A cunning despot could have publicly declared his willingness to join the hostilities against Britain, exacting revenge against the great power he most reviled and, crucially, robbing Hitler of his argument that Britain was holding out in anticipation of eventual Soviet assistance. Instead, or in parallel to that, Stalin could have demonstrably begun the withdrawal of Soviet forces back from the entire frontier, which would have struck at the heart of the Nazi leader’s public war rationale: a supposed “preventive attack” against the “Soviet buildup.”69
Instead of acting cunningly, Stalin fooled himself. He clung to the belief that Germany could not attack before defeating the UK, even though Britain did not have an army on the continent and was neither defending territory there nor in a position to invade from there.70 He assumed that when Hitler finally issued the ultimatum, he could buy time by negotiating: possibly giving in, if the demands were tolerable, thereby averting war, or, more likely, dragging out any talks beyond the date when Hitler could have launched an invasion, gaining one more critical year. Failing that, Stalin further assumed that even if hostilities broke out, the Germans would need at least two more weeks to fully mobilize their main invasion force, allowing him time to mobilize, too. When his spies out of Berlin and elsewhere reported that the Wehrmacht had “completed all war preparations,” he did not grasp that this meant that day one would bring full main-force engagement.
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WORD FROM THE SOVIET embassy in Berlin was that Ribbentrop was still “out of town.” In the Little Corner, while the relatively heated discussion with Timoshenko and Zhukov continued, Molotov stepped out. Stalin had had him summon Schulenburg to the Imperial Senate for 9:30 p.m.71 The German ambassador arrived promptly, direct from overseeing secret document bonfires at the embassy, on nearby Leontyev Lane. The count had been deeply disappointed that the Hitler-Stalin Pact, in which he had played an important role, had turned out to be an instrument not for a Munich-style territorial deal over Poland to avoid war, but for the onset of the Second World War.72 Now he feared the much-rumored German-Soviet clash, and he had gone to Berlin to see Hitler himself and come back empty-handed. In desperation, he had recently sent his embassy counselor, Gebhardt von Walther, to Berlin to try one last time to elucidate the suspected war plans and obtain instructions, but this had failed as well.73 Molotov demanded to know why Germany was evacuating personnel, thereby fanning rumors of war. Why had Germany not responded to the TASS bulletin?
Molotov handed the count the protest detailing systematic German violations of Soviet airspace that had been intended for Ribbentrop, and plaintively told him that “the Soviet government is unable to understand the cause of Germany’s dissatisfaction in relation to the USSR, if such dissatisfaction exists.” He complained that “there was no reason for the German government to be dissatisfied with Russia.” Schulenburg responded that “posing those issues was justified,” but he shrugged that “he was not able to answer them, because Berlin utterly refrains from informing him.” Molotov had gone toe to toe with Hitler in the gargantuan Nazi Chancellery, inducing the Führer’s interpreter to observe, “No foreign visitor had ever spoken to [Hitler] in this way in my presence.”74 But now the foreign affairs commissar could merely express, several times, “his regrets that [Hitler’s envoy] was unable to answer the questions raised.”75
Molotov shuffled back to Stalin’s Little Corner, a two- or three-minute walk, descending one floor.76 Voroshilov, Timoshenko, Zhukov, and Budyonny were still there; Mekhlis arrived. Suddenly, around 10:00 p.m., amid the still suffocating heat, the winds gushed, billowing the curtains at open windows and blowing summer dust on the streets. Then came the thunderclaps. Moscow was struck by a torrential downpour.77
