Intelligence

Already during the first weeks of the Germano-Soviet war first reconnaissance and subversive units were parachuted in the enemy rears or transferred across the frontlines in order to carry intelligence operations on behalf of the special cells of the General Staff, fronts and armies, as well as autonomous specialized units organized in the "Big Land". First groups started operating in Lithuania and White Russia, as well as in eastern Poland. The latter included Poles, veterans of the Polish campaign 1939 and interned in the USSR. Those recruited for the Soviet intelligence, were trained in the intelligence centre Skhodnya near Moscow. More >>>

Defence plans

Changes in the political configuration of the Soviet Union's western frontier, which occurred in 1939-1940, brought the necessity of numerous corrections in the Soviet strategic defence plans. Since the spring of 1940 those corrections had been made at the General Staff, and involved Marshal Boris Shaposhnikov (Chief of the General Staff), Gen. Nikolay Vatutin (Chief of Operations of the General Staff), Gen. Alexander Vasilevskiy (Deputy Chief of Operations of the General Staff), Gen. Kirill Meretskov (Deputy People's Commissar for Defence), Gen. Gherman Malandin (Deputy People's Commissar for Defence), Gen. Andrei Anisov (Deputy People's Commissar for Defence), Gen. Georgiy Zhukov (Commander of the Kiev Special Military District), and many lower-ranking officers of the General Staff. More >>>