On November 7, instead of a parade in celebration of the anniversary of the Russian Revolution, there was a demonstration of several hundred who distributed a rebellious leaflet: “Dear fathers and brothers, your children, wives, and mothers are dying from hunger. The authorities decided to destroy us by a most terrible death. You twenty-four years ago were able to destroy Tsarist power; you are able as well to destroy the hated Kremlin and Smolny executioners as long as you have guns.”31 This demonstration was ineffectual but suggests the regime’s hold on some hearts was tenuous. The siege would last nine hundred horrible days, and it turned into an epic struggle. The police recovered their nerve and used on-the-spot executions to keep order, even for such “crimes” as stealing a loaf of bread. By November most of the bombardment and shelling had stopped, and by mid-winter the city had become eerily quiet. “The Hitlerites are confident,” wrote Yelizaveta Sharypina, “that hunger will break the resistance of the Leningraders. Why waste bombs and shells?”32
Social chaos descended on the city. Party Secretary Andrei Zhdanov used thirty-five hundred Young Communists to watch food stores and guard against thieves. When culprits—sometimes working in gangs—were caught, they were summarily shot. There was some traditional patriotism, and, despite everything, there were still those who believed in Communism and did their duty as defined for them by the Party.33
People experienced a degree of freedom they had not known before as the regime lost control. The historian Mikhail Gefter, who lived through the time, said the Soviet system fell apart under the pressure of the invasion, but by 1943 it had reasserted itself. “Strange as it may sound,” he said, “1941 was more of a liberation than 1945.”34 Another man recalled how military defeats in 1941–42 led to questioning Stalin and how that “threw us back onto our own resources. So for many of us, those first two years of the war coincided with a spontaneous de-Stalinization, a true emancipation. We felt that everything depended on us personally, and that gave us an extraordinary feeling of freedom.”35
Civilians in Leningrad—never mind the armed forces—paid a heavy price. At least ten thousand had died by November, and the number rose astronomically after that.36 The total number of civilians who died during the siege will never be determined but is likely in the range of 1 million. By war’s end the Red Army in the Leningrad region had over 1 million killed and 2.4 million sick or wounded.37
Some supplies made it to the city by crossing Lake Lagoda, but the rations were at starvation levels. Hunger drove people to desperation, and cannibalism became “normal.” Vera Sergeevna Kostrovitskaia’s diary recorded how in April 1942 she noticed a lamppost one day because a man, with his back to it,
sits on the snow, tall, wrapped in rags, over his shoulders a knapsack. He is all huddled up against the post. Apparently he was on his way to the Finland Station, got tired, and sat down. For two weeks while I was going back and forth to the hospital, he “sat”
1. without his knapsack
2. without his rags
3. in his underwear
4. naked
5. a skeleton with ripped out entrails
They took him away in May.38
In March 1942 the artist Anna Petrovna Ostroumova-Lebedeva listened to Churchill’s talk on the radio, and when she heard him admit that 673,000 English soldiers had surrendered to Japan, she was amazed by his honesty. She wrote in her diary how he conveyed an image of the world gone mad. “What an immense panorama of fire has engulfed the whole world! The whole world! No, it seems there is no country whose peoples would not writhe and die in the flame of this fire. Some kind of mad desire for mutual extermination has seized everyone. And our Leningrad, its siege and we its inhabitants, perishing from hunger (20–25,000 per day), and from shells and bombs—we are only a tiny detail in this entire, horrible, nightmarish, but grandiose and amazing war.”39
Such reflections fill the letters and diaries of those who lived and died in the siege. As it was, the struggle for Leningrad was not decisive to the outcome of the war, but for all that it would be correct to “accord the battle for Leningrad and its associated winter blockade the dubious distinction of being the most terrible and costly siege in recorded history.”40
HOLDING MOSCOW: THE TURNING POINT IN THE WAR
At a meeting with Malenkov, Molotov, Shaposhnikov, Nikolai Vozne-sensky, and Dimitrov on October 15, Stalin admitted Moscow could not be defended. He said they had to leave before the day was out. According to Dimitrov, he muttered the words as casually as if he were saying, “Time for lunch!”41 The next day Stalin informed them they were going to Kuibyshev and that he would leave himself in twenty-four hours. But he dithered for two days.
On October 17, the head of the Communist Party in Moscow, Aleksandr Shcherbakov, explained on the radio that their leader was in the city. He spoke of the “complexity” of the situation, which in wartime always meant “gravity.” He said rumors of imminent surrender were false and that the capital would be defended at all costs. In fact the situation was deteriorating by the minute.42
It would seem Stalin decided late on October 18 that he was going to stay in Moscow after all. Several different leaders later claimed they had convinced him it was vital to remain. They no doubt echoed his view—when he finally chose to tell them what it was—that if he left Moscow, it would be lost, and perhaps so would the war. Stalin contacted Zhukov to see if the front could be held, but there was nothing good to report. He called a meeting of the GKO and the military commander and NKVD leader of Moscow for the morning of October 19. Many top Communists had left the city, with Dimitrov and others already in Kuibyshev. Stalin asked the circle gathered at the Kremlin: “What is the situation in Moscow?” He was told that it was still “alarming.” He asked each whether they should defend the city or not, but he tipped his hand about the answer he expected. They agreed to fight on, but the immediate problem was that social order had broken down, there was looting, and steps had to be taken. “What do you suggest?” Stalin asked. The reply came: “The military council requests that a state of siege be declared in the city.” “Correct!” Stalin answered after a few seconds. He requested a draft order to be prepared, but found it unsatisfactory and finally dictated it himself.43 Like other measures to hold up morale, this one dripped with blood: “All those who break the law will be immediately brought to justice by a court-of-war tribunal, and all provocateurs, spies and other enemy agents calling for the breaking of the law will be shot on the spot.”44
How far was this measure enforced? In October and November, 6, 678, mostly servicemen or those of military age, were arrested. Another 32,599 were sent to “reinforcement companies,” which could have meant being sent to the front in particularly dangerous engagements. A total of 357 were tried by tribunals and executed, and 15 were shot on the spot.45
Home guard divisions had to be raised, and thousands of men and especially women were put to work digging lines of defense and antitank trenches around the city. Zhukov managed to hold back the German onslaught throughout October. That task would have been impossible if the officers and men at key points on the approaches to the capital had not held their ground.
Already on October 12, Stalin ordered nearly half a million fresh troops from the Far East, together with a thousand tanks and as many planes. These buttressed the sagging western front, where the Germans were beginning to run out of steam. By the end of the month the Soviets had stabilized the situation.
Stalin called Zhukov back to Moscow and told him of his intention to hold a military review and ceremonial on November 6 for the anniversary of the Russian Revolution. He asked Zhukov: “Do you think the situation at the front will allow us to go ahead with our plans?” Zhukov thought it would indeed be possible as the enemy had suffered great losses recently, but advised calling in additional air cover.46
The audacious celebration was Stalin’s imaginative idea. It was designed to raise morale and to show that the USSR was anything but finished. In his speech, he was
upbeat, but admitted the enemy was steadily advancing. He reminded citizens of German predictions that the Soviet Union would be defeated in two months or less. He said Hitler had based his strategy on forming an international crusade by alarming the world with the specter of a Communist revolution. Stalin claimed (and firmly believed) that Hitler had sent Rudolf Hess (deputy Party leader) to Britain on May 10 to negotiate such a deal with Churchill.
There is no evidence that Hitler ordered Hess to make the foolhardy trip, only weeks before the opening of Operation Barbarossa. Hitler disavowed the whole thing, which was also a public relations disaster at home, for the deputy leader of the Party was in the land of the enemy. Stalin’s great fear was that the Germans would succeed in creating an Anglo-German assault on the USSR, and he held to that view throughout the war. He made only scant mention of this worry in his speech this day, when he wanted to play up the newfound unity with Britain and the United States.
Stalin said the invaders had reckoned that the “instability” of the Soviet system would give rise to feuds among its many peoples. But far from collapsing, the system was bolstered by the attack, and the people felt greater solidarity than ever. Why had Soviet troops retreated at all? Stalin asked. Part of the reason was that the military was still young and relatively inexperienced, having fought only four months. But the mettle of the Red Army was being “forged in the fire of the patriotic war and tomorrow will be the terror of the German army.” He added that another reason for the initial setback was the absence of a second front. Hitler could throw everything he had at the east because he felt secure in the west. Stalin (falsely) promised that a second front would open “in the nearest future” and relieve the pressure on the Soviet armies.
He used one telling phrase from Hitler. The Nazi leader was quoted as saying: “We must use any means possible to have the world conquered by Germans. To create our great German empire, we must first and foremost force out and exterminate the Slav peoples, the Russians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Ukrainians, and Byelorussians.” Stalin made no mention of anything Hitler had said about the Jews. But he gave plenty of evidence of the murderous orders issued to the Wehrmacht. These said no mercy was to be shown to men, women, or children. The implications were obvious: “The German invaders are looking for a war of extermination against the peoples of the USSR. Well, if the Germans want a war of extermination, they will get it. Henceforth our job, the job of the peoples of the USSR and of the men, commanders, and political workers of our army and navy, will be to annihilate to the last man all those Germans who desecrated the territory of our country. No mercy to the German occupiers! Death to the German occupiers!”
Stalin used an interesting metaphor to characterize the war, saying it was “a war of motors. He who will have the overwhelming superiority in the production of motors will win the war.” He concluded that with Great Britain and the United States linked by way of the lend-lease agreement, Hitler’s defeat was inevitable. He called for a war of liberation from the Nazi yoke.47 The next day the military parade took place, with Stalin and other notables reviewing it from the Lenin mausoleum in Red Square. This was no mock display of military might, but a march past with the soldiers heading straight off to battle raging only forty miles away.
SCORCHED EARTH
Stalin’s speech entered folklore as a major turning point in the battle for Moscow. When he reviewed the troops from atop the mausoleum, Lenin’s embalmed corpse was no longer inside it. Stalin had sent the body for safekeeping to distant Tyumen in Siberia. In the meantime, without even an embalmed Lenin, Stalin himself came to embody the spirit of a Communism fighting against its fiercest enemy.
He still had self-doubts. That was revealed when Zhukov came to headquarters on November 10, accompanied by General P. A. Belov. The latter recalled that “Stalin’s eyes did not have their former steadfastness, and his voice lacked conviction. But what amazed me even more was Zhukov’s behavior. He spoke sharply, in a peremptory tone. The impression was created that the senior commander here was Zhukov. And Stalin seemed to accept it as normal.”48
Nevertheless, Zhukovgave Stalin his due. When later asked what event impressed him most in the war, he mentioned the battle for Moscow and said Stalin deserved credit for staying on and organizing the technical and military resources, and thus “achieving the virtually impossible.”49
Dmitri Volkogonov’s biography of Stalin never fails to point out the dictator’s uncaring attitudes toward his own people. Volkogonov mentions a “scorched earth” order (No. 0428) signed by Stalin on November 17, 1941: “All inhabited locations up to a distance of 40–60 kilometers in the rear of German troops and up to 20–30 kilometers on either side of the roads, are to be destroyed and burnt to ashes…. Each regiment is to have a team of volunteers of 20–30 men to blow up and burn down inhabited locations. Those who excel themselves in the job of destroying settled locations are to be put forward for government awards.”
Volkogonov felt the military effectiveness of the policy was questionable, was callous, even if it likely created problems for the Nazi invaders. There was no doubt, however, that the order destroyed the last shelter over many people’s heads. General N. G. Lyashchenko told Volkogonov about an experience he had at the time:
At the end of 1941 I was commanding a regiment in a defensive position. There were two villages ahead of us, Bannovskoe and Prishib, as I recall. We got an order from division to burn down all villages within reach. We were in the dug-out where I was explaining how we were to carry out this order, when suddenly, breaking all regulations, the radio operator, a middle-aged sergeant, butted in.
“Comrade Major. That’s my village! My wife and children and my sister and her children are all there. How can we burn them down? They’ll all die!”
“You mind your own business, it’s for me to sort out,” I told him.
Lyashchenko found a way of capturing the villages without following the “stupid” order and admitted he was lucky to have been saved from the security police, because the order had come directly from Stalin.50
In traditional notions of warfare, the idea of a scorched-earth policy meant the people fled the invader and, before they left, burned anything of use. Stalin’s version was different, as he did not blink an eye about ordering the obliteration of villages and towns without regard to his own people.
Typical of his lack of concern was order No. 170 007, from January 11,1942. It was sent to the commander on the Kalinin front and called for the immediate capture of the city of Rzhev, with a population of fifty-four thousand. “All available artillery, mortars and aircraft” were to be used “to smash the entire city.” The commander was told that he “should not be deterred from destroying it.” Such orders led to the deaths of completely innocent bystanders—notably women, children, and older people who were not warned and evacuated.51
This kind of cruel determination ultimately led to victory, but at a terrible price.
33
SOVIETS HOLD ON, HITLER GROWS VICIOUS
Stalin stated the case for a follow-up to stopping the Germans at the gates of Moscow. On January 5, 1942, he put it this way: “The Germans are in disarray after their defeat near Moscow. They have prepared badly for the winter. Now is just the time to launch the general offensive.” He wanted to strike along the entire front from north to south, with the main blow aimed at Army Group Center. Zhukov cautioned that Soviet forces, especially the tank divisions, needed replenishing, and others concurred.1
Stalin listened to various options until he stopped the discussion, pointing with his pipe at a page: “Write this: ‘Our task is not to allow the Germans a breathing space, to pursue them westwards without pause, to force them to use up their reserves before the spring, when we will have large new reserves and they will have no reserves left, and this way to secure the complete rout of the Nazi forces in 1942.’”2
The attack he wanted required a level of troops and firepower that he simply did not have, but no one
dared object. The Soviets had some initial success fighting on twelve fronts, but by early March the Germans had held the line. The Red Army took dreadful casualties, estimated by General Volkogonov at a half million on the western front alone in these few months. The Wehrmacht also suffered badly, but far less.3
Hitler thought he saw hope and told military leaders (what they already knew) on March 28 that the “war will be decided in the east.” A new assault would begin as soon as the land dried out.4 Hitler’s war directive of April 5 for Operation Blue stated that action against Moscow would wait, and emphasis would be on the south toward the Caucasus and its oil fields. The aim was to destroy “the entire defense potential remaining to the Soviets and to cut them off, as far as possible, from their most important centers of war industry.” Army Group South was divided into Army Group A and Army Group B. Another war directive on July 23 following the fall of Rostov-on-Don changed the order of priorities. Whereas the first plan was to plunge into the vast and inhospitable Caucasus region only after victory against the major Soviet forces gathering near Stalingrad, now the two goals were pursued at the same time. Hitler’s confidence was boosted because of what he said “was the unexpectedly rapid and favorable operations” near the Don River. Army Group A, the more powerful of the two, was sent off to the Caucasus to lay hold of the oil fields in Maykop, and beyond that in Grozny and Baku. Army Group B was to take Stalingrad, which, Hitler said in what turned out to be a classic understatement, “the enemy will probably defend tenaciously.”5
Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler Page 56