What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa

by David E. Murphy

Book Overview

"A riveting account of one of history's greatest blunders."--William L. O'Neill, The New Leader This extensively researched book illuminates many of the enigmas that have surrounded the Nazi invasion... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300107803
• ISBN13: 9780300107807
• Release Date: June 2005
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 340 Pages
• Weight: 1.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Detailed and Thorough

Murphy's detailed analysis is thorough and meticulous. The dry bones of this history are the blueprints of the skeleton that is the support structure of the story. Stalin knew plenty and he knew it early. The only thing missing is an analysis of the peculiar mind of a paranoid, which this book does not try to approach, and shouldn't.

A good effort

Since this is more or less my 'forte' when it comes to World War II studies and especially the Eastern Front is where my concentration lies, specifically 1941, I was very pleased to get my hands on a copy of this book even before it was published (thanks to my history professor at my University). Overall it was a solid effort on the part of the author to show how much information Stalin, GRU, and in effect the Soviet Union was receiving from abroad. From Eastern to Western Europe and the US, embassies and personnel were sending information confirming the time of the invasion and detailing what the invasion itself would encompass or simply denying it as part of a German deception campaign. When viewing this information we can see that much of the data that confirmed the invasion was in fact correct while many details were not. Bottom line being that the idea that an invasion was going to occur was most definitely right but the dates being attributed to the invasion were not. The first messages began to arrive soon after December 1940 when Hitler has first through up of the invasion, but they were in effect useless since no troop movements had begun. The first thoughts coming into Stalin's mind were probably that it couldn't be true since Germany was still at war with England and Hitler would never make the mistake that was made in World War I when a two front war was fought and lost by Germany. The US was also one of the first to warn Stalin but in the end why should Stalin trust them? Or Great Britain who also tried to warn him? They had interfered in the Russian civil war, sent their troops to Russian lands to kill Red Army men, and now when only England was standing up to Hitler and Germany would it not suit England's interests to get the USSR on her side? This is one thing that has to be kept in mind, most messages from foreign sources like these were ignored, even worse if they were substantiated by other sources it simply made it seem as if this information was planted. Later on during one or two months before the invasion began an avalanche of information was forthcoming about Germany's intentions from every corner of the globe. Yet this is where the author makes a mistake, he does not in fact show all German deception that was focused on keeping the Soviet uninformed about their plans nor does he show some of the contradictory information coming in from the very same Soviet agents and sources that said Germany would attack. This is most definitely a lot to grasp and keep in mind. One example of the authors omission is from that famous spy Sorge in Tokyo, a few days before the invasion he sent a message saying "Germany might not attack or if it does it'll be at the end of June" this was sent on June 17th. I have in fact collected some of the volumes that Murphy based his work on and much of the information found in them he has omitted, this being just one example. Although in the end one cannot blame him for this, there is a w

What Stalin Ignored

It is quite remarkable how much very secret information that Mr. Murphy was able to collect to frame his story of the blindness of Stalin. Strong egocentric leaders often suffer from the supression of unwelcome news. You might see as does Cal Thomas, in a recent editorial, some of that suffering in Geo W. A delightful book by Murphy and an easy read in spite of the detail

Compelling Story of Deception and Self-Deception

After reading this book, I found myself remembering something that Ian Fleming wrote in a James Bond novel (I think). "The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't change their view of the world in response to the facts. They change the facts to fit their view of the world." Stalin was the epitome of this principle. The array of evidence that Soviet intelligence uncovered in the run-up to Barbarossa (the massive 1941 German invasion of Russia) was staggering. Yet all of this intelligence, purchased with the time and effort and sometimes the blood of Soviet intelligence personnel, might as well have never been collected. Stalin didn't want to conclude that Hitler was going to attack him in 1941. Therefore, all evidence pointing to that was provocation. It's incredible, and speaking as a serving intelligence officer, I find myself wishing that all the people making charges about the politicization of intelligence in the last few years in the US would read Murphy's book and see what real "politicization" involves. The only criticisms I have with this book is that I think it would have been appropriate for Murphy to italicize passages of the text which are his suppositions, inferences, and judgments as opposed to absolute facts. This is routine practice for Intelligence Community products, and it would be useful here. I also think any student of denial and deception ought to read the appendix of this book which contains letters that Hitler sent to Stalin in the run-up to the attack. Whoever wrote them for "der Fuhrer" was truly a master at deception. Finally, the irony of the situation is profound. Hitler did to Stalin with Barbarossa what the Allies did to Hitler with Fortitude South (the deception plan that convinced him that D-Day would be at Calais and not Normandy).

Arrogance rides triumphantly through the gates

barely glancing at the old woman about to cut the rope and spring shut the trap. This aphorism summarizes neatly the trap Hitler laid for Stalin in the days prior to the German invasion of the USSR. Lord Acton once said that absolute power corrupts absolutely. One of the chief lessons to be learned from David Murphy's "What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa" is that absolute power breeds an absolute arrogance that erodes the critical faculties that facilitated the despot's acquisition of power in the first place. It is commonly known that the German invasion of the Soviet Union in the pre-dawn hours of June 22, 1941 (Operation Barbarossa) took Stalin completely by surprise. The Soviet air force in the western zone was destroyed on the ground. The Soviet army, from Memel on the Baltic Sea to Odessa along the Black Sea was engulfed in fear and chaos almost from the start. Millions of Soviet soldiers were killed or taken prisoner and hundred of miles of Soviet territory was overrun in the first ten days of the war. As Murphy points out, the tragedy of Barbarossa for the USSR was not just the horrible loss of life and territory but the fact that these losses could have been lessened dramatically (although probably not eliminated) but for the supreme arrogance of the Soviet's supreme leader. Murphy fleshes this general information out with an exhaustive amount of additional information gleaned from recently opened Soviet archives. Murphy was a career intelligence officer with the CIA and served as its head of Soviet operations before retiring from the intelligence services. As a result of his experience, Murphy is able to cast a practiced eye on the USSR's intelligence gathering operations in the years before the invasion. Murphy begins with a brief overview of some critical events prior to the invasion, specifically the Stalin/Hitler pact and the brief Russo-Finnish winter war in 1939/1940. The first extended the USSR's territory hundred of miles westward. The USSR never managed to move its old defensive fortifications west and left the old fortifications to crumble. The Soviet army suffered horrible losses to the undermanned Finnish army before finally prevailing. Each event only served to confirm Hitler's notion that he could invade and defeat the USSR in a matter of weeks. Murphy then proceeds to outline the extensive intelligence gathering information operations of the Soviet military (the RU) and the civilian security apparatus (the NKVD). From cities across eastern and western Europe, from Japan, and the U.S. came reliable information indicating that Hitler had abandoned plans to invade Britain and had set in motion a plan to invade the USSR. Taken together this cumulative evidence represents a stunning indictment of Stalin and his inner circle. Stalin refused to believe any of this information. Rather, he believed the German disinformation campaign designed to convince the USSR that Germany had no immediate plans to in