What Stalin Knew (45 page)

that Hitler would not attack. Consequently, Fitin sent it back to the Ger-

man Department with this note to the chief: ‘‘Comrade Zhuravliev: You

keep this. P. Fitin.’’14

Meanwhile, on Thursday, June 19, Fitin’s German Department was

overwhelmed by a lengthy report from the Belorussian NKGB providing

details on final preparations for a German assault. It was normal practice

for Fitin’s directorate to use such information in summary reports dis-

seminated to the Council of People’s Commissars and the Central Commit-

tee VKP(b).15 They put the work on the summary aside when they received

a cable from the Berlin NKGB residency containing an alarming report

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from one of Berlin’s oldest and most reliable agents, Wilhelm Lehmann

(code name Breitenbach). Lehmann, a Berlin police officer, had been a

Soviet agent since September 1929. In 1930 he was transferred to the

police element working against the Soviet presence in Berlin. When the

Nazis came to power, he found himself in the counterintelligence element

of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA). Because of his reporting on

Gestapo counterintelligence efforts, which by 1939 amounted to fourteen

volumes in NKVD archives, the Berlin residency was able to protect its

operations and run them securely. He was also responsible for security and

counterintelligence operations in the German armaments industry. His

reporting was considered so valuable that from 1934 to 1937 he was han-

dled by Vasily M. Zarubin, one of the NKVD’s most celebrated illegals. (He

was better known in the United States under the name Zubilin when he

served there as resident from 1941 to 1944.) In 1935 and 1936, Zarubin

amazed Moscow when he forwarded reports from Lehmann on the experi-

mental work on rockets being done by Wernher von Braun and others.16

In 1939 the sudden death of the Berlin resident, Aleksandr I. Agaiants,

resulted in the loss of contact with Lehmann. It was reestablished in Sep-

tember 1940 by Aleksandr M. Korotkov, who became deputy resident. Leh-

mann, who had risen to become a Hauptsturmführer in the Gestapo, was

still responsible for the security of defense industries throughout Germany.

After recontact, he was turned over a new case officer, Boris N. Zhuravliev

(code name Nikolai). So high was the regard in which the service held

Lehmann that on September 9, 1940, Beria himself sent a telegram to

Berlin outlining the security rules for handling this valuable source. Be-

cause of his position, Lehmann was able to furnish the residency with

copies of virtually every document of interest produced by his department

of the RSHA. On June 10, 1941, for example, he delivered to his case officer

a secret report by RSHA chief Reinhard Heydrich on ‘‘Soviet Subversive

Activities against Germany.’’ The real blockbuster, however, was his report

on June 19 of information received by his Gestapo unit that Germany

would attack the USSR on June 22 at 3:00 a.m. The information was con-

sidered so important by the residency that it was sent by cable that same

evening through the ambassador’s channel to ensure it would reach Mos-

cow as quickly as possible. Apparently this report, like so many others, was

considered ‘‘false and a provocation.’’ How could this have happened? Leh-

mann’s years of service and the value of his reporting were well known even

to Beria. Obviously, Beria had no intention of confronting Stalin over the

report, and so it must have been suppressed.17

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209

After the war began, Lehmann’s case officer, Zhuravliev, returned to

the Soviet Union along with the other members of the Soviet embassy.

Contact was lost, and although Moscow Center tried several times to

get back in touch by parachuting radio operators into Germany, nothing

seemed to work. From U.S. Army records it appears that one of these radio

operators was doubled and gave the Gestapo the parole for making contact

with Lehmann. The Gestapo sent one of its own men, who held several

meetings with Lehmann, posing as an RU agent. He received secret Ge-

stapo information intended for the Soviets from Lehmann, who was ar-

rested and executed in secrecy. His colleagues were told he had been killed

in the line of duty in East Prussia. Lehmann’s wife was given the same

story and she duly received her widow’s pension. The Germans were evi-

dently determined to keep secret the fact that Lehmann had been a Soviet

agent.18

Over the weekend of June 21–22 Fitin went to his dacha near Tara-

sovka, west of Moscow. Early on Sunday morning, he received a telephone

call from the NKGB ordering him to return to Moscow immediately. As his

car headed toward Moscow, he encountered groups of high school stu-

dents celebrating their graduation. At the sight of them, he asked himself,

‘ Was Starshina wrong?’’ When he entered the building, the duty officer

told him that German troops had crossed the border with the USSR. Peo-

ple were still reluctant to say
war.
Strangely, at these words, Fitin felt

himself the happiest of men. Although it was certainly unusual for anyone

to greet war in a happy state of mind, Fitin knew that if he had been wrong

about Starshina, he would no longer be among the living.19

It is difficult to know what the chief of the RU general staff, Filipp I.

Golikov, was up to in the days before the invasion. The last RU special

report for which we have an archival reference was dated May 31, 1941, for

the period up to June 1. It maintained the fiction that England was Ger-

many’s main target. It was followed by two special reports on Romania. In

the period between June 15 and the beginning of the war, we have five

reports from RU residencies reflecting archival documents. Marginal com-

ments on two of them indicate Golikov was active. One, dated June 15, was

a report from source Ostvald of the RU residency in Helsinki on the arrival

at Finnish ports of two motorized German infantry divisions that were

then shipped to the north of the country by train. No fewer than 2,000

motor vehicles and 10,000 motorized infantry and special troops were

concentrated in the area of Rovaniemi, in central Finland.20 Finland de-

clared war on the USSR on June 26.

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The report on German troops in Finland was followed by two reports

from Sorge in Tokyo on June 17. The first said the Japanese had not yet had

a response from the Americans to the Japanese offer to negotiate or a

clarification of the American proposal to mediate in the Chinese conflict.

Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka asked Ambassador Eugen Ott to relay

to Ribbentrop his concern over rumors of an impending German-Soviet

war. He saw a German occupation of England, rather than war with the

USSR, as the only way to keep America out of European affairs. The sec-

ond Sorge report predicted that a war between Germany and the USSR

was being delayed until the end of June. He noted that the German em-

bassy had sent a report to Berlin stating that in the event of a German-

Soviet war, it would require six weeks for the Japanese to begin an offen-

sive against the Soviet Far East; the embassy believed, however, that it

would take them longer.21

On June 20 a report from Kosta, a source of the Sofia RU residency, re-

ported a conversation with the senior German representative, who stated

that hostilities were expected on the June 21 or 22. Another report arrived

from Sorge in RU Tokyo on June 20 stating that the German ambassador

believed war between with the USSR was inevitable. This cable was han-

dled by Mikhail F. Panfilov, deputy chief of the Information Department,

not by Golikov.22

In a 1969 article entitled ‘‘The Lessons of War,’ Golikov insisted that the

most important of all reports was ‘‘Report No. 5 of June 15, 1941, which

gave precise figures for the German troops facing each of our border

regions—Baltic, Western, and Kiev—from 400 kilometers deep into Ger-

man territory. We also knew the strength of the German troops in Romania

and Finland.’’ Golikov continued: ‘‘From the RU intelligence reports we

knew the date of the invasion, and every time Hitler put it off (mainly

because his troops were not ready), we reported this to our leaders. We

found out and reported all the strategic blueprints for the attack against the

USSR drafted by the German general staff, the main one being the noto-

rious Barbarossa plan.’’ As there is no archival reference to ‘‘Report No. 5,’’

it seems probable that it is a creature of Golikov’s imagination. Likewise his

claim for its handling, given his usual treatment of RU reporting.23

While Stalin still placed his trust in Hitler, many Soviet senior officials

were seriously concerned over the growing evidence of German intentions

to invade the Soviet Union. The border troops, for example, must have

been persuaded of the danger by their own excellent reporting because on

June 20, the chief of the Belorussian border troops district issued an order

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211

aimed at strengthening border defenses. All training exercises were to be

canceled until June 30; personnel involved in such exercises were to return

to their units, and all leaves were canceled. Border troop posts at the most

vulnerable points in the line were to be reinforced and strengthened.24

Timoshenko, who in May 1940 had replaced Voroshilov as defense

commissar, had instituted a series of reforms, including the creation of

nine new mechanized corps in July 1940 and the authorization of twenty

more in February 1941, but it became apparent that these new units were

‘‘understrength in manpower, equipment, and logistical support,’’ their

personnel ‘‘largely untrained.’’ These deficiencies existed throughout the

Red Army, particularly in the western border military districts, and were

exacerbated by Stalin’s refusal to accept the intelligence reports of German

troop deployment along the Soviet frontier. Neither Timoshenko’s reform

programs nor preparations to meet the German threat could succeed given

the paralysis imposed on the military leadership by Stalin’s indecision.25

With the situation on the border growing more alarming, in April and

May 1941 the general staff had quietly moved individual units from the

Far East and other military districts to the west. Although Stalin had re-

jected as provocative Timoshenko and Zhukov’s idea of a preventive attack

(there is no record that Stalin actually received a copy of the plan, but

Timoshenko and Zhukov discussed the concept with him), by mid-May he

allowed them to move twenty-eight divisions, nine corps headquarters,

and four army headquarters to the border districts. These armies were to

take up their positions in the Kiev and Western Special Military Districts

by June 1–10. Three additional armies were to be deployed to the west, but

only one had reached the outskirts of Moscow by June 22. Although close

to 800,000 conscripts were called up, they were inadequately supplied. The

extraordinary delay in moving these covering forces into place and provid-

ing them with the weapons, equipment, and transport they needed would

be a crucial factor in the days ahead.26

Commanders of troops already deployed along the frontier were aware

of the growing danger and tried to obtain from Timoshenko and Zhukov

permission to take measures locally to increase combat readiness. Their

requests were turned down. Whenever an individual commander risked

taking actions he felt would improve his defenses, there was a good chance

the NKGB special counterintelligence departments assigned to every troop

unit or the local border troops would notice and report him to Moscow.

One June 11, for example, Mikhail P. Kirponos, commanding the Kiev

Special Military District, received a telegram from Zhukov demanding an

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explanation for a report that the chiefs of the fortified area units had re-

ceived orders to occupy forward defensive positions. In a report to the

defense commissar, Kirponos was to explain ‘‘on what basis the units of the

fortified areas of his district received an order to occupy these forward po-

sitions.’’ Such actions, Zhukov informed him, ‘‘can provoke the Germans to

armed conflict and are fraught with all kinds of consequences. . . . Immedi-

ately cancel this order and report who gave this unauthorized order.’’ Kir-

ponos received a second message from Zhukov the same day directing him

to confirm the execution of Zhukov’s order and to report back by June 16.27

In another instance, Zhukov learned that Fedor I. Kuznetsov, the com-

manding general of the Baltic Special Military District, had raised the level