What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa

This "riveting account of one of history's greatest blunders" chronicles Russia's tragic mishandling of Nazi Germany's invasion during WWII (William L. O'Neill, The New Leader). On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany's Operation Barbarossa was launched against Russia. Within days, the invading army had taken hundreds of thousands of Soviet captives while the Luftwaffe bombed a number of Russian cities, including Minsk. Though accurate intelligence about the plan had been available to Stalin before the attack, he chose not to heed the warning. In What Stalin Knew, historian and former chief of the CIA's Soviet division David E. Murphy illuminates many of the enigmas surrounding the catastrophic invasion, offering keen insights into Stalin's thinking and the reasons for his fatal error of judgment. A story of successful misinformation campaigns, and a leader more paranoid about threats from within his regime than from an aggressive neighbor, this authoritative history sheds essential new light on the most consequential event in the Eastern Front of World War II. "If, after the war, the Soviet Union had somehow been capable of producing an official inquiry into the catastrophe of 6/22--comparable in its mandate to the 9/11 commission here--its report might have read a little like [this book]. . . . Murphy brings to his subject both knowledge of Russian history and an insider's grasp of how intelligence is gathered, analyzed and used--or not." --Niall Ferguson, The New York Times Book Review "A fascinating and meticulously researched account of mistaken assumptions and errors of judgment . . . Never before has this fateful period been so fully documented." --Henry A. Kissinger

About the Author :
David E. Murphy, now retired, was chief of CIA's Berlin base from the early 1950s to 1961 and then became chief of Soviet operations at CIA headquarters in the United States. He is coauthor of Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War, also published by Yale University Press.

Review :
Selected for AAUP Books for Public and Secondary School Libraries, 2006 "David Murphy brings the incisive eye of a former intelligence professional to the dramatic story of Operation Barbarossa. The result is a significant addition to our understanding of Stalin and the Second World War." --David Stafford, author of Churchill and Secret Service and Roosevelt and Churchill: Men of Secrets "David Murphy has written a valuable and detailed account of the intelligence from Soviet sources warning Stalin of Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, that helps to explain his costly refusal to heed their warnings." --Donald Kagan, Yale University "What Stalin Knew is a fascinating and meticulously researched account of mistaken assumptions and errors of judgment that culminated in Hitler's invasion of Russia in June 1941. Never before has this fateful period been so fully documented." --Henry A. Kissinger "This is a masterly book, very well documented and composed. It casts a clear and strong light on what is (and remains) the enigma of June 1941 and of the two or three months preceding it: what Stalin knew, and, perhaps more telling: what Stalin did not want to know. David Murphy's knowledge and his reading of Russian papers, books, and articles is the fundament of this extraordinary reconstruction. It should be of high interest, well beyond the ranks of Russian and Soviet specialists, for every serious reader about the Second World War." --John Lukacs "Fascinating and shrewd, this intelligence officer's investigation throws new light onto Stalin's colossal blunder, one of the war's greatest mysteries--as well as tells the story with the suspense of a wartime thriller." --Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar and Potemkin: Catherine the Great's Imperial Favourite