Soviet Union in June 1940 did evoke particular nervousness in the German
high command. Germany had thrown all her forces against France at that time,
and the Soviet Union rushed troops into the Baltic states and Bessarabia.
The airborne troops especially distinguished themselves. In June 1940 the
214th Soviet airborne brigade was dropped with the idea of seizing a group
of aerodromes in the region of Shaulyai in Lithuania, under a hundred
kilometres from the East Prussian border. In the same month the 201st and
204th airborne brigades were dropped in Bessarabia to capture the towns of
Ismail and Belgrad-Dnestrovsky. This was close by the Ploesti oilfields.
What would Stalin do if the German Army advanced further into North Africa
and the British Isles?
It is easy to understand why Hitler took the decision in that next
month, July 1940, to prepare for war against the USSR. It was quite
impossible for him to move off the continent of Europe and into the British
Isles or Africa, leaving Stalin with his huge army and terrifying airborne
forces which were of no use to him for anything but a large-scale offensive.
Hitler guessed rightly what Stalin's plans were, as is apparent from
his letter to Mussolini of 21 June 1941. Can we believe Hitler? In this
case we probably can. The letter was not intended for publication and was
never published in Hitler's lifetime. It is interesting in that it repeats
the thought that Stalin had voiced at a secret meeting of the Central
Committee. Moreover, in his speech at the 18th Congress of the Soviet
Communist Party Stalin had had this to say about Britain and France; In
their policy of nonintervention can be detected an attempt and a desire not
to prevent the aggressors from doing their dirty work... not to prevent, let
us say, Germany getting bogged down in European affairs and involved in a
war... to let all the participants in the war get stuck deep in the mud of
battle, to encourage them to do this on the quiet, to let them weaken and
exhaust each other, and then, when they are sufficiently weakened, to enter
the arena with fresh forces, acting of course "in the interests of peace",
and to dictate their own conditions to the crippled participants in the
war. Once again, he was attributing to others motives which impelled him
in his ambitions. Stalin wanted Europe to exhaust itself. And Hitler
understood that. But he understood too late. He should have understood
before the Pact was signed.
However, Hitler still managed to upset Stalin's plans by starting the
war first. The huge Soviet forces intended for the `liberation' of Russia's
neighbours were quite unnecessary in the war of defence against Germany. The
airborne corps were used as ordinary infantry against the advancing German
tanks. The many units and groups of airborne troops and commandos were
forced to retreat or to dig trenches to halt the advancing German troops.
The airborne troops trained for operations in the territory of foreign
countries were able to be used in the enemy's rear, but not in his territory
so much as in Soviet territory occupied by the German army.
The reshaping of the whole philosophy of the Red Army, which had been
taught to conduct an offensive war on other people's territory, was very
painful but relatively short. Six months later the Red Army had learnt to
defend itself and in another year it had gone over to offensive operations.
From that moment everything fell into place and the Red Army, created only
for offensive operations, became once again victorious.
The process of reorganising the armed forces for operations on its own
territory affected all branches of the services, including the special
forces. At the beginning of 1942 thirteen guards battalions of spetsnaz
were organised in the Red Army for operations in the enemy's rear, as well
as one guards engineering brigade of spetsnaz, consisting of five
battalions. The number of separate battalions corresponded exactly to the
number of fighting fronts. Each front received one such battalion under its
command. A guards brigade of spetsnaz remained at the disposal of the
Supreme Commander-in-Chief, to be used only with Stalin's personal
permission in the most crucial locations.
So as not to reveal the real name of spetsnaz, the independent guards
battalion and the brigade were given the code name of `guards minelayers'.
Only a very limited circle of people knew what the name concealed.
A special razvedka department was set up in the Intelligence
directorate of each front to direct the work of the `guards minelayers'.
Each department had at its disposal a battalion of spetsnaz. Later the
special razvedka departments began recruiting spetsnaz agents in territories
occupied by the enemy. These agents were intended for providing support for
the `minelayers' when they appeared in the enemy rear. Subsequently each
special razvedka department was provided with a reconaissance point of
spetsnaz to recruit agents.
The guards brigade of spetsnaz was headed by one of the outstanding
Soviet practitioners of fighting in the rear of the enemy -- Colonel (later
Lieutenant-General) Moshe Ioffe.
The number of spetsnaz increased very quickly. In unclassified Soviet
writings we come across references to the 16th and the 33rd engineering
brigade of spetsnaz. Apart from detachments operating behind the enemy's
lines, other spetsnaz units were formed for different purposes: for example,
radio battalions for destroying the enemy's radio links, spreading
disinformation and tracing the whereabouts of enemy headquarters and
communication centres so as to facilitate the work of the spetsnaz terrorist
formations. It is known that from 1942 there existed the 130th, 131st, 132nd
and 226th independent radio battalions of spetsnaz.
The operations carried out by the `minelayers' were distinguished by
their daring character and their effectiveness. They usually turned up
behind the enemy's lines in small groups. Sometimes they operated
independently, at others they combined their operations with the partisans.
These joint operations always benefited both the partisans and spetsnaz. The
minelayers taught the partisans the most difficult aspects of minelaying,
the most complicated technology and the most advanced tactics. When they
were with the partisans they had a reliable hiding place, protection while
they carried out their operation, and medical and other aid in case of need.
The partisans knew the area well and could serve as guides. It was an
excellent combination: the local partisans who knew every tree in the
forest, and the first-class technical equipment for the use of explosives
demonstrated by real experts.
The `guards minelayers' usually came on the scene for a short while,
did their work swiftly and well and then returned whence they had come. The
principal way of transporting them behind the enemy's lines was to drop them
by parachute. Their return was carried out by aircraft using secret partisan
airfields, or they made their way by foot across the enemy's front line.
The hig
h point in the partisan war against Germany consisted of two
operations carried out in 1943. By that time, as a result of action by
osnaz, order had been introduced into the partisan movement; it had been
`purged' and brought under rigid central control. As a result of spetsnaz
work the partisan movement had been taught the latest methods of warfare and
the most advanced techniques of sabotage.
The operation known as the `War of the Rails' was carried out over six
weeks from August to September 1943. It was a very fortunate time to have
chosen. It was at that moment when the Soviet forces, having exhausted the
German army in defensive battles at Kursk, themselves suddenly went over to
the offensive. To support the advance a huge operation was undertaken in the
rear of the enemy with the object of paralysing his supply routes,
preventing him from bringing up ammunition and fuel for the troops, and
making it impossible for him to move his reserves around. The operation
involved the participation of 167 partisan units with a total strength of
100,000 men. All the units of spetsnaz were sent behind the enemy lines to
help the partisans. More than 150 tons of explosives, more than 150
kilometres of wire and over half a million detonators were transported to
the partisan units by air. The spetsnaz units were instructed to maintain a
strict watch over the fulfilment of their tasks. Most of them operated
independently in the most dangerous and important places, and they also
appointed men from their units to instruct the partisan units in the use of
explosives.
Operation `War of the Rails' was carried out simultaneously in a
territory with a front more than 1000 kilometres wide and more than 500
kilometres in depth. On the first night of the operation 42,000 explosions
took place on the railway lines, and the partisan activity increased with
every night that passed. The German high command threw in tremendous forces
to defend their lines of communication, so that every night could be heard
not only the sound of bridges and railway lines being blown up but also the
sounds of battle with the German forces as the partisans fought their way
through to whatever they had to destroy. Altogether, in the course of the
operation 215,000 rails, 836 complete trains, 184 rail and 556 road bridges
were blown up. A vast quantity of enemy equipment and ammunition was also
destroyed.
Having won the enormous battle at Kursk, the Red Army sped towards the
river Dnieper and crossed it in several places. A second large-scale
operation in support of the advancing troops was carried out in the enemy's
rear under the name of `Concert', which was in concept and spirit a
continuation of the `War of the Rails'. In the final stage of that operation
all the spetsnaz units were taken off to new areas and were enabled to rest
along with the partisan formations which had not taken part in it. Now their
time had come. Operation `Concert' began on 19 September 1943. That night in
Belorussia alone 19,903 rails were blown up. On the night of 25 September
15,809 rails were destroyed. All the spetsnaz units and 193 partisan units
took part in the operation `Concert'. The total number of participants in
the operation exceeded 120,000. In the course of the whole operation, which
went on until the end of October, 148,557 rails were destroyed, several
hundred trains with troops, weapons and ammunition were derailed, and
hundreds of bridges were blown up. Despite a shortage of explosives and
other material needed for such work, on the eve of the operation only eighty
tons of explosives could be sent to the partisan. Nevertheless `Concert' was
a tremendous success.
After the Red Army moved into the territory of neighbouring states
spetsnaz went through a radical reorganisation. The independent
reconnaissance units, the reconnaissance posts which recruited agents for
terrorist actions, and the independent radio battalions for conducting
disinformation, were all retained in their entirety. There are plenty of
references in the Soviet military press to operations by special
intelligence units in the final stages of the war. For example, in the
course of an operation in the Vistula-Oder area special groups from the
Intelligence directorate of the headquarters of the 1st Ukrainian Front
established the scope of the network of aerodromes and the exact position of
the enemy's air bases, found the headquarters of the 4th Tank Army and the
17th Army, the 48th Tank Corps and the 42nd Army Corps, and also gathered a
great deal of other very necessary information.
The detachments of `guards minelayers' of spetsnaz were reformed,
however, into regular guards sapper detachments and were used in that form
until the end of the war. Only a relatively small number of `guards
minelayers' were kept in being and used behind the enemy lines in
Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. Such a decision was absolutely
right for the times. The maintargets for spetsnaz operations had been the
enemy's lines of communication. But that had been before the Red Army had
started to advance at great speed. When that happened, there was no longer
any need to blow up bridges. They needed to be captured and preserved, not
destroyed. For this work the Red Army had separate shock brigades of
motorised guards engineering troops which, operating jointly with the
forward units, would capture especially important buildings and other
objects, clear them of mines and defend them until the main force arrived.
The guards formations of spetsnaz were used mainly for strengthening these
special engineering brigades. Some of the surviving guards battalions of
spetsnaz were transferred to the Far East where, in August 1945, they were
used against the Japanese Army.
The use of spetsnaz in the Manchurian offensive of 1945 is of special
interest, because it provides the best illustration of what was supposed to
happen to Germany if she had not attacked the USSR.
Japan had a peace treaty with the Soviet Union. But Japan had gone to
war with other states and had exhausted her military, economic and other
resources. Japan had seized vast territories inhabited by hundreds of
millions of people who wanted to be liberated and were ready to welcome and
support any liberator who came along. Japan was in exactly the situation in
which Stalin had wanted to see Germany: exhausted by war with other
countries, and with troops scattered over expansive territories the
populations of which hated the sight of them.
Thus, in the interests naturally of peace and humanity Stalin struck a
sudden crushing blow at the armed forces of Japan in Manchuria and China,
violating the treaty signed four years earlier. The operation took place
over vast areas. In terms of the distances covered and the speed at which it
moved, this operation has no equal in world history. Soviet troops operated
over territories 5000 kilometres in width and 600-800 kilometres in depth.
More than a million and a half soldiers took part in the operation, with
over 5000 tanks and nearly 4000 aircraft. It r
eally was a lightning
operation, in the course of which 84,000 Japanese officers and men were
killed and 593,000 taken prisoner. A tremendous quantity of arms, ammunition
and other equipment was seized.
It may be objected that Japan was already on the brink of catastrophe.
That is true. But therein lies Soviet strategy: to remain neutral until such
time as the enemy exhausts himself in battle against someone else, and then
to strike a sudden blow. That is precisely how the war against Germany was
planned and that was why the partisan units, the barriers and defensive
installations were all dispensed with, and why the ten airborne corps were
created in 1941.
In the Manchurian offensive the spetsnaz detachments put up their best
performance. Twenty airborne landings were made not by airborne troops, but
by special reconnaissance troops. Spetsnaz units of the Pacific Fleet were
landed from submarines and surface boats. Some spetsnaz units crossed the
frontier by foot, captured Japanese cars and used them for their operations.
Worried about the railway tunnels on a strip of the 1st Far Eastern front,
the Soviet high command created special units for capturing the tunnels. The
groups crossed the frontier secretly, cut the throats of the guards, severed
the wires connected to the explosive charges, and put the detonators out of
action. They then held the tunnels until their own forces arrived.
In the course of the offensive a new and very risky type of operation
was employed by spetsnaz. Senior GRU officers, with the rank of colonel or
even major-general, were put in charge of small groups. Such a group would
suddenly land on an airfield close to an important Japanese headquarters.
The appearance of a Soviet colonel or general deep in the Japanese rear
never failed to provoke astonished reactions from both the Japanese high
command and the Japanese troops, as well as from the local population. The
transport planes carrying these were escorted by Soviet fighter aircraft,
but the fighters were soon obliged to return to their bases, leaving the
Soviet transport undefended until it landed. Even after it landed it had at
best only one high-ranking officer, the crew and no more than a platoon of
soldiers to guard over the plane. The Soviet officer would demand and
usually obtain a meeting with a Japanese general, at which he would demand
Spetsnaz: The Inside Story of the Soviet Special Forces Page 4