As German war preparations grew ever more intense, so did the warnings from Soviet intelligence networks. Beria reported to Stalin and Molotov (June 2) that Hitler, accompanied by Göring and Grand Admiral Raeder, had observed maneuvers of the German Fleet in the Baltic Sea, near Gdynia, and traveled to Warsaw and East Prussia.289 That same day, Goglidze reported from Soviet Moldavia that the commander of Romanian border units had, two full weeks prior, “received an order from General Antonescu immediately to clear mines from bridges, roads, and sectors close to the border with the USSR—mines that had been laid in 1940–41. At present all the bridges have been cleared of mines and they have begun to clear them in the sector along the River Prut.” The Romanians, Goglidze concluded, were eagerly expecting to be sent into battle shortly.290 The next day, Golikov asked frontline NKGB stations for assistance in verifying numbers of German troops, tanks, armored vehicles, combat aircraft, transport aircraft, and explosives, and the locations of German field headquarters in East Prussia, occupied Poland, and Romania. “Try to obtain data on the plans for military operations against the USSR (in any form, documentary or oral etc.),” he wrote to the NKGB station in Berlin, as if they had not been straining every nerve to do this.291
Germans were observed taking “samples of [Soviet] oil, motor vehicle and aviation petrol and lubricants,” presumably to determine whether they could be used with German equipment.292 Military intelligence in the Western military district, in an internal memo to commander Dmitry Pavlov (June 4, 1941), noted that reliable sources on the other side of the border had observed immense increases in German artillery, tank, and armored troops, influxes of weaponry through the Warsaw train system and aerodrome, upgrading of railroad stations for nighttime unloading, the takeover by the military of all civilian medical installations, the guarding of bridges by military personnel, and mobilization of bureaucrats to govern occupied territories, and concluded that it was “not excluded” that war would commence in June.293 On June 5, Golikov reported to Stalin, the entire politburo, Timoshenko, and Zhukov that “the Romanian army is being brought to full combat readiness.” Among the details: “In May officers of the Romanian army were given topographical maps of the southern part of the USSR,” and schools had their exams early “so that their buildings could be used for military barracks and hospitals.”294 That same day, the NKVD established an affiliate of its central archive in the Siberian city of Omsk to prepare for a possible evacuation of files.295
Goebbels, in one of his regular conferences for the Nazi press on June 5, stated, “The Führer has decided that the war cannot be brought to an end without an invasion of Britain. Operations planned in the East have therefore been canceled. He cannot give any detailed dates, but one thing is certain: the invasion of Britain will start in three, or perhaps five weeks.”296 The next day, the British foreign office recalled Cripps to London for “consultations.”297 Berlin was worried that something was up; London, for its part, was still fearing a last-minute new Hitler-Stalin pact against the UK. That day, Stalin signed decrees “on measures for industry’s preparedness to switch to the mobilization plan for [producing] ammunition” and for possible wartime mobilization of all industry from July 1.298 Between June 6 and 10, the Wehrmacht sent its tank and motorized divisions right to the border (until then, the advanced troops were mostly infantry), kicking up prodigious earth and dust and making exceptional noise, a massive, unmistakable change in border concentrations. “Alta,” on June 7, 1941, reported, “It is a fact that the date for the start of a campaign against Russia has been moved to after June 20, which is explained by the large material losses in Yugoslavia. No one doubts from informed circles that military action against Russia will be conducted.”299
