120. The upshot would be a commissariat for rubber. Patolichev, Isptytanie na zrelost’, 84–5; Na prieme, 329. Patolichev had studied at a rabfak, and in 1937 graduated from the newly established Military Academy of Chemical Defense (one of his classmates was Sorge). By Jan. 1939, still only thirty years old, he was named party boss of Yaroslavl province (replacing Shakhurin) and that year earned the Order of Lenin. In 1940, General Khrulyov introduced Patolichev to Stalin—the name clicked: Patolichev’s father, Semyon, had been a friend of Stalin’s and died in the Polish-Soviet War in 1920. The son declined Stalin’s invitation to assume leadership of the Communist Youth League. Patolichev did manage to get a protégé appointed as first secretary of the Communist Youth League in the Karelo-Finish Soviet Socialist Republic formed in March 1940—a young enthusiast by the name of Yuri Andropov (b. 1914), a graduate of the Rybinsk Water Transport School and, like his mentor in Yaroslavl, an orphan.
121. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence, I: 369–70.
122. Stafford, “SOE and British Involvement.” The Soviet role in the coup remains murky. Soviet intelligence had dispatched an NKVD operations group to Belgrade headed by Solomon Milstein and including the ace Vasily Zarubin; they arrived on March 11, 1941. Sudoplatov, Razvedka i kreml’, 136–7. German military intelligence suspected Soviet collusion with Britain in the coup. Vishlev, Nakanune, 25 (PA AA Boon: I. M. Akten betr. Abwehr allgemein, Bd. 12 [R 101997], Bl. Ohne Nummer [April 15, 1941]. Geheim. Aus vertraulicher Quelle. Betr.: Russland-Juogoslavien; betr. Balkan: Politischer Stimmungsbericht; Büro RAM, betr.: Schreiben des V.A.A. beim OKH vom 28.4.41).
123. Churchill, Second World War, III: 144. As in the case of Norway, Britain had helped embroil a neutral country in the war. Unlike Norway, Yugoslavia would be dismembered and descend into civil war. Catherwood, Balkans in World War Two, 157.
124. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 804–5 (TsAMO, op. 7237, d. 2, l. 79–81).
125. This was accompanied by an admission that Barbarossa would be delayed by up to four weeks, which might have happened anyway. DGFP, series D, XII: 372–3; Halder, Kriegstagebuch, II: 248. See alsao Dedijer, “Sur l’armistice.” Erwin Rommel, head of Germany’s Afrika Corps, independently launched a desert offensive on March 31, 1941, unaware of Hitler’s Yugoslavia directive, the pending invasion of Greece, or Barbarossa, from which his successful actions drained resources. Higgins, Hitler and Russia, 104, 108–9; Goerlitz, Paulus and Stalingrad, 30–3; Rommel, Rommel Papers, 119.
126. Germany, Hitler added, could not count on its allies: the Finns were too few, the Romanians “cowardly, corrupt, depraved.” Förster and Mawdsley, “Hitler and Stalin in Perspective,” 72–8; Halder, Kriegstagebuch, II: 335–8 (March 30, 1941); Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters, 160–1.
127. Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 50–1.
128. The discussions, in which Colonel Dragutin Savić and Bozin Simić, of the air force, also took part, had begun on April 2, with Vyshinsky. On April 3, Vyshinsky denied that the Soviets had ever mentioned a political and military pact. Stalin played the role of meliorator to obtain the signing. Barros and Gregor, Double Deception, 68–9 (citing Bakhmeteff Archive, Columbia University, Prince Regent Paul papers, box 14: Gavrilović to the foreign ministry, April 4, 1941). Soviet-Yugoslav relations dated from June 24, 1940.
129. Clissold, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, 121–2.
130. Gavrilov, Voennana razvedka informiruet, 578–9 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24119, d. 4, l. 279–80).
131. Lota, “Alta” protiv “Barbarossy,” 304; Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 581 (no archival citation). “Yeshenko” out of Bucharest also confirmed the pending German invasion of Yugoslavia (581–2: TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24119, d. 1, l. 521–4).
132. Clissold, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, 122–3. Hilger speculated: “Nothing the Russians did between 1939 and 1941 made Hitler more genuinely angry than the treaty with Yugoslavia; nothing contributed more directly to the final break.” Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 326–7.
133. Gavrilović conveyed the gist of the meetings to Cripps and the American envoy Laurence Steinhardt. Gorodetsky, Stafford Cripps in Moscow, 120 (citing FO 371 29544 N1401/1392/38, Cripps’s telegram April 6, cabinet min. April 7); Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 149–51; FRUS, 1941, I: 302 (Steinhardt to Hull, April 6), 311.
