Stalin’s Blindness

"Zero hour was approaching. Five mechanized division of the Wehrmacht were deployed along the River Bug, on the Polish-Soviet frontier, in a state of high alert ready to jump off eastwards..Daily newspaper headlines in neutral countries, like Switzerland, announced the coming invasion of Russia...Richard Sorge - Soviet master spy in Tokyo - informed his Moscow superiors of the exact date weeks ahead: June 22, 1944. Moscow replied: "Doubts about the reliability of your sources." When Klausen, Sorge’s communication officer, decoded the radio message from Moscow, Sorge ranted: "I’m fed up! Why don’t they believe me? How can those degenerates ignore my warnings?" ...Leonard Trepper, whose "Red Orchestra" was a Communist Soviet espionage network that covered the whole of Western Europe, informed Moscow of the coming invasion. Moscow didnt even acknowlege. "Leopold Trepper in Paris, like Rado in Geneva, like Sorge in Tokyo, was frantic. On June 21 - faced with the silence of his superiors in Moscow, who believed him even less than his colleagues in Switzerland and Japan - Trepper broke the most sacred rule of espionage. In panic, he rushed to Vichy, where the Soviet Embassy to Occupied France was located. That evening, he knocked on the door of General Sosloparov, the Soviet military attache, and begged him: "I have news that the Germans will be attacking tonight. You must transfer it by urgent coded cable to the Kremlin." Sosloparov laughed: "Are you mad? It’s impossible! For your own sake, I refuse. Moscow will think you’re crazy..."

But Leopold Trepper pleaded and the cable was sent. It arrived in Moscow that evening. Since Trepper was usually considered reliable, the Head of Intelligence decided to take the telegram personally to his boss

.. Stalin glanced at the decoded text, thought for a moment, and muttered. "Otto (Trepper’s code name) usually has an acute political sense. How did he fall victim to crude British provocation?"

The next day the Germans invaded Russia.

How could the Russians have been so blind? Apparently Stalin "was convinced that Germany would not be free to move east until Hitler’s work of destruction was completed in the west...Stalin’s calculation assumed attrition of the Wehrmacht in the west, before it turned on the Soviet Union." Stalin’s calculations had no room for negative feedback from his competent agents.