Roger Moorhouse - The Devils' Alliance - Hitler's Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941

Aside from the criticism of London’s alleged rumor-mongering, this was a rather desperate attempt to persuade Berlin to concur publicly with the Soviet statement—to induce some sort of commitment in kind from Hitler, a denial of belligerent intent, perhaps, or even an opening of the long-awaited negotiations. It was, as Molotov would later admit, very much “a last resort.” And it was met only with an echoing silence from the German side.

On the home front, however, Germany was not entirely mute. According to diarist Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, the rumor that Stalin himself was coming to Berlin for talks ran “like wildfire” through the German capital on the following day, June 15. She heard it first from her milkman, who added the detail that two hundred women had been set to work sewing Soviet flags. A neighbor then repeated the story, stating that Stalin was arriving in the next few days “by special armoured train.” After Molotov’s appearance in the capital the previous autumn, it must have seemed plausible, but Andreas-Friedrich was unimpressed, particularly when she claimed to have found the origin of the fable: Ribbentrop’s office.

Back in Moscow, the evidence for an imminent attack was still piling up. On June 16, Deputy Commissar for State Security Vsevolod Merkulov forwarded new information to Stalin—from the NKVD’s agent “Starshina” (Harro Schulze-Boysen) within the German Air Ministry—stating that the final order for the attack on the Soviet Union had been given. Exasperated, Stalin’s reply was definitive. “Tell the ‘source’ in the Staff of the German Air Force to fuck his mother,” he scrawled back to Merkulov. “This is no source, but a disinformer.”

Two days after that, it was Zhukov’s turn to feel Stalin’s wrath. On June 18, he and Timoshenko attended a three-hour meeting with Stalin in the Kremlin during which they explained the current situation on the western frontier and asked Stalin to allow them to place the Red Army in “full military readiness.” Stalin, however, grew increasingly irritated as Zhukov spoke, tapping his pipe on the table in frustration. Finally, as Timoshenko recalled, he exploded with rage, shouting at Zhukov, “And what, have you come to scare us with war, or do you want a war, as you are not sufficiently decorated or your rank is not high enough?” When Zhukov then backed down, Timoshenko persisted, but Stalin would have none of it. “It’s all Timoshenko’s work,” he told the assembled guests of the Politburo. “He’s preparing everyone for war. He ought to have been shot.” Stalin went on, “You have to realize that Germany on her own will never fight Russia. You must understand this.” And, as he left the room, he fired a last Parthian shot: “If you’re going to provoke the Germans on the frontier by moving troops there without our permission, then heads will roll, mark my words.” With that, he slammed the door behind him.

By the eve of the expected attack, June 21, there was no ignoring the mounting evidence. The staff of Moscow’s German embassy had already been evacuated along with their families and their belongings; paperwork had reportedly been burned in braziers in the courtyard. Further messages had been received from London, from America, and from Richard Sorge in Tokyo. Closer to home, Polish women reportedly shouted across the frontier on June 15 that the Soviets should expect war within a week, while an upsurge in spies, saboteurs, and defectors crossing the frontier appeared to confirm that prediction. One Soviet border commander noted what he called the “growing insolence of the Hitlerites,” as German sentries now began to turn their backs on their Red Army counterparts when they had previously stood to attention and saluted. In Romania, meanwhile, wild rumors were circulating not only that a joint German-Romanian attack was imminent but also that lists of functionaries had been drawn up to be appointed in Bessarabia and that the National Theater was rehearsing plays to be staged in the regional capital, Chișinău, after its liberation from Soviet rule. It was said that the Romanian leader, General Ion Antonescu, wanted to enter the city on June 27, a year to the day since the province had been lost.

It has been claimed that, in the ten days before June 22, Soviet intelligence was informed of the invasion from forty-seven different sources. One of the last of those was Alfred Liskow, a Wehrmacht soldier and communist sympathizer, who swam the river Bug on the night of June 21 to warn the Red Army that an attack along the entire front had been scheduled for dawn the following morning. After midnight, Zhukov phoned through to the Kremlin to advise Stalin of the new claims. The dictator was unimpressed, however, and ordered Liskow shot for his disinformation.

Only three hours later, German ambassador Schulenburg telephoned Molotov’s office in the Kremlin to arrange a meeting. He had already had a torrid night. Earlier in the evening, Molotov had summoned him to explain German violations of Soviet air space. The interview became a grilling. Why had the German embassy staff left Russia? Why had the German government not responded to the TASS communiqué? Unable to glean any answers, Molotov had complained that “there was no reason for the German government to be dissatisfied with Russia.” Now, a few hours after that meeting, Schulenburg was hurrying to see Molotov once again. This time he was authorized to provide an official response.

The ambassador solemnly read the telegram that had recently arrived from Berlin, carefully skipping the litany of accusations that prefaced its main message. It was “with the deepest regret,” he told Molotov, that he announced that the German government felt itself obliged to take “military measures” in response to the buildup of Soviet troops on the frontier. He took care to mention his own “utmost efforts” to preserve “peace and friendship” but conceded that he believed that “it meant the beginning of war.”

Molotov was aghast. Stammering with disbelief, he tried to explain the troop concentrations away, before complaining that Berlin had not presented any demands to the Soviet government. “Why,” he asked, “did Germany conclude a pact of non-aggression, if she so easily breached it?” The attack, he exclaimed, was “a breach of confidence unprecedented in history. Surely we haven’t deserved that.” Schulenburg, who had been one of the primary architects of the German-Soviet relationship, could only shrug in response.

JUST BEFORE DAWN ON SUNDAY JUNE 22, 1941, THE CODE WORD “Dortmund” was transmitted to German units stationed on the border with the Soviet Union. With that, on the stroke of 3:15 a.m., the assault began. All along the 1,300-kilometer frontier, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, an intense artillery bombardment prefaced the massed advance of 3 million men, accompanied by thousands of tanks and aircraft, across the line once dubbed the “Boundary of Peace.” In some places, at strategically vital river crossings or fortified guard posts, guile preceded the attack. At Koden, near Brest, for instance, Soviet sentries on a bridge over the river Bug were called out by their German counterparts to discuss “important business” and then machine-gunned. Elsewhere, elite teams of “Brandenburger” commandos, deep behind the Soviet border, cut telephone lines or disabled radio masts to hamper the Red Army’s response. Along most of the front, no ruse or deception was necessary, however, and the guns simply opened fire, heralding the largest invasion in the history of warfare. The Nazi-Soviet Pact had run its course.

Perfectly timed to coincide with Ambassador Schulenburg’s resigned shrug in Moscow, Soviet ambassador Vladimir Dekanozov was summoned to the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin. There, he and his interpreter, Valentin Berezhkov, were met by Ribbentrop, looking “puffed and purplish, his eyes clouded, the eyelids enflamed.” “Could he be drunk?” Berezhkov wondered. When Ribbentrop began, he seemed to confirm Berezhkov’s speculation. Raising his voice, he gave a rambling account of alleged Soviet violations of German territory and airspace and accused Moscow of harboring the intention to “stab the German people in the back.” Accordingly, he concluded, “German troops had crossed the border into the Soviet Union.”