Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941

by Ian Kershaw

  123. See Whaley, p. 227, for the general failure of intelligence systems to interpret German intentions correctly; also Waldo, Heinrichs, Jr., Threshold of War. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Entry into World War II, New York/Oxford, 1988, pp. 24–6.

  124. Zhukov, vol. 1, pp. 265–6; Whaley, pp. 172–5, 181; Murphy, pp. 173–84.

  125. Gorodetsky, pp. 156–7, 164–5; Roberts, Unholy Alliance, p. 217.

  126. Molotov Remembers, p. 22. Stalin spoke on similar lines to Zhukov on 14 June on hearing intelligence reports on the war-readiness of the advanced German divisions: ‘You can’t believe everything intelligence says’ (Zhukov, vol. 1, pp. 275–6). Zhukov was adamant (p. 274) that the Defence Commissariat was not privy to the non-military intelligence reports sent to Stalin.

  127. Medvedev and Medvedev, p. 229.

  128. DGFP, 12, doc. 468; Nazi–Soviet Relations, pp. 335–6. And see Gorodetsky, p. 211.

  129. Isaac Deutscher, Stalin. A Political Biography, revised edn., London, 1988, p. 444.

  130. Besymenski, p. 379.

  131. Besymenski, pp. 374–5.

  132. 1941 god, vol. 2, doc. 437; Besymenski, pp. 380–86, 391–3; extracts from notes made by Georgi Dimitrov in Ueberschär and Bezymenskij, pp. 184–5.

  133. See Besymenski, pp. 394–7; Gorodetsky, p. 208 and p. 365 n. 36; Montefiore, p. 311 n.; Overy, Russia’s War, pp. 68–9; R. W. Davies, Soviet History in the Yeltsin Era, London, 1997, pp. 56–8; and Geoffrey Roberts, The Soviet Union and the Origins of the Second World War. Russo-German Relations and the Road to War, 1933–1941, London, 1995, p. 144. The relevant historiography, Russian and German, which poses the ‘preventive war’ hypothesis is well surveyed–and its findings roundly dismissed–in Ueberschär and Bezymenskij, especially the contributions by Gerd R. Ueberschär, ‘Hitlers Überfall auf die Sowjetunion 1941 und Stalins Absichten. Die Bewertung in der deutschen Geschichtsschreibung und die neuere "Präventivkriegsthese”’ (pp. 48–69) and Alexander I. Boroznjak, ‘Ein russischer Historikerstreit? Zur sowjetischen und russischen Historiographie über den deutschen Angriff auf die Sowjetunion’ (pp. 116–28). The case for an intended pre-emptive offensive by the Red Army, forestalled by Hitler’s launch of ‘Barbarossa’, has recently been strongly advanced by Weeks, esp. chs. 5 and 8, and Heinz Magenheimer, Hitler’s War. Germany’s Key Strategic Decisions 1940–1945, London, 1998, pp. 51–7, while Constantine Pleshakov, Stalin’s Folly. The Secret History of the German Invasion of Russia, June 1941, London, 2005, sees (p. 77) the 15 May strategic plan as the blueprint for an attack that Stalin intended to carry out in 1942. The balanced appraisal of ‘traditionalist’ and ‘revisionist’ interpretations by Mawdsley, ‘Crossing the Rubicon’, pp. 864–5, judiciously concludes that, while offensive war–as a counter-offensive, that is–constituted an intrinsic part of Soviet military planning in 1940–41, there were no plans to stage an offensive pre-emptive strike in 1941. See in addition also now the sensible comments of Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin’s Wars. From World War to Cold War, 1939–1953, New Haven/London, 2006, pp. 76–9.

  134. See Mawdsley, ‘Crossing the Rubicon’, pp. 850–51; Besymenski, pp. 438–40. Colonel I. T. Starinov, a commander in the Western Army Group, later recalled the discrepancy between the claims in Stalin’s speech and the awareness of military leaders that ‘rearming was just beginning’ (though, he said, they did not speak of this, even among themselves). See Bialer, p. 223.

  135. DGFP, 12, doc. 593.

  136. Besymenski, p. 387. Gorodetsky, p. 208, suggests that the speech was deliberately leaked abroad, though gives no indication that it reached Berlin. Medvedev and Medvedev, p. 232, also presume that the speech was meant as disinformation, though again provide no evidence of knowledge of its genuine content in Berlin. The brilliant British journalist Alexander Werth, based at the time in Moscow, gleaned information about the speech, but only some weeks later, once the Soviet Union was involved in the war. What he heard, however (see Werth, pp. 122–3), did not accord with the surviving notes of the speech, indicating, in contrast to what Stalin actually said, that he pointed to the weaknesses, rather than strength, of the Red Army. Erickson, Road to Stalingrad, p. 82, on the other hand, correctly contrasts the false impression gained abroad with the real content of the speech.

  137. Glantz, Stumbling Colossus, pp. 242–4.

  138. 1941 god, vol. 2, doc. 473; Ueberschär and Bezymenskij, pp. 186–93. Analyses in Besymenski, pp. 435–53 and Mawdsley, ‘Crossing the Rubicon’, pp. 833–62.

  139. Mawdsley, ‘Crossing the Rubicon’, pp. 834–7.

  140. Glantz, Military Strategy, p. 87, points out that the plan of 15 May ‘sits comfortably within the context of previous Soviet strategic planning and, in particular, the experiences of the January war games’. He also pertinently remarks (p. 89) that the plan ‘established limited objectives well short of the destruction of the German state’, amounting to ‘a clear example of justifiable preventative war involving the conduct of a strategic offensive operation with definite limited aims’.

  141. Mawdsley, ‘Crossing the Rubicon’, p. 839.

  142. See Glantz, Stumbling Colossus, pp. 244–5.

  143. Quoted in Mawdsley, ‘Crossing the Rubicon’, pp. 852–3. Mawdsley concludes that Stalin was almost certainly shown the plan (which Glantz, Stumbling Colossus, p. 95, and Roberts, Stalin’s Wars, p. 76, doubt) but did not approve it (a point that ‘revisionist’ historians, rejecting Zhukov’s testimony as tendentious and self-serving, dispute).

  144. Quoted in Mawdsley, ‘Crossing the Rubicon’, p. 853.

  145. 1941 god, vol. 2, doc. 560 (Mikoyan to the Council of People’s Commissars, the Central Committee and Stalin, 16 June 1941); Schwendemann, p. 354 (and pp. 315–52 for a full analysis of economic relations in the months running up to the invasion, in which extensive German industrial exports to the Soviet Union were also made). And see Werth, p. 114. A German memorandum of 15 May 1941 on trading relations, listing the huge amounts of grain, petrol, cotton and metals delivered that year by the Soviet Union (with high figures for April), commented that ‘the status of Soviet raw materials still presents a favourable picture’ (Nazi–Soviet Relations, pp. 339–41).

  146. Erickson, Road to Stalingrad, p. 91.

  147. Quoted in Besymenski, p. 444.

  148. Mawdsley, ‘Crossing the Rubicon’, pp. 861–2. Glantz, Military Strategy, p. 88, concludes that Zhukov’s plan was flawed in a number of important respects, that it could not have been executed before mid-July at the earliest–too late to pre-empt the Germans–and that Stalin’s decision to ignore the proposal ‘seems to have been prudent’.

  149. DGFP, 12, doc. 505.

  150. Erickson, Road to Stalingrad, p. 78; Deutscher, pp. 443–4.

  151. Quoted in Gorodetsky, p. 214.

  152. Quoted in Hilger and Meyer, p. 328 and Gorodetsky, p. 206. Schulenburg’s official report is in DGFP, 12, doc. 423, and Nazi–Soviet Relations, pp. 330–32.

  153. Gorodetsky, pp. 206–7, 221; Besymenski, pp. 425–8.

  154. F. H. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War, London, 1993, pp. 106–9; also F. H. Hinsley, ‘British Intelligence and Barbarossa’, in John Erickson and David Dilks (eds.), Barbarossa. The Axis and the Allies, Edinburgh, 1994, pp. 63–6.

  155. See Gorodetsky, pp. 266–7.

  156. Khrushchev Remembers, p. 133.

  157. Gorodetsky, pp. 263–5, 267–74; Roberts, Unholy Alliance, p. 218; and Roberts, The Soviet Union and the Origins of the Second World War, p. 144.

  158. Quoted in Gorodetsky, p. 224.

  159. Quoted in Gorodetsky, p. 279, from the Russian edition of Zhukov’s memoirs. The English version, Reminiscences and Reflections, vol. 1, p. 275, only contains part of the quotation. Medvedev and Medvedev, p. 233, place Stalin’s comment on 15 June, though Zhukov’s memoirs make plain that it was uttered on the previous day. For the belated emergency defence measures, see Zhukov, vol. 1, pp. 259, 264; Gorodetsky, p. 280; also Glantz, Stumbling Colo
ssus, p. 246.

  160. Glantz, Stumbling Colossus, pp. 102–7.

  161. Medvedev and Medvedev, pp. 233–4, 238–9.

  162. Volkogonov, p. 393; Glantz, Stumbling Colossus, p. 251.

  163. Gorodetsky, p. 307.

  164. Gorodetsky, p. 275.

  165. 1941 god, vol. 2, doc. 513.

  166. 1941 god, vol. 2, doc. 514. And see Whymant, pp. 164–7.

  167. Whymant, p. 184.

  168. Murphy, p. 87 (who comments further (p. 88) that Sorge’s reports had been dismissed as ‘German disinformation’ by Stalin as early as 1936).

  169. 1941 god, vol. 2, doc. 543.

  170. 1941 god, vol. 2, doc. 544.

  171. 1941 god, vol. 2, doc. 570; Sekrety Gitlera, doc. 72.

  172. 1941 god, vol. 2, doc. 581.

  173. Erickson, Road to Stalingrad, p. 93; Whaley, pp. 99–103; Read and Fisher, p. 609.

  174. 1941 god, vol. 2, doc. 590.

  175. Medvedev and Medvedev, p. 239.

  176. Sekrety Gitlera, docs. 73–7.

  177. Molotov Remembers, p. 31. For the Tass communiqué, see Whaley, pp. 207–8.

  178. Roberts, Unholy Alliance, p. 218.

  179. Gorodetsky, p. 289.

  180. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War, pp. 109–11; Hinsley, ‘British Intelligence and Barbarossa’, pp. 69–70; Erickson, Road to Stalingrad, p. 93; Whaley, pp. 230–34.

  181. Gorodetsky, pp. 301–3.

  182. 1941 god, vol. 2, doc. 599.

  183. Besymenski, p. 421.

  184. Quoted in Besymenski, p. 409.

  185. Zhukov, vol. 1, pp. 277–8, 280 (quotation p. 277); Khrushchev Remembers, p. 167; Mikoyan, p. 388; Medvedev and Medvedev, p. 240; Glantz, Barbarossa, p. 31 and (for the text of the directive) p. 242; Glantz, Stumbling Colossus, pp. 252–4; Murphy, pp. 213–15.

  186. The preceding account is based on Zhukov, vol. 1, pp. 281–2; Volkogonov, pp. 402–4; Montefiore, pp. 321–4; Radzinsky, pp. 458–9; Gorodetsky, pp. 311–13; Service, pp. 437–8; Tucker, p. 625; Ulam, pp. 538–9; Read and Fisher, pp. 5–6, 635–7, 639–42; Watson, p. 189; and Overy, Russia’s War, pp. 73–4.

  187. Montefiore, p. 324.

  188. Volkogonov, p. 407; text of the directive in Glantz, Barbarossa, p. 242 and Amnon Sella, ‘"Barbarossa”. Surprise Attack and Communication’, Journal of Contemporary History, 13 (1978), p. 571. See Zhukov, vol. 1, p. 282: ‘it [the directive] proved plainly unrealistic–and was therefore never carried out.’

  189. Mawdsley, ‘Crossing the Rubicon’, p. 863; text of the directive in Glantz, Barbarossa, pp. 242–3. And see Sella, pp. 559–73 for the confusion, incoherence and lack of coordination in the Soviet response to the surprise attack.

  190. Mikoyan, p. 388.

  191. Quoted in Watson, pp. 189–90.

  192. Quoted in Radzinsky, p. 462. For the response to the radio address, see Sella, p. 575.

  193. ‘Iz vospominanii upravliyushchego delami sovnarkoma SSSR Ya. E. Chadaev’ [‘From the Memoirs of the Head of Sovnarkom USSR–Yakov Ermolaevich Chadaev’], Otechestvennaya Istoriya, 2 (2005), pp. 8–10; also Zhukov, vol. 1, pp. 305, 309.

  194. Volkogonov, pp. 421–2; Bonwetsch, p. 196.

  195. Mikoyan, pp. 390–2; Stepan A. Mikoyan, ‘Barbarossa and the Soviet Leadership’, in Erickson and Dilks, pp. 127–8; Volkogonov, pp. 409–12; Montefiore, pp. 329–34; Radzinsky, pp. 468–72; Medvedev and Medvedev, pp. 241–5; Service, pp. 441–3. Stalin’s unscheduled absence from his duties lasted only two days. It was simply not the case, as his full list of appointments detailed in his appointments book demonstrates, that ‘for ten days the Soviet Union was leaderless’, as is asserted by Jonathan Lewis and Phillip Whitehead, Stalin. A Time for Judgement, London, 1991, p. 89.

  196. 1941 god, vol. 2, doc. 651. This is a memorandum presented by Sudoplatov to the Soviet Council of Ministers on 7 August 1953, after Stalin’s death and in the context of moves to discredit Beria. In his published memoirs many years later (Pavel Sudoplatov and Anatoli Sudoplatov, Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness. A Soviet Spymaster, Boston, 1994, pp. 145–8), Sudoplatov suggests the meeting was intended to spread disinformation ‘intended to weaken German resolve’ by implying that the Blitzkrieg had failed and a prolonged war was inevitable. Overy, Russia’s War, p. 96, accepts the disinformation argument, though he places the Stamenov meeting in October, not in July. If it was meant as disinformation, it is strange that–to go from the lack of evidence on the German side–nothing reached the enemy. And in the context of the massive German advances and conquests during July the disinformation claim sounds implausible. Nor is the story undermined by being part of an anti-Beria campaign in 1953. The peace-feelers were, in fact, mentioned by two other sources. See Volkogonov, pp. 412–13 and Radzinsky, p. 474.

  197. Montefiore, p. 346.

  198. John Barber, ‘The Moscow Crisis of October 1941’, in Julian Cooper, Maureen Perrie and E. A. Rees (eds.), Soviet History, 1917–53. Essays in Honour of R. W. Davies, Basingstoke, 1995, pp. 201–5.

  199. Werth, pp. 232, 236–7. See also the vivid account in Rodric Braithwaite, Moscow 1941. A City and its People at War, London, 2006, pp. 242–59, 271–6.

  200. Barber, pp. 209–11; Mikhail M. Gorinov, ‘Muscovites’ Moods, 22 June 1941 to May 1942’, in Thurston and Bonwetsch, pp. 122–5; Roy A. Medvedev, On Stalin and Stalinism, Oxford, 1979, pp. 128–32; Nikolai Tolstoy, Stalin’s Secret War, London, 1981, p. 241; and Overy, Russia’s War, pp. 95–8. Mikoyan, pp. 417–22, outlines the measures to evacuate the government and prepare to detonate installations within Moscow, but misleadingly claims (p. 420) that calm prevailed and that there was no panic in the city’s population.

  201. Radzinsky, p. 482.

  202. Barber, p. 206; Volkogonov, pp. 433–4; Montefiore, pp. 349–50; Radzinsky, pp. 482–3.

  203. BBC interview with Nikolai Vasilievich Ponomariov, c. 1998, typescript, fols. 29–35. See also the ‘heroic’ depiction of Stalin during these days in A. T. Rybin, Next to Stalin. Notes of a Bodyguard, Toronto, 1996, pp. 31–4.

  204. Watson, p. 193.

  205. A point emphasized by Schwendemann, pp. 354–63.

  206. Molotov Remembers, pp. 21–32.

  207. Khrushchev Remembers, pp. 587–92.

  208. Gorodetsky, p. 323 (also p. 239).

  209. Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, ed. Elke Fröhlich, part I, vol. 4, Munich, 2000, p. 214 (10.7.37).

  210. This is the presumption of the counter-factual assessment by Valentin Falin, Zweite Front. Die Interessenkonflikte in der Anti-Hitler-Koalition, Munich, 1995, pp. 100–103.

  211. Had they followed Soviet proposals for a full-scale military pact in 1939, however, Britain and France would have committed themselves to direct military intervention in the event of a German attack on Poland, presuming the Poles, Romanians and Lithuanians would have permitted the Red Army to pass through their territories to engage in the conflict (Zhukov, vol. 1, p. 214).

  212. Roberts, Unholy Alliance, p. 225.

  213. Glantz, Barbarossa, p. 31; Overy, Russia’s War, p. 71.

  214. See Rotundo, pp. 295–6.

  215. Volkogonov, p. 470.

  216. Quoted in Mawdsley, ‘Crossing the Rubicon’, p. 864.

  217. Glantz, Barbarossa, p. 30; Whaley, pp. 217–18. Tolstoy, pp. 224–30, finds Stalin’s emphasis on avoidance of provocation so unpersuasive as an explanation of his stance in spring 1941 that he posits the hypothesis that Hitler himself sent a personal assurance to lull the Soviet leader’s suspicions, suggesting that conspiratorial elements in the German High Command were pressing for aggression that he opposed. There is, however, no evidence for this hypothesis. Nothing exists in either German or Russian archives to lend authentication to the text of two purported letters from Hitler to Stalin, of 31 December 1940 and 14 May 1941. These (printed in Murphy, pp. 256–8, apparently based upon their publication in a Russian novel of 1997) are almost certainly forgeries. Despite major question marks over
the provenance of the alleged documents, Murphy (pp. 185–91) seems prepared to offer them some credence. John Lukacs, June 1941. Hitler and Stalin, New Haven/London, 2006, pp. 150–58, is, however, wisely dismissive of the letters.

  218. The threat of such an attack had been sharply reduced by the Neutrality Pact of 13 April 1941. Though, as the deliberations by the Japanese government following the German invasion would show, there was no guarantee that Japan would adhere to the pact, from the Soviet perspective ‘the treaty held promise of a certain gain in time’ (Zhukov, vol. 1, p. 257).

  219. For the lamentable failings of German intelligence–which did little more than uphold existing prejudice about the weakness of the Red Army–see David Kahn, Hitler’s Spies. German Military Intelligence in World War II, New York, 2000, pp. 445–61. See also Whaley, p. 33. There appears to have been no attempt made by Soviet military intelligence to spread disinformation to advertise the strength of the Red Army.

  220. Erickson, Road to Stalingrad, pp. 69–73, 81, 86; Glantz, Military Strategy, pp. 63, 98, 101–2; Glantz, Stumbling Colossus, p. 97. See also Zhukov, vol. 1, p. 249.

  221. Medvedev and Medvedev, p. 245.

  222. Zhukov, vol. 1, p. 250, immediately adding that Stalin’s conjecture that the Germans would strike in the south, not the north, had proved incorrect. Zhukov (pp. 300–301) nevertheless admitted the military’s part of the responsibility for the tactical and strategic errors made on the eve of the invasion and immediately thereafter. See also Roberts, Stalin’s Wars, pp. 74, 80, and the comments on the failings of Soviet intelligence in Glantz, Stumbling Colossus, pp. 254–7. The general failure of the intelligence services of the major powers to anticipate ‘Barbarossa’ is emphasized by Whaley, p. 227.

  CHAPTER 7. WASHINGTON, DC, SUMMER–AUTUMN 1941