Stalingrad

meeting called for half past nine. When challenged with the evidence of German preparations, he did not admit that an invasion was about to take place. He simply expressed his astonishment that the Soviet Union could not understand the situation and refused to answer any questions until he had consulted Berlin.
    Schulenburg, a diplomat of the old school who believed in Bismarck’s dictum that Germany should never make war on Russia, had good reason to be astonished by the Kremlin’s ignorance. Over two weeks before, he had invited Dekanozov, then back in Moscow, to a private lunch and warned him of Hitler’s plans. The old count clearly felt absolved from any loyalty to the Nazi regime after the Führer had blatantly lied to him, claiming to have no designs against Russia. * But Dekanozov, astonished at such a revelation, immediately suspected a trick. Stalin, reacting in the same way, exploded to the Politburo: ‘Disinformation has now reached ambassadorial level!’ Stalin was certain that most warnings had been ‘
Angliyskaya provokatsiya’ –
part of a plot by Winston Churchill, the arch-enemy of the Soviet Union, to start a war between Russia and Germany. Since Hess’s flight to Scotland, the conspiracy had grown even more complicated in his mind.
    Stalin, who had refused to accept the possibility of an invasion until that Saturday afternoon, still remained terrified of provoking Hitler. Goebbels, with some justification, compared him to a rabbit mesmerized by a snake. A succession of reports from frontier guards told of tank engines being warmed up in the woods across the border,of German army engineers constructing bridges across rivers and removing barbed-wire entanglements in front of their positions. The commander of the Kiev Special Military District warned that war would begin in a matter of hours. Reports arrived that in Baltic ports, German ships had suddenly stopped loading and sailed for home. Yet Stalin, the totalitarian dictator, still could not come to terms with the idea that events might be outside his control.
    That night, after long discussions in his study with senior commanders of the Red Army, Stalin agreed to the dispatch in code of a signal to all military-district headquarters in the West. ‘In the course of 22–23 June 1941, sudden attacks by the Germans on the fronts of Leningrad, Baltic Special, Western Special, Kiev Special and Odessa Military Districts are possible. The task of our forces is not to yield to any provocations likely to prompt major complications. At the same time troops… are to be at full combat readiness, to meet a possible surprise blow by the Germans and their allies.’ The navy and some senior officers in the Red Army had quietly ignored Stalin’s orders against mobilization. But for many units, the warning order, which did not go out until after midnight, arrived too late.
    In Berlin, Berezhkov had given up any hope of getting through to Ribbentrop’s office as the night wore on. Suddenly, at around three in the morning, the telephone beside him rang. ‘Herr Reichsminister von Ribbentrop’, announced an unfamiliar voice, ‘wishes to see representatives of the Soviet government at the Foreign Office in the Wilhelmstrasse.’ Berezhkov explained that it would take time to wake the ambassador and order a car.
    ‘The Reichsminister’s motor car is already waiting outside your embassy. The Minister wishes to see Soviet representatives immediately.’
    Outside the embassy, Dekanozov and Berezhkov found the black limousine waiting at the kerb. An official of the foreign ministry in full uniform stood beside the door, while an SS officer remained seated beside the driver. As they drove off, Berezhkov noted that, beyond the Brandenburg Gate, dawn was already spreading a glow in the sky above the trees of the Tiergarten. It was midsummer’s morning.
    When they reached the Wilhelmstrasse, they saw a crowd of people outside. The entrance with its wrought-iron awning was lit by camera lights for newsreel crews. Pressmen surrounded the two Soviet diplomats, momentarily blinding them with the flashbulbs of their cameras. This unexpected reception made Berezhkov fear the worst, but Dekanozov appeared unshaken in his belief that Germany and Russia were still at peace.
    The Soviet ambassador, ‘barely five feet tall, with a small beak nose and a few strands of black hair plastered across a bald pate’, was not an impressive figure. Hitler, when he first