NIKOLAY KUZNETSOV

The Second World War

Kuznetsov played a crucial role during the first hours of the war at this pivotal
moment, his resolve and blatant disregard for orders averted the destruction of the
Soviet Navy. By June 21, 1941, Kuznetzov was convinced of the inevitability of war
with Nazi Germany. On the same day Semyon Timoshenko and Georgy Zhukov
issued a directive prohibiting Soviet commanders from responding to "German
provocations". The Navy, however, constituted a distinct ministry (narkomat), and
thus Kuznetsov held a position which was technically outside the direct chain of
command. He utilized this fact in a very bold move.

Shortly after midnight on the morning of June 22, Kuznetsov ordered all Soviet fleets
to battle readiness. At 3:15 am that same morning, the Wehrmacht began Operation
Barbarossa.[4] The Soviet Navy was the only branch of the military in the highest
state of combat readiness at the start of the initial German push.

In the following two years, Kuznetsov's primary concern was the protection of the
Caucasus from a German invasion. Throughout the war, the Black Sea remained the
primary theater of operations for the Soviet Navy. During the war years Kuznetsov
honed Soviet methods of amphibious assault. In May 1944 he was given the rank of
Admiral of the Fleet a newly created position initially equated to that of a four-star
general. In the same year, Kuznetsov was given the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
On May 31, 1945, his rank was equated to the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union
with a similar insignia.

June 28

Relations between Japan and the Soviet Union (as well as the latter's predecessor, Czarist Russia,
with whom the Japanese had fought a war) had been extremely tense.
1 Japan had been at war with pre-Communist China since 1931. In that conflict, the Japanese had
assumed control over the Chinese province of Manchuria. That led to border clashes between the
Japanese and the Soviet Union, whose Asian sectors adjoined that province.
2 Confrontations between Japan and the Soviets had lasted off and on for decades (the
Manchurian conflicts only adding to long-standing hostility), and fueled Japan's inclination to target
Stalin's Soviets for their oil.
3 Enter Richard Sorge (described by Evans and Romerstein as perhaps the most effective Soviet
agent in history), a wounded German World War I veteran who showed up in Japan posing as a
journalist fiercely loyal to Nazi Germany, then a Japanese ally. As a correspondent for a German
newspaper, Sorge had the advantage of access to the German embassy in Tokyo.
4 Herr Sorge in reality was also a ten-year veteran of the Soviet GRU (military intelligence). His
spy ring at the time focused mainly on subterfuge to dissuade Japan from invading the Soviets
included a Red Chinese Communist, Chen Hang Sen; American pro-Soviet writer Agnes Smedley; a
British subject, Guenther Stein; and Japanese Communists Horsumi Ozaki and Kinkazu Saionji,
both with influences extending into the Japanese imperial cabinet.

From Soviet asset Lauchlin Currie at the White House to volunteer Soviet agent
Harry Dexter White at Treasury to vehemently pro-Red Owen Lattimore of the
Institute of Pacific Relations (all with the alacrity and unison symbolic of a
transmission belt) chimed in to warn that any sign of America's willingness to sit
down and just talk with the Japanese would smack of a "betrayal" of Nationalist
Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek.

..."Irreparable damage to the good will we've built up in China," according to Currie.

..."A Far Eastern Munich," protested White.

..."I have never seen [Chiang] really agitated before [learning of the overture to the
Japanese]," said Owen Lattimore, a U.S advisor to Chiang. That was Lattimore's
version of Chiang's reaction. No independent verification from the generalissimo
himself. (Worthy of note was that a Democrat-led Senate subcommittee would later
define Lattimore as "a conscious, articulate instrument of the Soviet conspiracy."

Though crocodile tears from these Soviet apologists were voluminous indeed, none
of this same group of people shed similar tears for Chiang Kai-shek when (thanks
also to "Stalin's secret agents") the generalissimo was overthrown by the
Communists, which left the world to this day with a Chinese regime whose founder,
"Chairman Mao," was the bloodiest mass murderer in history, and whose successors
hold in their hands a good chunk of U.S. indebtedness. China's military buildup
someday could lead its leaders to threaten the Western world with nuclear
blackmail.

Later, Soviet KGB operative Vitaly Pavlov would disclose he had traveled to
Washington months before the lead-up to Pearl Harbor in order to brief Harry Dexter
White on points to emphasize when speaking against a U.S.-Japan rapprochement.
His words were strikingly similar to those used by the U.S. in its impossible demands
issued to the Japanese just days before the bombs dropped on the huge U.S. fleet
docked at the Hawaii facility.

Stalin:His evacuation of large parts of Soviet heavy industry from the western USSR
to locations east of the Urals, secured the Soviet manufacturing base required for
successful prosecution of the war.