134. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 316–20; Fel’shtinskii, SSSR-Germaniia, II: 156; Clissold, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, 123–4.
135. Barros and Gregor, Double Deception, 71 (citing European War 1939/9712, RG 59, NA, file 740.0011: Steinhardt to Sec. of State, no. 703, April 7, 1941; and FO/371/29544: Cripps to Foreign Office, April 6, 1941).
136. This is what Krebs reported from Moscow to Berlin. Teske, General Ernst Köstring, 296. See also Barros and Gregor, Double Deception, 75 (citing National Archives, German foreign ministry archives, microfilm T120, serial 36, frame 26013–14: Rudolf Likus, April 8, 1941; and Dept. of State Special Interrogation Mission, RG 59: interrogation of Gustav Hilger); Erickson, Road to Stalingrad, 74–7 (quoting Gavrilović, no citation); and Narochnitskii, “Sovetsko-iugoslavskii dogovor.” The defensive possibilities of the mountains were mentioned in the Pravda editorial (April 6, 1941). Churchill, too, vastly overestimated the Serbs’ fighting capacity. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence, 369.
137. The NKGB operative Sudoplatov recalled: “We didn’t expect such total and rapid military defeat of Yugoslavia. We were shocked.” Sudoplatov added that Gavrilović, presumed by all and sundry to be a Soviet agent, was not fully trusted by the Soviets; he was seen to be meeting with the British every week. Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 119. Parts of Yugoslavia were annexed by Italy, Bulgaria (Macedonia), Hungary (the Banat), and Germany, which set up a puppet government in Croatia. King Petar fled into exile, making his way to Britain.
138. Vishnevskii, “‘Sami peredem v napadenie,’” 105, 107–8; Nevezhin, “Sobiralsia li Stalin nastupat’,” 81; Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/i: 127–8. Samuilovich pleaded with Dimitrov (April 12) for instructions on how to characterize the German-Yugoslav war. Dimitrov approached Stalin, who allowed that it was a just war against German aggressors, but at the same time the larger “imperialist” nature of the war held. Lebedeva and Narinskii, Komintern i Vtoraia mirovaia voina, 524–6 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 73, d. 99, l. 23).
139. Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece, 132–3. The Nazi invasion of Greece had been planned for April 1, but was briefly delayed because of the coup in Yugoslavia. Disastrously, Britain sent a force to rescue the Greeks in Feb. 1941: the political authorities in London were moved by what they thought Britain’s Near East military commanders desired, while the latter proffered the advice that they thought the politicians in London wanted. Britain’s Balkan commitment of 1941 would become a commitment, in 1945, to defend Greece, while in parallel Britain would abandon Poland, the country for which it had gone to war in the first place. Lawlor, Churchill and the Politics of War, 165–256, 259.
140. Van Creveld, Hitler’s Strategy. On the limited, essentially defensive nature of German aims in Greece, see also Schramm-von Thadden, Griechenland, 143–4. Göring was among those who wanted to finish off Britain by continued bombing and or seizure of Gibraltar and the Suez. Overy, Göring, x.
141. Through most of the 1930s, German and Soviet ciphers remained essentially impregnable to British cryptanalysts, except for what was sent using only low-grade codes (instructions during training exercises, for ex.). The German-manufactured Enigma machine was a system of electro-mechanical rotor ciphers invented by a German engineer, which had been put on the commercial market in the 1920s, but which the German military had progressively made more secure, including going from three to five wheels, making decryption very labor- and resource-consuming. But the Poles reverse-engineered and reconstituted the Enigma, passing a replica to the British. By Aug. 1939, Britain’s code and cipher school had moved to Bletchley Park, to a secluded country house some fifty miles north of London, which was where the Enigma was brought. Finally, in spring 1940, the British broke German naval Enigma communications. The decryption was called “Ultra Secret” or “Ultra.” Hinsley et al., British Intelligence, I: 53–4, 487–95; Hinsley, British Intelligence, Abridged Version, 14–5; Bertrand, Enigma. See also Winterbotham, Ultra Secret, 10–1.
142. Woodward, British Foreign Policy, I: 604; Churchill, Second World War, III: 320–1. On March 30, the JIC concluded that the Enigma evidence indicated a large-scale operation against the Soviet Union “either for intimidation or for actual attack.” Hinsley et al., British Intelligence, I: 451–2 (citing CX/JQ/S/7).
