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Day 615 May 7, 1941
Royal Navy knows that German weather ships in the North Atlantic receive encrypted signals using the German naval Enigma codes. Off Iceland, British destroyer HMS Somali captures German weather ship Munchen and her Enigma code book.
In the Arabian Sea 400 miles off Somaliland, German armed merchant cruiser Pinguin shells small British tanker British Emperor, which send a stream of radio signals reporting the attack as the crew is taken off. British Emperor is finally sunk with torpedoes but Royal Navy cruiser HMS Cornwall homes in on the signals to hunt for the raider.
150 miles South of Iceland at 11 PM, U-94 sinks British SS Ixion and Norwegian SS Eastern Star (all hands rescued). Convoy escorts destroyer HMS Bulldog and sloop HMS Rochester drop 98 depth charges over 4 hours but U-94 suffers only minor damage. Italian submarine Tazzoli sinks Norwegian SS Ferlane off West Africa (all hands rescued). German bombers sink British minesweeper HMS Stoke at Tobruk (21 killed, survivors rescued by gunboat HMS Ladybird).
Iraq. 20th and 21st Indian Brigades move out of Basra and capture the nearby port of Ashar.
Overnight, British cruiser HMS Ajax and destroyers HMS Havock, Hotspur & Imperial (en route to meet the Tiger convoy) take a detour to bombard Benghazi, Libya, sinking Italian steamers Tenace & Capitano Cecchi.
Overnight, Luftwaffe bombs Liverpool for the last of 7 nights (75% of the port capacity has been destroyed). Destroyer HMS Hurricane is hit by bomb at Gladstone Dock, causing structural damage (under repair until December). Hull is also bombed.
Field Marshall Wilhelm List, commander of the Twelfth Army, takes the salute at a victory parade in Athens, 7th May, 1941.The troops are in Schutzenpanzerwagen (SD KFZ)251 half tracks. To List's rear is SS-Gruppenfuhrer Josef "Sepp" Dietrich, implying that the troops are Waffen-SS.
Greek general officers are escorted to the surrender conference in a German staff car. Greece would be garrisoned by German and Italian troops.
On 7 May, Schulenburg,(the German Ambassador) secretly opposed to Hitler's invasion, breakfasted with the Soviet Ambassador to Berlin, Dekanozov, whom he ambiguously tried to warn. They met thrice but 'he did not warn,' said Molotov later, 'he hinted and pushed for diplomatic negotiations.' Dekanozov informed Stalin who was becoming ever more bad-tempered and nervous. 'So, disinformation has now reached ambassadorial level,' he growled. Dekanozov disagreed.
'How could you allow yourself to argue with Comrade Stalin! He knows more and can see further than all of us!' Voroshilov threatened Dekanozov during a recess.
On 10 May, Stalin learned of Deputy Fuhrer Hess's quixotic peace flight to Scotland. His magnates, remembered Khrushchev who was in the office that day, were all understandably convinced that Hess's mission was aimed at Moscow. But Stalin was finally willing to prepare for war, admittedly in a manner so timid that it was barely effective.
On 12 May, Stalin allowed the generals to strengthen the borders, calling up 500,000 reserves, but was terrified of offending the Germans. When Timoshenko reported German reconnaissance flights, Stalin mused, 'I'm not sure Hitler knows about those flights.'
On the 24th, he refused to take any further measures. The paralysis struck again. Stalin never apologized but he very indirectly acknowledged his mistakes when he later thanked the Russian people for their 'patience'. But he blamed most of his blunders on others, admitting that he 'trusted too much in cavalrymen'. Zhukov confessed his own failures: 'Possibly I did not have enough influence.' This was not the real reason for his quiescence. If he had demanded mobilization, Stalin would have asked: On what basis? Well, Beria, take him to your dungeons!'
Kulik caught the attitude of most soldiers: 'This is high politics. It's not our business.' The intelligence was now flooding in. Earlier it had been presented in an ambiguous way but now it was surely clear that something ominous was darkening the Western border. Merkulov daily reported to Stalin who was now defying an avalanche of information from all manner of sources. On 9 June, when Timoshenko and Zhukov mentioned the array of intelligence, Stalin tossed their papers at them and snarled, 'And I have different documents'
He mocked Richard Sorge, the master spy in Tokyo who used his amorous and sybaritic appetites to conceal his peerless intelligence-gathering: 'There's this bastard who's set up factories and brothels in Japan and even deigned to report the date of the German attack as 22 June. Are you suggesting I should believe him too?'
Stalin-The Court Of The Red Tsar
by Simon Montefiore