The Greatest Battle

by Andrew Nagorski

  The worst thing about Stalin’s orders was that building and equipping new fortifications lagged way behind the abandonment or destruction of the old ones. When the Germans attacked, most of the newly constructed concrete emplacements were short of artillery and otherwise inadequately prepared for the German onslaught. The result was that they were easily overrun or bypassed. If Stalin had had another couple of years to prepare them, perhaps this wouldn’t have been the case, but time was a luxury he didn’t have.

  There’s no question that Stalin was playing for time. Isaac Deutscher, one of his early biographers, claimed that Stalin was hoping to be as successful as Tsar Alexander I, who made peace with Napoleon, which provided him with four years to prepare for war. The problem is that the Soviet leader clearly convinced himself that his wishes represented reality, and his refusal to accept the evidence to the contrary amounted to a monumental failure of leadership. This meant that he not only failed to make the best use of the time he had to prepare his forces for the attack that was coming but also impeded many of the efforts to make such preparations. Instead of putting his troops on full alert, he ordered them to do nothing that the Germans might construe as hostile behavior. Instead of signaling the need for utmost vigilance, he encouraged a false sense of security.

  As late as June 14, 1941, the Soviet news agency Tass dismissed rumors that the German troop build-up on the border meant that an invasion was imminent. “Germany is observing the terms of the nonaggression pact as scrupulously as the U.S.S.R., and therefore rumors of Germany’s intention to violate the Pact and attack the U.S.S.R. are groundless, while the recent transfer of German forces from the Balkans to the eastern and northeastern areas of Germany must be assumed to be linked to other motives unconnected with Soviet-German relations,” it asserted. The impact of such statements was, as one Soviet officer put it, “to dull the forces’ vigilance.”

  True, Stalin did take some actions that indicated he realized he might be wrong in his calculations. He appeared to issue an indirect warning to Hitler when he spoke to the graduates of the military academy on May 5. “Is the German Army invincible?” he asked. “No. It is not invincible.” He argued that the German leaders “are beginning to suffer from dizziness” from their string of successes. “It seems to them that there is nothing that they could not do,” he added. Then, repeating his point that the Germans weren’t invincible, he concluded, “Napoleon, too, had great military success as long as he was fighting for liberation from serfdom, but as soon as he began a war for conquest, for the subjugation of other peoples, his army began suffering defeats.”

  Leaving aside the irony of Stalin preaching about liberation versus subjugation and the implied message that the German conquests were justified up to that point but wouldn’t be if Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, the speech did signal some awareness of the looming danger. A week later, the Soviet leader agreed to the calling up of five hundred thousand reservists to strengthen border defenses, but this was a classic case of too little too late. Many of the fresh troops wouldn’t be deployed in time. Besides, production of new weapons had barely begun, and many existing military units were woefully underequipped. In March 1941, Stalin received the news that only 30 percent of tank and armored units could be adequately supplied with the parts they needed to operate. “Fulfillment of the plan for the supply of the military technology the Red Army needs so acutely is extremely unsatisfactory,” his top generals reported a month before the Germans attacked.

  Some historians have argued that at one point Stalin was even contemplating a preemptive attack against Germany, but a far stronger case can be made that he deluded himself to the very end that, at the very least, he could stall the Germans for another year. And, given his preoccupation with imposing Soviet rule on eastern Poland and the Baltic states—which meant full-scale terror in the form of mass deportations and executions—there’s even the possibility that he still believed that the ideal scenario would be one in which the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany never went to war. In that situation, the Germans and the Allies would wear each other out in a long struggle, giving the Soviet Union all the breathing room it needed and possibly the chance of more territorial gains later.

  Late in 1939, the French news agency Havas reported on a speech Stalin allegedly delivered on August 19 of that year, right before formalizing his agreement with Hitler. In it he argued that if the West defeated Germany in a long war, that country would be ripe for sovietization; but if Germany won in a long war, it would be too exhausted to threaten the Soviet Union and a communist takeover would be possible in France. Hence a win-win situation for the Soviet Union and his conclusion that “one must do everything to ensure that the war lasts as long as possible in order to exhaust both sides.”

  Stalin reacted to the Havas report by promptly branding it a total fabrication. But in his denial he insisted, “It was not Germany that attacked France and Britain but France and Britain that attacked Germany, thereby taking on themselves responsibility for the present war.” Even if Stalin didn’t make that speech, his protests were almost as revealing as the contested transcript. Besides, Stalin let slip similar comments on September 7, 1939, in the presence of several of his top aides. Discussing the war “between two groups of capitalist countries,” as he characterized the Western powers and Germany, he concluded, “We see nothing wrong in their having a good fight and weakening each other.”

  Whatever Stalin had come to believe about German intentions by the spring of 1941, he continued to react with fury whenever he was confronted with more evidence that he had grossly miscalculated. His underlings knew that they had to couch all bad news in slavish praise of their boss. Just a day before the German invasion when Beria sent Stalin a report with the prediction of Vladimir Dekanozov, the Soviet ambassador in Berlin, that the attack was imminent, the secret police chief prefaced it with the declaration: “My people and I, Joseph Vissarionovich, firmly remember your wise prediction: Hitler will not attack us in 1941!”

  By that time, the Germans were ready to strike. On the night of June 21, Soviet military commanders had reports from three separate German deserters from the front lines, who had crossed to the Soviet side to warn that the attack was coming at dawn. In each case, the news was relayed up the chain of command until it reached Stalin. But the Soviet leader kept insisting that the deserters had been sent over to provoke his troops. While he continued to maintain that Hitler wouldn’t attack, he did belatedly agree to place border units on alert. At the same time, he issued an order to shoot the third German deserter—Alfred Liskov, a young communist from Berlin who had brought the “disinformation” that would prove Stalin wrong.

  In Stalin’s world, “shoot the messenger” wasn’t a metaphor.

  2

  “Look how smart we are now”

  Unlike many of his counterparts who commanded other military units on the Soviet Union’s western border, General Georgy Mikushev wasn’t content to sit idly by while the German military machine geared up for its attack. His Forty-first Infantry Division, which consisted of fifteen thousand men, was deployed about six miles from the border of the western Ukraine, with seventy thousand German troops facing them on the other side. The Germans had about four hundred artillery pieces and mortars ready for the attack, twice the number possessed by Mikushev’s regiment. The Soviet general may not have known the exact numbers of enemy troops and guns he was facing, but he wasn’t impressed by the Kremlin’s desperate insistence that nothing was amiss in the German-Soviet relationship, and he was determined to prepare for the worst—even if it meant defying his superiors.

  On June 17, Mikushev quietly began calling back his units that had been dispatched on exercises or other assignments. At the base camp, the troops were ordered to make sure they were fully armed and ready. The artillerymen prepared their shells, machine gunners gathered up their rounds, and snipers filled their ammunition pouches with bullets. On the evening of Saturday, June 21, Mikushev gathered his top
officers, who assured him that their men were all on alert. They also reported growing anger in the ranks about the frequent overflights by German aircraft and the lack of retaliation against them.

  Mikushev listened and then chose his words very carefully. “Since the regiment is near the border and we have specific missions, we must be ready for all kinds of developments,” he told them. “I know how cunning the German army is from my experience in World War I. And, of course, the Fascists are even more cunning.” As he wrapped up his talk, Mikushev ordered his officers to stay with their units, taking as little time off as possible. And he emphasized that they had to be ready to fight at very short notice. To maintain that state of readiness, the officers would need to pass those orders down the line. To deflect attention from the real motive for these preparations, Mikushev had his officers explain to their subordinates that the regiment was expecting a visit from senior brass, which meant everyone had to show themselves to be battle ready.

  It was just after 3 A.M. the following day, June 22, that the German attack began. While many other regiments were caught completely by surprise and routed almost instantly, Mikushev’s troops quickly sprang into action, firing back at the attackers and slowing their advance. But this was in direct contradiction of an order from the Kremlin sent out less than an hour earlier, instructing the border units to reach the stage of “full combat readiness” but at the same time warning them “to not respond to any provocative actions that might result in serious complications.”

  Although many units—including Mikushev’s—didn’t even receive this order before the German attack began, his immediate superior, Lieutenant General Ivan Muzichenko, was furious when he received a report from informers in the Forty-first Division that Mikushev had authorized his troops to open fire. By 7 A.M., with the battle raging around them, a young officer arrived carrying instructions from headquarters to dismiss and arrest Mikushev for issuing the order to shoot without permission from his superiors—in other words, for insubordination. Mikushev kept his cool, telling his aides, “I think this situation will not last for long. Presumably the order has already been rescinded.” Even the NKVD agents in the unit who were supposed to arrest him looked stymied. Here they were supposed to arrest their commander who had had the foresight to prepare them for the German assault that was now in full swing. Mikushev told them they could arrest him and his men would go on fighting anyway.

  But it wasn’t an angry exchange. Mikushev had good relations with the senior NKVD officer in his regiment, and neither wanted to make the other look bad—and both men recognized the gravity of their predicament. Formally, Mikushev agreed to his arrest, and he retreated to a dugout where he would officially be held. But during the next three hours, his two top aides kept visiting him, getting his orders and relaying them to the troops so that nothing came directly from him. This maintained the pretence that he was under arrest and no longer in command.

  At 10 A.M., as the German offensive intensified, the senior NKVD officer and an aide went into the dugout. After a brief conversation with the “prisoner,” Mikushev emerged dressed in blue dungarees and a helmet and carrying an automatic weapon. Looking calm and in command, he took up a position in a cluster of pine trees outside the camp and started issuing orders directly to his troops again. Seeing his confident manner, they continued fighting, acquitting themselves well against the superior numbers and firepower of the German invader. In fact, they even pushed across the border a few kilometers into German-occupied Poland before they were driven back.

  Mikushev’s story was atypical for several reasons. Because of his foresight and initiative, his troops put up a more effective resistance than most of their compatriots elsewhere who also bore the brunt of the initial German attack. Because the senior NKVD officer in his unit was a reasonable man, he only went through the motions of an arrest without the normal consequences and then dropped the pretence altogether that Mikushev was a prisoner. And because Soviet defenses were collapsing so quickly and the Kremlin leadership had no idea what to do about it, Mikushev pulled off the virtually impossible feat of acting independently of his Stalinist masters and getting away with it.

  True, as his troops kept fighting during that summer, he was nearly arrested again when he escaped with his men from a German encirclement, ignoring the general orders not to retreat under any circumstances. But his evident courage and skill won the day in that case as well. On September 9, however, his luck ran out. A German machine gunner cut him down during a battle for control of a bridge. “Men like Mikushev fought till the last drop of blood,” says retired Red Army colonel and military historian Nikolai Romanichev. But what was remarkable about Mikushev’s heroism was that it was as much a product of his defiance of Stalin’s willful blindness as of his courage in facing the Germans.

  Far more typical, though, were the stories of German troops who were pleasantly surprised by the speed of their first victories and by the confusion and disarray of the Soviet defenders. Hans von Herwarth, who had served in the German embassy in Moscow in the 1930s, found himself crossing back into Soviet territory, this time as part of the army of would-be conquerors. Before dawn on June 22, his regiment’s artillery let loose against the Red Army’s positions for forty-five minutes, the firepower “making an awesome impression” against the dark sky. “For several hours the Soviets did not reply,” he recalled. “We had caught them unprepared, and, as many Russians told us later, not even dressed for the day.” This lack of preparation was more the norm than the exception. When German troops shelled the western Ukrainian city of Lvov, the local Soviet commander also failed to respond. After he was taken prisoner, he told his captors that he was initially convinced that German artillery must have been firing at his positions by mistake and that he was also acutely aware of the Kremlin’s order to avoid overreacting to any “provocations.”

  As they crossed the Bug River into Soviet territory, Herwarth’s regiment encountered strong resistance from NKVD border troops, some of whom were hidden in tree tops, allowing them to fire down at the invaders. But once they had overcome those fighters, the Germans discovered that the next part of their advance was remarkably easy. “The fighting spirit of the Soviet infantry could not have been lower,” Herwarth wrote. “If they put up any stiff resistance it was only because of the difficulty of deserting at that particular moment, due, for example, to the temporary stabilization of the front line.” Once the Germans broke through the Soviet line, “the Red Army abandoned all resistance, throwing away their weapons, and waiting to be taken prisoner.” Cavalry patrols from his regiment went out to round up their seemingly willing victims. “The prisoners followed without resistance, often trudging in long lines behind a single German soldier,” he added.

  From the tales of Red Army soldiers who survived the German assault, it’s easy to understand why many of their comrades felt they were better off in captivity. Vyacheslav Dolgov, who had just graduated from military school on June 21, 1941, was dispatched to serve as a political officer for the 375th Regiment in Staraya Russa in the Novgorod region on the northwestern front. Now a retired general living in Moscow, Dolgov describes himself as a true believer in those days. “I honestly believed in the iron fist and the genius of Stalin.” But he also vividly recalls the fear everyone in his unit felt about facing the Germans, particularly given how poorly equipped they were. “We asked our commander to give us weapons, since we were sent to fight without guns. We were told to seize weapons from the enemy and defeat them with their guns,” he said. “We would sometimes manage to get some guns from the Germans, but that was why there were so many casualties. I saw fields covered with dead bodies.” Dolgov and the regiment’s commander had to urge their troops on with shouts of “Hurrah! For the motherland! For Stalin!” and lead the attack before anyone would follow.

  Dolgov also recalled the sight of “cowards” surrendering in huge numbers. Once, he spotted a group of men wandering between two villages, waving white clothes. “
These were desperate Russian soldiers who had taken off their white underwear and were waving it to surrender,” he said. Other soldiers fled to the woods, hiding there and surviving by eating berries and scooping up water from the bogs and boiling it in their helmets after taking the lining out. During the battles around Staraya Russa, Dolgov was wounded for the first of several times during the war. Of the two to three thousand men in his regiment, only seventy-five survived.

  As his comrades died all around him, Dolgov recalled, he saw German fighters downing the few Soviet air force planes that had scrambled to meet them. “I felt sorry for our pilots,” he said. “The Germans kept hitting our planes, and I remember seeing one of our pilots parachuting from his burning wreck. A German pilot shot him.” The German pilots also dropped propaganda leaflets claiming that the whole Soviet front was collapsing, right up to and including Moscow. “Moscow has surrendered,” they asserted. “Any further resistance is useless. Surrender to victorious Germany now.” Despite the speed of the German advance, there was no way this could have been true at that point, but the leaflets convinced many of the frightened soldiers that they were already part of a defeated army.

  Little wonder that they felt that way. The German strike proved devastating for the Soviet air force, many of whose planes stood in neat formation on airfields in the western districts, offering Luftwaffe pilots ideal targets. On the first day of the assault, the Germans destroyed almost all the planes of the Baltic military district before they ever had a chance to take off, and throughout the border regions, the scorecard for the first day totaled approximately twelve hundred Soviet aircraft. At the same time, the German planes were free to roam the skies, attacking panicked ground troops and civilians at will. Major General I. I. Kopets, the commander of the Western front’s air force, had vowed to shoot himself if his planes were wiped out by a surprise attack. Seeing this happen on the first day of the German invasion, Kopets did exactly that.