Stalinism in wartime
Cards (29)
- •It came at the worst time for the USSR – the Army and Air Force were in transition, changing their organisation, leadership and defensive plans.
- •The new border defences were not built after the partition of Poland and Barbarossa was a disaster for Stalin.•Most Soviet aircraft were destroyed on the ground on the first day and by December, the Red Army had lost 6 million soldiers, either killed or captured.•They lost some of their best industrial areas and most fertile land along with 2/5 of the total population.
- •The German advance in the South had been very successful and General Paulus was ordered to capture the city of Stalingrad, important as it bore Stalin’s name.•Stalin ordered the city to be defended at all costs and civilians were organised into a militia to fight back.
- •The Luftwaffe heavily bombed the city and the ruined buildings became the site of street fighting, sometimes house-to-house.•Meanwhile, the USSR General Zhukov gathered forces and encircled the German 6th Army.•Hitler refused to let General Paulus break out and they were forced to surrender on 31st January 1943. The German army lost 500,000 men in the fight for Stalingrad. This was one of the most pivotal victories in all of WW2
- •The last chance for Hitler to seize the advantage again was his Operation Citadel, a Blitzkrieg attack focussed on the city if Kursk.•Hitler delayed the attack, waiting for better weather conditions and the Soviets knew it was coming thanks to Britain cracking the Enigma code. Both sides built up their strength.
- •Germany gathered an army of over 500,000 men, 10,000 guns and mortars, 2,700 tanks and assault guns and 2,500 aircraft.•The Red Army had almost 1,300,000 men, over 20,000 guns and mortars, 3,600 tanks, 2,650 aircraft and 5 reserve armies of another 500,000 men and 1,500 tanks.•The battle was fierce and had what is considered to be the largest tank battle in military history.•Ultimately, the USSR were victorious and Hitler’s hopes of successfully invading the USSR were essentially crushed.
- •After the victory at Kursk, Stalin launched his counter-offensive, Operation Bagration. This was named after a famous Georgian commander in the Napoleonic wars.•In 68 days, the 1.2 million strong German Army Group Centre was destroyed and the Soviets were the first to reach Berlin.•It can’t be underestimated how large the USSR contribution was to victory in the WW2 and a lot of the success came from the determination of the ordinary citizens:
- 6th December: Soviet counter-offensive pushes Germans back near Moscow
- 31sr January 1943: Nazi General Paulus surrenders at Stalingrad. 800,000 German troops had been lost.
- The USSR drive to Berlin which surrenders on 2nd May 1945
- •Stalin then withdrew for a week while a new military and government structure was built.
- Stalingrad in the South became a key struggle. From September to November 1942, a few thousands Soviet men and women held up the Germans despite suffering 75% casualties. This gave time for General Zhukov to set up an encircling counter-offensive which trapped the German 6th Army in a huge pocket. They forced the Germans to surrender on 31st January 1943
- In July 1943, Kursk saw the largest and fiercest set-piece battle in history involving a huge number of tanks. The Germans were defeated and their chances of victory were shut down. In 1944, Stalin then launched Operation Bagration (named after a Georgian commander in the Napoleonic Wars) which pushed all the way to Berlin. In 68 days, the 1.2 million strong German Army Group Centre was destroyed and the Soviets made it to Berlin first.
- Operation Barbarossa was launched on the night of 21/22 June 1941. Despite warnings from his military intelligence agents and from the British government, and despite a build-up of forces near the Soviet border, Stalin seemed “shocked and confused” when the attack came. His initial reaction was to suggest that someone contact Hitler in Berlin because he suspected the troop advance to be a “limited act of provocation”.
- Stalin knew the Nazi-Soviet Pact wouldn’t last long and it’s assumed he signed it to get “breathing space” to build up her defences. But they were still far from prepared for war by the Summer of 1941
- Stalin met the Politburo immediately and his first wartime order was to demand the destruction of the German Air Force and the German invading forces. He left the public announcement of war to Molotov, possible because he couldn’t bring himself to do it himself. Molotov made the announcement on the loudspeakers in Soviet cities and ended with: “Our cause is just, the enemy will be smashed, victory will be ours.”
- 23rd June: Stavka, the Supreme Military Command, is established. They were responsible for all military planning and consisted of all the marshalls of the Soviet Union, the Chief of General Staff and the heads of the various military services.
- 30th June: State Defence Committee (GKO) was set up by the Politburo. This was a civilian body responsible for organisation and coordinations. They had absolute authority over all Party, state , military and others organisations and they directed the wartime economy. Marshal Voroshilov was removed from military command to serve on the GKO. It was a small group of 5 (expanded to 8 in February 1942).
- 20th July: Stalin assumes overall military command. He became “the supreme war leader”.
- From July 1941, all authority, both political and military, rested with Stalin. His speeches were designed to rekindle patriotism. Interestingly, he appealed to his people’s love of their country and played on the threat to their culture, not to socialism. “The people fought for Russia, not Communism.” His speeches and actions were crucial in bolstering morale.
- After Hitler’s invasion, large numbers of people in national minority areas, particularly Estonia, Lithuania, Belorussia and the Ukraine, welcomed German soldiers as liberators after the harsh Stalinism of the 1930s. Thousands in these areas became collaborators. Some acted as “Hilfswillige” others fought, such as the Russian Liberation Movement under Andrey Vlasov which was formed in the Ukraine and became a division of the Waffen-SS. Probably over a million, including 250,000 Cossacks, joined Hitler’s side
- “Hilfswillige” (people willing to help the Germans as drivers, cooks, hospital attendants, ammunition carriers and messengers);
- Hitler’s racial ideology though worked against him as these Slavs were seen as inferior and not able to fight alongside Aryans. They therefore failed to capitalise on lots of potential support. In Belorussia in 1941, the Nazis were initially welcomed but they carried out a brutal policy, aiming to kill 75% of the population and condemning the rest to slavery. This led to fierce resistance and there was even a bomb-making factory, run by Jews, in the Naliboki Forest.
- The war required a continuation of “terror tactics” both for the arnmy and civilians. When the Germans threatened Stalingrad in July 1942, Stalin issued Ordewr 227 “Not One Step Backwards”. Any soldier who fell behind or tried to retreat would be shot on sight and more than 150,000 were killed by this order. Penal battalions were created from those who broke discipline and were labelled as “cowards”.
- Stalin ignored 80 warnings in 8 months and reports of German troop-build up. The country was unprepared for the German attack. By December, the Red Army had lost 6 million men. 6 days after the German invasion, Stalin admitted to a small group of close associates: “Lenin left us a great legacy, but we, his heirs, have messed it up.”
- Foreign governments assumed that the Red Army was a broken shell and this was reinforced by its poor performance against Finland in 1940.
- · There is no evidence to suggest that Stalin suffered even the slightest remorse about sending millions to their deaths in battle.
- · Stalin was a rallying force in desperate times. He did not leave Moscow when he evacuated the government in 1941. His speeches in 1941 can be compared to those of Churchill in their effect. In his speech on 3rd July 194q, Stalin said: “Comrades! Citizens! Brothers and Sisterds! Fighters of our Army and Fleet! I address you, my friends!” Stalin had never referred to the Russian people like this before and it had a big impact on people.
- · After the initial disasters, Stalin became more willing to listen to the advice of his High Command, particularly Zhukov who was made Deputy Supreme Commander of the Soviet Armed Forces. Zhukov planned the encircling counter-offensive that was the key to Russian success at Stalingrad.