by Ian Grey
On September 7, 1941, Kirponos, commanding the Southwest Front, reported the dangerous situation to Budënny and Shaposhnikov. Stalin impatiently rejected his warning. He was determined to hold Kiev and accused the front commanders of wanting to run away. Finally, he gave the order for the Southwest Front to pull back to the Desna River, but he insisted that Kirponos must hold Kiev.
The order angered the front commanders, who knew the gravity of their position, Kirponos was critical of Shaposhnikov, who was “a very competent officer of the old general staff,” but “he simply could not muster the courage to tell Comrade Stalin the whole truth.” Finally, Budënny spoke by telephone with Shaposhnikov, and, failing to gain approval for a withdrawal from Kiev, he sent a signal to Stalin on September 11 protesting against Shaposhnikov’s stand and stressing the danger. Budënny was at once relieved of his command. Khrushchev remained as political kommissar; evidently he had not protested as vigorously as he related subsequently. Timoshenko was appointed in Budënny’s place.
On the same day, September 11, Stalin conducted a teleprint exchange with the military council of the front. He had all the facts in mind and was seeking a solution. He soon had Kirponos flustered, and he became more convinced that withdrawal was unjustified. But he did not fully understand the danger or appreciate how swiftly the German panzer divisions carried out their encirclement movements. After going over the arguments, he repeated his order that Kiev must not be surrendered and bridges were not to be demolished without permission of the Stavka. He also admonished the commanders: “. . . You must stop looking for lines of retreat and start looking for lines of resistance, only resistance.”
Timoshenko arrived in Kiev on September 13, 1941. Three days later, the Germans completed the encirclement of the city. Four Russian armies were trapped. Four generals of the front command died, and thousands of Russian troops were killed trying to break out. It was the most crushing defeat the Red Army had suffered. For the Germans, it was a great tactical victory, but, as Guderian was to point out, it had the severe strategic disadvantage of delaying the German plans for taking Moscow before the winter began.
Hitler’s original intention had been to capture Leningrad and to occupy the Ukraine, the Donets Basin, and the Caucasus. Then Army Group Center would advance on Moscow simultaneously with Army Group North. In the first three months of the war, however, his forces made such tremendous gains that it seemed to him that Russia might collapse as ignominiously as France. He changed his plans, giving priority now to the capture of Moscow before the onset of winter. The occupation of the Russian capital would be a remarkable triumph and might bring down the Soviet government.
On October 2, 1941, Hitler issued an Order of the Day to his troops facing Moscow: “Today is the beginning of the last great decisive battle of this year.” The German offensive had, in fact, already begun. Ivan Konev, commanding the West Front, had reported to the Kremlin on September 26 that a German attack was imminent. The Stavka ordered him to stand fast. The main German attack was launched from positions south of Vyazma and in the direction of Yukhnov. Communications between the Russian fronts and the Stavka were ineffective. The news, received on October 5, that German tanks were already in Yukhnov took Stalin by surprise. He had been disturbed, too, by Guderian’s capture of Orel on October 2.
The advancing German forces encircled Vyazma. Stalin remained unaware of the gravity of the position until it was too late to take action. The massive setbacks and the immediate threat to Moscow would have unnerved most men, but the impact on Stalin was to strengthen his grim determination to fight. No single factor was more important in holding the nation from disintegrating at this time.
On October 5, Stalin had a teleprint conversation with Zhukov in Leningrad and ordered him back to Moscow. He was worried then by the German breakthrough south of Vyazma and entry into Yukhnov. He sent Zhukov to investigate the situation. On October 10, he telephoned Zhukov at the front headquarters and appointed him commander in place of Konev, who was to become his deputy. On Zhukov’s suggestion, however, he agreed that Konev should take command of the Kalinin sector.
During these desperate months, Stalin was constantly observing the front commanders with a suspicious appraising eye. Few of them had had adequate military training or combat experience. The most senior among them had come to prominence during the Civil War, and they had yet to master the techniques of modern warfare. Fighting against the swift and devastatingly efficient German armies quickly exposed their weaknesses. Commanders who showed panic or indecision were to him not unfortunate men who could not stand the strain, but a danger to the country and even traitors to be dealt with accordingly. In the savagery of this struggle for survival, there was no time for excuses or sympathy. He demanded of his commanders decision, courage, and positive leadership; they had to give strength to the troops who were equally untried and who on some fronts had fled in panic. At the same time, mindful of the lessons of the Civil War, he exercised close control over them, often inhibiting initiative and at times vetoing sensible action which at Kiev and other points might have avoided disaster. Several commanders were so afraid of him that they shrank from reporting setbacks because he might hold them culpable and punish them as traitors.
Zhukov, Timoshenko, and Shaposhnikov had proved their worth, and he relied on them. Zhukov and Timoshenko were of the rough sergeant-major breed, peasants in origin who had learned by experience and had become outstanding field commanders. In particular, he valued Shaposhnikov, the former tsarist officer with the clear, disciplined mind, and when illness removed Shaposhnikov from the Stavka, his place was taken by Aleksandr Vasilevsky, who had been a staff captain in the tsarist army and who had similar ability and clarity of mind. But the fighting and defeats of the summer and winter of 1941 were also bringing forward a number of brave and competent commanders.
Stalin himself was at all times the supreme commander in chief, but he was to entrust increasing authority to Zhukov and to men like Vasilevsky, Rodion Malinovsky, Rokossovsky, Vatutin, and Ivan Bagramian.
As the enemy closed on Moscow, fear gripped the city. Already on October 12–13, the State Defense Committee had ordered the evacuation to the east of many government offices, scientific and cultural organizations, and the diplomatic corps. By the end of the month, some 2 million people had gone from the city. Air raids had started in July and had continued, but confident that they would soon take Moscow, the Germans did not press their air attacks.
Within the city, people grew more desperate as they learned of the enemy approach. The mass evacuations and fear of German occupation brought a mood of panic. People stampeded at the railway stations, trying to board any train to the east, and sought other means of escape. And the widespread rumors that Stalin and the Politburo had already fled the city raised the panic to a climax.
On October 17, the secretary of the Central Committee broadcast to the nation that Stalin himself was in Moscow, and he sternly denounced rumors that Moscow would be surrendered. On October 19, a state of siege was proclaimed. Spies, diversionists, and panic-mongers were liable to be brought before special NKVD tribunals and summarily punished. Stalin’s presence, and the fact that the German advance was slowing down, helped to restore order.
On November 6, 1941, Stalin addressed the delegates attending a special celebration of the twenty-fourth anniversary of the Revolution, held this year underground in the Mayakovsky Station of the Moscow Metro, secure from air raids. His speech was broadcast and promptly published. He did not address the people frequently; a speech by him was a special event, particularly at this time, when the capital was in danger.
The Blitzkrieg had already failed in Russia, he declared. He expressed supreme confidence in the strength of the Red Army and the resistance of the Russian people. The reverses suffered had been due to the perfidious breach of the Soviet-German Pact and the unexpectedness of the German attack. Another reason for the Russian setbacks was their shortage of tanks and aircraft, and
he called for massive increases in production.
Soviet Russia was not alone in the war against Hitlerite Germany, he declared. Britain and the United States had expressed their support. They were not yet real allies. “One of the reasons for the reverses of the Red Army is the absence of a second front in Europe against the German-Fascist troops,” he said. “The fact of the matter is that at present no armies of Great Britain or the United States of America are on the European continent, waging war against the German-Fascist troops, and so the Germans are not required to split up their forces and fight on two fronts in the West and the East. . . . The situation at present is that our country is carrying on the work of liberation single-handed without any military assistance against the combined forces of the Germans, Finns, Rumanians, Italians, and Hungarians.”
Denouncing the Nazis as imperialists, Stalin spoke with angry scorn of German arrogance, the strident Übermensch propaganda, and the savage, often bestial, treatment of prisoners. He proclaimed the greatness of Russia in words which appealed to the patriotism of his countrymen and sharpened their hatred of the enemy: “And it is these people without honour or conscience, these people with the morality of animals, who have the effrontery to call for the extermination of the great Russian nation - the nation of Plekhanov and Lenin, of Belinsky and Chernyshevsky, of Pushkin and Tolstoy, of Gorki and Chekhov, of Glinka and Chaikovsky, of Sechenev and Pavlov, of Repin and Sigrikov, of Suvorov and Kutuzov! The German invaders want a war of extermination against the peoples of the Soviet Union. Very well then! If they want a war of extermination, they shall have it! Our task now . . . will be to destroy every German to the very last man who has come to occupy our country. No mercy for the German invaders! Death to the German invaders!”
The following morning, Stalin reviewed the traditional parade on Red Square. The troops whom he addressed were on their way to the front. The distant thunder of artillery to the west gave his speech a dramatic immediacy. Again he was appealing to the patriotism of the people. They were fighting for Russia, their homeland, and the enemy was approaching the gates of Moscow, the mother of ancient Muscovy and the capital of Soviet Russia.
“The war which you are fighting,” he declared, “is a war of liberation, a just war! May you be inspired in this war by the heroic examples of our great ancestors. . . . May the victorious banner of the great Lenin inspire you! Death to the German invaders! Long live our glorious country, its freedom, its independence! Under the banner of Lenin - forward to victory!”
Stalin was speaking with passion and sincerity. Far from appealing to the love of Russians for their country as an expedient to rally them in defense of the party and the regime, he was speaking from the depth of his being. Soviet Russia was Holy Russia, and Moscow was Matushka Moskva. Russia was his country, and he believed that the harsh years of building and reconstruction and now the savagery of war would in due course yield victory to the Russian people in the form of justice, freedom, and prosperity.
The texts of the two speeches circulated rapidly among the troops and civilians. Aircraft dropped copies in occupied territory. Every Russian read them avidly. They brought a dramatic and extraordinary uplift in the morale of the troops and of the civilian population. The upsurge of national feeling and the veneration of Stalin were inseparable. He had given expression to their love for their native soil and their hatred of the cruel and arrogant enemy.
The British and American support to which Stalin had referred in his speech of November 6, 1941, had been followed promptly with offers of help. A British military mission flew to Moscow. Stalin and Molotov discussed with the British ambassador the terms of an Anglo-Soviet declaration. But in his speech of July 3 and in his first letter to Churchill, Stalin sounded the theme which was to dominate and overcloud relations with the Allies: A second front should be opened on the continent without delay. Churchill explained in his reply that this demand was unrealistic. He made a number of proposals, including the basing of British fighter squadrons near Murmansk, naval operations in the Arctic, and the shipping of aircraft, munitions, and other supplies to Russia. Stalin demanded more. His attitude was that Russia was fighting the war alone and Britain, its only ally at this stage, owed it help.
Underlying his relations with Churchill was his continuing mistrust of the British. Churchill was, of course, quite different from the perfidious Chamberlain, and the British government had discarded the policy of securing peace in the west by encouraging Hitler to wage war in the east. But Stalin saw the British as a subtle and devious people. Among the Soviet forces and the people, too, the belief was that the British were saving their men and leaving the Russians to do all the fighting.
As winter approached in 1941, the question on the minds of Churchill and Roosevelt was how long Russia could stave off defeat and collapse. British and American military opinion, with only a few dissenting voices, was that Russian resistance would soon be crushed. It was to form his own view that Harry Hopkins arrived in Moscow on July 30, 1941, as Roosevelt’s personal representative. Hopkins, the president’s closest adviser, was an extraordinary man. Frail and ill but with a personal dynamism, a trenchant mind, and complete dedication to the Allied cause, he quickly reached a close understanding with Stalin. He was to play a major role in future relations.
His first meeting with Stalin at this time of disaster on all Russian fronts, when Western leaders were daily expecting news of Russia’s collapse, made a strong impression on Hopkins:
He welcomed me with a few swift words in Russian. He shook my hand briefly, firmly, courteously. He smiled warmly. There was no waste of word, gesture, or mannerism. It was like talking to a perfectly-coordinated machine, an intelligent machine. The questions he asked were clear, concise, direct. . . . His answers were ready, unequivocal, spoken as if the man had had them on his tongue for years. . . . If he is always as I heard him, he never wastes a syllable. If he wants to soften an abrupt answer . . . he does it with that quick, managed smile . . . a smile that can be cold but friendly, austere but warm. He curries no favour with you. He seems to have no doubt. He assures you that Russia will stand against the onslaught of the German army. He takes it for granted that you have no doubts either. . . . He laughs often enough, but it’s a short laugh, somewhat sardonic perhaps. There is no small talk in him. His humour is keen, penetrating. . . .
No man could forget the picture of the dictator of Russia as he stood watching me leave - an austere, rugged, determined figure in boots that shone like mirrors, stout baggy trousers, and snug-fitting blouse. He wore no ornament, military or civilian. He’s built close to the ground, like a football coach’s dream of a tackle. He’s about five feet six, about a hundred and ninety pounds. His hands are huge, as hard as his mind. His voice is harsh, but ever under control. What he says is all the accent and inflection his words need.
Stalin gave Hopkins an optimistic picture of the Russian positions. He forecast that the fronts would be stabilized before Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev by the beginning of October at the latest. His assurance to Hopkins that Kiev would be held was probably a factor in the disastrous decision to forbid an early withdrawal from the city. His estimate of the situation may have contained an element of bluff, or it may simply have reflected his refusal to accept the prospect of further major defeats. He was under severe strain at this time, and Hopkins noted that he was chain-smoking during their meeting of almost four hours.
Hopkins was profoundly impressed by Stalin as a man and by his determination to wage the war to the end. “Give us antiaircraft guns and aluminium, and we can fight for three or four years,” Stalin had said. Writing to Churchill early in September 1941, however, Stalin frankly expressed his deep anxieties. The loss of Krivoi Rog and other places “has confronted the Soviet Union with mortal danger. . . . The only way out of this more than unfavourable position is to open a second front this year somewhere in the Balkans or in France . . . and simultaneously supply the Soviet Union with 30,000 tons of aluminium by the beg
inning of October and a minimum monthly aid of 400 aeroplanes and 500 tanks (small or medium).
“Without these two kinds of aid, the Soviet Union will be either defeated or weakened to the extent that it will lose for a long time its ability to help its allies by active operations at the front against Hitlerism.”
A few days later, he wrote that, if a second front was not possible at present, Britain should land twenty-six to thirty divisions at Archangel or in the south to fight the common enemy. The suggestion of British troops on Russian soil could only have been made in a mood of desperation.
Hopkins’s report led to meetings in Moscow to discuss “apportionment of our joint resources,” at which Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook represented Churchill and Averell Harriman represented Roosevelt. The meetings with Stalin started on September 28 as the German offensive burst against Moscow. The discussions at the first meeting were cordial. The second meeting was difficult. Harriman noted that “Stalin seemed discourteous and at times not interested, and rode us pretty hard.” Of this two-hour meeting, Beaverbrook wrote: “Stalin was very restless, walking about and smoking continuously, and appeared to both of us to be under intense strain.” At this very time, Vyazma was being encircled and Guderian’s panzer group was taking Orel, both devastating setbacks.
The third meeting was again cordial. The Russian demands for equipment, machinery, and raw materials were almost totally agreed. Beaverbrook, always ebullient and an outspoken supporter of all aid to Russia and even of an early second front, infected the meeting with his enthusiasm. His pro-Russian outlook and his admiration and confidence in Stalin made him a welcome guest.