Stalin

by Ian Grey

  Churchill himself stood in awe of Stalin and, as his personal physician observed, was often unnerved in his presence. He found himself confronted by a swift, highly expert and disciplined intelligence, by a Russian-Asiatic outlook, an enigma which he could not understand, and above all by the reality of absolute and ruthless power, which he had never encountered. On a number of occasions, Stalin made teasing remarks which Churchill took in good part. But at dinner on the first evening of the conference, he was not sure at one point whether Stalin was serious or joking, and he overreacted.

  Talking of the punishment to be inflicted on the Germans after the war, Stalin said that the German general staff must be liquidated and that since German military might depended on some 50,000 officers, they should all be shot. He may have been serious, but, in fact, Field Marshal Paulus and other officers, taken prisoner at Stalingrad and elsewhere, had been accorded respectful treatment.

  Churchill responded vehemently that “the British Parliament and people would not tolerate mass executions.” Stalin mischievously repeated that “fifty thousand must be shot!” Churchill blazed with anger. Eden made signs and gestures to assure him that it was all a joke, but he ignored them. Roosevelt tried to bring good humor back to the occasion by suggesting that not 50,000 but 49,000 should be shot, “I would rather,” growled Churchill, “be taken into the garden here and now and be shot myself than sully my own and my country’s honour by such infamy!”

  At this point, Roosevelt’s son, Elliott, an uninvited guest who had joined the company after dinner, ineptly made a speech stating that he agreed with Stalin’s plan and that he was sure the U. S. Army would support it. Churchill got up from the table and walked into the adjoining room. A minute later he felt hands clapped on his shoulder and turned to find Stalin and Molotov grinning broadly. They assured him that it had only been a joke. Churchill wrote that “Stalin has a very captivating manner when he chooses to use it.” He returned to the table, but he was never to be fully convinced that Stalin had been joking.

  Stalin dominated the conference. He was brief and incisive in his comments, clear about his objectives, patient and inexorable in pursuing them. Brooke considered that he had an outstanding military brain, and observed that in all his statements he never once failed to appreciate all the implications of a situation with quick, unerring eye, and “in this respect he stood out compared with Roosevelt and Churchill.” The head of the U.S. military mission in Moscow had noted that no one could fail to recognize “the qualities of greatness in the man.” Combined with this essential greatness, there was a charm and at times a human warmth which seemed to belie the awesome ruthlessness which he would display in pursuit of what he saw as Soviet Russia’s interests.

  At the beginning of 1944, the Russian forces were massed in twelve fronts, extended over a distance of nearly 2,000 miles from the Gulf of Finland to the Black Sea. Stalin’s first purpose was to liberate Leningrad completely from blockade, to knock the Finns out of the war, and to reoccupy the Baltic states. The swift and devastating advance of the Ukrainian fronts, however, forced him to concentrate mainly on operations in the south, but all fronts gained dramatic victories.

  The political impact of the Red Army’s advance in the north was hardly less important than the military gains. In February, the Finns opened negotiations for an armistice. Stalin offered moderate terms. He may have had in mind the pleas of Churchill and Roosevelt for generous treatment of the Finns, but he was also anxious to encourage the Romanians and other satellites to break with their German ally. The Finns were, however, unsure of the real intentions of the Russians. They protested that they were unable to disarm the German troops in Finland, as Molotov demanded, and they were unwilling to allow Red troops into their country to enforce this and other conditions. In March, they broke off negotiations, but the armistice was clearly only postponed.

  In December 1943, Stalin had summoned Zhukov and Vasilevsky to Moscow to plan a winter offensive by the four Ukrainian fronts. Stalin had spells of bad temper during these months when the massive victories being won might have been expected to produce a benign humor. The strain of war was probably the basic reason for his irascibility. For two and a half years, without a break of a single day, he had personally directed Russian military operations and had controlled the immense Russian war effort. In the midst of the military and supply problems, he was aware of the rivalries and jealousies among his commanders, many of whom were rough, brutal, and independent by nature, like Konev, Timoshenko, Eremenko, Meretskov, and others. Among them, there was keen rivalry to gain victory and to receive the salute of the guns of Moscow which, with the decree of the Presidium proclaiming their deeds, was the supreme accolade. Stalin had instituted this system, but he was aware that rivalries and the rush for glory could lead to rash and ill-prepared offensives. At no time in the war was there greater need for a strong supreme commander, and he asserted his authority, permitting no argument or challenge to his orders.

  The outbursts of temper, which seemed more frequent early in 1944, were quickly brought under control. When the Fourth Ukrainian Front in the south, commanded by F. I. Tolbukhin, was held by the enemy at the Nikopol bridgehead, A. M. Vasilevsky, the Stavka representative, decided that the attack must be broken off to prevent heavy and wasteful casualties. He spoke with Stalin by telephone, proposing this course and the strengthening of the Third Ukrainian Front for an outflanking movement at Nikopol. Stalin was angry and abusive. He considered that Tolbukhin should have captured the bridgehead. Vasilevsky attempted to argue, and Stalin “threw down the phone” in a fury.

  On the following day, Vasilevsky was summoned to the telephone. Calmly Stalin discussed his proposals. He spoke also with the commander of the army facing the bridgehead, who confirmed that a direct attack would fail unless supported by an attack from the north by the Third Ukrainian Front. Stalin then gave orders to reinforce the front as Vasilevsky had proposed.

  At the time of the encirclement of two German corps within the Korshun salient, Stalin was angered by reports that the enemy was breaking out to the north through the lines, held by Vatutin’s First Ukrainian Front. He telephoned Konev for an immediate report. Showing great confidence, Konev asserted that “Comrade Stalin should not worry himself, as he [Konev] had taken all necessary measures to prevent the enemy’s escape by posting Rotmistrov’s tank army in the area between the two fronts.” Konev’s initiative impressed Stalin, who said he would consult the Stavka. He subsequently confirmed his approval of Konev’s actions.

  At this time, Zhukov was in bed with a severe attack of flu. On the morning of February 12, he was awakened to speak by telephone with the supreme commander. Stalin was annoyed that he was unable to give him an immediate up-to-the-minute report of the enemy attempt to break out from the Korshun salient. Curtly he told him to check and report, Zhukov hurriedly discussed the situation with Vasilevsky and then reported by telephone. Stalin listened and then told him that Konev had asked for command of all forces engaged in smashing the enemy within the salient, while Vatutin would command the outer ring of the encirclement. Zhukov raised objections. Stalin hung up the telephone.

  A few hours later, Zhukov received the directive of the supreme commander. Konev was given command of operations against the Korshun enemy group, while Zhukov himself was charged with responsibility for coordinating the operations of the First and Second Ukrainian Fronts and preventing any attempts to relieve the enveloped enemy forces. Vatutin complained to Zhukov about the unfairness of this decision, but both men knew that they had to accept it without argument.

  On February 18, 1944, the guns of Moscow saluted Konev and the Second Ukrainian Front. It was the great ceremonial salute of the nation in recognition of a major victory. There was no mention in the Presidium’s decree of Vatutin and the First Ukrainian Front which had shared in the operation. Moreover, Konev was made a marshal of the Soviet Union, joining in rank Zhukov and Vasilevsky, who had been promoted a year earlier.


  Soon afterward, Vatutin was mortally wounded in an ambush by Ukrainian nationalist partisans. A brave, able, and dedicated soldier, he had served his country well, especially during the months since July 1942, when with great temerity, he had asked Stalin to give him command of the Voronezh Front. He was buried in Kiev, but in Moscow, the guns fired a salute of twenty salvos in his honor; it was the salute which he had not received after the Korshun victory.

  In March 1944, Milovan Djilas, a member of the Yugoslav mission to Moscow, visited Konev’s headquarters. An austere man, he was censorious about the drinking party and banquet arranged for him and his colleagues. The drinking was heavy and for the visitors, faced with the interminable toasts, an ordeal. But those on duty or in contact with the front did not drink.

  Konev, a tall blond man of fifty with an energetic bony face, gave Djilas a brief description of the campaign at Korshun. He told him with relish how “some eighty or a hundred thousand Germans had refused to surrender and had been forced into a narrow space, tanks smashed their heavy equipment and machine-gun posts, while the Cossack cavalry finally finished them off. ‘We let the Cossacks cut them up for as long as they wished. They even hacked off the hands of those who raised them to surrender!’ the Marshal said with a smile.” It was an illustration of the bitterness and savagery of the fighting on the Russian fronts.

  Sitting at Konev’s side later, Djilas asked why Voroshilov, Budënny, and others who had held high command had been removed from their posts. “Voroshilov is a man of inexhaustible courage,” Konev answered, “but he was incapable of understanding modern warfare. His merits are enormous, but - the battle has to be won. . . . Budënny never knew much and he never studied anything. He showed himself to be completely incompetent and permitted awful mistakes to be made. Shaposhnikov was and remains a technical staff officer.”

  “And Stalin?” Djilas asked.

  Taking care not to show surprise at the question, Konev replied after a little thought, “Stalin is universally gifted. He is brilliantly able to see the war as a whole and this makes it possible for him to direct it so successfully.”

  Djilas remarked that “he said nothing more, nothing that might sound like the stock glorification of Stalin. He passed over in silence the purely military side of Stalin’s direction. Konev was an old Communist, firmly devoted to the government and the party but, I would say, with his own firm views on military questions.”

  Stalin appointed Zhukov commander of the First Ukrainian Front after the death of Vatutin, and he himself assumed the function of coordinating the operations of the two Ukrainian fronts. The campaign began to recover the Crimea. There had been proposals for sealing off the peninsula across the Perekop Isthmus, leaving the reconquest until later, while the Red Army kept up the momentum of its advance westward and into Romania and Hungary. Stalin had vivid memories of the threat posed from the Crimea by Wrangel in 1920 and now saw the danger of the Germans breaking out and attacking the rear of the Ukrainian fronts. He ordered that the Crimea be recovered forthwith. The campaign opened early in April 1944, and in the following month, after the destruction of the German Seventeenth Army, Sevastopol was liberated.

  On June 6, popularly called D-day, the Anglo-American invasion of Normandy - the long-awaited Second Front - was successfully launched. In Russia, a new spirit of goodwill toward the Allies was expressed by Stalin in a statement published in Pravda. He was generous in his tribute to the operation of forcing the Channel and carrying out massed landings in northern France as “unquestionably a brilliant success for our Allies. One must admit that the history of war does not know of an undertaking comparable to it for breadth of conception, grandeur of scale, and mastery of execution.”

  A pause followed on all fronts as the Russians prepared for their summer offensives. The first was launched on June 23 into Belorussia north of the Pripet Marshes. By this date, the Anglo-American landings were well established. In Italy, the Allies had advanced beyond Rome. The Germans were under severe pressure in every theater of war. The Russian offensive benefited from the Allied operations, but it was Hitler’s stubborn insistence on rigid, rather than elastic, defense that aided them most of all.

  Stalin worked obsessively on the plans for the Belorussian offensive. He discussed them with all commanders, sometimes individually, sometimes together. He was in frequent communication with the fronts and the Stavka representatives, on occasions telephoning them several times a day. Modifications were worked out in detail by the general staff and brought to him each time for confirmation. It was as though he had made a special resolution not to underestimate the enemy and to take extra care now when the tide had turned, and the Russian armies were sweeping from victory to victory. He, too, was impatient to expel the Germans and to crush them on their own soil. But he would not allow slackness in preparations or overoptimism which led to risky ventures. The careful planning brought results. The great pincer movement trapped some 100,000 enemy troops at Minsk. Army Group Center was virtually destroyed with a loss of more than 200,000 men. By mid-July, the Red Army had driven the Germans from Belorussia and had swept into northeastern Poland.

  To the south of the Pripet Marshes, Konev launched a massive offensive on July 14, taking Lvov thirteen days later. On July 6, Stalin ordered Zhukov to come to Moscow, and two days later, accompanied by Antonov, he went to Kuntsevo. Stalin wanted to know whether they considered the forces of Konev and Rokossovsky adequate for them to reach the Vistula. Zhukov’s view was that they were certainly adequate. Zhukov urged the transfer of some formations to reinforce Vasilevsky so that he could occupy East Prussia and hold down Army Group North on the shores of the Baltic. Stalin rejected this proposal. The priority was, he decided, to secure the Lvov region and eastern Poland. The Germans would fight to the last to hold East Prussia, and Vasilevsky might find himself tied down there.

  Two miles from Lublin, the Russians came upon the vast murder-camp of Maidanek with its complex of gas chambers, incinerators, and disposal units. Here the Germans had killed and cremated Jews, Russians, and Poles in groups of 200 to 250. Some 2,000 people had perished daily, and a total of 1.5 million people had gone to their death. All Red Army troops in the vicinity of Lublin were ordered to visit the camp so that, impressed by the inhumanity of their enemy, they would allow no feelings of pity or charity to sway them in their task of destroying the Nazi regime.

  After advancing some 450 miles in five weeks, Rokossovsky’s troops were fatigued and his front was suffering from the problems of overextended supply lines. At this time, moreover, the Germans in front of Warsaw were reinforced by three panzer divisions, rushed up from the south. In the first weeks of August, they delivered a counterattack, halting the Russian attempts to advance from their bridgeheads over the Vistula. Nearly six months were to pass before the Russians were ready to launch a major offensive from these positions.

  Rokossovsky’s advance to the outskirts of Praga, the suburb of Warsaw on the opposite bank of the broad Vistula, made liberation seem at hand. Already on July 24, however, General T. Bor-Komorowski, commanding the Armya Krajowa (AK), the Polish underground army in Warsaw, had decided to order an uprising before the Red Army could reach the city. He was fanatically anti-Russian. He was determined that the Poles should liberate their own city and prepare the way for the London government to take power, excluding the Polish communists. For these reasons and also from stubborn pride, he avoided all contact with Rokossovsky and the Russian High Command, refusing even to consider coordinating action with the Red Army.

  The people of Warsaw were, however, expecting Rokossovsky’s forces to cross the river and come to their aid. Moscow radio had broadcast on July 29 the usual appeal, sent to occupied territories, for the people to rise against the enemy as the Russians approached. They were bewildered when no Russian crossing was attempted and the Russian guns fell silent.

  On August 1, Bor-Komorowski’s underground army of 40,000 men attacked the Germans in the city. They were poorly arme
d and lacked supplies, but they fought bravely. The battle raged for sixty-three days, but the uprising was savagely crushed. Over 200,000 of the city’s inhabitants were killed. The Germans expelled the 800,000 survivors and razed the city to the ground.

  The uprising and what Churchill called the “Martyrdom of Warsaw” aroused controversy. The Allied leaders suspected that Stalin had ordered the Red Army to halt at the Vistula and that he was callously leaving the city to its fate. The London Poles actively fomented these suspicions in Britain and the United States. In fact, Rokossovsky’s forces had been halted and were in no position to cross the river and liberate the city.

  Stalin considered the uprising ill-timed and misconceived. He was opposed to cooperation with Bor-Komorowski and the AK, whose hatred of the Russians was well known. He appreciated Rokossovsky’s military difficulties. But also at this time when he was actively creating a new pro-Russian regime which would displace the Polish government in London, he was concerned to foster cordial Russo-Polish relations. He was anxious, too, to avoid alienating his Western allies.

  On the capture of Lublin on July 23, a manifesto had proclaimed the formation of the Polish Committee of National Liberation. It claimed to have been appointed by representatives of the peasant party and other democratic elements in Poland and to be recognized by Poles abroad, including the Union of Polish Patriots and the Polish Army in Russia.

  Soon after the start of the uprising, Churchill, misinterpreting Russian inactivity at the Vistula, sent a cable to Stalin, informing him that British planes were dropping supplies to the Poles and seeking assurances that Russian aid would soon reach them. Stalin’s reply was noncommittal and suggested that the extent of the uprising had been grossly exaggerated. Under pressure from the London Poles, Churchill asked Eden on August 14 to send a message to Stalin through Molotov, urging him to give immediate help to the Warsaw Poles. Two days later, Vyshinsky informed the U.S. ambassador that the Soviet government would not allow British or American aircraft to land on Soviet territory after dropping supplies in the Warsaw region, “since the Soviet government does not wish to associate itself either directly or indirectly with the adventure in Warsaw.” But on September 9, this decision was reversed. Moreover, from September 13, Soviet planes flew over Warsaw, bombing German positions and dropping supplies to the insurgents.