On May Day, there was a particularly impressive military parade in Red Square,
complete with motorised units, many new KV and T-34 tanks, and hundreds of planes. It was rumoured in Moscow that all these troops were on their way to Minsk, Leningrad
and the Polish border. Ambassador Count Schulenburg noted on May 2 that the tension in Moscow was growing, and that the rumours of a Soviet-German war were becoming
increasingly persistent. On that day Hitler made his speech on the Balkan campaign; as in his two previous speeches, there was again no mention of the Soviet Union.
On May 5 a reception was given in the Kremlin to hundreds of young officers, new
graduates of the military academies. Stalin spoke at this meeting. Officially, nothing was disclosed beyond what Pravda was to write on the following day. The article was entitled: "We must be prepared to deal with any surprises." "In his speech, Comrade Stalin noted the profound changes that had taken place in the Red Army in the last few years, and emphasised that, on the strength of the experience of modern war, its
organisation had undergone important changes, and it had been substantially re-equipped.
Comrade Stalin welcomed the officers who had graduated from the military academies
and wished them all success in their work. He spoke for forty minutes and was listened to with exceptionally great attention."
Obviously he had said much more than that in forty minutes.
After the outbreak of the war, I was given a fairly detailed account of this meeting, to which great importance was attached in Moscow at the time. I gathered that the main
points that Stalin had then made were these:
1) The situation is extremely serious, and a German attack in the near future is not to be ruled out. Therefore, "be prepared to deal with any surprises".
2) The Red Army is not, however, sufficiently strong to smash the Germans easily; its equipment is still far from satisfactory; it is still suffering from a serious shortage of modern tanks, modern planes and much else. The training of large masses of
soldiers is still far from having been completed. The frontier defences in the new territories are far from good.
3) The Soviet Government will try, by all the diplomatic means at its disposal, to put off a German attack on the Soviet Union at least till the autumn, by which time it will be too late for the Germans to attack. It may, or may not, succeed.
4) If it succeeds, then, almost inevitably, the war with Nazi Germany will be fought in 1942—in much more favourable conditions, since the Red Army will have been
better trained, and will have far more up-to-date equipment. Depending on the
international situation, the Red Army will either wait for a German attack, or it may have to take the initiative, since the perpetuation of Nazi Germany as the
dominant power in Europe is "not normal".
5) England is not finished, and the weight of the American war potential is likely to count more and more. There is a very good chance that, after the signing of the Non-Aggression Pact with Japan, that country will stay quiet as far as the Soviet Union is concerned.
Stalin reiterated that the period "from now till August" was the most dangerous of all.
[I have compiled this from several Russian verbal sources; all of them agreed in the main, and particularly on one of the most important points: Stalin's conviction that the war would "almost inevitably" be fought in 1942, with the Russians possibly having to take the initiative.]
Immediately following this Stalin speech to the young officers, there was a succession of desperate Russian attempts to "appease" the Germans in order to at least postpone the invasion, if there was to be one. On May 6 an ukase of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet appointed Stalin, until then "only" Secretary-General of the Party, President of the Council of People's Commissars, i.e. head of the Soviet Government. Molotov became
Deputy-President, whilst remaining at the same time Foreign Commissar.
The general public, not unnaturally, saw a danger signal in this appointment of Stalin as head of the government; in more normal conditions this would not have happened. One
of the men most impressed by this government change was Count Schulenburg who, in a
series of dispatches to Berlin, argued that Stalin was the most determined opponent of any conflict with Germany. But his counsels of moderation fell on deaf ears in Berlin; Hitler had decided long ago to attack Russia, regardless of what Schulenburg, an
exponent of the traditional Bismarckian Ostpolitik, thought or advised.
The next few weeks were marked by a kind of cold-footed opportunism on Stalin's part; to impress Hitler with his "friendliness" and "solidarity" he took such incongruous and gratuitous steps as closing down the embassies and legations of countries now occupied by the Germans, such as Belgium, Greece and Yugoslavia, which implied a sort of de facto, if not de jure recognition of their conquest by Germany.
[ This measure was, of course, not extended to the French "Vichy" Embassy in Moscow which had existed since 1940. The Ambassador was the erstwhile left-wing politician
Gaston Bergery, whose American wife, a former Schiaparelli model, would tell Russians how nice Paris was under the German occupation: "Les Allemands sont tellement corrects."]
For good measure, the strictest instructions were reiterated to the military authorities in the frontier areas and elsewhere on no account to shoot down any of the numerous
German reconnaissance planes flying over Soviet territory. In May 1941, the Soviet
Government went so far as to give official recognition to the short-lived pro-German and anti-British government of Rashid Ali in Irak—a country with which the Soviet Union
had not had any diplomatic relations before.
Also in May, only a few days after Stalin had become head of the government, the
Russians were puzzled and alarmed by the startling news of Hess's arrival in Britain. The news was presented in a highly confusing manner. TASS reported from Berlin on May 12
that, according to the Germans, Hess had "gone insane"; but this was not borne out by TASS dispatches from London, and the suspicion immediately arose of an Anglo-German deal—needless to say, at Russia's expense.
However, the Soviet press said very little about Hess; he was an awkward subject at a time when top priority had to be given to the development of cordial relations with Nazi Germany. Everything was done to keep the Germans happy, and considerable quantities
of oil and other materials in short supply were rushed to Germany without pressing for the delivery of industrial equipment from Germany due to Russia under the Trade
Agreement.
Whereas Schulenburg remained amicable in his talks with Molotov, the German
Government's response to Stalin's friendly economic and diplomatic gestures was
precisely nil. It seems, therefore, that it was in sheer desperation that—exactly a week before the Invasion—Stalin decided to publish that famous TASS communiqué of June
14, a document which was to figure prominently in all Soviet histories of the war written under Khrushchev as the most damning piece of evidence of Stalin's wishful thinking, shortsightedness and total lack of understanding of what was going on in Germany even at that late hour. This is the text of the famous TASS communiqué:
Even before Cripps's arrival in London and especially after he had arrived there, there have been more and more rumours of an "early war" between the Soviet Union and Germany. It is also rumoured that Germany has presented both