Stalingrad

by Stalingrad- The City that Defeated the Third Reich (epub)

  104. Vsevolod Vishnevskii, Poslednii reshitel’nyi (Moscow, 1931), cited in Overy, The Dictators, p. 462.

  105. Overy, Dictators, pp. 469f., 474–476; Reese, Soviet Military Experience, pp. 85–92.

  106. Reese, Soviet Military Experience, pp. 86–88; Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, p. 20f.

  107. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 37a, 37b.

  108. Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, p. 43.

  109. Ibid., p. 29.

  110. Ibid., pp. 58–59.

  111. The T-34 is a medium Soviet tank that was built from 1940. Steve Zaloga/Leland S. Ness, Red Army Handbook: 1939–1945 (Stroud, 1998), pp. 162–169. The Pe-2 is a Soviet bomber developed by Vladimir Petliakov that went into production in 1941. Soldiers gave it the nickname “Peschka.” Valerii Bargatinov, Kryl’ia Rossii: polnaia illiustrirovannaia ntsiklopediia (Moscow, 2005), pp. 493–494.

  112. Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, p. 85.

  113. Mark Harrison, The Soviet Home Front, 1941–1945: A Social and Economic History of the USSR in World War II (London, 1991), pp. 127–132.

  114. Figures from Mawdsley, who doubts the German information about 3.35 million prisoners of war (Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, p. 86).

  115. Glantz, Colossus Reborn, p. 549f.

  116. On November 30, 1939, the Red Army attacked Finland after it rejected Soviet territorial claims. The war ended on March 13, 1940, with Finland ceding 11 percent of its land area. During the Winter War the Red Army showed great strategic and tactical weakness. It purchased a victory, however, with enormous loss of life.

  117. Compare A. A. Cherkasov, “O formirovanii i primenenii v Krasnoi armii zagradotriadov,” Voprosy istorii 2 (2003): 174–175.

  118. Sovetskaia propaganda v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, ed. A. Ia. Livshin and I. B. Orlov (Moscow, 2007), p. 306.

  119. Colton, Commissars, Commanders, and Civilian Authority, pp. 16–17, 21.

  120. Istoriia kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo Soiuza, vol. 5, bk. 1, 1938–1945 (Moscow, 1970), p. 284.

  121. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 8, l. 50–58.

  122. Nikolai Glamazda, interview (NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 9, ll. 24–34); see also Lieutenant Colonel Afanasy Svirin, interview, pp. 148–192.

  123. Vasily Zaytsev, interview, pp. 360–373.

  124. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 9, ll. 24–34.

  125. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 11.

  126. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 2a, l. 42–70. On hate as a motivation in the Red Army and its effects, see Amir Weiner, “Something to Die For, a Lot to Kill For: The Soviet System and the Brutalization of Warfare,” in The Barbarisation of Warfare, ed. George Kassimeris (London, 2006).

  127. See Grossman, Gody voiny, p. 355; Chuikov, interview, pp. 266–290.

  128. Partiino-politicheskaia rabota v Sovetskikh Vooruzhennykh silakh v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny 1941–1945 gg. Kratkii istoricheskii obzor, ed. K. V. Krainiukova, S. E. Zakharova, and G. E. Shabaeva (Moscow, 1968), p. 215.

  129. A. M. Vasil’evskii, Delo vsei zhizni (Moscow, 1973), p. 233.

  130. Fritz, Fritzes: slang for German soldier.

  131. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 9, l. 35–55.

  132. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 14, l. 117–126.

  133. On Duka, see p. 227–231.

  134. Glantz, Colossus Reborn, p. 380; Istoriia kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo Soiuza, vol. 5, bk. 1, 1938–1945 (Moscow, 1970), p. 318.

  135. Reese, Soviet Military Experience, p. 70; Stalingradskaia popeia; V. Khristoforov, Stalingrad: Organy NKVD nakanune i v dni srazheniia (Moscow, 2008).

  136. Overy, Dictators, p. 473; Glantz, Colossus Reborn, pp. 383–385.

  137. The anonymous letter writer built on Stalin’s support, because he portrayed the behavior of the NKVD men as undermining the spirit of Stalin’s single command in October 1942. Of his fate nothing more is known. Sovetskaia povsednevnost’ i massovoe soznanie, 1939–1945, A. Ia. Livzhin and I. B. Orlov, eds. (Moscow, 2003), pp. 109–110. By the time of this letter, the NKVD Special Departments had become incorporated into a new counterintelligence organization called SMERSH (Russian acronym for “Death to Spies”), founded in April 1943. Vadim J. Birstein, Smersh: Stalin’s Secret Weapon. Soviet Military Counterintelligence in WW II (London 2011),

  138. See pp. 233–238.

  139. See note 62.

  140. Sbornik zakonov SSSR i ukazov Prezidiuma Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR. 1938 g.–iiun’ 1956 g. (Moscow, 1956), pp. 200–201.

  141. The order is printed in Stalingradskaia popeia, p. 423. See also Colton, Commissars, Commanders, and Civilian Authority, pp. 14, 60; Glantz, Colossus Reborn, pp. 381–382.

  142. Lieutenant Colonel Dubrovsky and battalion commissar Stepanov, interviews.

  143. See the interview with Major General Burmakov, commander of the 38th Rifle Brigade, regarding the collaboration with his political deputy Leonid Vinokur. See also the photo that shows Burmakov und Vinokur side by side (p. 240).

  144. Divisional commander Levykin und brigade commissar Ivan Vasiliev, interviews.

  145. Colton, Commissars, Commanders and Civilian Authority, p. 59.

  146. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 16, l. 14–52.

  147. Amnon Sella explains the price of such operations. Among the fallen Soviet soldiers in the first six months of the war were 500,000 members and candidates of the Communist party. In total, 3 million Soviet communists perished in the Great Patriotic War. Amnon Sella, The Value of Human Life in Soviet Warfare (London, 1992), pp. 157–158.

  148. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 8, l. 29–49. In his discussion of the Soviet assault troops in Stalingrad, Beevor overlooks this political aspect (A Writer at War, pp. 154–169). During the Civil War units of the Red Army considered unreliable were filled with communists to strengthen the combat force. Reese, The Soviet Military Experience, p. 72.

  149. During the Civil War, party comrades were celebrated as the “ferment” of the Red Army. Beyrau, “Avantgarde in Uniform.”

  150. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 4, l. 29–31.

  151. “Geroicheskii Stalingrad,” Pravda, Oktober 5, 1942, p. 1.

  152. Agitators were party activists who specifically trained poorly educated soldiers, using simple and graphic means. Berkhoff, Motherland in Danger, p. 3.

  153. The battle for Tunisia, which began in November 1942, was part of the North African Campaign waged by British, American, and French troops. It would end in May 1943 with the rout of the Axis forces. More than 230,000 German and Italian soldiers were taken as prisoners of war. The Western Allies referred to their victory as “Tunisgrad.”

  154. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 16, l. 62–74.

  155. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 8, l. 85–93.

  156. Captain Ivan Maksin, 308th Rifle Division, interview, pp. 145–182.

  157. “Comrade Koren,” interview, p. 310.

  158. Petrakov, interview, pp. 145–162.

  159. Zayonchkovsky, interview, pp. 381–398.

  160. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 3a, l. 1–3.

  161. Afanassyev described the first combat action of his artillery battery at defensive battles in the Crimea in September 1941. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 15, l. 37–46.

  162. See p. 149.

  163. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. I, op. 80, d. 14. In 1941 Soviet psychologist M. P. Feofanov wrote: “In a person without self-control fear escapes the control of his will. It takes the place of reason [ . . . ] lowers the will to the lowest level, the level of impulsive will.” M. P. Feofanov, “Vospitanie smelosti i muzhestva,” Sovetskaia pedagogika 1941, no. 10: 62. See also V. A. Kol’tsova, Iu. N. Oleinik, Sovetskaia psikhologicheskaia nauka v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny (1941–1945) (Moscow, 2006), p. 108.

  164. This emphasis, and along with it the education of fearlessness, had a prerevolutionary pedigree. General Mikhail Dra
gomirov (1830–1905) sought to inculcate a theory of morale among Tsarist troops that was built on similar principles. Dragomirov believed that the essence of victory was to impose one’s own will on the enemy. He also regarded the bayonet attack as the decisive action in battle. The parallels with Bolshevik ideas of a “psychic attack” and the Soviet preference for the Hoorah battle call in infantry attacks are obvious. Bruce Manning, Bayonets Before Bullets: The Imperial Russian Army, 1861–1914 (Bloomington, IN, 1992), p. 41; Jan Plamper, “Fear: Soldiers and Emotion in Early Twentieth-Century Russian Military Psychology,” Slavic Review 68, no. 2 (2009): 259–283. For fear conditioning among American and British soldiers in the two world wars, see Joanna Bourke, Fear: A Cultural History (Emeryville, CA, 2006), pp. 197–221.

  165. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. I, op. 71, d. 15. See also Lt. Col. Alexei Kolesnik (204th Rifle Division), interview: NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d.12, l. 22–25.

  166. The penalties threatened in Order no. 227 were nothing new. Blocking units and penal companies had been with the Red Army since its creation in 1918. Abolished after the Civil War, they were revived in military campaigns in the Far East in 1938 and 1939, and then in the Winter War with Finland. They appeared again in various sectors of the German-Soviet front starting in late June 1941. V. O. Daines, Shtrafbaty i zagradotriady Krasnoi Armii (Moscow, 2008); Cherkasov, “O formirovanii i primenenii v Krasnoi armii zagradotriadov.” What was new about Order no. 227 was its reach: it was to be read to all soldiers of the Red Army. Stalin referred to Order no. 227 as a copy of disciplinary measures that the German army applied to its own soldiers in the fighting around Moscow. For this reason historian Mikhail Miagkov claims that in December 1941 the German side formed blocking detachments. M. Iu. Miagkov, Vermakht u vorot Moskvy 1941–1942 (Moscow, 1999), pp. 218–219. The relevant literature contains no mention of such measures: Christian Hartmann, Wehrmacht im Ostkrieg: Front und militärisches Hinterland, 1941/42 (Munich, 2009); Hürter, Hitlers Heerführer. The blocking units in the Red Army were abolished in October 1944.

  167. Ordinary soldier offenders were dispatched to penal companies; officers charged with cowardice or desertion were sent to separate penal battalions.

  168. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 14, l. 112–116; see also below, pp. 57–59.

  169. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. I, op. 57, d. 1, l. 1–11.

  170. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. I, op. 80, d. 3.

  171. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 2a, l. 29–41.

  172. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. I, op. 80, d. 32.

  173. Alexander Shelyubsky, interview, NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 2a, l. 101–133.

  174. Order no. 227 addressed this problem squarely: “There is a lack of order and discipline in the companies, regiments, and divisions, with the armored force, the flying squadrons. This is currently our biggest deficiency. We need to introduce in our army the strictest order and an iron discipline, if we want to save the situation and defend our homeland successfully.” Prikazy narodnogo komissara oborony SSSR, p. 277.

  175. See interviews with Pyotr Zayonchkovsky und Alexander Shelyubsky.

  176. Acting in this manner, Kurvantyev meticulously implemented Stalin’s Order no. 270 of August 1941, which called on Red Army soldiers, regardless of their rank, to shoot their commanders if they abandoned their positions.

  177. Ayzenberg, interview.

  178. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 12, l. 22–25.

  179. Alexander Stepanov, interview, pp. 146–188.

  180. Soldiers and officers from the criminal units who “atoned for their guilt in the struggle against the German aggressors” received a certificate of rehabilitation: http://rkka.ru/idocs.htm, see under: dokumenty/lichnye/Spravka ob iskuplenii viny. Beevor claims that the promise of forgiveness extended to punished soldiers was a fiction because those in the criminal units were allowed to bleed to death. The case he cites, of officers of the 51th Army who were accidentally sent to a penal battalion, makes clear, however, that the Main Political Administration monitored the situation. Beevor, Stalingrad, p. 85.

  181. On loss estimates, see John Erickson, “Soviet War Losses,” in Barbarossa: The Axis and the Allies, ed. J. Erickson and D. Dilks (Edinburgh, 1994), p. 262; see also Alex Statiev, “Penal Units in the Red Army,” Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 62, no. 5 (July 2010): 721–747, at p. 740.

  182. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 14, l. 160–170.

  183. More than one million criminals were conscripted into the Red Army over the course of the war. Most of them were drafted before Order no. 227 was issued and sent to regular units. Beginning in October 1942, most gulag prisoners were sent to penal companies. Statiev, “Penal Units in the Red Army,” p. 731; see also Steven A. Barnes, “All for the Front, All for Victory! The Mobilization of Forced Labor in the Soviet Union During World War II,” International Labor and Working-Class History, Fall 2000, pp. 239–260.

  184. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 9, l. 56–61.

  185. Glantz, Colossus Reborn, pp. 547–551.

  186. The author wrote “Cossacks” but almost certainly meant Kazakhs. First, this addresses the confusion of this nationality with other Central Asian ethnic groups (Uzbeks and Turkmen) and, second, the questionable loyalty of Cossacks, especially the Don Cossacks, who supported the White Army in the Civil War. In World War II Cossacks fought in the Red Army as well as on the side of the Wehrmacht. For this reason, they were grouped into separate statistics by the NKVD. RGAMO, f. 220, op. 445, d. 30a, l. 483. R. Krikunov, Kazaki: Mezhdu Gitlerom i Stalinym. Krestovyi pokhod protiv bol’shevizma (Moscow, 2005); Rolf-Dieter Müller, An der Seite der Wehrmacht: Hitlers ausländische Helfer beim “Kreuzzug gegen den Bolschewismus” 1941–1945 (Berlin, 2007), pp. 207–212.

  187. The 45th Division, a unit comprising 10,000 soldiers in spring 1942, consisted of 6,000 Russians, 850 Ukrainians, 650 Uzbeks, 258 Kazakhs, and smaller numbers of Belarussians, Chuvash, and Tatars. Overall, it was made up of twenty-eight nationalities. Serov, interview.

  188. Karpov, interview, pp. 225, 232; see also Captain Lukyan Morozov, interview, pp. 225–246.

  189. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 11.

  190. Bukharov, interview, pp. 225–246.

  191. Rodimtsev, interview, pp. 294–310.

  192. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. I, op. 53, d. 1b. German divisional staff officers at Stalingrad kept track of the numbers of Soviet deserters crossing the lines. Their records showed a disproportionate number of non-Slavic deserters, Central Asian and Caucasian soldiers in particular. Ellis, Stalingrad Cauldron, pp. 315–319.

  193. On Russian nationalism in war and its relationship to Soviet patriotism, see Weiner, Making Sense of War; David Brandenberger, National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931–1956 (Cambridge, MA, 2002).

  194. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 29, l. 29–35.

  195. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, raz. I, op. 80, d. 29.

  196. V. S. Khristoforov, “Voina trebuet vse novykh zhertv: Chrezvychainye mery 1942 g.,” in Velikaia Otechestvennaia voina. 1942 god (Moscow, 2012), pp. 173–222, at p. 192; Stalingradskaia popeia, pp. 222–224. The latter source has figures that extend to mid-October 1942.

  197. “Dokumenty organov NKVD SSSR perioda oborony Stalingrada,” Velikaia Otechestvennaia voina. 1942 god, p. 456; V. S. Khristoforov, “Zagraditel’nye otriady,” in Velikaia Otechestvennaia voina. 1942 god, pp. 473–494, at p. 486; Stalingradskaia popeia, p. 223.

  198. These words are from an appeal in the Red Army newspaper that detailed how Order no. 227 was to be implemented without mentioning the secret order by name. “Za nepreryvnuiu boevuiu politicheskuiu rabotu!” Krasnaia zvezda, August 9, 1942, p. 1; see also Khristoforov, “Zagraditel’nye otriady,” p. 477.

  199. Igal Halfin, Terror in My Soul: Communist Autobiographies on Trial (Cambridge, MA, 2003); Halfin, Stalinist Confessions: Messianism and Terror at the Leningrad Communist Uni
versity (Pittsburgh, PA, 2009).

  200. Already in November 1941 General Zhukov ordered the commander and the commissar of a division that had shrunk from the Germans to be shot in front of their unit. Zhukov also ordered that all commanders and political officers of the Red Army be informed of his action. Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, pp. 114–115.

  201. See, for example, Daines, Shtrafbaty, pp. 131–135.

  202. Mark Edele, Soviet Veterans of the Second World War: A Popular Movement in an Authoritarian Society, 1941–1991 (Oxford, 2008), pp. 115–117.

  203. Khristoforov, “Voina trebuet vse novykh zhertv,” p. 183.

  204. Statiev, “Penal Units in the Red Army,” p. 744. This approach, Statiev writes, once more referenced the revolutionary political culture inside the Red Army. Most other modern armies sentenced penal soldiers to long prison terms.

  205. The latest publications by General Valentin Khristoforov, head of the Archives of the FSB, document many abusive practices within the wartime Red Army. The author comments on them with outrage. This is a notable departure from his earlier works, which celebrate the “Chekists” for their “patriotic” work. Khristoforov, “Voina trebuet vse novykh zhertv,” pp. 204–210; Khristoforov, Stalingrad. Organy NKVD nakanune i v dni srazheniia (Moscow, 2008).

  206. Krivosheev gives a precise number: 157,593 people; a similar number (“more than 157,000 death sentences”) is cited by Vladimir Naumov and Leonid Reshin and has been widely accepted by scholars as the number of executions actually carried out inside the Red Army. Vladimir Naumow and Leonid Reschin, “Repressionen gegen sowjetische Kriegsgefangene und zivile Repatrianten in der USSR 1941 bis 1956,” in Die Tragödie der Gefangenschaft in Deutschland und der Sowjetunion, 1941–1956, ed. Klaus-Dieter Müller et al. (Cologne, 1998), pp. 335–364, at p. 339; Merridale, Ivan’s War, p. 136. But Krivosheev adds that a special court order suspended more than 40 percent of all death sentences and had the convicts join penal units instead (Krivosheev, Rossiia i SSSR v voinakh XX veka, p. 302). Elsewhere in the same publication, Krivosheev writes of “135,000 executed soldiers” (ibid., p. 43). Of the death sentences, Naumov and Reschin believe that most were given in the early phase of the war and affected soldiers who had been temporarily encircled by the Germans or taken captive.