by Ian Kershaw
2. Montefiore, p. 34.
3. Volkogonov, p. 410 includes Andrei Zhdanov, a member of the Politburo, Leningrad party boss and close associate of Stalin, and Marshal Kliment Voroshilov (the former Defence Commissar). Whether Zhdanov had returned from holiday at Sochi, a Black Sea resort, where he had gone to recuperate from illness just before the Germans invaded (Molotov Remembers, p. 25; and Mikoyan, p. 380) is unclear. Neither Molotov nor Mikoyan indicated his presence at the meeting. Mikoyan’s memoirs (p. 390) make no mention of Voroshilov going to the Defence Commissariat, and refer only to Molotov, Malenkov, Beria and himself, alongside Stalin.
4. Molotov Remembers, p. 39. For a character sketch of the man who, after the war, remained so obedient to Stalin that he was prepared to believe the Politburo’s ludicrous charges of treason against his Jewish wife, rather than her own assertions of innocence, see Roy Medvedev, All Stalin’s Men, Oxford, 1983, pp. 82–112; and for a full study of his career, Derek Watson, Molotov. A Biography, London, 2005.
5. Quoted in Medvedev and Medvedev, p. 237; also (with varied translation) in David E. Murphy, What Stalin Knew. The Enigma of Barbarossa, New Haven/London, 2005, p. xv.
6. For the lavish birthday tributes in December 1939, see Robert C. Tucker, Stalin in Power. The Revolution from Above, 1928–1941, New York, 1990, pp. 607–9. In fact, it has been established that Stalin was born not, as he himself always claimed, on 21 December 1879, but on 6 December 1878 (Robert Service, Stalin. A Biography, London, 2004, p. 15).
7. Quoted in Tucker, p. 119.
8. See J. Arch Getty, ‘The Politics of Repression Revisited’, in J. Arch Getty and Roberta T. Manning (eds.), Stalinist Terror. New Perspectives, Cambridge, 1993, pp. 43–9.
9. Tucker, p. 444.
10. Moshe Lewin, The Making of the Soviet System. Essays in the Social History of Interwar Russia, New York, 1985, pp. 308–9.
11. Quoted in Montefiore, p. 197.
12. Moshe Lewin, The Soviet Century, London, 2005, pp. 100–104.
13. Lewin, The Soviet Century, pp. 100, 106–7.
14. Roger R. Reese, ‘The Red Army and the Great Purges’ in Getty and Manning, pp. 199, 210.
15. Reese, p. 213; Bernd Bonwetsch, ‘Stalin, the Red Army, and the "Great Patriotic War”’, in Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin (eds.), Stalinism and Nazism. Dictatorships in Comparison, Cambridge, 1997, p. 187.
16. Lew Besymenski, Stalin und Hitler. Das Pokerspiel der Diktatoren, Berlin, 2004, p. 96; slightly differing figures in Volkogonov, p. 368, and Gabriel Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion. Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia, New Haven/London, 1999, p. 115.
17. Montefiore, p. 29.
18. Richard Overy, The Dictators. Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia, London, 2004, p. 469; Montefiore, p. 197.
19. Tucker, pp. 433–4.
20. Besymenski, p. 96.
21. Besymenski, pp. 97–8.
22. Volkogonov, p. 369; Lewin, The Soviet Century, p. 110.
23. Gregor Suny, ‘Stalin and his Stalinism. Power and Authority in the Soviet Union’, in Kershaw and Lewin, pp. 26–7.
24. Quoted in Overy, Dictators, p. 64.
25. Tucker, p. 439.
26. Overy, Dictators, p. 65.
27. Montefiore, p. 29; Evan Mawdsley, The Stalin Years. The Soviet Union, 1929–1953, Manchester, 1998, p. 17.
28. Watson, p. 146.
29. Lewin, The Soviet Century, pp. 86–7.
30. Quoted in Service, p. 383. For the growth in bureaucracy, see Moshe Lewin, ‘Bureaucracy and the Stalinist State’, in Kershaw and Lewin, pp. 62–6.
31. Tucker, p. 595; Geoffrey Roberts, Unholy Alliance. Stalin’s Pact with Hitler, London, 1989, pp. 128–9; Watson, pp. 153–7.
32. Albert L. Weeks, Stalin’s Other War. Soviet Grand Strategy 1939–1941, Lanham, Md., 2002, p. 108.
33. Roberts, Unholy Alliance, p. 34.
34. A. J. P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War, Harmondsworth, 1964, p. 76.
35. Roberts, Unholy Alliance, p. 35; Heinrich Schwendemann, Die wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit zwischen dem Deutschen Reich und der Sowjetunion von 1939 bis 1941. Alternative zu Hitlers Ostprogramm?, Berlin, 1993, p. 23.
36. Besymenski, pp. 51–6 (Soviet report on the cooperation, 1928).
37. Roberts, Unholy Alliance, p. 41.
38. Quoted in Besymenski, p. 67.
39. Quoted in Roberts, Unholy Alliance, p. 57.
40. Quoted in Besymenski, pp. 21–2. See also Roberts, Unholy Alliance, p. 100, and Barton Whaley, Codeword Barbarossa, Cambridge, Mass., 1973, p. 200, for further references, in 1935–6, by Soviet leaders to Hitler’s professed aggressive aims towards the Soviet Union in Mein Kampf.
41. Roberts, Unholy Alliance, pp. 43–4.
42. David M. Glantz, The Military Strategy of the Soviet Union. A History, London, 1992, pp. 58, 60.
43. Quoted in Roberts, Unholy Alliance, p. 109.
44. Glantz, Military Strategy, pp. 69–70. G. Zhukov, Reminiscences and Reflections, Moscow, 1985, vol. 1, p. 209, states that ‘up to 40 divisions were massed in regions adjacent to the western border’.
45. Besymenski, pp. 98–101, 116–18; Roberts, Unholy Alliance, pp. 87–92.
46. Text of the foreign policy section of Stalin’s speech in Besymenski, pp. 134–42; ‘chestnuts’ quotation, p. 142, and quoted in Roberts, Unholy Alliance, p. 116 and Watson, p. 152. Both Roberts (p. 118) and Watson (p. 313 n. 55) point out that the literal translation of what Stalin said was ‘to rake the fire with someone else’s hands’.
47. Roberts, Unholy Alliance, p. 130. The USSR was prepared to commit 70 per cent of the specified armed forces directly deployed by Britain and France in the event of a German attack on the west. In the event of a German attack against the USSR, Britain and France would immediately deploy 70 per cent of specified Soviet forces (Zhukov, vol. 1, pp. 212–16).
48. Roberts, Unholy Alliance, p. 134.
49. For a full account of the failure of Britain and France to make common cause with the Soviet Union against the threat of Hitler, and the strong anti-Communism that lay behind the half-hearted diplomacy, see Michael Jabara Carley, 1939. The Alliance that Never Was and the Coming of World War II, Chicago, 1999.
50. Ivan Maisky, Who Helped Hitler?, London, 1964, p. 133.
51. The background to and conclusion of the pact is well described by Anthony Read and David Fisher, The Deadly Embrace. Hitler, Stalin and the Nazi–Soviet Pact 1939–1941, London, 1988, chs. 13–23. The relevant diplomatic documents (from German files) were conveniently brought together in Nazi–Soviet Relations 1939–1941, ed. Raymond James Sontag and James Stuart Beddie, New York, 1948, pp. 1–78. The closer economic relations since spring 1939 are dealt with by Schwendemann, pp. 44–54.
52. See Besymenski, pp. 67–88; and Roberts, Unholy Alliance, pp. 101–8.
53. Besymenski, pp. 186–92.
54. Quoted in Roberts, Unholy Alliance, p. 139.
55. Carley, pp. 196–8.
56. Besymenski, pp. 238–9; Gerhard L. Weinberg, The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany. Starting World War II, 1937–1939, Chicago/London, 1980, p. 604; Volkogonov, p. 353.
57. See Gustav Hilger and Alfred G. Meyer, The Incompatible Allies. A Memoir of German–Soviet Relations 1918–1941, New York, 1953, pp. 293–301.
58. Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–1945. Nemesis, London, 2000, p. 205.
59. Khrushchev Remembers, p. 128.
60. Quoted in Montefiore, p. 275.
61. Volkogonov, p. 352; and see Montefiore, p. 272.
62. Nazi–Soviet Relations, pp. 131–2 (memorandum on the German-Soviet Commercial Agreement of 11 February 1940); Alexander Werth, Russia at War, 1941–1945, paperback edn., New York, 1984, p. 113; Roberts, Unholy Alliance, pp. 175–8; Schwendemann, p. 143.
63. Quoted in Roberts, Unholy Alliance, p. 185.
64. Gorodetsky, pp. 5, 14.
65. Khrushchev Remembers, p. 166.
66. Roberts, Unholy Alliance, p. 186.
67. Besymenski, pp. 279–81.
68. Roberts, Unholy Alliance, p. 195. The Soviet unease was plainly expressed by Molotov in a memorandum for the German government delivered on 21 September 1940 (Nazi–Soviet Relations, pp. 189–94).
69. The official German accounts of the meetings are in DGFP, 11, docs. 325–9, 339.
70. Besymenski, pp. 315–18.
71. Stalin interrupted Molotov’s report on the talks with anti-German comments, berated the Nazi leaders and stated that ‘the chief principle of their policy is perfidy’ (quoted in Watson, p. 186).
72. 1941 god. Dokumenty [The Year 1941. Documents], ed. A. N. Iakovlev, V. P. Naumov et al., Moscow, 1998, vol. 1, docs. 41–2, 44, 53, 58, 93 (all from July and August 1940); also Gorodetsky, p. 38.
73. Besymenski, pp. 97–8.
74. Gorodetsky, p. 118.
75. Gorodetsky, p. 120.
76. Seweryn Bialer (ed.), Stalin and his Generals, London, 1970, pp. 35–6; Albert Seaton, Stalin as Warlord, London, 1976, pp. 87–9; Adam Ulam, Stalin. The Man and his Era, Boston, 1989, p. 530; Mikoyan, p. 382.
77. Besymenski, p. 368.
78. Seaton, p. 91.
79. Khrushchev Remembers, pp. 158–60, 163–4.
80. Besymenski, pp. 282–98 (Timoshenko’s report of 7 December 1940). David M. Glantz, Stumbling Colossus. The Red Army on the Eve of World War, Lawrence, Kan., 1998, p. 89, refers to the report as the joint work of Voroshilov and Timoshenko on 8 May 1940. This date was, however, that of the handover of responsibility to Timoshenko, not of the report itself. Timoshenko received the background material from the Red Army’s central administration at that time. But there is no indication that Voroshilov assisted in compiling the report which was eventually submitted by Timoshenko on 7 December 1940.
81. Bonwetsch, p. 186; Besymenski, p. 98; Louis Rotundo, ‘Stalin and the Outbreak of War in 1941’, Journal of Contemporary History, 24 (1989), p. 280; Glantz, Military Strategy, p. 92; Glantz, Stumbling Colossus, p. 107; and see Zhukov, vol. 1, pp. 228, 244–5.
82. Mark von Hagen, ‘Soviet Soldiers and Officers on the Eve of the German Invasion. Toward a Description of Social Psychology and Political Attitudes’, in Robert W. Thurston and Bernd Bonwetsch (eds.), The People’s War. Responses to World War II in the Soviet Union, Urbana/Chicago, 2000, pp. 191–9.
83. John Erickson, The Road to Stalingrad. Stalin’s War with Germany, vol. 1, London, paperback edn., 1998, pp. 62–4. See also Zhukov, vol. 1, pp. 233–43 for the deficiencies in rearmament, communications and defence.
84. Jacques Sapir, ‘The Economics of War in the Soviet Union during World War II’, in Kershaw and Lewin, p. 216. The Red Army’s weaknesses and inadequacy for battlefield combat on the eve of ‘Barbarossa’ are fully outlined in David M. Glantz, ‘The Red Army in 1941’, in David M. Glantz (ed.), The Initial Period of War on the Eastern Front, 22 June–August 1941, London, 1993, pp. 1–39; and David M. Glantz, Barbarossa. Hitler’s Invasion of Russia 1941, Stroud, 2001, pp. 22–8.
85. Gorodetsky, pp. 116–17; Sapir, pp. 210–11; Glantz, Military Strategy, pp. 65–6.
86. John Erickson, ‘Threat Identification and Strategic Appraisal by the Soviet Union 1930–1941’, in E. R. May (ed.), Knowing One’s Enemies. Intelligence Assessment between the Two World Wars, Princeton, 1983, pp. 416–18; Whaley, pp. 175, 181, 199, 223, 228, 242; Roberts, Unholy Alliance, pp. 187, 213; Glantz, Military Strategy, pp. 61–2. The Red Army’s General Staff continued to work on the assumption that the Wehrmacht would take ten to fifteen days to mobilize and deploy, ruling out, therefore, a surprise attack (Glantz, Stumbling Colossus, p. 96).
87. Gorodetsky, p. 126. The continuity of strategic thinking, also under Zhukov, is also stressed by Glantz, Military Strategy, pp. 87–8. Zhukov later remarked (Zhukov, vol. 1, p. 245): ‘Military strategy was chiefly based on the correct assertion that an aggressor can only be defeated by offensive operations.’
88. Besymenski, pp. 355–63. See also Glantz, Military Strategy, pp. 70–75; and Glantz, Stumbling Colossus, pp. 90–92.
89. Quoted in Glantz, Stumbling Colossus, p. 93 and Besymenski, p. 364. Zhukov, vol. 1, p. 250, recalled Stalin saying: ‘Nazi Germany will not be able to wage a major lengthy war without those vital resources.’
90. Besymenski, pp. 364–5; 1941 god, vol. 1, docs. 95, 134; Evan Mawdsley, ‘Crossing the Rubicon. Soviet Plans for Offensive War in 1940–1941’, International History Review, 25 (2003), pp. 821–3; Gorodetsky, pp. 122–4; Jacob Kipp, ‘Soviet War Planning’, in Glanz, Initial Period of War, pp. 46–7; Glantz, Military Strategy, pp. 78–81.
91. Gorodetsky, p. 127. For the proceedings of the conference, see Erickson, Road to Stalingrad, pp. 40–46.
92. Gorodetsky, pp. 128–9; Mawdsley, ‘Crossing the Rubicon’, pp. 825–7; Erickson, Road to Stalingrad, pp. 50–5; Glantz, Military Strategy, pp. 81–6; Zhukov, vol. 1, pp. 221–5.
93. Mawdsley, ‘Crossing the Rubicon’, pp. 827–32; 1941 god, vol. 1, doc. 315; extracts in Besymenski, pp. 365–7; Zhukov, vol. 1, p. 250.
94. Mawdsley, ‘Crossing the Rubicon’, pp. 827–9; Besymenski, p. 368; Glantz, Stumbling Colossus, pp. 100–102, 108. Those units that did exist found themselves short of equipment, weaponry and ammunition, lacking transport and hampered by poor communications (Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War. The Red Army 1939–1945, London, 2005, pp. 87–90).
95. Besymenski, pp. 368–70.
96. Richard Overy, Russia’s War, London, 1997, pp. 64–5. See also Rotundo, p. 282; Glantz, Military Strategy, pp. 75, 79; and Glantz, Stumbling Colossus, p. 88: ‘Given the scarcity of resources, although primacy was accorded to the erection of defences along the new border, neither set was fully prepared or manned in June 1941.’ See also Zhukov, vol. 1, pp. 251–3.
97. Mikoyan, p. 377.
98. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 4: The Hinge of Fate, London, 1951, p. 443.
99. Gorodetsky, pp. 113–14; Roberts, Unholy Alliance, p. 205.
100. Quoted in Gorodetsky, p. 174.
101. Gorodetsky, pp. 173, 176 (and passim in ch. 8); Zhukov, vol. 1, p. 268, where the wording varies slightly from Gorodetsky’s quotation of the Russian version of Zhukov’s memoirs; also Whaley, pp. 62–3. For similar sentiments attributed to Stalin, see Mikoyan, p. 377: ‘It would be a great advantage for Churchill if we entered the war, but for us it is useful to stay on the sidelines for a little longer.’
102. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 3: The Grand Alliance, London, 1950, pp. 316, 322–3.
103. For Soviet intelligence agencies, see Whaley, pp. 192–200, and the more recent extensive survey in Murphy, esp. pp. 62–116.
104. Gorodetsky, p. 130.
105. Khrushchev Remembers, p. 340.
106. Gorodetsky, p. 54. See Glantz, Stumbling Colossus, pp. 233–57, for the distrust of both civilian and military intelligence–a distrust aided and abetted by the tone of the reports passed to Stalin, which frequently placed the emphasis upon misinformation.
107. See Whaley, pp. 170–77, 180–81; Read and Fisher, pp. 594–601; Glantz, Barbarossa, p. 31.
108. Whaley, p. 242.
109. 1941 god, vol. 1, doc. 204; and see Gorodetsky, p. 124.
110. Quoted in Gorodetsky, p. 125; 1941 god, vol. 1, doc. 227. See also Whaley, p. 34.
111. 1941 god, vol. 1, doc. 301.
112. 1941 god, vol. 1, doc. 308. At the end of May 1941, Stalin was still prepared to believe that Hitler was ignorant about the contraventions of Soviet airspace, and that the Wehrmacht was operating on its own initiative. See Gorodetsky, p. 225. And see below for Stalin’s initial reaction to the attack on the Soviet Union, that it had been carried out without Hitler’s knowledge.
113. 1941 god, vol. 1, doc. 321.
114. 1941 god, vol. 1, doc. 340.
115. For example, 1941 god, vol. 2, doc. 376. On 24 April a communication from the German naval attaché in Moscow to the naval High Command mentioned rumours allegedly emanating from the Briti
sh ambassador accurately predicting 22 June as the day of the outbreak of war (Nazi–Soviet Relations, p. 330).
116. 1941 god, vol. 2, doc. 377.
117. 1941 god, vol. 2, doc. 394.
118. 1941 god, vol. 2, doc. 421 and doc. 592 for a calendar of twenty-five important reports from ‘Starshina’ and ‘Corsican’ between 6 September 1940 and 16 June 1941 (German trans. in Gerd R. Ueberschär and Lev A. Bezymenskij (eds.), Der deutsche Angriff auf die Sowjetunion 1941. Die Kontroverse um die Präventivkriegsthese, Darmstadt, 1998, pp. 199–212). The calendar was put together, on Stalin’s bidding, on 20 June 1941. It was passed to Merkulov, the head of external security, only after the German invasion had taken place (Gorodetsky, p. 297).
119. 1941 god, vol. 2, doc. 443. For Sorge’s activities in the weeks preceding the German invasion, see Robert Whymant, Stalin’s Spy. Richard Sorge and the Tokyo Espionage Ring, London/New York, 1996, chs. 11–12; and Murphy, pp. 84–90.
120. See, for example, the reports printed in Sekrety Gitlera no stole u Stalina [Hitler’s Secrets on Stalin’s Desk], Moscow, 1995, docs. 3–4, 6–7, 15–16. 18; and Gorodetsky, pp. 130–36.
121. Most of the eighty-four warnings assembled by Whaley (chs. 3–5) came through foreign channels. But some of the best information, as we have noted, was provided by Soviet agents. Stalin even thought that Dekanozov, the Soviet ambassador in Berlin, was being duped by British agents and passing on their disinformation (Mikoyan, p. 377).
122. 1941 god, vol. 1, doc. 327. See also Murphy, pp. 156–8; Rotundo, p. 290; and Glantz, Stumbling Colossus, pp. 241–2. The report included information on the date and character of the German attack which turned out to be almost wholly accurate predictions, but had already been damaged in presentation by Golikov’s disclaimer that they had mainly derived from Anglo-American sources. For Golikov’s way of presenting intelligence to Stalin, see Zhukov, vol. 1, pp. 272–3; Erickson, Road to Stalingrad, pp. 88–9; Whaley, pp. 194–6; and Murphy, pp. 141–61.