The 900 Days (10 page)

⁵
The text is from the German Foreign Ministry files. Hilger is quoted as saying it was not received in precisely this form in Moscow. But no other text has been discovered. (
Documents on German Foreign Policy
, Series D, Vol. XII, p. 1063.
)

⁶
While von der Schulenburg and Hilger were at the Kremlin, Walther gathered up some of the embassy personnel from their homes and brought them to the embassy. He then went to the railroad station to await the arrival of the Trans-Siberian in order to escort the German party from the train to the embassy. While he waited there, an NKVD officer appeared and politely told him that he must return to the German Embassy. Walther did so. The Russians did not even bother to accompany him. The German diplomats in Moscow were treated throughout with complete courtesy. In contrast, the Soviet personnel in Berlin and elsewhere in Germany were subjected to rude and even brutal treatment. (Walther, personal communication, July, 1967.)

THE GREAT WHITE MARBLE-AND-GILT HALL OF ST. GEORGE in the Kremlin Palace was thronged with Soviet military men. It was December 31, 1940, and several hundred top army commanders had been meeting in Moscow for the past fortnight, discussing urgent matters. The big question in the minds of all, as General M. I. Kalinin, commander of the West Siberian Military District, recalled, was: Will Germany attack and when can we expect it?

“It was obvious that the Fascists were in a hurry,” he recalled. “They were doing everything they could to test our strength.”

Up to New Year’s Eve nothing had been said officially about Germany, but tonight the officers had been told that Stalin would speak. Most of them anticipated he would use the occasion to warn that war with Germany was possible within a few months. This was the gossip as the officers strolled about the parquet floor, looking up at the white marble tablets on which were engraved the golden lists of holders of the St. George’s cross, the highest czarist military decoration, Russian equivalent of the Victoria Cross. Although the czarist regime had long since fallen, the names of the great Russian military heroes had remained on the walls without change.

Suddenly came a stir. Stalin appeared. He walked to the upper end of the hall from the interior reception rooms of the palace and stood there mechanically clapping his hands in the customary Russian way during the prolonged applause. Finally, it died down and the officers waited expectantly. Stalin smiled cryptically. “
S novym godom!”
he said. “
S novym schastyem!
— Happy New Year! The best to you all!”

He spoke a few more words of formal welcome, then turned the reception over to Marshal Kliment Voroshilov and walked out. Voroshilov offered a slightly warmer New Year’s greeting, and that was all. The reception was over.

The officers straggled out of the Kremlin into the snowy night puzzled. They returned to the Central House of the Red Army for a rousing celebration, punctuated by more vodka toasts than some of them could remember.

“Evidently, this isn’t the time to talk about the matter,” Kalinin and his comrades concluded. They asked no more questions. They had long since learned that Stalin was an enigma and that questions were not only futile but often dangerous.

The military meeting went on until January 7. Lesser commanders then returned to their posts, and a war game was run off between January 8 and 11 for top-ranking officers. This was followed by a conference at the Kremlin on January 13 in which Stalin and the Politburo participated. To this restricted audience Stalin did mention the gathering signs of war but offered no indication of when he thought it might break out. He talked in general terms. He spoke of the possibility of two-front war—with Germany on the west and Japan on the east—for which Russia must be prepared. He thought that the future war would be one of maneuver, and he proposed to increase the mobility of infantry units and decrease their size. Such a war, he warned, would be a mass war and it was essential to maintain an over-all superiority in men and material of two to one or three to one over a possible enemy. The employment of fast-moving motorized units, equipped with automatic weapons, demanded exceptional organization of supply sources and great reserves of material. Some of his listeners were astonished to hear him expound at length on the wisdom of the czarist government in laying in reserves of hardtack against possible war. He praised hardtack highly, called it a very good product, very nourishing, especially when taken with tea.

Other listeners were deeply disturbed at Stalin’s pronouncement (faithfully approved by the meeting) that a superiority of at least two to one was required for a successful offensive not only in the area of the principal breakthrough but on the whole operational front. The application of such a doctrine would require numbers, equipment and rear support far beyond anything heretofore contemplated. The Soviet commanders agreed that overwhelming superiority was needed in the breakthrough area, but they did not see why such great numerical concentrations were required on the nonactive parts of the front as well.

They were even more disturbed that the plans and estimates for bringing the Red Army up to strength to meet the German threat were not intended to be completed before early 1942. War might not wait that long.

The corridors of the Kremlin and of the Defense Commissariat on Frunze Street sputtered with rumors, but the actions flowing from the meeting carried no feeling of crisis or urgency. There was another big shake-up of commands. Marshal Meretskov was replaced as Chief of Staff by General Zhukov, principally because Meretskov made a poor impression at the Kremlin when he gave his report on the war games on January 13.
¹

General M. P. Kirponos was shifted from Leningrad to Kiev, and General Markian M. Popov was brought back from the Far East to take Kirponos’ post in Leningrad.

The great mistake of January, 1941, in the opinion of Soviet marshals who survived the war, was that Stalin simply refused to believe that a German attack was near and therefore did not order the drafting of urgent plans.

Not that Stalin was lacking concrete evidence of German intentions. It had already begun to pile up impressively. The earliest hint of what the future held may have been a report of the Soviet intelligence agency, the NKGB, to the Kremlin in July, 1940, revealing that the Nazi General Staff had asked the German Transport Ministry to provide data on rail capabilities for movement of troops from west to east. It was at this time that Hitler and the General Staff first began seriously to examine the question of an attack on Russia, and by July 31, 1940, the German planning was in full swing.
²

There is no indication that Stalin or any other high Soviet official paid heed to the early intelligence warnings. Indeed, it was not until after Molo-tov’s frosty conversations with Hitler in Berlin in November, 1940, at which Nazi-Soviet differences over spheres of influence and plans for dividing up the world became obvious, that talk began to be heard among some Soviet military men of a change in relations with Germany which might bring war. Marshal A. M. Vasilevsky, who accompanied Molotov to Berlin, returned convinced that Germany would attack the Soviet Union. His opinion was shared by many of his colleagues. Vasilevsky believed Molotov reported to Stalin the general conviction that Hitler sooner or later would attack and that Stalin did not believe him. Draft plans for the strategic deployment of the Soviet armed forces in case of German attack were twice laid before the Soviet Government by the High Command in the fall of 1940 but were not acted upon. As early as September, 1940, Soviet commanders along the Western Front were talking about Hitler’s “
Drang nach Osten”
and his habit of carrying around in his pocket a picture of Frederick Barbarossa. War games predicated on a German attack were discussed, but the generals were reprimanded by their political superiors for “Germanophobia.”

It was not healthy for military men to speak their minds openly about Germany so long as Stalin clung to his conviction that Hitler would respect the Soviet-German pact. Occasionally, after the Hitler-Molotov talks Stalin or Molotov remarked that Germany was no longer so punctual or careful about fulfilling her obligations under the pact. But no serious significance seemed to be attachéd to this.

Hitler gave approval to Operation Barbarossa, the military plan for attacking Russia, on December 18. At noon the next day he received the new Soviet Ambassador, V. G. Dekanozov, who had been cooling his heels in Berlin, waiting to present his credentials for nearly a month. Hitler received Dekanozov with great courtesy, apologizing that he had been “so busy with military affairs” that he had not had time to meet with him earlier. A week later, on Christmas Day, the Soviet military attaché in Berlin received an anonymous letter, saying the Germans were preparing for an attack on Russia in the spring of 1941. By December 29 Soviet intelligence agencies had in their hands the basic facts about Barbarossa, its scope and intended time of execution.

Toward the end of January the Japanese military attaché, Yamaguchi, returned to Moscow from Berlin. He gave a member of the Soviet naval diplomatic service his impressions of Germany. The Germans, he said, were extremely dissatisfied with Italy and were seeking another field of action.

“I do not exclude the possibility of conflict between Berlin and Moscow,” Yamaguchi said.

This information was reported to Marshal Voroshilov January 30, 1941.

Before the end of January the Defense Commissariat had become sufficiently concerned to begin drafting a general directive to the border commands and the fleets which would for the first time name Germany as the likely opponent in a future war.

At about this time the Chief Political Administration of the Army proposed to Zhdanov—who was in chargé of Party ideological work—that they shift the basis of army propaganda to a stronger line. They warned that a mood of overconfidence was being fostered by excessive emphasis on the theme of the “all-victorious strength” of Soviet forces and the constant implication that Russia was too powerful for anyone to attack her. The Political Administration wanted a line emphasizing vigilance, the need for preparedness and the danger of attack. But Stalin categorically forbade this approach for fear it would be regarded by the Germans as Soviet preparation for an attack.

In the first days of February the Naval Commissariat began to receive almost daily reports concerning the arrival of German military specialists in the Bulgarian ports of Varna and Burgas and of preparations for the installation of shore batteries and antiaircraft units. This information was reported to Stalin February 7. At the same time the Leningrad Command reported German movements in Finland and German conversations with the Swedes concerning transit of their troops.

About February 15 a German typographical worker appeared at the Soviet Consulate in Berlin. He brought with him a German-Russian phrase book which was being run off in his printing shop in a very large edition. Included were such phrases as: “Where is the chairman of the Collective Farm?”; “Are you a Communist?”; “What is the name of the secretary of the Party committee?”; “Hands up or I’ll shoot”; “Surrender.”

The implications were obvious.

The embassy in Berlin noted that more and more little items were appearing in the German press about “military preparations” on the Soviet side of the German border. Such ominous news releases had preceded the German attacks on Poland and Czechoslovakia.

There was no sign that any of this intelligence disturbed Stalin’s Olympian composure.

On Red Army Day, February 23, the Defense Commissariat issued the directive ordered by Meretskov naming Germany as the probable enemy and instructing the frontier regions to make appropriate preparations. However, by this time Meretskov had been replaced as Chief of Staff by Zhukov, and little was done by the new chief to follow the order up. It was decided to organize twenty new mechanized corps and many new air units, but little progress was made because the needed tanks, planes and other material were not available.

The daily bulletins of the General Staff and of the Naval Staff now began to carry items about German preparations for war against Russia. At the end of February and in early March German reconnaissance flights over the Baltic became an almost daily occurrence. The State Security organs obtained information that the German attack on the British Isles had been indefinitely postponed—until the end of the war against Russia.

The German flights were so frequent over Libau, Tallinn, the island of Ösel and the Moonzund Archipelago that the Baltic Fleet was given permission by Admiral Kuznetsov to open interdictory fire without warning. Kuznetsov’s directive was approved March 3. On March 17 and 18 German planes appeared over Libau and were fired on. Nazi planes also appeared over the approaches to Odessa. After one such incident Admiral Kuznetsov was summoned to the Kremlin. He found Police Chief Beria alone with Stalin. Kuznetsov was asked why he had issued the order to fire on the German planes. When he attempted an explanation, Stalin cut him off with a stiff reprimand and instructions to revoke his order. He did so on April 1, and the German reconnaissance flights resumed in force. Kuznetsov’s actions had violated orders issued by Beria forbidding border generals or any military units to fire on German planes.
³

The intelligence data piled up. The State Security forces obtained a report in March concerning a meeting of Marshal Antonescu, the Rumanian dictator, with Bering, a German official, at which the question of war against Russia was discussed. On March 22 the NKGB received what it regarded as reliable information that “Hitler has given secret instructions to suspend the fulfillment of orders for the Soviet Union.” On March 25 the NKGB compiled a special report of its data on the concentration of German forces in the East. This disclosed that 120 German divisions had now been moved to the vicinity of the Soviet Union.

The NKGB had one truly remarkable source. This was the master spy, Richard Sorge, a German Communist and intelligence agent, who had for some years been in Tokyo, ostensibly as a correspondent for German newspapers but actually a Soviet spy of unmatched capability and insight. Sorge had made himself a close confidant of the German Ambassador in Tokyo, Hermann Ott. Thus he was privy to the most intimate German military and diplomatic information.

Utilizing a secret wireless station—and an elaborate courier system—Sorge sent back to Moscow a stream of incredibly accurate information about both Japan and Germany. In 1939 he transmitted 60 reports totaling 23,139 words, and in 1940 his volume was about 30,000.