General has directed the GRU, Soviet military intelligence, since July 1940. He inherited the post after the dismissal of his predecessor , removed for having spoken to Stalin too frankly about the Red Army's lack of preparation. The implicit message was lost on no one in the apparatus.
In this spring of 1941, agents' reports pile up on his desk. They describe a concentration of German troops along the frontier, an attack on three axes, the names of commanders, a provisional opening date. The picture is coherent and alarming.
But Golikov also knows what Stalin believes. The master of the Kremlin holds the German-Soviet pact of 1939 to be solid and judges it inconceivable that Hitler would open a second front before finishing with England. The British, in his eyes, have but one aim: to sow discord between Moscow and Berlin. Berlin, for its part, has launched a vast operation of deception to mask its preparations.
On 20 March, Golikov submits his report. There remains the conclusion: to write it as the facts demand, or as the powers that be demand.
Should Golikov present the German concentration as a real threat of invasion, or describe it as Anglo-American disinformation?
Golikov chose B: his report faithfully described the German dispositions, then defused them. He wrote that the majority of the reports mentioning a war in spring 1941 came from 'Anglo-American sources whose aim, without any doubt, is to worsen relations between the USSR and Germany'. The most precise intelligence was thus filed under disinformation; Golikov instead forecast German operations against the United Kingdom, Gibraltar and the Near East. He told Stalin exactly what he wanted to hear. On 22 June, the invasion would sweep away this fiction. As for Proskurov, his predecessor, he would be shot on 28 October 1941 for having 'failed' to anticipate the very attack he had precisely foretold.
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