When Sorge’s recall orders came in November 1940, he demurred on the grounds that he could not leave Japan until April of next year. When further summons arrived from Moscow, Sorge always found an excuse not to obey. His refusal to follow the recall orders resulted in Moscow losing confidence in his reports. Therefore, when Sorge continued forwarding intelligence about the upcoming German invasion, his reports were treated with utmost suspicion in the Moscow center.
Still the dedicated patriot, Sorge continued to carry out his intelligence-collecting duties. On May 6 Sorge sent a report to Moscow, in part stating: “Decision on start of war against USSR will be taken by Hitler alone, either as early as May, or following the war with England.”[7] Still, Sorge’s superiors in Moscow customarily rejected his reports as: “Suspicious. To be listed with telegrams intended as provocations.”[8] Stalin himself reportedly categorized Sorge in the following manner: “A shit that has set himself up with some small factories and brothels in Japan.”[9] Thus, a priceless intelligence asset was wasted due to mistrust and suspicion, including Sorge’s report in late June that the war was about to start within days.
Another of Berzin’s recruits was Leopold Trepper, the head of the Soviet intelligence network in Europe, dubbed by German counterintelligence as Die Rotte Kapelle (the Red Orchestra). In similar fashion to Sorge, Trepper’s reports about the growing threat went unheeded. Another entity loosely connected to Treppler’s organization, a German Schultze-Boysen/Harnack Group, also passed on important information. However, this particular group, named after Lt. Harro Schulze-Boysen, a German Air Force intelligence officer, and Arvid Harnak, an official in the German Ministry of Economics, was anti-Nazi, rather than pro-Soviet, and was only marginally trusted by the Soviets.
Another source of impending invasion came from foreign governments hostile to Nazi Germany. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, while being a staunch anti-Communist, was an even greater implacable foe of Hitler. He was quoted as saying: “I have only one purpose: the destruction of Hitler…. If Hitler invaded Hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.”[10] Beginning in April of 1941, Churchill passed on to Stalin indications of imminent invasion. However, Stalin believed that any information coming from western intelligence sources was an attempt to provoke a war between the Soviet Union and Germany.
A very significant factor feeding Stalin’s mistrust of England and France was the fact that these two countries in the recent past were making plans to wage an armed struggle against Stalin. When on November 30, 1939, the Soviet Union attacked its small northern neighbor Finland, this unprovoked aggression created deep outrage in Western Europe. Outnumbered by more than four-to-one, the gallant Finnish army put up a tenacious resistance, thwarting Soviet plans for a quick victory. In late April to early March of 1940, England and France planned to send fifty-seven thousand ground troops into Finland to fight the Soviets. However, Norway and Sweden refused their passage on March 2. French Premier Edouard Daladier made an offer to Finnish leader Baron Carl Gustav Mannerheim to force their way through the two countries if Mannerheim phrased it as an official request. Mannerheim declined, not trusting the fighting spirit of British and French,[11] and in mid-March of 1940, Finland surrendered. This apparent readiness to commit troops, even though this help, judging from British and French meekly observing Poland’s and Czechoslovakia’s dismemberment, might not have been actually forthcoming, was not something Stalin would be willing to forgive or forget.
Another ill-conceived Allied plan for armed intervention against the Soviet Union was aimed at Baku oil fields. Located on the shores of Caspian Sea in the southern portion of the Soviet Union, the vast oil fields provided roughly 75 percent of country’s petroleum needs. Fearing that cordial relations with the Soviet Union would present Hitler with an unlimited strategic supply of oil, French leadership was serious about launching an air attack into the southern Soviet Union via Iraq or Iran in order to destroy Baku oil fields and deny them to Germany. Charles Richardson wrote:
On January 19, 1940, Premier Edouard Daladier of France issued an order which read in part: “General Gamelin and Admiral Darlan are to be requested to prepare a memorandum concerning eventual intervention for the destruction of the Russian oil fields.”[12]
Even though senior British statesmen like Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill were opposed to an attack on Baku oilfield, nonetheless several French and British reconnaissance flights were conducted over the area in question in early April of 1940. These overflights were noticed by the Red Army and duly reported, feeding further fuel to Stalin’s mistrust of Western democracies.
However, when Germany launched simultaneous attacks against Denmark and Norway on April 9, 1940, the Allied attention shifted to the matters closer to home than distant Baku. And when France’s turn to be invaded by Germany came scarcely a month later on May 10, Stalin was undoubtedly ironically amused by France’s humiliatingly rapid defeat and the British mad scrabble to avoid a bloodbath at Dunkirk.
But was Stalin really completely ignoring warnings presented by his intelligence services, or was there something else in play? Like his fellow dictator Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin considered himself superior to his professional military advisers in all matters geopolitical. It is quite possible that while believing some of the warnings, he considered himself better qualified to make the final judgment of their immediacy. His paranoia and cruelty undoubtedly demonstrate a presence of at least a small degree of mental illness. However, despite all his faults, Josef Stalin was not a stupid man. The Soviet dictator clearly realized that his country was not quite ready for war and was stalling for time. Time, the one resource Stalin needed most desperately, was in short supply: time to continue expanding the heavy industry to meet the increased demand of the Red Army, particularly expressed in large numbers of new tanks; time to increase the output of military schools and academies to provide leadership backbone to the expanding military; time for new commanders, who replaced those eliminated during the purges, to become acquainted with their new assignments.
Zhukov agreed with this:
Stalin was not a coward, but he clearly understood that country’s leadership, led by him, was clearly late with undertaking major measures to prepare the country for a large-scale war with such strong and experienced enemy as Germany. He understood that we were late not only with rearmament of our forces with modern combat equipment and reorganization of armed forces, but also with country’s defensive measures, particularly being late with creating needed state reserves and mobilization stores. J. V. Stalin clearly knew as well that after 1939, military units were lead by commanders far from being well-versed in operational-tactical and strategic science. On the eve of war, the Red Army did not retain practically any regimental or divisional commanders with academy education. Moreover, many of them did not even attend military schools, with their majority being prepared only in commanders’ courses. It was also impossible to discount the moral traumas which were inflicted upon the Red Army and Navy by the massive purges.[13]
A significant factor influencing Stalin’s disbelief of Germany’s offensive intensions was understanding that while the Soviet military was not at its peak performance, it was numerically and qualitatively stronger than German, quantity having a quality of its own. Stalin was thinking in absolute terms, matching gun against gun, tank against tank, and battalion against battalion. He was well aware that his armored force of nearly 24,000 tanks dwarfed the German tank force of roughly 4,500. The heaviest German tank was a medium Pz IV, completely outclassed by new Soviet medium T-34 and heavy KV-1 tanks. The Soviet air force and navy similarly outnumbered their German counterparts.