Simon Montefiore - Stalin

Schulenburg read out the telegram that had arrived at 3 a.m. Berlin time: the concentrations of Soviet forces had forced the Reich to take military “counter measures.” He finished. Molotov’s face twitched with disbelief and anger. Finally, he stammered: “Is this supposed to be a declaration of war?” Schulenburg could not speak either: he shrugged sadly.

Molotov’s anger overcame his shock: “The message I have just been given couldn’t mean anything but a declaration of war since German troops have already crossed the border and Soviet cities like Odessa, Kiev and Minsk have been bombed by German aircraft for an hour and a half.” Molotov was shouting now. This was “a breach of confidence unprecedented in history.” Now Germany had unleashed a terrible war. “Surely we haven’t deserved that.” There was nothing more to say: Count von der Schulenburg, who would be executed by Hitler for his part in the July 1944 plot, shook hands and departed, passing limousines rolling into the Kremlin bearing generals. Molotov rushed to Stalin’s office where he announced: “Germany’s declared war on us.”

Stalin subsided into his chair, “lost in thought.” The silence was “long and pregnant.” Stalin “looked tired, worn out,” recalled Chadaev. “His pock-marked face was drawn and haggard.” This, recalled Zhukov, “was the only time I saw Stalin depressed.” Then he roused himself with a wildly optimistic slogan: “The enemy will be beaten all along the line”—and he turned to the generals: “What do you recommend?”

Zhukov suggested that the frontier districts must “hold up” the Germans—

“Annihilate,” interrupted Timoshenko, “not ‘hold up.’”

“Issue a directive,” said Stalin, still under the spell of his grand delusion. “Do not cross the border.” Timoshenko, not Stalin, signed the series of directives that were issued throughout the morning. Chadaev noticed the mood improve: “on that first day of war, everyone was… quite optimistic.”

Yet despite everything, Stalin persisted in clinging on to shards of his shattered illusion: he said he hoped to settle things diplomatically. No one dared contradict this absurdity except Molotov, his comrade since 1912 who was one of the last who could openly argue with him.

“No!” replied Molotov emphatically. It was war and “nothing could be done about it.” The scale of the invasion and Molotov’s stark insistence managed to shake the reality into Stalin.

When Dmitrov, the Comintern leader, arrived, the outer office was a hive of activity, with Poskrebyshev, Mekhlis (in uniform again), Marshal Timoshenko, and Admiral Kuznetsov at work—and Beria “giving orders on the phone.” Inside, he noticed Stalin’s “striking calmness, resoluteness, confidence…” “They fell on us, without making any claims, making a vile attack like bandits,” Stalin told Dmitrov. The “bandits” had the advantage of total surprise. The Soviet front line had been overwhelmed. Stalin’s armies were strongest in the south. However, while the Germans thrust towards Leningrad and the Ukraine, Hitler’s strongest army group was meant to take Moscow. Army Group Centre’s two pincers shattered the Soviet Western Front, under Colonel-General Pavlov whose counter-attack was tossed aside as the Panzers charged towards Minsk and the road to Moscow.

Stalin reacted with a steady stream of orders that admittedly bore little relation to the disaster at the front: nonetheless, Beria, Malenkov, Mikoyan, Kaganovich and Voroshilov came, went and returned to the Little Corner throughout the morning so that by midday, all of them had been there at least twice, Beria thrice. Mekhlis was one of the first to arrive, Kulik came later. The Vozhd ordered Kaganovich to prepare the trains to remove factories and 20 million people from the front—nothing was to fall into German hands. Mikoyan was to supply the armies.

Stalin retained minute control over everything, from the size and shape of bayonets to the Pravda headlines and who wrote the articles, losing neither his jealousy of others’ glory nor his flawless instinct for self-preservation. When General Koniev received several mentions in the newspapers during the first week, Stalin found the time to telephone the editor and snap: “You’ve printed enough on Koniev.” When the same editor asked if he could publish one writer whom Stalin had savagely denounced before the war, he replied: “You may print. Comrade Adveenko has atoned.” Meanwhile he himself deliberately disappeared from the public eye. His appearances on the front page of Pravda fell dramatically. Amazingly, the USSR possessed no Supreme Command: at nine that morning, Stalin created an early version, the Stavka . Naturally, the decree named Stalin as Commander-in-Chief but he crossed it out and put Timoshenko’s name instead.

Everyone agreed that the government had to announce the war. Mikoyan and the others proposed Stalin should do it but he refused: “Let Molotov speak.” After all, Molotov had signed the treaty with Ribbentrop. The entourage disagreed—surely the people would not understand why they were not hearing from the Premier. Stalin insisted that he would speak another time. “He didn’t want to be first to speak,” said Molotov. “He needed a clear picture… He couldn’t respond like an automaton to everything… He was a human being after all.”

Molotov, who still regarded himself as a political journalist, immediately set to work on the announcement but Stalin dominated the drafting for he possessed the gift of distilling complex ideas into the simple and stirring phrases that henceforth characterized his war speeches. At midday, Molotov drove to the Central Telegraph Office on Gorky Street, just up from the Kremlin. He mastered his stammer and delivered the famous speech in his flat but quavering voice: “Our cause is just. The enemy will be crushed. Victory will be ours.”

When Molotov returned, Stalin walked up to his office to congratulate him: “Well, you sounded a bit flustered but the speech went well.” Molotov needed praise: he was much vainer than he looked. Just then the vertushka rang: it was Timoshenko reporting on the chaos of the frontier where the commanders, especially Pavlov on the vital Western Front that covered Minsk and the road to Moscow, had lost contact with their troops. Stalin fulminated about how “unexpected attack is very important in war. It gives the initiative to the attackers… You must strictly prevent… any panic. Call the commanders, clear the situation and report… How long will you need? Two hours, well not more… How is the situation with Pavlov?” But Pavlov, bearing the brunt of the German attack, “has no connection with the staff of his armies…”

Attended by Molotov, Malenkov and Beria, the threesome who were to spend most of the war in the Little Corner, Stalin gradually learned of the startling German successes and the Soviet collapse. During that first week, Beria, master of the Special Department, the Osobyi Otdel , the secret police in every military unit responsible for hunting down traitors, met Stalin fifteen times while Mekhlis, political boss of the army, virtually resided in the Little Corner: terror was Stalin’s solution to defeat. But these two, along with Civil War cronies like Voroshilov and Kulik, were little comfort when Timoshenko reported that almost a thousand planes had been eliminated on the ground by the end of the day.

“Surely the German air force didn’t manage to reach every single airfield?” Stalin asked pathetically.

“Unfortunately it did.” But it was the disaster of Pavlov’s Western Front that reduced Stalin to wild, if impotent, fury: “This is a monstrous crime. Those responsible must lose their heads.”