Book Reviews : Codeword Barbarossa. By BARTON WHALEY. (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1973. Pp. 376. $10.00.)

• Author: Robert C. Stine
• DOI: 10.1177/106591297402700115
• Published date: 01 March 1974
• Date: 01 March 1974
• Subject Matter: Articles

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Codeword Barbarossa. By BARTON WHALEY. (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press,
1973. Pp. 376. $10.00.)
The opening days of Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s invasion of Russia, were
characterized by almost complete strategic surprise. German forces caught thou-
sands of Soviet aircraft on the ground and found the Russian Army in an extremely
poor state of readiness. Why the Soviet forces were so unprepared has been some-
what of a mystery. Some place the blame on the ineptness of Soviet intelligence.
Khrushchev, among others, places the blame on Stalin, who, it is claimed, failed
to heed numerous warnings because of his unwillingness to recognize Hitler’s deter-
mination to attack. Barton Whaley, in Codeword Barbarossa, a revision of his 1969
doctoral dissertation, offers another solution to the mystery; Hitler was able to
achieve strategic surprise through a deliberate campaign of deception which masked
his true intentions.
The intelligence cycle consists of two principal steps, collection and production
(or evaluation). Whaley offers evidence that Soviet intelligence collected con-
siderable amounts of raw data about German activities in the year preceding Bar-
barossa. He lists eighty-four separate warning reports which are believed to have
reached Soviet intelligence. Unfortunately the evaluation of this raw intelligence
led Stalin to the wrong conclusion. The deception campaign included the following
phases. At first, word leaked that German troop movements in the vicinity of the
Russian border were maneuvers in preparation for Operation Sea Lion, the inva-
sion of Great Britain. Later, reports...