Stalin полностью

16. Just before midnight, Stalin evidently invited Beria and Sudoplatov to stay for supper. Volkogonov, Trotsky, 454; Primakov, Ocherki, III: 98–9; Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 76–7.

17. Ribbentrop in fall 1939 had wanted to make a public declaration to counter British press assertions that while in Moscow he had requested Soviet military assistance but been rebuffed. Stalin rewrote the German foreign ministry’s draft of his words to read, “The attitude of Germany in declining military aid commands respect. However, a strong Germany is the absolute prerequisite for peace in Europe, where it follows that the Soviet Union is interested in the existence of a strong Germany. Therefore, the Soviet Union cannot give its approval to the Western powers creating conditions which would weaken Germany and place her in a difficult position. Therein lay the community of interests between the Soviet Union and Germany.” Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 124–27; Fel’shtinskii, SSSR-Germaniia, II: 18.

18. British policy-makers had discussed a possible seizure of Sweden and Norway, which were also major German suppliers, as well as the deployment of British naval squadrons to the Baltic Sea, in order to cut off Germany and confront the Soviets militarily. Such offensive operations remained largely in the realm of fantasy, however, their costs higher than the Western publics or even Western leaders were willing to incur. In any case, Hitler had beaten Britain and France to the punch, invading Norway.

19. Shirer, Rise and Fall, 731–8 (citing Halder letter, July 19, 1957). Hastings, Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord (London: Harper, 2009), 1–59; Lukacs, Duel, 97–103.

20. The June 10 issue of Poslednie novosti, the émigré newspaper of Paul Miliukov, announcing the Nazi triumph over France, would be its last in Paris; the next day it was shut down.

21. Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, 297.

22. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10339678.

23. Shirer, Berlin Diary, 419–25. The Germans removed the railway carriage to Berlin.

24. On June 21, 1940, Köstring, the German military attaché, met his Soviet liaison officer, Colonel Grigory Osetrov, who asked about the terms imposed on France. Köstring stated, “I do not know the intentions of our command staff, but I think that there will still be something with Britain.” Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 333–4 (RGVA, f. 33988, op. 4, d. 36, l. 69s); Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 33 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 64, d. 674, l. 128).

25. France’s military budget had jumped from 12.8 billion FF in 1935 to 93.7 billion FF by 1939; it was investing 2.6 times as much on weapons production as it had on the eve of the Great War. Doise and Vaïsse, Diplomatie et outil militaire, 402; Frankenstein, Le prix du réarmement français, 34–35.

26. Of Germany’s 93 combat-ready divisions, only 9 were panzer divisions, with a total of 2,439 tanks; France had 3,254 tanks (4,200 with Belgian, Dutch, and British ones included). Stolfi, “Equipment for Victory”; Tooze, Wages of Destruction, 371–2.

27. Forcade, “Le Renseignement face à l’Allemagne,” 126–55.

28. French intelligence (the Second Bureau of the General Staff) had monitored the transfer of German divisions westward following completion of the Polish campaign, and by early May 1940, despite Germany’s minimizing the use of radio communications, the Second Bureau nailed the number of German divisions almost exactly (estimating 137 for an actual 136). The Germans had altered their compromised codes on May 1, cutting off French signals intelligence for a time, making the already skeptical decision makers at the top that much more so when it came to intelligence, however. Schuker, “Seeking a Scapegoat,” 81–127, citing Col. Ulrich Liss, “Die Tätigkeit des französischen 2. Bureau im Westfeldzug 1939/40,” Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau, 10 (1960): 267–78.

29. Bloch, Strange Defeat, 36, 52.

30. France’s Maginot Line, mocked by subsequent analysts, proved difficult to overcome even when the Germans attacked it from the rear, toward war’s end; not one of its major fortresses was captured in the fighting. Doughty, Breaking Point, 69–70.

31. Förster, “Dynamics of Volksgemeinschaft,” III: 204. In 1939, French intelligence had taken note of Guderian’s new, controversial strategy of using combined tank and air power to smash through and get behind enemy artillery and wreak havoc, but very few German generals, even in 1940, expected an armored blitzkrieg to succeed in delivering a knockout blow (based on the experience of World War I). Young, “French Military Intelligence,” 288–90.