127. Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 50–1.
128. The discussions, in which Colonel Dragutin Savić and Bozin Simić, of the air force, also took part, had begun on April 2, with Vyshinsky. On April 3, Vyshinsky denied that the Soviets had ever mentioned a political and military pact. Stalin played the role of meliorator to obtain the signing. Barros and Gregor, Double Deception, 68–9 (citing Bakhmeteff Archive, Columbia University, Prince Regent Paul papers, box 14: Gavrilović to the foreign ministry, April 4, 1941). Soviet-Yugoslav relations dated from June 24, 1940.
129. Clissold, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, 121–2.
130. Gavrilov, Voennana razvedka informiruet, 578–9 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24119, d. 4, l. 279–80).
131. Lota, “Alta” protiv “Barbarossy,” 304; Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 581 (no archival citation). “Yeshenko” out of Bucharest also confirmed the pending German invasion of Yugoslavia (581–2: TsAMO, f. 23, op. 24119, d. 1, l. 521–4).
132. Clissold, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, 122–3. Hilger speculated: “Nothing the Russians did between 1939 and 1941 made Hitler more genuinely angry than the treaty with Yugoslavia; nothing contributed more directly to the final break.” Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 326–7.
133. Gavrilović conveyed the gist of the meetings to Cripps and the American envoy Laurence Steinhardt. Gorodetsky, Stafford Cripps in Moscow, 120 (citing FO 371 29544 N1401/1392/38, Cripps’s telegram April 6, cabinet min. April 7); Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 149–51; FRUS, 1941, I: 302 (Steinhardt to Hull, April 6), 311.
134. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 316–20; Fel’shtinskii, SSSR-Germaniia, II: 156; Clissold, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, 123–4.
135. Barros and Gregor, Double Deception, 71 (citing European War 1939/9712, RG 59, NA, file 740.0011: Steinhardt to Sec. of State, no. 703, April 7, 1941; and FO/371/29544: Cripps to Foreign Office, April 6, 1941).
136. This is what Krebs reported from Moscow to Berlin. Teske, General Ernst Köstring, 296. See also Barros and Gregor, Double Deception, 75 (citing National Archives, German foreign ministry archives, microfilm T120, serial 36, frame 26013–14: Rudolf Likus, April 8, 1941; and Dept. of State Special Interrogation Mission, RG 59: interrogation of Gustav Hilger); Erickson, Road to Stalingrad, 74–7 (quoting Gavrilović, no citation); and Narochnitskii, “Sovetsko-iugoslavskii dogovor.” The defensive possibilities of the mountains were mentioned in the Pravda editorial (April 6, 1941). Churchill, too, vastly overestimated the Serbs’ fighting capacity. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence, 369.
137. The NKGB operative Sudoplatov recalled: “We didn’t expect such total and rapid military defeat of Yugoslavia. We were shocked.” Sudoplatov added that Gavrilović, presumed by all and sundry to be a Soviet agent, was not fully trusted by the Soviets; he was seen to be meeting with the British every week. Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 119. Parts of Yugoslavia were annexed by Italy, Bulgaria (Macedonia), Hungary (the Banat), and Germany, which set up a puppet government in Croatia. King Petar fled into exile, making his way to Britain.
138. Vishnevskii, “‘Sami peredem v napadenie,’” 105, 107–8; Nevezhin, “Sobiralsia li Stalin nastupat’,” 81; Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, II/i: 127–8. Samuilovich pleaded with Dimitrov (April 12) for instructions on how to characterize the German-Yugoslav war. Dimitrov approached Stalin, who allowed that it was a just war against German aggressors, but at the same time the larger “imperialist” nature of the war held. Lebedeva and Narinskii, Komintern i Vtoraia mirovaia voina, 524–6 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 73, d. 99, l. 23).
139. Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece, 132–3. The Nazi invasion of Greece had been planned for April 1, but was briefly delayed because of the coup in Yugoslavia. Disastrously, Britain sent a force to rescue the Greeks in Feb. 1941: the political authorities in London were moved by what they thought Britain’s Near East military commanders desired, while the latter proffered the advice that they thought the politicians in London wanted. Britain’s Balkan commitment of 1941 would become a commitment, in 1945, to defend Greece, while in parallel Britain would abandon Poland, the country for which it had gone to war in the first place. Lawlor, Churchill and the Politics of War, 165–256, 259.
140. Van Creveld, Hitler’s Strategy. On the limited, essentially defensive nature of German aims in Greece, see also Schramm-von Thadden, Griechenland, 143–4. Göring was among those who wanted to finish off Britain by continued bombing and or seizure of Gibraltar and the Suez. Overy, Göring, x.
141. Through most of the 1930s, German and Soviet ciphers remained essentially impregnable to British cryptanalysts, except for what was sent using only low-grade codes (instructions during training exercises, for ex.). The German-manufactured Enigma machine was a system of electro-mechanical rotor ciphers invented by a German engineer, which had been put on the commercial market in the 1920s, but which the German military had progressively made more secure, including going from three to five wheels, making decryption very labor- and resource-consuming. But the Poles reverse-engineered and reconstituted the Enigma, passing a replica to the British. By Aug. 1939, Britain’s code and cipher school had moved to Bletchley Park, to a secluded country house some fifty miles north of London, which was where the Enigma was brought. Finally, in spring 1940, the British broke German naval Enigma communications. The decryption was called “Ultra Secret” or “Ultra.” Hinsley et al., British Intelligence, I: 53–4, 487–95; Hinsley, British Intelligence, Abridged Version, 14–5; Bertrand, Enigma. See also Winterbotham, Ultra Secret, 10–1.
142. Woodward, British Foreign Policy, I: 604; Churchill, Second World War, III: 320–1. On March 30, the JIC concluded that the Enigma evidence indicated a large-scale operation against the Soviet Union “either for intimidation or for actual attack.” Hinsley et al., British Intelligence, I: 451–2 (citing CX/JQ/S/7).
143. Gorodetsky, “Churchill’s Warning”; Gorodetsky, Mission to Moscow, 118–9.
144. “Nakanune voiny (1940–1941 gg.),” 206–7. On March 24, Cripps advised indirect disclosure to Moscow of the coming German-Soviet war via the Turkish or Chinese ambassadors to the Soviet ambassador in London, Maisky, but his proposal was not immediately acted upon.
145. According to the Soviet report, Cripps also stated that if faced with possible U.S. entry into the war on Britain’s side, Germany might seek a peace deal with London involving the restoration of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, in exchange for German capture of the USSR. Primakov, Ocherki, III: 472–3 (TsA FSB).
146. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, 155–78. Soviet self-isolation was severe: whereas in 1937, Intourist, the Soviet state travel agency, had handled just 13,000 foreign passport holders who came to the USSR and in 1938, 5,000; in 1939–41 it had 3,000 customers, the majority of them from Germany. Dvornichenko, Nekotorye aspekty funktsionirovaniia industrii turizma, 23; Orlov and Kressova, “Inostrannyi turizm v SSSR,” 163. Zhdanov noted at a meeting at Intourist that wherever foreigners could be expected to congregate, such as hotels and restaurants, “the general course of the Central Committee is not to allow Soviet inhabitants [grazhdan] into these places.” Golubev, “Esli mir obrushitsia na nashu Respubliku,” 80 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 11, l. 1).