287. See also Mikoian, Tak bylo, 386.
288. Kira was evidently seized on May 5, 1940, by a squad overseen by Merkulov; she was executed by Blokhin without indictment or trial. “Beria protiv Kulika,” in Bobrenev and Riazantsev, Palachi i zhertvy, 197–264 (esp. 195–201, 211–3); Sokolov, Istreblennye marshaly, 300–1; Leskov, Stalin i zagovor Tukhachevskogo, 53–5; Montefiore, Court of the Red Tsar, 293–4.
289. DGFP, series D, VIII: 942; Erickson, Soviet High Command, 508, 553.
290. One scholar gives the reason as Stalin’s desire to show the world that the lessons of the Finnish War had been absorbed by replacing both the defense commissar and chief of staff, even though Stalin acknowledged that Shaposhnikov had gotten the war right. Balandin, Marshal Shaposhnikov, 317–23.
291. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 717.
292. Komandnyi i nachal’stvuiushchii sostav Krasnoi Armii, 4–14; Kirshin, Dukhovnaia gotovnost’ Sovetskogo naroda k voine, 379; van Dyke, Soviet Invasion, 198–9; Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/i: 63–4.
293. Osokina, Za fasadom, 206–18; Khanin, Ekonomicheskaia istoriia Rossii, I: 29.
294. Erickson, Road to Stalingrad, 13–49.
295. Kuznetsov, Krutye povoroty, 37.
296. Zhukov, Vospominaniia, II: 283–7. Zhukov recalls Kalinin being present. The logbook lists Zhukov on June 2, 1939, only in the presence of Molotov and Stalin, and on June 3 in the presence of twenty-five people, almost all military men, but not Kalinin. Kalinin and Zhukov both appear on June 13, but not at overlapping times. Na prieme, 300–1, 302–3.
297. Already by May 1940, 12,000 repressed Red Army officers and troops had been reinstated (not including the air force or navy). “O nakoplenii nachal’stvuiushchego sostava Raboche-Krest’ianskoi Krasnoi Armii,” 182, 187, 188–9.
298. Konstantinov, Rokossovskii, 42. See also Gorbatov, Gody i voiny, 162–72.
299. Drug plennykh, Jan. 27, 1940: 1.
300. Aron, Mémoires, 158.
301. Dullin, “How to Wage Warfare,” 224. See also Borkenau, Totalitarian Enemy, published in March 1939.
302. Schapiro, Totalitarianism; Gleason, Totalitarianism; Jones, Lost Debate. Stalin was likely unaware of these adverse currents. For May Day 1940, he altered the draft slogan for the Young Pioneers from “the cause of communism” to the “cause of Lenin-Stalin.” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1257, l. 137.
303. Hilferding, “Gosudarstvennyi kapitalizm ili totalitarnoe gosudarstvennoe khoziaistvo?” The Mensheviks, just before the Nazis would occupy Paris, would relocate to New York, while Hilferding would stay behind and fall into the clutches of the Gestapo. Liebich, From the Other Shore, 240–3.
304. Harrison and Davies, “Soviet Military-Economic Effort,” 373–93.
305. Adamthwaite, France, 269–79. There is little solid evidence on German intelligence assessments of Soviet capabilities. Germany used Iran, which in 1939 had declared its neutrality, as a platform for reconnaissance and covert action against the Soviet Union (the Shah shared with Hitler fear of the spread of Bolshevism; nearly half of Iranian trade was with Nazi Germany, mostly raw materials and oil for German weapons). Richard August, who went by the name Franz Meyer, an SS officer and spy working undercover as a representative of the Reichsgroup for Industry in the USSR from Sept. 1939 through Feb. 1940, was among those based in Tehran. He evidently reported that the Red Army was strong and the Russian émigré predictions of a pending anti-Bolshevik uprising fantastical. Dolgopolov, Vartanian, 16–7.
306. Emets, “O roli russkoi armii,” 64.
307. Adamthwaite, France, 232–4; Gates, End of the Affair, 57–8; Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence, 295.
308. Erickson, Soviet High Command, 513. For British views, see Murray, Change in the European Balance of Power, 274; and Adamthwaite, France, 51. On Stalin’s respect for the French army (“worthy of consideration”), expressed to Ribbentrop on Aug. 23, 1939, see DGFP, series D, VII: 227.
CHAPTER 13. GREED
1. Fröhlich, Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, VIII: 196–7 (June 28, 1940).
2. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 374–5 (AVP RF, f. 059, op. 1, pap. 339, d. 2315, l. 35, 35 a, 36, 38, 39).
3. Osborn, Operation Pike. See also Richardson, “French Plans”; Millman, “Toward War with Russia.”
4. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 317–8.
5. Fel’shtinskii, Oglasheniiu podlezhit, 180.
6. Golubev et al., Rossiia i zapad, 223 (citing RGASPI, f. 77, op. 1, d. 745, l. 34).
7. Solonin, “Tri plana tovarishcha Stalina,” 44.
8. On May 10, 1940, the same day Hitler attacked France, Moscow was invaded by Leningrad culture. After so many Ten-Day festivals for the various Union republics—beginning with Ukraine in 1936 and most recently with Armenia in Oct. 1939—now came the star turn of the Union’s second capital, with performances by the latter’s principal theaters, symphony orchestras, choral group, and the fabled Leningrad choreography school, cradle of the country’s ballet dancers. Altogether, 2,765 cultural figures from Leningrad would take part (by one press account, closer to 4,000). On May 29, Stalin hosted a banquet for them in the Grand Kremlin Palace. Izvestiia, May 10, 26, and 28, 1940; Kul’turnaia zhizn’ v SSSR, 1928–1941, 732; Nevezhin, Zastol’ia, 120–1. Also in May 1940, the Nazis sealed off the Jews of German-occupied Łódź into a ghetto behind barbed wire.
9. Gilbert, Churchill and America, 131–3.
10. Self, Neville Chamberlain, 432–3; Lukacs, Five Days in London.
11. In a May 24–28, 1940, Cabinet debate, Churchill prevailed. Reynolds, “British ‘Decision’ to Fight,” 147–67.
12. Firsov, “Arkhivy Kominterna,” 22 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 184, d. 4, l. 53: Sept. 29, 1939). Stalin evidently harbored a certain admiration for the new British PM, Haslam, Soviet Foreign Policy, 152n1.
13. Von Strandmann, “Appeasement and Counter-Appeasement,” 168. Germany sent a team under retired Rear Admiral Otto Feige (b. 1882) to fit out the 690-foot battleship’s superstructure above the first deck. Philbin, Lure of Neptune, 121–2.
14. Ericson, Feeding the German Eagle, 117, 121n101 (citing PA, R 106232, E0418717 and PA/Schnurre, Leben, 97).
15. While dancing the ancient dance with her, Feige was said to have heard a clicking noise, started probing, and found a hidden camera in a large wall painting (it had a small hole cut out). Feige remained impassive to Beria’s clumsy blackmail recruitment effort, while Hitler became indignant about the Soviet entrapment effort. According to Khrushchev, Stalin laced into Beria. Khrushchev, Memoirs, I: 258.