The Ruling Elite

by Deanna Spingola

  According to the document, Germany had the following objectives:

  II. Probable Allies and their Tasks:

  1.Germany anticipated the active participation of Romania and Finland in the war against Soviet Russia. The High Command will in due time arrange and determine in what form the armed forces of the two counties will be placed under German command at the time of their intervention.

  2.Using selected forces, Romania was to support the attack of the German southern wing, at least in its beginnings; to pin the enemy down where German forces are not committed; and otherwise to render auxiliary service in the rear area.

  3.Finland will cover the concentration of the German North Group (parts of the XXI Group) withdrawn from Norway and will operate jointly with it.

  4.Germany expected that Swedish railroads and highways to be available for the concentration of the German North Group, from the start of operations. 1202

  Suvorov concluded, after evaluating documents kept at the Central Archive of the Russian Ministry of Defense, that Marshal Semyon Timoshenko and Generals Georgy Zhukov and Aleksandr Vasilevsky, in charge of the People’s Defense commission, on March 1, 1941, presented a plan to Stalin to invade Germany. 1203

  By May 1941, per Stalin’s orders, the Soviet propagandists initiated a major campaign in order to allow him to take political and ideological control of the Red Army and its assets for the purpose of engaging in a surprise offensive war. The Department for Political Propaganda of the 5th Army and the Chief of the 7th Department of the GUPPKA (Chief Administration of Political Propaganda of the Red Army) collaborated on a Plan for Politically Securing Military Operations during the Offensive, which indicates that they were quickly executing Stalin’s orders. German troops confiscated this revealing document and other important papers from the headquarters of the 5th Army in the Kiev Special Military District. In this document, the Chief of Political Propaganda gave his instructions on preparing and disseminating the propaganda preparatory to an assault on the Wehrmacht who they asserted were militarily inferior. 1204

  There was another report, dated May 4, 1941, on the Morale of the Population of the General Government intimating that the German Wehrmacht, because of low morale, was in the process of disintegrating because of dissatisfaction with Hitler’s policies. The Soviet propagandists claimed that German soldiers were engaging in drunken behavior, committing suicides, and deserting. For this reason, per the propaganda, the Red Army could “quickly shatter the morale and strength of resistance of the soldiers.” 1205 During the same time period, German-speaker Sefton Delmer worked for Britain’s Political Warfare Executive (PWE). He broadcasted from London, perpetrating black propaganda over the BBC. He used rumors to provoke German soldiers to question the war. He attempted to weaken morale by pretending to be a German totally disillusioned with the NS regime. 1206

  On May 5, Stalin spoke to the graduating officers of the Frunze Military Academy. He said, due to their superior and increasing strength, and because of the Reich’s deteriorating military abilities, it was time “to abandon defensive tactics and adopt a military policy of attack operations.” He knew in 1940 that war with Germany was inevitable. While people never revealed the text of his speech, the military leaders and propagandists, General Golikov and Lev Bezymensky, soon circulated misinformation about his “peaceful intentions,” aimed specifically for Germany. 1207 He said, “War with Germany is coming whether Germany wants it or not.” Many people reported what he said about initiating a war with Germany. After Germany’s invasion, on September 15, Lieutenant Colonel Liapin said, “We had quite generally expected the outbreak of war with Germany, since Stalin, during the officers’ reception on May 5, in the Kremlin, had said that we must constantly expect war and be very well prepared for it.” 1208

  Meanwhile, Hitler focused on the war in the west, though he dreaded more air raids on London, after the first one on August 24, 1940. He hoped that the entire war would be over in 1941. On May 10, he sent 500 assault planes to Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, all of whom had declared war on Germany because of Britain’s influence. His war in the west was a diversion from his plans for an attack against the Soviets. On that same day, Rudolf Hess, the Deputy Führer, flew to Scotland on a peace mission, as they believed that the Duke of Hamilton and others opposed Churchill. Officials immediately arrested Hess, later tried him at Nuremberg, and then incarcerated him for the rest of his life. 1209 By May 15, the Soviets had, according to the General Staff, 303 divisions. Out of those 303 divisions, 258 divisions and 165 flight regiments would be devoted to fighting the German’s “surprise attack.” By August, Stalin would have between 330 to 350 divisions deployed against the Germans and their allied armies. Germany had 3,550 German tanks and assault guns whereas the Soviets only used between 14,000 and 15,000 tanks out of a total inventory of 24,000. 1210

  Soviet plans, though not implemented, included a strategic deployment plan of March 2, 1941 and an operational plan of May 15. This blueprint was:

  1.Implement the secret mobilization under the cover of exercises for Red Army soldiers.

  2.Concentrate troops in the vicinity of the western border areas under the pretense of training camps; as a priority, they would concentrate all of the reserve armies of the Soviet High Command.

  3.Secretly concentrate the Air Forces on airfields while increasing the ground organization.

  4.Organize the rear support services under the screen of training procedures/exercises. 1211

  Stalin approved of the documents that the marshals had prepared. They became part of the Strategic Deployment Plan of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union. Marshal Georgiy Zhukov issued a document subtitled how the Chief of the General Staff of the USSR in May 1941 Wished to Preempt Hitler. 1212 The Soviet essentials of war, according to their manual, states, the Red Army “are an offensive army, the most offensive of all armies.” Further, it reads, “The war will always, in all cases, be conducted on enemy territory, with the fewest possible casualties among one’s own forces, and will end with the utter destruction of the enemy.” Per that dogma, “There is no possibility of the penetration of hostile forces into the territory of the USSR.” Major Alexei Filippov, on June 26, 1941, said the “prevalent opinion among the troops was that the Red Army could not be beaten.” Major Mikhailov, on August 4, 1941, said, “The Red Army was the best armed and trained in the world, and was therefore invincible.” 1213

  Stalin, with his huge supply of weaponry, was prepared for an offensive war and not necessarily for a defensive war to protect their country. His propagandists have falsified the facts and claimed that their aircraft was old and obsolete. The Soviets began developing revolutionary aircraft in 1934, which they used in the Spanish Civil War. They had, by 1938, the Polikarpov I-16, the world’s first cantilever-winged monoplane fighter with retractable landing gear. It had two synchronized machine guns mounted atop the engine. This gun could fire 1,600 rounds per minute. They were years ahead of the Germans. The troops were not, as they have been characterized, a bunch of peasants wielding hayforks. By August 1939, their fighters had rockets in addition to other powerful armaments. They also had a plane that had an armored fuselage, essentially a flying tank, replete with powerful weaponry. However, the Soviets, despite their technological advantages, were untrained to fight air battles with a formidable enemy. They knew how to wage offensive “shock and awe” warfare—hitting ground targets. This makes it comparatively easy to exert military supremacy over an unwary enemy and to bomb their strategic military, transportation, and communication facilities. 1214

  The United States replaced Stalin’s material losses, for the imminent war, with the Lend-Lease program, written by Felix Frankfurter, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Soviets would be the biggest benefactors of this legislation. 1215 One factor in Hitler’s favor was their lack of discipline, inherent in communism. The Soviets bombed factories that
would go back into production within a month. Military commissars would shoot their own reluctant soldiers. The Soviets were in full production of weaponry by 1938 before the two nations signed the non-aggression pact. Hitler recognized that it was more important to control or eliminate access to oil and other primary war resources than to bomb factories. 1216

  Hitler had attempted to avoid another major war. Early on, he recognized that the Soviets intended to dominate Europe. In as much as peaceful measures and attempts to unite with other European countries against the Soviets had failed, he believed that the best way to minimize kindred fratricide was to strike Russia early and hard. A conquest of Russia would solve the population and food production challenges of Europe, the real Lebensraum, which meant sufficient food for all. The Soviets outnumbered Hitler in every respect—on land, sea and air. Germany, with limited resources, needed a short decisive victory. Now, after his air assault, with England in retreat and other European countries secured, he could focus on Russia. 1217

  If Hitler waited until 1942, the Soviets would be even more indomitable. Stalin may have thought that as long as Hitler was warring with the West, he would have time to ramp up for the Soviet assault on all of Europe, beginning with Germany. However, on April 3, 1941, Winston Churchill sent a confidential warning to Stalin telling him about the impending German invasion. He received similar warnings from the U.S. Undersecretary of state, Sumner Welles, and from the Yugoslavian ambassador to Moscow, Milan Gavrilovic. 1218

  On June 13, 1941, Richard Sorge, a key Soviet spy, obtained secret intelligence from his lover, Hanako Ishii, that he relayed to the Kremlin stating that Germany was going to launch an attack against the Soviet Union on June 22. Friedrich Sorge, an associate of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels was Sorge’s great-uncle. Sorge, who worked as a journalist in both Germany and Japan, told the NKVD in Moscow that Germany had ten armies in 150 divisions for an attack along the whole frontier. Although Stalin had other warnings, including those from certain people on the German General Staff, he seemed to disbelieve them. Starshina, a spy delivered “highly sensitive information about German war plans.” The British also had the Enigma Machine and Ultra which they used to decipher all messages from the German High Command, including those from the Wehrmacht General Staff. Although the Soviets were aware of Operation Barbarossa, Stalin decided that, either his own agents were inefficient or naïve or that Britain and the United States were attempting to ensnare them in a war with Germany. 1219

  According to Soviet intelligence, during the month of June, German envoys in Moscow began packing and shipping their property out of the Soviet Union. Furthermore, Stalin did not believe that Germany was sufficiently prepared to invade the Soviet Union before 1942, whose country was so large that it encompassed eleven time zones. How could Hitler muster enough of an army to combat at least 6,000,000 soldiers, augmented by the potential of millions of reserve troops? The Soviet military had, per the recently-released statistics, a possible 300 armed divisions with 120,000 mines and cannons, 23,300 tanks, and 22,400 aircraft. The Soviets had twice as many planes, 10,000-11,000, compared to the number that Germany had, about 5,000. 1220

  On June 14, 1941, double-agent spies in the German General Staff alerted their superiors in Moscow about an attack scheduled for June 22. Others, who defected to the Soviets, confirmed Hitler’s attack plans. In addition, the British Secret Service, through their connection to the traitor, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, confirmed the attack. As a result, Stalin directed a blackout of towns and cities close to the Polish border. He then mobilized his defenses at the border. His forces were inadequate but he still had an advantage in men and equipment. 1221

  On June 22, the morning of Germany’s Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, Hitler addressed the nation. He said, “As early as 1936, according to the testimony of the American General (Robert E.) Wood to a committee of the American House of Representatives, Churchill had said that Germany was becoming too strong again, and that it therefore had to be destroyed. In summer 1939, England thought that the time had come to renew its attempts to destroy Germany by a policy of encirclement. Their method was to begin a campaign of lies. They declared that Germany threatened other peoples. They then provided an English guarantee of support and assistance, as in the World War, let them march against Germany. Thus between May and August 1939, England succeeded in spreading the claim throughout the world that Germany directly threatened Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Finland, Bessarabia, and even the Ukraine. Some of these nations allowed themselves to be misled, accepting the promises of support that were offered, and thereby joined the new attempt to encircle Germany.” 1222

  Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa had an effect on the rest of Europe. Hundreds of thousands of citizens from other European countries joined him in his efforts to thwart the Communist aggressor from taking over all of Europe. Soldiers joined Hitler, to create an authentic pan-European Army. They came from Spain, Croatia, France, Norway, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Serbia, Belgium, Slovakia, Estonia, Ukraine, and even Poland. The “Free Arab” and “Free Indian” SS voluntary divisions respectively fought against Zionism and British imperialism. Even Tibetan warriors joined the fight against Communism. The Cossacks of Russia joined Hitler. After the war, the Allies sent these brave dissidents back to the Soviet Union to a certain death. 1223 One may read about this in The East Came West by Peter J. Huxley-Blythe. Many preferred suicide rather than return to Russia where they would face torture and certain death.

  Khrushchev admitted that in 1941, Stalin, when he found out that Germany had invaded, absolutely panicked. However, he had a huge network of spies in various places in Germany, including people who were in top leadership positions. Thus, the idea, as Khrushchev claimed, of Stalin retreating to his dacha-fortress and refusing to see anyone is debatable. He was depressed, apathetic and did not attend to any of the affairs of the state. Finally, on July 1, members of the Politburo forced him to return to his duties. Typically, he worked from early morning to late at night, but abandoned this habit after this “unexpected” invasion. Despite his rhetoric about being prepared for war, he was unprepared for an invasion of his country. 1224 He then painted Hitler as the aggressor, which served his purposes.

  Before July 1, within a week after the invasion, Stalin increased the Red Army by an additional 5.3 million men. 1225 The Germans downed 400 enemy planes the first day and destroyed double that number from the ground, all with few casualties. Within ten days, they were fifty miles into Soviet territory and had captured 290,000 Soviet soldiers, 2,500 tanks, and other artillery. Meanwhile, Soviet divisions retreated and then surrendered. The Germans captured another 100,000 Soviets. German losses remained low. Within a few months, Stalin’s military was overwhelmed and in chaos. He was unable to counter a surprise attack. By November, the Germans had taken another two million Soviet prisoners. The Soviets lost 14,200 aircraft, 17,500 tanks and 21,600 artillery pieces. 1226 In the opening weeks of the war, according to recently declassified Russian sources, just on the Soviet Western Front, there were 1,297,954 total casualties, with 328,735 listed as wounds, burns or concussions. Almost seventy percent of all the wounded, who they evacuated, had some form of psychiatric disability. 1227

  Germany’s assault would have been successful except that the majority of the elite military staff, including Admiral Canaris, opposed it, which resulted in aristocratic treason. Hitler knew that a swift victory was essential because of the brutal Soviet winters. He also insisted that the German Army hit the primary resources in the Ukraine, the oil and minerals, rather than the factories, which the Soviets could reassemble elsewhere. However, the generals doubted his strategies. Then unexpectedly, Hitler was stricken with severe abdominal cramps and for three agonizing weeks, he was unable to give direction. 1228 He was perhaps, poisoned.

  With Hitler’s incapacitation and unavailability, Germany’s elite military staff split his off
ensive in half, diverting it away from the southern resources and towards the Soviet capital, Moscow that had no strategic military value. By the time Hitler recovered from his mysterious malady, it was too late to stop the military movement northward. October rains made the battlefields unmanageable, which drastically affected Germany’s ability. Stalin, somehow knowing that the Germans had changed course, evacuated the factories and government offices. 1229

  The German soldiers, still in their summer uniforms, were now in sub-zero temperatures. They had run out of fuel and the supply system, under the direction of the elite generals, was unable to supply the troops because they had altered the plans but had not made appropriate accommodations for supplying the necessary food, clothing and other essentials. Because of the generals’ costly changes, the army, moving toward Moscow, came to a standstill. The other half of the army was still moving south. Sorge’s lover, at the time, told him that the Japanese were not going to attack the Soviet’s Siberian border. He notified his superiors in Moscow and Stalin transferred the majority of his troops from the Siberian border to fight the Germans around Moscow. 1230 Knowing this enabled the Soviets to relocate their reserves from the Far East to the European theatre where they were available just in time to participate in the battle of Moscow. The Soviets were then assured that they would only be fighting a one-front war. Germany had to maintain troops and equipment in the West and also on the eastern front. 1231