Free War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-1942 by Robert Kershaw Page A

matches featured ‘Locomotive’ versus ‘Spartakist’ Minsk. There were sports parades. A degree of contentment was being felt in those areas beginning to create wealth again. The Soviets were proud of the establishment of the new border in Poland, which had recovered for Russia ground lost in 1918. Confidence that had faltered during the war with Finland was returning. (2)
    Along the Soviet western border, however, there was a paradoxical sense of tension at odds with the heat wave that had engulfed the region by 20 June. Engineer Colonel Starinov in Brest-Litovsk observed:
     
‘It was another marvellous sunny morning. The sun shone down on the heaps of coal along the railway track and on the stacks of glistening new rails. It was the very picture of tranquillity.’
     
    Starinov, on exercise, had already heard reports ‘about German spies and aircraft violating our borders’. The TASS announcement of 14 June, castigating such rumours as ‘propaganda’ inspired by those hostile to the Soviet Union, had contributed to a lessening of tension but still did not account for the disturbing activity apparent on the other side of the River Bug. Starinov was informed by the Fourth Army Engineer Chief, Colonel A. I. Proshlyakov, that the Germans had been bringing up equipment to the western side of the River Bug all through June. Camouflage screens had been erected in front of the open sectors in their lines and observation towers. An artillery colonel told him that the TASS announcement had not changed the situation on the German side of the border, ‘but our troops had begun to relax’. Nodding toward soldiers carrying suitcases along the Brest railway station platform, he remarked ironically:
     
‘Not so long ago these guys were sleeping with their boots on, and now they’re getting ready to go off on leave! Why? The TASS announcement!’ (3)
     
    Soviet military archives clearly demonstrate that the commanders of the respective military districts bordering the frontier were aware of the German build-up. Reports from troops stationed on the border were giving clear indications of an impending German attack. Although mobilisations of interior districts were producing a partial deployment toward the western frontier, no concrete measures were ordered by the Soviet General Staff to raise readiness postures on the border itself. Indeed, where measures were taken on the initiative of individual staffs, they were ordered to be reversed. (4)
    The background to this bizarre response is explained by Dimitrij Wolkogonow, then serving as a lieutenant, but later to become a general and historian. Stalin thought the war would occur much later than was to be the case. In discussion with his closest advisors 20 days previously he announced that ‘evaluation of intelligence suggests we cannot avoid war. It will probably begin early next year.’ Soviet perception, Wolkogonow feels, was moulded by Stalin’s view.
     
‘Stalin was like God on earth. He alone said, “the war will not happen now.” It was his isolated belief, and he wanted to believe it. And what is particularly important is that he was totally clear in his own mind that the Red Army was unprepared for war.’
     
    Some 85% of Soviet officers serving in the Western Military District had only been in their appointment for a year; a direct consequence of the bloody purges of 1937–38 which had all but obliterated the officer corps. Stalin’s view prevailed. Nobody would dare question it. Wolkogonow commented:
     
‘It is likely that Stalin’s deception over the outbreak of war was directly related to the earlier suppression of information he did not want to hear. What should not happen was therefore unlikely to occur.’ (5)
     
    Logical developments, however, continued their inexorable course. On 20 June Kuznetsov, the commander of the Third Army in the Western Special Military District opposite the German Army Group Centre, reported the Germans had cleared the