Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941 полностью

WHEN CRIPPS HAD LEFT MOSCOW FOR LONDON, Nazi officials feared the worst: a trip to finalize details of a British-Soviet agreement.³⁴⁴ Germany’s anxieties testify to the potential of this option, which Stalin never pursued. Cripps, for his part, at a June 16 British cabinet meeting, was still expecting the German ultimatum to the USSR, which had never been part of Hitler’s intent.³⁴⁵ Once apprised of the secret Enigma intelligence, however, Cripps changed his mind and lunched with the Soviet envoy. “Hitler cannot embark on the final and decisive attack against Britain before the potential threat to Germany from the East is eliminated,” Maisky wrote of their conversation in his diary (June 18). “The Red Army is a powerful force, and by 1942, when all the shortcomings revealed by the Finnish campaign have been eradicated, it will be too late for the Germans to attack the Soviet Union. . . . Cripps is certain that [Hitler] will strike. Moreover, Cripps is in possession of absolutely reliable information that these are Hitler’s plans. . . . The members of the British Government with whom Cripps has spoken think that before an attack against the USSR, Hitler would present us with an ultimatum. Cripps does not share these views. Hitler will simply fall on us without warning, because he is not interested in this or that amount of food or raw materials which he can receive from the USSR, but in the complete destruction of the country and the annihilation of the Red Army.”³⁴⁶

On June 18, General Köstring, knowing Hitler’s eagerness to learn of any Soviet general mobilization (which could serve as a convenient pretext), nonetheless reaffirmed to Berlin the truth: the Soviet Union remained calm.³⁴⁷ Stalin saw the world in the darkest hues, as shaped by unseen sinister forces, with enemies lurking everywhere and no one’s motives to be trusted. But in what was by far the grandest challenge of his life, his pathological suspiciousness undermined him. In the machinations during 1941, he perceived two games: a British effort to entangle him in a war with Hitler and a German effort to intimidate and blackmail him. Neither was the game that was actually on. Ironically, the extensive penetration of Germany by dedicated antifascist agents became another weapon in Nazi hands, thanks to astute German disinformation and Stalin’s credulousness. Of course, the despot was far from alone in his misperceptions. But here was the greatest irony of all: even if he had been able to find the signal in the noise, it might not have done him much good. Stalin had allowed the Germans to see firsthand that he had forced into existence an army of colossal size, loaded with modern weaponry. But the Red Army’s forward defense posture, the core of Soviet military doctrine, which both Stalin and the high command fully shared, meant that deep German penetration was a foregone conclusion. That deadly vulnerability would have held even in the event of a preemptive Soviet strike.³⁴⁸ For all that, however, into the third week of June, Stalin had one option left—and it worried Hitler.

CODA: LITTLE CORNER, SATURDAY, JUNE 21, 1941

The only certain thing is that we face either a battle of global proportions between the Third Reich and the Soviet Empire or the most gigantic case of blackmail in world history.

VILHELM ASSARASSON, Swedish envoy in Moscow, telegram to Stockholm, June 21, 1941¹

Suddenly addressing me with “thou,” he said, “Thou must always keep touch with the Russian emperor; there, no conflict is necessary.”

OTTO VON BISMARCK, recalling the words of a dying Kaiser Wilhelm I²