There was, according to next day's Pravda, "stormy, lengthy applause" at this point; in reality, I noticed that the applause might have been greater than it actually was: it seems obvious that the "let-us-hope" had had a somewhat damping effect—which was to be reflected in some of the later speeches.
Molotov then said that the results of his visit to Washington had been less definite than those of his visits to London, but he stressed that the Soviet-American agreement on present and future cooperation was only "preliminary", adding, however, that general problems of war and peace had been lengthily discussed by him and Mr Roosevelt, and
that both the President of the United States and Mr Churchill had been very kind.
In conclusion, Molotov said:
Our strength is growing, our certainty of victory is stronger than it has ever been.
Under the great banner of Lenin and Stalin we shall wage this struggle till complete victory, till the complete triumph of our cause and that of all freedom-loving
nations.
Apart from discussing the British alliance, many of the other speakers took the
opportunity to speak of their own constituencies. Shcherbakov, representing Moscow,
recalled the struggle for Moscow and said, amid a storm of truly emotional applause:
"And now, Comrades Deputies, you can see your Capital intact! "
There was also a touch of emotion in the applause that greeted L. R. Korniets, a
representative of the now almost completely occupied Ukraine. Korniets, with his heavy drooping "Ukrainian" moustache did not mince his words: "We hope," he said, "that from agreements and words, the great Western Powers will proceed to action."
Zhdanov, representing Leningrad, who received an ovation almost as great as that given to Stalin, said:
The value of the Treaty is unquestionably enhanced by the fact that complete
agreement was reached in London and Washington in respect of the urgent tasks
for the creation of a Second Front in Europe in 1942...
He quoted a worker of the Kirov Plant (right in the front line) as saying:
"It strengthens our conviction that Hitler and his bloody clique will be crushed in 1942. Let us work with double and treble energy in helping the Red Army to carry
out its heroic mission."
Y. L. Paletskis, the Lithuanian representative, said he was convinced that there would not be "the slightest delay" in preparing the Second Front in Europe in 1942, as this was also in Britain's and America's interests; and the Latvian, Estonian, Georgian, Uzbek and other representatives spoke more or less on the same lines.
After three and a half hours of speeches, the Treaty was unanimously ratified. In Pravda on the following day Ehrenburg wrote a heartfelt couple of columns on "The Heart of England", in which he grew lyrical about London, its old stones, its soot and its "pastel skies". The raids on Cologne and the Ruhr were "only a beginning".
Already the small children of France, looking across the misty sea, are whispering:
"There's a ship over there." And the name of the ship is the Second Front.
The meeting of the Supreme Soviet was followed by a brief, one might say very brief, Anglo-Russian honeymoon. A few weeks later the sharp bickering over the Second Front began. It should be noted that at no time was the British aide-memoire mentioned on the Soviet side, or even hinted at—except perhaps for that "let us hope" in Molotov's speech.
There continued much suspicion on both sides—right up to Stalin's speech on November 6, and the landing in North Africa a few days later. Much of the bad humour and, before long, anger on the Russian side was spontaneous, and largely caused by the pretty
desperate outlook at the front; though, for a few weeks before the North Africa landing, some of the angry comments in the press may have partly been calculated to deceive the Germans.
Chapter III THREE RUSSIAN DEFEATS: KERCH, KHARKOV
AND SEBASTOPOL
All the, admittedly superficial, rejoicing over the Anglo-Soviet Alliance in fact coincided with one of the hardest periods of the war in Russia; for in May the Russians had suffered disasters at Kerch and Kharkov, and it was also obvious that the days of Sebastopol's resistance were numbered.
After the Russians had been driven out of the Crimea in the autumn of 1941, with the exception of Sebastopol which continued to be held by a strong garrison, they undertook a combined operation from the Caucasus in an endeavour to recapture the Kerch
Peninsula, at the eastern extremity of the Crimea, and thus establish a strong bridgehead from which eventually the whole Crimea could be liberated and Sebastopol relieved. This was one of the largest combined land-and-sea operations undertaken by the Russians
during the war. In the last week of December 1941, despite highly unfavourable weather conditions and some heavy losses, they succeeded in landing some 40,000 troops,
occupying the whole Kerch peninsula, and also (for a few days) the important city of Feodosia on the Crimean "mainland".
It was at Kerch, incidentally, that the Russians received their first evidence of large-scale German atrocities: soon after the German occupation of Kerch in 1941, several thousand Jews had been exterminated by one of Himmler's Einsatzgruppen and buried in huge trenches outside the town. Needless to say, Field-Marshal von Manstein, who was in
command of the German 11th Army in the Crimea, later denied all knowledge of this.
The immediate result of the successful landing at Kerch was to reduce the German
pressure on Sebastopol, and Manstein was later to admit that the Russian landing had created an immense danger to the German forces in the Crimea.
[E. v. Manstein, Verlorene Siege (Lost Victories), Bonn, 1955, p. 246.]
But owing to shortage of trained men, or equipment, or both, or because of some very serious miscalculation on the part of the Russian High Command, the successful Kerch landing was not followed up except by a few abortive sorties, and on May 8 von
Manstein launched an all-out offensive against the Russian forces in the Eastern Crimea.
This opened with a concentrated air attack on the Russians, who suffered heavy casualties and were forced to retreat to a fortified line known as the Turkish Wall. But the German onslaught was much too strong:
Our forces proved themselves incapable of holding the Turkish Wall, and retreated to Kerch. The local command had shown itself incapable of using the air force effectively, and our troops retreated under constant German air attacks... By the 14th the Germans broke into the southern and western outskirts of Kerch, and between the 15th and 20th our rearguard units fought desperately to enable our main forces to cross the Kerch Straits to the Taman Peninsula [on the Caucasus side of the five-mile-wide straits]. Even so, it proved impossible to carry out the evacuation in an organised manner. The enemy
captured practically all our military equipment, which was then used against the
defenders of Sebastopol.
[IVOVSS, vol. 2, p. 405.]
It was in these laconic words that the recent Soviet History described the first of the great disasters suffered by the Russians in the Crimea.
This disaster is attributed by the History to a faulty organisation of defence, the "shallow operational disposition of the troops" and the lack of essential reserves. Other reasons were "the thoughtlessness of the army headquarters, the absence of camouflage at the command posts, which had failed, moreover, to move from place to place, with the result that in their very first raids, the Luftwaffe smashed up these command posts, thus
wrecking all communications. The different headquarters were, moreover, unaccustomed to the use of radio." Lt. Gen. Kozlov, the commander of the Kerch Army Group, and his top commissar, Mekhlis, as well as numerous other officers and commissars, were
demoted, and Mekhlis, who was at that time both Vice-Commissar of Defence and one of the heads of the Political Administration of the Red Army was reheved of both these
posts and
demoted to the rank of corps commissar. Mekhlis and the officers of the Kerch group were accused of having "wasted hours arguing about the situation at fruitless sessions of the War Council", instead of acting. In particular, they had been too slow in withdrawing the troops to the Turkish Wall, and this had been fatal to the whole
defensive operation.
[Ibid., p. 406.]
Although some publicity was given at the time to the disgrace of Mekhlis, one of the villains of the Army Purge in 1937-8, little, if anything, was said about the holocaust among the other officers responsible for the Kerch disaster. It seems obvious that the demotion of Mekhlis was at least partly intended as a political operation (he was deeply detested by the "younger" generals); but how far he (and the other officers) were used as scapegoats for a perhaps inevitable failure (for German air superiority at Kerch was overwhelming) is anybody's guess. What is certain, however, is that the Kerch disaster paved the way for an even greater disaster: that of Sebastopol. After the liquidation of the
"Kerch front", von Manstein was free to concentrate all his forces in the Crimea against Sebastopol which had held out ever since October... Sebastopol was, however, a "noble", not a "shameful" disaster.
Like the Battle of Kiev in 1941, the so-called Battle of Kharkov in May 1942 was to
become the subject of some of Khrushchev's angry posthumous recriminations against
Stalin.
According to the present-day Soviet History, the Soviet Supreme Command had made numerous mistakes in its planning of the spring operations. First, because of the
concentration of enemy forces in that area, it had expected the main German blow to fall on Moscow:
Instead of concentrating large forces on the south-western and southern front, and creating an insuperable defence in depth in these areas, the Siavka continued to strengthen the Briansk front, whose main forces were protecting the Tula-Moscow
axis.
Secondly, the Soviet Supreme Command simply over-rated its own strength and under-
rated that of the Germans:
In planning large offensive operations in the summer of 1942 which would clear the invaders out of the Soviet Union, and so liberate millions of people from the German yoke, the Soviet Supreme Command over-rated the successes of our winter
offensive, and had not taken sufficient notice of the fact that, after the defeats it had suffered, the German army had restored its battle-worthiness, and was still full of offensive possibilities.
[ IVOVSS, vol. 2, p. 404.]
The Russian rout at Kharkov in May 1942 was more heavily concealed from the public
than almost any other Russian defeat; perhaps the great rapprochement then in progress with Britain and the United States had much to do with it, or perhaps also the fact that Stalin himself—at least according to present-day accounts— had played a leading role in conceiving and, worse still, in persisting in, this disastrous operation.
In March 1942 the Supreme Command had considered a plan for a large offensive in the Ukraine which would carry the Red Army all the way to a line running, north-to-south, from Gomel to Kiev, and then, roughly along the right bank of the Dnieper, through
Cherkassy, and on to Nikolaev on the Black Sea. Owing to shortage of reserves, this plan was abandoned in favour of a more modest offensive, the main object of which was the liberation of Kharkov. One Russian blow was to be struck from the north of Kharkov, the other from the south—from the so-called Barvenkovo salient which the Russians had
recaptured during the winter.
It so happened that the Germans were planning an offensive in the same area, but the Russians got in their blow first when they started their offensive towards Kharkov on May 12. The real trouble was that Russian superiority in the area was far from
overwhelming and, worse still (as events were soon to show) the Germans had powerful mobile reserves in the neighbourhood, and the Russians had not. The Soviet historian, Telpukhovsky sums up this battle as follows:
To smash our offensive, which had begun on May 12, a strong formation of German
troops, supported by large numbers of tanks and aircraft, struck a powerful blow at our 9th Army in the Slaviansk and Barvenkovo areas on May 17. Our troops had to
withdraw to the left bank of the Donets, thus exposing the flank of the Soviet shock troops advancing on Kharkov. By cutting the communications of our troops
advancing on Kharkov, the Germans placed these in an extremely difficult position, and they were forced, with very heavy fighting, to withdraw to the east, suffering serious casualties in the process.
[Telpukhovsky, op. cit., p. 119.]
The more recent History is much more explicit about this episode: it says that the advance on Kharkov was persisted in at the demand of Stalin, and despite the protests of Khrushchev, who saw that these troops were walking into a trap. Further, it tells how the Russian tank reserves were thrown in too late to save the situation. Finally, it admits that a large number of Russian troops were encircled, and that in the hard-fought attempts to break out "many brave men" died, including the deputy commander of the South-West Front, Lt. Gen. Kostenko, the commander of the 6th Army, Lt. Gen. Gorodnyansky, the
commander of the 57th Army, Lt. Gen. Podlas and many other high-ranking officers.
Although many of the troops broke out by escaping across the Donets, others continued to fight in the encirclement until May 30.
The offensive against Kharkov which had begun so successfully, thus ended in the
rout of three armies of the South-Western and Southern Front.
[ IVOVSS, vol. 2, p. 415.]
The History also mentions the fact that, as a member of the War Council of the South-Western Front, Khrushchev urged Stalin to stop the advance on Kharkov and to
concentrate the Russian forces on smashing the German counter-offensive. But Stalin
insisted on the Russians continuing their advance on Kharkov—"which," says the History, "complicated the situation still further."
[ IVOVSS, vol. 2, p. 414.]
Whether this is strictly true or not (and one must remember that the History was written after the XXth Congress, and goes out of its way to magnify Khrushchev's role in the war at Stalin's expense), it is interesting to note that this particular episode was dealt with at considerable length in Khrushchev's "Secret Report" at the XXth Congress in February 1956. The main points he made were these:
When an exceptionally serious situation developed in the Kharkov area, we
correctly decided to drop the operation whose objective was to encircle Kharkov...
We informed Stalin that the situation demanded changes in the operational plans...
Contrary to common sense, Stalin rejected our suggestion and ordered that the
Kharkov operation be continued, although by this time many of our army units
were themselves threatened with encirclement and extermination...
I telephoned Vassilevsky (the Chief of Staff) and begged him to explain the situation to Comrade Stalin. Vassilevsky replied, however, that Comrade Stalin did not wish to hear any more about this operation... I then telephoned Stalin at his villa.
Malenkov answered the phone. I said I wanted to speak to Stalin personally. Stalin informed me through Malenkov that I should speak with Malenkov... I asked again
to speak to Stalin himself. But Stalin still said no, though he was only a few steps from the telephone. After "listening" in this manner to our plea, Stalin said: "Let everything remain as it is."
And what was the result? The worst that could be expected. The Germans
surrounded our armies and we lost hundreds of thousands of our soldiers.
[ The Dethronement of Stalin: Full Text of the Khrushchev Speech {Manchester
Guardian reprint, 1956), p. 21. I have slightly abridged the text, and made a few corrections in the rather clumsy translation of this version of the "Secret Report".]
Whether in reality the Russians los
t, as Khrushchev claimed, "hundreds of thousands of our soldiers", the Germans, at any rate, claimed 200,000 prisoners.
In any case, the facts about the "Battle of Kharkov" were kept extremely dark at the time, except for a strange communiqué at the end of May which put the Soviet losses at "5,000
killed and 70,000 missing", in its own way an admission that something had gone seriously wrong. It caused considerable consternation. There was even a clumsy attempt to represent the "Battle of Kharkov" as a Russian victory: early in June, the foreign press were specially taken to a German war prisoners' camp near Gorki; the 600 or 700
prisoners we were shown had, indeed, been captured during the first stage of the Kharkov Battle—i.e. during the Russian offensive of May 12-17. Most of them, while deploring their Pech, their "bad luck", were extremely cocky for all that; they claimed to be convinced that Germany would smash Russia in 1942, and they did not believe for a
moment in any Second Front materialising in time.
[A visit to this camp, a former monastery, in which the Germans were fairly comfortably housed and better fed than most Russian civilians, and many conversations with the
Germans there, are described in The Year of Stalingrad, pp. 87-89. Most striking was the Germans' Herrenvolk attitude to their Rumanian fellow-prisoners, of whom there were half a dozen in the camp.]
The third great defeat suffered by the Russians in the summer of 1942 was at Sebastopol; but, unlike Kerch and Kharkov, Sebastopol was one of the most glorious defeats of the Soviet-German war. In many ways, except for its tragic end, the nine-months' siege of Sebastopol had the same quality of human endurance and solidarity as the siege of
Leningrad. Local patriotism, based on the historic memories of the other siege of Sebastopol in 1853-4, complete with "great ancestors" like Admirals Nakhimov and Kornilov, besides the peculiar revolutionary and patriotic traditions of the Black Sea Navy, had a decisively important effect on the morale of both soldiers and civilians.
Important, too, were the very strong and efficient local party and Komsomol
organisations. Towards the end, the last-ditch resistance was also encouraged by the simple and tragic fact that, with the exception of a very, very few top-ranking personnel, who got away dangerously by submarine, there was no alternative to imprisonment by the Germans but a fight to the last round.
Russia at war Page 45
