Barbarossa (9 page)

[For the political background to relations between the two powers
and the Berlin conference of November 1940, see Ch. 1.]

The shift in emphasis gathered speed and weight during the winter,
after the rejection of Stalin's letter of 27th November seemed to
have made conflict between the two powers inevitable; and the effect
was that by the spring of 1941 the Russian dispositions resembled a
caricature of Tukhachevski's old plan, with the troops bunched on the
new frontier, which they had little time to prepare for defence and
with their communications to base areas already stretched.

Indeed, there is a certain parallel, on a vaster scale, between
the Russian layout and the manner in which the French and British
armies deserted their own positions and rushed headlong into Belgium
to meet the invader in May 1940. In explanation, though, motives that
are less highminded than the desire to offer immediate succour to a
small ally suggest themselves. During the winter of 1940-41 the
strength in the Novgorod concentration area shrank again, and there
was a corresponding build-up (twenty infantry divisions, two cavalry
divisions, and five armoured divisions) along the Finnish frontier.
Two separate army groups were formed (normally the whole area would
come under one of the Leningrad army groups) under Generals Meretskov
and Govorov, and this fact, together with certain remarks of
Molotov's which have been recorded in the minutes of the Berlin
conference, suggests that the Russians were preparing a renewal of
their attack on Finland in the summer of 1941.

The even heavier concentration in the area between Lemberg (Lvov)
and the upper Prut was partly an extension of Tukhachevski's original
plan, partly also a means of strengthening Russia's hand in the
intensified power politics that were being played out in the Balkans.
For Stalin's opinion was that further Russian annexation would be
possible in the Balkans if Germany became more deeply involved in the
West, either by an attempted invasion of the British Isles or in the
Mediterranean. When Stafford Cripps presented to Stalin comprehensive
evidence of the German plan (supplied by Hess), the Russian leader
thought that it was a plant, sharing the view of Voroshilov that "We
have the time to play the role of gravedigger to the capitalist
world—and give it the finishing blow."

The result of this divergence of opinion between the
Stavka
and GOKO was an exceedingly unwieldy and top-heavy distribution of
the Russian Army. By the middle of May 1941 there were nearly 170
divisions, or over five sevenths of the country's total armed
strength, outside the 1939 frontiers. They were distributed in five
"military districts" running from north to south as
"Leningrad," "Baltic," "Western,"
"Kiev," and "Odessa" commands, and under generals
whose names—Popov, Tyuleney, Pavlov—were destined, if
they survived the first desperate days of battle and the punitive
firing squads that punctuated them, for obscurity.

But although the Red Army was at a disadvantage because of this
vulnerable distribution and was to suffer fearfully from clumsy,
hesitant, and incompetent leadership, it was more than the equal of
the Germans in the purely logistical field of equipment and supply.
There were deficiencies, notably in the field of medical services and
radio communication, but in the key figures of tank strength (over
seven thousand in the forward area) and field artillery the Russians
were superior.

There were three types of divisions: the infantry, composed of
three regiments, each of three battalions, and one reserve regiment
of two battalions; the cavalry, with four regiments, each of two
battalions; and the armoured division. In the later stages of the war
there were separate motorised infantry divisions, but in 1941 the
infantry had no motor transport and depended on horsedrawn wagons.
The only motorised infantry was that attached to the armoured
divisions. Each infantry division had an artillery component, and
this had wheeled and tracked vehicles for drawing the guns and
carrying the ammunition. The infantry divisions also had a tank
strength attached to them, but this was made up mostly of old French
designs of the twenties. Output of the T 34 was restricted to the
armoured divisions.

The cavalry, far from being an anachronism, was of immense value.
Recruited from Cossacks and Kalmuks—peoples who spent their
lives in the saddle—it had an extraordinary mobility. Its men
were trained to fight as infantry, but would use the horses to cover
huge distances over bad ground, and to tow their light artillery and
mortar limbers. They were adept at the art of concealment and
dispersion. "A Soviet cavalry division," Manstein grumbled,
"can move, in its entirety, a hundred kilometres in a night—and
that at a tangent to the axis of communication." They were
invaluable under conditions of fluid fighting, and their horses,
shaggy little Kirkhil ponies from Siberia, could stand temperatures
of 30 degrees below zero.

The importance of the cavalry divisions was heightened by their
status as the only mobile units capable of operating with any degree
of independence. For following on Pavlov's recommendations in 1939
the armoured divisions had been broken up and their strength
distributed as "brigades" throughout the infantry armies.
Although the divisional organisation was retained in a number of
cases, the breakdown of the brigades into "heavy,"
"medium," and "reconnaissance" spelled the end of
the tank force as an independent arm.

Then, following the success of the Panzer divisions in Poland and
France, efforts, first lethargic, then frantic, had been made to
start the regrouping of the tank brigades back into armoured
divisions. But this process was just beginning by the summer of 1941,
and the Russian commanders had had no time to acquaint themselves
with the problems—much less the solutions—of handling
large tank forces. Nonetheless, the actual weight of the armour
deployed was, in the aggregate, very formidable (some authorities
have put the total number of tanks in the Soviet Army at the start of
the campaign as high as twenty thousand), and its even distribution
endowed the regular infantry divisions with a fire power that was at
least the equal of their German equivalent.

Mass, then, the Russian Army possessed in abundance—as
always in its history. In equipment, too, it was better off than any
of the Wehrmacht's earlier victims. The key question remained, what
of its morale and its leadership?

In Russia, as in Germany, the relationship between Army and state
was a delicate one. In both countries a personal dictatorship and a
"Party" organisation had been faced with the problem of
disciplining the military and subordinating it to their own political
purpose. In both this had been achieved, but by completely different
approaches, which in turn left residual influences of profound
importance. Hitler had outmanoeuvred his generals and, within a few
years, achieved their exclusion from the field of politics, where for
half a century they had ruled as arbiters. Then with bribes,
cajolery, and browbeating he canalised their energies and their
expertise into one field, the pursuit of pure military efficiency.

But the Russian officer corps was not isolated, it was crushed.
When the purges were over, the Red Army was obedient to the point of
witlessness; dutiful but without experience; stripped of political
weight or ambition, at the expense of initiative, experiment, or the
desire to innovate. The question remained, had their native
patriotism, the primaeval love of "Mother Russia" which had
quickened ancestors suffering under regimes more barbarous and
tyrannical even than Stalinism, to rise and reject an alien invader,
also been eradicated? For this, and will power, and fatalism, and
that readiness to accept terrible sufferings that are essentially
Russian qualities, would all be needed to the full in the first
dreadful weeks of the German assault.

At the beginning of 1941 the OKW intelligence branch had estimated
Russian strength at "not more than" two hundred effective
divisions. Since the war Haider has said, "This was a gross
underestimate, the figure was more like three hundred and sixty."
In actual fact, the original figure was probably much nearer the
truth, but the Soviet mobilisation machinery was highly efficient,
succeeding in putting over a million men under arms before the end of
July. In this prodigious feat the Russians were greatly helped by
Osoaviakhim, which had thirty-six million members, of whom 30 percent
were women. It was a nationwide paramilitary organisation which
"implanted in them the rudiments of civil defence and close
fighting. Its clubs were formed of units to defend local areas, units
of pilots, of parachutists, of Partisan cadres and even for the use
of dogs in warfare. It was entrusted with the neutralisation of mine
fields and the recovery of equipment in the rear of armies . . ."

Hitler dismissed the latent strength of such an organisation. He
believed that the Soviet military machine was so riddled with
Communism, insecurity, suspicion, and informers, and so demoralised
by the purges that it could not function properly. Intelligence had
drawn up a clear picture of the Russian Army in Poland and of the
vulnerability of its disposition.

"You have only to kick in the door," he told Rundstedt,
"and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down."

It is certainly paradoxical to find Hitler, whose own contempt for
the professional soldier was unbounded, and who never ceased to exalt
the ties of Party over the scruples of caste, expressing so orthodox
a view on the corrupting effect of politics on a military system. But
whatever his reasoning, he had, in his estimate of the Russian
potential, overlooked one very important factor. The Wehrmacht was
now confronted by an opponent of a completely different kind from the
soft nations of the West. "The Russian soldier," Krylov has
said, "loves a fight and scorns death. He was given the order:
'If you are wounded, pretend to be dead; wait until the Germans come
up; then select one of them and kill him! Kill him with gun, bayonet,
or knife. Tear his throat with your teeth. Do not die without leaving
behind you a German corpse.' "

[A more formal rendering of these instructions can be found in
par. 2 of the "General Principles" to the Provisional Field
Service Regulations of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (People's
Commissariat for Defence 1937):

"The constant urge to get to grips with the enemy, with the
aim of destroying him, must lie at the basis of the training and
activity of every commander and soldier of the Red Army.
Without
special orders to this effect
the enemy must be attacked boldly
and with dash wherever he is discovered." My italics.]

three
| THE CLASH OF ARMS

Weighted down with heavy cares, condemned to months of silence,
I can at last speak freely—German people! At this moment a
march is taking place that, for its extent, compares with the
greatest the world has ever seen. I have decided again today to place
the fate and future of the Reich and our people in the hands of our
soldiers. May God aid us, especially in this fight.

Hitler's proclamation was read by Goebbels over the radio to the
whole nation at seven o'clock on the morning of 22nd June. Four hours
earlier the glare from six thousand gun flashes had lit the eastern
dawn, overwhelming the bewildered Russians in a tumult of fire and
destruction. The frontier guards, awakened by the squeal and clatter
of tank tracks, were shot down as they emerged from their barracks,
running half dressed through the smoke. From gun positions in the
line the Germans intercepted again and again the same message: "We
are being fired on; what shall we do?"

[General Günther Blumentritt, Chief of Staff to Field Marshal
von Kluge, quotes the retort of Russian headquarters: "'You must
be insane. And why is your signal not in code?' "]

What an appalling moment in time this is! The head-on crash of the
two greatest armies, the two most absolute systems, in the world. No
battle in history compares with it. Not even that first ponderous
heave of August 1914, when all the railway engines in Europe sped the
mobilisation, or the final exhausted lunge against the Hindenburg
Line four years later. In terms of numbers of men, weight of
ammunition, length of front, the desperate crescendo of the fighting,
there will never be another day like 22nd June, 1941.

The Russian defence was quite unco-ordinated, depending at this
stage on the initiative—where they dared exercise it—of
local commanders and the instinctive tenacity of the forward troops,
who held on grimly in undermanned and incomplete fortification. Even
after the battle was three and a half hours old, at the very moment
that Hitler's broadcast was exulting in "the greatest march the
world has ever seen" the Red Army Command was ordering:

. . . troops will attack enemy forces and liquidate them in the
areas where they have violated the Soviet frontier [but] unless given
special authorisation ground troops will not cross the frontier.

Flights by the Red Air Force over Finland or Rumania were
expressly forbidden, and over Germany permitted only to a depth of
sixty miles.

The Germans had divided their forces into three army groups;
North, under Field Marshal Ritter von Leeb; Centre, under Field
Marshal Fedor von Bock; and South, under Field Marshal Gerd von
Rundstedt. In conformity with the pattern of deployment which had
been so successful in Poland and France, the Panzer forces were kept
separate from the infantry, and were concentrated in four independent
Gruppen
, under young commanders of exceptional vigour and
skill—Kleist, Guderian, Hoth, and Hoepner.

[For opposing orders of battle see charts in this chapter.]