In describing how intelligence was collected and reported to Moscow, Murphy chillingly documents what it meant to be an intelligence officer under Stalin by following the careers of three men. NKVD foreign intelligence chief, Pavel Fitin, whose agents reported on German plans for BARBAROSSA right up to the attack, served throughout the war, but was in disgrace afterward. Ivan Proskurov, an air force officer and head of military intelligence during 1939–40, insisted on telling the truth to Stalin. He was shot in October 1941. Proskurov’s successor, Filipp I. Golikov, suppressed or altered intelligence reporting that did not meet the Soviet dictator’s preconceptions. He prospered under Stalin.”

This self-imposed isolation and distortion under which Stalin received intelligence and acted as his own analyst was replicated by Saddam Hussein in 2003, himself an admirer of the Soviet dictator’s methods, to even worse consequences. Foreign Affairs has published an excerpt, “Saddam’s Delusions“, from the Iraq Perspective Project that demonstrates that in comparison to Saddam’s fantasy world, Stalin’s decision making in 1941 was the epitome of rationality and clear thinking. The position and perspective of leadership inherently contains an element of distortion but it is evident that totalitarian, hyperviolent political systems like those created by Joseph Stalin or Saddam Hussein magnify the distortions a thousandfold.

Interestingly enough, Steury points to the possibility that even completely accurate information might not sway megalomaniacal dictators. His source is Adolf Hitler, reflecting upon the errors in German intelligence prior to Barbarossa:

“In closing, it is worth noting that there was another failure of judgment in BARBAROSSA, that of Adolf Hitler. Hitler, like Stalin, was a victim of his own preconceptions, but, in contrast to Stalin, he was ill-served by his intelligence services. Suffering from what the Japanese, from bitter experience, would call “victory disease,” the Germans overestimated their own capabilities, even as they underestimated the Soviet capacity to resist. In July 1942, one year after the start of the campaign, Hitler admitted as much to Marshal Carl Gustav Mannerheim, the Finnish military leader, on a visit to Helsinki—Finland then being a cobelligerent with Germany in its war with the Soviet Union. “We did not ourselves understand— just how strong this state [the ussr] was armed,” Hitler told him, “If somebody had told me a nation could start with 35,000 tanks, then I’d have said, ‘You are crazy!’ . . . [Yet] . . . We have destroyed—right now—more than 34,000 tanks . . . . It was unbelievable . . . . I had no idea of it. If I had an idea—then it would have been more difficult for me, but I would have taken the decision to invade anyhow . . . .”[8] History does not record Marshal Mannerheim’s reaction.”

[ Emphasis mine ]

Statesmen who deal with information from a variety of sources, including intelligence, need to step back a bit and assess the limitations and gaps, the potential for error, self-referential bias and outright lies. Everything needs to be questioned and taken with a grain of salt. Yet in the end, decisions have to be made and neither credulity nor paranoia will serve.

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