There can be little doubt that this figure, like the exaggerated death toll at Rotterdam, will not stand up to scrutiny. No one doubts that by mid-September, pounded by a circle of heavy guns and tanks, bombed and dive-bombed regularly to destroy military resistance, the city was heavily destroyed. When Churchill’s interpreter, Arthur Birse, was invited to tour Stalingrad later in 1943, he found it an incredible sight: ‘A collection of scattered and broken remains … The streets, as far as I could distinguish any, were mounds of rubble. The inhabitants lived in dugouts and cellars.’51 Yet the Soviet records of the damage to Stalingrad from the air (rather than the massive damage inflicted by artillery and tanks) present quite a different picture. The bombing of 23 August was not given particular prominence in the reports produced at the time, which focused instead on the regular raiding that took place over the whole period from 23 to 29 August, resulting in a cumulatively severe level of damage. The death from bombing of 40,000 people would almost certainly have been treated, as it was in Hamburg in July 1943, as a disaster without precedent and could have been produced only by a major firestorm. The report from the local air defence authorities for August simply records ‘Starting from mid-August the city experienced non-stop air bombing by large groups of enemy planes.’ The assessment of casualties for the six-day period of heavier raiding arrived at a figure of over 1,815 dead and 2,698 severely injured, many of the fatalities inflicted at the Volga River crossings.52 In September the number of raids fell from 100 to 69, mostly on the city, burning down many of the buildings still standing. Data was recorded as incomplete, which under the circumstances is unsurprising, but the recorded death toll was 1,500 for the whole month, not including those killed by the continuous artillery fire. Death statistics for October were again incomplete, but those recorded numbered 380. Between July and October 1942 the local civil defence authorities counted 3,931 deaths, a figure much more consistent with the scale of the raiding and the tonnage of bombs dropped.53
There is little doubt that these figures understated the actual deaths from bombing, given poor communications and the emergency conditions, but no margin of error could turn this figure into 40,000. There are other factors to bring into account in reducing this statistic: Stalingrad was a city of 440,000, many of whom were in fact evacuated (or fled) across the Volga as the German army approached; no pre-atomic bombing succeeded anywhere in killing at least 10 per cent of the population in a single day. The German bomber force was anyway much smaller than the later Allied forces which could indeed obliterate half a city under the right circumstances. There were only 400 aircraft, all of them medium bombers, and the final tally of 1,000 tons represented what the same force had dropped on London in one night without exacting more than 1,000–2,000 deaths. Stalingrad was a modern city, with wide roads, parks, and a great many more stone and concrete buildings than less modern Russian cities. As in other more modern cities it would have been difficult to generate a firestorm sufficient to consume 40,000 people. As it was, the figures of over 1,800 in August and 1,500 in September were the highest death tolls recorded in the Soviet Union from bombing throughout the war. In the end the figure of 40,000, like the ‘20,000 dead’ in Rotterdam, has fitted a popular view of German atrociousness, but not the facts.
After the bombing in August 1942 the capability of von Richthofen’s Fourth Air Fleet declined steadily, the victim of persistent attrition from a reviving Red Air Force, and of the deteriorating weather and supply lines. By 20 September there were only 129 fully operational bombers left, some of which were used to attack Soviet oil production at Grozny in a raid on 10 October. At the same time the PVO defence of the region was greatly expanded. By November there were 1,400 Soviet aircraft on the Stalingrad front, with more in reserve, and thanks to reforms introduced by Novikov, following his promotion to air force commander-in-chief in April, the air units were centrally controlled, fitted with radio communication and more tactically adept. When Paulus and his Army Group were finally cut off and encircled at Stalingrad, Göring promised to supply the pocket using all the transport and bomber aircraft that could be spared. The result was the loss not only of 495 transport and bomber aircraft, but also of some of the experienced training officers brought out of Germany to boost the declining pool of regular pilots. One of the aircraft lost was a Heinkel He177, one of a first group of 20 sent to southern Russia for trials. Only seven were fit for service and the group commander was shot down on his first mission.54 The failure of the supply programme to keep the Sixth Army fighting contributed to the cooling of relations between Hitler and Göring, and marked a turning point in the offensive capabilities of the German Air Force. In his first post-war interrogation, Göring complained, without much justification, about the crisis of the German bomber arm prompted by the events in Russia: ‘I built the Luftwaffe as the finest bomber fleet, only to see it wasted at Stalingrad. My beautiful bomber fleet was used up in transporting munitions and supplies … I always was against the Russian campaign.’55
THE SOVIET ‘BLITZ’
The German bombing of the Soviet Union differed in intensity and scale from the bombing of Britain or of Germany. Most bombing was undertaken in support of ground operations. The deliberate bombing of more distant targets was intermittent and, usually, small-scale. It included not only cities and the rail transport system, but could at times hit rural areas as well. German aircrews were encouraged to destroy local villages when they hit an airbase in the belief that they housed many of the local Soviet workers and airmen.56 The construction of a ‘front-line’ mentality was unnecessary in areas far in the rear as little or no bombing occurred there; for the population of the western and southern Soviet Union, the front line was real and dangerous and swept over and past them with inexorable momentum and violence. In Leningrad or Sebastopol or Stalingrad bombing was part of the war on the ground going on all around the city. The same was true for Soviet industry. Programmes of dispersal were not the fruit of the bombing threat but a dire necessity in the face of the rapid Axis advance. From this perspective, bombing was one of the least of the wartime concerns confronting the embattled Soviet people.
Nevertheless, the Soviet government had for many years encouraged popular identification with civil defence measures and, from 1932, made civil defence a formal part of the military system. Aviation was one of the key elements of Bolshevik modernity after 1917, both a military necessity but also a tool to advertise the success of the young revolutionary state through pioneering aviation technology, record-making and breaking, and high-profile air exploration. In the 1920s popular organizations designed to promote air-mindedness were created, first Aviakhim (Society of Friends of the Aviation and Chemical Industries) and then in 1927, following a merger between Aviakhim and the Society for Assistance to Defence, a unitary association known as Osoviakhim. The new organization became the vehicle for encouraging not only military-style training of the population, but preparing for civil defence tasks against the prospect of bomb or chemical attack. By 1933 the organization had 13 million members, including 3 million women, and was treated by the regime as an instrument for collective mobilization against any threat to the revolutionary heritage.57 In 1932 the regime formally founded the Main Directorate of Local Air Defence (mestnaia protivovozdushnaia oborona, or MPVO), which was organized on paramilitary lines but was under the control of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD). The responsibilities of the new organization covered all aspects of civil defence – training personnel, distributing gas masks, helping to convert cellars into shelters, and eventually creating a mass movement of ‘self-defence groups’ whose purpose was to mobilize a large part of Soviet urban society to defend its new cities and factories through their own collective efforts.
The MPVO was, despite its extensive organization and size by the early 1940s, unevenly prepared for the possibility of a bombing war. Like the active anti-air defences of the PVO, its efforts were concentrated on those zones closest to the possible thr
eat of bombing. Here it was organized much as the rest of the Soviet system on a decentralization of responsibility first to the level of republic, then region (oblast), district (raion) and city. The local MPVO offices were linked to the national NKVD structure, and local officials were ultimately responsible to the Commissar of the Interior, who for the period from 1938 to 1945 was Stalin’s Georgian ally, Lavrentii Beria. The exception was the MPVO organization for industry and for transport, which was run by the commissariats responsible until 7 October 1940, when all MPVO work was centralized under the NKVD.58 In 1941 before the outbreak of war there were 2,780 designated civil defence sites, mostly in the central and western Soviet Union, monitored by 121 cities designated as MPVO stations. They were run by a local network of full-time staff, which numbered just 3,838 in 1941, and were supported by around half a million workers, who combined regular work with their civil defence role. The main divisions were in Moscow, Leningrad and Baku, with battalions stationed in Minsk, Zaporozhie, L’vov and Kiev. The organizers were poorly trained; two-thirds had had no experience or formal training, just 9 per cent had attended courses of one or two months’ duration. Training exercises were held regularly but attendance was poor. Most officials relied on two or three hours of practical training a week. Industrial and transport sites also had dedicated firefighting brigades, 680 in number, but in May 1941 they possessed not a single fire engine.59
Despite the popular emphasis on collective efforts for civil defence, Osoviakhim was not integrated into the MPVO system. It is unclear how many of the population had had basic anti-gas, first-aid or air-raid training by the time war broke out. Self-defence groups existed, but their mobilization depended on the state of the local MPVO organization. Most of the records of MPVO units before the war show a poor level of preparation. In the city of Kursk, for example, it was found at the start of the war that although camouflage of local targets was satisfactory, staff were poorly trained, little effort had gone into planning protection of the population, what basement shelters existed were poorly resourced and insanitary, fire brigades lacked hoses and tenders, emergency units had no equipment for clearing debris, or jacks or cables, and not one MPVO brigade had motor-transport.60 Across the country, little effort had gone into preparing for the possibility of gas attack. There were just 10,000 old-fashioned army gas masks available for the civilian population and few gas-proof shelters. Decontamination teams lacked essential equipment and chemical laboratories capable of dealing with gas attack existed only in the larger cities, Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev. The few men trained in decontamination work were mobilized into the army on the outbreak of war along with an estimated 35 per cent of the rest of the MPVO workforce.61 In cities where the sheer distance from the front was thought to confer immunity from raiding, little was done to train and prepare the population for the possibility. In the ‘tank’ city of Cheliabinsk shelters were only checked for the first time in May 1942 when it was discovered that the authorities had so far issued no instructions on what to do in an air attack even though German aircraft were now very much closer.62
The poor level of practical preparation can be explained by the lack of urgency occasioned by the German-Soviet Pact of 23 August 1939, which made the two dictatorships into temporary allies and postponed the prospect of war as long as Britain remained undefeated. The German bombing offensive against Britain was still being conducted just a matter of weeks before the onset of Barbarossa and it must have seemed unlikely that it could suddenly be diverted eastwards at such short notice. The failure can also be explained by the wide number of other urgent defensive tasks on which the regime focused, including military production and frontier fortifications, and by the belief that most of the Soviet Union would be relatively safe from bombing, given the long distances from German bases and the Soviet operational plan in the event of war to mobilize rapidly, push forward and compel the enemy to fight on his own territory. Soviet cities by the early 1940s were still in the throes of adjusting to a massive influx of population and rapid programmes of building, which made the regular organization of civil defence less straightforward because there were fewer established local communities and less sense of civic identity. The effect of the Axis assault on 22 June 1941 was to overturn all these assumptions and to accelerate the preparation of the population for its own defence against bombing. If the German Air Force had undertaken a strategic bombing campaign from the start, Soviet cities and industry would have been at their most vulnerable in the first year of fighting.
On 2 July the government issued a resolution on the ‘universal and compulsory anti-air-raid and anti-chemical defence preparation of the population’. The MPVO organization was quickly expanded with new personnel to replace those conscripted, but the Axis campaign soon overran 94 cities designated as MPVO stations, and forced the whole organization to move its activities eastwards, where another 102 cities, including Stalingrad, were added to the list of MPVO stations as the risk of air attack suddenly became real.63 In the remaining area of the Soviet Union, MPVO numbers expanded rapidly. By 1944 there were 85,000 MPVO troops (including 9,621 army officers) supported by a civilian apparatus of 135,000 people. Additional civil defence groups which numbered 527,000 were formed for specialized work – decontamination, rescue, reconstruction. Urban ‘self-defence’ units were also established to help fight the consequences of bombing, a total of 2,990,000 women and men. In addition more than half the remaining population, 71 million people, were given rudimentary anti-gas and civil defence training, 40 million in the first year of the war, 15 million in the territories liberated in late 1943 and 1944 when bombing had all but disappeared as a threat. In the liberated areas 75 cities regained their status as MPVO stations.64
The Soviet Union introduced a comprehensive programme of civil defence protection only once war was under way. The statistics show a remarkable programme of achievement even allowing for a measure of exaggeration about the number and quality of shelters or the level of training really acquired or the speed of reconstruction. Since the system was never severely tested, except in Leningrad and Stalingrad, its capacity to withstand a sustained aerial campaign cannot easily be judged. The regime nevertheless placed substantial emphasis on the necessity for protecting the population and encouraging popular participation in their own preservation. Expenditure on MPVO work was 182 million roubles in the second half of 1941, 468 million in 1942, 474 million in 1943. Including all civil defence and reconstruction expenditure, the total wartime expenditure for MPVO was 3.22 billion roubles.65 The money was spent on a variety of essential civil defence resources. During the war 6,699 first-aid centres were set up in which 135,000 people were treated for air-raid injuries and an estimated 108,000 returned to work. The fire service expanded rapidly, as it did in other bombed states, from 680 brigades in summer 1941 to 12,149 in 1945, and from 18,269 firefighters to 170,786. From having no fire engines, the expanded service eventually fielded 469. Anti-gas preparations, rudimentary in 1941, were extended to all the areas where gassing was possible. Because of the disruption caused by the loss of the western territories, gas-mask production could not begin until late 1942. Two new civilian types, GP-1 and GP-2, were eventually produced in modest quantities, 10.1 million for a population of over 120 million in the unoccupied areas, and another 3.6 million for the armed forces. The number of laboratories for anti-gas work increased threefold during the war to a peak of 1,194 in 1945; by the end of 1942 there were 295 decontamination squads. As in Britain, fear that German forces would be tempted to use chemical weapons encouraged the construction of a large but, as it proved, mainly redundant sector of the civil defence apparatus.66
The main requirement was to provide adequate shelter for the threatened urban areas. This was a problem with many practical difficulties. Much housing in the Soviet Union was constructed of wood without cellars or basements that could easily double-up as shelters. Some 70 per cent of housing in Moscow was wooden. New buildings were supposed to be constructed with
basement protection, but the rule was not universally applied. In the capital an estimated 400,000 out of a population of 4 million could be sheltered by the outbreak of war, but most of the shelter places were in the newly built Moscow metro system where Stalin himself set up his underground headquarters close to the Kremlin. The metro had been intended for use as a shelter when it was constructed and MPVO personnel set up first-aid posts, water taps and loudspeakers in the stations when raiding started. People slept on boards placed over the rails in the tunnels. In the evenings there were lectures and film shows and concerts.67 For the population further from the centre, in low-rise wooden buildings, trench shelters and fox-holes were built. The national programme for sheltering the population posed prodigious problems of cost and materials and most provision was made in cellars and basements, where they existed, or in trenches and dugouts. Purpose-built shelters (category I) were deep under the ground and, where necessary, reinforced with concrete; out of an estimated 15 million in need of shelter by 1942, category I supplied just 349,500 places (2.3 per cent). Category II comprised the converted spaces underneath buildings and accommodated by 1942 some 2.388 million people. Each basement was protected by a wooden door 15 centimetres thick, faced with metal on both sides; they contained emergency lighting, tubs of sand and water, and crude benches or bunks. Additional gas-proof shelters were gradually constructed to provide space for 745,000 by the summer of 1942, and 1.9 million by 1945. For the rest of the population there were either temporary shelters excavated in the ground, or, for 60 per cent of those under threat, no shelter at all.68
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