WHEN THE BALTIC FLEET COMMAND GOT WORD FROM Admiral Kuznetsov that the Germans might attack in the early hours of Sunday morning, it came as no surprise. In fact, as Admiral Panteleyev, Chief of Staff, recalled, they had been expecting “minute by minute that the next telegram or telephone call would bring the dark word—war!”
It was almost midnight Saturday when Panteleyev was summoned to join his superior, Fleet Commander Admiral Tributs. “It’s happened,” he thought as he hurried out of the big war room to the Admiral’s private office. There he found Tributs with his Military Council member, Commissar M. G. Yakovlenko. Tributs was leaning back in his black-leather chair, nervously tapping his knee with a long pencil. He displayed no other sign of emotion.
“I’ve just talked with Kuznetsov,” he said without preliminaries. “Tonight we must expect an attack by Germany.”
Panteleyev dashed back to his desk and started sending alerts to all fleet units, to the Fleet Air Staff and the Administration of Rear Services and Supplies.
Actually, the fleet was not in bad shape to meet the emergency. Some progress had been made in preparing the Leningrad sea approaches to repel German attack. As early as May 7 Admiral Tributs decided to post patrol ships at the entrance of the Gulf of Finland and at all naval bases in order to intercept Nazi submarines or surface vessels. However, the cold weather, the late break-up of the ice and the persistent fog delayed Admiral Tributs in making his dispositions. It was not till the second half of May that one submarine, the S-7, took station in the Irben Strait, which gives access to the Gulf of Riga. On May 27 the patrol submarine S-309 assumed a position at the mouth of the Gulf of Finland. At the same time picket ships were posted at Hangö on the Finnish shore across the Gulf of Finland from Tallinn, at Libau (Liepaja), the westernmost Soviet harbor, only seventy miles east of the Soviet-German frontier, and at Tallinn and Kronstadt.
Before June 1 all Soviet cruisers and most of the mine layers and submarines, as well as the floating submarine base, had been pulled back from Libau to Ust-Dvinsk, the fortress and naval base near Riga, where antiaircraft protection was superior to that in exposed Libau. The Oka, a special mine layer equipped to put down antisubmarine nets, was sent from Libau to Tallinn, and the battleship Marat was returned from Tallinn to its old base at Kronstadt.
Neither the Baltic commander, Admiral Tributs, nor his superior, Admiral Kuznetsov, had much taste for Libau. It was an open harbor only a few minutes’ flight from the German air bases in East Prussia, and the naval commanders did not regard it as suitable for wartime use. The Russian Imperial Navy had taken the same view. Under the imperial war plans all warships were evacuated from Libau on the opening day of World War I.
When Libau fell into Soviet hands with the incorporation of the Baltic states into the Soviet Union in July, 1940, Stalin raised the question of what to do with it. He wanted to put a battleship there. Admiral Kuznetsov argued vigorously against this. Stalin listened silently and in the end agreed to station only light naval vessels, principally a submarine brigade, at Libau.
At the same time, as a sop to Stalin, two old battleships, the Marat and the October Revolution,1 were transferred from their secure, well-equipped base at Kronstadt to the new Tallinn base. There they stood in the open roadstead, awaiting the construction of a protective mole. This work, in the hands of the NKVD (police) labor force, was proceeding with utmost dilatoriness (as was most base and fortification work in the Baltic areas).
In April Admiral Panteleyev and several other fleet commanders went to Riga to confer with the recently formed staff of the Special Baltic Military District, which was commanded by Colonel General F. I. Kuznetsov. The army and naval commanders sat long over their maps. In the eight months since the Baltic states had been absorbed by the Soviets much had been done, but much remained to be done. Fortifications along the new frontier were far from complete. The Baltic District was short of troops, short of tanks, short of antiaircraft guns, short of planes. Work on airfields for the new fast fighters and long-range bombers (which they hoped to receive) was going very slowly. Worst of all, the army men said that since the construction was in the hands of the police there was no way to speed it up.
The naval men had equally serious complaints. The new coastal artillery batteries, including those designed to defend Libau from sea attack, were far behind schedule. The new naval bases on the Baltic coast were just being organized. Even the facilities at Riga were not ready and would not be until May 25. Eighty percent of the naval aircraft had to be stationed at rear bases, far from the potential war theater, because the airstrips had not been finished. One officer who inspected the advance fortifications was shocked to find that concrete gun pits were sited so close to the frontier that they had no protective mine fields or barriers in front of them. Others lacked any means of swinging guns in directions other than to the west—they would be useless once an attacker got behind them. Some embrasures were too narrow to contain the weapons they were supposed to receive.
By May the shore batteries at Libau had been installed, but there was no protection from the land side. The naval commander was responsible for defense against sea attacks, but land action was in the hands of the army’s Special Baltic Military District. Coordination between the two services had not been worked out. Army GHQ was at Riga, that of the navy at Tallinn, 180 miles away. The question of supreme command in case of war was not settled. The situation was similar at all Baltic bases in the Leningrad Defense area with the exception of Hangö, where the navy had been given supreme command.
The army’s attitude was epitomized by the Baltic Military Commander, Colonel General F. I. Kuznetsov. When Admiral Kuznetsov sought to discuss with his army namesake a project for constructing a defensive ring on the land approaches to Libau and Riga, General Kuznetsov exclaimed in indignation: “Do you really think we would permit the enemy to get to Riga?”
Only after repeated urging by Tributs, a lively, energetic, impetuous and highly qualified naval officer who could not conceal his feeling of alarm, was the 67th Infantry Division sent to man the land defenses of Libau. But this was on the eve of war, and formal liaison between army and navy was still unresolved as late as midnight, June 21.2
In view of these conditions Admiral Tributs’ proposal that he move his ships out of the dangerously exposed port of Libau made elementary common sense. But there was a major obstacle. Stalin held a different opinion. Stalin had wanted to station a battleship in Libau in the summer of 1940, and he might not welcome the further weakening of the base.
“We were aware that this force was too much for Libau, and when the war threat grew, it was proposed to transfer some of the ships to Riga,” Kuznetsov observed. “Because Stalin’s viewpoint was known I was not willing to issue an order for this without higher sanction.”
Kuznetsov procrastinated but finally agreed to bring the matter up in the Supreme Naval Council in the presence of Andrei A. Zhdanov. Zhdanov, a pasty-faced Party functionary of forty-five, was one of the most powerful of Stalin’s associates. In 1941 his prestige was so high that many spoke of him as a possible successor in the event of Stalin’s death. He was the Party chief of Leningrad and, as such, in general chargé of the Baltic region and the Politburo member most concerned with naval affairs. In the curious confusion of Kremlin responsibilities Foreign Minister Molotov in his dual role as Deputy Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars was chargéd with ministerial responsibility for the Soviet Navy, but it was Zhdanov, the Leningrad leader and active aspirant for Stalin’s mantle, who as secretary of the Central Committee was in political (and actual) chargé of most naval matters.
Half an hour before the Supreme Naval Council met in late April or early May Zhdanov appeared in Kuznetsov’s office.
“Why and what do you want to transfer from Libau?” he asked.
Kuznetsov was ready with his facts and figures. He told Zhdanov the Soviet warships were “like herrings in a barrel” at Libau and that there was a fine base near Riga from which the ships could operate easily in any direction.
Zhdanov was noncommittal. “Let’s see what the others say,” he grunted. No dissent was voiced in the Council, but Zhdanov insisted that the decision be referred to Stalin.
Kuznetsov sent his report to Stalin but got no reply. He had kept a carbon and decided to take the matter up personally with the dictator the next time he had a chance. In mid-May he managed to get Stalin’s approval. He immediately telephoned Tributs: “Go ahead. We have received approval.”
Admiral Tributs continued to worry about the two battleships at Tallinn. The port was open to attack from the north. Neither booms nor nets had yet been placed to protect the battleships from torpedoes. He requested permission to transfer the ships to Kronstadt. It came through on the eve of war. By the evening of June 21 the Marat had safely made its way back to Kronstadt, but the October Revolution still stood in the Tallinn Roads and was not pulled out until early July.
The night of June 21–22 was cool on the Tallinn shore. When Admiral Panteleyev stepped outside the fleet command post after sending off his messages putting the command on the alert, he found a raw wind blowing off the sea. From the nearby fields came the scent of uncut hay. Here, as in Leningrad, it was barely dusk, although the hour was past midnight.
Already the trawler Krambol had put out to strengthen the patrol off Tallinn. The Chief of Rear Services, Major General Mitrofan I. Moskalenko, had asked Moscow for permission to divert the tanker Zhelesnodorozhnik, en route to Libau with a load of fuel oil, to Ust-Dvinsk and Tanker No. 11 from Kronstadt to Tallinn. Fuel supplies were short in both places, and if war came each would badly need it. Two hours later permission came in.
At 1:40 A.M. Panteleyev received confirmation that the entire fleet and its bases had gone on No. 1 Combat Alert. The Libau commander had been given orders to send his remaining type-M submarines (except three on patrol duty) to Ust-Dvinsk and his other craft to Ventspils, further north on the Latvian coast. The commander of the Hangö base was ordered to send his submarines and torpedo boats across the Gulf of Finland to the base of Paldiski, west of Tallinn. There were in the Tallinn Harbor some new ships, not quite finished. Tributs ordered those fit for immediate service incorporated into the fleet in the morning. Those not ready for duty were to go back to the Leningrad shipyards immediately.
After telephoning Tributs just before midnight Kuznetsov placed calls to Golovko at Northern Fleet headquarters at Polyarny and to the Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol.
The Black Sea Fleet had just concluded spring training exercises. Kuznetsov had been in doubt whether to permit the maneuvers, but decided that if war came the fleet might as well be at sea as at its bases.
The exercises concluded June 18, and on June 20 the fleet was back in port in Sevastopol, where a seminar on the maneuvers was scheduled for Monday, June 23.
The fleet had gone on a No. 2 Alert as soon as it reached harbor. However, on Saturday evening many officers and men were ashore, strolling along the Grafsky embankment. Cutters and barges busily plied back and forth between ships and shore. A big concert was in progress at Navy House, with Fleet Commander F. S. Oktyabrsky in attendance. At the movie house on Red Fleet Boulevard a Soviet version of the Fred Astaire–Ginger Rogers picture called by the Russians Musical History was playing.
Some Moscow officers who had come down for the maneuvers had already left, but Rear Admiral I. I. Azarov, chief of the navy’s Political Department, a salty sea dog who had spent his life in the navy, was still in Sevastopol. He spent the evening in the summer garden restaurant at Navy House with an old friend from the Baltic Fleet, Aleksandr V. Solodunov, now in chargé of hydrographic studies for the Black Sea Fleet. The two men drank beer, told stories and had no thought of going to bed. The next day was Sunday. They would sleep late.
Suddenly Azarov noticed the director of Navy House and another officer speaking to a group of commanders at a neighboring table. The men grabbed their uniform caps and hurried out. As they passed Azarov’s table one leaned over and said: “No. 1 Alert has been announced.”
Azarov went straight to headquarters. He found that Chief of Staff I. D. Eliseyev had been on the point of going home when Kuznetsov’s warning call came through. The officer of the day, Captain N. G. Rybalko, had spent a quiet evening. At 10:32 P.M. he telephoned the Inkerman and Kherson lighthouses and ordered the lights turned on so that a tug could tow the nightly garbage scow from the harbor.
Now, a little after 1 A.M., as Azarov stood in the office he could see from the windows the lights of the city begin to dim in accordance with the No. 1 Alert. A siren sounded and there were signal shots from batteries. The radio loudspeakers began to call sailors back to their posts: “Vnimaniye . . . Vnimaniye . . .”
City authorities, thinking another practice alert was under way, telephoned staff headquarters, protesting the blackout: “Why is it necessary to black out the city so quickly? The fleet has just come back from maneuvers. Let the people have a chance to rest.”
They were told to obey orders and not to ask questions. Meanwhile, navy headquarters called the power station and the main switch was thrown. The city sank into darkness.
The city and fleet were fully blacked out, but from the sea still shone the beams of the two lighthouses. Telephone connections to the lights, it developed, were out of order, possibly sabotaged. Finally, a motorcyclist was dispatched and the lights were shut off.
Here and there antiaircraft batteries fired a round of tracer bullets to test their weapons. Fighter planes revved up their motors. Sailors and commanders streamed back aboard their ships to the signal “General Quarters” issued at 1:55 A.M. By 2 A.M. Officer of the Day Rybalko noted that the fleet was in readiness to meet attack.
At about 3 A.M. or a little later the acoustic listening posts on the coast at Yevpatoriya and Sarych Cape reported the sound of airplane motors. Officer of the Day Rybalko checked with the Fleet Air Command and the Air Force. No Soviet planes were in the air. Lieutenant I. S. Zhilin of the Antiaircraft Command telephoned, asking permission to open fire at “unknown planes.”
Rybalko called the fleet commander, Admiral Oktyabrsky.
“Are any of our planes in the air?” Oktyabrsky asked.
Rybalko replied: “No, none of our planes.”
“Bear in mind that if there is a single plane of ours in the air you will be shot tomorrow,” Oktyabrsky rejoined.
“Comrade Commander,” Rybalko persisted, “may we have permission to open fire?”
“Act according to your orders,” snapped Oktyabrsky.
Rybalko turned to Vice Admiral Eliseyev. The answer was so equivocal the young officer did not know what to do.
“What answer shall I give Zhilin?” Rybalko asked.
“Give him orders to open fire,” Eliseyev said decisively.
“Open fire,” Rybalko told Zhilin.
Zhilin understood the personal risks of such action.
“Bear in mind,” he said, “that you are taking full responsibility for this order. I am putting this note into my operations journal.”
“Write what you want,” shouted Rybalko, “but open fire on those planes.”
Almost without interval the roar of planes approaching Sevastopol at low altitude was heard, followed by the chatter of antiaircraft guns, the whine of bombs, the searing stab of powerful searchlights. Planes began to fall in flames. Battery No. 59 brought down the first. The crash of bombs rumbled over the harbor.
It was now some time after 3 A.M., Sunday, June 22.
By 3 A.M. in Moscow Admiral Kuznetsov had stretched out on a leather divan in the corner of his office. He could not sleep. He kept thinking of the fleets, of what might be in progress. He had great difficulty in keeping from picking up the telephone and again calling Admiral Tributs for it was the Baltic Fleet that gave him the gravest concern.
However, he managed to restrain himself by repeating Moltke’s aphorism that once you have given the order for mobilization there is nothing to do but go to sleep for now the machine is working on its own. But he could get no sleep.
A strident ring from the telephone brought him to his feet. It was now fully light.
He lifted the receiver.
“The Commander of the Black Sea Fleet is reporting.”
Kuznetsov knew from Oktyabrsky’s excited voice that something unusual had happened.
“An air attack is being carried out on Sevastopol,” Oktyabrsky gasped. “Our antiaircraft guns are beating off enemy planes. Some bombs have fallen in the city. . . .”
Kuznetsov looked at his watch. The time was 3:15. It had started. He had no doubt. The war had begun.3
He took up the phone again and asked for Stalin’s office. A duty officer answered: “Comrade Stalin is not here, and I don’t know where he is.”
“I have a report of exceptional importance which I must give immediately to Comrade Stalin personally,” Kuznetsov said.
“I cannot help you,” the officer replied, hanging up quietly.
Without replacing the receiver Kuznetsov called Defense Commissar Timoshenko. He repeated precisely what Oktyabrsky had told him.
“Do you hear me?” Kuznetsov asked.
“Yes, I hear you,” Timoshenko replied calmly.
Kuznetsov hung up. A few minutes later he tried another number in an effort to get to Stalin. No answer. He called back the duty officer at the Kremlin and told him: “Please advise Comrade Stalin that German planes are bombing Sevastopol. It’s war.”
“I’ll do what I can,” the officer replied.
A few minutes later Kuznetsov’s telephone rang.
“Do you understand what you have reported?” The voice was that of Georgi M. Malenkov, member of the Politburo and one of Stalin’s closest associates. Kuznetsov thought Malenkov sounded displeased and irritated.
“I understand,” Kuznetsov said, “and I report on my own responsibility. War has started.”
Malenkov did not believe Kuznetsov. He rang up Sevastopol himself and got through to Admiral Oktyabrsky just as Azarov entered the commander’s office. Azarov heard Oktyabrsky’s end of the conversation.
“Yes, yes,” Oktyabrsky was saying. “We are being bombed. . . .”
As he spoke, there was a resounding explosion. The windows rattled.
“Just now,” Oktyabrsky shouted excitedly, “a bomb exploded quite close to staff headquarters.”
Azarov and a friend exchanged glances.
“In Moscow they don’t believe that Sevastopol is being bombed,” the friend said. He was right.4
Within an hour Timoshenko telephoned General Boldin, Deputy Commander of the Special Western Military District, four times. Each time he warned against acting against German provocations, even when Boldin told him his troops were being attacked, towns were burning and people dying.
Marshal Nikolai Voronov, Chief of Antiaircraft Defense, had stayed at his desk, on orders, all evening long. About 4 A.M. he received the first word of the bombing of Sevastopol and of attacks on Ventspils and Libau. He hurried to Timoshenko and found L. Z. Mekhlis, Chief of the Army Political Administration and a close colleague of Police Chief Lavrenti P. Beria, with him. Voronov reported on the bombings. Timoshenko then gave him a big notebook and told him to write down what he had just said. Mekhlis stood behind Voronov, checking the statement word by word, and ordered him to sign it. Voronov was excused without any instructions, any orders, at a moment when, as he observed, every second, every minute counted.
“I left the office with a stone in my heart,” Voronov recalled. “I realized that they did not believe that war actually had started. My brain worked feverishly. It was clear that the war had begun whether the Defense Commissariat admitted it or not.”
He got back to his own office to find his desk heaped with telegrams reporting Nazi air attacks from the Gulf of Finland to the Black Sea. A young woman duty officer, wearing a beret, a revolver at her belt, dashed in from the next-door headquarters of the Armored Forces Administration. In the “secret safe” of the administration, she said excitedly, there was a big packet with many seals on which was written: “Open in Case of Mobilization.” Mobilization hadn’t been announced, but the war had begun—what should they do? Voronov said, “Open the packet and get to work.” He turned to his own officers and began to issue orders.
War had indeed begun, but when General Zhukov, Chief of Staff, reported to Stalin that the Germans were bombing Kovno, Rovno, Odessa and Sevastopol, Stalin still insisted it must be a provocation by the “German generals.” He clung to this conviction for hours.
As the sky brightened outside the windows of Kuznetsov’s office, he waited for orders from someone announcing a formal state of war—or at least for instructions to advise the navy that the attack had started. Nothing happened. His telephone did not ring. It was evident, as he later was to note, that hope for avoiding war still lingered. He could put no other interpretation on the curious response to news of the attack on Sevastopol.
Kuznetsov could contain himself no longer. He dispatched to Admiral Tributs and his other commanders a curt order. It said: “Germany has begun an attack on our bases and ports. Resist with force of arms any attempted attack by the enemy.”
In fleet headquarters at Tallinn Admiral Panteleyev was at his desk in the long, vaulted, coastal artillery gallery which served Tributs as the war room of his combat command post. The gallery dated back to World War I times. It was completely underground. There were no windows. The only illumination was provided by naked strings of electric light bulbs.
Along one wall stood small desks for the telegraph and radio operators. In the center of the chamber was a big situation board with maps of the Baltic area.
Panteleyev’s desk was at the entrance of the noisy room. Officers were coming and going. The telephones rang constantly. His task was to filter the reports, passing on the most urgent to Admiral Tributs. Captain F. V. Zozulya called from Kronstadt. “They’ve dropped sixteen mines at the entrance to the Kronstadt Roads,” he said. “But the channel remains clear.” A report came in from Libau. Captain Mikhail S. Klevensky reported that shortly after 4 A.M. bombs had been dropped on the military quarter of the city and around the airfield.
The Baltic Merchant Fleet relayed a message from V. M. Mironov, captain of the steamer Luga. He was returning to Leningrad from Hangö. About 3:30 A.M. his ship was attacked by a German plane. A score of bullets were fired, and Sergei I. Klimenov, a sailor, was slightly wounded. About the same time the Latvian steamer Gaisma, en route to Germany with a cargo of wood, was torpedoed in an attack by four German cutters off the Swedish inland of Gotland. The action occurred about 3:20 A.M. The Germans turned their machine guns on the Soviet sailors in the water, killing several, including Captain Nikolai Duve. These probably were the first casualties of the Soviet-German war.
Panteleyev looked about. Officers were barking orders. The clock on the wall pointed to 4:50 A.M. He received a call to report to Admiral Tributs. Panteleyev found him striding briskly to his desk, long pencil in hand. The Admiral raised his tired eyes to Panteleyev, who silently handed him a telegraph blank. The Admiral slowly filled in the blank, reading aloud to Panteleyev as he wrote:
“Germany has begun to attack our bases and ports. Resist the enemy with force of arms. . . .”
He sighed, then affixed his signature with a bold stroke. Officer Kashin grabbed the telegram. In an instant it was humming through the air and by the wires to every base and ship in the Baltic.
By 5:17 A.M. word had reached every Baltic unit: “Resist German attack.” Thus, in at least one sector, the vital sea approaches to Leningrad, Soviet forces knew that war had started; that the Germans had attacked; that they must resist with all strength.
Panteleyev went back to his desk. He felt relieved. The die was cast. War had begun. He listened to the hurried chatter of the telegraph keys as the operators tapped out the orders to the fleet. Then he went up the stone staircase and out into the open air.
The sun was rising. The sea was quiet. In the Surop Strait a tug was hauling a string of barges toward Tallinn Harbor. Aboard the tug the sailors were impatient. Harbor and home were in sight. Of war they as yet had no knowledge.
1 Originally called the Petropavlovsk and the Gangut, these 2 3,000-ton ships somewhat resembling World War I Italian battleships were part of the Czarist Navy’s 1909 building program, the first large-scale imperial construction after tne 1905 defeat by Japan. They carried twelve 12-inch guns.
2 Libau had neither the organization nor the forces to meet a German attack in the opinion of Vice Admiral N. K. Smirnov, Political Commissar of the Baltic Fleet. (N. K. Smirnov, Matrosy Zashchishchayut Rodinu, Moscow, 1968, p. 20.)
3 Kuznetsov’s timing of events on the night of June 21–22 leaves much to be desired. He gives different times in different versions of his memoirs. For example, Vice Admiral Azarov says he heard the first burst of antiaircraft fire at Sevastopol at 3:30 A.M.Officer of the Day Rybalko timed the first burst at 3:13 A.M. Admiral Kuznetsov, apparently basing himself on Rybalko’s notes, gives the time of the approach of German planes as 3:07 A.M. It probably would have taken Oktyabrsky’s call at least ten minutes to get through to Moscow. Thus it probably was closer to 3:30 A.M. that Kuznetsov got the call from Sevastopol.
4 Marshal Budyonny disputes this. “There wasn’t a single small child who didn’t believe the Germans were getting ready to attack,” he insists. “If Stalin didn’t believe this, then why was I appointed nine hours before to command the Reserve Army?” He insists there was no question of disbelieving the bombing reports. He heard them about 4 A.M. and called Admiral Kuznetsov to obtain confirmation. As for difficulties in getting through to Stalin, everyone was trying to telephone him and naturally some of the calls were taken by duty officers. (Budyonny, personal conversation, July, 1967.)