Winter War, Kira Murdered and Hitler's Next Move

対フィンランド「冬戦争」、副国防相夫人誘拐と殺害

[Kira Kulik, the wife of Deputy Defence Commissar] was trebly tainted, for she was an aristocrat with links to Tsarist intelligence and the ex-wife of an arrested Jewish merchant….

When she was alone by the piano with Stalin (at her husband’s birthday party), she asked him to free her brother, a former Tsarist officer, from the camps. Stalin listened affably…. … Kira’s approach, presuming on her familiarity and prettiness, set a mantrap in his suspicious mind. (pp. 290-291)

Days later, Kulik ordered the artillery barrage that commenced the Soviet invasion of Finland,… which like the Baltic States had been part of the Russian Empire until 1918 and which now threatened Leningrad.

On 12 October, a Finnish delegation met Stalin and Molotov in the Kremlin to hear the Soviet demands for the cession of a naval base at Hango. The Finns refused the Soviet demands, much to Stalin’s surprise….

During dinner with Beria and Khrushchev at his flat, Stalin sent Finland his ultimatum….

On 30 November, five Soviet armies attacked along the 800-mile long border. Their frontal assaults on the Mannerheim Line was foiled by the ingenious Finns, who, dressed like ghosts in white suits, were slaughtering the Russians…. By mid-December, Stalin lost about 25,000 men. He amateurishly planned the Winter War like a local exercise, ignoring the Chief of Staff Shaposhnikov’s professional plan…. After 9 December, the Ninth Army was decimated around the destroyed village of Suomussalmi.

… Stalin’s first solution was to dispatch the ‘gloomy demon’ Mekhlis, now at the height of his power, to the front.

… On the 26th, Stalin finally appointed Timoshenko to command the North-Western Front and restore order to his frayed forces who were now dying of hunger….

Mekhlis arrived in Suomussalmi to find chaotic scenes which he made worse. He confirmed the losses and shot the whole command….

On 1 February… Timoshenko probed Finnish defences, launching his great offensive on the 11th…. The Finns sued for peace. On 12 March, Zhdanov signed a treaty in which Finland ceded Hango, the Karelian Isthmus, and the north-eastern shore of Ladoga, 22,000 square miles, to insulate Leningrad….

… Mekhlis revealed that the Finns often attacked during the Red Army’s afternoon nap. ‘Afternoon nap?!’ spat Stalin. (pp. 291-294)

In May, Stalin ordered the kidnapping of Kulik’s wife, Kira…. On 5 May, Kobulov, the prince-assassin Tsereteli and a favoured torturer Vladzimirsky trailed Kira on her way to the dentist, then bundled the beauty into a car and took her way to the Lubianka….

[On 7 May, Kulik] called Beria, who invited him to the Lubianka. While Kulik sipped tea in his office, Beria called Stalin:

‘Marshal Kulik’s sitting in front of me. No, he doesn’t know any details. She left and that’s all. Certainly, Comrade Stalin, we’ll announce an all-Union search and do everything possible to find her.’ They both knew that Kira was in the cells beneath Beria’s office. A month later. Countess Simonich-Kulik, mother of an eight-year-old daughter, was moved to Beria’s special prison, the Sukhanovka, where Blokhin murdered her in cold blood with a shot to the head. Kobulov complained that Blokhin killed her before he arrived…. (pp. 295-296)

カチンの森

[To handle the Polish officers arrested or captured in September 1939,] Blokhin traveled down to the Ostachkov camp where her and two other Chekists outfitted a hut with padded, soundproofed walls and decided on a Stakhanovite quota of 250 shooting a night…. [H]e began one of the most prolific acts of mass murder by one individual, killing 7,000 in precisely twenty-eight nights, using a German Walther pistol to prevent future exposure. The bodies were buried in various places – but the 4,500 in the Kozelsk camp were interred in Katyn Forest. (pp. 296-297)

ヒトラーの対ソ心理戦

That June, the Führer unleashed his Blitzkrieg against the Lower Countries and France….

Stalin had seized a buffer zone from the Baltic to the Black Sea but he now started to receive intelligence of Hitler’s intention to attack the USSR. He redoubled his attention to the Germans….

… However insistent the facts of the German military build-up, the Soviet spymasters were under pressure to provide the information that Stalin wanted: ‘We never went out looking for information at random,’ recalled one spy. ‘Orders to look for specific things would come from above.’

Stalin reacted to this uneasiness by aggressively pushing the traditional Russian interests in the Balkans which itself alarmed Hitler, who was weighing up whether to attack his ally. He decided to invite Molotov to Berlin to sidetrack the Soviets into a push for the Indian Ocean…. In his handwritten directive, Stalin instructed Molotov to insist on explanations for the presence of German troops in Romania and Finland, discover Hitler’s real interests and assert Russian interests in the Balkans and Dardanelles…. (pp. 297-298)

もう読んでしまった部分だが、“Stalin” にはあとでソビエトのスパイ、ゾルゲが少しだけ登場する。ドイツのソ連空爆開始情報を本国に見事に伝えている。ゾルゲと尾崎秀実、少しぐらいは読まないと。