“Operation Snow”

In 1995, Committee for State Security lieutenant general Vitaly Pavlov published “The Time Has Come to Talk about Operation ‘Snow’” in News of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. Pavlov maintained that, in early 1941, Soviet intelligence had concluded that Germany would invade the USSR and Japan would use the opportunity to invade the Soviet Far East, confronting the USSR with an unwinnable two-front war. The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs then launched Operation Snow to manipulate American policymakers into adopting a stance that would provoke Japan to attack south against American, British, and Dutch possessions rather than north. Its instrument was U.S. Treasury Department official Harry White. Pavlov claims he met with White in May 1941, and White agreed to carry out the plan. Five books have appeared treating Operation Snow as historical fact, the two most recent by reputable scholars. This increasing acceptance of Operation Snow has been facilitated by the lack of any detailed examination of the validity of Pavlov’s claims. An examination of the evidence shows that Operation Snow was fiction aimed at raising the prestige of Soviet-era intelligence in the eyes of the Russian public. Operation Snow never happened

Counterintelligence · Economic history · Geography · Meteorology · Political science · Snow · History · Intelligence, Security, War Strategy · Law