik, op. 45, d. 29, l. 246.

274. Matveev and Merzhliakov, “Akademik kontrarazvedki,” 7; Karpov, “Vo glave komiteta informatsii,” 53.

275. Moritz, Fall Barbarossa, 160; Halder, Halder Diaries, II: 943 (May 30, 1941); Halder, Kriegstagebuch, II: 435–6.

276. Military intelligence HQ supposedly responded to Sorge: “We doubt the veracity of your information.” Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, 224 (no citation).

277. Whymant, Stalin’s Spy, 184. Soviet military intelligence had evidently sent a military attaché to Tokyo to check into his behavior and work, which exposed Sorge to risk. The young operative who checked him became quickly and utterly convinced of Sorge’s reliability. Fesiun, Delo Rikharda Zorge, 173–5 (Kh. D. Mamsurov).

278. Clausen began to lose faith in Communism, as he would tell Japanese interrogators after his arrest on Oct. 18, 1941. Whymant, Stalin’s Spy, 119–22, 292; Fesiun, Delo Rikharda Zorge, 18. Clausen’s radio had no outside aerial, for security purposes, but at night he could still broadcast more than 2,000 miles. (Although Japanese counterintelligence picked up the unauthorized signals, it could not pinpoint their source or decrypt the code.) Normally, the radio operator was not allowed to encrypt or decrypt the messages. But Sorge had had a motorcycle accident on May 13, 1938, and he had had to teach Clausen the cipher code and delegate to him the task of putting the material into code before sending it. Once Clausen (b. 1899) could read the content of Sorge’s messages, he was in a position to decide what to transmit (or not).

279. Sipols, Tainy, 397.

280. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 617–8 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24127, d. 2, l. 340–1); Naumov, 1941 god, II: 175; Fesiun, Delo Rikharda Zorge, 116; Whymant, Stalin’s Spy, 146–7, citing Obi, Zoruge jiken, I: 248, 274. See also “Tiuremnye zapiski Rikharda Zorge.” Sorge’s messages via Clausen had not only to be decoded but translated from the German. Evidently, Sorge’s raw material, after being received at HQ in Moscow, was not always promptly processed and forwarded to the information (analytical) department.

281. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 627 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24127, d. 2, l. 381); Fesiun, Delo Rikharda Zorge, 117–8; Naumov, 1941 god, II: 252. Golikov wrote on the document: “ask ‘Ramsay,’ corps or armies?”

282. Fesiun, Delo Rikharda Zorge, 137–9 (Sudoplatov); Zhukov, “Iz neopublikovannykh vospominanii”; Zhukov, Vospominaniia, I: 380. At the time, Zhukov recalls, Stalin did not name the suspected double agent to him, but later Zhukov concluded it must have been Sorge. “Sorge’s tragedy,” Sudoplatov later surmised, “was that with the authorization of Artuzov, Uritsky, Berzin, Karin, and Borovich (his communications officer) he cooperated with German intelligence in Japan. This put him a position of less than full trust.” Fesiun, Delo Rikharda Zorge, 137.

283. Zhukov would later claim he was not informed by Stalin about the intelligence the regime was receiving. This was only partially true. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 378, 380. There is a story that during a showing to senior Soviet officers of a Franco-German film, Who Are You, Dr. Sorge? (1961), a retired Zhukov lost his composure, stood up in the cinema, and shouted out in the dark to Golikov, “Why did you at that time, Filipp Ivanovich, hide everything from me? Not report about such a document [Sorge’s report on an imminent German attack] to the chief of the general staff?” Golikov was said to have replied, “And what, should I have reported to you if this Sorge was a double, ours and theirs?” Vorob’ev, “Kazhdaia piad’ zemli,” 165–6. After Khrushchev saw the foreign film about Sorge, the story goes, he asked Mikoyan and then Soviet intelligence whether the USSR had had such an agent. A commission was formed under Kosygin and, posthumously, Sorge was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union on Nov. 5, 1964; his paramour/wife in Japan, Hanako Ishii, began receiving a Soviet pension.

284. Back in 1937, when Zhukov had been stationed in the Belorussian military district, Golikov had been sent there as a member of its military council, evidently on assignment for Mekhlis to help annihilate the local military elite. Golikov accused Zhukov, among others, of friendship with enemies of the people, interrogated Zhukov over his associations, and built a dossier on him (his wife had had his daughter christened in a church; he treated his subordinates rudely). But one of Zhukov’s accusers, it seems, was arrested (“he dug a pit for another, but fell into it himself,” in the popular saying, Zhukov wrote). Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 109; Spahr, Zhukov, 22–3.

285. This was partly based on having learned that transport of Far Eastern rubber to Germany via the Trans-Siberian Railroad was to be minimized. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 657–8 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24127, d. 2, l. 422); Fesiun, Delo Rikharda Zorge, 119–20; Naumov, 1941 god, II: 303–4.

286. Whymant, citing Sorge’s testimony to his Japanese captors, surmises that some or all of the messages were not transmitted to Moscow. For ex., Sorge claims to have told Moscow: “Lieutenant General Scholl conveyed clearly to Ambassador Ott, in total secrecy, that Germany and the USSR were finally to go to war and he should take the necessary measures; and he told me various details about it.” Whymant, Stalin’s Spy, 164–5, citing Obi, Zoruge jiken, III: 183.

287. Sorge added: “Scholl avers that the most powerful strike will be struck by the left flank of the German army.” Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 658 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24127, d. 2, l. 424); Fesiun, Delo Rikharda Zorge, 119–20; Novoe vremia, 1990, no. 26: 32 (photocopy of the radiogram). Golikov asked for clarification on the nature of the “tactical mistake” and on Scholl’s revelation about a left flank strike. By the time Sorge would able to reply, it was July 3, 1941. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 714 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24127, d. 2, l. 527–9). Scholl had been a deputy military attaché in Tokyo (1938–1940).

288. Vishlev, Nakanune, 53–5 (PA AA Bonn: Büro des Staatssekretar. Aufzeichunungen uber Diplomatenbesuche. Bd. 8 [R 29833], Bl. Ohne Nummer; Russland, Bd. 5 [R 29716], Bl. 035 [113439], 091 [113495], Bl. 087 [113491]).

289. Beria wrote: “In many places along the border the Germans have concentrated pontoons, wooden and inflatable boats. The greatest number of them can be found on the Brest-Lvov salient. Work continues on the mounting of defensive installations near the borders, mostly at night. Leaves for soldiers of German army units have been forbidden. Moreover, information has been received about the relocation of German troops from Budapest and Bucharest on an axis toward the borders of the USSR.” Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 202–3 (TsA FSK).

290. “Nakanune voiny (1941 g.),” 206; Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 200–1. Romania had accumulated excellent intelligence on Soviet forces in the south of the USSR, material that was passed to the head of German military intelligence Admiral Canaris during his visit in May.

291. Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 206–7 (TsA FSK).

292. Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 208–9 (TsA FSK: June 3, 1941).

293. Volkogonov papers, Hoover Institution Archives, container 6 (Blokhin and Samoilovich). Kuznetsov requested more funding in connection with shifting the navy to combat footing from July 1. Solonin, “Tri plana tovarishcha Stalina,” 57 (citing GARF, f. R-8418, op. 25, d. 481, l. 32–33: June 4). Further, on June 4, Kaiser Wilhelm II died peacefully in Dutch exile at age eighty-two; the Reich Commissioner for the Occupied Netherlands laid a wreath in Hitler’s name. “There is no doubt that the Kaiser had the best intentions,” Goebbels instructed the Nazi press, “but . . . the decisive factor in history is not goodwill but great ability.” Boelcke, Secret Conferences, 172.

294. Naumov, 1941 god, II: 324–5. Beria (June 5) reported that “between June 1 and 5, the Romanian general staff had ordered all military personnel who are on leave as well as all reservists up to forty years of age on farming duty to report to their units.” Vinogradov et al., Sekrety Gitlera, 138–9 (TsA FSB, f. 3os, op. 8, d. 9, l. 68–9).

295. Omsk would not get equipment or shelving until late 1944 (around the time some materials would begin to be returned to Moscow). Vinogradov, “Istoriia formirovaniia arkhiva VChK,” 37. Large numbers of files are still there.

296. Boelcke, Secret Conferences, 174 (June 5, 1941).

297. Cripps arrived in London on June 11, by way of Stockholm, where the general director of the Swedish foreign ministry, taken aback at Cripps’s insistence on secret German-Soviet negotiations, shared details of Swedish intercepts of Wehrmacht orders to troops in Norway for an invasion of the USSR. The Swedish official stressed a coming attack in the week of June 20–25. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 304 (citing FO 371 29482 N2680/78/38, Mallet: June 8, and CAB 65/22/59 (41)2: June 12); Boheman, Pä Vakt, 154–5.

298. Samuelson, Plans for Stalin’s War Machine, 197–8. Also on June 6, Stalin received a report that the USSR had 5.7 million wired radio receiver points, more than 80 percent of all its radio equipment, but that the wires were in disrepair, subject to interruption and breakdown. The other 20 percent, wireless radios, were deemed below international standard. Altogether, whereas the United States had 343 receivers (wireless and wired) for every 1,000 people, and Nazi Germany 159, the Soviet Union had just 36. Lovell, Russia in the Microphone Age, 41 (citing GARF, f. 6093, op. 1, d. 56, l. 10–2, 13–4, 19).

299. Lota, “Alta” protiv “Barbarossy,” 308. This was her last meeting with Zaitsev (“Bine”), who was recalled to Moscow; she was assigned a new handler, Anatoly Staritsky (“Tal”), a radio specialist, who was to teach her cipher codes and met with her on June 12.

300. Pavlov, “Ot ‘Iunkersa’ 1941 k Tsessne 1987”; Kuznetsov, “Krutye povoroty,” esp. no. 6 (1993): 79; Stepanov, “O masshtabakh repressii,” no. 5: 62; Medvedev, Let History Judge, 473.

301. Stalin arrested the family members of the military men he executed, but when one of his behind-the-lines saboteurs was killed in the line of duty, the despot awarded a 25,000-ruble cash award to the family and a pension to the widow of 500 rubles per month (the salary of the deceased). Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 261–2 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 4, d. 105, l. 205).

302. Timoshenko and Zhukov reported that in the first quarter of 1941, there had been 156 crashes killing 141 crew and destroying 138 aircraft. Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph, 375 (citing TsAMO, f. 75284, op. 1, d. 119, l. 18). From Sept. 1, 1939, through June 22, 1941, the Luftwaffe, in training at flight schools, lost 1,924 killed and another 1,439 injured. Additionally, units in combat in the same period, in accidents and disasters, lost 1,609 killed and 485 injured. On average, this was 248 people a month. Solonin, “Delo aviatorov.”

303. Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 135, 381. Kulik had sidetracked the Soviets’ own superior F-34 tank gun, whose production had been initiated by others, and even got Stalin to cut production of the versatile 76-mm antitank gun. “Disorganized but with a high opinion of himself, Kulik thought all his actions infallible,” recalled his first deputy. “Holding his subordinates in a state of fear was what he considered to be the best way of working.” Voronov, Na sluzhbe voennoi, 163. See also Pospelov, Istoriia Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, I: 414–6, 475–6; Zakharov, Nakanune velikikh ispytanii, reprinted in idem., General’nyi shtab, 391; “Nakanune voiny: iz postanovlenii vysshikh partiinykh i gosudarstvennykh organov (Mai 1940 g.—21 iiunia 1941 g.),” 201–3; Zhukov, Vospominaniia, I: 367; Vannikov, “Iz zapisok narkoma vooruzheniia”; Erickson, Road to Stalingrad, 62–3. When Khrushchev overstepped his writ and questioned Kulik’s competence, Stalin exploded: “You don’t even know Kulik! I know him from the civil war when he commanded the artillery in Tsaritsyn. He knows artillery!” Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 283–4.

304. Kuznetsov and Dhzoga, Pervye geroi Sovetskogo Soiuza, 54. Rychagov was succeeded by his deputy, the forty-one-year-old Pavel Zhigaryov. Rychagov had proven his mettle in Spain in 1936 and at Lake Khasan in 1938. During the Finnish War, his forces, the 8th Army, had been surrounded and practically annihilated. See also “Beseda s admiralom flota Sovetskogo Soiuza I. S. Isakovym [May 21, 1962],” in Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniiia, 372–9.

305. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 671–2 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 7237, d. 2, l. 120–1). The Germans were issuing knowingly false military radio reports, overheard by Soviet signals intelligence agents, about the movement of their troops into Romania and Hungary, as if they were preparing to strike Ukraine. Mel’tiukhov, Upushchennyi shans Stalina, 252, 296–7. See also Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, 174, 178–82, 225–6.

306. The envoy was Anatoly Lavrentyev (b. 1904), who until 1939 had worked in the heavy industry commissariat. Vishlev, “Pochemu zhe” (no. 2), 75: PA AA Bonn: Büro des Staatssekretär, Russland, Bd. 5 (R 29716), Bl. 081 (113485); Vishlev, Nakanune, 50. The Slovak envoy in Moscow, according to the Germans, surmised that Stalin would satisfy German demands for whatever goods its war economy needed, but would not consent to placing Soviet territories under German rule. Nekrich, Pariahs, 229 (citing Bundesarchiw-Militärarchiw. RMII/34: 238: German naval attaché to Berlin, May 21, 1941).

307. An NKGB agent traveled the border on the German side, finding it saturated with troops in full combat gear hiding in the forests, with special weapons depots and oil tanks stuffed, and bridges fortified and heavily guarded. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 276–7 (citing TsA SVR, d. 21616, t. 2, l. 372–5: Kobulov to Timoshenko, June 9, 1941).

308. Vinogradov et al., Sekrety Gitlera, 148–50 (TsA FSB, f. 3os, op. 8, d. 58, l. 1841–5: June 9, 1941). See also Bezymenskii, Gitler i Stalin, 474.

309. Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 212 (TsA FSK: June 9, 1941). A note with the published document states that “the Japanese shared intelligence about the USSR with the Swedish, Turkish, Bulgarian and other embassies.”

310. Kumanev, “‘22ogo’ na rassvete,” 3 (citing Timoshenko recollections, at the Institute of History, Feb. 19, 1967); Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 296–7; Whymant, Stalin’s Spy, 184 (no citation). Timoshenko’s recollections came after the Moscow showing of the film about Sorge. The Kremlin meeting could have happened on June 6, 1941. Vatutin evidently was also present. Gordetsky gives the date as June 18.

311. Vinogradov et al., Sekrety Gitlera, 151 (TsA FSB, f. 3os, op. 8, d. 58, l. 1846: June 11, 1941); “Sovetskie organy gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti v gody Velikoi otechestvennoi voiny.” See also Hilger and Mayer, Incompatible Allies, 334–6.

312. Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 219–20 (TsA FSK); Primakov, Ocherki, III: 486 (TsA FSB, f. 3 os, op. 8, d. 58, l. 1853–55); “Nakanune voiny (1940–1941 gg.),” 216. The NKGB First Directorate summary of Kobulov’s report for the leadership altered the paragraph structure slightly, emphasizing the sentence: “Whether there will initially be some kind of demands presented to the Soviet Union is unknown.” Naumov, 1941 god, II: 342–3. Kobulov stressed that the recommendation of “Elder” to preempt the Germans was “straight from the heart,” not a “provocation.” Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 296 (citing TsA SVR, d. 23078, t. 1, l. 430–1). On June 9, 1941, border intelligence reported that as of May 28 the concentration of all troops against the USSR, including on the territory of the former Austria, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Greece, Romania, and Germany east of Berlin, reached approximately 4.5 million. “Furthermore, Major Wendel [the source at German HQ] said that this army is fully ready for war with the USSR.” Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 676–80 (TsAMO, f. 127, op. 12915, d. 16, l. 362–8).

313. Moritz, Fall Barbarossa, 192. All the German war updates for the USSR can be found in Whaley, Codeword, 251–6. Hitler had returned from the Berghof to Munich on June 11, 1941, and late the next day left for Berlin, arriving by train near noon on June 13. The next day, he delivered a final all-day briefing to his forty-five most senior commanders at the Reich chancellery. Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters, 605–6; Halder, Kriegstagebuch, II: 455 (June 14, 1941), 456 (June 14). On June 17 Hitler and then the High Command confirmed the timetable. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, VI: 1001; Hillgruber, Hitlers Strategie, 508.

314. Vinogradov et al., Sekrety Gitlera, 151–3 (TsA FSB, f. 3os, op. 8, d. 58, l. 1857–50). See also Sinitsyn, Rezident svidetel’stvuet, 117–8 (referring to the agent “Monk,” who does not appear in the published intelligence materials); and Beshanov, Leningradskaia oborona, 28. The Soviet London station had reported on how Finland would join a German invasion of the USSR. TsA FSB, f. 3os, op. 8, d. 57, l. 1178–9 (May 4), l. 1220–1 (May 7), l. 1373–4 (May 16); Naumov, 1941 god, II: 177 (TsA SVR, f. 23078, t. 1, l. 366: May 7). The NKGB reported a partial Finnish mobilization on June 13. Vinogradov et al., Sekrety Gitlera, 156–7 (TsA FSB, f. 3os, op. 8, d. 58, l. 1861–2).

315. Lota, “Alta” protiv “Barbarossy,” 309.

316. Beria added that from Oct. 1940 through June 10, the NKVD recorded 185 planes violating Soviet air space. He further reported that from Jan. 1 through June 10, more than 2,000 border violators from the German side had been detained. Many had grenades and portable radio stations. There were worries of biological warfare terror (vials with epidemic-inducing diseases). Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 220–1 (TsA FSK: June 12, 1941), 228 (TsA FSK).

317. On June 13, Dekanozov telegrammed Molotov about Soviet agents having observed a massive transport of troops and equipment toward the Soviet frontier: heavy artillery, tanks, trucks, planes. “Kanun voiny: preduprezhdeniia diplomatov,” 76. On June 14, Dekanozov added that the Swedish and Danish military attachés in Berlin no longer believed troop concentrations constituted a tactic to force concessions but instead amounted to “genuine preparation for a war against the Soviet Union.” Sipols, Tainy, 398–9. Dekanozov had met “Elder” and “Corsican” and was evidently persuaded by them that this was war, not an ultimatum. Sokolov, “Novye dannye.”

318. Vishlev, Nakanune, 163 (PA AA Bonn: Dienstelle Ribbentrop. Vertrauliche Berichte über Russland [Peter], 2/3 [R 27113], Bl. 462591–462594); Vishlev, “Pochemu zhe,” 94–5. Hitler did not trust Berlings, and on June 18 ordered “close surveillance” on him and, after the onset of hostilities, his arrest. In fact, he would be sent to Sweden. Vishlev, “Pochemu zhe,” 74 (citing ADAP, XII/ii: doc. 639, 645). The Russian press frequently cites a report by Yankel “Jan” Chernyak (“Jean”) on June 12 that the attack would commence on June 22 at 3:30 a.m. This warning, if it occurred, has not been published in the various collections of intelligence documents.

319. “These rumors,” the bulletin stated, “are the clumsy product of the propaganda of forces inimical to the USSR and Germany, forces interested in the extension of the war.” Also, the Soviet embassay on June 10 had reported word that Simon had begun secret negotiations with Hess on June 10. Rozanov, Stalin-Gitler, 203–4.

320. Izvestiia, June 14, 1941; Tisminets, Vneshniaia politika SSSR, IV: 555–6. See also Werth, Russia at War, 125–6; Gafencu, Prelude to the Russian Campaign, 207–8. “The affairs of the TASS communique was a last resort,” recalled Molotov late in life. “If we had been successful in delaying the war beyond the summer it would have been very difficult to start it in the autumn. So far, diplomacy had been very successful in delaying war, but no one could predict when it would fail.” Chuev, Sto sorok, 42–3.

321. Andreas-Friedrich, Berlin Underground, 67–8. Other rumors, however, indicated an impending attack that very month. Boberach, Meldungen aus dem Reich, VII: 3374, 2380, 2394.

322. Herwarth, Against Two Evils, 195.

323. Sontag and Biddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 345–46.

324. Vishlev, “Pochemu zhe,” 78 (citing PA AA Bonn: Dienstelle Ribbentrop, Vertaruliche Berichte über Russland [Peter], 2/3 [R 27113], Bl. 462597).

325. Halder, Kriegstagebuch, II: 455–6 (June 14); Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters, 147.

326. Vishlev, “Pochemu zhe,” 76 (citing PA AA Bonn: Büro des Staatssekretär, Russland, Bd. 5 [R 29716], Bl. 051–054 [113455–113457], 066 [113470], 104–6 [113508–114510], 130–31 [113534–113535]; Jacobsen, Kreigestagebuch, I: 404.

327. Zhukov offers a colorful treatment of the call. Zhukov, Vospominaniia, I: 383; Zhukov, Vospominaniia, I: 367. For restrictions on measures to improve military readiness, see also Anfilov, Krushenie pokhoda Gitlera, 98ff. Some Soviet commanders viewed the TASS communique as an indication that on high, somehow, they were averting war, despite the colossal buildup. But the general staff was told the TASS bulletin bore no relation to ongoing Soviet military preparations. Ivanov, Shtab armeiskii, 40; Vasilevskii, Delo vsei zhizni, 108.

328. Vasilevskii, Delo vsei zhizni, 43. The western military districts were also ordered to field headquarters. Mobilized units from Eastern Siberia and Mongolia, ordered west on May 22, were due to arrive in Ukraine (Berdichev, Proskurov, Shepetovka) between June 17 and July 10.

329. Fröhlich, Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, IX: 376–81; Taylor, Goebbels Diaries, 414–6. See also Vishlev, Nakanune, 26–9, 151. Concerning Hitler’s “silence” after the TASS bulletin, Gafencu, the Romanian envoy, telegrammed Bucharest (June 16) that “the war of nerves is at full blast, worsened by the news from Finland and Romania about more and more significant military preparations.” Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 307. Köstring wrote to Berlin (June 18) that “gossip and rumors here have reached unfathomable magnitude. To transmit them would take whole volumes.” Teske, General Ernst Köstring, 320.

330. Golikov’s warnings were more balanced than many critics have asserted. Naumov, 1941 god, II: 87–9 (April 16, 1941), II: 119–20 (April 25, 1941), II: 213–5 (May 15, 1941), II: 324–5 (June 5, 1941), II: 333 (June 7, 1941); “Nakanune voiny (1940–1941 gg.),” 219–20; Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 136–7 (May 5, 1941). But Golikov clashed over assessments of German troop concentrations with Novobranets, acting head of the information (analytical) bureau of military intelligence. Golikov was said to have used a derogatory name for the Ukrainian Novobranets (khokhol). Novobranets quotes a document from Beria, supposedly prepared on June 21, 1941: “Lt.-General F. I. Golikov, the head of military intelligence (where the Berzin band recently reigned), complains about his Colonel Novobranets, who also lies, claiming that Hitler has concentrated 170 divisions against us on our western border. But I and my people, Iosif Vissarionovich, firmly remember your wise forecast: Hitler will not attack us in 1941!” Novobranets, “Nakanune voiny,” 176–8, 165; Krasnaia zvezda, Feb. 2 1991; Naumov, 1941 god, II: 46–7 (TsAMO, op. 7237, d. 2, l. 84–6: April 4, 1941).

331. Erickson, Road to Stalingrad, 88–9; Coox, “Japanese Foreknowledge,” 225; McNeal, Stalin, 237.

332. On May 20 Churchill told General Sikorski that a German attack on the USSR “does not seem to enter into consideration.” On May 23, a British Joint Intelligence Committee report, which the Soviets obtained, noted: “With her usual thoroughness Germany is making all preparations for an attack so as to make the threat convincing.” Antonov, “Anatolii Gorskii.”

333. On June 13, the British Joint Intelligence Committee concluded that Stalin would make the concessions necessary to escape war. That day, Eden summoned Maisky, telling him to come alone; Maisky had no choice but to bring his minder, Novikov, which irritated Eden. The British foreign secretary explained the intensity of the German buildup, indicating the information came from extremely reliable sources, and pledged British assistance if the USSR were attacked. Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, 361; Haslam, Near and Distant Neighbors, 115 (citing JIC [41] 251 [Final]: FO 371/29484). By June 10, Enigma intercepts made clear that attack would not commence until after June 15. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence, I: 472 (citing FO 371/29481, N 2498/78/38), 474 (citing CX/JQ/S11), 477, 479; Woodward, British Foreign Policy, 617, 619–20.

334. Barros and Gregor, Double Deception, 194–6 (citing PRO, PREM3/230/1).

335. Gorchakov, “Nakanune, ili tragediia Kassandry,” 21.

336. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 282–3, 305. Churchill wrote to his counterpart Smuts in South Africa (June 18), “According to all the information I have, Hitler is going to take what he wants from Russia, and the only question is whether Stalin will attempt a vain resistance.”

337. DGFP, series D, XII: 1030; Frölich, Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, IX: 373–76; Vishlev, Nakanune, 58; Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 328, 330, 334; Fel’shtinskii, Oglasheniiu podlezhit, 359.

338. Sorge added: “I saw a message to Germany that in the event a war arises between Germany and the Soviet Union, Japan will demand around six weeks before beginning an attack on the Soviet Far East, but the Germans think the Japanese will need more time, because that will be a war on land and sea . . .” Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 692 (TsAMO f. 23, op. 24127, d. 2, l. 454); Naumov, 1941 god, II: 380; Fesiun, Delo Rikhard Zorge, 120–1; Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 161 (photocopy of the original telegram). In a second message transmitted on June 17, Sorge clarified that his earlier message was indeed about nine full armies (150 divisions), not nine army corps. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 692 (TsAMO f. 23, op. 5840, d. 7, l. 88).

339. Lota, “Alta” protiv “Barbarossy,” 349; Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 691. Military intelligence reported on June 15, that as of June 1 Germany had 286 to 296 total divisions, and had concentrated 120 to 122 of them on the Soviet frontier with Germany and Romania, and that this movement continued. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 686–90 (June 15, 1941).

340. On June 16, “Corsican” informed Korotkov (“Stepanov”) about Rosenberg’s speech. Peshcherskii, “Krasnaia kapella,” 145.

341. Sinitsyn, Rezident svidetel’stvuet, 132–3; “Vospominaniia nachal’nika razvedki P.M. Fitina,” 18, 20–1; Sharapov, “Za sto chasov do voiny”; Lota, Sekretnyi front, 35–6; Chudodeev, “Chelovek iz ‘gruppy Ya,’” 18–24. See also Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 122–3. Fitin does not appear in Stalin’s office logbook; neither does the GB personnel Sinitsyn, Sudoplatov, or Rybkin-Yartsev. Bondarenko, Fitin, 222–3. On June 17 Merkulov and his two deputies, Bogdan Kobulov and Mikhail Gribov, were summoned to Stalin’s office (Molotov was also present) for some forty minutes (8:20–9:00 p.m.). Kobulov was back on June 18 for five minutes, in the company of Molotov, Timoshenko, Zhukov, and Malenkov. Na prieme, 336–7.

342. Primakov, Ocherki, IV: 17–25 (Fitin’s remembrances, evidently composed in 1970). Another version of Fitin’s recollections appeared in Pravda, May 8, 1989 (A. Baidakov, citing conversations with Fitin). This episode provoked the one systematization of NKGB intelligence: back at HQ, Fitin’s team would produce a “Calendar of Information Obtained through Corsican and Elder,” a chronological summary from the first report (Sept. 6, 1940) through the latest (June 16, 1941), running to eleven typed pages. “We were given all the material from every espionage station,” Rybkina recalled. “We got to work. Zhuravlyov and I did not leave the office. We looked at individual files, we looked at how much a source could be trusted, how their previously supplied information had been confirmed and so on. We did everything to make sure that the information was thoroughly tested and checked.” The Calendar conveyed that there would be a German invasion; only the details and timing were uncertain. Still, the compilers wondered whether Stalin’s skepticism could somehow be right, since he had not just their NKGB reports but also those of military intelligence, embassies, trade representatives, journalists, and who knew what else. Merkulov was in the Little Corner on the evening of June 20 for an hour, but, if the document was completed by then, he evidently shrank from presenting it to the despot. Nor did he sign it. Fitin was said to have returned it to Zhuravlyov with a notation: “You keep this. P[avel] F[itin]. June 22.” Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 286–96; Naumov, 1941 god, II: 400–7 (TsA FSB); Primakov, Ocherki, III: 431–2, 452, 493n33. Gorodetsky asserts (without citation) that the finalized document only got to Merkulov hours after the German attack, then made its way to the archives. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 297. In parallel to the Calendar [kalendar’] compiled by the NKGB, military intelligence put together a List [perechen’], which is undated. The list, which was not comprehensive, contained 56 reports of Germany’s war preparations, 54 of them received since Jan. 1941. Fully 20 came from one source—Kegel (“X”)—and 10 from another: Yeremin (“Yeshenko”). Thirty-seven offered a date for a German attack; some of the dates overlapped, but they varied and several were imprecise. Of the sixteen reports that indicated the principal thrust for a German attack, ten specified Ukraine. There is a high likelihood that the list was compiled after the invasion, in late June, perhaps in connection with Stalin’s summons of Golikov, Timoshenko, and Zhukov on June 28, 1941 or shortly thereafter. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 701–13; Lota, Sekretnyi front, 220–34 (citing TsAMO, op. 7272, d. 1, l. 87–98).

343. The report also said the Germans would target Svir-3 power station, which could be judged to have little military significance. Vinogradov et al., Sekrety Gitlera, 161–3 (TsA FSB, f. 3os, op. 8, d. 58, l. 1914–6); “Nakanune voiny (1940–1941 gg.),” 221; Naumov, 1941 god, II: 382–3 (APRF, f. 3, op. 50, d. 415, l. 50–2); Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 236–7 (TsA FSK), 237–8; Primakov, Ocherki, III: 487–8 (TsA FSB, f. 3 os, op. 8, d. 58, l. 1914–6). Gorodetsky speculates that Stalin was rattled. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 296–7.

344. The Germans assumed that any British-Soviet negotiations would be leaked, and there were no such leaks (the British press was besotted with predictions of Hitler’s blackmail of the USSR). Vishlev, “Pochemu zhe,” 76–7 (citing PA AA Bonn: Büro des Staatssekretär, Russland, Bd. 5 [R 29716], Bl. 087 [113491], 146 [113540]; Dienstelle Ribbentrop UdSSSR-RC 7/1 [R 27168], Bl. 26071).

345. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence, I: 480–1 (CAB 65/22, WM [41] 60 CA, June 16).

346. “We argued for a long time, but Cripps clung to his views,” Maisky added. Cripps, for his part, noticed that Maisky “seemed much less confident that there would be not be a war” and “now seemed very depressed.” The editor of the Times (Geoffrey Dawson) also found Maisky suddenly persuaded that a German invasion was coming. Gorodetsky, Stafford Cripps in Moscow, 111–2; Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 305–6 (citing AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 352, d. 2402, l. 235–6: Maisky to Molotov; and f. 0171: Maisky’s diary, June 18; and FO 371 29466 N3099/3/38: Cripps memo, June 19); Times archives, Dawson to Halifax, June 22. After Eden had failed to persuade Maisky that Britain had definitive intelligence showing a coming German invasion, Churchill and the British cabinet had taken the remarkable decision to share the Enigma intelligence. Cadogan had summoned Maisky and on June 16 recited German war preparations, then showed him a map of German troop concentrations on the border, in minute detail. Maisky’s dispatch reporting the stages and numbers of Germany’s buildup arrived in Moscow amid the silence in Berlin over the TASS bulletin, but the reaction, if any, remains unclear. “Kanun voiny: preduprezhdeniia diplomatov,” 77–8; Naumov, 1941 god, II: 374; Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 303 (citing AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 352, d. 2402, l. 214–5: Maisky to Molotov, June 16); Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, 361–3. The NKGB reported (June 17) on the movement of some German divisions, based on sources inside Britain, mentioning either “an undertaking of great scale, as the Germans maintain, or possibly . . . maximum pressure on the USSR.” Naumov, 1941 god, II: 381–2 (TsA SVR, d. 21616, t. 2, l. 411).

347. Nekrich, Pariahs, 229 (citing Bundesarchiw-Militärarchiw. RMII/34: 320: Köstring to Matzky).

348. Roberts, “Planning for War,” 1320–1. Even Gorodetsky, who writes of “Stalin’s failure to prepare for the German onslaught,” admits that “even with hindsight, it is hard to devise alternatives which Stalin could have safely pursued. If he had made a preemptive strike, the blow would at best have softened but definitely not averted.” Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 323.

CODA. LITTLE CORNER, SATURDAY, JUNE 21, 1941

1. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 306 (citing UD:s Arkhiv 1920 ARS, HP/1557/LVIII, June 21, 1941). The citation contains a typo, indicating the Swedish ambassador in Berlin, but this was from Moscow.

2. Bismarck, Bismarck, The Man and the Statesman, II: 301.

3. Stalin might have taken a meal in his apartment in the company of the inner circle that afternoon; alternately, he could have done so later in the evening. Mikoyan would recall many years later that “we, politburo members, gathered in Stalin’s Kremlin apartment. . . . We left around 3:00 a.m.” The timing of Mikoyan’s account does not jibe with the Kremlin office logbook, in which, moreover, Mikoyan does not figure on June 21. Molotov late in life remembered that “on June 21, we stayed until 11 or 12 p.m. at Stalin’s dacha. Maybe we had even watched a movie. We used to do this often, watch a movie.” These times, too, are contradicted by the office logbook. Kumanev, Riadom so Stalinym, 24; Mikoian, Tak Bylo, 388; Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 36; Na prieme, 337.

4. Anna Alliluyeva, Stalin’s sister-in-law, is the main source for the theory that an infected childhood bruise on his left arm had resulted in a chronically stiff elbow. Alliluyeva, Vospominaniia, 167.

5. Dokuchaev, Moskva, Kreml, Okhrana, 113–6. Stalin hated the black ravens, who shat on the monuments, so the Kremlin commandant fought an all-out war against them, trapping at least 35,000 birds, which were given as feed to the zoo.

6. Molotov recalled: “The tension was palpable in 1939 and 1940. Tensions ran very high.” Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 25.

7. German embassy personnel in Moscow did not know the precise date of the invasion. “I am personally very pessimistic, and although I do not know anything concrete, I think Hitler will launch a war against the USSR,” Schulenburg said at Köstring’s mansion (June 16) in a conversation the NKGB eavesdropped. “At the end of April I saw [Hitler] personally and completely openly I said to him that his plans for a war against the USSR are utter folly, that now is not the time to talk about war with the USSR. Believe me, for my candor I fell out with him and I’m risking my career and, perhaps, soon I’ll be in a concentration camp.” Vinogradov et al., Sekrety Gitlera, 169–70 (TsA FSB, f. 3os, op. 8, d. 58, l. 1978–80: June 20, 1941).

8. “From June 10 to 17,” Merkulov wrote (June 18), “thirty-four people left the German embassy to return to Germany; the upper ranks were sending home their families and belongings.” Naumov, 1941 god, II: 384–5 (TsA FSB, f. 3os, op. 8, d. 58, l. 1945–8). That same day, Augusto Rosso, the Italian ambassador, went to see Schulenburg at his residence (the NKGB eavesdropped the conversation). The German ambassador admitted to receiving his own instructions to evacuate embassy staff families and non-essential employees. Rosso telegrammed Rome asking for instructions in the event of war, especially about what to do with documents. Altogether, NKGB counterintelligence, in Moscow and Rome, secured three versions, independent of one another, of the Rosso-Schulenburg exchange, reporting that Rosso noted Schulenburg’s lack of information, but wrote “in strict confidence he [Schulenburg] added that in his personal opinion . . . a military conflict was unavoidable and that it could break out in two or three days, possibly on Sunday [June 22].” Pronin, “Nevol’nye informatory Stalina,” 1–2 (citing FSB archives); Naumov, 1941 god, II: 389 (TsA FS); Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 267–8. Sudoplatov commented on the June 19 report from the NKGB Rome station chief, “It appears we are being robustly disinformed.” In other words, a privileged conversation between allies—Germany and Italy—was intended to trick the Soviets into preparing for war and thereby provoke war. Under such reasoning, anything and everything the Germans did could be dismissed. The extraordinary achievement and exertions of total surveillance were in vain. Sharapov, “Za sto chasov do voiny.”

9. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 693–4 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24119, d. 2, l. 83).

10. Molotov added: “I will have a talk with I.V. [Stalin]. If anything particular comes of it, I will give a call!” Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 165–6 (June 21, 1941); Naumov, 1941 god, II: 416. Molotov late in life, to a question about anticipated blackmail, replied, “And why not think so? Hitler was an extortionist, to be sure. He could have been extorting concessions. . . . Around each issue there could have been extortion and deception and duplicity and flattery and . . . it’s hard to say really.” Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 30.

11. “Iz perepiska N. V. Valentinova-Vol’skogo s B. I. Nikolaevskim,” in Valentinov, Nasledniki Lenina, 214.

12. Valedinskii, “Organizm Stalina vpolne zdorovyi.” See also, among other important sources, RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1289, l. 6, 6 ob., 22–3; d. 1482, l. 7 ob., 23.; Ilizarov, Tainaia zhizn’ Stalina, 113.

13. Tiulenev, Cherez tri voiny (2007), 224; Utesov, Spasibo, Serdtse!, 249–50.

14. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia, 422–3 (quoting an interview with Isakov in 1962).

15. Bullock understood that Hitler and Stalin possessed dissimilar personalities, but he portrayed them as two similar lower-class malcontents, ambitious yet resentful of the political regimes and social orders they lived under. Still, in his telling, neither represented a mere expression of supposed impersonal forces. On the contrary, he portrays each as uniquely decisive in the creation of their respective regimes and policies. In Overy’s follow-up, the infrastructure of rule and systems of domination, rather than the persons, drive the respective systems, which emerged from the destruction of the Great War, sought to realize alternatives to the perceived failures of parliamentary order, and drew upon popular support. Overy understands that the two systems represented very different utopias. Still, he, too, overdoes the similarities. Bullock, Hitler and Stalin, 349, 977; Overy, Dictators.

16. Kumanev, Riadom so Stalinym, 409–10 (Chadayev); Kuznetsov, Nakanune, 355, 370.

17. Recollections of one of Poskryobyshev’s two daughters, Natalya: http://sloblib.narod.ru/slob/poskreb.htm. Poskrebyshev’s first wife, Jadwiga, a Pole, had died in 1929 of tuberculosis.

18. Tyulenev wrote that he saw Timoshenko and Zhukov that evening at the defense commissariat, evidently before their audience with Stalin, and that he departed the city for his dacha in Serebryannyi Bor, where his family was staying. Tiulenev, Cherez tri voiny (2007), 224, 226. This version of his memoirs—purportedly restoring censored parts—does not differ in essence from the earlier version regarding this episode: Tiulenev, Cherez tri voiny (1972), 123–4; Bialer, Stalin and His Generals, 200–3. Admiral Kuznetsov recalled that Tyulenev, when giving a lecture, reminisced that he had been phoned by Stalin at 2:00 p.m. Kuznetsov, Nakanune, 357, which also appears in the first edition (1966), 329.

19. That day Cripps had visited Maisky on his own initiative, and sought to ensure cooperation following the German invasion that Cripps knew was coming. Maisky’s detailed summary of the conversation was received in Moscow on June 22 at 11:00 a.m. “Iz neopublikovannykh dokumentov (Beseda I. Maiskogos) S. Krippsom 21 iiunia 1941g.), 39. See also Vishlev, Nakanune, 51. Gorodetsky (personal communication) notes that Maisky had decided to spend the weekend at the country house of his old friend, Negrín, the last Spanish Republican prime minister, and that the envoy would be genuinely surprised when he heard the news of war. Beyond his fear of crossing Stalin, he could not get out of his head that all the warnings might just be a self-serving British provocation. Supposedly, Major General Susloparov (“Maro”), the military attaché and intelligence chief in Vichy, sent a message on June 21 that the invasion would begin the next morning, and Stalin wrote on it: “This information is an English provocation. Clarify who is the author of this provocation and punish him.” This document has not been published. Ivashutin, “Dokladyvala tochno,” 57; Krasnaia zvezda, Feb. 2, 1991 (Ivashutin interview). Susloparov had told his French interlocutors (June 18) that Germany would not attack the USSR, that the rumors, being spread out of Germany (not Britain, as he formerly believed), formed part of the “pressure which the German government is expected to exert on Moscow to increase considerably the delivery of grain, oil products, and other raw materials, indispensable for continuing the war.” Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 307–8 (citing Quai d’Orsay Archives, 835/Z312/2: 261–4). See also Trepper, Great Game, 127.

20. Later, Dekanozov would be accused of having edited reports to Moscow to downplay the attack warnings, at least through late May, but in June he began to try to reduce Soviet personnel (arrivals kept coming, however, including children and pregnant wives). On June 15, he summoned the courage to telegram Molotov: “The news is that now people do not speak about the concentration as Germany demonstration to compel concessions from the USSR. Now they affirm that this is for genuine preparation for war against the Soviet Union.” Berezhkov, History in the Making, 72; “Kanun voiny: preduprezhdeniia diplomatov,” Vestnik Ministerstva inostrannykh del SSSR, 76–7. Lehmann (“Breitenbach”), in Gestapo counterintelligence, a Soviet source since 1929, evidently told his handler (now the young, inexperienced Boris Zhuravlyov) at a meeting in the outskirts of Berlin on the evening of June 19 that his Gestapo unit had received an order that Germany would invade the USSR on June 22 at 3:00 a.m. But no such communication has been published. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 348; Kolpakidi and Prokhorov, Vneshniaia razvedka Rossii, 454; Damaskin, Stalin i razvedka, 263–4. Beria supposedly erupted at Dekanozov (his former minion who now reported to Molotov and who sent the Lehmann message), writing to Stalin: “I again insist on the recall and punishment of our ambassador in Berlin, Dekanozov, who keeps on bombarding me with deza about a supposed Hitler attack on the USSR. . . . He reported that the attack commences tomorrow.” But this document has not been published. Ivashutin, “Dokladyvala tochno,” 57; Krasnaia zvezda, Feb. 2, 1991: 5 (Ivashutin interview); Lota, “Alta” protiv “Barbarossy,” 283–4; Lota, Sekretnyi front, 46. See also Krasnaia zvezda, June 16 and 21, 2001; and Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 2001, no. 22: 7.

21. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 377.

22. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 694 (TsAMO f. 23, op. 24127, d. 2, l. 463); Naumov, 1941 god, II: 398–9 (TsAMO, op. 24127, d. 2, l. 463); Fesiun, Delo Rikhard Zorge, 121.

23. On June 21, Berlings (“Peter”) reported to his German handlers that Filippov, the TASS journalist-intelligence operative, told him: “We are firmly convinced that Hitler has ventured a colossal bluff. We do not believe that the war could begin tomorrow . . . It is clear that the Germans intend to exert pressure on us in the hope of attaining advantages, which Hitler needs for continuation of the war.” Vishlev, Nakanune, 61 (PA SS Bonn: Dienstelle Ribbentrop. Vertarauliche Berichte über Russland [Peter], 2/3 [R 27113], Bl. 462604–62605), 164; Vishlev, “Pochemu zhe,” 96.

24. Hitler had shifted the date of attack (something that could have been expected). There were many contradictions among the reports. Vinogradov et al., Sekrety Gitlera, 11–2, 17; “Predislovie,” in Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 6. Molotov complained that as 1941 progressed, he “spent half a day every day reading intelligence reports. What was not in them! What dates did they not name!” He added: “I think you cannot rely on intelligence officers. You have to listen to them, but you have to check up on them. Intelligence operatives can push you into such a dangerous position that you do not know where you are.” Chuev, Sto sorok, 31–2; Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 22. Hitler, according to an interview with Halder on June 19, 1958, had told him in Aug. 1938, “You will never learn what I am thinking. And those who boast most loudly that they know my thoughts, to such people I lie even more.” Deutsch, Conspiracy Against Hitler, 32.

25. Zhukov stated in 1965, “I well remember the words of Stalin, when we reported the suspicious actions of German forces: ‘Hitler and his generals are not such fools that they would fight simultaneously on two fronts, which broke their necks in World War I. . . . Hitler does not have the strength to fight on two fronts, and Hitler would not embark on a crazy escapade.’” Zhukov continued: “Who at that time could doubt Stalin, his political prognoses? . . . We all were accustomed to viewing Stalin as a farseeing and cautious state leader, the wise Supreme Leader of the party and Soviet people.” Anfilov, “‘Razgovor zakonchilsia ugrozoi Stalina’,” 39–46; Lota, Sekretnyi front, 15 (citing RGVA, f. 41107, op. 1, d. 48, l. 1–58).

26. Hilger got it right: “Everything indicated that he [Stalin] thought that Hitler was preparing for a game of extortion in which threatening military moves would be followed by sudden demands for an economic or even territorial concessions. He seems to have believed that he would be able to negotiate with Hitler over such demands when they were presented.” Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 330.

27. It is a half-truth that Soviet intelligence performed its function and warned of the attack. No document has come forward analyzing the likelihood, let alone the contents, of Germany’s systemic campaign of deception while it was taking place.

28. Dahlerus, Last Attempt.

29. Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 266–7; Naumov, 1941 god, II: 383; Primakov, Ocherki, III: 366; Grechko et al., Istoriia vtoroi mirovoi voiny, III: 254, 335–8.

30. NKVD transport had reported on German movements from summer 1940 and, in May and June 1941, produced memos of more than twenty numbered paragraphs. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 135–6, 157, 174–6, 268–9, 324–6, 426–7, 462–5, 541–2, 545–9, 656–8, 681–3, 800–3, II: 279–82, 306–7; Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/i: 299, I/ii: 19–21, 56–60, 62–4, 79–80, 82–5, 85–7, 96–7, 108–10.

31. On May 17, 1941, Merkulov had reported to Stalin, Molotov, and Beria on mass arrests and deportations of anti-Soviet elements in the Baltic republics (some 40,000). On June 21, Merkulov reported 24,000 arrests and deportations in western Belarus. GARF, f. 9475, op. 1, d. 87, l. 121, in Volkogonov papers, Hoover Institution Archives, container 21. See also container 15.

32. Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 297.

33. Gefter, Iz etikh i tekh let, 262–3.

34. Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 179.

35. The notion of Stalin’s willful blindness to coming war retains the stature of folklore. The accusation, engagingly delivered in Nekrich, 1941, 22 iuinia, gained weight when Nekrich was persecuted and his book removed from Soviet libraries. But already by 1939, the Soviets counted more than 10,000 aircraft (versus less than 1,000 in 1931), and nearly 3,000 armored vehicles (from a mere 740 in 1931). From the signing of the Pact through mid-1941, another 18,000 fighter planes and 7,000 armored vehicles and tanks had come off assembly lines. In 1941, the defense share of the state budget was set to exceed 40 percent. Davies et al., Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 299; Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/i: 65–80.

36. Anfilov, Doroga k tragedii, 104.

37. To evaluate Soviet strength, the Nazi regime relied partly on Germans who had been born in the Soviet Union or lived there but were then expelled, and, “like émigrés everywhere, they underestimated the strengths of their former place of residence and overestimated the animosity of the people against their own government.” Herwarth, Against Two Evils, 187.

38. “Stalin was not a cowardly person,” wrote Zhukov, “but he well understood that the country’s leadership, which he headed, had been manifestly tardy with the fundamental preparations for the country’s defense in such a big war against such a powerful and experienced enemy as Germany.” Admiral Kuznetsov noted—in a passage excised from the book version of his memoirs—that Stalin’s “mistake was in miscalculating the date of the conflict. Stalin directed war preparations—extensive and many-sided preparations—on the basis of very distant dates. Hitler disrupted his calculations.” Zhukov, Vospominaniia, I: 368; Bialer, Stalin and His Generals, 198 (Kuznetsov). See also Pospelov, Istoriia Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, I: 479. “We of course cannot manage to avoid war before 1943,” Stalin was said to have told Meretskov in Jan. 1941. “We are being dragged in against our will. But it is not out of the question that we can stay out of the war until 1942.” Meretskov, Na sluzhbe narodu (1984), 197–8.

39. The Red Army had perhaps 13,000 tanks in western border regions, of which 469 were KV-1s and 832 were T-34s (they had begun to arrive in May–June). The Red Army had a large edge in combat aircraft. Morukov, Velikaia Otechestvennaia, I: 6; Pospelov, Istoriia Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, I: 415, 475–6.

40. Stepanov, “O masshtabakh repressii.”

41. Only one in fourteen had higher military education. All these percentages were lower than they had been in 1937 for the far smaller officer corps. Another 1 million officers were in the reserves, perhaps a third of whom had some training. The officer corps had grown by more 2.5 times from 1937 to 1940, through the purges. Reese, Stalin’s Reluctant Soldiers; Cherushev, “Nevinovnykh ne byvaet . . . ”; Kalashnikov et al., Krasnaia Armiia, 10–1.

42. Kuznetsov added of Stalin: “He brushed facts and arguments aside more and more abruptly.” Kuznetsov, however, has been disingenuous. In his telling, on June 21 he met Rear Admiral Mikhail Vorontsov, the Soviet naval attaché in Berlin, whom he had recalled to report in person and who had managed to travel by train from Berlin to Moscow. Vorontsov was full of details about the deployed German war machine, and Kuznetsov claimed he reportedly this immediately to Stalin. In fact, the naval commissar conveyed it as an example of a likely provocation. Kuznetsov writes in his memoirs that the last time he saw Stalin before the war was “June 13 or 14,” but he is in the logbook for June 21. Kuznetsov, Nakanune, 348–9, 355; Shustov, “No Other Ambassador,” 167; Bialer, Stalin and His Generals, 579n5 (citing Der Spiegel, March 20, 1967: 135).