German Invasion (1941)

Stalin and the German Invasion 1941

Hitler’s forces on the frontier: 5.5 million troops, 2,800 tanks, 5,000 aircraft and 47,000 artillery pieces
3.15 am June 22^nd 1941 Operation Barbarossa began
German bombers hit 66 Soviet airfields
Hundreds of aircraft destroyed on the ground
Minsk, Odessa and Sevastopol bombed
German army advanced on a front of 1,000 miles
Soviet forces had not been placed on alert
Ordered not to respond to provocation although Stalin was told of the invasion within 15 minutes
He rejected requests for permission to respond, believing Hitler was just trying to provoke USSR
At 6.30 he gave orders to retaliate
Over next few days the scale of the catastrophe became apparent:
1000 Soviet planes destroyed on first day
End of 5^th day Germans had taken Dvinsk 185 miles from the border
Took road and rail bridges over R. Dvina
No steps taken to destroy important bridges
Frontier had moved west after incorporation of eastern Poland into USSR but no effective fortifications had been built along the new frontier – some of the fortress defences along the old frontier were dismantled
Stalin had been given plenty of warning weeks before
January 1941 US Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles gave a warning to the Soviet ambassador in Washington based on information picked up in Berlin that the Germans would attack in May or June
Churchill sent Stalin a message on April 3^rd that attack was imminent
Anthony Eden (GB Foreign Secretary) told Soviet ambassador Maisky the same thing in London at least five times between April and June
British Secret Service passed on to Moscow via Soviet spy ring in Switzerland the date of the invasion and exact details of where attacks would take place
If Stalin didn’t trust GB and US sources, information also came from other informants
Most remarkable was Richard Sorge, a German communist and intelligence agent based in Tokyo who was acting as a Soviet spy
He was on close terms with Herman Ott the German ambassador in Tokyo
Ott supplied him with all the latest military and diplomatic information
5^th March Sorge told Moscow the Germans would attack in mid June
Sent stream of reports adding more details until a week before the actual invasion when he gave the date and dispositions of the 9 German armies involved
At about the same time count von Schulenburg, German ambassador in Moscow, who was no supporter of Hitler and who was against the idea of war between the 2 states, warned his Soviet counterpart of the coming attack
Stalin’s intelligence forces reported the German build up near the border (5^th May)
There were reports at the end of May that all civilians were being moved out of border areas
6^th June German border guards replaced by troops
Signs and warnings multiplied daily until 21^st June
Even so Stalin was shocked by the German attack
Didn’t believe Hitler would risk war with USSR before GB was beaten – it would mean a war on 2 fronts
Under no illusions that the Nazi-Soviet Pact would last 10 years
Told an audience of young officers that war was certain (May 5^th) but that he hoped to stave it off until 1942
June 6^th approved detailed plan for switching Soviet industry over to war production by end of 1942
This is a controversial topic
How could Stalin have been so mistaken about the timing of the German invasion?
Did he see the intelligence reports – and if he did why didn’t he act?
It seems he did read the reports – but – he ignored information that didn’t fit in with his theories and beliefs
It’s likely that he didn’t show all of the reports to his military chiefs who were kept very much in the dark

Stalin’s Thinking

That GB was the real enemy of USSR
GB intervened in the Civil War
He suspected they were waiting for an opportunity to destroy USSR
The betrayal of Czech at Munich and their reluctance to sign an alliance with USSR in summer 1939 showed him that GB hadn’t changed
During Soviet-Finnish War there were plans to send 50,000 GB and French troops in north Norway to help the Finns
Stalin was worried about the possibility of GB bombing raids on Leningrad
Even after the defeat of Finland the British Chiefs of Staff prepared examining options for attacking USSR eg raids on the Caucasus oil fields
March and April 1940 GB recce flights over oil towns of Baku and Batum revealed that Baku had virtually no anti-aircraft defences
In conversations between GB and French Prime Ministers 15^th May was mentioned as a possible date for aerial attack on Baku
Germans depended heavily on USSR supplying them with oil
Attacks from bases in Iraq could put the Soviet oil industry out of action and deal a severe blow to both countries
There was no attack on May 15^th
After the fall of France 1940 the British abandoned the idea
No doubt GB plans were passed to Stalin by the Gestapo
By this time Churchill, a sworn enemy of communism was Prime Minister
Stalin distrusted any info from GB and US sources
Believed that Churchill would do anything to bring USSR into war against Germany
10^th May 1941 Hess flew to GB to negotiate peace
Stalin believed he’d been invited by GB Secret Service to form plans for joint GB and German attack on USSR

The Timing of Invasion

Stalin bothered by German build-up in western Poland
It seems he believed Hitler was building up military pressure as a bluff or blackmail as a preliminary for some new demands for economic or territorial concessions
When these were presented Stalin would be able to negotiate with Hitler and reach agreement as before, and war would be avoided
Another possibility considered by Stalin was that it was the German generals that wanted to provoke war
In that case there was no need to worry because Hitler would make sure it didn’t happen in 1941
Stalin wrote a personal letter to Hitler saying how surprised he was by the German military preparations which gave the impression that USSR was going to be attacked
Hitler sent a personal letter telling Stalin in confidence that German troops were being concentrated in Poland so they’d be safe from British bombing of western and central Germany
Hitler gave his word of honour as head of state that he would keep the Pact
Zhukov said Stalin believed him
Mystery – why Stalin trusted Hitler – he trusted no-one else
Once Stalin made up his mind it was usually impossible to get him to change it – he’d made up his mind to trust Hitler
It made it hard for his subordinates to prepare to meet an attack without risking Stalin’s wrath

The Khrushchev Era

During the period of De-Stalinization late 50s-early 60s much evidence emerged
In his memoirs Admiral Kuznetsov says Stalin expected a war and saw the Nazi-Soviet Pact as a ploy to gain further time for preparation
His mistake was to overestimate the time he had to do it
Kuznetsov criticises Stalin for his secretiveness – most Red Army senior officers knew nothing about what the strategic plans were in case of a sudden attack – or whether any existed at all
Stalin dominated those around him
They weren’t used to taking initiatives and dared not challenge his authority

AM Nekrich

Soviet historian
1965 book “22^nd June 1941”
Published under the auspices of the Marxism-Leninism Institute
He lays the blame entirely on Stalin
It wasn’t that he ignored the warnings presented – he simply put the wrong interpretation on them and refused to believe there’d be an invasion before Spring 1942
It shows how out of touch he was with the real world
Khrushchev fell from power in 1964
Stalin began to be rehabilitated
Military leaders and historians were encouraged to write memoirs and articles about Stalin’s role as war leader
They were not forbidden to make fair criticisms but the main point of the exercise was to encourage a positive evaluation of Stalin’s contribution
Nekrich’s work although well received in USSR and Eastern Europe now came under attack
His book was discussed at a conference of historians who concluded it was ‘politically harmful’
He was censured and expelled from the Communist Party in June 1967 and his book banned

GA Deborin

Historian
Put the new official line
Claimed although Stalin made mistakes and reached wrong conclusions it was because he received false information
Said – ‘Stalin’s estimate of German intentions was endorsed by those around him. So Stalin cannot be considered solely responsible for his mistakes’

Glasnost

Stalin’s reputation came under attack
Dmitri Volkogonov said Stalin’s miscalculations ‘stemmed from his personal rule. It is hard to blame the commissars of the Chief War Council when their boss’s image was that of the wise and infallible leader...to please Stalin everybody talked about the “invincibility of the Red Army”...Zhukov probably put it best when he said that all Stalin’s actions and thoughts on the eve of the war were subordinated to the single effort to avoid war, and this generated in him the certain belief that it would not occur’
Zhukov – Stalin resisted all attempts by the military leadership to put the troops on alert for fear of provoking Hitler
Volkogonov – ‘one can understand the desire not to give Hitler an excuse to attack, but he can hardly have imagined that Hitler would attack if provoked, if invasion of the USSR did not already figure in his plans’

Viktor Suvorov

Some historians felt this interpretation too simple
1990 book called “Icebreaker: who started the Second World War?” published in English; written by Suvorov
He’d defected to GB from Soviet Military Intelligence
Said Stalin intended to attack Germany first on 6^th July 1941
Hitler’s invasion in June was to forestall Stalin
Some German historians seized on this to enable them to portray Hitler’s invasion as a justifiable action to save western Europe from communism
The book caused a sensation in the USSR
1995 collection of essays published based on latest evidence and generally supporting Suvorov, eg 5^th May 1941 in a speech to officer graduates Stalin said – ‘Now that we have reconstructed our army, built up sufficient technology for contemporary warfare, become strong – now is the time to move from the defensive to the offensive, we have to move from defence to a policy of attack. The Red Army is a modern army, and a modern army is an offensive army’
Zhukov was thinking along the same lines – 15^th May sent a note to Stalin proposing ‘we deprive the German command of their initiative by forestalling their forces during deployment, by attacking them at the moment they are at the deployment stage’

Other Contributions

2 Russian historians, Gabriel Gorodetsky and Dmitri Volkogonov dismiss the theory
1998 book ‘The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire’ (Volkogonov) said although it’s possible Stalin was planning to attack Hitler first,there’s no evidence that it was to be July 1941
Nor was there evidence to show how Stalin had reacted to the Zhukov note
‘It was impossible to contemplate a large-scale offensive against Germany without a detailed and documented operational analysis, without creating the necessary army groupings and many other undertakings. It would be possible to send a unit into battle on verbal orders only, but never a multi-million-man army. If Stalin was planning to attack Hitler first, he must have been planning to do it later’

The Red Army

USSR not in a state of preparedness for German invasion
Soviets rearming since start of 1^st 5 Year Plan – huge sums spent
Mark Harrison: ‘because the Soviet rearmament pattern aimed at some future war, it was never ready for war in the present. Changing forecasts and expectations meant that military plans were always under revision. The armed forces were always in the midst of re-equipment and reorganization. Military products already in mass production were always on the verge of obsolescence; defence industries were always half way through re-training and re-tooling’
During Spanish Civil War, Soviet weapons and aircraft were obviously inferior to German
But the 20 months of extra preparation time gained by the Nazi-Soviet Pact weren’t wasted –
Defence output doubled
Red Army trebled in size
June 1941 5.5 million men in uniform
Every month there were produced: 230 tanks, 700 war planes, 4000 guns and mortars, 100,000 rifles, million plus shells
Overall picture not so good
Large proportion of troops untrained
Using obsolete weapons
Most tanks obsolete
Most up to date tanks only just coming into production
Same with planes –Yak-1 and MIG-3 fighters
Army command not recovered from purges of 1937-8 – all the most experienced officers executed
Their immature, inexperienced replacements obediently accepted Stalin’s view of military strategy, i.e. if the Germans attacked, the Red Army would plug breaches in the defences, drive them out and crush them those who suggested German forces might be strong enough to penetrate deeply and so plans should be made for defence in depth in the interior were accused of being in league with the enemy, many had been shot and others were still in prison
Stalin so confident that obvious precautions ignored
Discussions about relocating arms factories further east but little was done

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