Stalin полностью

24. Hitler had shifted the date of attack (something that could have been expected). There were many contradictions among the reports. Vinogradov et al., Sekrety Gitlera, 11–2, 17; “Predislovie,” in Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 6. Molotov complained that as 1941 progressed, he “spent half a day every day reading intelligence reports. What was not in them! What dates did they not name!” He added: “I think you cannot rely on intelligence officers. You have to listen to them, but you have to check up on them. Intelligence operatives can push you into such a dangerous position that you do not know where you are.” Chuev, Sto sorok, 31–2; Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 22. Hitler, according to an interview with Halder on June 19, 1958, had told him in Aug. 1938, “You will never learn what I am thinking. And those who boast most loudly that they know my thoughts, to such people I lie even more.” Deutsch, Conspiracy Against Hitler, 32.

25. Zhukov stated in 1965, “I well remember the words of Stalin, when we reported the suspicious actions of German forces: ‘Hitler and his generals are not such fools that they would fight simultaneously on two fronts, which broke their necks in World War I. . . . Hitler does not have the strength to fight on two fronts, and Hitler would not embark on a crazy escapade.’” Zhukov continued: “Who at that time could doubt Stalin, his political prognoses? . . . We all were accustomed to viewing Stalin as a farseeing and cautious state leader, the wise Supreme Leader of the party and Soviet people.” Anfilov, “‘Razgovor zakonchilsia ugrozoi Stalina’,” 39–46; Lota, Sekretnyi front, 15 (citing RGVA, f. 41107, op. 1, d. 48, l. 1–58).

26. Hilger got it right: “Everything indicated that he [Stalin] thought that Hitler was preparing for a game of extortion in which threatening military moves would be followed by sudden demands for an economic or even territorial concessions. He seems to have believed that he would be able to negotiate with Hitler over such demands when they were presented.” Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 330.

27. It is a half-truth that Soviet intelligence performed its function and warned of the attack. No document has come forward analyzing the likelihood, let alone the contents, of Germany’s systemic campaign of deception while it was taking place.

28. Dahlerus, Last Attempt.

29. Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 266–7; Naumov, 1941 god, II: 383; Primakov, Ocherki, III: 366; Grechko et al., Istoriia vtoroi mirovoi voiny, III: 254, 335–8.

30. NKVD transport had reported on German movements from summer 1940 and, in May and June 1941, produced memos of more than twenty numbered paragraphs. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 135–6, 157, 174–6, 268–9, 324–6, 426–7, 462–5, 541–2, 545–9, 656–8, 681–3, 800–3, II: 279–82, 306–7; Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/i: 299, I/ii: 19–21, 56–60, 62–4, 79–80, 82–5, 85–7, 96–7, 108–10.

31. On May 17, 1941, Merkulov had reported to Stalin, Molotov, and Beria on mass arrests and deportations of anti-Soviet elements in the Baltic republics (some 40,000). On June 21, Merkulov reported 24,000 arrests and deportations in western Belarus. GARF, f. 9475, op. 1, d. 87, l. 121, in Volkogonov papers, Hoover Institution Archives, container 21. See also container 15.

32. Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 297.

33. Gefter, Iz etikh i tekh let, 262–3.

34. Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 179.

35. The notion of Stalin’s willful blindness to coming war retains the stature of folklore. The accusation, engagingly delivered in Nekrich, 1941, 22 iuinia, gained weight when Nekrich was persecuted and his book removed from Soviet libraries. But already by 1939, the Soviets counted more than 10,000 aircraft (versus less than 1,000 in 1931), and nearly 3,000 armored vehicles (from a mere 740 in 1931). From the signing of the Pact through mid-1941, another 18,000 fighter planes and 7,000 armored vehicles and tanks had come off assembly lines. In 1941, the defense share of the state budget was set to exceed 40 percent. Davies et al., Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 299; Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/i: 65–80.

36. Anfilov, Doroga k tragedii, 104.

37. To evaluate Soviet strength, the Nazi regime relied partly on Germans who had been born in the Soviet Union or lived there but were then expelled, and, “like émigrés everywhere, they underestimated the strengths of their former place of residence and overestimated the animosity of the people against their own government.” Herwarth, Against Two Evils, 187.