By the middle of June 1941, Hitler had moved enormous military resources to the Soviet border. Four million German troops were amassed on the border ready to invade. There were also 3,500 tanks, around 4,000 planes, and 50,000 guns and mortars. Attempts were made to keep this mobilisation secret, but given its size, numerous reports from border units, the Soviet intelligence service, even officials of the British and US governments, were passed on to the Soviet government. Stalin refused to act on these reports, instead wrote on them “For the archives”, and “To be filed”. This was all confirmed by General Zhukov in his Reminiscences and Reflections. When the Soviet military command asked for permission to put the Soviet troops on alert, Stalin refused. He refused to believe Hitler would invade. “German planes increasingly broke into Soviet airspace,” reports Air Marshal A. Novikov, “but we weren’t allowed to stop them.” (Quoted in Medvedev, Let History Judge, p. 332.)
In his speech at the 20th Congress of the CPSU, Khrushchev pointed out that on 3 April 1941, Churchill, through his ambassador to the USSR, the British minister Stafford Cripps personally warned Stalin that the Germans had begun regrouping their armed units with the intent of attacking the Soviet Union. Churchill affirmed in his writings that he sought to “warn Stalin and call his attention to the danger which threatened him”. Churchill stressed this repeatedly in his dispatches of 18 April and on the following days.
However, Stalin took no heed of these warnings. What is more, Stalin ordered that no credence be given to information of this sort, in order not to provoke the initiation of military operations.
We must assert that information of this sort concerning the threat of German armed invasion of Soviet territory was coming in also from our own military and diplomatic sources; however, because the leadership was conditioned against such information, such data was dispatched with fear and assessed with reservation.
Thus, for instance, information sent from Berlin on May 6, 1941, by the Soviet military attaché, Captain Vorontsov, stated: “Soviet citizen Bozer … communicated to the deputy naval attaché that, according to a statement of a certain German officer from Hitler’s headquarters, Germany is preparing to invade the USSR on May 14 through Finland, the Baltic countries and Latvia. At the same time Moscow and Leningrad will be heavily raided and paratroopers landed in border cities…”
In his report of May 22, 1941, the deputy military attaché in Berlin, Khlopov, communicated that: “…the attack of the German army is reportedly scheduled for June 15, but it is possible that it may begin in the first days of June…”
A cable from London Embassy dated June 18, 1941, stated: “As of now Cripps is deeply convinced of the inevitability of armed conflict between Germany and the USSR, which will begin not later than the middle of June. According to Cripps, the Germans have presently concentrated 147 divisions (including air force and service units) along the Soviet borders…”
Despite these particularly grave warnings, the necessary steps were not taken to prepare the country properly for defence and to prevent it from being caught unawares. (Special Report on the 20th Congress of the CPSU by N.S. Khrushchev, 24-25 February 1956.)
And again:
In this connection, we cannot forget, for instance, the following fact: shortly before the invasion of the Soviet Union by the Hitlerite army, Kirponos, who was chief of the Kiev Special Military District (he was later killed at the front), wrote to Stalin that the German armies were at the Bug River, were preparing for an attack and in the very near future would probably start their offensive. In this connection, Kirponos proposed that a strong defence be organised, that 300,000 people be evacuated from the border areas and that several strong points be organised there: anti-tank ditches, trenches for the soldiers, etc.
Moscow answered this proposition with the assertion that this would be a provocation, that no preparatory defensive work should be undertaken at the borders, that the Germans were not to be given any pretext for the initiation of military action against us. Thus, our borders are insufficiently prepared to repel the enemy. When the fascist armies had actually invaded Soviet territory and military operations began, Moscow issued the order that the German fire was not to be returned. Why? It was because Stalin, despite evident facts, thought that the war had not yet started, that this was only a provocative action on the part of several undisciplined sections of the German army, and that reaction might serve as a reason for the Germans to begin the war.
The following fact is also known: on the eve of the invasion of the territory of the Soviet Union by the Hitlerite army, a certain German citizen crossed our border and stated that the German armies had received orders to start the offensive against the Soviet Union on the night of June 22 at 3 o’clock. Stalin was informed about this immediately, but even this warning was ignored.
As you see, everything was ignored: warnings of certain army commanders, declarations of deserters from the enemy army, and even the open hostility of the enemy. Is this an example of the alertness of the chief of the party and of the state at this particularly significant historical moment? And what were the results of this carefree attitude, this disregard of clear facts? The result was that already in the first hours and days the enemy had destroyed in our border regions a large part of our Air Force, artillery and other military equipment; he annihilated large numbers of our military cadres and disorganised our military leadership; consequently, we could not prevent the enemy from marching deep into the country. (Ibid.)
Incredibly, there were no defence plans prepared in the event of a German attack. Many Soviet tanks were without their crews. Even when Hitler actually launched his offensive, Stalin ordered the Red Army not to resist. Thus, the mighty Soviet armed forces were paralysed for the critical first 48 hours. The Red Air Force was destroyed on the ground. Due to this confusion and paralysis at the top, huge swathes of territory were lost in the first few weeks. Millions of Soviet soldiers were captured with little resistance. With proper leadership, there is no doubt that the German invaders could have been pushed back into Poland at the beginning of the war. A decisive defeat could have been inflicted on Hitler as early as 1941. The war could have been brought to an end far earlier, avoiding the horrific losses suffered by Belarus, western Russia and the Ukraine. The nightmare suffered by the peoples of the USSR were the direct result of the irresponsible policy pursued by Stalin and his clique.
Stalin feared war with Germany because he was afraid that this could lead to his overthrow. He was particularly afraid of the military. After the disastrous Finnish campaign of 1939-40, he ordered the release of thousands of officers who had been imprisoned in the Purges, but Medvedev points out that as late as “1942, Stalin ordered a large group of leading Red Army officers to be shot in the camps; he considered them a threat to himself in the event of unfavourable developments on the Soviet-German Front”. (R. Medvedev, Let History Judge, p. 312.)
After the war, strenuous attempts were made by the Kremlin to spread the myth of Stalin as a ‘great war Leader’. This does not stand up to the slightest scrutiny. We have already seen how Stalin’s policies left the Soviet Union at the mercy of Hitler. When Hitler invaded, the Soviet leaders were in disarray. Stalin initially panicked and went into hiding. His actions amounted to total capitulation. Despite this he gave himself the title of ‘Generalissimo’ and embellished his role in the Great Patriotic War. The true position was expressed by Khrushchev in the following terms:
It would be incorrect to forget that, after the first severe disaster and defeat at the front, Stalin thought that this was the end. In one of his speeches in those days he said: “All that which Lenin created we have lost for ever”. After this Stalin for a long time actually did not direct the military operations and ceased to do anything whatever. He returned to active leadership only when some members of the Political Bureau visited him and told him that it was necessary to take certain steps immediately in order to improve the situation at the front.
Therefore, the threatening danger which hung over our Fatherland in the first period of the war was largely due to the faulty methods of directing the nation and the party by Stalin himself. However, we speak not only about the moment when the war began, which led to serious disorganisation of our army and brought us severe losses. Even after the war began, the nervousness and hysteria which Stalin demonstrated, interfering with actual military operations, caused our army serious damage.
Stalin was very far from an understanding of the real situation which was developing at the front. This was natural because, during the whole Patriotic War, he never visited any section of the front or any liberated city except for one short ride on the Mozhaisk highway during a stabilised situation at the front. To this incident were dedicated many literary works full of fantasies of all sorts and so many paintings. Simultaneously, Stalin was interfering with operations and issuing orders which did not take into consideration the real situation at a given section of the front and which could not help but result in huge personnel losses.
I will allow myself in this connection to bring out one characteristic fact which illustrates how Stalin directed operations at the front. There is present at this Congress Marshal Bagramyan, who was once the chief of operations in the headquarters of the south-western front and who can corroborate what I will tell you.
When there developed an exceptionally serious situation for our army in 1942 in the Kharkov region, we had correctly decided to drop an operation whose objective was to encircle Kharkov, because the real situation at that time would have threatened our army with fatal consequences if this operation was continued. We communicated this to Stalin, stating that the situation demanded changes in operational plans so that the enemy would be prevented from liquidating a sizeable concentration of our army. Contrary to common sense, Stalin rejected our suggestion and issued the order to continue the operation aimed at the encirclement of Kharkov, despite the fact that at this time many army concentrations were themselves actually threatened with encirclement and liquidation.
I telephoned to Vasilevsky and begged him: “Alexander Mikhailovich, take a map” – Vasilevsky is present here – “and show Comrade Stalin the situation which has developed.” We should note that Stalin planned operations on a globe. (Animation in the hall.) Yes, comrades, he used to take the globe and trace the front line on it. (Special Report on the 20th Congress of the CPSU by N.S. Khrushchev, 24-25 February 1956.)
Hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers were captured in the first days of the war. The losses later suffered by the Red Army were made far worse by Stalin’s insistence on frontal attacks, irrespective of the cost in lives. When the Red Army counter-attacked at the end of 1941 instead of trying to outflank the enemy with tactical manoeuvres, Stalin demanded the capture of one village after another. “Because of this,” Khrushchev explained, “we paid with great losses – until our generals, on whose shoulders rested the whole weight of conducting the war, succeeded in changing the situation and shifting to flexible-manoeuvre operations, which immediately brought serious changes at the front favourable to us.” (Ibid.)
By the end of November 1941, the Soviet retreat had lost ground that contained 63 per cent of all coal production, 68 per cent of pig iron, 58 per cent of steel, 60 per cent of aluminium, 41 per cent of railway lines, 84 per cent of sugar, 38 per cent of grain, and 60 per cent of pigs. Some major centres, notably Leningrad, were effectively isolated. Huge supplies of basic materials and equipment were suddenly cut off, and much more was put at risk by the swift German advance. Faced with the prospect of imminent defeat and overthrow, Stalin reluctantly replaced his talentless and incompetent stooges with other more able commanders, some of them having been released from jail for the purpose:
After fearing for his life and being threatened by a total loss of power, he understood that he needed specialists to conduct the war successfully, and in his search for them he even turned to those he had arrested. Men were freed from prison and sent to high command posts – Rokossovsky and Gorbatov, among others; but this did not, of course, solve the entire problem. It was impossible to fill with individual bricks the enormous gaping hole that Stalin’s insane terrorist activity had made in the leadership of the armed forces. (Grigorenko, op. cit., p. 211.)