by Ludo Martens
Elleinstein adds to this:
`Drinking strong vodka, he remained drunk for almost eleven days.'
.
Elleinstein, op. cit. , p. 269.
Let us return to Stalin, dead drunk for the last eleven days and demoralized for another four months.
When Zhukov announced to Stalin on June 22, 1941, at 3:40 in the morning, that German planes had bombed border cities, Stalin told him to convoke the Politburo. Its members met at 4:30. Vatutin told them that the German land forces had begun their offensive. Soon after came the German declaration of war.
.
Zhukov, op. cit. , pp 235--236.
Stalin understood better than anyone the savagery that the country would have to endure. He kept a long silence. Zhukov recalled this dramatic moment.
`Stalin himself was strong-willed and no coward. It was only once I saw him somewhat depressed. That was at the dawn of June 22, 1941, when his belief that the war could be avoided, was shattered.'
.
Ibid. , p. 268.
Zhukov proposed that the enemy units should be attacked immediately. Stalin told him to write up the directive, which was sent at 7:15. But `considering the balance of forces and the situation obtaining it proved plainly unrealistic --- and was therefore never carried out.'
.
Ibid. , p. 236.
Khrushchev's affirmation that Stalin had `issued the order that the German fire was not to be returned' is clearly false.
.
Khrushchev, Secret Report, op. cit. , p. S39.
If Stalin was affected when he heard that the war broke out, `After June 22, 1941, and throughout the war Stalin firmly governed the country, led the armed struggle and international affairs together with the Central Committee and the Soviet Government.'
.
Ibid. , p. 268.
Already, on June 22, Stalin took decisions of vital importance. Zhukov testified that at 13:00 on that day, Stalin telephoned him to say:
`Our front commanders lack combat experience and they have evidently become somewhat confused. The Politbureau has decided to send you to the South-Western Front as representative of the General Headquarters of the High Command. We are also sending Marshal Shaposhnikov and Marshal Kulik to the Western Front.'
.
Ibid. , p. 238.
The High Command was the college of military and political leaders around the supreme leader, Stalin.
At the end of the day, Zhukov was already in Kiev. He learned upon arrival that Stalin had given a directive to begin counter-offensive operations. Zhukov thought the directive premature, given that the Chiefs of Staff did not have sufficient information about what was happening on the front. Nevertheless, on June 24, Zhukov sent the 8th and 15th mechanized corps on the offensive. They `successfully dealt one of their first counterblows at the enemy.'
.
Ibid. , p. 242.
With good reason, Zhukov draws attention to the `grandiose border battle of the initial period in the war', which is little studied in his opinion. And with good reason. To further his political intrigues, Khrushchev painted this period as a series of criminal errors by Stalin, who completely disorganized the defence. But, facing the Nazi blitzkrieg, disorganization, defeats and important losses were to a great extent inevitable. The important fact is that, placed in very difficult circumstances, the army and its leading cadres undertook phenomenal, determined resistance. Their heroic fighting began to create, right from the very first days, the conditions for the defeat of blitzkrieg warfare. All this was possible, to a great extent, because of Stalin's energetic resistance.
Right from June 26, Stalin took the strategic decision to build a reserve front, some 300 kilometres behind the front, to stop the enemy should it succeed in breaking through the defences.
That very day, the Western Front was broken and the Nazis charged toward Minsk, the capital of Byelorussia. That evening, Stalin convoked Timoshenko, Zhukov and Vatutin and told them:
`Think together and decide what can be done about the current situation'. Zhukov reported:
`All these proposals were approved by Stalin ....
`(B)uilding up a defence in depth on the approaches to Moscow, continuously harrying the enemy and checking his advance on one of the lines of defence, then organizing a counter-offensive, by bringing up for this purpose troops from the Far East together with new formations.'
.
Ibid. , p. 256.
On June 29, a series of measures were taken. Stalin would announce them to the people in his famous radio speech of July 3, 1941. Its content reached the Soviets by its simplicity and by its tenacious will to win. Stalin said:
`The enemy is cruel and implacable. He is out to seize our lands, watered with our sweat, to seize our grain and oil secured by our labor. He is out to restore the rule of landlords, to restore tsarism, to destroy national culture and the national state existence of the Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Lithuanians, Letts, Estonians, Uzbeks, Tatars, moldavians, Georgians, Armenians, Azerbaidjanians, and the other free peoples of the Soviet Union, to Germanize them, to convert them into the slaves of German princes and barons.
`Thus the issue is one of life or death for the Soviet State, for the peoples of the U.S.S.R.; the issue is whether the peoples of the Soviet Union shall remain free or fall into slavery ....
`Our people must know no fear in fight and must selflessly join our patriotic war of liberation, our war against the fascist enslavers.
`Lenin, the great founder of our state, used to say that the chief virtue of the Bolshevik must be courage, valor, fearlessness in struggle, readiness to fight, together with the people, against the enemies of the country ....
`The Red Army, Red Navy, and all citizens of the Soviet Union must defend every inch of Soviet soil, must fight to the last drop of blood for our towns and villages ....
`We must strengthen the Red Army's rear, subordinating all our work to this cause. All our industries must be got to work with greater intensity to produce more rifles, machine-guns, artillery, bullets, shells, airplanes ....
`We must wage a ruthless fight against all disorganizers of the rear, deserters, panic-mongers, rumor-mongers, we must exterminate spies, diversionists, and enemy parachutists ....
`In case of forced retreat of Red Army units, all rolling stock must be evacuated, the enemy must not be left a single engine, a single railway car, not a single pound of grain, or a gallon of fuel ....
`In areas occupied by the enemy, guerilla units, mounted and on foot, must be formed, diversionist groups must be organized to combat the enemy troops, to foment guerilla warfare everywhere ....
`Forward, to our victory!'
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Stalin, The German invasion of the Soviet Union. The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union (New York: International Publishers, 1945), pp. 13--17.
On July 10 began the Battle of Smolensk. After the seizure of that city, the Hitlerites thought that they could charge towards Moscow, 300 kilometres further on. The Battle of Smolensk raged for two months.
`The battle of Smolensk played a crucial role in the initial period of the Great Patriotic War .... According to German generals their forces lost 250,000 officers and men ....
`As a result we gained time and were able to raise strategic reserves and carry out defensive measures at the Moscow sector.'
.
Ibid. , p. 275.
Vasilevsky made the following remark:
`The Smolensk battle ... laid the basis for disrupting the blitzkrieg ....
`(It was) a most valuable school for testing the fighting efficiency of Soviet soldiers and commanders, including top commanders and the Supreme Command'.
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A. M. Vasilevsky, A Lifelong Cause (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1973), p. 96.
On September 30, the Nazis began their final offensive to take Moscow.
Some 450,000 inhabitants of the city, 75 per cent women, were mobilized to build fortificati
ons and anti-tank defences. General Panfilov's troops led memorable battles in defence of the Volokolamsk Road, immortalized in a novel of the same name by Alexander Beck .
.
Alexandre Beck, La chaussйe de Volokolamsk (Paris: Йditions Bordas, 1946).
Moscow was bombed by German aviation. Panic began to seize the city's population. The Nazis were only 80 kilometres away. Part of the administration was evacuated. But Stalin decided to remain in Moscow. The battles became more and more fierce and, in early November, the Nazi offensive was stopped. After consulting with Zhukov, Stalin took the decision to organize the traditional November 7 military parade on Red Square. It was a formidable challenge to the Nazi troops camped at the gates of Moscow. Stalin made a speech, which was broadcast to the entire country.
`(T)he enemy is before the gates of Leningrad and Moscow.
`The enemy calculated that our army would be dispersed at the very first blow and our country forced to its knees. But the enemy wholly miscalculated .... our country --- our whole country --- has organized itself into a single fighting camp in order, jointly with our army and navy, to rout the German invaders ....
`Is it possible, then, to doubt that we can and must gain victory over the German invaders? The enemy is not as strong as some terror-stricken would-be intellectuals picture him. The devil is not as terrible as he is painted ....
`Comrades, Red Army and Red Navy men, commanders and political instructors, men and women guerillas:
`The whole world is looking to you as a force capable of destroying the brigand hordes of German invaders. The enslaved peoples of Europe under the yoke of the German invaders are looking to you as their liberators. A great mission of liberation has fallen to your lot.
`Be worthy of this mission! ....
`Under the banner of Lenin --- onward to victory!'
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Stalin, The twenty-fourth anniversary of the October Revolution, The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Revolution, pp. 35--38.
On November 15, the Nazis began their second offensive against Moscow. On November 25, some units advanced into the southern suburbs of Moscow. But on December 5, the attack was contained. Throughout this period, new troops coming from all over the country were able to reach Moscow. Even at the most dramatic moments, Stalin kept his strategic forces in reserve. Rokossovsky wrote:
`The Army's defences were spread so thin that they threatened to burst. It took feats of troop juggling to prevent this from happening.'
.
K. K. Rokossovsky, A Soldier's Duty (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1985), p. 87.
After having consulted all of his commanders, Stalin decided on a large counter-attack, which began on December 5. Some 720,000 Red soldiers pushed back 800,000 Hitlerites 100 to 300 kilometres.
For the first time, the `invincible' German troops were defeated, and well. In front of Moscow, the fascists lost more than 500,000 men, 1,300 tanks, 2,500 canons, more than 15,000 motorized vehicles and much more matйriel. Hitler's army had not yet suffered such losses.
.
Vasilevsky, op. cit. , p. 128.
Many consider the Battle of Moscow to be the real turning point of the anti-fascist war. It took place less than six months after the beginning of the lightning war. The unflinching will, the immense organizational capacities and the mastery of large strategic problems by Stalin contributed significantly.
Stalin and the Nazi war of annihilation
When referring to the Second World War, it is important to remember that there were several wars, not one. The war led by the Anglo-American and French imperialists against their German counterpart had little in common with the national anti-fascist war led by the Soviet Union. During its struggle against the Hitlerian invasion, the French ruling class did not and could not mobilize and arm the working masses in a fight to the death against Nazism. After the defeat of his troops, Pйtain, French World War I hero, signed the act of capitulation and became a major collaborator. Almost en masse, the French big bourgeoisie followed Hitler, trying to make the most of the German New Order. The war in the West was more or less a `civilized' war between `civilized' bourgeois.
Nothing of the kind took place in the Soviet Union. The Soviet people faced a completely different war; one of Stalin's merits is to have understood this in time and to have prepared appropriately.
Before Operation Barbarossa began, Hitler had already announced what was to occur. In his Journal, General Halder took notes of a speech given by Hitler to his generals on March 30, 1941. The fьhrer spoke of the upcoming war with the Soviet Union:
`Battle between two ideologies. Damning judgment of Bolshevism: it is an asocial crime. Communism is a frightening danger for the future .... It is a battle of annihilation. If we do not see things in this manner, we will still beat the enemy, but in thirty years, the Communist enemy will oppose us once more. We are not waging war to maintain our enemy ....
`Battle against Russia: destruction of Bolshevik commissars and of the Communist intelligentsia.'
.
Jacobsen, op. cit. , pp. 119--120.
Note that discussion refers to a `final solution', but not against the Jews. The first promises of a `war of annihilation' and of `physical destruction' were addressed to the Communists. And, sure enough, the Bolsheviks, the Soviets, were the first victims of mass extermination.
General Nagel wrote in September 1941:
`Unlike the diet for other prisoners (i.e. British and U.S.) we are under no obligation to feed the Bolshevik prisoners'.
.
Alan Clark, La Guerre а l'Est (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1966), p. 250.
In the Auschwitz and Chemno extermination camps, `Soviet prisoners of war were the first, or among the first, to be deliberately killed by lethal injections and gassing.'
.
Arno Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? The ``Final Solution'' in History (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988), p. 349.
There were 3,289,000 Soviet prisoners of war, dead in the concentration camps, `while travelling' or under `various circumstances' ! When epidemics took place in the barracks of Soviet prisoners, Nazi guards only entered `with flame-throwing teams when, ``for hygiene reasons'', the dying and dead were burned along with their lice-ridden beds'. There can easily have been 5,000,000 assassinated prisoners, if we take into account the Soviet soldiers who were `simply killed on the spot' when they surrendered.
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Clark, op. cit. , p. 251.
Therefore the first extermination campaigns, in fact the biggest, were against the Soviet peoples, including Soviet Jews. The peoples of the USSR suffered the most and endured the greatest number of dead (23 million), but they also showed utter determination and amazing heroism.
Until the invasion of the Soviet Union, there were no large massacres of Jewish populations. At the time, the Nazis had not encountered any serious resistance. But with their very first steps on Soviet soil, these noble Germans had to face adversaries who were fighting to the last man. Right in the first weeks, the Germans suffered important losses, against an inferior race, the Slavs, worse even, against Bolsheviks! The exterminating rage of the Nazis was born in their first massive losses. When the fascist beast started to bleed under the Red Army's blows, it dreamed up the `final solution' for the Soviet people.
On November 26, 1941, the German 30th Army Corps, occupying a large Soviet territory, ordered that be taken as hostages ` ``all individuals related to partisans''; ``all individuals suspected of being in contact with partisans''; ``all members of the party and the Komsomol, as well as party caretakers''; ``all former party members''; and ``all individuals who ocupied official positions before the arrival of German and Rumanian troops.'' These hostages were to be held ``in concentration camps.'' For every German or Rumanian soldier killed by a partisan, ten of these hostages were to be executed'.
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Mayer, op. cit. , p. 251.
For each German soldier killed, the Nazis decided to execute at l
east ten hostages.
On December 1, 1942, during a discussion with Hitler on the war against the Soviet partisans, General Jodl summed up the German position as follows:
`In battle, our troops can do as they please: hang partisans, even hang them head down or quarter them.'
