The 900 Days

by Harrison Salisbury

  2 Rokossovsky’s concern was not deep enough to keep him from planning a fishing trip on the weekend of June 21–22. At the last minute a concert was scheduled for Saturday night at his headquarters in Novograd-Volynsky, so that instead of being away he was on hand to alert his commanders. But they were ordered to go to their units only “after the concert.” (N. V. Kalinin, Eto v Serdtse Moyem Navsegda, Moscow, 1967, pp. 8-9.)

  3 A number of similar attacks were reported, including another in Fedyuninsky’s command. Grigori Baklanov describes such an incident, probably based on Fedyuninsky, in his novel, lid 41 goda, but makes it occur on the night of June 21, rather than in the early hours of June 22. (Grigori Baklanov’ lul 41 goda, Moscow, 1965, pp. 114-115.)

  4 Kuznetsov’s memoirs imply that the initiative for the No. 2 Alert came from him. In any event, Kuznetsov did issue orders June 19 for a No. 2 Alert not only for the Baltic Fleet but also for the Northern Fleet and the Black Sea Fleet. The order was issued by the Military Council of the Baltic Fleet, according to K. L. Orlov, Borba Za Sovetskuyu Pribaltiku v Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voine, 1941–1945, Vol. I, Riga, 1966. (N. G. Kuznetsov, Nakanune, Moscow, 1966, p. 109; Orlov, p. 52.) The Germans had already begun to lay mines in the Gulf of Finland, but this was not detected by the Baltic Fleet patrols. Vice Admiral N. K. Smirnov blames the delay in establishing a Soviet mine barrage for the loss of the mine layer Gnevny and the damaging of the cruiser Maxim Gorky by German mines in the Gulf of Finland. (N. K. Smirnov, Matrosy Zashchishchayut Rodinu, Moscow, 1968, p. 18.)

  5 Kuznetsov has written several versions of this evening. He gives the time of this call as 10:30 in one version and 11 P.M. in another. Probably it was closer to n P.M. Kuznetsov spent only a few minutes with Timoshenko and was back in his own office and on the phone to Tributs by about 11:30 P.M. (N. G. Kuznetsov, “Pered Voinoi,” Oktyabr, No. 11, November, 1965; N. G. Kuznetsov, “Pered Velikim Ispytaniyem” Neva, No. 11, November, 1965; N. G. Kuznetsov, “Stranitsy By logo” Voprosy Istorii, No. 4, April, 1965; N. G. Kuznetsov, “Osazhdenny Leningrad i Baltiiskii Flot” Voprosy Istorii, No. 8, August, 1965; N. G. Kuznetsov, Nakanune.)

  6 Apparently Kuznetsov transmitted two telegrams. He gives the text of the first, a simple, urgent order, as: “SF KBF CHF PVF DRF Combat Alert No. 1 urgent Kuznet-zov.” The initials designate the Northern, Baltic and Black Sea fleets and the Pinsk and Danube River flotillas. The second message was fuller. It said: “In the course of 22 and 23 June sudden attack by Germans is possible. German attack may begin with provocational action. Our task not to give rise to any provocation which might increase complications. Simultaneously fleets and flotillas must be in full combat readiness to meet sudden blows by Germans or their allies. I order: transfer to Combat Alert No. 1, carefully camouflaged. Carrying out of reconnaissance in alien territorial waters is categorically forbidden. No other actions are to be taken without special permission.”

  According to Panteleyev, whose task it was to transmit the Combat Alert to all units of the Baltic Fleet, the No. 1 Alert had been acknowledged by all commands by 1:40 A.M., Sunday, June 22. Kuznetsov says that the Combat Alert No. 1 was announced within twenty minutes of his telephone conversation with Tributs at Hangö, the Baltic bases and other installations. (Kuznetsov, Oktyabr, No. 11, November, 1965, p. 167.) Another reference by Kuznetsov says all the fleets were on No. 1 Alert by 4 A.M. (Kuznetsov, Voprosy htorii, No. 8, August, 1965, p. no.) The individual reports indicate that Libau and Ventspils went on No. 1 alert at 2:40 A.M. Admiral Golovko reported that all his Northern Fleet units had been alerted by 4:25 A.M. The Black Sea Fleet reported Sevastopol on No. 1 Alert by 1:15 A.M. and all units by 2 A.M. The Danube Flotilla reported itself on No. 1 Alert at 2:22 A.M.

  One account, that of the official Soviet history of the war in the Baltic, suggests the No. 1 Alert was issued by Kuznetsov at the strenuous urging of Admiral Tributs, who was said to have telephoned Kuznetsov repeatedly on the night of June 21 requesting such a measure. This same account asserts (possibly mistakenly) that the longer telegram from Kuznetsov was not received until 2:30 A.M. and that its text read: “... on Monday 23 June a sudden attack by Fascist Germany is possible but it is also possible that it will be only a provocation.” (I. I. Azarov, Osazhdennaya Odessa, Moscow, 1962, p. 12; N. Rybalko, Voyenno-Istoricheskii Zhurnal, No. 6, June, 1963, p. 63; Kuznetsov, Neva, No. 11, November, 1965, p. 157; V. Achkasov, Voyenno-Istoricheskii ZhurnaU No. 5, May, 1963, p. 104; I. I. Loktionov, Dunaiskaya Flotiliya v Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voine, Moscow, 1962, p. 15; G. F. Godlevskii, N. M. Grechariyuk, V. M. Kononenko, Pokhody Boyevye, Moscow, 1966, p. 81; Orlov, op. cit., p. 52.)

  3 ♦ The Fateful Saturday

  TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AFTER THE SATURDAY OF JUNE 21, 1941, Admiral Kuznetsov was still trying to reconstruct what was happening behind the scenes in the Kremlin, in the Defense Commissariat, in the highest circles of the Soviet Government.

  He recalled the day as an unusually quiet one. Ordinarily his telephone was busy with calls from commissars and high officials, especially from those whom he liked to call the “fidgety ones,” Vyacheslav A. Malyshev and Ivan I. Nosenko, the chiefs of the defense industries. The calls would come in a steady stream until about 6 P.M., when the top officials usually went home for dinner and a little rest before returning to their offices. They were in the habit of staying on duty until 2 or 3 A.M. in the event of a call from Stalin, who worked through most of the night. A commissar who was not at his desk when a call from the khozyain,1 or boss, came through was not likely to be a commissar the following morning.

  But Saturday was quiet. Neither Malyshev nor Nosenko called. It was Kuznetsov’s impression that since it was Saturday, normally a half-holiday, and moreover a fine day, warm and summery, most of the chiefs had taken the afternoon off and gone to the country. In late afternoon he telephoned Defense Commissar Timoshenko. “The Commissar has left,” his office said. The Chief of Staff, General Zhukov, was not in his office either.

  Was anything happening in Moscow? Did the whole glorious June day drift by without the Kremlin paying heed to what was afoot?

  In one government office there was no quiet. This was the Foreign Commissariat, located in a rambling group of decaying buildings on Lubyanka Hill, across a small square from the red-stone headquarters of the NKVD. Since he had relinquished the premiership to Stalin on May 6 Foreign Commissar Molotov had concentrated on diplomatic duties. However, he retained a suite in the Kremlin, as Deputy Premier, and divided his time between the two establishments, usually working days in the Narkomindel (Foreign Office) and evenings in the Kremlin.

  Some time on Friday night, or early Saturday morning, Molotov, acting on orders from Stalin himself (very probably after a long and heated argument within the Politburo), had drafted careful instructions which were telegraphed in cipher to the Soviet Ambassador in Berlin, Vladimir G. Dekanozov.2

  Dekanozov was instructed to request an immediate meeting with Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to present a note verbale, protesting the increasing German overflights of Soviet territory. These were said to have numbered 180 in the period between April 19 and June 19, some of them penetrating to a depth of sixty-five to a hundred miles.3

  Dekanozov was then supposed to draw von Ribbentrop into a discussion of the general state of Soviet-German relations, expressing concern over their apparent deterioration, noting the rumors of possible war and voicing hope that conflict might be avoided. Dekanozov was to assure von Ribbentrop that Moscow was ready for conversations to ease the situation.

  The coded instructions to Dekanozov were received in the Berlin Embassy early Saturday morning. In Berlin, as in Moscow, the weather was fine. Berliners were preparing to leave town by afternoon. Many were heading for the Potsdam parks or the Wannsee, where the bathing season was getting under way.

  The atmosphere in the Soviet Embassy was serene. I. F. Filippov, the Tass correspondent in Berlin, dropped in after attending the usual dull Saturday morning press conference at the Nazi
Foreign Office. He found Dekanozov listening to a report from the Soviet press attaché on the contents of the morning German press. Filippov told the Ambassador that the foreign newsmen had questioned him about rumors of a German attack on Russia. He said that some were considering staying in Berlin for the weekend because of the possibility of news.

  “It didn’t seem to me that the Ambassador took my news very seriously,” Filippov recalled in his memoirs. Dekanozov did detain him after the others had left, however. He asked Filippov what he thought of the rumors. Filippov told the Ambassador that the many facts which the embassy already had in its possession required that the rumors be taken seriously. But the Ambassador assured him: “There’s no need for a panicky mood. That is just what our enemies want. You must distinguish between truth and propaganda.”

  Filippov left the Ambassador after telling him he was planning a trip to the Rostok area on Sunday. The Ambassador thought that was a fine idea, and he said he hoped to go for a drive as well.

  If Dekanozov was disturbed by Moscow’s instructions that he seek an urgent conference with Ribbentrop, he betrayed no sign of it in talking with Filippov.4

  Valentin Berezhkov, first secretary of the embassy, was instructed to call the Wilhelmstrasse and arrange for the meeting with Ribbentrop. However, the duty officer at the Wilhelmstrasse advised him that Ribbentrop was out of town. Berezhkov then tried to reach Baron Ernst von Weizsäcker, State Secretary of the Foreign Office. He was also unavailable. Berezhkov called a little later. No one in a responsible position could be found. He kept calling at intervals. Finally, about noon, he got Dr. Ernst Wormann, head of the Political Division of the Foreign Office. Wormann was no help.

  “It seems to me,” Wormann said, “that the Führer must be having some important meeting. Evidently, they are all there. If your matter is urgent, turn it over to me and I’ll try and get in touch with the chiefs.”

  Berezhkov replied that Dekanozov had instructions to talk to Ribbentrop and no one else.

  Meanwhile, Moscow began to place urgent calls to the Soviet Embassy in Berlin. Molotov was demanding action. All that Berezhkov could report was that every effort was being made to reach Ribbentrop—without result.

  The afternoon wore on in an atmosphere of growing nervousness. Evening fell—and still no Ribbentrop. The rest of the embassy personnel went home. Berezhkov stayed on. Mechanically, every thirty minutes he telephoned the Wilhelmstrasse.

  The windows of the Soviet Embassy gave onto the Unter den Linden. Berezhkov sat by his telephone and gazed out on the boulevard, where, as on all Saturdays, the Berliners paraded under their beloved lime trees—girls and women in bright summer prints; men, mostly middle-aged, in dark, rather old-fashioned suits (the youngsters were all in the army); the inevitable policeman in his ugly Schutzmann helmet leaning against the wall at the embassy gate.

  On Berezhkov’s desk lay Saturday’s copy of the Volkischer Beobachter. In it was an article by Otto Dietrich, Hitler’s press chief, expounding on the “threat” which still overhung Hitler’s plans to create a thousand-year Reich.

  “It was hard,” Berezhkov recalls, “to keep from thinking of the rumors flying through Berlin and that the latest date given for the attack on the Soviet Union—the twenty-second of June—might this time turn out to be correct.”

  He thought it more and more strange that in the course of the whole day it had not been possible to get in touch with either Ribbentrop or Weizsäcker, who ordinarily was quick to receive the Soviet Ambassador when the Minister was out of town.

  Berezhkov continued his telephoning. Each time the duty officer repeated: “I still have not been able to reach the Reich Minister. But I have your request in mind and am taking steps.. . .”

  Finally at 9:30 P.M. Dekanozov was received by Weizsäcker.5 The Soviet Ambassador presented his complaint about the Nazi overflights. Weizsäcker replied briefly that he would refer the note verbale to the appropriate authorities and added that he had been informed of wholesale overflights by Soviet, rather than German, planes, and that “it was therefore the German and not the Russian Government that had cause for complaint.”

  Dekanozov attempted to broaden the conversation and bring up the general subject of Moscow’s anxiety over the course of Soviet-German relations. He was not successful.

  Von Weizsäcker’s terse minute to von Ribbentrop conveys the measure of Dekanozov’s failure:

  When Herr Dekanozov tried to prolong the conversation somewhat, I told him that since I had an entirely different opinion than he and had to await the opinion of my government, it would be better not to go more deeply into the matter just now. The reply would be forthcoming later.

  The Ambassador agreed to the procedure and left me.

  Saturday, June 21, was a fine day in London. It was both sunny and warm, a combination that is “not very frequent” in London, as Ivan M. Maisky, Russia’s Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, noted in his memoirs.

  Maisky hurried through his work in the Soviet Embassy at No. 18 Kensington Palace Gardens and by 1 P.M. was on his way with his wife to the Bovington home of Juan Negrin, Premier of the Spanish Republic from 1937 to 1939. For the last year Maisky and his wife had spent almost every weekend at Negrin’s house, about forty miles outside London.

  The Maiskys got to Bovington a little after two.

  “What’s the news?” Negrin asked as they shook hands.

  Maisky shrugged his shoulders.

  “Nothing special, but the atmosphere is threatening and at any moment we can expect something,” he replied. He had in mind, of course, an attack by Germany on Russia.

  Trying not to think of the many reports he had sent to Moscow warning of the likelihood of a German attack, Maisky changed his diplomat’s dark pin stripes for summer flannels and went for a stroll in the gardens. He sat on a bench in the green lawn and put his head back to soak in the warm sunshine. The air was filled with the intoxicating scents of summer, but try as he would he could not get out of his mind the dangers of the moment. Suddenly he was summoned to the telephone. The embassy secretary in London told him that Sir Stafford Cripps, the British Ambassador in Moscow who was then home on leave, wanted to see him immediately.

  Maisky got into his car and was back in London within the hour, Cripps, in some excitement, was waiting for him in the embassy.

  “You recall,” Cripps said, “that I have repeatedly warned the Soviet Government of the nearness of a German attack?6 Well, we now have reliable evidence that the attack will be made tomorrow, on the twenty-second of June, or in an extreme case on the twenty-ninth of June. I wanted to inform you of this.”

  Maisky dispatched an urgent cable to the Foreign Commissariat. The time was about 4 P.M. (7 P.M. Moscow time). Then he went back to Bovington, to the quiet country, to the tennis courts, to the scents of summer, there to spend an almost sleepless night.

  In view of the three-hour difference in time between London and Moscow, Maisky’s urgent cable could not have been decoded by the Foreign Commissariat earlier than 8 P.M., possibly not until after 9 P.M., Moscow time. At that hour Molotov still had no word from Berlin concerning Dekanozov’s effort to talk to von Ribbentrop.7

  Possibly stimulated by Maisky’s cablegram or, more probably, despairing at Dekanozov’s lack of success in getting through to von Ribbentrop, Molotov called the German Ambassador, Count Friedrich Werner von der Schu-lenburg, to come to his Kremlin office at 9:30 P.M.

  Molotov and von der Schulenburg had had frequent meetings during the heyday of the Nazi-Soviet pact. Now talks had become more rare and contacts between the Russians and the Germans were being carried on at lower levels. The summons to the Kremlin came as a surprise to Schulenburg.

  Molotov opened the conversation by registering his complaint about aircraft violating the Soviet frontiers. But this, von der Schulenburg quickly realized, was only a pretext for a general discussion of relations, particularly of what Molotov described as indications that the German Government
was dissatisfied with the conduct of the Soviet Government.

  Molotov mentioned rumors that war was impending between the two countries and added that he could not understand what grounds there might be for German complaint. He asked Schulenburg to enlighten him as to the trouble.

  “I replied that I could not answer his question, as I lacked the pertinent information,” Schulenburg reported in an urgent telegram to Berlin which he sent off at i: 17 A.M., Sunday morning. It was the last message the German Embassy in Moscow was to file for many years.

  Molotov continued to press the matter, saying he wondered if there might not be something to the rumors of impending war. He had been informed, he said, that all German business people had left the country and that wives and children of embassy personnel had also departed.

  Von der Schulenburg, an honest, principled man, was embarrassed. He knew from his own private sources (but not yet officially) that war was imminent. Deeply alarmed at what was going on in the Reich, he had sent a trusted agent to Berlin who had returned only the previous Sunday, bringing word that the likely date of attack was June 22.

  The Ambassador had no ready answer for Molotov. He said rather lamely that the German women and children had gone home for vacation, that the climate in Moscow was very severe. Not all the women had left, he added, an allusion to the wife of Gustav Hilger, second secretary of the embassy, who accompanied Schulenberg to the interview.

  At this point, Hilger recalled, Molotov gave up the effort, shrugged his shoulders and the interview was at an end. The Germans drove back to their embassy in the late evening twilight. An excursion boat was moving down the Moskva River, blazing with light, a jazz band blaring out an American song.