The Russian Campaign(1941-1943)

The Storm of war -Andrew Roberts

The Russian Campaign(1941-1943)

One of the enduring mysteries of the Second World War is as to why Hitler opened a second front against Russia when Britain was as yet undefeated.

The consensus by most historians is that Hitler believed that by defeating Russia, Britain would be further isolated and further subjugation would be easier.

In addition, Hitler anticipated a quick victory over the ‘racially weak’ Russian Slavs. He did not expect the battle to last more than seven weeks.

But this decision of Hitler changed the course of war. By opening up a second front when Britain was not yet conquered was a gross miscalculation by the fuehrer.

And to compound it all Hitler declared war on the United States on 11 Dec 1941 (after Pearl harbor).

This was an unimaginably stupid thing to have done in retrospect, a suicidal act less than six months after attacking the Soviet Union. America was an uninvadable land mass of gigantic productive capacity and her intervention in 1917 – 18 had sealed Germany’s fate in World War I.

‘The entry of the United States into the war is of no consequence at all for Germany, ‘ Hitler had remarked in November 1940, ‘ the United States will not be a threat to us in decades – not in 1945 but at the earliest in 1970 or 1980. ‘
Talk of famous last words!

Hitler’s Russian campaign commenced in Jun 1941 (op barbarossa) and by Feb 1943 the campaign ended in a comprehensive and massive defeat from which the Germans never recovered. In attempting the Russian campaign, Hitler was repeating the same errors as Napoleon had over a century ago. And it was the same enemy that defeated Napoleon that proved to be the undoing of Hitler as well- The Russian Winter.

Once again the figures are staggering: 4 million German troops, stretching along the entire western border of the Soviet Union from Finland to the Black Sea.

With 3,350 tanks in twenty armoured divisions, 7,000 field guns and 3,200 aircraft, and 600,000 horses.

Against Hitler’s 180 divisions, the Red Army had 158 immediately available, along
with 6,000 combat planes and more than 10,000 tanks.

Dictator Stalin-the savior of modern democracy


After an initial hiccup, as Stalin was rather taken aback by the German onslaught, the supremo got into his element – His first command –and most sensible one in retrospect – was to mobilize every Russian male born between 1905 and 1918 – and 800,000 women . In all, five million people were called up immediately, and by December 1941 almost 200 new divisions – averaging 11,000 soldiers each – were considered ready for battle.

His second major decision - On 28 July 1941,a month into the German offensive, Stalin’s ordained a ‘Not One Step Back’ policy- that anyone who retreated without specific orders or who surrendered was to be treated as a ‘traitor to the Motherland’, and his family therefore liable to imprisonment.

Even Stalin’s own son, First Lieutenant Yakov Dzhugashvili was not excluded; his wife spent two years in a labour camp. (Yakov was shot in 1943, when he entered the perimeter zone of his POW camp, either in an escape attempt or, just as likely, as suicide-by-escape.)

The death penalty was imposed for panic – malingering, falling asleep on duty, cowardice, drunkenness, desertion, loss of equipment, refusing to charge through a minefield, destroying a Party membership card on capture ( even though carrying one meant a death sentence from the Germans), and so on and on.

Marshal Zhukov ordered retreating soviet troops to be machine-gunned, and even wanted to shoot the families of those who surrendered.

In the first six months after Operation Barbarossa, the Soviet Government moved 2,593 industrial concerns eastwards in 1.5 million railway wagons and trucks, at the same time that 2.5 million troops were being moved in the opposite direction. The operations has been described as an ‘economic Stalingrad’ in its sheer size and importance.

Industrial centers were being founded so fast that the Russians ran out of names to call them, and a town was actually entitled Bezymyanny (Nameless) in the outskirts of Moscow.

To shift a large part of Russia’s industrial base, along with food, tools, equipment and prisoners, as well as twenty five million Russians, so far eastwards, and then impose an eighteen hour working day with one day’s rest per month, probably required completely totalitarian power.

Factory production began behind the Urals even before builders had constructed the roofs and walls of the factories. Managers were given targets, and were made to appreciate that meeting them was a life and death matter, for them personally as much as for the nation. Of course conditions were often unspeakable; at one factory 8,000 female workers lived in holes bored into the ground. Every industrial concern that could be turned over to war production was turned over. A factory producing champagne bottles, for example, was appropriately enough reassigned to the production of Molotov cocktails.

Such was the efficiency and ruthlessness of the Soviet leadership- and at the heart of the Second World War lies this giant and abiding paradox: although the western war was fought in defence of civilization and democracy, and although it needed to be fought and had to be won, the chief vanquisher of the German fighting machine was a dictator who was as psychologically warped and capable of evil as Adolf Hitler himself.

During the battle of Stalingrad, the Red Army shot around 13,500 Russian soldiers – the size of an entire fully manned division – for treachery, cowardice, desertion, drunkenness and ‘anti-Soviet agitation’. The condemned men were ordered to undress before execution, so that their uniforms could be reissued ‘without too many discouraging bullet-holes’.

‘The only Extenuating cause for withdrawing from a firing position’, as the soldiers were told, ‘is death.’

Some 400,000 Russians served in the various punishment battalions that were set up to impose absolute obedience on the Red Army. Yet had the slightest backsliding been permitted, the Soviets could never have persuaded rational human beings to undergo the hell of the Great Patriotic War.

Probably only a dictatorship as savage as Stalin’s, and a people as inured to barbarism as the Russians, could have broken Hitler’s power,’ is Max Hastings’ verdict. ‘The story of how they did so has never been one for weak stomachs.’

Contrast this with Britain at the very same period - there were strikes over pay and conditions even in the aircraft production factories, something that in Russia would have been inconceivable ( although instantly resolvable).

‘Along came the Russian Winter’ - German Staff Ineptness

For all the celebrated German teutonic efficiency and General Staff foresight it is simply unfathomable as to why the German staff did not foresee the Russian winter and prepare themselves logistically for the same.

As the one thing that the German Army could have laid down with some exactitude was the certainty of a very cold winter in Russia, a matter of common sense and logistical foresight of the kind at which the High Command was supposed to excel.

The only answer is the gross miscalculation by Hitler as to duration of the campaign..he expected a brisk campaign, with the inferior Russian slavs capitulating without a fight and the battle to be over within a matter of weeks.

Hilter could have well taken a leaf out of history and learnt from the disastrous Napoleon’s Russian campaign undertaken in June 1812.

Napoleon had started his campaign with 6,00,000 men and he too expected a swift and decisive victory over the Russians and had made no plans for a winter stay in Russia.

But Czar Alexander had other plans and adopted a clever strategy: instead of facing Napoleon's forces head on, the Russians simply kept retreating every time Napoleon's forces tried to attack.

Enraged, Napoleon would follow the retreating Russians again and again, marching his army deeper into Russia. Thus the campaign dragged on much longer than Napoleon expected.

The Russians adopted a "scorched-earth" policy: whenever they retreated, they burned the places they left behind. Napoleon's army had trouble finding supplies, and it grew progressively weaker the farther it marched.

In Sep 1812 when Napoleon finally entered Moscow he found the Russians had simply abandoned the city, which was now on fire and in ruins in conformity with the scorched-earth tactics. It was only then that Napoleon, realising the futility of the campaign,ordered his army to retreat. Yet with a particularly harsh winter quickly setting in, it proved to be the cruelest foe for what was now an underfed, ragged army. Of the roughly 600,000 troops who followed Napoleon into Russia, just about 100,000 made it out.

So if it was the Czar’s cunning and the winter that proved to be the undoing for Napoleon, it was Stalin’s ruthlessness and the endless reservoir of manpower that the Russian’s possessed coupled with the Russian winter that meant the death knell for the Germans.

By Sep 1941, three months into the campaign, Hitler’s German army had occupied 6,00,000 square miles of Russian soil and decimated close to 3 million troops. But it seemed not to matter to the Russians. Divisions rose as soon as one got eliminated.

The Germans had been victorious so far, it was true, but as one German tank commander commented as they drove further and further into that enormous country: ‘If this goes on, we will win ourselves to death.’

In Jun 41, Stalin had 158 divisions. With its ruthless efficiency, the Russian state had raised 200 additional divisions by the end of 1941.

This affected Hitler’s ‘swift campaign’ idea, with defeat and capture not seeming to matter to the Russians, and then of course…Along came the Russian winter….

The Russians have a saying that there is no such thing as cold weather, only the wrong kind of clothing. The German commissariat had not transported anything like enough woolen hats, gloves, long – johns and greatcoats to Russia, and suddenly there was a desperate need for millions of such items, over and above what could be looted from the Russians and poles.

Hitler had no clue as to the grim fate he had set for his troops.

The consequences of this lack of warm clothing were often horrific. An Italian recalls watching German troops returning from the Eastern Front in Warsaw. He was puzzled as to strange appearance of some of the soldiers, who had a glazed look and zombie like movements.
He said ”Suddenly I was struck with horror and realized that they had no eyelids. The ghastly cold of that winter had the strangest consequences. Thousands and thousands of soldiers had lost their limbs; thousands and thousands had their ears, their noses, their fingers and their sexual organs ripped off by the frost. Many had lost their hair … Many had lost their eyelids. Singed by the cold, the eyelid drops off like a piece of dead skin… Their future was only lunacy.”

Churchill used the opportunity to mock Hitler by remarking caustically: ‘ There is a winter, you know, in Russia. For a good many months the temperature is apt to fall very low. There is snow, there is frost, and all that. Hitler forgot about this Russian winter. He must have been very loosely educated. We all heard about it at school; but he forgot it. I have never made such a bad mistake as that.’

In the end it was the Russian fighting man who had prevailed, defending his Motherland. The unbelievably dogged resistance shown by the ordinary Russian soldier had delivered victory.

Operation Barbarossa had indeed, as Hitler had predicted, made ‘the world hold its breath’ and it was only after the comprehensive defeat of the German forces that it could finally begin to exhale.