leadership, rather than to lack of immediate preparedness. Stalin deserves most of the blame for what befell the Soviet Union in 1941, but surprise was the least of the reasons for catastrophe. The Red Army was outfought by the Wehrmacht at every level, save that some of its units displayed an animal sacrificial courage that astonished their foes. Before the invasion, on 12 May Zhukov had moved into forward positions four Soviet armies, 800,000 men. On 2 June Beria told Stalin that the Germans were at a high state of readiness along the entire border. On the 12th a further report on German deployments went to Stalin, noting a high level of hostile intelligence activity: the Wehrmacht had some two hundred ‘line-crossers’ scouting in the Soviet border region. In response, Stalin grudgingly agreed that war readiness should be reduced to two hours for rifle divisions, three for motorised and artillery divisions. This scarcely constituted absolute passivity in the face of the threat.
Both the Russians and the British were naïve enough to expect an ultimatum to precede hostilities. On 11 June, Sir Stafford Cripps returned home ‘for consultations’. The purpose of his recall was exactly as stated – to enable the British government to discuss with him the bewildering and momentous developments that were unfolding. London was dismayed by a German propaganda campaign, designed to persuade the world that a new Russo–German rapprochement was imminent. The Kremlin was shocked by Cripps’s journey, for the opposite reason: Stalin assumed that the British were preparing some byzantine diplomatic stroke, which would leave the Soviet Union isolated. On 16 June Maisky was summoned to Britain’s Foreign Office and given a cool recital of its latest intelligence on German deployments, based on Ultra. The Wehrmacht was thought to have eighty divisions in Poland, thirty in Romania, five in Finland and north Norway, 115 in all. This was little more than half the reality, substantially fewer than the GRU had already identified. It was a reflection of the limitations of Ultra in 1941, and of the War Office’s poor analytical capability at this stage, that they got the numbers so badly wrong. But even former sceptics on the JIC no longer doubted the overarching reality: Hitler was about to invade the Soviet Union.
In Moscow, the NKVD adopted a desperate last-minute ploy: its operatives intercepted two German diplomatic couriers, about to leave Moscow for Berlin with the German embassy’s dispatches. One man was trapped in a hotel lift, while the other was locked in the bathroom of his suite. In the five minutes before the lift-bound courier was freed, the NKVD photographed the German ambassador’s correspondence before restoring it to its briefcase. The contents, when examined in the Lubyanka, proved equivocal: Schulenberg reported that he was confident Soviet intentions remained peaceful. But he also stated that he had obeyed instructions from Berlin to reduce his staff to an absolute minimum, an obvious preliminary to war.
On Cripps’s way back from London he stopped in Stockholm, where he told the director of the Foreign Ministry about rumours of a new Russo–German agreement. Rubbish, said the Swede. His country’s intelligence service had intercepted orders to German forces in Norway, which made plain that they would attack between 20 and 25 June. The Swedish ambassador in Moscow, doyen of the diplomatic community, reported: ‘The only certain thing is that we face either a battle of global significance between the Third Reich and the Soviet Empire or the most gigantic case of blackmail in world history.’ Zoya Rybkina, key NKVD analyst of Germany, described how on 17 June she prepared a situation report for Pavel Fitin to present to Stalin, based chiefly, but not entirely, on the Red Orchestra’s messages – Sorge, of course, reported to the GRU. She later professed to have concluded that war was inevitable: ‘All of Germany’s military preparations for armed aggression are complete, and an attack can be expected at any time.’ In reality, however, the document was more equivocal than its drafters afterwards tried to claim. To cover themselves, they repeatedly used such phrases as ‘It is not indicated on what data the source has reached his conclusions … Harnack does not know where, when, or in what connection Halder had expressed this point of view … Harnack does not take at face value the statement of Göring, and refers to his notorious bragging.’ Knowing that the Kremlin still stubbornly rejected their own near-certainty, they felt obliged to assert doubts they did not have.
Merkulov and Fitin went together to the Kremlin at noon on 17 June. The latter, who had seldom met Stalin, afterwards acknowledged his own trepidation, which might more justly be called terror. The two grey, bleak, merciless heroes of so many state killings agreed their line before entering Khozyain’s presence: they would describe their own intelligence assessment as merely ‘likely to be true’, rather than certain. They found Stalin calm, pacing the room as was his custom. Fitin saw the most recent decrypt from Berlin lying on his desk. ‘I have read your report,’ murmured Stalin in his accustomed slow, understated fashion. ‘So Germany is getting ready to attack the Soviet Union?’ And he stared at both Fitin and Merkulov.
They had not been expecting him to address the issue so baldly, and felt lost. ‘We were silent,’ recalled Fitin. ‘Only three days before, on 14 June, newspapers had published the TASS statement saying that Germany was still unwaveringly adhering to the conditions of the Soviet-German pact.’ Both he and Merkulov preserved the stone-faced silence that seemed to offer their most plausible path to survival. Stalin fired a string of contemptuous questions about the NKVD’s sources. Fitin described the Schulze-Boysen/Harnack networks, then Stalin said: ‘Listen, intelligence chief, there are no Germans that can be trusted, except Wilhelm Pieck’ – the Comintern’s secretary, now exiled in Moscow. Then followed a silence that seemed to the visitors interminable before Stalin once more looked up, gazed hard at them and barked, ‘Misinformation! You may go.’ In another version of the conversation, he instructed the intelligence chiefs to go back to the sources, check their information and once more review the NKVD assessment. What is certain is that Stalin rejected the war warning.
Rybkina wrote later: ‘It is hard to describe the state of our team while we awaited Fitin’s return from the Kremlin. He called to his office me and [Pavel] Zhuravlev’ – the veteran director of the German section, much admired by colleagues. Fitin tossed the stapled document onto the coffee table at which his two subordinates sat. ‘I’ve reported to the Boss,’ he said. ‘Iosif Vissarionovich studied your report and threw it back at me. “This is bluff!” he said irritably. “Don’t start panic. Don’t deal with nonsense. You’d better go back and get a clearer picture.”’ Fitin told the nonplussed intelligence officers: ‘Check this one more time and report to me.’ Once alone together, Zhuravlev said to Rybkina, with the parade of conviction indispensable to survival in the Soviet universe: ‘Stalin can see further from his bell-tower. Apart from our reports he is being briefed by the GRU, ambassadors, trade missions, journalists.’ Rybkina professed to agree, but added: ‘This means that our agents, who have been tested over years, must be considered untrustworthy.’ Zhuravlev shrugged, with authentic Russian fatalism, ‘We shall live, we shall see.’ Beria, in grovelling anticipation of Khozyain’s wishes, ordered that forty NKVD officers who had passed on warnings of war should be ‘ground into labour camp dust’. He wrote to Stalin on 21 June: ‘I again insist on recalling and punishing our ambassador to Berlin, Dekanozov, who keeps bombarding me with “reports” on Hitler’s alleged preparations to attack the USSR. He has reported that this attack will start tomorrow … But I and my people, Iosif Vissarionovich, have firmly embedded in our memory your wise conclusion. Hitler is not going to attack us in 1941.’
Much ink has been expended by historians on attempts to determine what proportion of the intelligence garnered by Russia’s secret services reached the Kremlin, rather than remaining in the desk drawers of Beria, Merkulov and Fitin. This controversy seems spurious. Beyond doubt, Stalin was provided with overwhelming evidence about the German military build-up on the Soviet border. The Homeric blunder lay in his analysis of its significance. Posterity derides Stalin for rejecting obvious truth. But he merely chose to share the strategic view held by the British, and especially their Joint Intelligence Committee, with the sole exception of Churchill, until the last days before ‘Barbarossa’. This seems important in comprehending the tyrant’s conduct. Thanks to Whitehall traitors, the Kremlin knew that Bletchley Park had begun to read German wireless traffic on a substantial scale, which increased Stalin’s belief in London‘s omniscience. A perversely exaggerated respect
