by Will Podmore
The Nazi lie was that the Soviet Union won the battle only because of its great numbers of men and munitions. At Stalingrad the opposite was the case. The Red Army was hugely outnumbered and outgunned and the Nazis also had total command of the air. Yet the Nazis lost because of the Red Army’s better strategy, better tactics (especially in street-fighting) and better morale. As military historian H. P. Willmott concluded, “The point that emerges from any detailed examination of the conduct of operations on the Eastern Front in 1942 is that the Wehrmacht was outfought at every level …”4 It was not the Soviet Union’s greater numbers that made the victory possible. It had had greater numbers in World War One, which had not saved it from defeat. Nor did ‘General Winter’ win the war; it was winter for the Red Army too.
Bellamy rated the Soviet counter-offensive at Stalingrad, Operation Uranus, as ‘the greatest encirclement of all time’.5 By the end of the battle, in February 1943, the Nazis and their allies had lost 50 divisions, 1.5 million men, 3,500 tanks, 12,000 guns and 3,000 aircraft. Never before had the Wehrmacht suffered such a defeat. US Secretary of State Edward Stettinius said at the time, “The American people should remember that they were on the brink of disaster in 1942. If the Soviet Union had failed to hold on its front, Germany would have been in a position to conquer Great Britain.” Recent historians agreed that, as Acton noted, “Stalingrad marked the turning point.”6
Goebbels tells a lie
After the Soviet victory at Stalingrad, it was clear that Germany could not win the war if the Allies stayed united, so the Nazis tried to split the Allies. In April, Goebbels alleged that Jewish commissars had killed 10,000 Polish officers at Katyn, near Smolensk in Western Russia, in 1940. But documents with dates from 12 November 1940 to 20 June 1941 were found in the graves, proving that the prisoners were alive until the Nazis invaded. Pravda commented on 19 April 1943, “Feeling the indignation of the whole of progressive humanity over their massacre of peaceful citizens and particularly of Jews, the Germans are now trying to arouse the anger of gullible people against the Jews. For this reason they have invented a whole collection of ‘Jewish commissars’ who, they say, took part in the murder of the 10,000 Polish officers. For such experienced fakers it was not difficult to invent a few names of people who never existed - Lev Rybak, Avraam Brodninsky, Chaim Fineberg. No such persons ever existed either in the ‘Smolensk section of the OGPU’ or in any other department of the NKVD …”
Goebbels wrote on 17 April, “the Polish Government-in-exile now demands that the International Red Cross should take part in the investigation. That suits us perfectly.”7 (Later, in 1944, the Red Cross gave the Nazi concentration camp Theresienstadt a good report.8) The ‘Free Polish government’ in London endorsed the Nazi claims, breaking its relations with the Soviet government. Goebbels boasted in his diary, “This break represents a one-hundred-per-cent victory for German propaganda and especially for me personally … we have been able to convert the Katyn incident into a highly political question.” The Times commented on 28 April, “Surprise as well as regret will be felt that those who have had so much cause to understand the perfidy and ingenuity of the Goebbels propaganda machine should themselves have fallen into the trap laid by it. Poles will hardly have forgotten a volume widely circulated in the first winter of the war which described with every detail of circumstantial evidence, including that of photography, alleged Polish atrocities against the peaceful German inhabitants of Poland.”
On 8 May, Goebbels admitted, but only in his diary, “Unfortunately, German ammunition has been found in the graves at Katyn ... It is essential that this incident remains a top secret. If it were to come to the knowledge of the enemy the whole Katyn affair would have to be dropped.” The bullets found in the graves were mainly 7.65mm bullets made in Germany. The others were 9mm bullets - the Soviet Union did not have a 9mm pistol until after the war. The Anti-Soviet Polish General Wladyslaw Anders accepted that all the men were shot with German ‘Geco’ brand bullets and that no Soviet ammunition was used.
The official German report contained photos of the German shell casings found in the graves. The photos were of the casings’ sides, not of their ends where their dates of production were stamped. If they had been stamped 1940 or earlier, the Nazis would surely have photographed them, to prove Soviet guilt.
In 2011-12, a Polish-Ukrainian archaeological team partially excavated an SS Einsatzgruppe mass murder site at the town of Volodymyr-Volyns’kiy in Ukraine.9 More than 96 per cent of the shells found in these graves were made in Germany in 1941, mostly the same ‘Geco’ bullets found at Katyn. The team dated the site as 1941 at the earliest. They also found the badges of two Polish policemen previously thought to have been murdered hundreds of miles away in Katyn. In sum, the evidence was that the Nazis, not the Soviets, shot the Polish officers at Katyn.
The battle of Kursk and Operation Bagration
At the battle of Kursk, July-August 1943, Germany lost 30 divisions (including 7 Panzer divisions), 500,000 troops, 1,500 tanks, 3,000 guns and 3,500 warplanes. Glantz and House summed up, “The battle of Kursk meant an end to blitzkrieg in a strategic and operational sense. For the first time in the war, a German offensive was contained in the tactical or shallow operational depths. … the Soviets had learned ... that the only effective defense was one that exploited all arms and possessed both depth and flexibility. … As a result, the Soviets proved that a determined and properly constructed infantry-based defense could defeat the tactics of blitzkrieg. Hence, Kursk marked a turning point in the war strategically, operationally and tactically. Building on the lessons of Kursk, the Soviets also applied their new combined-arms techniques to offensive situations, at first tentatively and later with greater effect.”10
Fritz observed, “As far back as the autumn of 1943, Hitler had planned to stabilize the eastern front in order to transfer troops west to defeat the Allied invasion of France. …The Soviets, however, had refused to cooperate and play their assigned role. Instead of sitting passively through the winter, the Red Army had launched a series of continuous offensives that had drained German resources and brought the Ostheer to the breaking point.”11
At the Teheran conference in December 1943, the Allies agreed that the Curzon Line would be the Polish border. Churchill said on 22 February 1944, “I cannot feel that the Russian demand for a reassurance about her Western frontiers goes beyond the limits of what is reasonable or just.”12 But, on 21 March, he told Stalin that ‘all questions of territorial change must await the armistice’. Stalin saw this as ‘a betrayal of the agreement reached at Teheran, which in fact it was …’13
Also at the Tehran conference, Stalin stated that Soviet forces would launch an offensive at the same time as D-Day, to stop Hitler transferring forces from the Eastern to the Western front. On 22 June, 1.6 million Soviet soldiers launched Operation Bagration over a 500-mile-long front. This offensive was larger than Overlord, both in the forces engaged and in the cost to the Wehrmacht. In three months, the Red Army destroyed 28 German divisions, while there were just 15 German divisions on the Western front in France on D-Day and the weeks thereafter. Without this Soviet operation, D-Day might have failed. As the late Forrest Pogue, an official US Army historian, summed up, the Soviet forces ‘broke Germany and made the [D-Day] landing possible’.14
The American military historians Williamson Murray and Allan Millett observed that Operation Bagration was ‘the single most impressive ground operation of the war’.15 Mark Mazower called it ‘not only the most effective Soviet offensive of the war but perhaps the most overwhelming and devastating single military assault in history’.16 Murray and Millett concluded, “the Soviets displayed the greatest abilities at the operational level of war. From Bagration, which took out virtually all of Army Group Center in summer 1944, to the operations that destroyed German forces in East Prussia and Poland in winter 1945, Soviet commanders exhibited outstanding capabilities in deception, planning, an
d the conduct of operations. Their victories were far superior to anything the Germans had achieved early in the war.”17
The struggle for Warsaw
Russian historian Irina Mukhina observed, “Already in early 1944, the London Poles shifted the strategy of AK [Armia Kraiova] from anti-Nazi to anti-Soviet. … the AK did not abandon their anti-Soviet actions in newly liberated cities (like Wilno). Their continuing resistance involved armed struggle and was not always limited to wearing white and yellow bows, a sign of Polish patriotism. This clandestine, often forgotten anti-Soviet struggle of forces connected to the London Poles continued well into 1945, intensifying after the dramatic failure of the Warsaw Uprising and spreading over the ‘traditional’ Polish territories of Warsaw, Lublin, Krakow, Bialystok and other regions, thus creating pockets of anti-Soviet resistance behind the frontlines of the Red Army and slowing the Allied advance to Berlin. But already in the first two weeks after the liberation of Wilno, and before the onset of the Warsaw Uprising, the extent of the Polish actions became evident to Soviet authorities. Members of AK killed Red Army soldiers and representatives of the newly established civilian occupation administrations created by the Soviets.”18
Mukhina noted of the Warsaw rising, “the Poles had repeatedly attempted to stage similar uprisings in other towns and cities when the Red Army was approaching. Polish rebels also actively resisted Soviet domination after the Red Army had liberated these cities. Hence, the Warsaw Uprising was not a unique event but just one among many such pre-emptive uprisings, even if it was unique in the scale of the resulting devastation. Moreover, Moscow knew well that Western Allied forces secretly participated in this ultimately anti-Soviet action. … British and American involvement in anti-Soviet uprisings in Poland and the Baltic states behind the front lines of World War II reinforced Stalin’s suspicions of his wartime Allies. Stalin’s knowledge that the two Allied governments trained the leaders of anti-Nazi/anti-Soviet uprisings was one more factor leading to the systematic breakdown of the Grand Alliance.”19
Mukhina pointed out, “[O]n 17 and 18 July 1944 British forces parachuted the leaders of the Warsaw Uprising into Warsaw so that these men could prepare a successful anti-Soviet revolt that would put the Polish capital in Polish hands before the Red Army could take Warsaw. The British not only parachuted the leaders of the rebellion into Warsaw, but they, in collaboration with the United States, had also previously trained these men to lead this and other anti-Soviet revolts in Eastern Europe.”20
In July, the Red Army, including four Polish divisions, entered Poland after liberating Vilna and Lvov. By the end of the month, they freed an area the size of Britain, on a 600-mile front. But the Nazis had built up a powerful defensive system around Warsaw. They transferred four panzer divisions from France and counter-attacked on 1 August. The same day, the AK launched its rising in Warsaw, on orders from the ‘Free Polish Government’ in London, which had not consulted any of the Allies.21
General Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski, the commander of the AK, also refused to liaise with any of the Allies.22 Zhukov wrote, “On instructions by the Supreme Commander, two paratroop officers were sent to Bor-Komorowski for liaison and coordination of actions. However, Bor-Komorowski refused to receive the officers … our troops did everything they possibly could to help the insurgents, although the uprising had not been in any way coordinated with the Soviet command.”23 (Historian Anthony Tucker-Jones recently commented, “In light of Rokossovsky’s efforts to the north-east and south-east of Warsaw in the face of the tough Waffen SS, this is largely true.”24) Bor-Komorowski stated publicly, “The Bolshevik enemy will face the same merciless struggle that shook the German invader. Actions in favor of Russia are treason to the motherland. … The Germans are running. Time is coming to fight the Soviets.”25
As Sir Max Hastings noted, “the Polish commander wanted it both ways: the success of his revolt hinged upon recognising Russian military support, while its explicit objective was to deny the Soviet Union political authority over his country. … the British Joint Intelligence Committee had concluded that, if the Poles carried out their long-planned uprising, it was doomed to failure in the absence of close co-operation with the Russians, which was unlikely to be forthcoming. It seems lamentable that, after making such an appreciation, the British failed to exert all possible pressure upon the Poles to abandon their fantasies.”26
Red Army General Konstantin Rokossovsky’s forces were in no position to free Warsaw, as many historians agreed. Tucker-Jones affirmed, “In five weeks of fighting Rokossovsky had covered 450 miles (725km) and was within reach of Warsaw. The Polish capital now looked a tempting prize as a culmination of Bagration’s remarkable success, but Stalin’s summer offensive was beginning to lose momentum. Rokossovsky’s 1st Byelorussian Front was at the very limit of its supply lines; ammunition and rations were exhausted, as were his men. In many ways the defence of Warsaw echoed that of Minsk – the eastern approaches of the Polish capital were protected by a 50 mile (80km) ring of strongpoints. The only difference was that this time Model had sufficient mobile reserves with which to parry Rokossovsky’s forces. … Rokossovsky simply could not fulfil his orders to break through the German defences and enter Praga by 8 August. … Rokossovsky was facing twenty-two enemy divisions, including four security divisions in the Warsaw suburbs, three Hungarian divisions on the Vistula south of Warsaw, and the remains of six or seven divisions which had escaped from the chaos of Bialystok and Brest-Litovsk, that could be deployed between the Narev and the Western Bug. At least eight divisions were identified fighting to the north of Siedlice, among them two panzer and three SS panzer or panzergrenadier divisions.”27
Overy asked, “Could the Red Army have captured Warsaw in August 1944 and saved its population from further German barbarities? The answer now seems unambiguously negative. Soviet forces did not sit and play while Warsaw burned. The city was beyond their grasp. … German war memoirs … confirm that the Red Army was prevented from helping Warsaw by the sudden stiffening of the German defence. … On 10 September the attack was renewed … The Polish 1st Army then launched its own attack across the Vistula into Warsaw itself, but after heavy losses was forced on September 23 to retreat back across the river. Even at this late stage the Polish Home Army distrusted their pro-Communist compatriots so profoundly that they refused to co-ordinate their operations with the new attacking force.”28
Willmott agreed, “in military terms, the capture of Warsaw was probably beyond Soviet resources in August and September: the 1st Belorussian Front alone sustained 123,000 battle casualties in July and August.”29 Alan Bullock also agreed, “It occurred at a time when the Russian advance in the centre had run out of steam and preparations for the next phase of the campaign had not yet begun.”30 Acton too, “In retrospect, too, it appears that the Red Army was not in fact in a position to break through to Warsaw in time to save the uprising.”31 As Mazower pointed out, “the Soviet troops were exhausted, out of fuel and supplies and needed to regroup and they had been brought to a halt by a determined German defensive line.”32 Fritz noted, “after weeks of unbroken fighting, the Soviets had outrun their supply capabilities and passed the culmination point of the offensive.”33 Robin Edmonds confirmed, “Subsequent research suggests that the Red Army’s need for a pause of months - not just weeks - on the Vistula, after an advance of four hundred miles, was genuine, as indeed Stalin assured Churchill in Moscow (an assurance accepted absolutely by Churchill at the time).”34 Snyder concluded, “there is no reason to believe that Stalin deliberately halted military operations at Warsaw.”35
The Polish Prime Minister said in a broadcast from London to Warsaw, on 19 September, “Today the Soviet air force is giving you air cover and A.A. artillery. The Russians are shelling enemy forces and are already dropping some arms and food, thus making it possible to continue the fight. On behalf of the Polish Government I acknowledge this help with gratitude, and at the same time I appeal fo
r further help.”36 Bor-Komorowski acknowledged, on 18 September, “Since the night of September 13th-14th we have received daily arms and food dropped by the Russian air force on the centre of the city. Supplies were also dropped on the suburbs.”37 As Churchill said on 26 September, “The Soviet armies were at that time engaged in heavy fighting with strong German forces to the east and north-east of Warsaw, but when their operational plans permitted and direct contact had been established with the Polish Commander-in-Chief in Warsaw, they sent supplies to the Polish forces and provided them with air cover and anti-aircraft support. This assistance has been gratefully acknowledged by the Polish Prime Minister and by the Polish Commander-in-Chief in Warsaw.”38
The Nazi counterattack drove the Red Army back nearly 60 miles. In revenge for the rising, the Nazis destroyed Warsaw and killed 200,000 of its people. No wonder that General Anders called the rising a ‘disaster’, ‘madness’, a ‘flagrant crime’.39 The Red Army planned to liberate Warsaw by outflanking and surrounding the Nazi forces. This it did on 17 January 1945, three months after the rising, when the river and the marshes north and south of the city had frozen solid, giving firm track for tanks and heavy weapons. In all, 600,000 Soviet troops died freeing Poland from Nazism. Of this Vistula-Oder offensive, Fritz wrote, “in three weeks, the Red Army had won perhaps its most spectacular victory of the war.”40 And American historian Robert Messer noted “the crucial timing of the spectacular Soviet winter offensive, launched ahead of schedule on the eve of the Yalta conference; in part as an effort to relieve the beleaguered Western front after the disappointing setbacks of the Battle of the Bulge.”41