What Stalin Knew (18 page)

Iron Guard. Himmler and others probably supported the Iron Guard be-

cause of its ideology, but Killinger, a very influential senior Nazi Party

official who had been named ambassador in 1940, was able to persuade Hit-

ler and Göring that Germany should back Antonescu. AVS also reported

that during meetings in Vienna, Göring and Antonescu had discussed Ro-

mania’s role in the forthcoming war with the USSR. He described the

growing chorus of voices calling for war with the USSR. ‘‘The German

military,’’ according to AVS, ‘‘are drunk with their successes and claim that

war with the USSR will begin in May.’’

AVS, having just returned to Bucharest from Berlin, asked embassy

counselor Hamilcar Hoffmann on March 26 what he thought of the ru-

mors of an impending war with the USSR. Hoffmann replied by recount-

ing his discussions with Michael Antonescu, nephew of the dictator and

minister of justice in his government. According to the nephew, Antonescu

was made privy to Germany’s plans for war against the USSR by Hitler in

January 1941. Detailed discussions in Vienna with Hermann Göring on

Romanian mobilization and preparations for war had followed. In Mi-

chael Antonescu’s view, ‘‘Antonescu has promised Germany that Romania

will actively participate in the campaign against the USSR. May will be the

critical month.’’4

74

RESIDENCIES IN EASTERN EUROPE

Also on March 26, Colonel Yeremin sent in a report from another

source, Nemesh, a retired Romanian staff officer. This report adds weight

to those from AVS on German plans for war with the USSR. Nemesh stated

that ‘‘the Romanian general staff has precise information that in two or

three months Germany will attack the Ukraine. The Germans will attack

the Baltic States at the same time, hoping for an uprising there against the

USSR. . . . The Romanians will take part in this war together with the Ger-

mans and will receive Bessarabia.’’ Nemesh also described military prepa-

rations under way in Romanian Moldavia. After reading the report, Goli-

kov gave instructions that the contents be checked with Colonel Pavel V.

Gaev, chief of the Intelligence Department of the Odessa Military District,

who was responsible for covering Romanian matters as well.5

On March 30, AVS added to his previous reporting on the meetings

between Antonescu and Göring in Vienna. Agreement was supposedly

reached stipulating that Germany would provide arms for twenty Roma-

nian divisions and no more. Antonescu wanted to mobilize far more men,

but in the German view, further mobilization would threaten spring plant-

ing. ‘‘In every sector, including that of the German presence in Romania,’’

AVS continued, ‘‘the growing threat of the German front against the USSR

is becoming more noticeable.’’6

On April 14, AVS reported on the several talks Ambassador Killinger

had held with Antonescu after his return from Berlin. On the one hand, he

gave Antonescu assurances that Hitler ‘‘considered him to be the sole per-

son in the Romanian leadership capable of ensuring the stable develop-

ment of Romania.’’ On the other hand, he reminded him that Germany

alone would determine when ‘‘Russia’s turn would come.’’ Meanwhile, Ro-

mania need not fear a Soviet attack and must not ‘‘provoke the USSR.’’ As

for Bessarabia, Antonescu would get it back, but Berlin would determine

the timing. On April 20 AVS added that preparations for war with the USSR

were still moving forward. He noted that Berlin had not wanted Romania

to participate in the war against Yugoslavia because it needed the Roma-

nian general staff to concentrate on ‘‘the task of military preparations in

Moldavia, deploying its troops there with German help.’’ This work was

now going forward ‘‘in coordination with the German military mission.’’

Also, ‘‘German troops now in Yugoslavia will be returned to Romania

and concentrated on the Russian front. . . . The date for the beginning of

the attack on the USSR will be from May 15 to the beginning of June.’’ This

AVS report ended with information on the growing antiaircraft defenses

around Ploesti and the arrival from Germany of Ukrainian ‘‘emissaries’’

RESIDENCIES IN EASTERN EUROPE

75

who would be sent to areas bordering on Bukovina and Bessarabia to

‘‘organize espionage and sabotage groups.’’ They would be sent into Soviet

areas to ‘‘foment peasant uprisings and carry out acts of sabotage.’’

These AVS reports were substantiated on April 23 by Vrach, another

Bucharest RU residency source. A colonel in the German air mission had

told him that ‘‘one or two powerful air raids will demonstrate Russian

impotence . . . beginning the war in May; we will end it in July.’’ Another

high-ranking officer explained Germany’s victory in these terms: ‘‘Our

main advantage is that we always maintain the initiative. We will do so in

our confrontation with the USSR. From the first blow we will demoralize

the Russian army. The most important thing—always keep the initiative.’’

This report ends with details on the deployment of German troops in

Romania.7

On May 5 the Bucharest RU residency issued another AVS report,

quoting an air officer from a Luftwaffe unit stationed in Romania who had

just returned from a trip to Berlin: ‘‘Whereas before the date for German

military operations against the USSR was to have been May 15, in connec-

tion with the events in Yugoslavia it has now been moved back to the

middle of June.’’ AVS stated that the officer firmly believed in the likelihood

of an impending conflict. Gerstenberg, one of AVS’s best sources (accord-

ing to Moscow RU Center), spoke of the impending German-Russian war

as ‘‘something that goes without saying’’ and said that ‘‘all of his service

actions are devoted to this event.’’ He also said as a fact that ‘‘the month of

June would see the beginning of the war. . . . The Red Army would be

defeated in four weeks. German aviation would destroy rail junctions,

highways, airfields in the western USSR, in the shortest possible time; the

immobile Russian army would be surrounded and split up by advancing

German armored units and suffer the fate of the Polish army.’’ Further-

more, Gerstenberg doubted the likelihood of Russian air attacks on Roma-

nian territory because ‘‘the location of Russian air units was known to the

Germans and they would be put out of action on the first day of the war.’’8

On the basis of his debriefing of a German visitor from Berlin, AVS

reported on May 28 that ‘‘preparation for the military action of Germany

against the USSR is proceeding systematically. . . . Military preparations

are going forward like clockwork and make the beginning of the war in

June realistic.’’ A key aspect of the report was the care Hitler was exercising

not to disclose the exact nature of his plans regarding the USSR in dis-

cussion with his allies. Nevertheless, ‘‘German measures for a campaign

against the USSR are being carried out with great precision. . . . [Alfred]

76

RESIDENCIES IN EASTERN EUROPE

Rosenberg, who has been chosen over Ribbentrop to deal with the political

aspects of the ‘Russian complex,’ is now working directly with General

[Alfred] Jodl [chief of the operations staff of the Wehrmacht high com-

mand]. He is taking an active part in preparing for the campaign against

the USSR. . . . All preparations are to be completed by mid-June. . . . War

against the USSR presents no problem from a military standpoint. . . . In

two or three months German troops will be in the Urals.’’ In conclusion,

AVS repeated his view that ‘‘the Germans are continuing to prepare for war

with us.’’9

It was information from the Bucharest RU residency and AVS that

provided the basis for the RU special report of June 7, 1941, on ‘‘Prepara-

tions of Romania for War,’ which ended with the words: ‘‘Officers of the

Romanian general staff persistently assert that, in accordance with un-

official declarations of Antonescu, war between Romania and the USSR

should begin soon.’’ The report was disseminated to Stalin, Molotov, Voro-

shilov, Timoshenko, Beria, Kuznetsov, Zhdanov, Zhukov, and Malenkov.

Because Romania would never attack the Soviet Union independently, the

report should have had an impact. It obviously did not.10

Clearly, AVS made an extremely valuable contribution to RU knowl-

edge of German plans and intentions. What happened to him? When the

war began, members of the Soviet embassy were interned and then sent

back to the USSR. AVS stayed on with the German embassy but lost con-

tact with Sharov, his communications link with RU Moscow. The RU at-

tempted to infiltrate agents into Romania to try to make contact, but its

operations failed. AVS and his wife made trips to Berlin, where they con-

tacted Alta, hoping that she might find a way of getting AVS’s information

to RU. Nothing worked out and Alta herself was arrested by the Gestapo

and later executed. As it turned out, she never betrayed AVS and his wife.

They remained with the German embassy in Bucharest until the arrival in

Romania of the Red Army in 1944, then returned to the USSR.

AVS agreed to continue working for the RU and did so until war’s end.

When the division of Germany into four zones of occupation was an-

nounced, AVS objected to it, claiming that the decision was made in re-

sponse to a Soviet demand. He refused to continue working with the RU,

and he and his family were sent to the GULAG, as confirmed by a Janu-

ary 16, 1952, decree of the USSR Ministry of State Security. They were

released only after Stalin’s death and were not rehabilitated. In October

2003, when the first of Vladimir Lota’s articles on AVS came to the atten-

RESIDENCIES IN EASTERN EUROPE

77

tion of officials in the Belorussian prosecutor’s office, their case was re-

viewed. The 1952 sentence was invalidated and they were rehabilitated

posthumously. One son died in the GULAG; a second son survived and

today lives in Germany.11

Belgrade

Until Belgrade was destroyed by the Luftwaffe and Yugoslavia was overrun

by the Wehrmacht in April 1941, the RU residency in Belgrade had excel-

lent contacts with the Yugoslav general staff. This and other sources en-

abled it to produce valuable reporting both on the situation in the Balkans

and on German intentions to invade the USSR.

The legal RU resident in Belgrade was the military attaché, Major

General Aleksandr G. Samokhin (code name Sofokl). The assistant mili-

tary attaché was Colonel Mikhail S. Maslov; secretary to the military at-

taché was Captain Andrei A. Vasilev. Viktor Z. Lebedev (code name Blok)

whose cover was counselor of the political representation, as Soviet embas-

sies were known at the time, was very active in the Belgrade diplomatic

community. As the year 1941 began, the residency was responding to re-

quirements from RU Moscow concerning the movement of German troops

into Romania and the Balkans generally. A January 27, 1941, report con-

cluded that there were now fourteen German divisions in Romania, thus

confirming German interests in protecting Romanian oil and expanding its

Balkan position. On the same date, statements by the German ambassador

in Belgrade at a closed meeting in his embassy disclosed the link, from the

German point of view, between developments in the Balkans and future

relations between Germany and the USSR. According to the ambassador,

the Balkans must ‘‘be included in the New Order in Europe, but the USSR

will never agree to this and therefore war between the two is inevitable.’’12

On February 14, the RU residency obtained the Yugoslav general

staff’s holdings on the location and strength of German army divisions.

The report listed 127 divisions in Eastern Europe, 5 in Scandinavia, and 50

along the English Channel. The remainder were in the reserves in Ger-

many, in occupied France (11) and in Italy (5). As for those in Romania,

they consisted of 3 tank divisions, 4 motorized divisions, and 13 infantry.

In a marginal note, Golikov ordered the Information Department to ‘‘dis-

seminate this with a map.’’13

On March 9, 1941, residency agent Rybnikar was told by the minister

78

RESIDENCIES IN EASTERN EUROPE

of the royal court that the German general staff had turned down a plan for

an assault on the British Isles; the next task would be the conquest of the

Ukraine and Baku, which would take place in April or May of that year.14

On April 4, General Samokhin wrote to RU Moscow: ‘‘The concentra-

tion of German troops all along the border of the USSR from the Black Sea

to the Baltic, the ill-disguised revanchist declarations of Romania in re-

gard to northern Bukovina, the movement of [German] ‘instructors’ to

Finland, the benevolent reaction to Swedish mobilization, the new move-