What Stalin Knew

May 30, 2005
One of the enduring puzzles of World War II is Stalin's dismissal of unmistakable evidence of a looming German invasion, a blunder that contributed to the disastrous Russian defeats of 1941. This engaging study of the Soviet intelligence apparatus helps clarify the mystery. Murphy, an ex-CIA Soviet specialist and co-author of Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War, argues that Stalin knew virtually everything for many months before the attack. Soviet spies in the German government offered detailed reports of invasion plans. Britain and the United States passed along warnings. Soviet agents in Eastern Europe noted the millions of German soldiers heading east to the Soviet border and their stock-piling of weapons and Russian phrase books. Stalin rejected these reports as Western provocations and barred the Red Army from taking elementary precautions, like chasing off the German reconnaissance planes surveying their defenses. Murphy presents a bizarre additional wrinkle in two letters Hitler sent to allay Stalin's suspicions, which claimed that the German armies massing in Poland were preparing to attack England and warned Stalin that rogue Wehrmacht units might invade Russia against Hitler's wishes-a smokescreen that inhibited Stalin's response to the German buildup and initial attacks. Murphy chalks up the debacle to Stalin's clinging to a Marxist fantasy of the capitalist powers fighting each other to exhaustion, and to the paralysis instilled in the Red Army by his purges. Fearful subordinates bowed to Stalin's absurd complacency about German intentions; the one intelligence chief who dared challenge his delusions was arrested and shot. Murphy's well-researched account offers both a meticulous reconstruction of an intelligence epic and a window into the tragedy of Stalin's despotism.

June 1, 2005
On June 22, 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa and shattered the nonaggression pact that Hitler and Stalin signed in 1939. Soviet intelligence had warned Stalin about the impending invasion, but the Soviet leader refused to believe those reports and removed key intelligence officers. Murphy, the former chief of Soviet Operations for the CIA, attempts to figure out why Stalin made such a colossal, and catastrophic, blunder. Working with recently published Soviet documents and military archives, Murphy examines Stalin's total control of military planning, his naive trust in Hitler's promises, and Germany's skillful strategy of deception. He also shows how Stalin's use of terror, prison, and execution to silence all disagreement had a devastating effect on the Soviet military command. Murphy's inside look at the workings of Soviet intelligence reads like a suspense novel with a fascinating cast of characters (including General Proskurov and intelligence officer Pavel Fitin). The author notes that much important archival material from early 1941 is still not available to researchers-so this story is not yet complete. Still, What Stalin Knew is a major contribution to the history of World War II; highly recommended for most academic libraries. -Thomas A. Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, PA

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