Russia's War

by Richard Overy

  Agreement had always been unlikely, as both sides recognized. Goebbels watched Molotov and the Soviet delegation breakfasting with Hitler in the Chancellery. ‘Bolshevist subhumans,’ he wrote in his diary, ‘not a single man of any stature.’55 On the very day of Molotov's departure, Hitler ordered final preparations ‘to settle accounts with Russia’. On December 5 he told his military staff that by the spring German ‘leadership, equipment and troops will visibly be at their zenith, the Russians at an unmistakable nadir’.56 On December 18 he signed War Directive Number 21 ordering the preparation for war on the Soviet Union, ‘Operation Barbarossa’. A date was set for the following May, ‘the first fine days’. On January 9, at his retreat in Berchtesgaden, he gave a speech on the future of Germany. ‘Russia must now be smashed,’ one witness recalled him saying. ‘The gigantic territory of Russia conceals immeasurable riches… Germany will have all means possible for waging war against continents… If this operation is carried through, Europe will hold its breath.’57

  The failure of Molotov's visit did not diminish Stalin's desire to avoid a direct military confrontation with Germany. The Soviet Union was not, as Hitler knew, ready for a major war, and would not be for at least a year. Stalin has often been pictured as a man blinded by appeasement, leading an unprepared country to the brink of ruin in 1941. It is certainly true that right up to the moment of the German attack Stalin did not want war and hoped that it could be avoided by negotiation – a view not very different from Neville Chamberlain's in 1939 – but the absence of preparation is a myth. The Soviet political and military leadership began to prepare the country from the autumn of 1940 for the possibility of a war with Germany. The problem was not the absence of preparation but the fundamental flaws in strategy and deployment that underpinned it.

  Consistent with the Red Army philosophy of active defence and massive counter-offensives into enemy territory, Stalin wanted the new zone of defence to be moved right up to the frontier with Germany and its allies. To the astonishment of German forces, Soviet engineers began to build fortifications in full view, right on the frontier itself. The old Stalin Line was almost entirely abandoned; depots and strong points were left to crumble, or were covered over with earth or in some cases handed over to be used as vegetable warehouses by local collective farms. Much of the equipment removed from them was poorly stored or was moved forward to the new frontier, where it sat rusting while the new fortifications were constructed. The new fortified zones, on which the whole strategy of forward defence hinged, were too numerous to complete all at once. By the spring most of them lacked guns of any kind, radio equipment, even electric power or air filters. When Zhukov visited the border districts in April he immediately ordered armoured doors to be installed at the entrances to the fortifications. On the eve of the German invasion the key frontier areas had no minefields, camouflage or effective fields of fire. Of 2,300 strong points set up on Zhukov's orders, fewer than 1,000 had any artillery.58

  Zhukov was among those who argued that the Stalin Line should not have been abandoned, and was supported by Shaposhnikov. Stalin refused to accept the argument and to authorize defence in depth. For political reasons the newly acquired territories were to be defended at all costs. Only in June 1941, shortly before the German attack, did Stalin grudgingly concede that the old line should in places be manned, at 30 per cent of its garrison strength. The troops found nothing more than a concrete shell. When General Ivan Konev's men occupied the Kiev Fortified Area, abandoned in 1939, they found it ‘overgrown with grass and tall weeds’, the concrete gun emplacements empty.59

  In the autumn of 1940, while the engineers wrestled with the impossible task of fortifying the 2,800 miles of frontier, Soviet leaders drew up their contingency plans in the event of an invasion from the west. Like the 1939 plan, the 1940 draft was based on the assumption that there would be a period of time before the main forces clashed. The one concession that the General Staff made as a result of the German victory in Western Europe was no longer to assume that the period would be three weeks, but could be as little as ten to fifteen days. (In the event, by day fifteen German forces were closing in on Leningrad and poised to take Smolensk and Kiev!) The planners started from the assumption that Germany would attack together with its allies Hungary, Romania and Finland. The direction of the main German advance was, at Stalin's insistence, assumed to be south-west, towards the industry, food and oil of the Ukraine and the Caucasus. Stalin seems to have been influenced in this decision by his civil war experience, where control of the major economic resources was regarded as decisive. Other possibilities were explored, but the plan finally agreed upon in October incorporated Stalin's preference.

  The forces protecting the Ukrainian frontier were to engage in a vigorous defence, plugging any holes made by the German advance, smashing its forward units with air attacks, and hampering the mobilization of the main forces by bombing attacks and harassing raids in strength. The main Soviet force would deploy far to the rear, then, once assembled, roll forward through the battling frontier forces onto enemy soil. They were to make for the main assembly of German forces, expected to be around Lublin, and there inflict a decisive defeat before wheeling south-west to sever Germany from her Balkan supplies, then north to seize Silesia.60 Given the state of the Red Army and Air Force, the plan had an air of complete fantasy about it. When it was put to the test in a series of war games in January, the weaknesses of the Soviet position became clear.

  The war games followed a week-long command conference that began on December 23. The object was to thrash out the lessons of the year and review the current state of military planning. No serious attempt was made to challenge the central principles upon which Soviet war-planning rested. The war games were staged to confirm what was seen as received wisdom. The first was fought between Zhukov and General Dmitri Pavlov, chief of the Soviet mechanized forces, on New Year's Day, 1941 . Zhukov was the German side, Pavlov the Soviet. Although Pavlov was able to bring his main forces to bear on East Prussia, consistent with the strategy of the massive counter-offensive, he was routed by Zhukov. In the second game, played a week later, the players were reversed. This time Zkukov pushed successfully across the frontier into Hungary; Pavlov's weak counter-attack attempted to parry. The outcome said a great deal about Zhukov's battlefield skills, even on a table-top. But there were worrying signs for Soviet strategy. When Stalin assembled the commanders and officials following the second game, a curious drama unfolded.61

  The chief of staff was asked to report on the outcome of the games. Meretskov spoke hesitantly. Rather than say out loud that the Zhukov Germans had won the first game, Meretskov applauded the early stages, when Pavlov with sixty divisions had overcome the fifty-five German divisions defending the Reich frontier. Stalin angrily took the floor and exposed as nonsense the view that a ratio of little more than one division to one could overcome the fixed German defences. It was all right ‘for propaganda purposes’, he told the assembly, ‘but here we have to talk in terms of real capabilities’. The uncomfortable Meretskov was then asked about the second game but would give no definite answer on the outcome, which was inconclusive. When one of Timoshenko's deputies followed the discussion by insisting on voicing his own belief that infantry divisions should be horse-drawn rather than mechanized, Stalin's patience was stretched to the limit.62 The General Staff left the conference in a despondent mood. The following day Zhukov was appointed Chief of the General Staff, and Meretskov was put in charge of training.

  Zhukov had never been a General Staff officer and expressed his desire to remain in the field. Stalin insisted, and Zhukov took up the key military position at the most critical time for Soviet forces. He approached his task with a ruthless energy, but he was not staff-trained and had to rely more than a chief of staff should on the work of his deputies. The five months that remained before the German invasion were used to press forward the building of the fortifications and the establishment of large numbers of air and tank
units in the forward defence zone that were to absorb the preliminary German attack, should it come. In March the Government called for the creation of twenty mechanized corps to be distributed along the frontier, but by June less than half were equipped. The air force was ordered to establish 106 new air regiments, using the new models coming into production, but by May only nineteen were complete. These forces were crammed into a narrow belt behind, or sometimes straddling, the frontier. They absorbed four-fifths of the production of the new T-34 tank, the most advanced in the world, and half of the available modern aircraft, but they lacked the training (and spare parts) needed to operate them effectively. Morale among the forward troops was at its nadir; officers were losing control of their men. Crime and insubordination were widespread.63

  In May 1941 Zhukov and Timoshenko produced what turned out to be the last version of the deployment plan before the German invasion. It varied little from the plan drawn up the previous October, except that it now postulated two counter-offensives into German-held territory: one towards Cracow, to cut Germany off from her southern allies; one towards Lublin, with the ultimate object of securing German-occupied Poland and East Prussia. A section of this document has been seized upon as evidence that the Soviet Union was planning a pre-emptive strike against Germany in the summer of 1941, a strike undone by the sudden launching of Barbarossa . The document in question, an unsigned memorandum dated May 15, was not an order or directive but an exploratory recommendation for force deployment entirely consistent with the planning of the previous two years.64 There is no evidence that Stalin saw it, but even if he had there are no grounds for thinking that this was anything other than a continued review of the forward defence posture on which Soviet strategy had relied since the 1930s. Some form of pre-emption through spoiling attacks on the mobilizing forces of the enemy was an integral part of that posture. It did not signify a Soviet intention to launch unprovoked war but was, on the contrary, a desperate gambit to obstruct German mobilization against the Soviet Union.

  It is true that in March 1941 Stalin, grudgingly, agreed to Zhukov's request to call half a million reservists to the colours, with a further 300,000 several days later. True, too, that the frantic rearmament called for in 1940 brought new labour laws in June 1940 that lengthened the working week to seven days on, one day off. True, also, that throughout May 1941 Zhukov and Timoshenko argued with Stalin, often heatedly, to transfer more troops as a precaution against certain defeat. Not until June 4 did Stalin relent, authorizing the movement of a further 120,000 men to the frontier fortified zones and the second line of defence, but only over a four-month period.65 None of this suggests a premeditated assault on Germany. It is also true that Stalin and other military leaders stressed that the Red Army was an offensive force. On May 5 Stalin spoke publicly about the Soviet military: ‘The Red Army is a modern army, and a modern army is an offensive army.’ This, too, has been taken as evidence of malign intent. Yet it is entirely consistent with the Soviet view of fighting dating from the 1920s. Defence was regarded neither as an acceptable option for a revolutionary state, nor as militarily desirable. Stalin said nothing that had not been said a hundred times before.

  The clearest evidence that Stalin had no plans to attack Hitler first can be found in his almost frantic efforts to appease the German leader right up to June. Despite the efforts of Zhukov to prepare more thoroughly for a possible German attack, Stalin insisted repeatedly that no such danger existed and that nothing should be done to provoke it. Among the wider public, as with the military leaders, there was a growing sense of unease, of impending crisis. In the spring a Soviet film, If War Should Come Tomorrow, portrayed a German attack repulsed by heroic Soviet soldiers and the revolutionary overthrow of Hitler. Stalin knew, of course, that a great deal remained to be done. The lamentable performance of the military at the command conference in January could have done little to convince him that the Soviet Union was capable of any effective counter to Hitler (or Japan, with whom a separate non-aggression pact was signed in April 1941). He insisted to all around him that war would not come. Zhukov was widely criticized after the war for not having done more to prepare for the German attack, but it is difficult to see what more he could have done under the circumstances. In 1966 Zhukov spoke in his own defence against the chorus of recrimination: ‘Let's say that I, Zhukov, feeling the danger hanging over the country gave the order: “Deploy!” They would report to Stalin. “On what basis?” “On the basis of danger.” “Well, Beria, take him to your basement.”’ Indeed, the hapless Meretskov was taken to the ‘basement’ that spring and given the worst that the Lubyanka could offer. Not that Zhukov was a coward. He was, Timoshenko recalled, ‘the only person who feared no one. He was not afraid of Stalin.’67 He spoke his mind regularly. The problem was that one man could not change the political machinery. Stalin ordained that war would not come in 1941, and the system was not able to contradict him.

  Few military campaigns could have been more clearly signalled. Despite German efforts at concealment and disinformation, designed to lull Soviet intelligence into thinking that the military preparations were for the war with Britain, there came during the spring of 1941 an almost endless stream of intelligence information about imminent German invasion. There were at least eighty-four such warnings, most probably a great many more. They were passed through the office of the head of military intelligence, General Filip Golikov. His reports classified information as either ‘reliable’ or ‘doubtful’. Most of the information on Barbarossa was placed in the second category. He suggested that much of it was British misinformation, part of a conspiracy to drive a wedge between the two allies. Warnings sent directly from the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, which were culled from decryptions of German orders, were regarded as a particularly blatant attempt at provocation. When Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess, made his ‘peace’ flight to Scotland on 10 May 1941, Soviet officials regarded the whole episode as evidence that their mistrust of British motives had been right all along.68 The most reliable evidence came from a German Communist spy in Tokyo, Richard Sorge, who was indiscreetly fed a diet of detailed information on German moves by German embassy staff. On March 5 Sorge sent microfilm of German documents to Moscow indicating a German attack in mid-June. On May 15 he sent more precise detail, giving the date as June 20. On May 19 he warned that nine German armies with one hundred and fifty divisions were poised on the Soviet frontier. Military intelligence replied simply: ‘We doubt the veracity of your information.’69

  Not even the repeated violation of Soviet air space – an estimated 180 incursions – made any difference. Stalin remained utterly, almost obsessively, convinced that Germany would not invade. On June 14 the Soviet news agency Tass published a stinging rejection of any suggestion of imminent attack. The rumours were spread ‘by forces hostile to the Soviet Union and Germany, forces interested in the further expansion and spreading of the war’.70 When watertight information was supplied from a Czech espionage source, Stalin said, ‘Find out who is making this provocation and punish him.’ Even when Soviet spies in Berlin, many in positions of responsibility, reported on June 16 that ‘the blow may be expected at any time’, Stalin rejected the report on the grounds that no Germans, even Communist sympathizers, were to be trusted. A courageous German soldier crossed the frontier on June 21 to tell the Red Army that Germany would attack the next day. Stalin ordered him shot: more disinformation and provocation.71

  Why was Stalin so blind? The Soviet Union had the largest intelligence network in the world. Why did Stalin disregard it entirely? He was a man with an almost congenital distrust of others. Why did he apparently trust Hitler, most artful of statesmen? There is no easy answer. Stalin based his calculations partly on rationality. He argued that to invade the Soviet Union with its vast army and overstretched frontier would require a numerical advantage of two to one for the attacker. This Hitler did not have. He was convinced that no leader, however adventurist, would risk a two-front war. Wh
en German forces were sent into the Balkans to help Italy they became embroiled in Yugoslavia, Greece and eventually, as late as May 1941, in driving the British from the Aegean. Stalin was no military genius, but he could see no sense in Hitler striking east in June with only a few weeks of combat weather remaining. The Balkan diversion hardened Stalin's conviction, for conviction it was. He projected onto Hitler his own sense of what was possible.

  There are other explanations. It seemed plausible that Hitler's military moves in the spring of 1941 were simply a ploy to bring Stalin back to the negotiating table. (Stalin was not alone in drawing that conclusion.) He also felt he had the measure of his fellow dictator. He had the same grudging respect for Hitler that his opposite number reserved for him. He clearly indulged at times in the fantasy that side by side the two leaders, each in his own way a revolutionary, could take the world by storm. On more than one occasion he was heard to complain, ‘Together with the Germans we would have been invincible.’72 Yet in the end Stalin suffered from a failure of imagination. He does not seem to have been able to entertain the idea that Hitler could undertake an assault so breathtaking, so against the grain of military good sense. He must, nevertheless, have had the strongest misgivings. Khrushchev remembered Stalin in the weeks before the German attack as a man ‘in a state of confusion, anxiety, demoralization, even paralysis’.73 On June 14 Zhukov suggested beginning Soviet mobilization. ‘That's war,’ replied Stalin, and refused.74 Perhaps Stalin was simply unable to admit that he had misjudged Hitler. By the weekend of June 21/22 he was of two minds. He put the Moscow air defences on alert, but then complained that he was giving way to ‘panic’ himself. At half past midnight on June 22, Timoshenko, Zhukov and his deputy, Nikolai Vatutin, went to see Stalin to persuade him to issue an alert. He finally authorized it, but too late for many of the units in the German line of attack. Timoshenko had great difficulty persuading Stalin not to include a sentence asking frontier commanders to treat with the oncoming German officers to settle the dispute. He did insist that no Soviet soldier, sailor or airman was to cross the frontier, the very antithesis of everything that Soviet operational art had taught them.75