Stalin полностью

Voroshilov, meanwhile, was receiving reports of Soviet indecisiveness from the area near the Halha River, and, on the recommendation of chief of staff Shaposhnikov, summoned a more decisive person. On May 24, in Voroshilov’s office, the deputy commander of the Belorussian military district, a cavalry specialist, received a briefing on developments along Mongolia’s borders, to which he was instructed to fly immediately. His mission was to investigate the military situation, then recommend and, if necessary, take corrective measures.¹⁴ That commander was Georgy Zhukov. Like Beria, he would prove to be another missing piece. A peasant’s son (b. 1896), he had worked the fields like all the village children (in his case from age seven), attended the local church school for three years, and, at age eleven, departed for Moscow to apprentice in a furrier’s shop (where he slept on the floor). Zhukov had been conscripted in the Great War and, despite his lowly origins, awarded two St. George’s Crosses before joining the Reds in summer 1918 and fighting in the famed First Cavalry Army. Twenty years later, the NKVD had wiped out almost all the commanders under whom he had served, making him an associate of “enemies of the people.” Zhukov would later claim that his summons by Voroshilov, without explanation, had given him pause, and that his unexpected posting to the Mongolia-Manchukuo frontier had saved his life.¹⁵

It did not take Zhukov long to see that Soviet forces facing the Japanese were a mess.¹⁶ But, incredibly, Kwantung Army intelligence had failed to notice that the bridgehead on the Halha was held by Soviet forces. On the morning of May 28, when 2,500 troops of the Japanese Kwantung Army followed through on the plan to cut off the pontoon escape route of the Mongol cavalry, then launch a frontal assault to drive them backward into waiting Japanese units, they met barrages of Soviet artillery and armor. Japan maintained air superiority, so, over just two days, the Red Air Force lost 15 fighter planes in combat, while the Japanese lost a single plane. (Voroshilov called the front and exploded.)¹⁷ But the Japanese rear unit sent to cut off the Mongol escape route was wiped out nearly to a man, and the battered Japanese troops in the frontal assault retreated.¹⁸ On May 31 at the Supreme Soviet, Molotov, in a speech almost entirely devoted to relations with the Western powers, publicly repeated the patience-running-out warning to Japan, noting that “we will defend the borders of the Mongolian People’s Republic as decisively as our own, in line with our mutual assistance pact with them.”¹⁹ But the Kwantung Army was not likely to walk away.

GERMAN CUL-DE-SAC

The Germans feared success in the Soviet-British talks, and on May 30, 1939, the German foreign ministry had suddenly been ordered to undertake “definite negotiations” with the Soviets and not to be limited to economic issues—an apparent affirmative response to Molotov’s ultimatum, a point conveyed by Weizsäcker to Astakhov, the Soviet chargé d’affaires in Berlin.²⁰ The next day in Tokyo, however, Ott suddenly became confident about German negotiations with Japan, reporting that the private secretary of Japan’s prime minister had told him that “the latter was firmly resolved to put through the [Germany-Japan] alliance,” and that the deputy war minister had told him the Japanese army would overcome the opposition of the Japanese navy.²¹ If so, this could scuttle any German talks with Moscow. On June 5, the Japanese cabinet approved a compromise vis-à-vis Germany’s demands whereby Japan assented to automatic involvement in any German-Soviet conflict and freedom to choose the appropriate moment to enter any other conflicts (such as a German-British one). This compromise represented a major policy victory for the Japanese army. But Japan’s unsophisticated representative in Berlin, Lieutenant General Ōshima, seems not to have conveyed the decision to Germany.²² Stalin, in any case, knew the real Japanese position—policy paralysis—thanks to Sorge, who had high contacts among Japanese ruling circles.

On June 4, further solid information on German plans for an invasion of Poland came from Rudolf von Scheliha, the Soviet spy in the German embassy in Warsaw, via Kleist, Ribbentrop’s aide for the east, who had recently visited the Polish capital. The German ambassador there (von Moltke) and the air force attaché had been recalled to Berlin for consultations.²³ The combination of Hitler’s designs on Poland and inconclusive German-Japanese talks could potentially push the Führer to cut a deal with the Soviet devil.²⁴ At long last, it appeared that Stalin’s long-standing use of economic talks as a pathway to political talks might bear fruit. But distrust ran deep.²⁵ And Hitler might be bluffing.