Hitler Moves East, 1941-1943 (11 page)

Feverishly special machines were developed by various aircraft firms from the suitable available types. They were equipped with pressurized cabins, with engines specially tuned for high-altitude flying, with special photographic equipment and a wide angle of vision. In the late winter the "Rowehl Geschwader" began its secret flights. The first squadron operated from Seerappen in East Prussia and reconnoitred the area of Belorussia. The aircraft were He-111 machines with special high-altitude engines. The second squadron, operating from Insterburg, photographed the territory of the Baltic States as far as Lake Ilmen. They used the Do-215-B2, a special model made by the Dornier works. The machine had a ceiling of 30,000 feet. The area north of the Black Sea coast was photographed by the third squadron, operating from Bucharest with He-111 and Do-215-B2 machines. From Cracow and Budapest the special

squadron of the Research Centre for High-altitude Flying covered the area between Minsk and Kiev. They employed special Junkers models, the Ju-88B and Ju-86P—magnificent machines capable of reaching 33,000 and 39,000 feet respectively. That was a sensational height for those days.

The plan worked smoothly. The Russians noticed nothing. Only one machine had engine trouble, and made a forced landing in the Minsk area on 20th June, two days before the outbreak of war. But the crew were able to set their secret machine on fire before they were captured. The outbreak of the war caused the incident to be forgotten.

The long-range reconnaissance flights of the Rowehl Geschwader were virtually the only source of really significant intelligence material for the first phase of the campaign. All the airfields in Western Russia, including the well- camouflaged fighter bases near the frontier, were photographed. What the human eye would never have seen was revealed by special films. Surprisingly numerous units were spotted on forward fields, and huge concentrations of armour were made out in the forests in the north.

This information enabled a resounding blow to be struck against the Soviet defensive capacity. For days Field-Marshal Kesselring and his Air Corps commanders sat evaluating the aerial photographs and discussing operations.

There was just one problem that troubled them—the timing of their attack. Zero hour on 22nd June had been chosen to give the infantry enough light to make out their targets. That was why the artillery bombardment was scheduled to start at 0315 hours. On the Central Front, however, it was still dark at 0315, and air-force operations were therefore not yet possible. The Russian fighter and bomber formations, which would naturally be alerted by the artillery bombardment, would thus have thirty or forty minutes before the first German aircraft appeared over their fields. Needless to say, experienced pilots could have found their targets in the dark even twenty years ago, but the point was that no air forces should be spotted crossing the frontier too soon. For that would have warned the Russians and deprived the ground forces of their element of surprise. At last somebody thought of the solution—General Loerzer, General von Richthofen, or Colonel Mölders, nobody remembers for certain who it was. The idea was that the aircraft would approach the enemy airfields at great height in the dark, in the manner of long-range reconnaissance planes.

The plan was adopted. For each airfield from which Soviet fighters were operating three German bomber crews with experience of night flying set out. Flying at great height and taking advantage of uninhabited areas of marsh or forest, they crossed the frontier and sneaked up on their targets, so that they were over the fields exactly at first light, at 0315 hours on 22nd June.

At the same time as the bombers, but very much higher, flew Rowehl's long-range reconnaissance machines, carrying men of the "Brandenburg" Intelligence Regiment. They were to be dropped by parachute near railway junctions and road intersections, for sabotage actions or for work as undercover agents.

The plan went according to schedule. On the Russian fields the fighters were lined up in formation. Row by row they were bombed and shot up. Only from a single airfield did a fighter formation attempt to take off, just as the German bombers arrived. But the Russians were a few minutes too late. The bombs and shells burst right among the formation about to take off. Thus the pilots were written off as well as the machines. Right at the beginning of the war the Soviet fighter strength had been wiped out by a terrible "Pearl Harbor of the air." As a result, the German Stuka and bomber formations were able, on that first day of the offensive, to clear the way for the ground forces untroubled by enemy fighters. They penetrated some two hundred miles into Russian territory and destroyed Soviet bomber bases. Without this blow the Red Air Force would have been a dangerous enemy during the first crucial operations. Anyone questioning this assertion need only look at the losses suffered by the German Luftwaffe in the first four weeks of the war. Between 22nd June and 19th July the Luftwaffe lost, in spite of its shattering opening strikes, a total of 1284 aircraft shot down or damaged. The war in the air on the Eastern Front was therefore no walkover. On 22nd June the three air fleets on the Eastern Front flew 2272 missions, with 1766 bombers and 506 fighters. Seven days later their operational strength had dropped to 960 aircraft. Not till 3rd July did it rise again above the thousand mark.

It is clear that the surprise blow at the Soviet Air Force was of decisive importance for the ground troops. This raises once more the question: How was this surprise possible if Moscow knew Hitler's attack to be imminent? What was the explanation of the curious fact that in the front line the Soviet ground troops and Air Force were blissfully and unconcernedly asleep, while in the hinterland all preparations for war had been carefully made? The blackout, to quote

just one instance, had been planned so thoroughly that throughout Western Russia the blue blackout bulbs and blackout materials were available right from the start. Strips of gummed paper were found even in the smallest villages, protecting window-panes against being shattered by blast.

Mobilization, too, functioned smoothly. Altogether, military traffic throughout the hinterland worked exceedingly well. The switch-over to a total war footing was performed by industry without a hitch in accordance with prepared plans.

The elimination of all possible "enemies of the State" in the border territories went like clockwork. As early as the night of 13th/ 14th June 1941—
i.e.,
eight days before the German attack— the Soviet State Security Service had all "suspect families" in the Baltic countries transported to the interior of Russia. Some 11,000 Estonians, 15,600 Latvians, and 34,260 Lithuanians were put aboard trains within a few hours and shipped wholesale to Siberia.

Everything was functioning smoothly. Henry D. Cassidy, the Associated Press correspondent, in his first major report for the American papers sent from Moscow on 26th June, described his journey aboard a military train from the Black Sea to the Soviet capital. He said, "I got the impression from this journey that the Soviets are off to a good start."

Off to a good start! But why then were the forward lines on the Central Front off to such a bad start? So bad in fact that Colonel-General Guderian remarks in his memoirs: "Careful observation of the Russians convinced me that they knew nothing of our intentions." The enemy was taken by surprise all along the front of the Panzer Group.

How was this possible? A surprising but satisfactory answer is provided by Marshal Yeremenko in his memoirs, published in Moscow in 1956. Stalin alone was responsible, is Yeremen-ko's verdict.

I. V. Stalin, as the Head of State, believed that he could trust the agreement with Germany, and failed to pay the necessary attention to such symptoms as indicated a fascist attack against our country. He regarded information about an impending German attack as lies and provocations by the Western Powers, whom he suspected of wanting to wreck relations between Germany and the Soviet Union in order to implicate us in the war. That was why he failed to authorize all urgent or decisive defence measures along the frontier, for fear that this would serve the Hitlerites as a pretext for attacking our country.

It seems therefore that it was Stalin who, against the insistence of his General Staff, refused to authorize the alert for the frontier troops and forbade the organization of effective defence measures throughout the border regions. Stalin did not believe Richard Sorge, nor "Grand Chef" Gilbert, nor yet "Petit Chef" Kent. He did not believe Lucy, and least of all did he believe the British Ambassador.

Does that seem credible? It certainly does not seem incredible. The history of espionage and diplomacy is full of instances when excessively accurate reports supplied by agents about some great secret encountered not enthusiasm but mistrust. One such example is the story of Elyesa Bazna, the Armenian valet of the British Ambassador in Ankara, who from 1943 onward gained access to all the top-secret telegrams from the embassy safe and sold them to Hitler's espionage service. Cicero, as Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen's valet called himself, laid his hands on the secret documents in the simplest possible way. While at breakfast His Excellency usually left the key to his safe in his jacket in the bedroom. The Armenian would take it, go and dust the Ambassador's study, unlock the safe, photograph the documents, lock the safe again, and slip the key back into the jacket. It was as simple as that.

But Adolf Hitler refused to believe it. He regarded the whole thing as an elaborate plant by the British secret service, of which he was more terrified than the devil is of holy water. He would sweep the reports off his desk and refuse to draw any conclusions from the Allied plans which lay clearly revealed before him.

It seems that Stalin was filled with the same deep distrust of his informants, and that this suspicion grew stronger with every report confirming the imminence of a German attack. A master of casting suspicion on others, and a cunning tactician, he fell victim to his own conspiratorial mode of thinking. "The capitalist West is trying to manœuvre me into opposition to Hitler," he would speculate. With the stubbornness so often found in dictators he clung to his conviction that Hitler could not possibly be so foolish as to attack Russia until he had defeated Britain. He regarded the German concentrations along his military frontier in Poland as a bluff. Perhaps the Soviet dictator was himself influenced by the rumour deliberately spread by German intelligence that the concentration of forces in the East was intended to deceive Britain and divert attention from the planned invasion of the British Isles. Besides, a man like Stalin would

hardly believe that an important secret such as a German war of aggression was so badly guarded that all the world seemed to be privy to it.

This view is confirmed by the greatest authority on the Kremlin backstage and the Red Army's secret intelligence activities, David J. Dallin. In his book
Soviet Espionage
he writes: