346. Khrushchev, Memoirs, I: 271. “Stalin is afraid of Hitler—and not for nothing,” Trotsky had thundered in 1939. Other perspicacious observers, such as Hilger, also recognized that “there is not the slightest doubt that a deep fear of Hitler’s Germany was the essential guide to all Soviet foreign policy in the 1930s.” But Hilger, unlike Trotsky, grasped that this fear “made the Kremlin bend every effort and strain every muscle to render the country strong politically, economically, ideologically, and militarily.” Biulleten’ oppozitsii, no. 79–80, Aug.–Oct. 1939, 14–6. Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 276.
CHAPTER 14. FEAR
1. Molotov continued: “Stalin, as a cold-blooded person, took this matter very seriously when discussing grand strategy.” Chuev, Sto sorork, 45–6; Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 34.
2. Weinberg, Hitler’s Table Talk, 9.
3. Chuev, Sto sorok, 28–9.
4. Barros and Gregor, Double Deception, 49 (citing Liudas Dovydenas and J. Edgar Hoover: OSS Papers, RG 266 NA, file 10532: Hoover to Donovan, Jan. 27, 1942); Naumov, 1941 god, I: 455–7 (AVPRF, f. 082, op. 23, pap. 95, d. 6, l. 268–72).
5. Molotov would pass Dekanozov’s Dec. 7 report to Stalin only on Dec. 24. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 440–1 (AVFRF, f. 06, op. 3 (dop.), pap. 36, d. 467, l. 1–4); “Nakanune voiny (1936–1940 g.): doklady i zapiski v TsK VKP (b),” 220–2; Voiushin and Gorlov, “Fashistskaia agressiia,” 15–6.
6. Soviet intelligence reports about Hitler’s intention to seize Ukraine (“the bread-basket of Europe”) had become more or less regular from early 1939, and continued after the signing of the Pact. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 25–6.
7. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 449 (TsA FSB: Dec. 14, 1940). Varga sent Stalin a report from his Institute of World Economics and Politics, with detailed tables of “the resources Germany is receiving from its occupied territories,” information that “might be interesting for you.” Cherkasov, IMEMO, 33 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 716, l. 28: Dec. 16, 1940).
8. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 455–7; Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 20; Berezhkov, At Stalin’s Side, 211–2. Pavlov, not Berezhkov, accompanied Dekanozov on the visit to Hitler. On Dec. 13, 1940, The Siberians, a children’s film by Lev Kuleshov, premiered in Moscow. It featured a Buryat hunter who, on New Year’s Eve, tells two boys the story of how a hunter had once helped Stalin escape from Siberian exile, and how Stalin had given him his pipe as a memento, but the hunter had died in the civil war and left the pipe to another hunter/red partisan. The two boys decide to try to track down the pipe and return it to Stalin (played by Gelovani).
9. The directive stated that it was “of decisive importance that the intention to attack should not become known.” Hubatsch, Hitlers Weisungen, 84–92; Naumov, 1941 god, I: 452–5; Butler, Grand Strategy, III/i: 540.
10. Fabry, Der Hitler-Stalin Pakt, 365–7.
11. Berghahn, Germany and the Approach of War, 191–2. “Backward Russia constituted a vulnerable yet provocative target for its European competitors,” one scholar argued. “Huge and lumbering, Russia always seemed an immense threat, but one that could be neutralized by a bold stroke aimed at one of its innumerable weak points . . . At the same time, the sharp fluctuations in Russian power, linked to the stop-and-go nature of its efforts to catch up to the West, created strong incentives for preventive war initiated by Russia’s foes.” Snyder, “Russian Backwardness.”
12. Photostat: http://ww2db.com/photo.php?source=all&color=all&list=search&for eigntype=D&foreigntype_id=168. “One of the more remarkable facts in the history of the German Supreme Headquarters is that from the end of June to the beginning of December 1940 the highest-level staff of the Wehrmacht and its Supreme Commander played only a very small part in the preparations for the greatest campaign in the Second World War,” wrote Warlimont. “There was no carefully thought-out plan as a basis for action against Russia such as would have been made in the old days by the Prussian-German General Staff.” Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters, 135, 138–9. In Dec. 1940, Beria’s NKVD drafted a decree to get all code and decoding departments—foreign affairs commissariat, foreign trade, defense, and fleet—moved into NKVD state security; Stalin approved. Khaustov, “Deiatel’nost’ organov,” 359–60.
