ABSTRACT
We were both for many years hampered to different degrees by the inaccessibility of the relevant archives in the Soviet Union. Up to about 1990 we were only able to count on the more or less official publications by Soviet authors, who used materials provided to them by the officials responsible, or on intelligence sources in Western archives and publications in Western countries. Even though Rohwer had had contact since 1975 with the then Director of the Institute of Military History of the Soviet Army, Lt-Gen. Prof P.A. Zhilin, during the annual meetings of the International Commission of Military History (ICHM), there was no real exchange of materials possible during this period of ‘stagnation’. This began to change when in 1988 General Polkovnik Prof D. Volkogonov and his assistant, Kapitan 1 Ranga LA. Amosov, became the Soviet representatives at the ICHM. During the International Congress of Historical Sciences held in Madrid in 1990 they arranged a meeting with the then head of the archives of the Soviet General Staff, Polkovnik
I. Venkov, and his assistant, then Major O. Starkov. With their unconventional assistance Rohwer was allowed access for the first time to important documents on the shipbuilding plans of the Soviet Navy from 1926 to 1941. These became the source for several articles in Western journals and publications.6 They were also the basis for the presentation of a joint paper by Rohwer and Amosov at the Naval History Symposium of the US Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1993 on parallels between Stalin’s and Hitler’s naval programmes, published in a slightly diflferent version in Germany.7
