143. Stalin’s logbook of visitors for Aug. 22 and 23 contains six names (aides were never logged in). On Aug. 24, Molotov alone is logged in (2:15 a.m. to 3:35 a.m.). Na prieme, 270–1. See also Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 96–7.
144. For the full Pact, see Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 76–8; and Naumov, 1941 god, II: 576–8, 585–93. Gaus appeared in the photos.
145. Degras, Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy, III: 145 (Sept. 1935).
146. “Johnnie” Herwarth and his Bavarian wife, Pussi, spent time at Bohlen’s dacha, as Soviet intelligence and Stalin knew, but, officially, Herwarth was the chief contact at the German embassy in Moscow to Britain, the United States, and France. At the dacha they rode horses, played tennis, and sipped tea. Herwarth was one quarter Jewish. Bohlen, Witness to History, 69–83; Herwarth, Against Two Evils, 167.
147. Bezymenskii, “Secret Protocols of 1939,” 76; Bezymenskii, “Sovetsko-Germanskie dogovory,” 3, 20–1. Molotov would hold on to the Soviet original of the secret protocol until Oct. 1952, when it was belatedly placed in the “osobaia papka” of the party archives. Other 1930s agreements that contained secret protocols included the German-Polish nonaggression declaration of 1934, Franco-Italian and Anglo-Italian agreements of 1935 regarding Africa, the 1938 Munich Pact, the 1939 Anglo-Japanese Agreement on China, and so on.
148. Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant, 181–4; Ribbentrop, Memoirs, 109–15 (composed in prison while waiting to be hanged after the Nuremberg trial in 1946); Schmidt, Statist, 452–4; Bloch, Ribbentrop, 249. Stalin rewrote the text of the communiqué regarding Poland, and Hitler judged it superior to the text drafted in Berlin. Hilger recalled: “‘The old Romans,’ Stalin said, turning to me, ‘did not go into battle naked but with shields. Today correctly worded political communiqués play the role of such shields.’” Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 302. Ribbentrop, who had conceded everything, later claimed to have been impressed by Stalin: “his sober, almost dry and yet so apt way of expressing himself, the hardness and yet generosity of his bargaining.” Ribbentrop, Memoirs, 113.
149. Na prieme, 271.
150. Simonov, “Zametki k biogfraii G. K. Zhukova,” 49. Khrushchev, who was at the Near Dacha on Aug. 23, 1939, recalled that Stalin said, “This is a game, who can outsmart and deceive whom.” Khrushchev, Vospominaniia, I: 225-8. Stalin well understood that the Pact helped Hitler, too. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 115. Gaus claimed he overheard Stalin mutter “deception.” It is unclear if Gaus understood what could have been the Russian word (obman), though Stalin did know some words in German and might have uttered Täuschung; or Gaus could have misheard.
151. At the same time, complicating Japan’s attempt to conquer China, many Japanese forces were tied down in Manchukuo to deter the Soviet Union. Goldman, Nomonhan, 1939, 35 (citing U.S. Department of the Army, Forces in the Far East, Japanese Special Studies on Manchuria, 13 vols. [Tokyo, 1954–6], XI/3: 193).
152. Krasnov, Neizvestnyi Zhukov, 118–20.
153. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 252.
154. Efimenko et al., Vooruzhennyi konflikt, 319–20 (RGVA, f. 32113, op. 1, d. 670, l. 57–9). Zhukov would claim that he acted on Aug. 20 also because he learned that the Japanese planned an offensive beginning Aug. 24, but there is no such plan in the Japanese documentation record. Coox, Nomonhan, 578–9.
155. Coox, Nomonhan, 582. The Japanese espionage network in Mongolia, which had never amounted to much, evidently missed this massive buildup.
156. Grechko et al., Istoriia vtoroi mirovoi voiny, II: 217; Zhilin, Pobeda na reke Khalkhin-gol, 18; Khalkhin Gol, 71.
157. Vorozheikin, Istrebiteli, 224.
158. Mongol troops had been pressed into fighting by both belligerents, but, supposedly, many on the Japanese side refused to fight or defected to the Soviets. Dylykov, Demoktraicheskoe dvizhenie mongol’skogo naroda, 39–40.
159. Coox, Nomonhan. See also the blistering critique of Japanese strategy: Wilson, When Tigers Fight.
160. Erickson, Soviet High Command, 522.
161. Krasnov, Neizvestnyi Zhukov, 136–7.
