Such numerical comparisons are, in any case, often misleading— whether in the heat of the battle, or after the event—and it would be fruitless to discuss the rival claims in detail here. There were, however, three factors which favoured the Russians in the battle around Smolensk: Firstly, the morale of the Russian troops was now much higher than it had
been; the thought that they were not fighting in distant Belorussia, but literally on the road to Moscow had an important psychological effect. Secondly, Soviet artillery, which was almost the only weapon the Red Army had with which to fight both tanks and
aircraft, was considerably better than the German. Thirdly, very important militarily and even more so psychologically, there was the first appearance of the devastating katyusha mortars. As Marshal Yeremenko later wrote:
We first tried out this superb weapon at Rudnya, north-west of Smolensk. In the
afternoon of July 15, the earth shook with the unusual explosion of jet mines. Like red-tailed comets, the mines were hurled into the air. The frequent and dazzling
explosions, the like of which had never been seen, struck the imagination. The effect of the simultaneous explosion of dozens of these mines was terrific. The Germans
fled in panic, and even our own troops near the points of the explosions, who for reasons of secrecy had not been warned that this new weapon would be used, rushed back from the front line.
[ Voyenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, 1959, No. 1, p. 51 (Historico-military Journal), quoted by IVOSS.]
The Russians had also thrown in a few modern planes, so that German air supremacy was no longer quite as complete as it had been during the first three weeks of the war.
But whatever the numerical superiority of either side, the essential fact remains that the Russians succeeded in slowing down, and then halting, the German blitzkrieg just east of Smolensk—and that this had several important consequences.
From the Russian point of view it was a desperate rearguard action—but one on a large enough scale, and long enough sustained, to give the Russian High Command a
breathing-space. The "Smolensk Line" was the shield behind which the Soviet armies were able to regroup, and bring up reserves, for the defence of Moscow. But for this, Moscow might well have fallen, as Hitler had originally planned, before the winter set in.
From the German point of view the Russian stand in the Smolensk area was the first
check to their plans, and the resulting delay faced them with a major strategic problem.
On August 4, when the heavy fighting around Smolensk had already gone on for about
three weeks, Hitler held a conference at Novy Borissov, at the headquarters of Army
Group Centre. According to Guderian, who attended it, Hitler designated the industrial area of Leningrad as his primary objective. He had not yet decided whether Moscow or the Ukraine would come next, but seemed to incline towards the latter target... He hoped to be in possession of Moscow and Kharkov by the time winter began. But no decisions were reached on this day.
[Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader (London, 1952), pp. 189-90.]
For the next twenty days heavy, but still inconclusive fighting continued in the Smolensk area, and when Hitler held another conference on August 23, Guderian's pleading in
favour of a concentrated drive on Moscow was turned down. Hitler had finally made up his mind to attack the Ukraine and the Crimea, saying that the raw materials and the agriculture of the Ukraine were vitally important to the prosecution of the war. As for the Crimea, it was "a Soviet aircraft carrier for attacking the Rumanian oilfields", and must therefore be eliminated. "My generals," he said, "know nothing about the economic aspects of war." Whether or not Hitler still thought that, under this new plan, Moscow could fall before the winter, it was clear to Guderian that this was now most unlikely, and he took Hitler's decision very badly—or at least so he said after the war. He was later to refer to Hitler's decision to move two armies and one tank group to the south, instead of concentrating the attack on Moscow, as a "fatal error".
*
Though the Russians dismiss as fantastic the German claim to have captured 348,000
prisoners, over 3,000 tanks and over 3,000 guns in the Smolensk fighting, Russian losses were undoubtedly heavy. They themselves admit the loss of 32,000 men "missing", 685
tanks and 1,176 guns.
[IVOVSS, vol. 2, p. 77.]
Nevertheless the Smolensk battle was one of the turning points of the war. The Russians had halted the German blitzkrieg, and had forced Hitler to change his plans. Furthermore, it had an important effect on morale within the Red Army. Whereas, initially, many
Russian soldiers had been, as it were, psychologically overwhelmed by the power of the German army, and particularly by the number of their tanks, by the end of July more and more Russian soldiers had learnt to use weapons such as grenades and "Molotov
cocktails" against tanks, and (perhaps because of pep-talks by the Army's propaganda services) a healthy hatred of the Germans more and more took the place of sheer fear. An important aid to morale was a lavish distribution of medals and decorations, though not as lavish as it became later. About a thousand decorations were awarded after Smolensk and seven men were given the title "Hero of the Soviet Union".
Chapter V CLOSE-UP ONE: MOSCOW AT THE BEGINNING
OF THE WAR
I arrived in Russia on July 3, 1941, that is, twelve days after the beginning of the German invasion. Geographically, the journey from London to Moscow was of a kind that was
only conceivable in wartime: travelling with the second batch of the British Military Mission, I was flown to Inverness, then to the Shetlands, and from there, by Catalina flying boat—all in one sixteen-hour hop—to Archangel. The last few hours we flew over the vast uninhabited tundra country of the Kola Peninsula. Then, after flying over the White Sea and Archangel harbour, we came down on the waters of the Dvina river, some miles south of Archangel. Here, on board a sort of large house-boat, a sumptuous supper had been laid on by the local military authorities, and this supper continued, right through the "white" night till two or three in the morning. Among the members of this second batch of the Military Mission—the first batch, with General Mason MacFarlane at its
head, had flown to Moscow a few days before—were two Home Office officials in
colonel's uniform, one a fire-fighting expert, who was taking a stirrup pump to Moscow, and the other a shelter expert.
Our hosts were a colonel and two majors, both extremely amiable, and, as the evening progressed, other officers joined the party. Several referred to Stalin's broadcast that day, and thought it would be a very long and hard war, but that Russia would win it in the end.
One of the majors assured me that Moscow's air defences wese such that it would
probably never be bombed, and that the same was true of Leningrad.
All of them were eagerly interested in Britain with which Russia had, obviously, had very little contact for a long time. The curious thing was that both the colonel and the two majors showed a very special interest in Rudolf Hess and seemed, in fact, rather worried about him. They had read Churchill's speech and said that the Russian people had been very gratified by it, though they knew that Churchill had been one of the chief
"interventionists" in the Civil War; even so, one of them asked, was I really absolutely sure that Hess's proposals had been turned down? They were, obviously, not quite sure yet of either Britain's or America's disposition.
Outside, it had been a "white" night throughout. The fir trees on the steep sandy banks of the river were silhouetted against the brief twilight. There were lots of mosquitoes about.
After a couple of hours' sleep we were taken in motor-boats some distance up the river and then by car to an airfield. At 6 a.m. the sun was already high in the sky. Blades of grass and wild flowers were swept by the wind as we walked to the plane. It was a
luxurious giant Douglas, and for three or four hours we flew ov
er what looked like one vast interminable forest. Then, at Rybinsk, we crossed the Volga and, after flying over some more thickly populated country, we reached the outskirts of Moscow.
On the face of it, Moscow looked perfectly normal. The streets were crowded and the
shops were still full of goods. There seemed no food shortage of any kind; in Maroseika Street, I walked that first day into a big food shop and was surprised by the enormous display of sweets and pastila and marmelad; people were still buying food freely, without any coupons. In their summer clothes the young people of Moscow looked anything but
shabby. Most of the girls wore white blouses, and the men white, yellow or blue sports shirts, or buttoned-up shirts with embroidered collars. Posters on the walls were being eagerly read, and there were certainly plenty of posters: a Russian tank crushing a giant crab with a Hitler moustache, a Red soldier ramming his bayonet down the throat of a giant Hitler-faced rat— Razdavit' fascistskuyu gadinu, it said: crush the Fascist vermin; appeals to women—"Women, go and work on the collective farms, replace the men now in the Army! " On numerous houses the front pages of that morning's Pravda or Izvestia with the full text of Stalin's speech were stuck up, and everywhere crowds of people were re-reading it.
All sorts of peculiar things were happening: I saw the last issue of Bezbozhnik, the
"godless" paper; it was entirely devoted to indignant denunciations of the Nazi persecutions of the Protestant and Catholic Churches in Germany! Clearly, Stalin was working for the greatest unity among the Russian people, and anti-religious propaganda had completely vanished since the war had begun. However, the Bezbozhnik's volte-face was a bit blatant, and, in fact, this was to be its last issue. It was closed down "owing to paper shortage". Instead, Emelian Yaroslavsky, the "anti-God" leader, was publishing pamphlets like The Great Patriotic War, in the best nationalist tradition, which they were now selling on bookstalls.
Partly perhaps as a result of Stalin's warning against spies and "diversionists" there was a real spy mania in Moscow. People seemed to see spies and paratroopers everywhere. The British army N.C.O.s who had travelled with me from Archangel had a most unpleasant
experience on that very first day. From the airfield, they had gone to Moscow in a lorry, together with the Mission's luggage. At a street corner they had been stopped by the militia; puzzled by the unfamiliar British uniforms, a crowd had gathered round them and somebody had said "parachutists", whereupon the crowd had grown angry and
vociferous. So the N.C.O.s had to be taken off to a police station, where they were finally rescued by an Embassy official.
Everyone was being asked for papers on all kinds of occasions, and it was absolutely essential to have these in order, especially after the midnight curfew, when a special pass was required. Speaking anything but Russian aroused immediate suspicion.
Auxiliary militia-women were particularly keen. I remember walking with Jean
Champenois [The Agence Havas correspondent in Moscow who joined the Free French
in 1941.] along Gorki Street at sunset, when suddenly a militia-woman pounced on him shouting: "Why are you smoking?" and ordered him to put out his cigarette at once; she thought he might be signalling to German aircraft!
All day long, soldiers were marching along the streets, usually singing. The opolcheniye movement was in full swing; during those first days of July tens of thousands of men, many of them elderly, volunteered, appearing at assembly points—such as the one
opposite the house I lived in, in Khokhlovsky Lane—by the hundred, all carrying small bundles or suitcases. After being sorted out—and partly rejected—they were sent to
training camps.
Apart from that, the mood in Moscow still seemed reasonably calm. People could still be seen laughing and joking in the streets though, significantly, very few talked openly about the war.
I found the Lenin Mausoleum closed, and was waved away, but without any explanation, by two bayoneted guards. On the surface, life seemed, in many ways, to go on as before.
Fourteen theatres were open and invariably crowded, and restaurants and hotels
continued to be packed.
For all that, Moscow was preparing for air raids. Already on July 9, special trucks began to run along the tram-lines, distributing heaps of sand. That week I wrote an article on the London blitz and on British air raid precautions, and this was promptly published in Izvestia, was much talked about, and even produced some polemics on the pros and cons of pouring buckets of water over incendiaries, which I had declared to be wrong. My
story of the London blitz was widely discussed, all the more so as during the Soviet-German Pact the Russian press had not dwelt very much on Britain's experiences of
bombing.
The prospect of German air raids led, by the second week of July, to a large-scale
evacuation of children from Moscow. Many women were also urged to leave and to work
on kolkhozes. Railway stations were crowded with people who had permits to leave Moscow. Many of the women I saw at the Kursk Station on the night of July 11, on their way to Gorki, were weeping; many thought they would not get back to Moscow for a
long time, and perhaps, for all they knew, the Germans would come.
*
Anglo-Russian relations were rapidly improving. Sir Stafford Cripps, who had been cold-shouldered by the Russians right up to the beginning of the Nazi invasion, had two
meetings with Stalin in the second week of July, and on July 12 the Anglo-Soviet
Agreement was solemnly signed by Molotov and Cripps in Molotov's office at the
Kremlin, in the presence of Stalin, Admiral Kuznetsov, General Shaposhnikov, General Mason MacFarlane, and Laurence Cadbury, head of the British Trade Mission. Stalin,
through an interpreter, talked at some length to Mason MacFarlane, and chocolates and Soviet champagne were served.
At Lozovsky's [ A Deputy Foreign Commissar and the Deputy-Chief of Sovinform-
bureau. His chief in the latter organisation was that extremely hard "Stalinist" party boss, member of the Politburo, A. S. Shcherbakov] press conference on the following
afternoon, the Russians were still showing surprise at the signing of the agreement
providing for mutual aid and promising not to make a separate peace with Germany.
Lozovsky himself seemed pleasantly surprised, and said it was the biggest blow for
Hitler, since it smashed his plan for fighting East and West separately. Asked whether the USA could be considered a silent partner to this agreement, he said gallantly: "The USA is too great a country to be silent."
The press set-up in Moscow during those first weeks of the war was a very strange one.
The only official sources of information were the Soviet press with their war
communiqués and their war reportages, and these press conferences held three times a week by Lozovsky.
The reportages in the press dealt chiefly with isolated cases of Russian bravery and heroism, though, occasionally, especially in the army paper, Red Star, there were some useful analytical articles. The communiqués tended to be cagey and often gave only the vaguest indications of where the fighting was actually taking place, but people soon learned to read between the lines. Fighting in "the Minsk direction" or "the Smolensk direction" usually meant that these cities had already been lost, and a study of the communiqué vocabulary taught one to understand the degree of the Russian setbacks;
thus "heavy defensive battles against superior enemy forces" meant that the Russians were in full and disorderly retreat; this was the worst of all the communiqué phrases.
The general tendency of Lozovsky's press conferences was to suggest that all the Russian setbacks were temporary; that, whatever the loss of territory, the Germans were not going to win; that Moscow and Leningrad, in any case, would not be lost; that Russian losses were admittedly high, but that German losses were higher still —the most questionable of his arguments;
that relations between Germany and her satellites were highly strained, also a questionable proposition in the summer and autumn of 1941. Occasionally he
revealed important facts—such as the destruction by the Russians of the Dnieper Dam or the deportation to the east of the entire population of the Volga-German Autonomous
Soviet Republic—a matter of about half-a-million people. Major disasters, such as the capture by the Germans of many hundreds of thousands of prisoners, and the stupendous losses in aircraft, were not mentioned at all. On the other hand, he tended, if anything, to exaggerate the number of German tanks and aircraft engaged on the Russian Front; thus, he spoke of 10,000 German tanks taking part in the fighting.
Lozovsky was an Old Bolshevik, with a smooth, cosmopolitan veneer, a first-vintage
émigré, who had spent many years in Geneva and Paris, had known Lenin, spoke good
French, and, with his barbiche and carefully cut clothes, looked rather like an old boulevardier, whom one could well imagine on the terrace of the Napolitain during la belle époque. After the Revolution, he had been active on the Profintern, the Red Trade Union International, a body of small consequence, and later became a member of the Foreign Affairs Commissariat. With his Old Bolshevik background, he must have had some
anxious moments during the Purges; nor can he have been happy during the Soviet-
German Pact. However, Lozovsky was a good survivor though, personally, he did not fit very well into the Stalin-Molotov milieu. In 1943 he became a leading member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, and this led, in the end, to his downfall; in 1949, along with other prominent members of this Committee, that perfectly harmless old man was
shot.
In 1941 he was considered—wrongly perhaps—as one of the Foreign Commissariat's
survivors of the Litvinov era, more sympathetic to the West than Molotov, though, on one notable occasion, he very clearly dissociated himself from Litvinov. It was a curious incident: just a couple of days before the signing of the Cripps-Molotov agreement,
Russia at war Page 22
