Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941 полностью

On March 6, 1941, the NKGB in Berlin reported that German economic functionaries were calculating the mother lode of raw materials and foodstuffs that could be expected from an occupation of the European part of the USSR, while the Wehrmacht was optimistic about seizing Ukraine in two to three weeks, thanks to the rail network there, and seizing Baku oil quickly as well. “Chief of staff Halder thinks that the Red Army is in no condition to mount the requisite opposition to the German forces’ lightning attack.”⁹⁵ On March 9, Samokhin, of military intelligence, reported out of Belgrade that, based on conversations with the minister of the court and the owner of Yugoslavia’s most widely read newspaper, Politika, “the German general staff has abandoned an attack on the British Isles, and been given as its next immediate task the seizure of Ukraine and Baku, which it is supposed to carry out in April or May,” and that “Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria are now preparing for this.”⁹⁶ On March 13, “Yeshenko” reported out of Bucharest that Germany intended to attack the USSR before defeating Britain. An SS officer who had arrived in Romania was heard to have boasted, “We’ll continue the battle against England with airplanes and submarines. But we have 10 million lads who are itching to fight and are bored. They are thirsting for a serious foe. Our military machine cannot be unoccupied.”⁹⁷ But on March 14, “Mars” reported, also out of Budapest, that a Hungarian official had summoned him to remonstrate that the rumors of pending war between Germany, Hungary, and Romania against the USSR were lies. “This is English propaganda. . . . Hungary wants to live in peace with the USSR. Germany has enough with the war with England, and is economically interested in peace with the USSR.”⁹⁸

Who had it right—before or after defeating Britain?

Hitler, through March 1941, had told only a few hundred people of Barbarossa. Germany’s formula for talks with Romania, Hungary, and Finland was not pending invasion but how the “protection of the East” was essential in order to “provide against surprises.”⁹⁹ Personnel in Göring’s air ministry were among the closest to the circles in the know, while Ribbentrop and the foreign ministry had not been directly apprised. But in early March 1941, Scheliha, the foreign ministry official with excellent military contacts, provided further information to “Alta,” who reported to Moscow that “there is a basis that speaks to an attack against Russia taking place in the nearest term (dates are named of May 15 to June 15). People are talking about a concentration of 120 divisions in Poland, about the placing of bombers at previously unoccupied aerodromes in East Prussia, intensive establishment of antiaircraft defenses in the eastern cities of Germany, all of which testifies to the preparation of some sort of extraordinary events.” She wrote that “Aryan” insisted that “exceptionally well-informed circles of the leading political and military officialdom report unanimously that an attack on the USSR will happen this year, namely before June.”

“Aryan” had added the most crucial detail: “the concentration of Soviet forces at the frontiers arouses here a certain disquiet. People are asking, are the Russians not noticing that something is getting ready against them, and do they not plan to preempt the German strike? Some express satisfaction at this concentration, since they think that the Russian army will not be in a condition to retreat quickly.”¹⁰⁰

RESPONDING TO THE GERMAN BUILDUP

On March 10, amid all the contradictory warnings, Stalin created a new body, the “bureau” of the Council of People’s Commissars. It consisted of the chairman, Molotov, and his deputies and could make decisions in the name of the full council (a prerogative Stalin himself had inserted in the decree).¹⁰¹ The despot also assigned Molotov a new first deputy chairman, Voznesensky, a member of the next generation whom Stalin advanced above Mikoyan and Kaganovich. “What shocked us about the composition of the bureau leadership was that Voznesensky became first deputy,” Mikoyan would recall later in life. “Stalin’s motives in this leapfrogging were incomprehensible. But Voznesensky in his naïveté was very pleased about his appointment.”¹⁰²