89. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 704 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24119, d. 4, l. 160–1).
90. Welkisch had joined the German Communist party in 1930, worked at the Breslauer Zeitung from 1934, and been recruited into Soviet military intelligence by Herrnstadt in Warsaw. He married Margarita Welkisch, a photographer, in 1937; she had already been recruited into Soviet military intelligence by Herrnstadt.
91. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 706–8 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24119, d. 1, l. 296–303). The Geneva Convention legally allowed military attachés to gather information about the armed forces of the country in which they were accredited. Many other Soviet military attachés also served as military intelligence representatives, such as Major General Ivan Susloparov (“Maro”) in Paris, Nikolai Nikitushev (“Akasto”) in Stockholm, and I. A. Sklyarov (“Brion”) in London. Their reports are omitted here.
92. Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/i: viii. “Annihilating his own intelligence apparatus, Stalin cut down a bough, on which he sat, and became a victim of the disinformation of German intelligence,” Golikov’s deputy later wrote. Novobranets, “Nakanune voiny,” 171.
93. Vishlev, “Pochemu zhe,” 70–2; Warlimont, Im Hauptquartier der deutschen Wehrmacht, 164;
94. Between Feb. and June 1941, the Soviets fed disinformation to Ivar Lissner, a Baltic German journalist, in Harbin, Manchuria, which purported to be from Russian consulates and embassies, and were designed to impress upon the Germans the costs of deeper involvement in the Balkans. Barros and Gregor, Double Deception, 52–60.
95. Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 44–5 (TsA FSK); Primakov, Ocherki, III: 472 (TsA FSB).
96. Golikov requested clarification from “Sophocles.” Gavrilov, Voennana razvedka informiruet, 548 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24119, d. 4, l. 199); “Nakanune voiny (1940–1941 gg.),” at 219. On March 9, “Corsican,” who had seen the German air reconnaissance photos of the USSR, including of Kronstadt, conveyed that he had been told the “military attack on the USSR is an already decided issue.” Bondarenko, Fitin, 195–6 (citing FSB archives). On March 11, “Ramsay” reported out of Tokyo that Germany was still urging Japan to attack British Singapore. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 563–4 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24127, d. 2, l. 195–6); Fesiun, Delo Rikharda Zorge, 113 (March 10, 1941), 114–5 (March 15).
97. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 564–5 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24119, d. 1, l. 394–5). On March 26, 1941, “Yeshenko” reported that “a German attack against Ukraine will occur in two to three months.” Lota, Sekretnyi front, 40.
98. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 770.
99. Halder, Halder Diaries, II: 91 (April 30, 1941); Halder, Kriegstagebuch, II: 386–8. On April 2, 1941, Hitler informed Rosenberg of the coming invasion, without specifying the date; Rosenberg immediately formed an office that would become the Ministry for the East.
100. Lota, “Alta” protiv “Barbarossy,” 303 (no citation); Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 577 (no archival citation). At the end of March 1941, Germany had about forty divisions on the frontier. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 515.
101. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1304, l. 150–1.
102. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 346. Evidently, complaints against Molotov were reaching Stalin, many a result of Beria intrigues.
103. Friedlander, Prelude, 199.
104. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 607–40, 641–50. See also Zakharov, General’nyi shtab, 226–30. The Red Army had been expanded by creating new divisions, which, by design, were partially manned, rather than by filling out the many existing partially manned divisions. After the onset of a war, all divisions were to be brought to full strength by summoning 5,000 or so reservists for each. But this approach, which had failed under the tsars, did not foresee the constraints that would prevent reservists from reaching their assigned units in time, did not foster unit cohesion in the meantime, and increased the number of required experienced officers, who were in insufficient supply. Reese, Stalin’s Reluctant Soldiers, 36–9.
105. Mawdsley, “Crossing the Rubicon,” 822–3, 831, 863. This was the southern variant of the approved fall 1940 war plan.
106. V. N. Kiselev, “Upriamye fakty nachala voiny,” 18–22; Iampol’skii et al., Organy, I/ii: 50–2 (excerpted); Gor’kov, “Gotovil li,” 35; Gor’kov, Kreml’, 61. The plan has not been published in full. See also Vasilevskii, Delo vsei zhizni (6th ed.), Politizdat, 112. See also Gareev, Neodnoznachnye stranitsy, 93, 99.
107. Naumov, 1941 god, I: 731–2 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 273, l. 27–8: March 8, 1941); “Nakanune voiny (1941 g.),” 198: April 26, 1941); Zhukov, Vospominaniia, I: 307; Gor’kov and Semin, “O kharaktere voenno-operativnykh planov,” 109; Na prieme, 328.
108. MP-41 specified two kinds of mobilization, regular or open and “hidden” under the guise of training. “Mobilization is war, and we cannot understand it in any other way,” Shaposhnikov had written in the 1920s. Shaposhnikov, Vospominaniia, 558. “There were reasons enough to try to delay the USSR’s entry into the war, and Stalin’s tough line not to permit what Germany might be able to use as a pretext for unleashing war was justified by the historic interests of the socialist motherland,” Vasilevsky would state. “His guilt consists in not seeing, in not catching, the limit beyond which such a policy became not only unnecessary but also dangerous.” Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/ii: 242.
109. Lota, Sekretnyi front, 129.
110. Jervis, “Strategic Intelligence and Effective Policy,” 165–81.
111. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/i: 125–48. This would be Khrushchev’s self-defense in the secret speech.
112. TsAMO, f. 23, op. 7272, d. 1, l. 693–793 (March 15, 1941); Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 591–6 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 7277, d. 1, l. 140–52); Lota, “Alta protiv “Barbarossy,” 285–93. According to a top defector’s memoir, Tupikov came to the conclusion that about 180 German divisions were being concentrated on the frontier, but Dekanozov dismissed “it airily as a figment of someone’s imagination.” Akhmedov, In and Out of Stalin’s GRU, 145. In fact, Dekanozov reported to Moscow (March 16), 1941: “every day trains are heading east with weaponry (equipment, shells, vehicles and construction materials).” “Kanun voiny: preduprezhdeniia diplomatov,” 71.