Countdown

espite several early warnings of impending attack, most of the Soviet border defense was caught by total surprise as the German war machine went into action in the early hours of June 22, 1941. Eager to retain the power they had obtained, the autocratic lead­ers in the Kremlin had allied themselves with the anti- Communist Nazi dictator in Berlin. The Hitler-Stalin pact in August 1939 was the result of Josef Stalin’s readiness to sacrifice anything for tranquillity. His leadership was characterized by both brutality’ and wishful thinking. Stalin was fully aware of the fact that he had crippled both the revolutionary wing of the international working class and the Red Army, the two main factors that had saved the Communist government twenty years earlier. Never­theless, he simply refused to acknowledge the impend­ing war and disregarded the fact that the pact with Hitler enabled Germany to concentrate the bulk of its armed forces against the Western Allies. The Fiihrer naturally had never given up his dreams to conquer the Soviet Union, and once the fighting in the West had come to a standstill, he started preparations for invasion in the East, Operation Barbarossa.

On March 20, 1941, the Soviet intelligence services submitted a report that a German military attack against the USSR would take place between May 15 and June 15. This would also have happened, had Hitler not decided to divert his armies against the Balkans follow­ing the anti-German Yugoslav coup d’etat on March 26, 1941. However, a fear of “disturbing” the leader existed, particularly among the higher echelons of Soviet society. Thus General-Leytenant Filipp Golikov, the head of the Intelligence Service, commented that this was probably “misinformation coming from the English or perhaps even the German intelligence service.”

More reports of an approaching German invasion continued to pour in during the following weeks. On June 13 the People’s Commissar of Defense, Marshal Semyon Timoshenko, advised Stalin to place the border troops on alert. The next day, Timoshenko and General Armii Georgiy Zhukov returned with the same proposal. “You propose carrying out mobilization?” exclaimed Stalin, “Alerting the troops and moving them to the Western borders? That means war! Do you understand that or not?”

Zhukov replied that, according to their intelligence reports, the mobilization of the German combat divisions was complete. Stalin shook his head and said, “You can’t believe everything you read in intelligence reports.”

Meanwhile, the largest invasion army the world had ever seen was marching on the opposite side of the Soviet western border: 3.6 million German and other Axis soldiers, 600,1000 vehicles, 3,600 tanks, and more than 3,000 first-line aircraft.

By sending a constant stream of reconnaissance air­craft over Soviet territory, the Germans themselves provided the Soviets with evidence of what was coming. The task of surveying the Soviet defenses was given to the strategic reconnaissance group of the Luftwaffe High Command, Aufklarungsgruppe Oberbefehlshaber der Luftwaffe. Under the leadership of Oberstleutnant

Theodor Rowehl, high-altitude Ju 86Ps and Ju 88s oper­ating from Hungarian and Polish bases carried out photographic mapping of the Ukraine. He Ills and Do 215s with specially modified engines that enabled them to increase their operational ceiling systematically covered White Russia and the Crimea from bases in East Prussia and Rumania.

According to Soviet estimates, some five hundred German flights over Soviet territory were made. On April 15, 1941, a Ju 86P crash-landed near Rovno in the Ukraine. Bad weather forced down another Ju 86P near Vinnitsa. Equipped with camera and exposed film show­ing Soviet territory, this was perfect evidence that the Germans were planning an aggression. But Stalin for­bade fighters or antiaircraft units to intervene against these reconnaissance flights out of fear of “provoking” Hitler.

On the evening of June 21, 1941, a German deserter reported that the attack would take place the following night. Marshal Timoshenko, General-Armii Zhukov, and General-Leytenant Nikolay Vatutin summoned Stalin, whose last hope was that “Perhaps the German generals sent this deserter to provoke a conflict?” But finally the Soviet leader agreed to issue a warning order to the bor­der troops. As the full strength of the German attack was launched less than two hours later, most units had not received this message.