The 900 Days

by Harrison Salisbury

  The intelligence data piled up. The State Security forces obtained a report in March concerning a meeting of Marshal Antonescu, the Rumanian dictator, with Bering, a German official, at which the question of war against Russia was discussed. On March 22 the NKGB received what it regarded as reliable information that “Hitler has given secret instructions to suspend the fulfillment of orders for the Soviet Union.” On March 25 the NKGB compiled a special report of its data on the concentration of German forces in the East. This disclosed that 120 German divisions had now been moved to the vicinity of the Soviet Union.

  The NKGB had one truly remarkable source. This was the master spy, Richard Sorge, a German Communist and intelligence agent, who had for some years been in Tokyo, ostensibly as a correspondent for German newspapers but actually a Soviet spy of unmatched capability and insight. Sorge had made himself a close confidant of the German Ambassador in Tokyo, Hermann Ott. Thus he was privy to the most intimate German military and diplomatic information.

  Utilizing a secret wireless station—and an elaborate courier system—Sorge sent back to Moscow a stream of incredibly accurate information about both Japan and Germany. In 1939 he transmitted 60 reports totaling 23,139 words, and in 1940 his volume was about 30,000.

  His first message to Moscow reporting German preparations for an eastern offensive was dispatched November 18, 1940. Month by month his reports accumulated more data: that in Leipzig a new German reserve army of forty divisions was being formed (on December 28, 1940); that eighty German divisions had been concentrated on Soviet frontiers; that twenty divisions which had participated in the assault on France had been shifted to Poland. On March 5 Sorge was able to transmit to Moscow a sensational item. He sent off a microfilm of a telegram from Ribbentrop to Ambassador Ott which gave the date of the German attack as mid-June.

  Did this mass of data obtained by Soviet intelligence agencies, particularly those agencies controlled by Police Chief Beria, actually reach Stalin, Zhdanov and other members of the Politburo? Some Soviet military figures, in the virulence of their hatred for Beria, have hinted that he suppressed or distorted these materials.

  This is possible. It is also true that Dekanozov, the Soviet Ambassador in Berlin, was a close associate of Beria’s and thus in a position to color, slant or suppress information on Beria’s instructions. Another Beria henchman, Bogdan Kobulov (one of the six police officials executed with Beria December 23, 1953), was Counselor of Embassy in Berlin and in chargé of intelligence operations. There is evidence that Dekanozov did, in fact, minimize reports indicating German preparations for attack. Andrei Y. Vishinsky, a Beria lieutenant, had been installed in the Foreign Commissariat as Molotov’s chief aide. Vishinsky’s influence may have been weighted against finding cause for alarm. However, these men could not have kept the military intelligence reports from reaching Stalin.

  Marshal F. I. Golikov was chief of intelligence for the General Staff from mid-July, 1940, until the beginning of the war. He insists that all reports bearing on German plans were forwarded to Stalin and that they clearly indicated that an attack was being prepared.

  Some of Golikov’s critics contend that while he forwarded the reports he labeled them of “dubious authenticity” or suggested that they came from agents provocateurs. However, it is probable that it was precisely the “dubious” reports which would particularly appeal to Stalin’s suspicious mind.

  The evidence indicates that Stalin, Zhdanov and the others received the intelligence but consistently misinterpreted it, regarding it as provocative or indicative of a situation less immediately pressing and thus fitting Stalin’s concept of an attack by Germany not earlier than autumn 1941 or spring 1942.

  “It was clear that the General Staff did not anticipate that war would begin in 1941,” Marshal Voronov, wartime head of Soviet artillery, concluded. “This viewpoint emanated from Stalin, who beyond reason believed in the nonaggression pact with Germany, who had full confidence in it and refused to see the obvious danger which threatened.”

  It took a strong will to ignore all evidence. For months there had been a stream of worrisome reports from the Soviet military attaché, in France, Major General I. A. Susloparov. The Germans had systematically restricted Soviet Embassy activities, and in February, 1941, the embassy was shifted from Paris to Vichy, leaving only a consulate in Paris.

  In April Susloparov sent word to Moscow that the Germans planned to attack Russia in the last days of May. A bit later he advised that the attack had been delayed a month because of the difficult spring weather. By the end of April Susloparov had obtained information about the impending attack from his Yugoslav, American, Chinese, Turkish and Bulgarian colleagues. All these data were forwarded to Moscow by the middle of May.

  In April a Czech agent named Skvor reported that the Germans were moving troops to the border and that the Czech Skoda plant had been given instructions to halt deliveries to the Soviet Union. Stalin red-inked the report: “This informant is an English provocator. Find out who is making this provocation and punish him.”

  An account quickly reached Moscow of an incident in Berlin at a reception at the Bulgarian Embassy. The chief of the German Western press department, a man named Karl Bemer, got drunk and shouted out: “Inside of two months our dear Rosenberg will be boss of all Russia and Stalin will be dead. We will demolish the Russians quicker than we did the French.” I. F. Filippov, the Berlin Tass correspondent, heard of the incident almost immediately and also that Bemer had been arrested as a result of his loose talking.

  The reports came not only from Soviet sources. As early as January Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles warned the Soviet Ambassador in Washington, Konstantin Umansky, that the United States had information indicating the Germans were preparing war against Russia in the spring.

  On April 3 Winston Churchill, through Sir Stafford Cripps, the British Ambassador in Moscow, sought to warn Stalin that British intelligence data indicated the Germans were regrouping to attack Russia. Sir Stafford had difficulty in relaying the message, in part because of touchy Soviet-British relations. He had instructions to hand the message to either Molotov or Stalin. In the end he gave it to Vishinsky, who may or may not have passed it higher.4

  Toward the end of April Jefferson Patterson, then the First Secretary of the American Embassy in Berlin, invited Valentin Berezhkov, First Secretary of the Soviet Embassy, to cocktails at his pleasant Charlottenburg house. Among the guests was a German Air Force Major who was introduced as having just come home on leave from North Africa. Toward the end of the evening the Major sought out Berezhkov.

  “There’s something Patterson wants me to tell you,” he said. “The fact is I’m not here on leave. My squadron was recalled from North Africa, and yesterday we got orders to transfer to the east, to the region of Lódź. There may be nothing special in that, but I know many other units have also been transferred to your frontiers recently. I don’t know what it may mean, but I personally would not like to have something happen between my country and yours. Naturally, I am telling you this completely confidentially.”

  Berezhkov was taken aback. Never before had one of Hitler’s officers passed on this kind of top-secret information. The embassy had been repeatedly warned by Moscow to avoid provocations, so, fearful of a trap, Berezhkov did not attempt to draw out the officer. He did, however, relay the data to Moscow.

  Berezhkov’s report went forward with a stream of similar information from the Berlin Embassy. Beginning in March the embassy heard a series of possible dates for the invasion—April 6, April 20, May 18 and June 22. All of them were Sundays. The embassy became convinced a multiplicity of dates was being deliberately circulated as a smoke screen.

  It did not escape embassy notice that the German press, after several years, was again serializing excerpts from Mein Kampf. The passages republished were devoted to Hitler’s “Lebensraum” theories, the need for expansion to the east. Was the German public being prepared for events to come? This conclus
ion fitted other data coming into the hands of Soviet diplomats.

  March and early April, 1941, were a tense period in relations between Germany and Russia. This was the moment in which Yugoslavia with tacit (or more than tacit) encouragement from Moscow defied the Germans and in which the Germans moved rapidly and decisively to end the war in Greece and occupy the whole of the Balkans. When Moscow signed a treaty with Yugoslavia April 6—the day Hitler attacked Belgrade—the German reaction was so savage that Stalin became alarmed.5 He ostentatiously closed down the diplomatic missions of countries occupied by the Germans (Belgium, Greece, Yugoslavia, Norway, Denmark) and even gave diplomatic recognition to the fleeting pro-Nazi government of Rashid Ali in Iraq. He seized on the departure of Japan’s Foreign Minister Matsuoka (who had just concluded a friendship pact with Molotov) for a demonstrative gesture toward the Germans. At the Kazan railroad station ceremonies for Matsu-oka’s departure April 13 he threw his arms around Count von der Schulen-burg’s shoulders and declared: “We must remain friends and you must do everything to that end.” He then sought out the German military attaché, Colonel Hans Krebs, and blurted: “We will remain friends with you—in any event!” It was on this same ebullient occasion that Stalin embraced Matsuoka and proclaimed: “We, too, are Asiatics!”

  The diplomatic significance of Stalin’s conduct was not lost on Schulen-burg, who promptly telegraphed a report to Berlin. Stalin’s conduct may have been influenced by a report submitted to him and to Molotov by the NKGB on April 10 summarizing a conversation between Hitler and Prince Paul of Yugoslavia. Hitler was described as telling Prince Paul he would open military action against Russia at the end of June.

  It may have been Stalin’s fear of growing German hostility that led him to speed deliveries of Soviet supplies to the Germans. These deliveries rose to new highs in April—208,000 tons of grain, 90,000 tons of oil, 8,300 tons of cotton, 6,340 tons of copper, tin, nickel and other metals, and 4,000 tons of rubber. For the first time the Russians began to transport rubber and other materials ordered by the Germans via the Trans-Siberian line by special express train. Much of this matériel, including the rubber, was purchased abroad and was destined, of course, to be used by the Nazi forces in their attack on Russia.

  The stream of messages, microfilms and dispatches coming to the NKGB from Sorge by this time was reaching imposing dimensions. During the absence of Ambassador Ott (who had accompanied Foreign Minister Matsuoka to Berlin and Moscow) Colonel Kretschmer, the German military attaché in Tokyo, received word of Germany’s intention of attacking Russia. Sorge dispatched a message dated April 11 which said: “Representative of General Staff in Tokyo reports that immediately after the end of war in Europe war will begin against the Soviet Union.”

  Throughout April the daily bulletins of the Soviet General Staff and the Naval Staff reported German troop movements to the Soviet frontier. The May i information bulletin of the General Staff to the frontier military districts summarized the situation in these words:

  “In the course of all March and April along the Western Front from the central regions of Germany the German Command has carried out an accelerated transfer of troops to the borders of the Soviet Union.”

  Such concentrations were particularly visible in the Memel area across the Soviet-German frontier from the advanced Baltic base of Libau.

  The movements were so obvious along the central Bug River frontier near Lvov that the chief of frontier guards asked Moscow for permission to evacuate the families of his troops. Permission was categorically refused, and the commander was rebuked for his “panic.”

  German overflights of Soviet territory continued to increase, and the German chargé in Moscow, Tippelskirch, was summoned to the Foreign Commissariat April 22 and presented with a stiff protest. The Russians claimed there had been eighty overflights from March 28 to April 18, including one in which a German plane had been forced down near Rovno April 15 and found to be carrying a camera, exposed film and a topographical map of the U.S.S.R. The Germans were warned of “serious incidents” if the flights continued, and they were reminded that Soviet instructions to border forces not to fire on German planes might be withdrawn.

  Rumors of Soviet-German war were so persistent in Moscow (being fed by every traveler and diplomat arriving in Russia who had passed through Germany) that German diplomatic and military personnel begged Berlin for some excuse, however lame, with which to combat them. The efficient network of Soviet secret police informers reported all the rumors to the NKGB.

  Now there came from Richard Sorge what could only be described as final confirmation of German plans. In a telegram sent by secret wireless from Tokyo May 2 Sorge reported:

  Hitler has resolved to begin war and destroy the U.S.S.R. in order to utilize the European part of the Union as a raw materials and grain base. The critical term for the possible beginning of war:

  A. The completion of the defeat of Yugoslavia.

  B. Completion of the spring sowing.

  C. Completion of conversations between Germany and Turkey.

  The decision regarding the start of the war will be taken by Hitler in May. . . .

  Stalin received from his intelligence forces on May 5 a report which said: “Military preparations are going forward openly in Poland. German officers and soldiers speak openly of the coming war between Germany and the Soviet Union as a matter already decided. The war is expected to start after the completion of spring planting.”

  Sorge’s messages tumbled one after the other. In a day or’ two he was reporting: “A group of German representatives returning from Berlin report that war against the U.S.S.R. will begin at the end of May.” On May 15 he gave the date specifically as June 20–22. On May 19 he reported: “Against the Soviet Union will be concentrated 9 armies, 150 divisions.”

  By this time Admiral Kuznetsov had ordered his Northern Fleet to carry out reconnaissance as far west as Cape Nordkyn in Norway, to strengthen its naval patrols and reinforce its fighter and AA (antiaircraft) crews. He sent similar orders to other fleet units.

  He issued the order a day after the Soviet naval attaché in Berlin, Admiral M. A. Vorontsov, advised Moscow that he had obtained a statement by an officer attachéd to Hitler’s headquarters to the effect that Germany was preparing to attack Russia through Finland and the Baltic states. Moscow and Leningrad were to be attacked by air and paratroops landed. Madame Kol-lontai, the Soviet Minister in Stockholm, reported in mid-May that German troop concentrations on the Russian frontier were the largest in history.

  A deputy military attaché in Berlin named Khlopov reported on May 22 that the attack of the Germans was scheduled for June 15 but might begin in early June. The military attaché, General Tupikov, was sending almost daily reports of German preparations.

  The top personnel of the Soviet Embassy in Berlin met in early May and analyzed all the information available concerning German preparations for war. They drafted a report which concluded that the Germans were almost ready and on a scale that, considering the concentration of troops and matériel, left no doubt that an attack on Russia was to be expected at any moment. This report was sent to Moscow but not until late in the month. Possibly it was deliberately delayed by Dekanozov.

  There was no diminution of the information from Sorge. He obtained from the German military attaché in Tokyo a German map of Soviet military dispositions, indicating the German plans for assault, and advised that the general German objective was to occupy the Ukraine and impress one to two million Russian prisoners of war into their labor force. He sent information that 170 to 190 divisions were being concentrated, that the assault would begin without an ultimatum or declaration of war and that the Germans expected total collapse of the Red Army and the Soviet regime within two months.

  About June I Admiral Vorontsov, the naval attaché in Berlin, advised Admiral Kuznetsov in Moscow that the Germans would attack about June 20–22. Kuznetsov checked to be certain Stalin received a copy of the telegram. He did.
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  On June I Sorge sent another message from Tokyo explaining the German offensive tactics which were to be employed: strong reliance on cutting off, surrounding and destroying isolated Russian units.

  Stalin could not have had more specific, more detailed, more comprehensive information. Probably no nation ever had been so well informed of an impending enemy attack. The encyclopedic mass of Soviet intelligence makes even the imposing data which the United States possessed concerning Japan’s intention to attack Pearl Harbor look quite skimpy.

  But the Soviet experience reveals that neither the quantity nor the quality of intelligence reporting and analysis determines whether a national leadership acts in timely and resolute fashion. It is the ability of the leadership to comprehend what is reported, to assimilate the findings of the spies and the warnings of the diplomats. Unless there is a clear channel from lower to top levels, unless the leadership insists upon honest and objective reporting and is prepared to act upon such reports, regardless of preconceptions, prejudices, past commitments and personal politics, the best intelligence in the world goes to waste—or, even worse, is turned into an instrument of self-deceit. This was clearly the case with Stalin. Nothing in the Bolshevik experience so plainly exposed the fatal defects of the Soviet power monopoly when the man who held that power was ruled by his own internal obsessions.