Without having communications, army commanders and some district commanders went directly to forward units to find out the situation for themselves. But because the events unfolded so rapidly, this method of command further complicated situation. District headquarters were receiving the most conflicting information from various sources, often inflammatory and panicked in character….
Until 9 a.m. we were not able to find out anything of significance, because the [Districts’] headquarters and [their] commanders could not receive concrete information about the enemy from headquarters of armies and corps. They simply did not know where and in what strength the German units were advancing, where the enemy was striking main blows and where the secondary ones, where his armored and mechanized units were operating.[44]
At noon all the staff officers gathered around the radio. Amid slight crackling, Molotov’s voice, minutely shaking, but strong, came through:
Citizens of the Soviet Union! The Soviet Government and its head, Comrade Stalin, authorized me to make the following statement:
Today at 4 a.m., without making any demands upon the Soviet Union, without declaration of war, the German forces invaded our country, attacked our borders in many locations, and their aircraft bombed our cities: Zhitomir, Kiev, Sevastopol, Kaunas, and some others, killing and wounding over two hundred people. Air attacks and artillery bombardment were also conducted from Rumanian and Finnish territories.
This unheard-of attack upon our county is an unprecedented travesty in the history of civilized countries. The attack on our country was perpetuated despite the fact that a treaty of nonaggression had been signed between the USSR and Germany and that the Soviet Government most faithfully abided by all provisions of this treaty. The attack upon our country was perpetrated despite the fact that during the entire period of operation of this treaty, the German Government could not find grounds for a single complaint against the USSR as regards observance of this treaty. Complete responsibility for this treacherous attack upon the Soviet Union completely and totally falls upon the German Fascist rulers.
After the attack took place, at 5:30 a.m. Von Schulenburg, the German ambassador in Moscow, made the statement to me, as the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, in the name of his government, that the German Government decided to enter into war against the Soviet Union in connection with the concentration of Red Army units near the eastern German border.
In reply to this, in the name of the Soviet Government, I stated that until the last moments the German Government did not make any demands upon the Soviet Government, that Germany attacked the Soviet Union despite the peaceful stance of the Soviet Union, and in this the Fascist Germany is the aggressor.
On instruction of the government of the Soviet Union I also stated that at no point had our troops or our air force committed a violation of the frontier and that the statement made this morning by the Rumanian radio to the effect that Soviet aircraft allegedly had fired on Rumanian airfields is a sheer lie and provocation.
Likewise, the whole declaration made today by Hitler is a lie and provocation by Hitler, who is trying belatedly to concoct accusations charging the Soviet Union with failure to observe the Soviet-German pact.
Now, when the attack against the Soviet Union is an accomplished fact, the Soviet Government orders our troops to repulse the treacherous attack and drive the German forces from our territory.
This war has been forced upon us, not by the German people, not by German workers, peasants, and intellectuals, whose sufferings we well understand, but by the clique of bloodthirsty Fascist rulers of Germany who have enslaved Frenchmen, Czechs, Poles, Serbians, Norway, Belgium, Denmark, Holland, Greece, and other nations.
This is not the first time that our people have had to deal with an attack of an arrogant foe. At the time of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia our people’s reply was war for the fatherland, and Napoleon suffered defeat and met his doom.
It will be the same with Hitler, who in his arrogance has proclaimed a new crusade against our country. The Red Army and our whole people will again wage victorious war for the fatherland, for our country, for honor, for liberty.
The Government of the Soviet Union expresses its unshakable confidence in that our glorious Army and Navy and the brave falcons of the Soviet Aviation will honorably carry out their duties to the Motherland, the Soviet people, and deliver a crushing blow upon the aggressor.
Our whole nation now must be united as one as never before. Each one of us must demand from ourselves and others discipline, order, and self-sacrifice worthy of the real Soviet patriot in order to ensure that all the needs of the Red Army, Navy, and Air Force, in order to ensure the victory over the enemy.
The Government calls upon you, the citizens of the Soviet Union, to even tighter close ranks around our Soviet Bolshevik Party, around our Soviet government, around our great leader Comrade Stalin.
Our cause is just. The enemy will be defeated. Victory will be ours.
Late at night on June 22, as the western Soviet frontier continued to be ripped apart by flames and explosions, Colonel General Kirponos’ staff sent off another report to Moscow. Like the first report, intentional or not, and most likely lacking the actual knowledge of the situation, it was another sketchy one. It estimated German strength facing the South-Western Front at somewhat between twelve to fifteen divisions, including several armored and mechanized. Kirponos and his staff were oblivious as to the depth of German penetration or even where the most threatening incursions occurred. Most significantly, they did not know that a major gap was kicked open between the flanks of Fifth and Sixth armies, and the German mechanized forces were rapidly probing in depth.
In his memoirs, Zhukov stated that he arrived at Kirponos’ headquarters around midnight on this first night of war. Alarmed by lack of cohesive actions at the border, Josef Stalin sent out several high-ranking military personages to the front in order to oversee the matters and report back directly to him. General Georgiy Zhukov, chief of staff of the Red Army and former commander of Kiev Special Military District, was the natural choice to as an emissary to the South-Western Front. However, it is highly unlikely that Zhukov was able to reach Kirponos’ headquarters by midnight. He definitely had time to arrive there the following night, June 23. Zhukov was accompanied by Nikita Khruschev, the future Soviet premier. Up until the start of the war, Khruschev was Stalin’s appointee as the first secretary of the Central Committee in Ukraine, the highest Communist Party assignment there. Now, Khrushchev put on a uniform and was assigned by Stalin as another member of Military Council of the South-Western Front.
General Franz Halder, chief of German General Staff, was much better informed about the situation along Soviet border. At the end of the day, he wrote in his now-famous war diary:
The enemy was surprised by the German attack. His forces were not in tactical disposition for defense. The troops in the border zone were widely scattered in their quarters. The frontier itself was for the most part weakly guarded. As a result of this tactical surprise, enemy resistance directly on the border was weak and disorganized, and we succeeded everywhere in seizing the bridges across the border rivers and in piercing the defense positions (field fortifications) near the frontier.[45]