The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB

Stalin was much less suspicious of Adolf Hitler than of Winston Churchill, the evil genius who had preached an anti-Bolshevik crusade in the civil war twenty years earlier and had been plotting against the Soviet Union ever since. Behind many of the reports of impending German attack Stalin claimed to detect a disinformation campaign by Churchill designed to continue the long-standing British plot to embroil him with Hitler. Churchill’s personal warnings to Stalin of preparations for BARBAROSSA only heightened his suspicions. From the intelligence reports sent by the London residency, Stalin almost certainly knew that until June 1941 the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), the body responsible for the main British intelligence assessments, did not believe that Hitler was preparing an invasion. It reported to Churchill as late as May 23 that “the advantages… to Germany of concluding an agreement with the USSR are overwhelming.”²⁵ The JIC assessments were probably regarded by Stalin as further proof that Churchill’s warnings were intended to deceive him. Stalin’s deep suspicions of Churchill and of British policy in general were cleverly exploited by the Germans. As part of the deception operation which preceded BARBAROSSA, the Abwehr, German military intelligence, spread reports that rumors of an impending German attack were part of a British disinformation campaign.

By early June, reports of German troop movements toward the Soviet frontier were too numerous to be explained, even by Stalin, simply as British disinformation. At a private lunch in the German embassy in Moscow, the ambassador, Count von der Schulenberg, revealed that Hitler had definitely decided on invasion. “You will ask me why I am doing this,” he said to the astonished Soviet ambassador to Germany, Vladimir Georgyevich Dekanozov. “I was raised in the spirit of Bismarck, who was always an opponent of war with Russia.” Stalin’s response was to tell the Politburo, “Disinformation has now reached ambassadorial level!”²⁶ On June 9, or soon afterwards, however, Stalin received a report that the German embassy had been sent orders by telegram to prepare for evacuation within a week and had begun burning documents in the basement.²⁷

Though Stalin remained preoccupied by a non-existent British conspiracy, he increasingly began to suspect a German plot as well—though not one which aimed at surprise attack. As it became ever more difficult to conceal German troop movements, the Abwehr spread rumors that Hitler was preparing to issue an ultimatum, backed by some display of military might, demanding new concessions from the Soviet Union. It was this illusory threat of an ultimatum, rather than the real threat of German invasion, which increasingly worried Stalin during the few weeks and days before BARBAROSSA. He was not alone. A succession of foreign statesmen and journalists were also taken in by the planted rumors of a German ultimatum.²⁸

Beria sought to protect his position as head of the NKVD by expressing mounting indignation at those inside and outside the NKVD who dared to send reports of preparations for a German invasion. On June 21, 1941 he ordered four NKVD officers who persisted in sending such reports to be “ground into labor camp dust.” He wrote to Stalin on the same day with his characteristic mix of brutality and sycophancy:

I again insist on recalling and punishing our ambassador to Berlin, Dekanozov, who keeps bombarding me with “reports” on Hitler’s alleged preparations to attack the USSR. He has reported that this attack will start tomorrow… But I and my people, Iosif Vissarionovich, have firmly embedded in our memory your wise conclusion: Hitler is not going to attack us in 1941.²⁹