The second component was Operation Uranus, a massive counter-offensive that was going to take forty-five days to prepare. The German troops were already short of vital materials, above all tanks and artillery, and their best forces were being sucked into Stalingrad and getting “stuck in the mud” there. Uranus would attack their flanks, in effect surrounding the outstretched enemy’s arm from three sides and then cutting it off. They had learned much from their enemy.36
The Soviets used every trick in the book, including heavy use of snipers, one of whom was credited with 224 kills. It was precisely because of the high casualties—such as he had seen in taking Kiev in 1941—that Hitler had sworn to avoid entering cities.37
THE TIDE CHANGES FOR GERMANY AND THE “JEWISH QUESTION”
The führer’s anger boiled over, and on September 24 he had had enough of Halder and replaced him as chief of the army’s General Staff with a young and passionate general, Kurt Zeitzler, a “true believer” in Hitler and the Nazi cause.38 Halder had been confident up to the summer of 1942, but began to regard the odds as growing against victory, and was troubled to see how the Red Army was preparing at Stalingrad. He could not agree with Hitler’s burst of optimism, and in fact concluded that “the war as a whole could no longer be won by Germany.”39 Hitler also replaced Field Marshal Wilhelm List, in charge of Army Group A, which was trying to take the Caucasus. The führer had broken his own rules by ordering Army Group B to seize Stalingrad.
The inescapable problem was far greater than laying hold of that city. Even if by some miracle the Wehrmacht won there, where would it go next? It would have to cross the Volga, the greatest river in the Soviet Union. The Red Army would be sitting on the opposite bank. How would the Germans get across? And even if that were accomplished, and assuming the best possible scenario, how could they move forward with another winter approaching?
On September 30, Hitler briefly returned to Berlin from his field headquarters. In public he remained steadfast and determined and told his military men that the city named for Stalin had to be taken. Its population, as he said of Moscow’s and Leningrad’s, would be destroyed.
Hitler was traveling to Munich on November 7 to give his annual speech to the Party faithful on the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch when word reached him that American forces were gathering at Gibraltar and would soon be in North Africa. During the night of November 7-8, in Operation Torch, 106,000 American and British troops landed at three major points along the coast and were soon taking cities from Casablanca to Algiers. Hitler was astounded. It was beyond his imagination that the United States, the sleeping giant, could have been mobilized, battling and beating German troops in Africa.
Ribbentrop joined the führer’s train on the way to Munich. When he heard about the American landing and the scale of their supplies, he proposed that Hitler allow him to put out peace feelers to Stalin. In a remarkable turn of events, the foreign minister went so far as to suggest giving up the gains made in the east.
The situation faced by the two dictators had changed almost 180 degrees in just one year. In October and November 1941, Stalin had contemplated seeking a peace with Hitler and was even preparing to hand over the better part of the western USSR. Now Ribbentrop proposed to relinquish Germany’s eastern conquests in return for peace with Stalin. Hitler was infuriated by the suggestion and forbade Ribbentrop to speak of it again. In fact the idea came at a time when the Germans still had room to negotiate. Just over a week later, when the massive Soviet counteroffensive began, the situation deteriorated drastically.40
Hitler’s speech on November 8 dashed any hope of seeking peace. He expressly ruled out such negotiations. The Americans were chalking up successes, and the British were pursuing Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, “the Desert Fox.” Rommel was finally being run to ground. His famed Afrika Corps was headed for defeat despite everything he could do. By May 12, 1943, the Allies had resoundingly defeated the Axis powers in North Africa, taking 238, 243 prisoners, half of whom were German. It was every bit as disastrous as Stalingrad would soon turn out to be.41
When he returned to his East Prussian headquarters, Hitler seemed upbeat. The Germans had taken over unoccupied France, and German-Italian forces for the moment were hanging on in Africa. General Walter Warlimont noted in his memoirs that a “deceptive atmosphere of confidence” returned. “There was no realization that this time the tide of the war had really turned, and we went back to the dance of tactical expedients with Hitler as the master of ceremonies.”42
The issue was sealed with the massive Soviet counteroffensive at Stalingrad on November 19, 1942. They initially thought they had encircled 85,000–90,000 enemy troops, but found they had bottled up more than a quarter of a million.43 By the time Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrendered on January 31, in the New Year the Germans had lost 100,000 men, and another 113,000 German and Romanian troops had been taken prisoner.
Hitler was shaken, and there are many reports of the depressed situation at his headquarters. Nevertheless, he soon rebounded, perhaps believing as he did that, above all, leaders had to show confidence. One of his secretaries recalled him as saying: “We will win this war, because we fight for an idea and not for Jewish capitalism, which drives the soldiers of our enemies. Only Russia is dangerous, because Russia fights with the same fanaticism as we do for its worldview. But the good will be the victor, there is nothing else for it.”44
34
ETHNIC CLEANSING IN WARTIME SOVIET UNION
The Soviet Union had more than a hundred nationalities and countless ethnic groups. From 1917 onward official policy, called “indigenization,” fostered multiple cultures but demanded loyalty to Moscow. By the 1930s doubts about some ethnic groups or nations had led to waves of repression. In the war years, as the USSR took over countries like parts of former Poland, the Baltic States, Finland, and other areas, native elites were “cleansed” and sometimes murdered, and hundreds of thousands more were deported.
FEAR OF ETHNIC GERMANS
The outbreak of hostilities with Hitler in June 1941 increased exponentially the determination of the Soviets to deal with all actual or potential “enemy” groups inside the country. Highest on the list were the 1.4 million or so ethnic Germans, some of whom could trace their origins back to the age of Tsarina Catherine the Great in the eighteenth century. In response to the invasion, all German passport holders were interned, and by August 15 fifty thousand had been deported from the Crimea. Just over a week later the same treatment was given to Soviet citizens of German ethnicity living in the Volga, Saratov, Stalingrad, and other regions. The Supreme Soviet explained these actions in a special decree of August 28 as follows: “According to reliable information received by the military authorities, there are in Volga province among its German population thousands and tens of thousands of diversionists and spies who, upon a signal from Germany, are to commit acts of sabotage in the areas occupied by the Volga Germans.” In order to avoid blood that would surely flow if such acts took place, the government “has found it necessary to resettle the entire German population to other areas.” In a follow-up order, the NKVD—which devoted at least fifteen thousand men to the operation—was told to separate the heads of households from their families at the last minute and to deport them separately.1
This was no “surgical operation” but one conducted with great cruelty. Many of those in charge had gained experience in deporting tens of thousands from the recently “reclaimed” areas to the west. Now they went to work inside the Soviet Union itself. Entire populations were to be sent to distant places in Siberia. People were told to take what little they could gather and were deported in the worst conditions imaginable in voyages of despair that lasted as long as two months.
A Volga German soldier heard what happened back home, where his wife and child were deported. He came upon settlers on their way “to occupy our homes—homes completely furnished, farmlands, with domestic animals and machinery, potatoes to dig and cabbages to harvest�
�in fact everything to start life anew.”2
On Stalin’s orders, the Soviet Germans were driven from Leningrad, Moscow, and other cities beginning on September 15. His aim was to use them as forced laborers alongside Gulag prisoners. In total, 9,640 Germans were deported from Moscow; 3,162 from Gorky; 38,288 from Rostov; 31,320 from Zaporizhzhya; 38,136 from Krasnodar; and so on. More Germans were deported in 1942, bringing the final tally to 1, 209, 4303
A hint of German blood or association with the enemy nationality was enough. Thousands caught up in the dragnets were completely innocent. Even potential victims of the Nazis, like Jews, were considered guilty if they had once had contact with the Germans. Gabriel Temkin, for example, was a Jewish refugee from German-occupied Poland. He joined the Red Army and was being trained until the taint of his distant link to Germans was discovered. Dismissed from the army, he was sent to a camp where he found many people like himself and became part of a labor battalion. Temkin remembered:
I was in shock and so were many others. I recall the reaction of a Soviet cadre officer, a lieutenant; Miller was his name, of German ancestry, born in Russia in the city of Engels on the Volga. He knew almost no German. He was now bitterly cursing in pure, juicy Russian. Though he had already been engaged in front-line battles and wanted to continue fighting the German Fascists, he was removed from his regular military unit and assigned to become a company commander in a labor battalion.4
The deportations of the Germans stretched into the winter. The reception areas were completely unprepared for so many people. The total number of Germans who died as a result of the operation has been estimated at 175,000. The vibrant culture and rich social life of the Russian Germans in regions like the lower Volga and elsewhere was all but extinguished.5
MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT LOYALTY
Ethnic groups with historic grievances against the Russians also came under scrutiny, particularly in the Caucasus. During the 1920s and 1930s the Soviet regime had carried on a veritable crusade in that region, and that picked up again during the war.6 Suspect groups included the Kalmyks, a Mongol Buddhist people from the lower Volga region; and the Karachays, a Turkic Islamic group living between the Black and the Caspian seas. Both areas were occupied by German forces, and in varying degrees the people there fought against the Reds. The Wehrmacht created limited “Eastern Legions” out of these and others from Georgia, Armenia, and Dagestan and Tartars from the Volga.
The combination of traditional resistance to Moscow and collaboration with the Germans moved these people to the top of Stalin’s hate list. In October 1943 the regime sought its revenge, dissolving whatever independence the Kalmyks once had. By the end of the year this entire people had been deported. As usual the operation was cruel, with transport on disease-ridden trains to nowhere. Isolated records show that hundreds died en route. The NKVD ensured that the hundred thousand or so people involved were put in “special settlements.” More than one-fifth died in captivity, but material hardships were such that by war’s end, less than half those alive were capable of working.7
At the same time the NKVD exiled seventy thousand Karachays, virtually the entire population they could find. Stalin expressly ordered their deportation to punish them for collaborating with the enemy. Ultimately even those in the Red Army were released from service to be deported. In February 1944, Beria informed Stalin of the “treason” of the Balkars (also a Muslim people with Turkic language from the Caucasus), who were accused of having “joined German organized armed detachments.” The decision was made to deport this entire people (around forty thousand) for “betrayal of the motherland.” The charge was that after the retreat of the Wehrmacht, the Balkars had “joined German organized bands to fight against Soviet power.” It did not matter that some had been loyal to Moscow. The group as a whole had to pay. There is little information on their fate, but it could hardly have been a happy one.8
The Chechens and Ingush were converts to Islam and had even declared a jihad against the Russian government back in 1827. Their popular image was of a group of bandits impossible to control. Chechen insurgency continued in the 1930s, when Stalin’s terror was in full swing, and these spirited people, not even a half million strong in 1941, were fighting the Red Army even before the Wehrmacht arrived.9
Soviet authorities drew up plans for revenge as soon as the Germans were driven from the Caucasus. Beria was in charge but took his cue from Stalin. Red Army and NKVD troops occupied the area, supposedly to rest from the war raging in the west. Stalin authorized an NKVD plan on January 31, 1944, and the secret police prepared to deport the entire Chechen and Ingush people, a total of 496, 460, whether they lived in the immediate region or not.10
The surprise attack came on the night of February 23-24. The sweep descended on the victims like a whirlwind, and in a matter of just six days nearly half a million were deported, a feat that was possible because the Soviets had honed their “cleansing” methods through practice. An estimated three thousand were killed during the roundup, and up to ten thousand more did not survive the transit to the east. Perhaps as many as a hundred thousand died during the first three years of their exile. As invariably had happened, the localities where the deportees were sent were unprepared and completely overwhelmed when so many arrived out of the blue.11
A decree of the Supreme Soviet on March 7 validated the operation after the fact in the following terms:
In connection with this subject, in the period of the Fatherland war, especially in the time of the operations of the German-Fascist military in the Caucasus, many Chechens and Ingush betrayed the Motherland, gave over the country to Fascist occupation, joined the ranks of diversionists and intelligence agents, infiltrated Germans into the rear of the Red Army, created on orders from the German armed bands to fight against Soviet power and in the course of this prolonged time, did not occupy themselves with honest labor, carrying out bandit raids on collective farms in neighboring districts and killing Soviet people.12
This was the same rationalization given for most ethnic cleansing during the war. In 1944 the authorities singled out other groups in the Crimea and Caucasus. These included the Tartars, Greeks, Turks, Kurds, and Khemshils. Although some of these groups were small, the operations, taken together, involved hundreds of thousands. In the case of the Turks, Kurds, and Khemshils, who lived in Georgia along the border with Turkey, every man, woman, and child was rounded up, making a total of 92, 307. As usual, this was done on Stalin’s orders, conveyed through Beria. It was considered irrelevant that some in these groups were in the Communist Party or that others fought against the Germans. What counted was that they were Muslims with potential ties to “foreigners.” They were driven out in eleven days in a typically brutal operation and sent off to distant lands in the east.13
According to a note from Beria to Stalin on May 29, 1944, there were “anti-Soviet elements” in the Crimea, and he counted among them 14,300 Greeks, 9,919 Armenians, and 12,075 Bulgarians. Some were said to have shown “passivity” during the German occupation, and others were accused of having ties to foreign states. Stalin authorized Beria to deport them all. The NKVD descended on the Crimean Greeks, sending a total of 15,040 east as if they were animals going to slaughter. Even Greeks serving in the Red Army were dismissed and deported, or put in labor battalions. If they survived the war, they were sent to the east as well. The closest anyone has come to explaining this campaign has been to cite a statement from Beria that the “German authorities received assistance from the Greeks in trade, transportation of goods, etc.”14
The Crimean Tartars, a Turkic people and Sunni Muslims, had settled in Russia in the thirteenth century. In the 1930s Stalin turned against them when they (like most Muslims) resisted collectivization. The so-called kulaks among them were deported at once. In 1942 the Tartars in areas under German threat were moved out. The Germans tried to exploit the conflicts with the Soviet regime and mobilized some to fight, but as soon as the Crimea was recovered, the regime took its reve
nge. On May 11, 1944, Stalin sought the deportation of the entire Crimean Tartar population of around 200,000. Non-Tartar spouses could choose to stay behind.
In just two days, May 17-18, Red Army and NKVD troops surrounded Tartar villages. Although Beria said the operation went off without “excesses,” more than twenty thousand died in transit.15
Ayshe Seytmuratova survived to tell the tale that applies to many of the other deportations. He said: “We Tartars call these Soviet railcars ‘crematoria on wheels.’ So we were transported for weeks without proper food or medical attention. There was not even any fresh air, for the doors and the windows were bolted shut. For days on end, corpses lay alongside the living. And only out in the sands of Kazakhstan did the transport guards open the doors, so as to toss out the corpses alongside the railway. They did not give us time to bury the dead. Many people went insane.”16
Tartar historians believe that losses during the deportation and in the early settlements wiped out as much as 45 percent of their people. Human-rights activists have claimed there was an attempted genocide. The Soviets tried to erase the Tartars from memory by burning their books, manuscripts, and other documents. Unlike other groups, even the despised Chechens, they were not allowed to return to their former homes until long after Stalin’s death.
UNCOVERING REAL ENEMIES AND “CLEANSING” THEM
At his famous speech in 1956 signaling the thaw from Stalinism, Khrushchev mentioned all these deportations and blamed them on Stalin. Khrushchev admitted that the “monstrous acts” did not even spare members of the Party and Communist Youth (Komsomol). As the Ukrainian “expert,” he claimed to know that the Ukrainians had been arguably the most disloyal of all nationalities in the Soviet Union. He said that their limitless hatred of the Communists sometimes led them to collaborate with the Nazis.
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