268. Fröhlich, Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, IX: 333–5. Werner Wächter, chief of staff in Goebbels propaganda ministry, would later call this “the age of whispering propaganda,” and boast about the flood of rumors, “all of which were equally credible, so that in the end there wasn’t a bugger left who had any idea what was really up.” Boelcke, Secret Conferences, 174 (1942).
269. Naumov, 1941 god, II: 270–1 (PA AA Bonn. Dienstelle Ribbentrop. UdSSR-RC, 7/1 R 27168, BI26041–26043); Vishlev, Nakanune, 153–4. Hilger would later write that “we thought the stories were being circulated deliberately, to exert pressure upon the Soviet Union” for extortion. Hilger and Mayer, Incompatible Allies, 328–9. See also Barros and Gregor, Double Deception, 198, 225.
270. Vinogradov et al., Sekrety Gitlera, 124–7 (TsA FSB, f. 03os, op. 8, d. 57, l. 1500–4); Naumov, 1941 god, II: 259–60; Primakov, Ocherki, III: 483–5. On May 27, British forces approached the outskirts of Baghdad, and German personnel prepared to evacuate. That same day the British sank the battleship Bismarck. In East Africa, Italy had capitulated to British forces (on May 18); Rommel, in North Africa, was faring poorly; Germany was suffering high casualties in efforts to seize Crete. (Of course, Germany had vast unused forces coiled to attack the USSR that were not being used against Britain.) All this could be considered to have put a definitive end to the concept of a German “peripheral strategy” attack in the Near East.
271. A Soviet counterintelligence profile (June 1940) noted: “Köstring has perfect command of Russian . . . an experienced and cunning person . . . commands an enormous tactical horizon, undergirded by rich practical experience.” The profile added: “At every occasion Köstring uses personal observations, conversations with the local population to compose wide-ranging overviews, reports and so on about the situation of the population, new construction sites etc.” Pogonii, Lubianka, 2, 225. Hitler had briefed Köstring about his intention to attack the USSR already on Sept. 3, 1940, in the company of Halder, but the specifics of Barbarossa do not appear to have been known to him. Halder, Kriegstagebuch, II: 86.
272. This account comes from Vasily Ryasnoi, a Samarkand-born (1904) ethnic Ukrainian and the head of the German department in Soviet counterintelligence (abruptly inducted in 1937 from party work). Pogonii, Lubianka, 2, 224.
273. Several examples of purported transcripts of eavesdropping in April and May 1941 have been published: Istoriia Sovetskhikh organov gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti, 313 (internal use only); Pronin, “Nevol’nye informatory Stalina,” 1–2 (citing unspecified FSB archives); Naumov, 1941 god, I: 598; Vinogradov et al., Sekrety Gitlera, 52–5 (TsA FSB, f. 3os, op. 8, d. 56, l. 1011–5: April 30), 109–12 (d. 57, l. 1346–51: May 18; a slightly different version with names omitted). NKGB counterintelligence did not know the extent to which Stalin read or extracted useful information from the bugged conversations. Pogonii, Lubianka, 2, 225. erik, op. 45, d. 29, l. 246.
274. Matveev and Merzhliakov, “Akademik kontrarazvedki,” 7; Karpov, “Vo glave komiteta informatsii,” 53.
275. Moritz, Fall Barbarossa, 160; Halder, Halder Diaries, II: 943 (May 30, 1941); Halder, Kriegstagebuch, II: 435–6.
276. Military intelligence HQ supposedly responded to Sorge: “We doubt the veracity of your information.” Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, 224 (no citation).
277. Whymant, Stalin’s Spy, 184. Soviet military intelligence had evidently sent a military attaché to Tokyo to check into his behavior and work, which exposed Sorge to risk. The young operative who checked him became quickly and utterly convinced of Sorge’s reliability. Fesiun, Delo Rikharda Zorge, 173–5 (Kh. D. Mamsurov).
278. Clausen began to lose faith in Communism, as he would tell Japanese interrogators after his arrest on Oct. 18, 1941. Whymant, Stalin’s Spy, 119–22, 292; Fesiun, Delo Rikharda Zorge, 18. Clausen’s radio had no outside aerial, for security purposes, but at night he could still broadcast more than 2,000 miles. (Although Japanese counterintelligence picked up the unauthorized signals, it could not pinpoint their source or decrypt the code.) Normally, the radio operator was not allowed to encrypt or decrypt the messages. But Sorge had had a motorcycle accident on May 13, 1938, and he had had to teach Clausen the cipher code and delegate to him the task of putting the material into code before sending it. Once Clausen (b. 1899) could read the content of Sorge’s messages, he was in a position to decide what to transmit (or not).
