Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler

by Robert Gellately

Throughout 1940 the Kremlin prepared for the inevitable, but Stalin vacillated. There were times when he seemed satisfied they were doing what they could and others when he realized they were still far behind.

  An example of his conflicted state of mind was evident on November 7, 1940, when the Communist elite gathered to celebrate the Bolshevik Revolution. The distinguished guests drank one too many toasts, and the lunch that started at 5: 30 went on until 9: 00. Guests were about ready to leave when Stalin, glass in hand, said he wanted to speak. What he had to say definitely put a damper on spirits:

  History has spoiled us. We have had many successes with comparative ease. This has led to complacency in many of us, a dangerous complacency…. We have a lot of honorable, courageous people, but they forget that courage alone is far from sufficient: you have to know something, you need skills: “Live and learn!” One must be constantly learning and every two or three years relearn things. But around here no one likes to learn. People are not studying the lessons of the war with Finland, the lessons of the war in Europe…. We are not prepared for the sort of air war being waged between Germany and England. It turns out that our aircraft can stay aloft for only thirty-five minutes, while German and English aircraft can stay for up to several hours! If in the future our armed forces, transport, and so forth are not equal to the forces of our enemies (and those enemies are all the capitalist states, and those who deck themselves out to look like our friends!), then they will devour us. Only given equal material forces can we prevail, because we are supported by the people, the people are with us….

  Look at me: I am capable of learning, reading, keeping up with things every day—why can you not do this? You do not like to learn; you are happy just going along the way you are, complacent. You are squandering Lenin’s legacy.

  This scolding left the room in silence and some in tears. The head of the Comintern, Georgi Dimitrov, who recorded these remarks in his diary, also wrote that he had never seen or heard Stalin “the way he was that night—a memorable one.”10

  As usual, Stalin blamed all the mistakes on everyone else. His subordinates were at fault; they did not work hard enough. In point of fact, it was he who was most to blame, and contrary to his boast, it was not at all clear that the regime had the people behind it.

  One of the most important effects of the Winter War with Finland, according to Dmitri Volkogonov, Russian historian and career officer in the Red Army, was that “an unfamiliar lack of self-assurance” came over Stalin, and “from this moment he was obsessed with the sole idea that, if Hitler were not provoked, he would not attack.”11 Although Stalin forced through changes and expanded the armed forces, his determination to avoid acting in a way that Hitler could interpret as a “provocation” persisted up to and even after the German attack was in full swing.

  From mid-1940 until then, he permitted the Luftwaffe to carry out reconnaissance flights over the Soviet Union without hindrance. Beria ordered NKVD border units not to fire on the German planes, but to write up a report. Violations of Soviet airspace became routine and were duly noted, but Stalin essentially disregarded the information.12 Even if the Soviets wanted to stop the spy planes, their military technology would have had a hard time of it.13

  Some steps were taken to make improvements in the defense of the country. Military conscription was expanded, and according to a new law of May 1940, service was extended from two to three years. Women were encouraged to enlist, but relatively few did. Reservists began to be recalled as early as August 1939, and the army had grown to 3.4 million by July 1940. Another 800,000 reservists were drafted into service in May 1941. Even so, on the eve of the German invasion many frontline divisions were only at half strength.

  The growth of the army, particularly by using older reservists, did not always work well. Many of them resented government policies (such as collectivization), and mass desertion and discipline problems in the ranks in turn inspired a new disciplinary code in 1940. Stiffer sentences became the norm, harsher than any other country’s. In 1939,112 officers and men were executed for various crimes, and military tribunals sentenced 2,283 servicemen to prison terms. In 1940, 528 officers and men were executed, and the number imprisoned jumped to 12,000, with 7,733 given terms of five years or longer. The use of these terror methods to keep the troops in line underscores the Red Army’s lack of combat readiness. The officer corps was understaffed and, compared with other European armies, also younger and less experienced.14

  The most severe problem was the lack of trained officers at the battalion and company levels. To make matters worse, the belated attempt to equip the army with more up-to-date weapons, including tanks, was incomplete in mid-1941. Often old and new weapons were mixed together in units, and that produced confusion and inefficiency. Even basic items like boots and clothing were in short supply.

  Stalin had moved the USSR westward with new conquests in 1939 and 1940. The Soviets opted to leave behind the better-fortified positions they already had and shift their defensive line to the west. The new districts faced hostile local populations that had recently been taken over by the USSR. The upshot was that the Red Army did not have sufficient time to establish effective lines and was not ready for the German attack. The Soviets lacked an operational plan for war or for mobilization. The USSR was thus even less prepared for a German assault in 1941 than it had been in 1939.15

  Stalin put his faith in the Communist theory that National Socialism was the agent of monopoly capitalism, which was intent on acquiring markets, raw materials, and investment opportunities. According to this view it would make no sense for Germany to attack if the Soviet Union was prepared to give everything it craved. A corollary of this theory was that imperialists would inevitably go to war with each other, and it was Stalin’s fervent belief that the USSR had merely to wait for the Western capitalist powers to exhaust themselves in war while he played the role of “the laughing third man” watching the fight. He would take advantage of the situation when the combatants were at an end. This theory did not encourage an all-out drive to prepare for an onslaught that appeared to Stalin to be completely irrational.

  He struck a new note on May 5, 1941, in an unusually candid speech to military graduates at a ceremonial assembly in the Kremlin. He repeated what he had said about the poor quality of Soviet weaponry in his assessment of the Winter War with Finland. This time he drew contrasts with Germany and said war with that country was all but inevitable. Summing up why their enemies seemed to be getting the upper hand, he explained that they had been creative in finding new ways of escaping the Versailles Treaty, while Britain and France gloated. “Lenin turns out to be correct when he said that parties and states perish from dizziness and success.”

  Was Germany invincible? Stalin asked rhetorically. Of course not:

  Germany began the war with the slogan “Liberation from Versailles.” And it had the support of peoples suffering from the Versailles system. But now Germany is carrying on the war under the banner of the conquest and subjection of other peoples, under the banner of hegemony. That is a great disadvantage for the German army. Not only is it losing the sympathy it once had from several countries and peoples but it is also creating enemies in the many countries it occupies. An army that must fight while contending with hostile territories and masses underfoot and in its rear exposes itself to serious dangers. That is another disadvantage for the German army.

  Furthermore, the German leaders are already beginning to suffer from dizziness. They believe that there is nothing they could not do, that their army is strong enough and there is no point in improving it any further. All of which goes to show that the German army is not invincible.16

  Germans had alienated many of the people they conquered, but the same point held for the Soviet Union. Stalin wanted no “hostile” forces in the new republics, and he used brutal methods to that end. As we have seen, he met with Beria and gave him the go-ahead for wholesale deportations of potential troublemakers.

  In
May 1941 the Red Army began drawing up blueprints for an offensive against Germany. Historians have argued vehemently about the significance of these plans and other evidence about Stalin’s motives at that time.

  Some have gone so far as to claim that Hitler attacked in a “preventive war” when he got wind of Stalin’s intentions. However, Hitler moved for reasons of his own and had made these clear long in advance. So far as Stalin himself was concerned, an offensive war was not feasible, because the capitalist countries (Germany and Britain) were hardly finished off. Actually, they were only hitting their stride. He worried that if he tried to head west, his worst fear might come true: the capitalists would bury their differences and attack the USSR. The most plausible explanation for Stalin’s halting attitude was a vain hope that the inevitable war with Germany could be delayed and fought under more favorable conditions.17

  Far from planning an attack, the Soviet Union invested vast resources in building up its new defensive positions in the recently annexed lands. Research in the recently opened Russian archives has been unable to turn up convincing proof that Stalin wanted to attack. There is no conclusive evidence of the kinds of preparations that would have been needed to train and turn loose the Red Army.18 It was true that Stalin did not entirely exclude the possibility of attacking Germany, but only if Berlin faltered. He had Zhukov and Timoshenko draw up plans for such an eventuality. In the first half of 1941, when Hitler swept everything in his path, the Kremlin’s priority was to pursue “diplomatic and economic appeasement.”19

  WORD OF THE ATTACK TO COME

  Reports from the Soviets’ worldwide network of spies sounded warnings of an impending attack. The Soviet embassy in Berlin conveyed similar impressions. One staff member there, walking past the studio of Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler’s favorite photographer, observed how different maps were featured in the shopwindow. In the spring of 1940 there were some of Holland, Belgium, Denmark, and France; in early 1941, there were new ones of Yugoslavia and Greece. In late May the maps were of the Soviet Union. Valentin Berezhkov of the Soviet embassy remarked that it was as if Hoffmann were subconsciously signaling Berliners: “Now it’s the Soviet Union’s turn.”20

  The information conveyed by the Soviet ambassador in Berlin was toned down because he knew Stalin did not want to hear bad news. The conclusion was still inescapable in his reports that an attack was pending. The information did not cause Stalin the least concern, and business between the two countries continued as usual.

  He refused to take his own spies seriously. Instead, he questioned their reliability and motives. As early as eleven days after Hitler signed directive No. 21 for Operation Barbarossa back in late 1940, Soviet spies alerted Stalin to the planned attack. He did not discount what they said, but like Molotov and others he was torn by mistrust and driven by wishful thinking that the news could not be true. As one of the leaders closest to him noted, Stalin became “unhinged” as the shrillness of the warnings picked up.21

  Winston Churchill had gotten wind of the coming German attack in April 1941 and decided to write Stalin. Later Churchill made much of his having conveyed the information, but there was considerable delay before it reached Moscow. Ultimately it was passed over on April 21 and was at best cryptic, citing as a source “a trusted agent.” The news was in fact gleaned from secret Nazi radio messages by the code-breaking ULTRA machine.22 If the British had said more, word of their abilities might have been leaked to the Germans. As it was, Churchill’s message did not spell out when the strike would come and was not as “obvious” as is often supposed. Stalin interpreted the short note as another attempt by the British to manipulate him into joining the war against Hitler. He later asked Churchill why the British had not told him in advance of the German attack.

  American intelligence knew as much or more about what was coming, but the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, Laurence Steinhardt, advised Secretary of State Cordell Hull not to convey the information because he believed it would be counterproductive. In his view the Soviets would likely regard it as “neither sincere nor independent.”

  Stalin continued to worry about being “provoked” into war with Germany. On the other hand, he was also concerned that the British might try to reach a separate peace with Hitler and turn on the Soviet Union. By the time Churchill’s note arrived, it had the exact opposite effect of the one intended, because it convinced Stalin of Britain’s nefarious intentions. “Look at that,” he said to Zhukov, “we are being threatened with the Germans, and the Germans with the Soviet Union, and they are playing us off against one another. It is a subtle political game.”23 Stalin thought he saw through it all, but he was too clever by half. The Soviet people paid the price for these costly errors of judgment.

  On June 9, Timoshenko and Zhukov showed Stalin reports of Richard Sorge, one of the most reliable Soviet spies, who gave the exact date of the coming invasion. Stalin ran Sorge’s character into the mud and threw the report in their faces. The Soviet military men had no more luck on June 18, when they begged Stalin to put the country on full alert. Once again he refused, brushing aside Timoshenko’s warning about increasing German reconnaissance flights and troop movements.

  Stalin’s psychological makeup was such that in moments of great importance he became overcautious, almost to the point of timidity. From all the information coming in, he should have concluded that the moment of truth was at hand.24

  STALIN’S VACILLATION PERSISTS

  What made Stalin’s attitude toward the possibility of war all the more peculiar was that for more than a decade he, and Lenin before him, had said that such a conflict with the West was inevitable. Yet he could not imagine Hitler would really attack and held on to the idea that nothing should be done to offend. At a meeting with Timoshenko and Zhukov only days before the attack, he ridiculed them for being alarmist about obvious German activity near the border and left the room. He stuck his head back in to issue yet another scolding. “If you’re going to provoke the Germans on the frontier,” he roared at Timoshenko, “by moving troops there without our permission, then heads will roll, mark my words.”25

  A well-proven Soviet spy in the German police since 1929, and later even a member of the counterintelligence branch of the Reich Security Main Office, Wilhelm Lehmann reported on June 19 that the attack would begin at 3: 00 a.m. on June 22. This news was brought to Beria’s personal attention. Even though Lehmann had been a loyal and trusted agent for more than a decade, Beria dismissed the information as “false and provocative.” He did not bother to tell Stalin about it for fear of facing the dictator’s wrath.26

  Molotov recalled the dread Soviet leaders had of making the wrong move: “I think psychologically it was impossible for us to be ready for war. We felt we were not yet ready, so it was quite natural for us to overdo it. But there is also no way to justify that. I personally don’t see any mistakes in that. In order to delay the war everything was done to avoid giving the Germans a pretext to start it.” He thought the Soviets needed two more years to prepare. Pressed by those who interviewed him decades after the war, he reluctantly admitted that Hitler had surprised them and in passing said that the Soviet leadership took a long-term view about spreading Communism and did not want to act precipitously: “I am sure intelligence reports are still coming in, and something may begin somewhere. That’s the nature of intelligence. And it has nothing to do with Marxism-Leninism. Our ideology stands for offensive operations when possible. Otherwise, we wait.”27

  Once Stalin signaled the Soviet Union was not going to war because of the actions of some “victory-drunk German generals” or anyone else, the Red Army bent over backward not to contradict him. When commanders in the Baltic and Kiev special military districts took steps on their own to enhance the readiness of their troops as the sound of coming war became impossible to ignore, their orders were countermanded by the Red Army General Staff. Even blackouts and minimal air-raid precautions were expressly forbidden. Soviet aircraft were neatly lined up along runw
ays without the slightest attempt to camouflage them. Whenever the political administration of the Red Army, in keeping with Stalin’s thought, labeled messages of an imminent conflict with Germany “provocative rumors,” all field commanders fell silent.28

  Information continued to pour in, and Stalin just as consistently brushed it aside. Finally, on June 21, three German deserters crossed the lines to tell of the impending attack. They swore it was going to happen within hours. Timoshenko got up the nerve to inform Stalin. There was a meeting in the Kremlin with Stalin on the evening of June 21, and he dismissed the “disinformation” yet again. Doubts began, however, and he finally remarked haplessly, according to Mikoyan, “I think Hitler’s trying to provoke us. He surely hasn’t decided to make war?”29

  Other members of the Politburo, as well as Timoshenko and Zhukov, finally prevailed on Stalin to take some preliminary steps. Zhukov was permitted to issue a statement to military districts that told of a possible attack on June 22–23, which could start with “provocative actions.” The Red Army was not to respond, lest there be “serious consequences.” Nevertheless, the army was to be brought to “full combat readiness.” In the night the military district leaders were to move troops into forward defense lines and begin camouflaging aircraft and preparing blackouts. The order, which reflected Stalin’s obsession with not wanting to make the first move in the greatest chess game of his life, was utterly ineffective and did not even reach all the troops. He left them completely exposed.30

  Early in the morning of June 22, 1941, the Germans launched Operation Barbarossa. Some Germans were dismayed, but others, including the foot soldiers, thought the Wehrmacht would be in Moscow in six weeks.

  This attack was to prove Hitler’s undoing and was disastrous all round. It opened the final and bloodiest chapter in the social catastrophe that marked the first half of the twentieth century in Europe. By the time this war ended, it had become the greatest killer of all time. Its political and psychological reverberations would last into the twenty-first century. It was such a profound crisis, so utterly unprecedented in all its many horrific faces, that it raised questions about the very meaning and future of Western civilization.