After collecting the rewards of the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939, the Soviet
leaders sat back to watch the struggle between Germany and France and Britain.
Meanwhile, under the terms of the German-Soviet trade agreement of August
19, 1939, the Soviet government furnished Germany large quantities of wheat,
oil, and minerals, becoming thus, in a sense, the "arsenal of
dictatorship," just as the United States became the "arsenal of
democracy." The Soviet government also gave loyal diplomatic support to
Germany by expelling from Moscow the envoys of the countries which Germany had
overrun and by recognizing the puppet governments which Germany had set up.
The unexpected rapid collapse of France startled the Soviet leaders because it
left Russia alone on the continent with a powerful Germany. while the attention
of the world was focused on the final phases of the struggle in the West, the
Soviet government moved quickly to consolidate its position in the east-in the
Baltic states and Rumania.
The Soviet government had not consulted the German government before making
these moves. Hitler was angered particularly by the Soviet encroachments in
Rumania, on which Germany counted for filling a substantial part of her needs
in oil and wheat. A frankly fascist regime was organized by General Antonescu,
which permitted the Germans to send in troops to "protect" the
Ploesti oil fields in October 1940. Russia was thus blocked from access to the
Balkans. However, at the same time an Italian blunder opened them to the
British.
In October 1940 Mussolini decided to have a little adventure of his own.
Without consulting Berlin and without any provocation, he declared war on
Greece. The Italian army invaded Greece from Albania, the Italian air force
bombarded her cities, and the Italian navy attacked her shipping. The pro-Axis
dictator of Greece, General Metaxas, was forced to accept British assistance.
The Greek army, however, proved perfectly capable of taking care of itself. Not
only did it succeed in containing the Italian invasion, but in a difficult
winter campaign hurled them back and invaded Albania in its turn.
The foothold gained by the British in Greece disquieted Hitler. Raging
against the ineptitude of his Italian partner, he ordered the preparation of
operation "Marita," the invasion of the Balkans, to be undertaken in
the spring of 1941. Before undertaking this operation, Hitler wished to
ascertain the attitude of Russia. On his summons, the Soviet Foreign Commissar
Molotov arrived in Berlin for discussions (November 12-14, 1940).
During the conversations, which were interrupted by a British air raid sending
the Soviet and Nazi dignitaries scurrying for the safety of an air-raid
shelter, Hitler suggested that Russia join the German-Italian Pact of Steel.
but the negotiation over spoils bugged down. So, on December 18, 1940, Hitler
ordered the preparation of operation "Barbarossa," the invasion of
Russia.
The decision to attack Russia added a reason to secure the right wing of the
German army by sweeping the British out of the Balkans-which the Germans
proceeded to do in April 1941. Having cleaned up the Balkans wing, they turned
to the main business of invading Russia.
At four AM, June 22, 1941, the German Panzers lumbered across the Soviet
border under a protective umbrella of the German Luftwaffe. At the same hour,
the German foreign minister informed the astonished Soviet ambassador in Berlin
that Germany was at war with Russia. No Soviet provocation preceded the
invasion. A few hours later, speaking over the London radio, Prime Minister
Churchill offered Russia an alliance, and on July 13 Britain and Russia
concluded a mutual assistance pact, which was later transformed into a formal
Anglo-Soviet alliance valid for twenty years.
For three years Russia took on the brunt of German military power largely
alone. In her struggle with Germany Russia enjoyed one advantage: Japanese
neutrality. While Japan remained neutral toward Russia, Germany's European
allies and satellites all hastened to declare war on her. The German
propaganda, which represented the German-Soviet war as an all-European crusade
against communist Russia, had a certain basis in fact.
The organization of Hitler's vast army could not be completely concealed,
but the Soviet government ignored warnings. It was completely surprised by the
German attack. The German plan was to annihilate the Soviet Army in a few swift
blows and to seize the great Russian cities: Leningrad, Moscow and Kiev. After
that, the Germans expected, the Soviet government would surrender and
disintegrate. At first, their campaign proceeded "according to
plan"-to use the characteristic phrase of the German war communiquˆ©s.
German armored divisions plunged deep into Russia and encircled in great
pincers movements Soviet army units, leaving them to later destruction by
conventional forces. City after city fell, millions of Soviet soldiers were
captured or killed, and vast quantities of war supplies were lost. But, despite
heavy losses, the Soviet army retreated in good order. It had many natural
advantages for defense: the vastness of Russia, poor roads, and a climate
characterized by short, hot summers, separated from long, rigorous winters by
periods of thaw in the spring and rains in the fall, when military operations
had to be suspended.
Leningrad, Kiev, Moscow
By September 8, the Germans reached Leningrad in the north and invested it.
Hitler attached great psychological importance to the capture of the city of
Lenin-the "cradle of Bolshevism." But the siege, marked by great
heroism and harrowing suffering on the part of the defenders, lasted 18 months,
and the city was never taken. In the south Kiev, the "Mother of Russian
cities," fell to the Germans on October 18. But in the center the Germans
were then still 200 miles from Moscow. At the end of October, despite the
advanced season, they suspended major operations in the north and south and
made an all-out drive to the capital. By the end of November, after fighting
vast tank battles which dwarfed the battles in the west of the previous year,
the Germans clawed their way to the suburbs of Moscow.
Soviet government bureaus and foreign embassies had already been evacuated to
Kuibyshev, some 500 miles to the east on the Volga. Looting broke out in the
semi-deserted city, which appeared doomed. But Stalin and his associates were
still in the Kremlin, planning a counter-offensive. Marshal Timoshenko, an old
civil war general, in command of the defenses, was replaced with General George
Zhukov, one of the crop of younger commanders trained in Germany.
On December 6 Zhukov hurled fresh units from Siberia into he battle. Soviet units
all along the front went into an offensive and the German lines wavered and
fell back. Panic developed in German headquarters, but Hitler assumed
operational command and prevented the retreat from turning into a rout by
draconic stand-or-die orders. The Germans withdrew into "hedgehog"
positions-armed camps bristling with defenses in all directions.
The severe winter took a heavy toll from the Germans, who had expected to
defeat the Russians before winter and were unprepared for a winter campaign. At
the same time they had to contend with increasing guerrilla activities. If
Hitler had come to Russia as a liberator instead of as a conqueror, he might
very well have rallied much of the Soviet population against their communist
government.
War behind the Lines
However, like Napoleon in 1812, he preferred to rely on military means alone to
defeat Russia. Alfred Rosenberg, a Baltic German and former Russian subject,
who as a student at the University of Moscow had witnessed the Russian
Revolution, was appointed commissioner of the occupied regions. He instituted
harsh and humiliating policies which alienated the Russian population. Old
churches, monasteries, palaces and the homes of Leo Tolstoy and Peter
Tchaikovsky were systematically and deliberately desecrated.
The Communist Party fought back by maintaining underground organizations in the
occupied regions which directed resistance against the Germans. To prevent
fraternization communist agents committed deliberate outrages against the
Germans, provoking them to brutal reprisals against the population-taking and
shooting of hostages, burning of villages, deportations to concentration camps,
or forced labor in Germany. As a result of German shortsightedness and Soviet
cleverness, the Russian people rallied to the defense of the "Soviet
fatherland."
In the spring of 1942 the German army reorganized for a new offensive, whose
objective was to complete the conquest of the Ukraine and to seize the Caucasus
region as far as the Volga. After that the Germans would be able to turn north
or south, and from the east outflank Moscow or the lands of the Near and Middle
East.
Stalingrad
Churning through the dust of southern Russia, the German armored and motorized
units reached Stalingrad on the right (western bank) of the Volga by August 23.
The conventional tactic for the Soviet army to adopt would have been to retire
to the left (eastern) bank of the Volga and form a defensive line based on the
river, but this would have cut the Soviet supply of oil coming in tankers
across the Caspian Sea and up the Volga. There was also a psychological factor,
in that the city bore the name of Stalin and its fall would have diminished the
prestige of the dictator.
Defeat and Consequences
On his hold-or-die orders the Soviet army, strengthened by the local
population, clung to the city. The battle of Stalingrad-the Verdun of World War
II-got underway. As days, weeks, and months went by, the battle increased in
intensity. At first the Germans and Russians fought over quarters of the city,
then over streets, and finally in fierce man-to-man combats over individual
houses, floors and rooms.
The city was reduced to a pile of rubble. As winter approached, the German
generals advised retreat, but Hitler, who had already proclaimed Russia broken
and defeated, would not hear of it-not even when the Soviet army mounted an
offensive to the north and south of Stalingrad, broke through the German lines,
and encircled the German Sixth Army in front of the city-in November 1942.
The inevitable result of Hitler's folly came on February 1, 1943, when Marshal
von Paulus, twenty-four German and satellite generals, and 91,000 Axis troops
(of the original 330,000 trapped by the Soviet army) surrendered. This
catastrophe broke the offensive power of the German Army. From this time on,
the initiative on the Eastern front was safely in the hands of the Soviet
army.#
The early days and weeks of 1943 opened-as had 1942-with the German Army in
serious trouble. In the first winter its predicament had arisen largely out of
accident and miscalculation. In 1943 the causes were more serious, and more
fundamental.
For over half its length, nearly six hundred miles, the front had solidified.
From the frozen Baltic, around the siege perimeter at Leningrad, due south to
Lake Ilmen, and across the pine forest of the old Rzhev salient, and then down
to Orel, the German front had hardly altered in twelve months. Permanent
emplacements of logs and earth sheltered the soldiers; reinforced concrete
protected guns whose field of fire traversed enormous mine fields, laid during
spring and summer, while the earth was soft.
In these positions the "garrison" had a comfortable enough time. Fuel
was plentiful, clothing adequate, mail was delivered regularly. Its situation
is comparable to that of the Western front in World War I between St. Mihiel
and the Swiss frontier. Its bitterest enemies were the terrible cold and the
huge bands of Partisans who roamed the desolate terrain, usually on horseback,
and came out of the freezing night to attack lonely German billets far behind
the lines. The front itself was often quiet for days at a time. The Germans
used it as a rest area for worn-out divisions, the Russians as a training
ground for new ones.
It was to the south, where the three great rivers of the Ukraine flowed into
the Black Sea, that the campaign was being decided. Here, six months before,
the Germans had deployed the flower of their Army, and here it was now in
headlong retreat. it had failed to force an issue in its prime. How, weakening
daily, could it avoid annihilation?
For Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, as he considered this problem, there was
no comfort. The forces for which he had responsibility were broken into three separate
groups, each too far, and too preoccupied with its own perils, to render the
others mutual support. With Paulus gone, German strength in south Russia was
halved. To the southeast, still deep in the Caucasus, Army Group A lingered on,
outside the scope of Manstein's direct command and alarmingly vulnerable to
Russian encirclement.
Manstein's own units, in Army Group Don, had taken such a battering since
November as to be hardly recognizable. Corps and divisions had lost their
identity; shot-up Panzers, anti-aircraft and Luftwaffe remnants, had polarized
around a few energetic commanders-Hollidt, Mieth, Fretter-Pico, who gave their
names to Gruppen responsible for stretches of front up to a hundred miles long.
Nonetheless, the Germans' inferiority was not so great as they, and the
majority of Allied observers, believed it to be at the time. Many of the
factors present the previous winter had recurred-men and machines had worn
themselves down in the exertions of the summer battles; winter equipment was
still inadequate, for mobile warfare at least; the tenacity and resilience of
the Russian soldier had again been underestimated-and these factors were
transient. As the Germans fell back on their railheads, if and when they could
gain time to breathe, when the temperature moderated, then they might still
expect their situation to improve.
The Russians now definitely had the stronger army-whereas in the winter of 1941
they had never achieved more than a local numerical superiority and owed their
victory simply to the toughness and bravery of the Red Army man and his
personal ascendancy over the individual German when the thermometer was 20
below. But equally the Russians had inherited many of the weaknesses of the
previous period. They had brought two and a half million men into uniform since
the outbreak of war. They had lost over four million trained soldiers. A
ruthless standardization of equipment-two types of trucks, two tanks, three
artillery pieces-had allowed them to raise production rates in spite of losing
two thirds of their factory space.
But of leaders to handle the new army there was a desperate scarcity. Some were
too cautious, others too headstrong, all compensated for lack of experience
with blind obedience to orders from above. The result was that tactical
flexibility and speed in exploitation were far below the German standard. Only
the artillery, some of the cavalry, and a very few of the tank brigades truly
merited the "Guards" accolade that was being so liberally dispensed. The
real problem for the Red Army had become one of adaptation: the change-over
from a defensive stance, where its rugged courage and fortitude had carried the
day, to the more complex structure of an offensive pattern, where the
initiative and training of even the smallest units could be of vital
importance.
The Battle of Kursk
Of all the operations in World War II none is so evocative of 1914-18 as the
German attack on the Kursk salient, the ill-fated Fall Zitadelle in high summer
of 1943. Rightly acclaimed as the greatest of all tank battles -at its height
there were close to three thousand tanks on the move at the same time-it was
from first to last a colossal battle of attrition, a slugging match which
swayed to and fro across a narrow belt of territory, seldom more than fifteen
miles deep, in which mines, firepower, and weight of explosives (rather than
mobility and leadership) were the decisive factors.
There is another feature of the offensive, which broke the Panzer force and
irrevocably handed the strategic initiative to the Russians, which evokes the
Great War, and this is the procrastination and argument which preceded its
launching. The plan can be seen acquiring a momentum of its own, which ends by
sweeping along all its participants, some protesting, some intoxicated, to a
doom whose inevitability they all came to recognize.
When this great Panzer battle turned out to be a failure for the Germans,
despite the new Panther tank, the generals took to quarreling among themselves.
Some even talked of staging a palace revolution to do away with Hitler. Even
Heinrich Himmler saw that the failure of the Zitadelle offensive meant that the
war was lost. The question which now exercised him was how to moderate defeat
and save his own skin, and as on two other occasions he sent out secret agents
to put out peace feelers to the Allies. The explosion of the Stauffenberg bomb
was less than a year away.
Devastating Retreat
By the late summer of 1943 the morale of the whole Wehrmacht, from top to
bottom, had suffered permanent change. Its courage and discipline were
unimpaired. But hope was tainted, and humanity, where vestiges of it remained,
was extinguished. August came in stifling heat; then September, the days
crisper but with an evening fog. The rattle of machine guns, as a few last
scores were settled with the local population, and the thud of demolition
charges, the German Army retreated across European Russia, leaving a trail of
smoke, of abandoned vehicles and loose-covered shallow graves.
At the same time the Western Allies were liquidating another German pincer
reaching out to the lands of the Near and Middle East through the deserts of
North Africa.
Source: Alan Clark, Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict, 1941-45 (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1965).
Send comments and questions to Professor Gerhard Rempel, Western New England College.