What Stalin Knew (32 page)

the Soviet system worked. Golikov was a perfect choice. While he himself

likely saw Stalin as a guardian angel, Stalin surely saw in him an individ-

ual on whom he could rely completely.

When Golikov became the new head of military intelligence, the subor-

dination and designation of the service were changed. Under Proskorov

it had been the Fifth, or Intelligence, Directorate of the Defense Com-

missariat, and Proskorov bore the title of deputy defense commissar. On

July 26, 1940, an order of the Defense Commissariat on the structure of the

general staff placed the Intelligence Directorate in the general staff, where

it was called RU GS KA, or Intelligence Directorate, General Staff, Red

Army. Golikov was designated deputy chief of the general staff, subordi-

nate to the chief of the general staff, then Meretskov. (Zhukov would re-

place him as chief of the general staff in January 1941.)∞∫

The most important department in the RU was the Information De-

partment, responsible for producing intelligence summaries and special

reports. Its chief also served as deputy to the directorate chief. When Goli-

kov arrived in July 1940, the acting chief of the Information Department

was Grigory P. Pugachev. He was succeeded by Nikolai I. Dubinin, who left

because of illness in February 1941, to be replaced by Vasily A. Novo-

branets, who had joined the RU in April 1940 under Proskurov and, since

April 1940, had been deputy chief of the Information Department for East-

ern Countries. Golikov did not get on well with Novobranets, quarreling

144

PROSKUROV IS FIRED

over Novobranets’s view that German troop deployments on the western

borders presaged a German offensive against the USSR. In April 1941, a

new chief arrived, Major General N. S. Dronov. His last assignment had

been as chief of staff of an army group in the Odessa Military District, and

his only previous experience had been as a commander or staff officer with

the troops. So Golikov’s deputy, the chief of the most important depart-

ment in the directorate, would be, like Golikov himself, an officer with no

intelligence experience. (In October 1941 Dronov would leave the RU to

become chief of staff of the Tenth Army, the very army to which Golikov

would also be assigned that fall. These two babes in the intelligence woods

must have gotten on well together.)19

Golikov’s office was on the third floor of the building at Znamenski 19,

one of a complex that housed the NKO, the general staff, and the Political

Directorate of the Red Army. His officers described him as a short person,

round faced, with close-cropped blond hair and piercing blue eyes. Ac-

cording to one, he always wore a strange smile whether he approved or

disapproved of work done by a subordinate. ‘‘He never gave straightfor-

ward orders or directions but always left it up to the subordinate. If he was

not satisfied, he would say, ‘I never gave you orders like that’ or ‘You did not

understand me.’ ’ Golikov let it be known to his officers that he would

report directly to Stalin. Above all, he seemed always concerned that RU

information be consistent with Stalin’s views.20

∞∑

C H A P T E R

Golikov and

Operation Sea Lion

As head of military intelligence from July 1940 to

June 1941, Golikov was responsible for the dissemination of reports from

RU field residencies; he also supervised the preparation of periodic intel-

ligence summaries or analyses based not only on RU agent reports but on

all information available from all elements of the government, includ-

ing the Foreign Affairs Commissariat. Significant in Golikov’s treatment

of this information was his emphasis on German operations against En-

gland. Aware that Stalin was convinced that Hitler would not attack the

Soviet Union until he had defeated England, Golikov used every oppor-

tunity to reinforce this view and to label any warnings of an imminent

German invasion of the Soviet Union as disinformation originating in

England, America, or Germany.

In 1965 historian Aleksandr M. Nekrich asked Golikov about the anal-

yses prepared under his supervision: ‘‘Abroad much is written about the

warnings the Soviet Union received through various channels of the im-

pending attack. The impression has been created that the first warning

came in March 1941 [a report given by Undersecretary of State Sumner

Welles to Konstantin A. Umansky, the Soviet ambassador to the United

States]. Is this true?’’ Golikov replied:

No, it wasn’t like that. The first warnings came from Soviet military

intelligence well before March 1941. The Intelligence Directorate

146

GOLIKOV AND OPERATION SEA LION

carried out an enormous amount of work in the collection and analy-

sis of information from various channels on the intentions of Hit-

lerite Germany, particularly and most of all its intentions toward the

Soviet government. Along with the collection and analysis of exten-

sive agent information, the RU carefully studied international in-

formation, the foreign press, public opinion, military-political and

military-technical literature from Germany and other countries, and

so forth. Soviet military intelligence had reliable and proven sources

of secret information on a whole series of countries, including Ger-

many itself. Therefore, the American report was not and could not

have been news to the political and military leadership of our coun-

try, beginning with I. V. Stalin.1

In describing the RU’s performance and Stalin’s reaction, Golikov was

less than candid. The March 1941 warning did occur, however. The infor-

mation was obtained by Sam E. Woods, a gregarious commercial attaché

at the American embassy in Berlin, who had established good contacts in

the German resistance and was able to follow German preparations for the

invasion of the USSR from late July 1940 to the signing of Plan Barba-

rossa. Although Woods’s reporting brought the usual bureaucratic crit-

icism in Washington, by early 1941, it had been confirmed by American

code breakers who had read messages between Tokyo and the Japanese

ambassador in Berlin. President Roosevelt ordered that the Soviets be

informed. Sumner Welles notified Ambassador Umansky on March 20. A

telegram to Ambassador Laurence Steinhardt stated that ‘‘the Government

of the United States, while endeavoring to estimate the developing world

situation, has come into the possession of information which it regards as

authentic, clearly indicating that it is the intention of Germany to attack

the Soviet Union.’’ When Stalin saw the translation of the message, he

wrote on it, ‘‘Provocation!’’2

Later, on April 15, 1941, Steinhardt met with his regular contact,

Solomon A. Lozovsky, a deputy in the Foreign Affairs Commissariat, and

told him, ‘‘I consider it my duty to inform you and ask that you inform

Molotov: ‘Beware of Germany. . . . There is more to it than simple rumors;

it would be madness for Germany to take this step, but they can do it.’ ’

Lozovsky replied, ‘‘I do not believe that Germany will attack the Soviet

Union. . . . In any case, the USSR is always ready and will not be taken

unaware.’’3

On June 5, Steinhardt and Lozovsky had a long meeting on many

issues affecting Soviet-American relations, principally those involving the

Baltic States. For the Soviets, an important problem was the arrest in April

GOLIKOV AND OPERATION SEA LION

147

1941 and detention of Gaik B. Ovakimian, ostensibly an employee of the

Soviet trading company AMTORG but actually the head of the NKGB

residency in New York. At meeting’s end Steinhardt again brought up the

danger of a German attack on the USSR. Lozovsky stated that ‘‘the Soviet

Union remains calm in the face of all kinds of rumors about an attack on

its borders. The Soviet Union will meet it fully armed. If there are people

who might try, then the day of an invasion of the USSR will be the unhap-

piest in the history of the country attacking the USSR.’’4 This apparently

was their last meeting. Ironically, Lozovsky, a staunch Soviet patriot, was

executed in August 1952 for crimes against the state in connection with the

investigation of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. Laurence Steinhardt,

the highest-ranking Jewish diplomat in the U.S. State Department, died in

a plane crash in March 1950 while serving as ambassador to Canada.5

Warnings from Great Britain remained tentative through 1940, be-

coming explicit only at the beginning of 1941. Back on June 24, 1940,

Churchill had expressed to Stalin his hope for friendly relations between

Great Britain and the Soviet Union, making clear that his government

would not give up the fight against Nazi Germany and that its longer-term

goal was to liberate those countries of Europe under German domination.6

On July 3 the Soviet ambassador, Ivan M. Maisky, met with Churchill, who

reiterated his determination to resist Hitler but said he had no idea when

the German attack on Great Britain would come. Earlier, in a June 22

telegram to Molotov, Maisky had declared that the decision of the Church-

ill government to continue the fight despite the fall of France was sup-

ported by the British people. Although the group around Chamberlain still

existed, it would not risk open opposition to the Churchill government. To

judge from VENONA information, the RU residency would spend much of

its time during 1940 reporting on the effects of German bombing and its

impact on popular morale.7

As a concluding comment and perhaps as a warning, Churchill re-

peated to Maisky at their July 3 meeting a statement by the French politi-

cian Pierre Laval to an American journalist: ‘‘Hitler has nothing against

France. Hitler hates the Bolsheviks and is waiting only for the appropri-

ate circumstances to deliver the fatal blow.’’ Maisky responded: ‘ You

can be sure that the USSR can take care of itself at any time and in any

circumstances.’’8

It seems doubtful that Churchill intended Laval’s words as a serious

warning. In any case, it would have been lost in the tedious exchanges

during the remainder of 1940 over various problems caused by the Soviet

148

GOLIKOV AND OPERATION SEA LION

incorporation of the Baltic States. Even a long discussion on December 27

between Maisky and Anthony Eden, newly ensconced in the Foreign Of-

fice, intended by Eden as a gesture of friendship, degenerated into argu-

ments over Baltic gold and freighters. By this time, of course, Operation

Barbarossa was on track.9

In the new year, things changed. On February 12, 1941, Eden told

Maisky that in the last two weeks the number of German troops in Ro-

mania had grown rapidly and that all the airfields in Bulgaria were in the

hands of the Germans. In March the British government tried to persuade

the Soviets that the German advance into the Balkans and the Near East

represented a threat to both countries. It was time to create an atmosphere

of trust, to look less to the past and more to the future. On March 6, 1941,

the British ambassador, Sir Stafford Cripps, told Andrei Vyshinsky, deputy

commissar for foreign affairs, of rumors that Germany was preparing to

attack the USSR and that its actions in the Balkans were designed to

protect its Balkan flank. Cripps believed the rumors were based on Hitler’s

rejection of the plan for the invasion of the British Isles, and he proposed

the mounting of strong opposition to Germany.’’10

On April 19 Cripps handed Vyshinsky a copy of an April 3 letter from

Churchill to Stalin that read in part: ‘‘I have at my disposal sufficient infor-

mation from a reliable agent that when the Germans considered Yugo-

slavia caught in their net, that is, after March 20, they began to transfer

three of their five tank divisions from Romania to southern Poland. As

soon as they learned of the Serbian revolution, that transfer was revoked.

Your Excellency will easily understand the meaning of these facts.’’ We

know now that this information was based on ULTRA, the British program

for breaking the ENIGMA code used by the Germans.11

On June 3, 1941, Maisky reported to Moscow in a telegram a conversa-

tion in which Eden had told him that the British government had precise

information about a recent concentration of German forces on Soviet bor-

ders, mainly in the Ukrainian region. Churchill considered the buildup a

prelude to an attack against the USSR. Eden added, under instructions

from the British government, that if German air forces in the Near East

turned against the USSR, British air forces could go on the offensive and

provide assistance. On June 13 Eden, again acting under instructions from