p The riazis knew it would not be easy to defeat the Soviet Union. They intended to make the most of perfidy and surprise, the long-time tools of aggression.

p The attack was to be carried out without a warning, without preliminary demands, talks or pretexts. And to the public Hitler intended to portray the sneak attack as a preventive war: the Soviet Union, he would say, had to be attacked to avert an imminent Soviet attack. The facts upset this legend.

p To assure surprise, the nazis employed a set of deceptions. Some were enumerated in the Directive on Concealing Preparations for Operation Barbarossa, which said, among other things: "Reports of new means of attack and transport are to create the impression that preparations to attack the Soviet Union are meant to camouflage the landing (in Britain— Ed.) ... Deployment of troops for ’Barbarossa’ is to be portrayed as the greatest deceptive action in the history of wars, aimed at covering up final preparations for the invasion of Britain."

p With the same motive, the Germans sold the Soviet Union samples of their panzers and planes and let Soviet representatives visit industrial installations, including war factories, confident that in the brief time before the assault on the USSR Soviet designers, fliers and tankers would learn nothing useful from them. This also revealed their basic recklessness and disdain for the imminent adversary.

p The nazi talks with the Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs in November 1940 were also part of the camouflage. Ribbentrop suggested that the Soviet Union should join the Germany-Italy-Japan military bloc, though actually it was erected against the USSR. Naturally, the Soviet delegation turned the offer down.

p Despite these manoeuvres to conceal Hitler’s nefarious intentions, the secret was cracked by Soviet intelligence officers. One of these, Richard Sorge, informed Moscow not only of the date of the attack, but of the invaders’ initial attack strength, the operational and strategic targets of the nazi Command and direction of the main blows. In two successive radiograms, on June 15, 1941, he wired: "The war will begin June 22”, and "Attacking on a wide front at dawn June 22."  [70•1 

p The Soviet Government was then fortifying the country’s frontiers, though its efforts were impeded by the international set-up. It had no knowledge of how the British and US governments would react to a German attack on the USSR. Not improbable was it to think that they would offer some kind of support to the Germans. Every Soviet act of fortifying the western frontiers was, if journalists discovered it, presented falsely in the British and American press. Provocative reports to that effect had to be denied. One TASS denial said: 71 "According to a United Press correspondent’s cable from Vichy, the Soviet Union is massing large forces along its western frontiers. Diplomatic circles in Moscow, UP alleges, are referring to large-scale concentrations along the western frontiers — TASS is authorised to declare that the suspiciously strident report ... is a figment of the author’s imagination."  [71•1 

p The British Government’s treatment of Hess was perturbing. True, Hess’s proposals of peace and an alliance against the Soviet Union were obviously unacceptable to Britain after the preceding months of the war. But neither did the British Government reject the offer publicly, encouraging Hitler to attack eastward. Soviet historian V. Trukhanovsky draws the conclusion that "Hitler was sure the attack on the USSR would not lead to war on two fronts and that if Britain did not help Germany against the Soviet Union she would at any rate place no obstacles to the war against the socialist state. There was one more aspect to this question. The British Government ardently desired that Germany should commit error in this issue, for this error would mean Britain’s salvation. ... In May-June the British Government’s reaction to the Hess mission was such as to fortify Hitler in his view that an arrangement could be reached if development were given a ’push* by an attack on the USSR."  [71•2 

p The -US and British governments were active in other areas, top, prodding Germany to come sooner to grips with the Soviet Union. In the spring of 1941 British Intelligence in New York, working jointly with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, planted the following false report in the German Embassy in Washington: "From highly reliable source it is learned USSR intends further military aggression instant Germany is embroiled in major operations."  [71•3 

p With everything to win from stretching out the peace, the Soviet Union had to reckon with the fact that certain groups in Britain and the United States wished to hasten the nazi attack. In the circumstances, it was important to observe meticulously all the non-aggression treaty stipulations. German Ambassador Werner von Schulenburg wrote from Moscow that the Soviet Government was "due to the present 72 international situation, which it views as grave, trying to avert a conflict with Germany".  [72•1 

p Hitler Germany held strong, though temporary, triumphs: her economy was militarised and the country on a war footing; the preparations for war of conquest had been long and thorough and her army had acquired combat experience in the West; her arms and troops deployed in the border areas were superior. Besides, Germany had at her command the economic and manpower resources of nearly all Western Europe. In countries overrun by the nazis, the arsenals, vast stores of metal and strategic raw materials, and the steel and war factories were operating for the conqueror. The Soviet Union, its troops lacking experience in large-scale operations, was faced by a powerful military machine..

p Those were the factors that contributed to the Soviet Army setbacks at the beginning of the war.

p At dawn on June 22 the fascist armies jumped off, delivering a sudden and perfidious blow of immense power without so much as a declaration of war. The Wehrmacht and its allies —190 divisions in all, comprising 5,500,000 mencrossed the border while air armadas showered bombs on Soviet cities and thousands of guns and tanks opened fire.

p Hitler’s war against the Soviet Union was reactionary, imperialist, aggressive and unjust. So were its aims. German imperialism set out to destroy the Soviet Union and clear the way to world supremacy. It set out to destroy the Soviet system, to capture the land and wealth of the country, to instal German landlords and capitalists in the conquered land, abolishing the statehood of the Soviet people and wiping out Soviet culture.

The nazi treacherous attack exposed the USSR to great peril. The Soviet people were assaulted by a perfidious and brutal enemy who had an immense military potential and would shrink at nothing.