Hitler Moves East, 1941-1943 (10 page)

This raises a question of vital importance to military historians: Were the Russians really taken by surprise by the German attack, completely unsuspecting and engaged in harmless peaceful pursuits? Were they really so unprepared, and did they withdraw their allegedly inferior forces—as is still being maintained in many quarters to this day—to the Don and the Lower Volga in order to lure the German armies deep into Soviet territory and defeat them there? Was that what happened? It was not.

It is, of course, true that the Soviet frontier troops suffered a complete tactical surprise from the German attack on 22nd June. Only a few bridges along the 1000-mile frontier had been blown up by the Russians in time. The crucial bridges over the Memel, the Nemen, the Bug, the San, and the Prut— and even that over the Daugava at Daugavpils, though 155 miles behind the frontier—were captured by German assault detachments by bold or cunning strokes. Does this prove that the Russians were unsuspecting?

Then how is it to be explained that on 22nd June the 146 attacking German divisions, with 3,000,000 men, were faced

on the Russian side by 139 Soviet divisions and 29 independent brigades, with some 4,700,000 men? The Soviet Air Force had 6000 aircraft stationed in Belorussia alone. A large part of them, admittedly, were obsolete, but at least 1300 to 1500 were of the latest types. The German Luftwaffe, on the other hand, started the campaign with no more than 1800 operational machines.

This seems to suggest that the Russians were, after all, well prepared and equipped for defence. How then can the incredible mismanagement on the frontier be explained? What is the solution of the riddle?

On 23rd February 1941 Soviet Defence Minister Timo-shenko had issued the following decree: "In spite of the successes of our policy of neutrality the entire Soviet people must remain in a constant state of readiness against the threat of an enemy attack."

On 10th April 1941 the Soviet War Council had decreed a secret alert for the so-called Western Front. Why? On the strength of what circumstances, what information, what news?

Well, the news which had been reaching Moscow since January 1941 had all been rather alarming. This information was supplied by the magnificently organized Soviet intelligence service. Between Paris and Berlin one Leopold Trepper, alias Gilbert, also known as "Grand Chef," was travelling freely, collecting information throughout Hitler's sphere of control, and this information he passed on to Moscow via the Soviet Embassy in Berlin.

In Brussels, Viktor Sokolov, alias Kent, a major in the Soviet intelligence service, maintained an office, and there he received his precious pieces of information from well-informed Communist contacts. His intelligence network was known as the "Rote Kapelle" (the Red Choir).

In Switzerland the most cunning of Soviet agents in Europe was operating—Rudolf Rössler, known as Lucy, a member of the "Red Choir," subordinated to Rado, the Soviet top agent.

But the best man of the Soviet military intelligence service was in Tokyo—Dr Richard Sorge, Press Assistant at the German Embassy there, a man who did more for the Soviet Fatherland War than a whole army. It was-he who had given Stalin the certain information that Japan would not move against the Red Army in Manchuria. Sorge's report enabled him to withdraw the Siberian divisions from the Far Eastern Front, and it was these divisions which later turned the tide of the war at Moscow, Kursk, and Stalingrad.

All these agents supplied the Red Army's intelligence departments with mountains of information about Hitler's military plans against the Soviet Union. All of them predicted the attack. And such gaps as there may have been in their reports were filled in by the diplomatic representatives of the Western Powers from the inexhaustible fund of information of the British and American secret services.

Here is one piece of evidence that the German attack, including its exact date, cannot have been a surprise for the Russians. On 25th April 1941 thé German Naval Attaché in Moscow, in a telegram routed to the Naval High Command via the Foreign Office in Berlin, reported: "Rumours about impending German-Russian war greatly increasing in scope. British Ambassador gives 22nd June as date of beginning of war."

This suggests that some two months before the outbreak of the war half Moscow was informed about Hitler's date of attack. And Stalin? Would he not have been told? Of course he was told, and he was fully aware of the importance of espionage and personally looked after this department.

In March 1937, addressing the Central Committee of the Communist Party about the tasks of secret intelligence work, he had said, "To win a battle in war one must have several corps of Red Army men. But to prevent a victory at the front it is enough to have a few spies in an army staff, or even in a divisional staff, who would steal the plan of operations and pass it on to the opponent."

At the Eighteenth Party Congress, in 1939, .Stalin had again broached the subject, in the following significant words: "Our Army and intelligence service have their sharp eyes no longer on the enemy within our country, but on the enemy abroad." In view of these remarks, is it credible that in 1941 Stalin would have taken no notice of the information

supplied to him by his secret service about the German preparations for an attack? He must have been informed. After all, he had first-rate informants. From Berlin to Tokyo, from Paris to Geneva, his informants—many of them highly respected men beyond the breath of suspicion—sat in high positions and supplied valuable information.

The thoroughness of their work was revealed during the very first few weeks of the war. When the 221st Defence Division in Lomza cracked the safe left behind by the C-in-C of the First Cossack Army, they found in it maps for the whole of Germany, with the location of German Armies, Army Groups, and divisions accurately entered. The information was complete—nothing was lacking.

But this, by comparison, was peanuts. Some much more exciting discoveries were made.

The German radio monitoring service in the East Prussian seaside resort of Cranz had been intercepting the coded messages of countless unknown agents' transmitters since the beginning of the war. Attempts to crack the ingenious figure codes had been in vain. At last, in November 1942, German intelligence received the key. The Soviet chief agent Viktor Sokolov, alias Kent, had been captured in Marseilles. In order to save his mistress, Margarete Barcza, he offered to work for the Germans and betrayed the code.

What Admiral Canaris was shown after the decoding of the messages was far worse than the greatest pessimists had feared. There was a message of 2nd July 1941, for instance. Ten days after the outbreak of war Alexander Rado reported from Geneva to Moscow: "Rdo. To Director. KNR 34. Valid German plan of operations is Plan 1 with objective Moscow. Operations on wings merely diversions. Main thrust on Central Front. Rado."

About three weeks later, on 27th July, Rado amplified his message in reply to an inquiry from Moscow: "Rdo. To Director. KNR 92. Re RSK 1211. In case Plan 1 meets with difficulties Plan 2 will be used with main thrust on wings. Change of plan will be known to me within two days. Plan 3 with objective Caucasus not envisaged before November. Rado."

Needless to say, Berlin was flabbergasted to find a Soviet agent in Switzerland so accurately informed, and every effort was made to discover his source—a source which could discover a "change of plan" in the German High Command "within two days." But this source was never discovered. It has not been discovered to this day. Right through the war Alexander Rado continued to send his information to Moscow by radio. One thing is certain, however: Rado's main contact was Rudolf Rössler, alias Lucy, a Communist émigré from Bavaria who worked in Switzerland. In
The Soviet Army,
edited by the British military historian Liddell Hart, Dr Raymond L. Garthoff, who made a thorough study of the evidence, states that an anonymous source on the German General Staff informed this net of the German plans for the invasion of the USSR, and even provided the date of the invasion.

What more could Stalin or the Soviet General Staff want? Hitler's secrets were openly revealed to the Kremlin. Moscow, therefore, could have turned Operation Barbarossa, based as it was on surprise, into a crushing defeat for Hitler within the first twenty-four hours. Provided, of course, Stalin drew the correct military conclusions from his information. Why did he not do it?

To decide this key question of the German-Soviet war we have to turn our attention to a different one first. What was the state of German espionage against Russia? What did the German Command know about the military secrets of the Soviet Union? The question can be answered in two words— very little. The German secret service was very thinly established in Russia. It knew nothing of the vital military secrets of the Soviets, whereas they knew everything about Germany. They knew all about German weapons, about German garrisons, they knew where the German training areas were situated, and where the armament factories were. They knew the exact figures for German tank production. They had a clear picture about the number of German divisions. The German Command, by way of contrast, at the beginning of the war estimated the Red Army at 200 divisions. Within six weeks of the start of operations it discovered that there were at least 360. The German Command had no idea that the Russians had super-heavy KV tanks, or the T- 34, or those terrifying multiple mortars, soon to be nicknamed "Stalin's organ-pipes."

Naturally, the German military secret sendee had tried, especially after 1933, to look behind the Soviet scenes. But the Soviets' mistrust of Hitler's Third Reich had been greater still than their suspicion of the Weimar Republic, and consequently the prospects of establishing secret agents within the Soviet Union were not promising. Besides, German

intelligence was not overzealous in this direction and was unwilling to take risks. After all, no one in the German High Command envisaged a war between Germany and Russia.

Later, when Hitler demanded intensified intelligence work in Russia, it was found that this could not be organized at such short notice. The strict controls on the frontiers of the Communist empire, the close surveillance of every traveller, and indeed every stranger, made it virtually impossible to build up a network of agents. If, now and again, a spy was insinuated nevertheless from Finland, Turkey, or Iraq he would encounter almost insuperable difficulties in transmitting his information. A courier service was out of the question since no Soviet citizen was allowed to travel abroad. What few tourists there were were under strict supervision. That left only carrier pigeons from the frontier regions, and the radio. Both methods were enormously dangerous, and very few people were prepared to take the risk.

Nevertheless, in conjunction with the work of the German Military Attachés, some useful information was obtained in this way. Thus Guderian published a book entitled
Achtung
—
Panzer!
in which, on the grounds of reliable information, he put the number of Soviet tanks at 10,000. But in the German High Command the general was ridiculed. The then Chief of Army General Staff, Colonel-General Beck, accused Guderian of exaggerating, and even of creating alarm and despondency. Yet Guderian had deliberately erred on the cautious side and deducted a few thousand from the number reported to him. Quite unnecessarily, as it turned out, since the Russians at the outbreak of war possessed over 17,000 tanks.

In 1941 nobody would have thought that possible. The Finnish-Soviet winter war of 1939—40 had had a disastrous effect on the assessment of Soviet strength. The fact that little Finland offered such prolonged resistance to the Soviets was taken as evidence of Soviet weakness. To this day there are quite a few serious observers who maintain that Stalin deliberately conducted the Finnish war with outmoded weapons and inferior forces as a gigantic bluff, in order to deceive the world. Certainly the Soviet High Command did not employ the T-34 or the super-heavy KV tanks—even though these were manufactured right on Finland's doorstep, at Kolpino—nor yet the multiple mortars.

Finland's Marshal Mannerheim reports in his memoirs that Hitler told him in 1942 that the Russian armaments came as a colossal surprise to him. "If anyone had told me before the beginning of the war that the Russians could mobilize 35,000 fighting vehicles I would have had him declared insane. But up to date they have in fact thrown 35,000 of them into battle."

In order to get a peep behind Russia's walls after all, in spite of the well-nigh insuperable Soviet precautions against conventional forms of espionage, the German Command resorted to a method which was employed twenty years later, in our own time, by the Americans, and which when discovered gave rise to a serious crisis—secret aerial reconnaissance from great altitudes. The idea of spying inside Soviet territory by means of very fast and exceptionally high-ceiling aircraft was not an American invention. Hitler had practised the method successfully long before the Americans. This interesting chapter has so far not had the publicity it deserves. The evidence for it is in American secret archives. It may be assumed that it was the study of these papers which induced the Americans to experiment with their U-2s. The secret documents about German aerial reconnaissance bore the code name "Reconnaissance Group under the C-in-C Luftwaffe."

In October 1940 Lieutenant-Colonel Rowehl received a personal and top-secret order from Hitler: "You will organize long-range reconnaissance formations, capable of photographic reconnaissance of Western Russian territory from a great height. This height must be so exceptional that the Soviets will not notice anything. You must be ready by 15th June 1941."