The 900 Days (6 page)

They were told to obey orders and not to ask questions. Meanwhile, navy headquarters called the power station and the main switch was thrown. The city sank into darkness.

The city and fleet were fully blacked out, but from the sea still shone the beams of the two lighthouses. Telephone connections to the lights, it developed, were out of order, possibly sabotaged. Finally, a motorcyclist was dispatched and the lights were shut off.

Here and there antiaircraft batteries fired a round of tracer bullets to test their weapons. Fighter planes revved up their motors. Sailors and commanders streamed back aboard their ships to the signal “General Quarters” issued at 1:55
A.M.
By 2
A.M.
Officer of the Day Rybalko noted that the fleet was in readiness to meet attack.

At about 3
A.M.
or a little later the acoustic listening posts on the coast at Yevpatoriya and Sarych Cape reported the sound of airplane motors. Officer of the Day Rybalko checked with the Fleet Air Command and the Air Force. No Soviet planes were in the air. Lieutenant I. S. Zhilin of the Antiaircraft Command telephoned, asking permission to open fire at “unknown planes.”

Rybalko called the fleet commander, Admiral Oktyabrsky.

“Are any of our planes in the air?” Oktyabrsky asked.

Rybalko replied: “No, none of our planes.”

“Bear in mind that if there is a single plane of ours in the air you will be shot tomorrow,” Oktyabrsky rejoined.

“Comrade Commander,” Rybalko persisted, “may we have permission to open fire?”

“Act according to your orders,” snapped Oktyabrsky.

Rybalko turned to Vice Admiral Eliseyev. The answer was so equivocal the young officer did not know what to do.

“What answer shall I give Zhilin?” Rybalko asked.

“Give him orders to open fire,” Eliseyev said decisively.

“Open fire,” Rybalko told Zhilin.

Zhilin understood the personal risks of such action.

“Bear in mind,” he said, “that you are taking full responsibility for this order. I am putting this note into my operations journal.”

“Write what you want,” shouted Rybalko, “but open fire on those planes.”

Almost without interval the roar of planes approaching Sevastopol at low altitude was heard, followed by the chatter of antiaircraft guns, the whine of bombs, the searing stab of powerful searchlights. Planes began to fall in flames. Battery No. 59 brought down the first. The crash of bombs rumbled over the harbor.

It was now some time after 3
A.M.
, Sunday, June 22.

By 3
A.M.
in Moscow Admiral Kuznetsov had stretched out on a leather divan in the corner of his office. He could not sleep. He kept thinking of the fleets, of what might be in progress. He had great difficulty in keeping from picking up the telephone and again calling Admiral Tributs for it was the Baltic Fleet that gave him the gravest concern.

However, he managed to restrain himself by repeating Moltke’s aphorism that once you have given the order for mobilization there is nothing to do but go to sleep for now the machine is working on its own. But he could get no sleep.

A strident ring from the telephone brought him to his feet. It was now fully light.

He lifted the receiver.

“The Commander of the Black Sea Fleet is reporting.”

Kuznetsov knew from Oktyabrsky’s excited voice that something unusual had happened.

“An air attack is being carried out on Sevastopol,” Oktyabrsky gasped. “Our antiaircraft guns are beating off enemy planes. Some bombs have fallen in the city. . . .”

Kuznetsov looked at his watch. The time was 3:15. It had started. He had no doubt. The war had begun.
³

He took up the phone again and asked for Stalin’s office. A duty officer answered: “Comrade Stalin is not here, and I don’t know where he is.”

“I have a report of exceptional importance which I must give immediately to Comrade Stalin personally,” Kuznetsov said.

“I cannot help you,” the officer replied, hanging up quietly.

Without replacing the receiver Kuznetsov called Defense Commissar Timoshenko. He repeated precisely what Oktyabrsky had told him.

“Do you hear me?” Kuznetsov asked.

“Yes, I hear you,” Timoshenko replied calmly.

Kuznetsov hung up. A few minutes later he tried another number in an effort to get to Stalin. No answer. He called back the duty officer at the Kremlin and told him: “Please advise Comrade Stalin that German planes are bombing Sevastopol. It’s war.”

“I’ll do what I can,” the officer replied.

A few minutes later Kuznetsov’s telephone rang.

“Do you understand what you have reported?” The voice was that of Georgi M. Malenkov, member of the Politburo and one of Stalin’s closest associates. Kuznetsov thought Malenkov sounded displeased and irritated.

“I understand,” Kuznetsov said, “and I report on my own responsibility. War has started.”

Malenkov did not believe Kuznetsov. He rang up Sevastopol himself and got through to Admiral Oktyabrsky just as Azarov entered the commander’s office. Azarov heard Oktyabrsky’s end of the conversation.

“Yes, yes,” Oktyabrsky was saying. “We are being bombed. . . .”

As he spoke, there was a resounding explosion. The windows rattled.

“Just now,” Oktyabrsky shouted excitedly, “a bomb exploded quite close to staff headquarters.”

Azarov and a friend exchanged glances.

“In Moscow they don’t believe that Sevastopol is being bombed,” the friend said. He was right.
⁴

Within an hour Timoshenko telephoned General Boldin, Deputy Commander of the Special Western Military District, four times. Each time he warned against acting against German provocations, even when Boldin told him his troops were being attacked, towns were burning and people dying.

Marshal Nikolai Voronov, Chief of Antiaircraft Defense, had stayed at his desk, on orders, all evening long. About 4
A.M.
he received the first word of the bombing of Sevastopol and of attacks on Ventspils and Libau. He hurried to Timoshenko and found L. Z. Mekhlis, Chief of the Army Political Administration and a close colleague of Police Chief Lavrenti P. Beria, with him. Voronov reported on the bombings. Timoshenko then gave him a big notebook and told him to write down what he had just said. Mekhlis stood behind Voronov, checking the statement word by word, and ordered him to sign it. Voronov was excused without any instructions, any orders, at a moment when, as he observed, every second, every minute counted.

“I left the office with a stone in my heart,” Voronov recalled. “I realized that they did not believe that war actually had started. My brain worked feverishly. It was clear that the war had begun whether the Defense Commissariat admitted it or not.”

He got back to his own office to find his desk heaped with telegrams reporting Nazi air attacks from the Gulf of Finland to the Black Sea. A young woman duty officer, wearing a beret, a revolver at her belt, dashed in from the next-door headquarters of the Armored Forces Administration. In the “secret safe” of the administration, she said excitedly, there was a big packet with many seals on which was written: “Open in Case of Mobilization.” Mobilization hadn’t been announced, but the war had begun—what should they do? Voronov said, “Open the packet and get to work.” He turned to his own officers and began to issue orders.

War had indeed begun, but when General Zhukov, Chief of Staff, reported to Stalin that the Germans were bombing Kovno, Rovno, Odessa and Sevastopol, Stalin still insisted it must be a provocation by the “German generals.” He clung to this conviction for hours.

As the sky brightened outside the windows of Kuznetsov’s office, he waited for orders from someone announcing a formal state of war—or at least for instructions to advise the navy that the attack had started. Nothing happened. His telephone did not ring. It was evident, as he later was to note, that hope for avoiding war still lingered. He could put no other interpretation on the curious response to news of the attack on Sevastopol.

Kuznetsov could contain himself no longer. He dispatched to Admiral Tributs and his other commanders a curt order. It said: “Germany has begun an attack on our bases and ports. Resist with force of arms any attempted attack by the enemy.”

In fleet headquarters at Tallinn Admiral Panteleyev was at his desk in the long, vaulted, coastal artillery gallery which served Tributs as the war room of his combat command post. The gallery dated back to World War I times. It was completely underground. There were no windows. The only illumination was provided by naked strings of electric light bulbs.

Along one wall stood small desks for the telegraph and radio operators. In the center of the chamber was a big situation board with maps of the Baltic area.

Panteleyev’s desk was at the entrance of the noisy room. Officers were coming and going. The telephones rang constantly. His task was to filter the reports, passing on the most urgent to Admiral Tributs. Captain F. V. Zozulya called from Kronstadt. “They’ve dropped sixteen mines at the entrance to the Kronstadt Roads,” he said. “But the channel remains clear.” A report came in from Libau. Captain Mikhail S. Klevensky reported that shortly after 4
A.M.
bombs had been dropped on the military quarter of the city and around the airfield.

The Baltic Merchant Fleet relayed a message from V. M. Mironov, captain of the steamer
Luga
. He was returning to Leningrad from Hangö. About 3:30
A.M.
his ship was attacked by a German plane. A score of bullets were fired, and Sergei I. Klimenov, a sailor, was slightly wounded. About the same time the Latvian steamer
Gaisma
, en route to Germany with a cargo of wood, was torpedoed in an attack by four German cutters off the Swedish inland of Gotland. The action occurred about 3:20
A.M.
The Germans turned their machine guns on the Soviet sailors in the water, killing several, including Captain Nikolai Duve. These probably were the first casualties of the Soviet-German war.

Panteleyev looked about. Officers were barking orders. The clock on the wall pointed to 4:50
A.M.
He received a call to report to Admiral Tributs. Panteleyev found him striding briskly to his desk, long pencil in hand. The Admiral raised his tired eyes to Panteleyev, who silently handed him a telegraph blank. The Admiral slowly filled in the blank, reading aloud to Panteleyev as he wrote:

“Germany has begun to attack our bases and ports. Resist the enemy with force of arms. . . .”

He sighed, then affixed his signature with a bold stroke. Officer Kashin grabbed the telegram. In an instant it was humming through the air and by the wires to every base and ship in the Baltic.

By 5:17
A.M.
word had reached every Baltic unit: “Resist German attack.” Thus, in at least one sector, the vital sea approaches to Leningrad, Soviet forces knew that war had started; that the Germans had attacked; that they must resist with all strength.

Panteleyev went back to his desk. He felt relieved. The die was cast. War had begun. He listened to the hurried chatter of the telegraph keys as the operators tapped out the orders to the fleet. Then he went up the stone staircase and out into the open air.

The sun was rising. The sea was quiet. In the Surop Strait a tug was hauling a string of barges toward Tallinn Harbor. Aboard the tug the sailors were impatient. Harbor and home were in sight. Of war they as yet had no knowledge.

¹
Originally called the
Petropavlovsk
and the
Gangut
, these 2 3,000-ton ships somewhat resembling World War I Italian battleships were part of the Czarist Navy’s 1909 building program, the first large-scale imperial construction after tne 1905 defeat by Japan. They carried twelve 12-inch guns.

²
Libau had neither the organization nor the forces to meet a German attack in the opinion of Vice Admiral N. K. Smirnov, Political Commissar of the Baltic Fleet. (N. K. Smirnov,
Matrosy Zashchishchayut Rodinu
, Moscow, 1968, p. 20.)

³
Kuznetsov’s timing of events on the night of June 21–22 leaves much to be desired. He gives different times in different versions of his memoirs. For example, Vice Admiral Azarov says he heard the first burst of antiaircraft fire at Sevastopol at 3:30
A.M.
Officer of the Day Rybalko timed the first burst at 3:13
A.M.
Admiral Kuznetsov, apparently basing himself on Rybalko’s notes, gives the time of the approach of German planes as 3:07
A.M.
It probably would have taken Oktyabrsky’s call at least ten minutes to get through to Moscow. Thus it probably was closer to 3:30
A.M.
that Kuznetsov got the call from Sevastopol.

⁴
Marshal Budyonny disputes this. “There wasn’t a single small child who didn’t believe the Germans were getting ready to attack,” he insists. “If Stalin didn’t believe this, then why was I appointed nine hours before to command the Reserve Army?” He insists there was no question of disbelieving the bombing reports. He heard them about 4
A.M.
and called Admiral Kuznetsov to obtain confirmation. As for difficulties in getting through to Stalin, everyone was trying to telephone him and naturally some of the
calls
were taken by duty officers. (Budyonny, personal conversation, July, 1967.)