Stalin crossed the line separating reasonable caution from dangerous credulity
Throughout the 75 years that have passed since the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, we have been looking for an answer to a seemingly simple question: how did it happen that the Soviet leadership, having irrefutable evidence of the preparation of aggression against the USSR, did not fully believe in its possibility. Why Stalin, even having received on the night of June 22 from the headquarters of the Kiev Special Military District, the news of the advancement of German units to the starting areas for the offensive, told the People's Commissar of Defense Timoshenko and Chief of the General Staff Zhukov: there is no need to rush to conclusions, maybe it will still be settled peacefully?
One of the options for the answer is that the Soviet leader became a victim of large-scale disinformation carried out by the German special services. Stalin's personal miscalculation, in turn, automatically extended to all senior officials who were responsible for the state of defense and security of the country, regardless of whether they agreed with the leader's point of view or not.
Hitler's spells
The Hitlerite command understood that surprise and the maximum force of an attack on the Red Army could be ensured only when attacking from a position of direct contact. For this, it was required to move directly to the border dozens of divisions that made up the strike grouping of the invasion army. At the German headquarters, they realized that with any measures of secrecy, this could not be done in secret. And then an incredibly audacious decision was made - not to hide the transfer of troops.
However, it was not enough to concentrate them at the border. Tactical surprise in the first strike was achieved only on condition that the date of the attack was kept secret until the last moment. But this is not all: the intention of the German military was also to simultaneously prevent the timely operational deployment of the Red Army and bring its units to full combat readiness. Even a surprise invasion would not have been so successful if it had been met by the troops of the Soviet border military districts already prepared to repel the attack.
On May 22, 1941, at the final stage of the operational deployment of the Wehrmacht, the transfer of 47 divisions, including 28 tank and motorized divisions, began to the border with the USSR. Public opinion, and through it, the intelligence agencies of all interested countries (not only the USSR) were planted with such an abundance of the most incredible explanations of what was happening, from which, in the literal sense of the word, the head was spinning.
Generally speaking, all versions of why such a mass of troops are concentrated near the Soviet border boiled down to two:
to prepare for the invasion of the British Isles, so that here, at a distance, to protect them from attacks by British aviation;
for the forceful provision of a favorable course of negotiations with the Soviet Union, which, at Berlin's hints, were about to begin.
As expected, a special disinformation operation against the USSR began long before the first German military echelons moved east on May 22. In terms of scale, she knew no equal. For its implementation, a directive was specially issued by the OKW - the Supreme High Command of the German Armed Forces. Hitler, Minister of Propaganda Ribbentrop, State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Weizsäcker, Reich Minister Meissner - the head of the presidential office, the highest ranks of the OKW took part in it.
It should be said about a personal letter, which, according to some information, the Fuhrer sent on May 14 to the leader of the Soviet people. By that time, the sender explained the presence of about 80 German divisions near the borders of the USSR by the need to keep the troops away from British eyes. Hitler promised to begin a massive withdrawal of troops from the Soviet borders to the west from June 15–20, and before that he begged Stalin not to succumb to provocative rumors about the possibility of a military conflict between the countries.
This was one of the peaks of the disinformation operation. And before that, through various channels, including through the press of neutral states, double agents used blindly by politicians and journalists friendly to the USSR, news was thrown to the Kremlin through the official diplomatic line, which were supposed to strengthen the hope of the preservation of peace in the USSR government. Or, as a last resort, the illusion that even if relations between Berlin and Moscow acquire a conflict character, Germany will certainly try to resolve the issue through negotiations first. This should have calmed (and, alas, indeed somewhat calmed down) the Kremlin leadership, instilling in them the confidence that some kind of time was guaranteed.
Official diplomatic contacts were also actively used as a channel of disinformation. The aforementioned imperial minister Otto Meissner, who was considered a close person to Hitler, met almost weekly with the Soviet ambassador to Berlin, Vladimir Dekanozov, and assured him that the Fuhrer was about to finish developing proposals for negotiations and hand them over to the Soviet government. False information of this kind was transmitted directly to the embassy by the Lyceumist - an agent-twin of Burlings, a Latvian journalist who worked in Berlin.
For complete credibility, the Kremlin was planted with information about possible German demands. They weren’t trifling that, even if in a paradoxical way, they should not have frightened Stalin, but should have assured him of the seriousness of the intentions of the German side. These requirements included either a long-term lease of grain spaces in Ukraine, or participation in the operation of the Baku oil fields. They did not confine themselves to claims of an economic nature, creating the impression that Hitler was waiting for concessions of a military-political nature - consent to the passage of the Wehrmacht through the southern regions of the USSR to Iran and Iraq for action against the British Empire. At the same time, the German disinformers received an additional argument when explaining why the Wehrmacht formations were being pulled together to the Soviet borders.
The German special services played out a multi-move: simultaneously with misleading the main enemy - the USSR, the rumors spread increased mistrust between Moscow and London and minimized the possibility of any anti-German political combination behind Berlin's back.
At the most crucial moment, heavy artillery went into action. In agreement with Hitler, Goebbels published in the evening issue of the Velkischer Beobachter newspaper on June 12 an article "Crete as an example", in which he made a transparent allusion to the Wehrmacht landing in the British Isles. To create the impression that the Reich propaganda minister had made a gross mistake and issued a secret plan, the issue of the newspaper "on Hitler's personal order" was confiscated, and rumors spread throughout Berlin about the inevitable resignation of the minister, who had fallen out of favor. The retail newspaper was really not allowed through (so as not to misinform its own military and the population), but foreign embassies received a number.
“My article about Crete,” Goebbels wrote in his diary the next day, “is a real sensation at home and abroad … Our production was a great success … From the wiretapped telephone conversations of foreign journalists working in Berlin, one can conclude that they all fell for the bait … In London, the topic of invasion is again in the spotlight … OKW is very pleased with my article. It is a great distraction action."
And immediately after that, a new tactic was chosen - to remain completely silent. In the words of Goebbels, Moscow tried to lure Berlin out of the hole by publishing a TASS report on June 14, which refuted rumors circulating in the West about a possible German attack on the USSR. The Kremlin seemed to be inviting the Imperial Chancellery to confirm the message. But, Goebbels wrote on June 16, “we do not argue in the press, we lock ourselves in complete silence, and on day X we just strike. I strongly advise the Fuehrer … to continue spreading rumors continuously: peace with Moscow, Stalin arrives in Berlin, the invasion of England is imminent in the very near future … I once again impose a ban on the discussion of the topic of Russia by our media in the country and abroad. Until day X is taboo."
Alas, the Soviet leadership took the Germans' explanations at face value. Striving at all costs to avoid war and not to give the slightest pretext for an attack, Stalin until the last day forbade bringing the troops of the border districts on alert. As if the Hitlerite leadership still needed a pretext …
The illusion of confidence
On the last day before the war, Goebbels wrote in his diary: “The question about Russia is becoming more acute every hour. Molotov asked for a visit to Berlin, but received a decisive refusal. A naive assumption. This should have been done six months ago … Now Moscow must have noticed that it threatens Bolshevism …”But the magic of confidence that a clash with Germany could be avoided was so dominant in Stalin that, even after receiving confirmation from Molotov that Germany had declared war, the leader, in a directive issued on June 22 at 7.15 a.m. to the Red Army to repel the invading enemy, forbade our troops, with the exception of aviation, to cross the German border line.
It is fundamentally wrong to make some kind of rabbit out of Moscow, numb under the gaze of a boa constrictor. The Soviet leadership made an attempt (active, but, unfortunately, on the whole failed) to oppose the operations of the German special services with a massive transfer of their own disinformation to the "other" side in order to delay the moment of the Wehrmacht attack or even eliminate the threat.
Feeling that the danger was increasing every day, and the country was not ready to repulse it, the Soviet leader, on the one hand, tried to pacify the Fuhrer: he forbade to stop German aircraft flights over Soviet territory, strictly monitored the supply of grain, coal to Germany, oil products and other strategic materials were carried out strictly according to the schedule, severed diplomatic relations with all countries that were subjected to German occupation, and on the other, with some of his actions and statements, he put pressure on Hitler, restraining his aggressive intentions.
Since one of the best paths to this is a demonstration of force, from the beginning of 1941 four armies began to move from the depths of the country to the western border. 800 thousand storerooms were drafted into the Armed Forces. Stalin's speech at the Kremlin reception of graduates of military academies on May 5, 1941 was sustained in offensive tones.
Among the measures designed to disorient the Fuhrer, there were quite impressive disinformation measures carried out by the Soviet special services with the knowledge of the Kremlin. So, the German agents in Moscow were planted (and successfully, because reports of this kind were preserved in the funds of the German Foreign Ministry) information that the most probable and dangerous direction of a possible strike against the USSR in the Soviet leadership is considered to be the northwest - from East Prussia through the Baltic republics to Leningrad. This is where the main forces of the Red Army are drawn. But the southwestern and southern directions (Ukraine and Moldova), on the contrary, remain relatively weakly protected.
In fact, it was in the southwestern direction that the main forces of the Red Army were concentrated: as part of the troops of the Kiev Special Military District, the most powerful in the Red Army, at the beginning of the war there were 58 divisions and there were 957 thousand people. For Hitler, it was as if they were preparing a wolf's pit here, or, if we resort to literary associations, they imitated a sheepfold, but set up a kennel.
Even misinformation about the alleged oppositional moods in the Soviet leadership was thrown on the “other” side. So, the People's Commissar of Defense Tymoshenko allegedly insisted on the all-round strengthening of the north-western direction, so that, as reported by German agents, weaken the troops of his native Ukraine and thereby guarantee it to surrender it to the Germans. Even Stalin became a figurant of disinformation. The archives of the "Ribbentrop Bureau" preserved reports about the presence in the leadership of the CPSU (b) of a certain broad "movement of labor opposition" that opposed "Stalin's exorbitant concessions to Germany."
Diplomats connected to disinformation activities (which they might not know about) worked in this direction. Until June 21, 1941, when visiting the German Foreign Ministry, the Soviet ambassador in Berlin Dekanozov conducted only protocol conversations, discussing current private issues about marking individual sections of the common border, building a bomb shelter on the territory of the embassy in Berlin, etc.
A kind of peak of disinformation, an attempt by Moscow, which was already mentioned above, to "lure Berlin out of the hole" was the publication on June 14, 1941 of a TASS report. Stalin tried at the same time to mislead Hitler about his own awareness of the Wehrmacht troops being drawn to the border, and to force him to speak out on this score. And with special luck, I wanted to hope that Hitler would regard the TASS report as an invitation to negotiations and would agree to them. This delayed the war for at least several more months.
However, in Berlin, they began the final steps to directly prepare for the invasion, so the answer, as already mentioned above, was complete silence. Maintaining the initiative and consistently moving towards the invasion, the Nazi leadership could easily ignore any messages from Moscow.
But the preparation for war of the Soviet Union, the same TASS statement, not linked and not coordinated with other actions of the Kremlin, caused serious harm, disorienting the people and the army. “For us, the employees of the General Staff, as, naturally, for other Soviet people, the TASS message at first caused some surprise,” wrote Marshal Vasilevsky. The fact that it was in fact a diplomatic move, calculated on the reaction of Berlin, knew only a narrow circle of the highest military. According to the recollections of the same Vasilevsky, the heads of the structural divisions of the General Staff were informed about this by the First Deputy Chief of the General Staff, General Vatutin. But even the commanders of the troops of the border districts were not warned, let alone the commanders of the lower echelon. Instead of increasing vigilance and mobilizing all forces, the statement promoted complacency and carelessness.
For fear of giving the Germans even the slightest pretext for aggression, Stalin forbade any action to bring the troops to the required degree of combat readiness. All attempts by the district commanders to advance at least some additional forces to the border were harshly suppressed. The Soviet leader did not notice how he crossed the line separating reasonable caution from dangerous credulity.
Retroactive counterplay
Response actions, reflection are always secondary. Forced to answer, in most cases, plays by the rules of the attacking side. To seize the initiative, it is necessary to take such actions that would radically change the situation, put the enemy in a dead end.
Was it not these considerations that drove the leaders of the Soviet General Staff (Chief of the General Staff Zhukov, his first deputy Vatutin and deputy chief of the Operations Directorate Vasilevsky) in the development of the document reported to Stalin in mid-May 1941? The document, known as "Zhukov's Note", contained a proposal to "preempt the enemy in deployment and attack the German army at the moment when it is in the deployment stage and does not have time to organize the front and interaction of the combat arms." It was envisaged with the forces of 152 divisions to crush 100 enemy divisions in the decisive direction Krakow - Katowice, and then continue the offensive, defeat the German troops in the center and on the northern wing of their front, seizing the territory of former Poland and East Prussia.
The leader of the USSR rejected this option, saying that the top military thereby wanted to confront him with Hitler, who was waiting for that in order to take advantage of the pretext to attack. However, regardless of the motives for the negative decision, Stalin was most likely right: a large-scale attack on the practically deployed troops of the Wehrmacht could at best become a gesture of despair: without detailed elaboration of operational documents and the creation of the necessary groupings of troops, he risked turning into an adventure.
There was, however, another option for action, quite real and also allowed to break out of the coordinate system set by the Hitlerite leadership. Later, analyzing the situation on the eve of the war, Marshals Zhukov and Vasilevsky came to the conclusion that in mid-June 1941 the limit had come when it was impossible to postpone the adoption of urgent measures further. It was necessary, regardless of the reaction of the German side, to bring the troops of the Red Army into full combat readiness, take defensive positions and prepare to repel the aggressor without crossing the state border. In this case, it would be possible, if not to detain the enemy at the border, then at least to deprive him of the advantages associated with the surprise of the attack.
In strategic terms, such actions allowed the Soviet side to immediately seize the initiative. They would have made it very clear to Hitler that his aggressive designs had been exposed, his peace-loving assurances were not believed, and the Red Army was ready to repel the invasion. Of course, all the bridges were burned at the same time, the complex political and diplomatic game, by playing which Stalin hoped to simultaneously appease the Fuhrer and frighten him, stopped.
The leader did not take these measures either, probably continuing to be in the illusion that he was playing a game in a Soviet-German duet. A very high price was paid for the need to act in the enemy's coordinate system until the very moment of the invasion. The troops of the Red Army met the beginning of the war in a peacetime position. Their great potential for repelling a massive enemy attack turned out to be unused. And this is a lesson for us for all time.
Needless to say, how far have the technologies of deceiving a potential enemy, information and psychological processing of the ruling elites and the broad masses advanced over the past 75 years? The stratagems that were used in politics and the art of war as early as in ancient China have been transformed today into a theory and an effective system of practical actions of troops in a controlled impact on the enemy using a whole range of means and methods of disinformation. You don't have to go far for examples: the US and NATO aggression against Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, an attempt to discredit Russia's efforts to combat international terrorism in Syria …
But for all the sophistication of the strategies and technologies of disinformation, one can say for sure: the least vulnerable is a society in which there is a unity of power and people, united by a great goal.
