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What Stalin Knew
The Enigma of Barbarossa
By David E. Murphy Yale University Press
Copyright © 2005 David E. Murphy
All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-300-11981-7
Chapter One
Stalin versus Hitler Background
The year 1945 saw the end of the most destructive war in the history of mankind. Among the nations that suffered the greatest human and physical losses were Germany and Soviet Russia. It was a decision made final in August 1939 by the German and Soviet leaders that rendered this catastrophic war inevitable. Why was that decision made? How did the German leader, Adolf Hitler, and his Soviet counterpart, Josef Stalin, view the world at that time?
Both Germany and Soviet Russia were losers in World War I. After a relatively brief but important period of diplomatic, military, and economic cooperation during the 1920s, the two nations followed different paths of development in the 1930s. Stalin achieved total control of the ruling Communist Party and embarked on a wholesale transformation of the rural economy, eliminating a rising group of independent peasants and forcing others onto collective farms. This policy eventually enabled the state to control agricultural output, but it also produced massive famine in which millions died. Concurrently, Stalin began a gigantic industrialization program that greatlyexpanded existing industries (most of which had been expropriated following the 1917 revolution) and created vast new industrial centers. The pace and intensity of this effort were unprecedented but made necessary, in Stalin's view, by the "capitalist encirclement" of Soviet Russia.
Stalin saw criticism of any aspect of his agricultural and industrial policies as an attack on his leadership of the party, and he responded by instituting widespread purges of those he termed "the opposition." The arrest, imprisonment, or execution of many thousands of the nation's most talented people would in time be felt throughout the party, government, and economy, but most severely in the armed forces. Apart from the problems caused by the loss of experienced cadres, the purges resulted in an atmosphere of fear and suspicion that paralyzed many of the survivors, making them incapable or unwilling to work effectively or creatively.
Abroad, Stalin saw his socialist regime surrounded by capitalist states that had been hostile to Soviet Russia since the Revolution of 1917. To the west were Great Britain, France, and their client states such as Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Poland, all of which were in some degree anti-Soviet. Japanese aggression, notably in Manchuria and North China, figured as the main threat in the Far East. When Hitler and his National Socialist Party came to power via the ballot box in Germany, Stalin understood his election as a natural evolution from democratic capitalism to fascism that would hasten the development of a revolutionary situation. He therefore forbade the German Communists, a formidable, well-organized party, to make common cause with the German Socialist Party, then the largest party of the left, against the Nazis and their storm troopers. The result of this decision was the destruction of both parties and the consolidation of Hitler's power as Führer.
While Stalin was preoccupied with his purges, Hitler set about eliminating the restraints on Germany imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. In October 1933 Germany seceded from the League of Nations. In January 1935, following a plebiscite, it reincorporated the Saar, a German province that had been placed under a League of Nations mandate after World War I. On March 16, 1935, in defiance of the treaty, Hitler reintroduced compulsory military service and created an air force. A year later he remilitarized the Rhineland. The former Allies protested but took no other action.
In June 1935 Germany signed a naval agreement with Great Britain that greatly relaxed the Versailles Treaty's limitations on German naval tonnage and permitted Germany to build a submarine fleet, forbidden under Versailles. The agreement came as a shock to many, including Winston S. Churchill, as with it the British government appeared to lend support to Hitler's violations of the treaty. Admittedly, strict enforcement of its provisions had never been popular in the United Kingdom, where sympathy for Germany as the underdog was not inconsiderable. Furthermore, if enforcement risked war, it is unlikely that the British public would have stood for it. Memories of the trench slaughter of the 1914-18 war were fresh in the minds of most families, and the British economy was still suffering from the effects of the Great Depression. The naval treaty was seen by some British politicians as an effort, therefore, to demonstrate to Hitler that Great Britain was willing to work with him to ensure stability in Europe. In this, of course, they completely misjudged their man. On June 23, 1939, Hitler renounced both the 1936 naval agreement and a subsequent version.
Despite the apparent similarities in their government structures, Fascist Italy and Germany were not that close until October 1935, when the Italian army invaded Ethiopia. The League of Nations labeled Italy an aggressor and imposed economic sanctions, but to no avail. Ethiopian resistance was overcome in May 1936 and the King of Italy was crowned Emperor of Ethiopia. The prestige of the League of Nations suffered, as did that of France and England. Meanwhile, Germany was the only European power that refrained from acting against Italy. The two "have not" powers drew closer after this experience. Military cooperation between the two grew as they joined in supporting General Francisco Franco's revolt against the Spanish Republic, which began in July 1936.
This revolt had its origins in the long-standing tension between urban workers and landless peasants on the one hand and extremely conservative landowners and industrialists on the other. The latter groups and the Catholic hierarchy upheld the monarchy, while the urban and rural poor supported those working to establish a republic. Victory in the municipal elections of April 1931 was interpreted as a vote for a republic, and King Alfonso went into exile. The new republic could not satisfy the demands of the poor for social justice and at the same time persuade the upper middle class that their rights would be respected. Frustrated, the poor engaged in industrial strikes, seized land, and attacked Church property, prompting a brutal army crackdown and, in turn, the creation of a Popular Front formed of liberal republicans and socialists. In the elections of February 1936, the Popular Front gained control of the parliament. During the months that followed, Spanish society split into two factions. The left grew increasingly radical and opposition to the republic from the right was centered in the Falange Party, a Spanish version of fascism. By July, large elements of the army, particularly the officer corps, felt they had to save Spain from communism.
It was this feeling that invited them to launch a rebellion under General As part of its policy to rectify the terms of the 1919 Versailles Treaty, Hitler's Germany remilitarized the Rhineland in 1936 and annexed Austria in March 1938. In September 1938 it absorbed the Sudeten area of Czechoslovakia, and in March 1939 the Bohemian and Moravian areas of that country became a German protectorate. Slovakia became independent although in reality it was a German client state. Also in March 1939 the Memel area of Lithuania was made part of East Prussia. Francisco Franco, who turned to Germany and Italy for help. They both sent units of their regular forces lightly camouflaged as "volunteers." The republic also turned to England, France, and the United States for assistance but these countries demurred, choosing instead a policy of nonintervention, although some of their citizens participated as individuals. Soviet Russia sent weapons and its own volunteers to support the republican cause but tried to mask the extent of its aid (see chapter 2 for details on the activities of Soviet volunteers in Spain). It also coordinated the operations of international brigades recruited from foreign communist parties. When the Spanish civil war ended in early 1939 with a Franco victory, it was seen by many as a victory "over communism," adding to the prestige of the Tripartite Anti-Comintern Pact, which Italy had joined in November 1937.
While the Spanish conflict ground on, Hitler had been taking other actions to expand German territory. In March 1938, when a Nazi, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, was named Austrian chancellor, the Austrian frontier was opened to the German army. There were no protests by France or Great Britain. On March 13 Hitler announced the return of Austria to the Reich. What happened in fact was the isolation of Czechoslovakia, Hitler's next victim.
In Czechoslovakia, Hitler's tactics were similar to those he used in Austria. The Sudeten German minority, occupying territory along Czechoslovakia's western border with Germany, was included in the state following the Versailles Treaty. This area was also the location of Czechoslovakia's new line of very modern fortifications, vital to that nation's defense against Germany. Throughout the summer of 1938, the Sudeten German National Socialists continued to make impossible demands on the Czechs, followed by Hitler's threats of military action. At this point Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain of Britain took over. On September 15 he visited Hitler in Germany at Obersalzberg, and again on September 20-24 at Godesberg, offering to intercede with the Czechs. Hitler would not budge, but he did say that "this will be the last territorial claim I shall have to make in Europe." On September 26 he issued a forty-eight-hour ultimatum. France and Great Britain began to mobilize. Mussolini now intervened to agree with Chamberlain's proposal for a four-power conference, which was held in Munich. Neither Soviet Russia nor the Czechs themselves were invited. Britain and France accepted Hitler's demands and on October 1 German troops entered the Sudeten area. Chamberlain returned to London claiming he had achieved "peace in our time." On March 15, 1939, as the Spanish Republic disintegrated, Hitler's army entered Prague. On March 16 Hitler proclaimed the "Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia." Slovakia declared its independence; in reality it was a German client state.
These events surely convinced Hitler that if he could be assured of Soviet neutrality in a Polish-German conflict, the odds were good that neither France nor Great Britain would intervene to help Poland. Stalin, on the other hand, must have certainly known, after his rebuff in the Czech crisis at the hands of the British and French, that he could expect little help from them were he to oppose a German invasion of Poland. Consequently, he would drive the best bargain he could with Hitler. He would look on his negotiations with the British and French during the summer merely as a negotiating device to obtain more from Hitler. Stalin never imagined that in reaching an agreement with Hitler he would be deceived by the Führer on a scale that rivaled that of the infamous Trojan horse.
Chapter Two
The Outspoken General Ivan Iosifovich Proskurov
How could Stalin have trusted Hitler? Here follows the history by which Stalin, supplied by his own country's intelligence services with absolutely solid information on Hitler's intentions, blindly disregarded the intelligence in favor of Hitler's lies.
The interwoven careers of three intelligence officers dramatize this history and will enable the reader to determine what Stalin knew and how he came to know it. The first of these was Ivan I. Proskurov, a talented military pilot and air force commander who had fought in Spain. The second was Pavel M. Fitin, who was assigned to the NKVD's Foreign Intelligence Service by the party and rose rapidly to become its chief in May 1939. The last was Filipp I. Golikov, who had served in the Red Army since the postrevolutionary Russian civil war, primarily on political assignments. In July 1940, Stalin appointed Golikov head of the Soviet Military Intelligence Service as Proskurov's replacement.
Proskurov had no previous intelligence experience, but he was ideally suited for the task given to him. A brave combatant and imaginative commander, he was highly intelligent and had an excellent memory. Instinctively honest, he refused to shade the truth in preparing intelligence reports. He was also a modest, unassuming man devoted to his country, wife, and children. Unusual for that time and place, he always showed great concern for the welfare of his subordinates, protecting those who feared repression (the purges) whenever he could. On the other hand, in the USSR under Stalin, where subservience to the "Boss" and the concealment of unpleasant truths were the rule, Proskurov's qualities, especially his independence of mind, were not ones that would endear him to Stalin. Indeed, his outspokenness often enraged Stalin, who knew he couldn't control him.
Proskurov was born on February 18, 1907, in the village of Malaya Tokmachka in what is now Zaporozhskaya Oblast of Ukraine. His father was a railroad worker and Ivan attended the Aleksandrovsky Railroad Academy in Zaporozhe and the Kharkov Institute of Mechanization and Electrification of Agriculture during the unsettled years of World War I, the February and October revolutions of 1917, the brief Ukrainian independence period from 1918 to 1920, and the civil war. From 1924 to 1926 he worked at the Zaporozhe Cable Factory, where he belonged to the Komsomol. From 1926 to 1927 he was chairman of the district council of labor unions, joining the Communist Party in 1927. In 1931 he joined the Red Army air forces.
Some of Proskurov's biographers characterize his entry into the Soviet air forces as simply a party assignment (partnabor). Proskurov himself reportedly agreed, saying that he did not become a pilot "from birth, but rather by chance-I was even a bit afraid of the idea of flying." But "at the district committee they talked me into attending flight school." The school was the Higher School for Pilots at Stalingrad, which he completed in March 1933. He was fortunate in this assignment as it allowed him to escape the severe famine conditions brought on in his native Ukraine by Stalin's decision to impose collectivization on the peasantry, an action from which Soviet agriculture never recovered. Pilots in training, however, enjoyed a reasonably nutritious diet.
Proskurov was assigned to the aviation brigade of the prestigious Zhukosvky Air Academy in Moscow as a flight instructor. A year later he was sent to the commanders' course at the Stalin School for Naval Aviators at Eisk, on the Sea of Azov in Krasnodarsky Kray, where he finished first in his class. In May 1934 a special commission appointed him aircraft commander in the Ninetieth Heavy Bombardment Squadron. Next he was assigned to the Eighty-ninth Heavy Bombardment Squadron of the Twenty-third Aviation Brigade as instructor in instrument navigation; his superiors characterized him as a "highly disciplined officer." His unit's party organization named him a delegate to a party congress and he was promoted to senior lieutenant. The next year, 1935, Proskurov became a member of the Soviet exhibition team attending an air show in Romania. In 1936 he made a record flight to Khabarovsk in the Soviet Far East to deliver engineers and spare parts to the famous Soviet pilot Valery P. Chkalov who had damaged his plane in an accident. Proskurov and his navigator made it to Khabarovsk in fifty-four hours and thirteen minutes, including refueling stops, a record for which Defense Commissar Kliment Ye. Voroshilov awarded them certificates and engraved gold watches. It was while Proskurov and his navigator were on a well-deserved leave that they heard of the invasion of republican Spain by General Franco and his troops. They both immediately volunteered to help the Loyalist forces.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from What Stalin Knew by David E. Murphy Copyright © 2005 by David E. Murphy. Excerpted by permission.
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