MOSCOW, June 21. /TASS/. The General Staff of Nazi Germany's Air Force by March 1941 had already developed a plan for bombing Leningrad, Vyborg, Kiev and other cities of the Soviet Union, as follows from an intelligence report from Berlin, presented by the presidential National Center for Historical Memory at a TASS press conference.
"In the German Air Force General Staff intensive work is in progress in case of military operations against the USSR. Plans are being drawn up for bombing the most important facilities of the Soviet Union. It is proposed, first of all, to attack key bridges in order to prevent the delivery of reserves. A plan for bombing Leningrad, Vyborg and Kiev has been drawn up. The Air Force General Staff regularly receives photos of Soviet cities and other facilities, in particular the city of Kiev," reads an intelligence agent’s message from Berlin to the 1st Department of the USSR People’s Commissariat of State Security (NKGB), received no later than March 27, 1941.
Another memo notes intensive attempts by Germany’s aviation attache, Colonel Heinrich von Aschenbrenner in Moscow to find out the location of Soviet power plants. For this purpose, he personally traveled by car around the areas where they were located.
"Among Air Force officers there is a widely spread opinion that a military campaign against the USSR is presumably timed for the end of April or the beginning of May. The reason behind these dates is the Germans intend to preserve the harvest for themselves. By their calculations, retreating Soviet troops will be unable to set fire to the still green grain crops," the message says.
On June 21, TASS and the National Center for Historical Memory under the President of the Russian Federation signed a memorandum of cooperation. It envisages the launch of an information and educational project on key dates and events crucial to historical memory, one of them being June 22 and the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.