78. Murray, Change in the European Balance of Power; Hauner, “Czechoslovakia as a Military Factor.” Wilhelm Keitel, head of the High Command in 1938, when interrogated at Nuremberg in 1946 about whether Germany would have attacked Czechoslovakia in 1938 if the Western powers had come to Prague’s aid militarily, would reply, “Certainly not. We were not strong enough militarily.” Fritz Erich von Manstein, another general, would state under interrogation, “had Czechoslovakia defended itself, we would have been held up by her fortifications, for we did not have the means to break through.” Similarly, Alfred Jodl would say that, after an invasion of Czechoslovakia, it would have been “militarily impossible” to hold out against a French move from the West. International Military Tribunal, X: 572, 600, 772. See also Churchill, Second World War, I: 392.
79. Deutsch, Hitler and His Generals; Steiner, Triumph of the Dark, 575–9.
80. Parssinen, Oster Conspiracy, 162.
81. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 247 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 4, d. 297, l. 50).
82. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/i: 17 (citing TsAMO, f. 5, op. 176703, d. 7, l. 431).
83. Herwarth, Against Two Evils, 123. The German invasion plan (Fall Grünn) excluded Soviet intervention because of the upheaval in the Red Army. Hochman, Failure of Collective Security, 140.
84. Hochman, Failure of Collective Security, 162–3, 166–7.
85. Because Stalin did not take his southern holiday, there are none of the instructional letters to Moscow that are revealing of his thinking. In addition, Comintern General Secretary Georgi Dimtrov, who kept a diary on Stalin’s thinking, was away on holiday (in Kislovodsk and Crimea) through Oct. 19, 1938.
86. Lukes, Czechoslovakia between Hitler and Stalin, 224.
87. Alexandrovsky wrote in his diary: “I confess that I felt uncomfortable, as I could say nothing.” “Miunkhen,” Mezhdunarodnaia zhizn’, 1998, no. 11: 138–40.
88. Lukes, “Stalin and Beneš,” 41. Stalin had to think about Japan’s obligation in the Anti-Comintern Pact to assist Germany if the USSR and Germany clashed militarily over Czechoslovakia, as pointedly noted in Izvestiia (Sept. 30, 1938) in a TASS report on speculation in London newspapers. Koltsov had been dispatched to Czechoslovakia, whence he filed many evocative stories on the crisis—“Alarming Days of Prague,” “Czechoslovakia on the Eve of New Tribulations,” “Aggressors Mangle Czechoslovakia”—illuminating the Stalinist line.
89. DVP SSSR, XXI: 516–7 (Potyomkin, Sept. 23, 1938), 523 (conversation of Jankovski and Potyomkin, Sept. 23).
90. Cienciala, “Foreign Policy of Józef Piłsudski,” 143, citing Polskie dokumenty dyplomatyczne 1938 (Warsaw: Polski Instytut Spraw Miçdzynarodowych, 2007), docs. 297, 317.
91. Coulondre, De Staline à Hitler, 165. On Sept. 26, the Soviet military attaché in Paris had claimed that thirty infantry and cavalry divisions, along with tanks and airplanes, had been positioned along the frontier with Poland. Gamelin, Servir, II: 356.
92. Landau and Tomaszewski, Monachium 1938, 462 (Beck to Lipski, Sept. 28, 1939).
93. For indirect evidence of Stalin’s designs on Poland’s eastern territories, see Raack, “His Question Asked and Answered.”
94. Pons, Stalin and the Inevitable War, 134–5 (citing RGASPI, f. 495, op. 73, d. 61a, l. 1); DVP SSSR, XXI: 738.
95. On Sept. 28, Potyomkin was in the Little Corner from 3:15 a.m. to 3:25 a.m., in the presence of Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Zhdanov, and Yezhov, all of whom were there from 2:00 a.m. to 4:15 a.m. Na prieme, 241.
96. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 77–8. On Sept. 30, Timoshenko and Poliakov gave an overview of Poland’s military posture on the Soviet border to Voroshilov. Duraczyński and Sakharov, Sovetsko-Pol’skie otnosheniia, 82–3 (RGVA, f. 33797, op. 5, d. 479, l. 199–200).
97. Maslov, “I. V. Stalin o ‘Kratkom kurse istorii VKP (b)’”; APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1122, l. 28–11; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1122, l. 54ff.
