GrogHeads Forum

For the prior thread of my Icebreaker Thesis Chronology project, click here (http://www.grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=24429.msg667323#msg667323).

For the Table of Contents and Introduction thread, click here (http://www.grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=24392.0).


The Plot {cue M:I secondary theme}
---------

December 23, 1940, from Halder's diary again, "The situation with rubber is difficult." And about to be much moreso! -- since you won't be able to rely on Soviet rubber anymore.  ^-^ Still, that's why you want to make sure to hit while Stalin has all his own supplies up front to hit you with!


December 23, 1940: 274 Red Army marshals, generals, and admirals, gather with Stalin and Politburo members until the evening of December 31st, to discuss 1940 and plans for 1941.

The commanders are brought to remote places outside Moscow in closed rail cars or in airplanes, and then delivered in equally blacked-out cars to the inner courtyard of "Hotel Moscow". Any commanders not already starting in Moscow are forbidden to go into the city (where they might be spotted and recognized); their military districts continue to publish newspapers with previously-taken photographs and articles giving the impression that they are still present on duty. From the hotel all commanders are loaded onto closed buses in the inner courtyard each day and driven to the General Staff building, returning at the end of the day in the same fashion. Naturally the hotel itself is "cleared of outside elements" and placed under special security and surveillance.

Winter is here again! -- how are troops on the new border doing? Are they ready to spend another winter there? Lieutenant-General Kurdyumov, at this time Chief of the Red Army's Combat Training Directorate, reports at this meeting (per "On the Eve of the War: Documents of the Conference of the Supreme Command of the Red Army, December 23-31, 1940", in "The Russian Archive: the Great Patriotic War", 1993, 12:1:34) that troops on the border are frequently forced to do housekeeping rather than engage in combat training. Wow, they've had more than a year to do 'housekeeping'! In their defense, the troops have been very busy, just not in preparing for winter quarters. Nor in preparing for their defense.

Even their training has been disrupted by movements at the border, though. At the same staff meeting (ibid., 12:1:40-41), Lieutenant-General Fyodorenko, currently Chief of Armored Forces Command, comments that from 1939 until now, virtually all tank formations on the borders found themselves transferred around three or four times; and some were shuffled on the border so often that "over half the redeployed units [i.e. the tank units redeployed to the border so far] had no practice areas." What he's saying is that they were being given fast maneuver training so often, that they weren't in one place long enough to settle down and start building practice areas for even other arriving tank crews to use!


None of that is the main point of this super-secret conference, however, even though it's related. The texts of the conference will be eventually published after the collapse of the Soviet Union, as "On the Eve of the War: Documents of the Red Army High Command Officers' Conference, December 23-31, 1940" (publisher uncited by Suvorov). Zhukov delivers the first and most important lecture, introducing the new tactics of sudden attack. This theme continues throughout the conference, including on December 26, 1940 (at either another lecture or else the first lecture was given three days later; Suvorov is unclear here): "The use of new means of struggle and new attack tactics has great value for our success. Before the enemy finds a means of countering the advance, the attacker can make use of all the advantages given by the element of surprise." Obviously, he isn't talking about new Nazi surprise blitzkrieg tactics being of great value for Soviet success!

Air Force Lieutenant-General P.V. Rychagov, Chief of the Air Force Main Directorate of the Red Army, delivers the second (and also very important) lecture, titled "The Air Force in an Offensive Operation and the Struggle for Air Superiority." Zhukov in his "Memoirs and Reflections" (p.191) will regard this lecture as "very informative". Rychagov summarizes his argument thus (from p.177 of the Conference documents), "The best means of defeating the air force on the ground is a simultaneous strike at a large number of air bases where the enemy's aviation is possibly located", thus to "catch all enemy aircraft at their bases." Consequently, he also stresses that such preparations must absolutely be veiled. Of course, it is practically impossible to do this in wartime. It can only feasibly done in peacetime, with an unsuspecting enemy, ideally one who hasn't arranged himself on the defensive. You cannot start a war and then suddenly strike most airfields hoping to catch all aircraft while parked! Rychagov's "special operations" are Soviet-speak for starting a war with a crippling surprise air strike against enemy air bases, quickly to be followed by thousands of commando para-jumpers seizing the airfield (under established air supremacy cover), and hundreds of thousands of light airmobile troops quickly landing in gliders, to be followed by even larger numbers of heavier airmobile troops in normal transports.

One of the more amusing incidents at this meeting involves eventual Baltic Military District (and then Northwestern Front) Chief of Staff Lieuteant-General Klyonov (also spelled in English letters Klenov), protogé of Politburo member Zhdanov, demonstrating his ideological commitment to waging only offensive invasion wars, by lecturing Zhukov (of all people! -- in front of Stalin!!) about how best to deliver such surprise attacks. From pp.153-154 of the conference docs, "These will be operations of the starting phase, when the enemy's armies have not yet completed their concentration and are not prepared for deployment. These are operations of invasion, for carrying out a whole chain of special tasks... This is the use of large air and, perhaps, mechanized forces, while the enemy has not yet prepared for decisive action... The mechanized forces will have to be used independently, and they will solve the tasks of invasion into enemy territory."

Colonel-General of Tank Troops D.G. Pavolv, commander of the Western Special Military District, delivers the lecture titled "The use of mechanized units in contemporary offensive operations and breakthrough by mechanized corps." From the conference docs p.255, "Poland has ceased to exist after seventeen days. The operation in Belgium and Holland ended after fifteen days. The operation in France, before France's capitulation, lasted seventeen days. These are three very characteristic numbers, which cannot but force me to accept them as a possible number for our calculations of our offensive operation."

Was the Soviet defense of Russia even talked about?! Yes -- after a fashion. The lecturers at the conference, for example, unanimously agreed that the current Soviet Field Statute for the spread of a division on a defensive line was too small, at eight to twelve kilometers. The width of the line must be widened -- by putting more troops into the defending division so that the density will remain equal or perhaps greater across the line? No, that would pose too much administrative strain. Besides, they aren't talking at all about adding more troops onto defensive duty in any way. In fact, the point everyone agrees on is that one division could do the work of two or three in defending their width of a line, freeing up those other divisions to help with the offense! (Sources uncited by Suvorov.)

Another possibility for adjusting defensive theory, is advocated by the Chief of Staff of the Leningrad Military District, Major-General P.G. Ponedelin: don't bother with primary defensive lines at all! Concentrate all the forces in those locations where the Soviet Union would carry out sudden strikes against its enemy, leaving secondary locations defenseless with a completely bare border in those places! Ponedelin isn't immediately taken out and shot as an obvious traitor to the Motherland; on the contrary a month from now, when Zhukov becomes the Chief of General Staff of the Red Army, he will offer Ponedelin command of the 12th Army, to be parked in the Lvov-Chernovitsi bulge. He'll be tried and shot as a traitor later after that command -- not because he will concentrate all force into a hitting fist and leave his border flanks bare to be crushed by the Germany blitzkrieg (many other generals will share the same fate and be reassigned by Stalin or even promoted), but because he'll be captured by the Nazis: standard Soviet procedure on recovering captured officers is to court-martial and shoot them.

Anything else about Red Army defensive preparations? Yes, Army General I.V. Tulenev, commander of the Moscow Military District, delivers a lecture on "The Character of Contemporary Defensive Operations". So questions dealing with defense are examined after all!

After consideration of the topic, Tulenev declares, "We have no established contemporary defensive theory." (pp.209-210)  #:-) #:-) #:-)

Until December 1940, Soviet military theory did not work on questions of defense, or not in any primary way. With Hitler on the doorstep now, perhaps they should get started with that?! Tulenev summarizes what everyone agrees upon about that: "Defense will be a part of a general offensive. Defense is an indispensable form of military operations in separate secondary locations, which allows us to save forces for offensive operations and to prepare attacks." (p.210)

That might sound at first like it could be sufficient defensive planning, but notice that those locations are not only regarded as "secondary" but as "separate". They aren't mutually reinforcing, and aren't even contiguous with one another. At most Tulenev is talking about gappy defensive spots, not about lines at all.

Moreover, the goal is to conduct grandiose sudden offensive operations on enemy territory, and therefore to amass huge forces in narrow areas. For this purpose, the Soviet commanders are planning to take almost all forces out of those "secondary" locations -- the only (separate) areas where any defense at all is being planned.

December 31, 1940, People's Commissar of Defense Marshal of the Soviet Union S. K. Timoshenko, on the final day of the conference: "In the theater of operations you must aim at being able simultaneously to pursue two, if not three offensive operations on several fronts, to overwhelm enemy defense capabilities over the widest possible area." (p.350) Defense at any primary location is not even theoretically being considered. The most important thing is to advance with entire armies, fronts, and groups of fronts. Regiments, denuded divisions, perhaps even a corps of thinned divisions, would sometimes be left for defense in separate locations. Some did agree that if needed an entire field army could remain in a local defense according to immediate circumstances -- but especially to serve as a fast strategic reserve for deploying regiments and divisions for the offensive!

We shall be seeing examples of these ideas later in 1941; but the point is that no plans at all are being laid for systematic defense. All defense is meant to be the minimal expected for dealing with temporary local situations. Systematic defense preparations are not examined even theoretically -- about six months before Germany will hit the Soviet Union with exactly the same kind of surprise blitzkrieg these commanders are super-secretly planning to hit some "enemy" with.

The concept of Germany preparing a similar surprise blitzkrieg, by the way, is vocally, even adamantly, dismissed as impossible at the conference. This is partly because, as eventual Marshal of the Soviet Union Grechko will later reveal in JMH, 1966, #6, p.8, "...[W]ithin 11 days after Hitler had finalized the plan for war against the Soviet Union (December 18, 1940), our intelligence people were in possession of that fact and the basics of the German Command decision."

There can be no surprise Nazi attack, because Soviet High Command knows the attack is coming this year and knows to watch for it!

A group under the code name "Viking" works in the staff of the Nazi Oberkommand Wehrmacht, the Over- or High-Command of the Armed Forces or warmakers, abbreviated OKW. Seven high-ranking German officers and generals are supplying information straight from Hitler's cabinet to Stalin's pre-GRU military intelligence agents! (as per the official Soviet military newspaper "Red Star" issue December 23, 1989, page uncited.) Another group under the code name "Alta" works in the German embassy in Moscow; but the entire embassy is wrapped up in the web of Stalin's espionage (his military intelligence; his pre-KGB party intelligence; and his own personal intelligence group concealed under the name "Special Section of the Central Committee of the Communist Party".) The embassy agents are "supplemented by a man who had, in essence, unrestricted access to all state secrets of Germany," (per "Red Star", October 1, 1987). JMH #4, 1992, p.30, adds that the German embassy in Moscow has ties at this time to Goering's staff (the second-in-command of the Nazi Party under Hitler); to the science and technology organs of the Third Reich; and of course to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "Among these agents," notes the JMH article, "there was even one of the closest associates of the foreign affairs minister, Ribbentrop. He was recruited in Poland to work for the British and in his convictions he was an adamant enemy of the Soviet Union." Like many other agents, he thought he was working against Stalin, when in reality he was working for him. (Suvorov in "Chief Culprit" Chapter 40, adds an impressive set of examples of Stalinist agents to this list. For example, Stalin will know the plan for the Nazi Kursk offensive in 1943, six days before the operation's own generals!)

Stalin and his generals know Hitler is coming this year; they know he likes to hit with blitzkriegs; they know how armies perform blitzrkiegs; they have the opportunity right now in the final week of December 1940 to start preparing thoroughly to receive Hitler's attack.

But they are not planning to defend against Hitler's expected attack. They are planning to hit some "enemy" with a surprise blitzkrieg first -- in fact, to hit some enemy before this enemy finishes preparations for his own blitzkrieg, catching this enemy off guard and wrecking practically all his forces on the Continent who will be caught out of position to defend against the Soviet thunderbolts.

They will still be expecting for Hitler to attack after winning or at least settling his war against Britain, however; and they are still expecting Hitler to attack for the purpose of conquering and collecting Russia into his economic control, therefore needing a long-term war and occupation.

Stalin orders new pre-GRU chief Golikov (succeeding all his liquidated predecessors), whose agents provided this information about Barbarossa, to find some way to be sure about Nazi timing on this basis. Golikov, who has all of the GRU's history at liquidating his predecessors for motivation, gets right on that project!  :bd: He'll report back in early January.

And it will be freaking genius...  :D :notworthy:

December 31, 1940: after 6pm the conference ends and most of the participants are rapidly and secretly transported back to where they have been pretending to still be; but one group remains.

49 of the highest ranking commanders have been playing a strategic staff wargame on maps since 11am today: "Easterners", led by Pavlov the commander of the Western Special Military District; and "Westerners", led by Zhukov the commander of the Kiev Special Military District. According to the Soviet Journal of Military History, #12, 1986, p.41, this is the largest and most important wargame of all the prewar years.

The Easterners have 24 generals, 1 rear admiral, 1 first rank navy captain, 1 second-rank navy captain, and 1 colonel. The Westerners (whoever they are supposed to be, cough cough  ^-^ ) have 21 generals, admirals, and officers. The game's supervisor is People's Commissar of Defense Timoshenko. The referees are twelve of the top commanders of the Red Army, including four Marshals of the Soviet Union. Stalin and the entire Politburo observe the scenario of the future war playing out. Zhukov himself says (uncited by Suvorov) that the two games planned for this exercise do not have an academic character, but are directly tied to the imminent war.

Suvorov (in "Chief Culprit") says the two staffs evaluate situations, make decisions, and give orders and directions "for several days and nights, without rest or sleep". In other words, they're playing out the games in real-time.

The Easterners are not playing out any defense plans against Westerner aggression: they're going for the breakthrough invasion against the Westerners before the Western group has completed its own preparations for blitzing. Thus the title of the game: "Offensive Operation of the Front with Breaks through the  Fortified Regions." Suvorov doesn't specifically state what maps they are using, but says they are thinking of ways to take Koenigsberg, Warsaw, Prague, Bucharest, Krakow, and Budapest, and strongly implies that they are gaming the conquest of Eastern Prussia with Zhukov defending it.

He also seems to cite the conference docs ("On the Eve of War...", pp.388-89) about the tasks for the game being designed according to the principle that on July 15, 1941, Germany attacks the Soviet Union (as of course the intercepted plans 11 days after Hitler's finalization had told the Soviets): German troops force their way 70 to 120km into Soviet territory; but by August 1, they are thrown back to their original positions.

But none of that is gamed! -- the game just starts with the mention that the Germans have attacked and the Soviets have already driven them back precisely where they happened to start from!

In other words, the successful defense is a political sham for narrative color; nothing about parrying the blow on defense and driving the enemy back had been discussed at the conference, not even in the context of pure counterattack for defense -- and the wargamers aren't interested in simulating that, either. All the conference discussion had been about the new tactics of launching a surprise attack on an unexpecting enemy who has not quite completed his own preparation for attack, and that's what the wargame is trying to simulate (per Suvorov's report at least). But of course, if the narrative color for the start of the operation really happened, then the Westerners wouldn't be caught by surprise with a crushing blow against his airfields and so forth before his preparations for his own attack were ready.

JMH #2, 1992, p.22, clearly states, whether or not the conference documents do, that Nazi Germany was the enemy: "unfolding the main forces of the Red Army in the West and grouping the main forces against Eastern Prussia and in the direction of Warsaw brings about serious fears that the struggle on this front can turn into protracted fighting."

The second wargame, which starts immediately after the conclusion of the first, doesn't involve a surprise attack against Nazi Germany. It starts with the Easteners already one hundred kilometers inside the Westerner territory!  <:-)

Of the two Soviet games, "the debriefing of the first one is concluded at the highest political leadership level in the country." (per Zolotarev's article in "Red Star", December 27, 1990, page uncited.) That of course is a politically correct euphemism to mean Stalin debriefed the participants after the first game. He became convinced that the Red Army would get bogged down in Eastern Prussia, and decided that a strike on Europe should be delivered from the Ukraine and Moldova, not from an area north of Polesye.

Two games had to be played to simulate a concentration of thrust on either side of Polesye, the largest swampland region in Europe and maybe in the world. (I can't tell for sure, but Suvorov may be talking about Pripyat?) You can't go down the middle, and you can't feasibly be strong on both sides equally; so one side has to be the main invasion push. The game was testing which thrust should be primary and secondary. Both options have their pros and cons, and the games won't settle this dispute.

Consequently, the second game, played between January 8th and 11th, deals with "retaliatory measures" {Dr. Evil fingerquotes} in Romania, Hungary, and in Germany from that direction. Some generals are switched between teams; others don't play the second game at all, with other generals replacing them. But the main opponents remain the same -- except this time Zhukov, the commander of Kiev Military District, plays the Easterners, with Pavlov trying to defend Romania and Germany. Zhukov finds the going much easier in Romania than against the modern fortifications of Eastern Prussia, and especially likes having an indisputable superority of aviation, tanks, and paratroops. The second game ends with Zhukov's decision to attack Budapest, breaking through to Lake Balaton, and crossing the Danube River near Budapest. (An area we will be considering much later...!)


In 1945, when the Red Army seizes the archives of the Wehrmacht Heer, Soviet historians will bring out the single Nazi wargame of invading Russia, exposing their terrible plan. The Soviet two wargames after the conference, and the conference documents themselves, will be locked carefully away until the fall of the Soviet Union. (per JMH, #1, 1990, p.58.


December 1940: having watched the Wehrmacht crush Poland and western Europe under its treads, the United States decides it's time to get off horses and out of armored cars and put some tanks in production! Eventually they will field some decent tanks (and some much better tank destroyers, such as the Wolverine), but that will take several years.

It's the start of 1941. You know the drill by now -- but for the final year: Soviet fighter and bomber airfleet training manuals continue to focus teaching one massive ground strike instead of dogfighting.

By June 21, 1941, five corps and three independent divisions of level bombers will remain, mostly equipped with the two-engine Ilyushin DB-3f (aka the Il-4), a magnificent long-range medium bomber (the "DB" itself is an English-letter acronym for "long-range bomber" in Russian), first going into production in 1935. It performed the first loop of a Soviet bomber during testing, and went on to set several world records in its class, primarily based on its design requirements to drop a 1000kg bombload 3000km away at a speed not lesss than 350km/h! But (by Soviet standards anyway) it is not a strategic heavy bomber like the four-engine TB series. (TB-3s will also remain, but they are used to transport airmobile cargo and troops, not as a strategic bomber.)

DB-3s were the two bombers(!!) which infamously shot down the neutral Finnish civilian Junkers Ju-52 passenger transport during the Soviet usurpation of the Baltic states, on June 14th last year, carrying western diplomatic papers from Stalin's putative allies.

The bomber is roughly equivalent to the Nazi He-111, except better in every performance metric since its arrival in 1935, and it has only gotten better since then. Fifteen DB-3Ts (the T indicates a torpedo bomber variant!), from the Soviet Baltic fleet, will drop the first Soviet bombs on Berlin on the night of August 7-8, later this year. They may not be organized into three aviation armies anymore, but five corps and three more divisons of (mostly) these bombers are nothing to sneeze at! -- imagine if Hitler had similar numbers of significantly improved He-111s! They just don't have major roles in Stalin's grand strategy right now.



Early 1941: Remember back when Stalin disbanded the NKVD Chief Directorate some years ago, in order to replace it with SIX NEW NKVD directorates?

Early this year, Stalin creates a seventh NKVD Chief Directorate! -- the CD for Rapid-response Forces (CDRF), commanded by former NKVD Special Operation Forces divisional commander Lieutenant-General Pavel Artyomyev.

The CDRF immediately creates and starts filling out dozens of motorized rifle divisions -- the equivalent of many corps, thus equaling several whole NKVD CDRF armies (although apparently(?) not organized that way). Each division will have over ten thousand troops, hundreds of thousands of troops in total.

Each NKVD CDRF motorized rifle division features a tank regiment (or even battalion), two or three motorized rifle regiments, a howitzer regiment (high arc fire for assaulting trenches and other defensive-works, not low-arc direct fire against incoming threats), and other units for flavor. (Howitzers can be used for long-distance defensive support, as in American Vietnam-era firebases, but they need firebase equivalents. Which will not be provided for these guns; they will be overrun out of defensive position at the start of Barbarossa.) Suvorov indirectly suggests by this order of battle, that these "divisions", although meant to be filled out to full strength eventually, start off more like brigades in manpower (with regiments and battalions as the immediate sub-units).

The name "Rapid-response Force" sounds defensive; and motorized rifle divisions can be used defensively, by stationing them well behind the front lines, able (as the name would suggest) to rapidly deploy to problem areas in response to invasion. (As Suvorov puts it in "Icebreaker", a tennis player expecting an attack hangs back away from the net in order to have the best chance of intercepting the incoming strike.) Every single NKVD CDRF MRD is deployed to the western border, however -- up next to the tennis net, metaphorically -- not well back from the border, in concurrence with Soviet invasion doctrine.

In other words, whole armies (worth) of motorized Secret Police death squads are being given howitzers and rushed to the front lines; not rushed to deploy against the recently invaded areas with a few pockets of military resistance remaining. In combat, they would have one and only one function this close to the line: as fast follow-up forces to a surprise blitzkrieg westward into Central and Western Europe (just like Hitler's SS motorized divisions into Russia). The Soviet invasion, like the eventual Nazi one, would blitz past any strong defensive points, cutting off supply and support, striking deep into civilian areas; the howitzer-armed secret police would arrive to root out the bypassed remaining strong defensive spots, and take control of the civilians.

Beria's CDRF will prove nearly useless for defensive warfare on Soviet territory; just as Hitler's SS motorized divisions will become nearly useless once the Red Army invades the German homeland -- although still more useful than Soviet NKVD CDRF MDRs, due to the higher quality training and equipment lavished on the SS: the most useful SS divisions are mechanized and armored, not simply motorized. The Soviet purpose for such divisions is to overwhelm static targets with relatively fast-moving quantity on a good road network (for wheels) unlike what is available in Russia at this time.

Start of 1941: Soviet Marshal Bagramayan reports that the 55th Rifle (standard infantry) Corps is putting several standalone airborne battalions through intensive assault training near the Romanian border. These units are intended to be parceled out to his (or other) divisions later on an as-needed basis. Bagramayan's description suggests that such training of airborne battalions by Rifle Corps is the rule, not the exception. He does not bother explaining why offensive assault battalions for striking the enemy's backfield by surprise, are being given intensive training near the Romanian border; their purpose would be presumably obvious.  ^-^

January 1, 1941: a poem in Pravda (converted into English rhyme and metrics by the "Icebreaker" translator): "In '41 new treasures we'll unearth, our shovels hitting layers rich in worth. Uranium may turn to just plain fuel, unleashed by cyclotrons, become the rule. Each year we fight for coal, to make more steel, each year we've won -- and surely win we will!... Our list of sixteen stars, it may expand with stars to join the row and grow our land..." This refers to the small nations added, by invasion conquest, to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, in 1940; Pravda is being told to train its readers to expect more Soviet conquests in 1941.

From an article (author unsourced by Suvorov), same issue, "Great is our country: Earth herself has to keep turning for nine hours to let all our vast Soviet land enter a new year of fresh victories." This refers to past military victories in 1940, with new victories to come hopefully in 1941. "The time will come when she will need not nine hours, but all night and all day... And who knows where we will find ourselves toasting the New [year] five years, ten years hence: at what latitude, along which new Soviet meridian?" This is Soviet world conquest propaganda: fresh invasion victories should lead in ten years' time to the USSR stretching around the globe in both hemispheres.


January 1941: the Ammunition Narkomat has been ginning along steadily with new ammunition factories, since its inception back near the start of 1939; but it has turned out that making gunpowder and shells and cartridges where you assemble them into ammunition, is not such a great idea, compared to having separate factories for such things. Thus a chief directorate is set up this month for constructing gunpowder factories, shell factories, cartridge factories, and missile factories: twenty-three construction areas in all.

New storage facilities? -- no, no. Just new factories for producing the components to fabricate ammunition. They aren't planning to store all this new ammunition somewhere...  ::)  ^-^

Early January 1941: Stalin gathers a very tight-knit circle at the highest Soviet command level, to discuss the late December evidence that Hitler will attack the Soviet Union this year. (Suvorov doesn't give a date, since records aren't kept; he infers this from other evidence. The wargames about invading a "western" "enemy", cough, are probably still going on.)

Stalin has trouble believing it, suspecting this is some kind of counter-intelligence forgery. Why? Because Hitler would need years to even try to bring all Russia west of the Urals far enough under his control to have any hope of holding onto it through the winter and against expected counter-attacks; and it would be suicide for Hitler to try that without having finished fighting Britain in some successful way; and the evidence shows clearly enough that Hitler won't be finished fighting Britain early enough this year to start conquering western Russia! Yet the evidence seems strong enough to warrant watching out for Hitler, so as not to be caught by surprise.

Stalin has already back in December ordered new pre-GRU chief Golikov (the agency isn't called the GRU yet, but will next year) to come up with a foolproof plan to detect when, if ever, Hitler pulls the trigger on invading. Golikov has not been lax the past few weeks, and reports success! -- he can pinpoint the exact time Hitler's invasion, if at all, will start!

How?! Stalin naturally demands Golikov tell him the method, but it is so incredibly secret Golikov insists on sharing it with Stalin alone and no one else. Stalin agrees; and after hearing how Golikov plans to know, he accepts Golikov's ongoing briefs alone and in person.

So how will Golikov know not only when, but even if Hitler really intends to pull that trigger? Because, obviously, the Nazis will need all kinds of winter gear if they're going to seize control of any amount of western Russia this year -- or any year! So, Golikov has set up a very nuanced and detailed system to watch for massive winter weather preparations among many factors in Germany.

GRU residents across conquered Europe are ordered to track sheep, carefully checking and sifting all key organizations directly or indirectly tied to sheep. Over the course of several months in 1940, and then going forward, the number of sheep under Hitler's control (and where he might buy sheep products, such as Italy) are ascertained, along with the main sheep raising centers and slaughterhouses. Twice a day Golikov gets reports about mutton prices throughout Europe. If there's a sudden spike in wool prices due to a shortage, but a sudden cratering of mutton prices due to a glut of meat on the market, then you can be sure Hitler has ordered a massive amount of winter weather gear (at least six million sheepskins worth) for his troops.

Golikov also orders his agents to hunt up dirty rags and oil-soaked paper left by Nazi troops all around Europe -- the leftovers from where they're cleaning their weapons. The leftovers are supposed to be burned or buried in the ground, but that didn't always happen so the agents have plenty of opportunity to collect huge quantities of dirty rags. Those dirty rags are then sent back, in bulk, across the border, on Golikov's orders, wrapping pieces of scrap metal. Hitler's own secret police would check things of course, but all they ever found was only what was there: completely unimportant scrap metal wrapped in the most valuable dirty rags in world history, worth many times the weight of that scrap metal in platinum! Why? -- because once Hitler's soldiers start cleaning their weapons with special oils fit for Russian winter, then Hitler must be about to attack! There can be no option on this: standard German gun oils harden below water's freezing temperatures. Guns would jam and might even explode!

By the same token, Golikov has agent teams in Nazi territory sending lamps, heaters, stoves, and lighters as well as other primitive heaters. These could be regarded as contraband, so these get smuggled as well as legally imported into Russia. Why? Because these are military issue items, and Soviet experts are told to check the grade of kerosene. When Hitler starts distributing massive quantities of winter-grade kerosene to his troops, then he's planning to occupy proportionately large amounts of Soviet territory this winter! Again there's no option for this: standard kerosene breaks down below freezing, into non-combustible materials.

If those signals start showing up, you can expect an attack will definitely happen, perhaps within days depending on other factors happening at the border. Until they show up, don't worry, Hitler isn't going to attack yet.

But those special winter signals will never show up -- because Hitler isn't planning to do the impossible: he's only planning to wipe out the Soviet army while he can catch it out of position, and so hopefully inspire an uprising against the Soviet government, which will then distract and cripple Russia until whenever Hitler can get around to really conquering them.

How does Suvorov know Golikov's plan if Golikov never spoke of it but to Stalin in secret? Suvorov produces no records of the plan, of course; but he proposed the theory when he studied at the GRU Academy, and once he was posted as an analyst at GRU Headquarters he was able to research the files there and discover exactly the sorts of action his theory expected if Golikov was covertly watching carefully for Nazi winter preparations. This part of the thesis also fits some other things that will be happening, down to very-early-morning (after midnight) on June 22nd this year!

January 13th, 1941: since late 1939, Chief of Staff Meretskov, veteran commander of the hard Soviet fight against the awe-inspiring Finnish security corridor during the Winter War, has been destroying the exponentially-more-awe-inspiring Soviet security corridors which he helped design and construct in the first place (such destruction being in direct violation of Soviet defensive regulations, per Suvorov). On this day, more than a year later, Stalin fires him, to be replaced with General Zhukov.

At the same time (date not clear from Suvorov but apparently around now?), as reported later in the JMH, 1963, #10, p.31, the General Staff declares the armies gathering along the border to be the First Strategic Echelon: the armies resolved by the 1932 Revolutionary Council, to be the invasion springboard for igniting the ultimate and final world war, while the Soviet Union calls upon all workers to rise up against all property owners worldwide, mobilizing ten million troops of its own (or eighteen million rather), for a relatively orderly deployment behind the "covering armies" of the First Echelon. Has the purpose of the First Echelon changed since 1932? "Accomplishing the mission of the invasion armies is to be the responsibility of the First Strategic Echelon," according to the General Staff.

Meanwhile, is Chief of the General Staff Meretskov fired for destroying the life-saving Russian defensive security corridor which would be their first and by far best protection against a Nazi invasion? No, he is fired for not being fast enough at building offensive transportation lines, bridges, and air bases in the former security corridor! The railroad system in the territories acquired after the division of Poland, only had about 6700km of tracks, and only 2008km of those went two ways, and they were of low capacity.

Construction intensifies to typically epic-Zhukov levels, who immediately adds 8 railway brigades to the Red Army's prior 5, massing (nearly) all of them in western border areas to lay down new lines leading to the edge of the frontier (per "Red Star", the Red Army newspaper, September 15, 1984.) Highways are also laid down leading to and from the border; not laterally deep within the backfield territory to shuttle armed forces for blocking progress back and forth parallel to the border. "The highway grid in Western Byelorussia and Western Ukraine was in bad shape. Many bridges could not take the weight of an average tank, or of artillery." (Marshal of the Soviet Union Zhukov, "Recollections and Reflections", p.207.)

Had Zhukov been planning on defense, he would have not been complaining, but would have been making the situation even worse for an invading army, and salting the area with anti-tank cannons; but he starts building more highways (to and from the border) and replacing old bridges with armor-capable modern structures. The NKVD, in Soviet sources (such as Chief Marshal of the Air Force Novikov's "In the skies over Leningrad", p.65), supply many work crews to help Zhukov in making the border much easier for armies to move through. These of course are "GULAG" prisoner work crews, acting surprisingly close to border areas where they would want to escape.

At this same time, "In early 1941, the Hitlerites proceeded to build bridges, railway spur lines and air strips," pointing toward their side of the border, as quoted from the official "History of Red-Banner-Winner Kiev Military District, 1919-1972", p.147. The Soviets, and everyone else, correctly interpreted these as logistic preparations for invasion. Three pages earlier however the Kiev Military District history writes, "Railway forces in Western Ukraine were working on expanding and reinforcing the grid."

The railroad brigades are not at the same time preparing barriers for these railroads! They will be so unused to building defensive barriers, in fact, that "Soviet Railway Forces" p.98 will later call it "tough and unfamiliar work" when they must do so during the Nazi invasion. They had battalions geared to patching up tracks ("Soviet Armed Forces", p.242) -- not only repairing Soviet gauge tracks, but repairing and converting enemy tracks, which Suvorov (source unclear, or unsourced) claims was their primary mission.


Poor Chief of the General Staff Meretskov, architect of the now destroyed Stalin Line (which he helped destroy), fired for not building offensive infrastructure fast enough where he could have been building a new Stalin Line (had he been ordered to). Alas, thrown into prison for his treachery in following his orders, to suffer a nine millimeter brain hemmor---

...what? Oh, wait, sorry that was just a guess: that isn't what happens. Stalin promotes him to Deputy People's Commissar for Defense!  <:-) As the forward representative for the Commissar on the field, Meretskov gives more orders to more generals and marshals from this position; including touring the Nazi border with them, like he used to do as Leningrad Military District Commander before the Soviet invasion of Finland, where he can see firsthand what kind of Soviet preparations his marshals and generals are doing.

Once Hitler's generals panzer-blitz over his practically non-existent defenses, however, Meretskov will surely be... um.... ....ah, let's see... oh, he's promoted eventually to a Marshal of the Soviet Union, and will show up touring Manchuria's borders, under the guise of "Colonel-General Maximov", with his soon-to-be-invading generals in 1945, before they launch a surprise attack blitzkrieg on the Japanese. "I myself traveled up and down on an all-terrain vehicle, in places even on horseback, covering all sectors," he'll recall for "Red Star", June 7, 1987. Never mind, then, carry on!  ::)

January 16, 1941, from Halder's diary, "Anti-aircraft gun battalions of the land army, forty battalions. The special personnel for them have yet to be prepared. This is feasible only by autumn." Fortunately they're planning to wipe out most of the Soviet Air Force in the first few days. Better hope the whole rotten structure caves in after only three weeks of kicking in the door, then! -- but if not, at least you'll start getting anti-air battalions by then.


January 28, 1941, from Halder's diary, "The fuel situation is serious. We can count on fuel supply during the period of concentration and deployment, and two months of operations." That's with captured fuel, assuming it takes longer than three weeks for Soviet socialism to implode.

"Automobile tires. The situation is very serious." It's unclear if they'll even have two months of truck and car tires. Keep in mind, their whole logistic plan will require remaking the Russian railway system from scrap (using captured engines and railcars meanwhile) -- somewhat literally from scrap after the Nazi bombers have gotten done with the rail network! -- and then the supplies will have to be gotten from the rail lines to the front lines by trucks. If those tires go out, that's the end of the fight soon afterward.

Keep in mind that in one general sense, Hitler's generals are planning a three month war if necessary on two months of supplies; but also on a three week war on two weeks of initial supplies. The variance in timing comes from hopefully minimum to hopefully maximal time to inflict enough damage for civil war to erupt and take down or at least paralyze Stalin's Soviet Union long enough for Hitler to deal with Britain and otherwise consolidate his European gains (then to do something about Russia eventually). The other variance in timing comes from some having perhaps enough of some crucial supplies for two months, but having enough of other crucial supplies for only two weeks -- and then being able to somewhat randomly capture more of what they need, thanks to Stalin's strategic forward deployments. Taking Moscow is meant to be the last expected chance of breaking the Soviet system, if necessary, but hopefully not necessary: the whole rotten structure might collapse much sooner. Hopefully.

This leads in turn to a certain lack of clarity about how to achieve the desired goal and how long it will take. From Halder's war diary again, "Operation Barbarossa. The goal of the campaign is unclear. It does not at all affect England. Our economic base does not improve from this." Right, which is why the general goal is to cause a governmental collapse as soon as possible. If not...! "If we are tied down in Russia, the situation will become even more difficult... Operation Barbarossa is extremely risky."

February 1941: Zhukov insists that General Tulenyev, commander of the Moscow Military District, and the third highest ranking general in the Red Army, shall be assigned as commander of the Southern Front instead of (apparently) the Western Front. The Southern Front won't be formally created until the day before Barbarossa, but secretly several border Military Districts will already be converted to Front Headquarters by then. In fact, Southern Front will already have a headquarters commander by the day before Barbarossa (though he'll be busy escorting a special corps to the border from Crimea).

Why secretly assign and convert Military Districts to Fronts? Because Soviet Fronts are important signals that the Soviet Military is starting military operations. Prewar data shows the logistical arm directly subordinate to each Front command was, all by itself, to have up to two hundred thousand soldiers. While a Military District can still exist during wartime, Fronts are only created at the beginning of a war (as for example per the Soviet Military Encyclopedia, Vol.8, p.332.) A Far Eastern Front (with two and then later three armies) was set up in 1938 due to active hostilities with Japan, and even up to this time there are skirmishes involving hundreds of tanks and aircraft although no formal declaration of war. Fronts had been created briefly on the Soviet western border during 1939 and 1940 for each of the "liberation crusade" invasions, most recently for Bessarabia and Bukhovina (at the time Romanian territories). Once hostilities ceased (i.e. the Soviets conquered their target areas) the Fronts as such were disbanded back into Military Districts.

Stalin's enemies are painfully well aware of this, so he is making his preparations for the conversion of Military Districts to Fronts in secret.

Some of these arrangements are subtle, carrying meaning only to Soviet military specialists. For example, the Western Special Military District this month creates a second deputy district commander's slot. Why? Army General Pavlov (soon to be commander of the Western Front) has a Deputy Commander already and numerous subordinates. Well, he must have some special need for a second deputy, so whom does he choose, or who is assigned to him? Nobody. No one at all. The second deputy commander's post is quietly created in February 1941, and then stays vacant for a few months. Then Lieutenant-General Kurdyumov will come to fill it -- shortly before Barbarossa.

So what's going on here?!

To explain: in Soviet military doctrine, the MD commander is in effect a military governor having authority over all civilians as well as military forces in his district. If a Military District ever converts to a Front, however, three broad possibilities happen: fighting in place, fighting in retreat, and fighting in advance (an invasion). In the first two possibilities, the MD Commander (Pavlov in this case) converts to a Front Commander but continues being the military governor over the civilians; even trying to help withdraw them to safety if he is being invaded. But those are emergency situations; Military Districts are intended to serve as support preparation and forming-up points for Soviet armies to invade a neighboring government: ideally and normally the third possibility happens. In that case, the plan requires for the Front Commander to have a second deputy, so that the Commander can move his headquarters toward and into foreign territory and manage the invasion with one deputy while the other stays behind helping his logistic situation and, of course, continuing the military governance of the civilians in the (former) District.

Specifically for this example, in peacetime Pavlov's duty station is in Minsk, with one deputy, currently Lieutenant-General Boldin, and his chief of staff, currently Major-General Klimovskikh. Once war starts, Pavlov would switch over smoothly and instantly to Commander Western Front, Klimovskikh the Front Chief of Staff, and Deputy Boldin would, in this case, take command of a Western Front mobile team as Pavlov's representative on the very front line. If Pavlov is planning to defend in place, or worse to defend in withdrawal, he doesn't need a second deputy. But if Pavlov is planning to move the Front HQ out of Minsk and follow an invasion, bringing his Chief of Staff with him, and sending his first Deputy up as the front line leader (the on-map boss, in western operational parlance), someone has to stay behind in Minsk as his personal representative.

That position, only needed when planning and executing an invasion, has now been created, in February 1941; and some months later, Kurdyumov, who was once in charge of the Red Army's Directorate of Combat Training, will arrive to get up to speed on administering things in Minsk, so that he can act as a homeland military governor in backfield support while Pavlov is invading whatever is on the Western Special Military District border. Sitting upon the conveyor belt for more and more fresh westbound reserves will be precisely the best choice of general for optimally preparing those troops to go on into the largest liberation crusade in Soviet history.

Unless whoever is on the other side of that border strikes first, catching them all off balance and unprepared to defend.

The same thing is happening this February down in the Kiev Special Military District, where plans are setting up for four armies, ten stand-alone corps, plus no less than ten air divisions. Top secret documents will already start referring to this unofficially as what it will become on June 22nd later this year: Southwestern Front. Its commander is Colonel-General Kirponos. Does he quietly get a second deputy slot? Yes he does! -- General Yakovlyev will arrive to fulfill it. Once he arrives, a clandestine command center for SW Front HQ will be set up in Ternopol. Official HQ will stay in Kiev, along with Yakovlyev, or specifically in the Kiev suburb Brovary deep in a massive bunker. The Ternopol command center, where Front Commander Kirponos is going, is very understandably only a string of dugouts which will be hastily thrown up. He isn't meant to hunker down there for any length of time, so why do more?

North again into the Baltic Special Military District, starting to be described unofficially as Northwestern Front. The top officers, including Baltic MD commander Colonel-General Kuznyetsov, will quietly take off for Panevyezhis. General Safronov will arrive to stay behind in Riga as the second district deputy.

Things will be more complicated for the Odessa Military District. Chief of Staff Major-General Zakharov, not the MD Commander Colonel-General Cherevichenko, will pick up most of Odessa MD's officers on June 20th, and roll them over, not into a Front HQ, but into 9th Army's HQ -- which makes sense once 9th Army starts getting beefed up to the size of one of Hitler's four Panzer Groups! 9th Army will become practically a Front unto itself! What about Cherevichenko? Oh, don't worry, he will be in personal charge of the 9th Army (or so he plans); that's where his Front HQ will be! But earlier he will stealthily leave Odessa to go into the Crimea to take over 9th Special Corps (formed in the Caucasus), to bring back as his flagship corps, so to speak, when taking command of the 9th Army. (He'll be caught on the trains when Hitler invades.) Does he get a second deputy? Yes, indeed, Chibisov will already be there, up to speed, staying behind on June 20th when 9th HQ is raised to combat alert status (two days before Barbarossa) and the rest of the MD HQ staff pack up to secretly move to the Army where they plan to meet up with the Front Commander Cherevichenko as his Front HQ.

Is there no exception to this second deputy assignment? Ah, Leningrad Military District! It is still secretly being regarded from February 1941 onwards as Northern Front, but it gets no second deputy. This however fits perfectly into the scenario: it is Northwestern Front's Colonel-General Kuznyetsov, not Northern Front's Lieutenant-General Popov, who gets the second deputy. Leningrad MD is set much farther back from the border, or rather its border is with Finland mostly. Once it becomes a Front, even if its flanking neighbors are invading Nazi territory, its forces would not be expected to move far at first. They can serve as reserves for Fronts on either side, doled out to Northern Front's neighbors as they find need, and otherwise focus on Finland. Its staff, including Popov, will be making secret trips from MD HQ to the Nazi border, but they won't be moving Front HQ out there, so Leningrad has no need for a second MD deputy.

February 1941: Soviet colonels and higher ranks, especially among paratroopers, commandos, and intelligence types, start being assigned competent and loyal ethnic German officers as their aides. So do Soviet cavalry commanders, who are slowly being transferred out of their assault backfield raiding units of horses, into airborne and tanks (just as was happening in Germany). Afterward, the Soviet commanders will joke about it in their memoirs, saying things like, "There a war starts, with the Germans, and my personal radio operator -- who would've thought it? -- is a German! Of course, the little guy is a fine fellow, disciplined, tried and true." Aside from Military Intelligence Colonel Starinov (of "Mines Awaiting Their Moment"), who will soon be deployed to the western border with his Soviet ethnic German driver, some examples are: Colonel Stein, commanding 2nd Airborne Brigade of the 2nd Airborne Corps, who has a German private among his orderlies. Colonel Rodimtsev also has a German driver. Cavalry Colonel (subsequently Major-General) Lev Dovator has not gone airborne yet, but his widow remembers (in a "Red Star" article, February 17, 1983), "In our regiment there was one German. Now Lev Mikhailovich, you see, brought him over to our home every day, so they would keep practicing, and by the time the war started [Lev] already spoke fluent German."


February 1941: after sending regiments and whole divisions of NKVD to "eradicate hostile elements" and "cleansing territory" in Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Western Ukraine, and Byelorussia throughout 1940, slaughtering military officers, teachers, clergy, police, writers, jurists, journalists, farmers, entrepreneurs, and anyone else regarded as defending the ownership of property (such as in the 1939 Polish Katya massacre along with two other such mass murder secret graveyards in Poland); NKVD combat units now start massing along the frontier of East Prussia, occupied Poland, and Romania.

Not only 47 ground and 5 naval border detachments, plus 11 regiments, totaling around 100,000 men, but also the NKVD 4th Division (commanded by NKVD Colonel Mazhirin) on the Romanian border (including NKVD 57th regiment detachments parked on the eastern side of the border bridges); NKVD 10th Division in the Rava-Russkaya area (with its 16th Cavalry Regiment concentrated at border outposts); and NKVD 21st Motorized Rifle Division on the Finnish border along with NKVD 1st Division (commanded by NKVD Colonel Donskov). The NKVD 22nd Motorized Rifle Division is in Lithuania. "We shall crush the Beast in its own den," vows Commissar-General for State Security Beria, the infamous secret police leader, in February 1941 (specific source unreported by Suvorov). These are the first arrivals of next massive wave of divisions to be deployed westward before June 22; not all of which will arrive before Hitler invades.

February 1941: Soviet Marshal Zhukov, in his "Recollections and Reflections", p.194, recalls a discussion about the defensive merits of the Molotov Line, which he was helping build: "The fortified sectors are being built too close to the border, in a pattern that, operationally, leaves us at an extreme disadvantage, especially in the Byelostok salient [where marshals after-the-fact said they were expecting the second strongest invasion strike]. From around Brest and Suwalka, this lets the enemy strike at the rear of our Byelostok group of forces. The FS, moreover, given their limited depth, cannot sustain battle for long, since enemy artillery can shell them through and through."

Zhukov this month now holds the position of Commander of the Red Army's General Staff. Once he took command earlier this month, he did direct work in the area to increase at typically epic Zhukov pacing -- but not on the Molotov fortified sectors! Several, such as around Brest, were actually relegated to secondary status (per Anfilov, "Immortal Feat", p.166.) Suvorov quips that by Soviet Russian standards, relegating to secondary status means work almost halted! Starinov confirms: "The fortified sectors on the old borders [i.e. the old Stalin Line] went right on being stripped of armaments, while construction on the new borders [the Molotov Line] was held to a snail's pace." (Starinov, p.178)

Yet according to captured German 48th Motorized Corps documents, Nazi commanders report round-the-clock work at Brest, and at night "the Russians [are] using flood-lights while building their pillboxes". Work on the Brest portion of the Molotov Line almost halts; but the Soviets still shine floodlights on their work at night so that the Germans can see them constantly working on their almost-halted efforts!

Eventual Marshal of the Soviet Union Bagramayan will later (JMH, 1976, #1, p.54) call the Molotov Line "an intentional sham". Even back in 1940, while acting as personal friend and subordinate of Zhukov, Bagramayan was watching a Fortified Sector under construction "in plain view of the Germans." Sites are fenced off with some boards: "To me, this bit of board fencing was reminiscent of fig leaves on antique statues. [...] 'What do you think?' I asked the man in charge at one of the sites. 'Can the Germans guess what your crews are putting up here, on the banks of a border river, behind these little boards?' 'No question about it!' answered he, without hesitation. 'It would not be hard to figure out what sort of building we're doing.' It occurred to me, what those tactically ignorant enough to have picked these construction sites had done, you could easily call sabotage! The same thing evidently had happened earlier, too."

Bagramayan defines this activity as "An obvious sham of working on defense," but quickly adds, "higher authority had approved the project plans." He means higher than the Military District commander who was personally responsible for the Fortified Sectors. Who is next up the chain in higher command? That would be Zhukov! -- who had made a similar show not long previously (which may be the "same thing [that] had happened earlier, too" which Bagramayan mentions). Zhukov, back in August 1939, had created similar light fortifications right on the border of Mongolia, off to the side of his planned lines of advance, where they could support the initial steps of invasion, and where the Japanese could see apparently harmless defensive preparations being lightly but quickly erected, giving an appearance of weak defense. Zhukov would later in his memoirs praise his successful strategy there, leading to a crushing Soviet blitz into Mongolia, blasting a Japanese occupation army, before withdrawing.

So it should not be surprising that Bagramayan does not personally yell a halt order in the face of the construction commander; nor does he return to Zhukov to report that they can both expect a firing squad thanks to Zhukov's orders to spend millions of rubles on building fortifications that the enemy can safely blast off the face of the Earth at any moment if the enemy decides to attack -- which is exactly what will happen on June 22, 1941. Bagramayan is one of the shrewdest men alive, a man who will enter WW2 as a Colonel and finish as a four-star general: he knows what the Fortified Sectors of Military Districts are intended for in Soviet military doctrine. He and his friend and master Zhukov will be promoted by Stalin after June 22nd.

Colonel-General Sandalov, in his memoirs "Overcome", p.64, reports some comments at the time from Brest Fortified Sector Commander Major-General Puzyryev. The general is commanded to hide Soviet forces in the woods, ordering them to stay out of sight, "not to provoke war". But at the same time, he is ordered to relentlessly throw their preparation for defense in the enemy's face for days and nights on end, without concern for triggering diplomatic or military complications. Did he at least think the his Molotov Line frantic defensive constructions were suitable? "Perching the fortified sector on the very border was not business as usual. Earlier, we had always built pillboxes some distance from the border. Here, though, we had no choice. We had to go by not just military, but also political considerations." This is a polite euphemism for saying Stalin and/or other high commanders insisted on it.

In his "Assignment: Moscow" (p.53), Sandalov talks again about being surprised to see pillboxes being built close enough to the frontier for the Nazis to see them. Baffled, he questions Chuikov (previously a Far East commander). With a mock sigh Chuikov says it's a pity, but, yes, the Germans certainly are noticing these defense works being put up. Guderian will launch the war from the other side of this border river, and records that he did indeed get a good look at the Soviets building pillboxes by day and under bright lights at night. Guderian personally ordered much the same thing, on a much hastier basis, right before invading Poland. And he is himself doing the same thing now. Both sides allow the enemy to pinpoint gun emplacement layouts and gun port directions, so as to easily figure out how and where assault fire would be directed.

It must be stressed that almost all the Soviet engineering troops are concentrating along the western borders, furiously at work doing something! Later in 1978, "Soviet Military Forces" (published by Voyenizdat in Moscow) will be fairly blunt (on page 255) about their task being to prepare the "initial points for attack, [the] foundation of passageways for columns [i.e. columns of troops to march and drive through]... operational and tactical camouflage, organization of joint action in the storming groups with infantry and tanks; [and] to provide the equipment for crossing rivers." But in a defensive war you don't need to storm across your border rivers with infantry and tanks! -- you need to be ensuring your enemy cannot storm across the border river to hit his own initial points for attack on your side!

February 21, 1941: in "Soviet Armed Forces Logistics during the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945", p.33, eventual Marshal of the Soviet Union Kurkotkin tells that the General Staff on this day gives to the People's Commissariat for Transportation all necessary paperwork for moving the Second Strategic Echelon westward.

The General Staff, of course, did not wake up this morning, decide to create organizational containers for seventy-seven divisions in central and eastern Russia, and to move them all westward to the border, during breakfast while catching up on what each other's grandchildren were doing, then signing a few forms to get it started!

They have been preparing this documentation for months, considering the orders and instructions to railway forces as to when, where, and what kind of support to provide; how to cloak loading and transfer (more on the crazy levels of attempted secrecy later); how to route traffic; where to take on fuel and supplies (at no main or medium-sized stations, by the way!); and where to set up sites for mass unloading of troops. Naturally they must also pinpoint which troops would go where and when; for which orders must also be in (at least) initial preparation about mustering those divisions near railway loading areas, and which ones shall move first.

These 77 divisions do not count the NKVD Divisions also gathering at the border, nor the divisions (now officially designated as part of First Echelon Armies) already there.

How far back was this decision first officially made? August 19th, 1939, when many of these 77 divisions were first conceptually formed and the others soon afterward. The 85th Division, for example, was created by the Politburo decision and started its formal existence in late August 1939; in September 1939, the 159th Division. By June 21st, the 85th will be parked on the German borders in the region of Augustov, watching the NKVD cutting down the Soviet barbed wire -- but not the Nazi wire, because the Nazis will have finished doing that two weeks earlier for some very famous reason coming up on June 22nd!  ^-^ The 159th will be in the 6th Army by then, at the Rava-Russkyaya border. The same month of September 1939 saw the creation of 125th and 128th Rifle Divisions in the Ural Military District, as another example, and they will also be parked "on the immediate borders", of East Prussia in their case.

The go-order for this doesn't start yet for all the divisions -- only for some of them now in February. But the trickle westward will increase steadily to a flood between now and the end of June. More on this later.

February 1941: another winter on the border is finishing for the divisions of the newly designated First Echelon Armies already on the border. Perhaps now they will start planning better for the 41-42 winter? Nope, even their current barely-winter-suitable 'housekeeping' stops!

What about the newly arriving NKVD Divisions, straining even farther the pauce billeting of the First Echelon? No, they are too busy to even start planning to make winter quarters (though perhaps they are using their cachet as elite political death squads to kick some Red Army units out of what barracks they already have).

Soon, the Second Strategic Echelon divisions are going to start arriving; on top of divisions already here, and new divisions still being formed along the border, and other First Echelon divisions being moved up to the border meanwhile. But the Second Echelon have no plans to build even minimally-suitable winter quarters either!

Moreover, according to Bagramayan (indirectly cited without quotes from his article in JMH, 1976, #1, p.62), every single First Strategic Echelon division will leave behind their dugouts and unfinished barracks to head into the border belt, right up to the border. (This will really kick into gear on June 13th, much more on that later!) Is this so that the Second Echelon can camp in their dugouts and unfinished barracks? Nope, when they arrive they won't even take advantage of those, much less build any new dugouts. Second Echelon won't even build new gunnery ranges and practice areas.

Will Second Echelon be busy finally starting serious defenses in the backfield? Nope, Second Echelon won't even start digging trenches. According to Suvorov, "Reams of official documentation as well as Soviet generals' and marshals' memoirs corroborate that this second wave of troops camped out, nothing more."

In "Chief Culprit" Suvorov cites a random example: on March 1941, the 118th Division, of the 16th Rifle Corps, of the 11th Army, is created in the Baltic region -- this is the headquarter container at first, of course, with some core troops to start the subordinate regiments and battalions etc. In May the reserve troops assigned to this division will start to arrive, and will put up a temporary summer camp made of tents in the Kozlovo Ruda region, 45 to 50 kilometers from the state border. On or shortly after June 13th (about which much more later!), they'll abandon this tent city and march for the border. Right next to it, starting on June 18th, will be the 28th Tank Division, doing the same.

In other words, Stalin and his high command intend for practically none of the divisions already at, or arriving at, or planning to arrive at the border this year, to winter on the border. Stalin intends for one hundred and ninety-one Red Army divisions (plus however many NKVD divisions) to winter somewhere else, one way or another.  ^-^

They won't be sitting around counting trees, either: they'll be running combat training 8 to 10 hours a day -- plus also night exercises, self-training, weapons maintenance, and drills under arms. (For example, Major-General and later Marshal of the Soviet Union Moskalenko's memoir, "In the Southwestern Sector: Recollections of an Army Commander", p.18.)

Spring 1941: the glider office of the People's Commissariat for Aviation Industry has completed its preparations at last, and its factories start churning out mass-produced assault gliders, in numbers sufficient to drop hundreds of thousands of paratroops and light airmobile units (not counting more standard airmobile units which would need to arrive in normal aircraft once landing zones are seized).

Unlike other weapon systems which can be stored for years or even decades and then be used, gliders rot quickly. The Soviets will not be ignorant of this, because they have been out-producing the entire rest of the world combined in gliders for the past decade. Anyone and everyone professionally connected with glider production will know: gliders produced in the spring of 1941, must be used before mid-autumn 1941, at the very latest. They will be useless afterward that year, and will not even functionally exist by spring 1942.

This signifies the start of a(nother!) ticking clock. If the Soviet Union does not launch a light airborne assault troop operation, equivalent in equipment-type to the (eventual) Market-Garden drops, but about three times larger than the total multi-day drop, by mid-September of 1941 at the latest (for all practical purposes), then this freakish number of gliders (and the resources and manpower being feverishly spent on them) will be wasted. Earlier than mid-September will be exponentially better.

If the Soviet Union does use them, they can only be used for offensive invasion.

If they are not preceded by some surprise and overwhelming operation to clear the sky of interceptors, they will be shot out of the sky by standing and scrambling combat air patrols: the Soviet Union must first attain full air supremacy (as the Germans had generally done in their parachute invasions recently, and as the Allies would do more solidly for Overlord and Market-Garden). Suppressing the ground anti-air would also be very helpful first (as was unable to be done for Overlord although the Allies tried, leading to the loss of many gliders and towing aircraft in the air with their crews and cargos).

If the landing sites are not secured first by equivalent numbers of airborne parachutists (surviving their own preliminary drops), they will be shot up on the ground immediately before or during initial deployment, and/or crash and burn.

If the chute and glider invasion is not followed quickly by heavier airmobile troops in proper transport aircraft, and then soon afterward by strong ground invasion forces, the invasion will be eaten up on the ground and fail. The Soviets have been practicing for just such maneuvers at the division and corps level for years, and will continue right up to the day before Barbarossa.

If Germany invades first, of course, all the gliders will be wasted at best, if not captured on the ground. Which is exactly what will happen later this summer. Gliders can be of some use in a very prepared counterattack, assuming air supremacy has already been achieved; but they are of no use in defending against an attack.

Gliders are basically large parachutes for equipment or a squad of ground troops. Actual parachute troops would deploy from powered aircraft. Fortunately, back in 1938, the world's best transport and air-assault deployment craft in 1941 (and throughout the war), the American C-47 (developed from the civilian DC-3, accidentally mis-translated as the S-47 in "Chief Culprit", those letters being equivalent in Russian), was licensed by the United States, including provision of the most complex equipment necessary for its production, for Soviet production as the PS-84 (eventually renamed the LI-2 in 1942 in honor of the chief engineer of their Russian production factory). Around 234 will be built (aside from any lend-leasing, and 57 prior test productions) by June 1941, in PS-84 "passenger" configuration although that is a little misleading -- they could be used in a pinch as chute deployment. Fortunately, for the sake of convenience, they will be painted a camouflage green right at the factories during production; consequently, they will not need repainting later should war perhaps happen to occur!

By themselves, this is hardly enough to even begin supporting hundreds of thousands of glider-borne troops by an advanced para-drop invasion, but the Soviet Union has hundreds and hundreds of various 'obsolete' light, medium, and even heavy bombers capable of being quickly (or already) converted over to para-drop duty. All the mega-airdrops in the 1930s were carried out with several hundred converted TB-3s for example, which by themselves were capable of dropping several thousand parachute assault troops as well as ferrying light tanks, armored cars, and artillery.

None of that would work without the enemy ground forces being absolutely plastered with close assault aircraft; but the Soviet Union has the most cost-effective mass-produced, and also the highest quality, strike aircraft in the world (the Su-x series and the Il-2, respectively) -- and is moving those aircraft up to the borders where not already there.

"Red Star", the Soviet military magazine, reminded its readers back on September 27th, 1940, that landing substantial airmobile troops is impossible without absolute Soviet air supremacy; and Field Manual 39 (the 1939 edition, still in force in spring 1941) clearly spells out that conducting a "deep-penetration operation" of any kind, especially a mass airdrop of paratroopers, is feasible only given Soviet air supremacy.

FM-39, also Air Force Combat Regulations, as well as the "Operational Directives for Independent Use of Aircraft", require a major Soviet war to initially launch an enormous strategic operation designed to crush enemy airpower on the ground. The air forces of several fronts, naval aviation, and fighter aviation, are all supposed to participate in such an operation. But the success of their theory depends entirely on the extent to which it could achieve strategic and tactical surprise.

March 4, 1941: from a Pravda article, "Divide your enemies, temporarily meet the demands of each, then crush them one by one, giving them no chance to close ranks."

March 1941, as reported by G.A. Deborin in The Second World War, 1958, p.108, "The German leaders had especially strong expectations from their Japanese allies. They really wanted Japan to be the first to start military action against the USSR... But the Japanese leaders evaded talks with Germany. Only in March 1941 did the Japanese minister of foreign affairs, Iosuke Matsuoka, arrive in Berlin... Matsuoka refused to determine the deadline for Japanese action against the USSR, which led to a strong clash between him and Hitler."

The Soviet History of the Second World War, Vol.3, p.274, adds "When Matsuoka informed Ribbentrop about the high probability of a Soviet-Japanese pact, the head of German diplomacy stated that one would be wise not to involve oneself too intimately with the Soviet Union, but watch the events in the region." -- hinting about events being planned by Germany this summer, of course.


March 11, 1941: Generals Vasilevsky and Zhukov, and Marshal Timoshenko, together the three heads of the People's Defense Commissariat, send Stalin their finalized plan for invading Germany.

Suvorov says the original of this document can be found in the Central Archive of the Russian Ministry of defense, holding #16, register #2951, case #241, pp.1-16. This will eventually be published by Yakovlev, Gaidar, and Primakov, in "1941", 1998, Vol.1, p.741. But they only publish five of the sixteen pages -- the pages describing the German army and suppositions about German command intentions. The Red Army Forces and plans of the Soviet Union are explicitly bracketed out until the signatures, Timoshenko, Zhukov, and Vasilevsky.

Suvorov claims to have seen the original. But he doesn't quote from it.


March 20, 1941, new pre-GRU chief Lieutenant-General Golikov (still alive and impressing Stalin after the ongoing liquidation of his predecessors since the start of the pre-GRU), submits a detailed report to Stalin concluding "the most likely time for action [by Hitler] against the USSR, is after having defeated England or having achieved peace with England on terms honorable for Germany." In other words, not this year because Hitler doesn't look like he's going to get out of fighting Britain anytime soon, and he is making no preparations for massive winter occupation and fighting -- both of which would be necessary to conquer at least the western Soviet Union.


March 30, 1941: Adolf Hitler gives a speech to his generals explaining his aims for the war in the East: smash the enemy's armed forces, eliminate the communist dictatorship, establish true socialism (i.e. the national socialism of the Nazi Party), and turn Russia into a base for pursuing the war to bring true socialism to the world. As he famously says somewhere during this period (in a citation I can't find yet), all they have to do is kick in the door, and the whole rotten house will come tumbling down!

Spring 1941: Soviet marshals and generals have a tendency to talk in bits and pieces about deployments westward before the war. Anfilov (in "Immortal Feat", p.189), reports that "ten rifle divisions from areas within the country were moved forward to the west" into the Western Special Military District; while in the adjoining Baltic Area Special Military District, four rifle divisions shift closer to the border: the 23rd, 48th, 126th, and 128th. Suvorov finds indications elsewhere that the 11th and 183rd rifle divisions also moved up; did Anfilov not know? not care? didn't want to say? Did every single tank and motorized rifle division stay in place?

Some Soviet marshals, including Zhukov, say 28 rifle divisions are brought up at around this time from deeper in-country. Eventual Marshal of the Soviet Union Vasilyevsky will stress later, however (in his "Life-long Cause", p.119), that those 28 divisions are only "initiated implementation of the force concentration plan". But no officer ever reports the total number of divisions, even if like Zhukov they must have known the full tally. This will give historians a lot of difficulty later in figuring out the true extent of what is happening in the Soviet Union before Barbarossa. But Soviet propaganda will have a proportionately easier time insisting that Hitler invaded a Russia who wasn't prepared and wasn't even preparing for war.


Spring 1941: Major-General Grigoryenko, in his 1981 memoirs, "Nothing But Rats Underground", p.141, thinks back to the utter ongoing destruction of the Stalin Line: "I don't know how future historians will explain this crime against our people. Those now writing [in 1981] are burying the event in utter silence. I don't know how to explain it. For billions and billions of rubles (by my [Grigoryenko's] calculations, no less than 120 [billion]) the Soviet government fleeced our people to build fortifications no enemy could pierce, along our entire western border -- from sea to sea, from the gray Baltic to the azure Black Sea. Then, on the very eve of war -- in the spring of 1941 -- enormous blasts thundered along the entire 750-mile line of fortifications. Massive reinforced-concrete revetments and semi-revetments, three-, two- and single-port weapons emplacements, command and observation posts, tens of thousands of pillboxes... all were blown sky-high on personal orders from Stalin!"

Some of course survived, even to having working plumbing for military journalists in the 80s, but the point is that all coordinated defensive purposes to the Stalin Line have been ruined on orders of Stalin.

Keep in mind, this is the same Grigoryenko quoted by Suvorov earlier in his career, as explaining the purpose of the Fortified Sectors of the Stalin Line: not primarily for defense, but for supporting offensive invasion by the Soviet Red Army! The Fortified Sectors of the Stalin Line had been rendered instantly useless for that purpose, upon the signing of the Molotov Pact, but could have been still useful in case of invasion by the Nazis (or whomever) -- which in hindsight is what Grigoryenko is complaining about: Stalin destroyed them so they couldn't be used for protection.

But why physically destroy the forts, even if they are stripped of arms and supplies and equipment? Verdun's abandoned forts, even though unprepared, had been useful against the Nazi invasion. Soon, the Brest fortifications will cause the Nazis some problems -- better than nothing! Stalingrad's walls were unarmed, but helped delay its conquest until Nazi failure. When the Soviets had to abandon the mere trenches of the Kursk Salient, they returned two years later to hold the line, and found the trenches waiting.

Grigoryenko even 40 years later cannot figure out why; but at the time he was stationed in the Far East of Russia, and knew comrades and superiors of his were being summoned westward. Like most soldiers aside from the very top brass, Grigoryenko didn't know just how extensive this logistic movement was, and maybe never put the pieces together -- but by spring 1941, the final eastern elements of the First Strategic Echelon movement would have been slowly approaching the old Stalin Line; with the Second Strategic Echelon surge being prepared to follow afterward. The Line's constricted passages were still in the way of these forces with no plans to defend in the Stalin Line. During peacetime those routes were totally sufficient; but during a surge of continental-sized invasion westward, they would be totally insufficient for the (relatively) fast transport of so much men and material.

Before 1939, the original Fortified Sectors could be used for defense as well as, more primarily, intended for supporting an assault. But Stalin no longer has operational or strategic plans for defense, and these sectors can no longer help stage an assault; they are only in the way of the coming Echelon forces, and the subsequent logistic supply.

They also could be staging areas for rebels against Stalin's regime, if Stalin happened to be moving his monstrous numbers of secret police death squads, now armed with howitzers, out of his territory for a protracted time -- which had happened before in Lenin's 1920 invasion of Poland.

April 11, 1941: Sorge, still working freelance to show he is a faithful and committed Soviet communist (and/or that he should be allowed to come home someday and not be shot in the head), sends this cable: "The representative of the [German] General Staff in Tokyo declared that immediately after the end of the war in Europe, war against the Soviet Union will begin."

Sorge is unwittingly passing on counter-intelligence; Hitler started planning Barbarossa last year, and will kick it off a little more than two months from now, without having settled his war with Britain. This also comports, probably not coincidentally, with the counter-intelligence Stalin had sent to Hitler just before Hitler authorized Barbarossa in June 1940, where Stalin let on that he expected Hitler to attack him in the spring of 1941 (i.e. around now) but only if Britain has been knocked out of the war, and that Stalin would be his good friend and not team up against him first!

The pre-GRU isn't really paying attention to Sorge anyway, partly because they still rank him as a malicious defector who, since he refuses to come home to be shot in the head, is probably a triple agent for Germany pretending to be a double agent for Russia pretending to be a German agent for Germany (while spying on Japan)!

There's also the problem that Sorge has no evidence to back up such reports, although in his defense that's partly because some reports like this one just don't have corroborating evidence, and partly because when he does have "important documents" the GRU won't send a courier to pick them up!

And besides, the pre-GRU on completely independent ground, involving a thorough ongoing study of all the current relevant economic, political, and military factors, has come to much the same conclusion: Germany cannot win a two-front war; and Hitler will not start an extra war, especially not against the largest military force on Earth, before settling with Britain. Therefore, while they continue to monitor his suspicious activity, by their calculations Hitler must have decided not to invade the Soviet Union this year after all.

But the Soviets expect Hitler to want to take all Soviet property and means of production under his authority -- which he does, of course, but that isn't the main goal of his planned invasion. This is a point Suvorov also mis-estimates in "Icebreaker" and "Chief Culprit"; he really has no idea why Hitler would do something so suicidal, other than feeling he has no other choice anymore but to roll the dice and hope for five sixes!

April 12, 1941: the Nazis seize Belgrade, capital of Serbia.


April 13, 1941: Rommel reaches the borders of Egypt with the Afrika Korps, outfighting Britain and her allies so badly that the Allied troops start to attribute magical powers to him!


Also April 13, 1941: the shortest route between Berlin and Tokyo runs straight through Moscow, especially if you decide to go by rail (to the occupied Asian mainland coast anyway) instead of flying. Japanese ambassador Matsuoka stops in Moscow briefly on his return trip from Berlin, by rail, to sign a pact of neutrality between the Soviet Union and Japan.

Party General Secretary Stalin is on the scene, but he is only a citizen, invested with no official state, government, military, or diplomatic powers; he takes no responsibility for this historic act. Molotov, as with Germany, signs the neutrality pact, "to further peaceful and friendly relations as well as mutual respect for territorial integrity and inviolability... in the event one of the Parties to the pact is the target of military operations from one or several third powers, the other Party to the pact shall observe neutrality throughout the entire conflict." (from the International Policy of the USSR: A Compilation of Documents, Vol.4, p.550.)

Japan believes it can plan and act in an easterly and southern direction without too much worry that the USSR will attack them again. The armies in the Soviet Far East have been gathering up and departing since the winter of 1940 anyway, as Japanese intelligence is well aware; clearly they will be busy elsewhere for some time.

Despite the fact that Japan is already the "Axis" ally of Nazi Germany, Japan officially declines to ever fight the Soviet Union. Hitler was counting on Japan to distract Stalin with warmaking on the other side of the continent, during the upcoming Barbarossa, but Japan already has one too many industrial giants on its own upcoming plate to deal with!

Right after signing the agreement, Matsuoka heads for the train station to leave Moscow, when something politically very odd happens: at the last minute before the train departs, Stalin appeared on the platform! -- obviously delaying the departure. Stalin doesn't normally meet or see off anyone like this, and laughs and jokes in a remarkably good mood. After walking with the Japanese minister right to the steps of the railcar, he VERY uncharacteristically embraces the Japanese minister and proclaims that the Soviet Union and Japan would remain friends forever! Among the many officials attending this departure, is the German military attaché -- and he gets a similar Stalin bear hug with the same declaration that Germany and the Soviet Union would also remain friends!

Stalin is usually very reserved and discreet in the presence of outsiders, certainly never embracing them. Many historians take this public display as clear and obvious evidence that Stalin truly desired peace and meant to avoid war at any cost. Y. Gal'perin has a different opinion in his article "The Third Front" for the June 19, 1997 issue of Vesti: "They did not know Stalin well in Tokyo. If the Japanese had at least superficially acquainted themselves with the lifestyle and career path of the great follower of Lenin's legacy, they would have noticed that his methods always remained the same: make an alliance with somebody against somebody else, and follow it with a stab in the back to the ally once he becomes useless."

April 14, 1941, in Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels' diary entry today, "The signing of the Soviet-Japanese neutrality agreement was a great surprise for Germany. Ribbentrop ordered the German ambassador in Tokyo to demand an explanation from the Japanese government." (cited in "History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, 1941-1945", Vol.1, p.400.)

Once Matsuoka returns, he will tell the Nazi's Tokyo ambassador, "If Germany and the Soviet Union were to start fighting, not a single Japanese premier or minister of foreign affairs could keep the nation neutral. Japan will ally with Germany in attacking Russia, whatever the situation. Pacts of neutrality do not matter in this affair." (per "History of the Second World War", Vol.3, p.355.)

That isn't at all what the pact says! -- and Japan will not invade the USSR even with Stalin "on the brink of defeat" (as Suvorov acknowledges in Chief Culprit when discussing this incident.) During the direst days of Nazi invasion and occupation, Japan honors the Pact; but the Soviet Union never disbands the Far Eastern Front, even though hostilities have ceased for now. Stalin only disbands a Front once he gets what he wants. (Arguably Finland was no exception, if Stalin wanted control of the security corridor between Finland and Leningrad.)

Stalin will start planning for an attack on Japan, or rather on Japanese mainland occupied territory (i.e. Manchuria, North Korea, northern Vietnam...) at least as early as the summer of 1944, when Stalin will tell Marshal A.M. Vasilevsky that he would be the chief commander of Soviet troops in a war against Japan (JMH, #10, 197, p.60; also Vassilevsky's Life's Mission, p.499.) Stalin will call Japan an aggressor for the first time publicly (after today) on November 6, 1944; an on April 5, 1945, his government will cancel the Soviet-Japanese neutrality pact striking Japan in the back a few months later, invading Manchuria. But, politically speaking, he has not betrayed the treaty: he never made it, Molotov did.

Moscow will announce the attack technically late on August 8th, 1945, but the attack actually started a few hours earlier on August 9th! -- the record will not account for the many hours of time difference between the areas. "This policy," of attacking Japan while still in the neutrality pact, the Soviet announcement calls, "the only instrument capable of bringing closer the advent of peace, freeing the people involved from further sacrifice and suffering, while letting the Japanese people put danger and destruction behind them..."

Colonel Savin, much later in JMH, 1985, #8, p.56, will call it "a just and humane act of the USSR". General Ivanov describes such action (in his "Opening Phase of the War", p.281) as "preparations for and launching of a sudden first strike, together with opening of a new strategic front."

Malinovsky will address his troops on August 10th: "The Soviet people cannot live and work in peace and quiet, while Japanese militarists are sabre-rattling at our Far Eastern Borders, looking for a good opportunity to attack our Motherland." Malinovsky will know that the 66 largest cities in Japan have already been systematically firebombed off the face of the earth, the most recent being Hiroshima -- with only one plane and one bomb!

By some accounts, it will be this invasion, not the dropping of atomic warheads, which convinces Japan to surrender -- to the United States. They will know full well what is coming if Stalin reaches them.

(For a full chapter on the final blitz of World War 2, see Suvorov's chapter "An Ideal War" in "Chief Culprit". It has many more interesting details and comparison with Soviet preparations before Barbarossa.)

April 14, 1941: the Nazis conquer Yugoslavia on the day after Stalin directs Molotov to sign a neutrality pact and friendship agreement with Japan.

April 16, 1941: the Nazi airstrikes on Britain damage St. Paul's Cathedral.


April 16, 1941: General Shelakhov, at this time a Major-General in charge of the 1st Order of the Red Banner Army on the Far Eastern Front, will write later in a JHM article (1969, #3, p.56), that in accordance with a People's Commissar of Defense Order issued on this day, "18th and 31st rifle corps command components were reassigned from the Far Eastern Front to the west, along with 21st and 66th rifle divisions, 211th and 212st airborne-assault brigades, and a number of special-forces units."

The special-force units mean NKVD troops. The HQs go first to make preparations for the troops to arrive afterward. There are already five airborne assault corps (purely offensive in character and design) lining up just behind the armies bulking up on the western front. Why are another two airborne-assault brigades (purely offensive in character and design) being redeployed from the Far East? The 212th is no ordinary airborne brigade even by elite standards: it was Zhukov's personal favorite, part of his personal reserve in 1939 together with an NKVD Special Forces battalion. He used them in his surprise blitz on the Japanese 6th Army, and then used the Brigade again in the rear of the blitzed 6th Army. They are on the way now to join the 3rd Airborne-Assault Corps on the Romanian border, where after Barbarossa starts they will be reconfigured into the 87th Rifle and then later ride to heroic rescue and inflict much butt-kicking upon the Nazi forces as the legendary 13th Guard Division!

But right now they're intended to surprise assault an enemy by air-mobile landing, somewhere near Romania.

Also sometime in April, Colonel Mishulin's 57th Tank Division is packed up and shipped out thanks to this Defense Order; according to his correspondence at the time, he doesn't know where. He and his division will land in Kiev Special Military District, to start unloading in the Shepetovka area.

April 19, 1941: the Greek prime minister Korizis committed suicide yesterday, and Greece is nearly ready to surrender to Hitler. Greece's British (and allied) defenders are headed for disaster with no assurance they can even be evacuated. Churchill has been sending his Soviet enemy Stalin correspondence on a regular basis, commonly regarded as warning him that Hitler may try to attack him. Churchill wrote another such letter on April 3rd, requesting the British Ambassador in Moscow, Sir Stafford Cripps, to immediately hand it to Stalin in person. But neither Stalin nor Molotov would receive the ambassador. Today Cripps transmits the message to Andrei Vyshinsky, the Deputy People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs; who will reply on April 22nd that the message has been handed to Stalin.

This letter is usually cited as Churchill's most important warning: not only western historians refer to it, but so does Khrushchev, the Soviet historian Anfilov (quoting it "in all his books" claims Suvorov), Zhukov quoting it completely, as does Pavlov, in their memoirs, along with the official "History of the Great Patriotic War".

The text reads: "From a trustworthy agent I have received credible information to the effect that on March 20th, once the Germans had decided Yugoslavia had fallen into their net, they began to redeploy to southern Poland three out of the five panzer divisions earlier stationed in Romania. At that moment, word of massive unrest in Serbia prompted them to call off that redeployment. Your Excellency will have no difficulty appreciating the significance of these facts."

All Soviet historians (up through Suvorov's time, so he says) insistently portray this as a warning. From Stalin's standpoint, however, he hears that a mere three panzer divisions (compared to the sixty-three tank divisions Stalin is secretly creating, each with more and arguably better tanks than Nazi armored divisions) did NOT leave Romania but have pointed toward Serbia, turning their backs upon his forces massing at the Romanian border.

Churchill is well aware of those Soviet forces, though not of their total and planned extent; Hitler has been briefed about dozens of Soviet tank divisions clustered along the Soviet border including Romania's. Both Churchill and Hitler are also well aware of Romania's importance to the Nazi fuel supply.

The crux of the warning would be, in context, that with all these factors Hitler still wanted to move three armored divisions from the crucial protection of fuel for all Nazi armored divisions, to southern Poland -- traditionally, for very practical reasons, the invasion route between Russia and Germany. Does Stalin simply ignore this warning? No, but he has been watching the Nazis doing sham defensive work and aggressive scouting on his borders for a while now. He knows Hitler is planning to invade sometime; based on the pre-GRU's work back in December, he even knows generally when to expect it: in July, not yet. And Stalin has long been planning some kind of border action himself.

It must be noted that Suvorov goes back and forth on Stalin learning about an invasion early, and dismissing the idea of invasion entirely. Both however are true! -- Stalin's current pre-GRU chief Golikov is sending him data every day deductively proving that Hitler has no intention at all of conquering western Russia yet! Which, as Suvorov sometimes forgets, although he does know better, is not Hitler's intention at this time.

April 22, 1941, on the day his most recent later is handed to Stalin, Churchill writes elsewhere (as reported by L. Woodward, "British Foreign Policy in the Second World War", p.611), "the Soviet government knows full well... that we stand in need of its help."

So the April 3rd letter, delivered on the 19th, wasn't about warning Stalin about preparations for invasion -- it was asking for help and tactfully suggesting a method.

April 23, 1941: Stalin has long since invaded and is now pacifying all neutral countries between Soviet and Nazi territory. During these operations Stalin has barely, if at all, used his airborne and airmobile troops so far, now numbering nearly two million: each man costing more than his weight in gold (purchased by grain sold off by Stalin in a decade of unspeakable famine. Literally unspeakable, in Soviet Russia...!) If he has only a defensive war in mind, he should now disband these costly elite units, and plow them thoroughly back into proper defensive formations with defensive equipment, at least starting new security corridors and partisan brigades (perhaps even partisan armies by now).

Stalin today secretly commissions and deploys five airborne corps (per the Decree of the Central Committee of the ACP(b) and the Council of the People's Commissars "Regarding New Units of the Red Army", #1112-459cc, April 23, 1941)! -- all in the western reaches of the Soviet Union, close enough to be dropped onto Nazi territory without further deployment, but also clustered in the woods out of sight.

These are the first airborne corps in the world, effectively a large airborne army (though not grouped that way). They are not standing around counting trees either; they begin intensive training for an impending assault airlift.

Having said this, there are still different levels of operation to each airborne corps. According to "Soviet Air Assault Troops", 1986, each corps includes an administration with staff, service formations, three air assault brigades, an artillery battalion, a separate tank battalion of fifty-four tanks, and other formations; so the corps are starting out at divisional strength. The arty and tank battalions are meant to be airlifted to captured air bases.  Each corps nominally numbers 10,419 men (a divisional strength), and they will each be fully filled out by June 1st.

Wait, wait, back up: the TANK BATTALIONS are going to be airlifted?! Sure, why not? These are battalions of amphibious tanks, each of them weighing around as much as an artillery gun barrel or less! Admittedly, they're approximate to Nazi Panzer I models, but they're light enough (relatively) to be airlifted by cargo transports, and they can float long distances in stormy water at 6 meters per second if that happens to be necessary.

1st Air Assault Corps is commanded by Major-General M.A. Usenko, housing the 1st, 204th, and 211th Air Assault Brigades in the Kiev Military District.

2nd Air Assault Corps is commanded by Major-General F.M. Kharitonov, housing the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th AABs in the Kharkov Military District. The corps can be deployed directly against Germany, Romania, Czechoslovakia, or Austria.

3rd Air Assault Corps is commanded by Major-General V.A. Glazunov, housing the 5th, 6th, and 212th AABs in Odessa. It can only be feasibly deployed against Romania.

4th Air Assault Corps is commanded by Major-General A.S. Zhadov, housing 7th, 8th, and 214th AABs in Pukhovichi, Byelorussia.

5th Air Assault Corps is commanded by Major-General I.S. Bezuklyi, housing 9th, 10th, and 201st AABs, in Daugavpils, Latvia. They can assault and land in Germany itself. (A group of 'obsolete' long-range bombers from this area will hit Berlin early in August this year!) There is also a 202nd Air Assault Brigade detached for assignment to any corps.

Colonel A.I. Rodimtsev, previously a cavalry colonel, now transitioning into an air assault role, eventually promoted to Colonel-General, already honored as a Hero of the Soviet Union for his combat experience in Spain, later to be honored a second time as Hero, commands the the 5th Air Assault Brigade of the 3rd Paratroops Corps, and will write about this time in his memoir, "Motherland, These Are Your Sons", 1982, p.162, "I had to serve with excellently trained warriors, the best of our Soviet youth... The officers were mostly experienced parachutists: each of them [had] made from fifty to one hundred jumps. The brigade consisted of four separate paratroops battalions, a separate artillery battalion, a sergeants' school, a separate reconnaissance company, a separate machine gun company, [and] a separate communications company. The brigade was fully equipped with weapons and necessary supplies, as well as parachutes. An excellent collective of officers, disciplined and friendly. Later my first impression was confirmed. Every one of them showed extreme courage and selflessness in battle for the Motherland. The brigade trained according to schedule... I was pleased by the hard-working nature of my parachutists, their courage and their will power, which was easy to feel amongst that confident youth... All the time was used for preparations for jumps and [for the] jumps themselves."

The 212th Airborne Assault Brigade is training next to Rodimtsev's 5th AAB, in what he calls "conditions that were closer to actual battle conditions". It has been secretly transferred from the Far East, and he reports that its soldiers and commanders each had no less than one hundred jumps, sometimes even up to two hundred jumps, while the brigade's commander Colonel I.I. Zatevakhin has at least three hundred jumps.

Rodimtsev's account will be mirrored in the memoirs of 4th Airborne Corps' commander Major-General Zhadov ("Four Years of War", 1978, p.14), and his subordinate Colonel I.G. Starchak, "From the Sky into the Battle: Memoirs of the Chief of Paratroopers of the Western Front" (serving also as a biography of Zhadov's service). Zhadov will attest, "All brigade and corps formations were manned with well-trained personnel, supplies, and weapons."

By June 1st, all five corps will be fully ready for combat assault. However, it must also be stressed that at full organized strength each "corps" will be equivalent to a "division", and indeed their order of battle indicates regiments and battalions and brigades (and some attached companies), but no divisions. This leads to the interesting question of whether the corps 'container' is only meant to be propaganda bragging, or whether it is meant to take in airborne divisions someday? And if not someday soon, since their planned top-off will be done by June 1st, then when and what for? Soviet organizational doctrine does demonstrably prefer to set up and keep organizational containers for opportunistic expansion later.

Also on April 23, 1941, the Party Central Committee and the Council of Ministers orders the Commissariat of Aviation Industry (the Aviation Narkomat) to accelerate the production of an 11-seat glider with a deadline of May 15, 1941; and a 20-seat glider by July 1, 1941. This order is personally signed by Stalin (even though he's still 'only' the party secretary) and Molotov.

April 24, 1941: in a red-flag message to Berlin, the German naval attaché wires that he is trying to quell "obviously wild rumors about an impending German-Soviet war." By May 2nd, Ambassador Schulenberg will report that he is grappling with these rumors, but that staff members are bringing back from Germany "not just rumors, but corroborating facts".


April 1941: Major-General Zakharov, Chief of Staff for the Odessa Military District, then converted to the 9th Army (and later a Marshal of the Soviet Union), will later in "Historical Issues" (possibly meaning the oft-cited Journal of Military History), 1970, #5, p.43, mark this month as the emergence of a "new situation", "the appearance on the Prut River of teams of officers wearing Romanian and German army uniforms, with all signs saying they had come to reconnoiter."

This definitely signals an end to peace, though not yet the beginning of war. What kind of war? That depends on the preparations being made on the scouting officers' side of the border. The Soviets will mark the steady increase and rank of such recon teams from now until the night rolling over into June 22. The Nazi generals will not be observing their own land and making intensive preparations to receive visitors, such as the Finnish generals before the Soviet invasion of the Winter War. Instead, more and more Nazi generals will arrive to inspect the land on the Soviet side of the Prut -- because they are not making preparations to receive visitors.  ^-^

Are Soviet generals on the border, receiving news of this "new situation", ordering five or six rows of barbed wire strung out on their side of the border, boobytrapped with plenty of mines? Are they setting up behind that barrier a real minefield two miles deep, followed by anti-tank ditches covered with flame-throwing landmines? Are they reinforcing all this with twenty or thirty-odd rows of still more barbed wire, on metal stakes for good measure? -- no, better yet, on steel rails, sunk let us say into concrete? And then beyond them, let's see, how about another mine field? -- this one fake of course, just to mess with the invader, ha, but then at some point switch again to the real thing, surprise! -- and then another anti-tank ditch, followed by tree-trunk barriers, and then once this very basic low-tech security zone has been established, start creating the REAL defenses that Slavic rulers have been the worldwide experts on for centuries, such as on the former Stalin Line before Stalin destroyed it?!

Of course not. That would hamper the increasing number of Soviet generals sneaking up to the border line in disguises -- week after week, month after month... They've been doing this since at least as far back as Bagramayan studying the Carpatian mountain passes in September of 1940, and Chief of General Staff Meretskov in July 1940! -- much much sooner than the Nazi generals. Zakharov himself will join up with Meretskov, now the Deputy People's Commissar for Defense, touring the border sometime between June 13 and June 21.

Colonel Kochetkov, in his memoir "With Battened-down Hatches", p.8 ), recalls how Major-General Puganov, commander of the Brest-based Soviet 22nd Mechanized (tank) Division (of the 14th Mechanized Corps, 4th Army, Western Front, per "Soviet Tank Forces", p.27, "in the immediate vicinity of the border"), set up his divisional headquarters, and himself in it, so that he and his staff, including Kochetkov, could sit in his office and watch German soldiers on the far bank of the Western Bug.

The headquarters can be raked with all of whatever the Nazis prefer to throw at it, grenade launchers, machine guns, snipers; but the very first cannon shells will be zipping straight through that headquarters window with direct fire, followed immediately by machine-gun bullets of course while the cannons spend a moment reloading for round two.

Panzer General Guderian over across the river is well aware of all this; he himself has parked his headquarters up near the river, too, and has been watching through his binoculars, plotting exactly where his first shells are going to go, once he starts invading. He is even going up to the very water's edge in disguise!

With that entry, by the way, I have finally caught up (roughly) with events going on in 1941, synched with the current year.  :bd: <:-)

Hereafter, I'll be trying to synch posts to the days of our current lives, up through the early days of Barbarossa anyway, as a way of illustrating real-time tensions and events stacking up in the final countdowns.

And things are reaaalllly going to start stacking up! I'll probably create Part VIII for the events of June 13th through June 20th; and then Part IX for June 21st all by itself! But there are still plenty of things to include before June 13th, in this thread, including a subsection coming up soon on May 4th and its importance (with the 5th and subsequent days) to the story.

This is just a pause to explain my plans for the rest of the series; I'll have some more entries between now and the new May 4th subsection, but relatively I'll have some time for brief posting vacations up to June 13th.

(As to why June 13th or even May 4th is important in Suvorov's theory.... well, we'll be getting to that when we get there, God willing and the creek don't rise!  \m/ )

I hope everyone who has followed along so far has enjoyed or at least appreciated this Godawfully Huge chronological series -- in some ways a giant AAR of Stalin's grand strategy -- as much as I've enjoyed resequencing and posting the details from Suvorov's (English-translated) work! (With a little further research and theorizing of my own thrown in.)

April 1941: the new chief directorate set up to fabricate the constituent parts for assembling ammunition, has put up its new factories with astonishing speed since January this year! It now hands their management over to the Ammunition Narkomat. While in some ways this adds more time to production (by adding in another set of logistic links), the overall result in efficiency speeds up production.

This is becoming a problem, because the storage facilities are full! The chief artillery directorate of the Red Army has a solution for its own shells, however: this same month, its minister transmits an order to transport the output of the Ammuntion Narkomat to the western state borders and lay it out on the ground!  :o :o :2funny:

Anyone at all involved with artillery, down to the greenest dirt-level private just out of artillery boot camp, knows that you do not lay out artillery shells on the ground, especially near a potential combat border!

Not unless you intend to use them fairly soon.  ^-^

First half of 1941: Hitler has been lining up a phalanx of headquarters aimed at invading Great Britain (Operation Sea Lion), giving them impressive sounding names. But he has been maneuvering to deploy virtually all his forces against the Soviet Union, without providing them even one ostentatiously named headquarters!  :wow: :timeout:  :'(  ^-^

The leading generals are already there or on the move; not back at their fake headquarters aimed at Britain. This makes perfect sense because Hitler is setting up a surprise attack.

The only active and public Soviet Front, meanwhile, is off on the other side of Russia: the Far Eastern Front. But Molotov (under Stalin, who was present on the scene) has signed a non-aggression pact with Japan, freeing them up to concentrate on expanding their Co-Prosperity Sphere (by invading other nations). Normally that should mean the Far Eastern Front would be disbanded, for now. Instead the Front still mysteriously exists, and can be seen by enemy intelligence to exist. There are even two armies -- relatively new ones -- at the Far Eastern Front. But, as the Japanese know, those armies have been and are still being stripped of most of their troops and all of their best commanders, who are tip-toeing and zig-zagging toward the western border. This process will continue literally up to the day the Nazis invade.

At the western border, Military Districts still officially and publicly exist -- Districts with the purpose of acting as springboards for invasion of foreign nations in Soviet strategic doctrine, through Fortified Sectors set up for this purpose. But as early as February 1941, five special designations already appear in, at the time, top-secret documents, only some of which will have been unsealed, for scientific (i.e. military) research in Suvorov's day.

The Soviet JMH, 1978, #4, p.86, will casually explain: "In February 1941, border military districts received instructions to immediately organize front-line command centers." From that time forward, these five selected Military Districts start being named in top-secret documents: Northern Front; Northwestern Front; Western Front; Southwestern Front; and Southern Front.

Fronts in Soviet military doctrine, only exist once the nation has gone to war.

Spring 1941: after Germany's downfall, a team of Soviet military investigators will interrogate as many top Nazi leaders as they can get hold of. On June 17, 1945, Field Marshal Keitel will declare, "The attack on the Soviet Union was carried out to preempt a Russian attack on Germany. [...] I maintain that all preparatory measures we took until Spring 1941 were defensive provisions for coping with a possible Red Army attack. Thus, the entire war in the East can to a certain extent be called preventive. Of course, in taking these preparatory steps, we decided on the most effective method, namely we decided to preempt Soviet Russia's attack and strike a surprise blow to smash its armed forces. By the spring of 1941, I had grown convinced the massive build-up of Russian forces and their subsequent attack on Germany could, in strategic and economic terms, plunge us into an extremely critical situation... Especially threatened were two eastern flank outposts -- East Prussia and Upper Silesia. The very first few weeks of a Russian attack would already put Germany at an extreme disadvantage. Our attack was the direct consequence of that threat..." (from the Interrogation protocol, 17 June, 1945; also JMH, 1961, #9, p.77-87.)

Keitel will be partially misleading here: regardless of what he might or might not know about the Eastern Theater, he'll know Hitler and the high command decided back in July 1940 to start planning for Barbarossa; and he'll know that Hitler authorized the start of preparations (after a planning stage) in mid-December 1940. It is of course possible that the offensive forces didn't start showing up until Spring of 1941, but he'll know the preparations on the border before then weren't only defensive. In fact, the Nazis have been building sham defenses on the border, just like they did before invading Poland! -- just more extensively, of course. (It's entirely possible Keitel isn't aware of that detail, however.)

Germany's chief military planner Colonel-General Jodl will squarely hold the same opinion about a pre-emptive attack as Keitel. "The view prevailed in political circles that the situation would grow more troublesome in the event Russia attacked us first." (from the Interrogation Protocol, 18 July, 1945; also JMH, 1961, #4, pp.84-91.)

The Soviet investigators will actively seek to make Keitel and Jodl give up their position, but they will stand their ground and be executed by hanging at the Nuremberg International Tribunal for, among other things, "unleashing unprovoked aggressive war" against the Soviet Union.

Whatever else they're guilty of, Keitel and Jodl might be innocent of that charge, for they had no part in planning the campaign for Hitler's Directive #21. That was Army Supreme Commander, Field Marshal von Brauchitsch, and Army Chief of General Staff, Colonel-General Galder. Major-General Marx, then Major-General Friedrich Paulus, ran tactical operations, making Paulus the architect of all planning from September 1940 through January 1942 when the Operation was officially canceled. It was Paulus' plans, as First Senior Quartermaster of the General Staff Army, which, delivered by and under the direction of Chief of General Staff Army Galder, were approved by Hitler on December 5, 1940. Paulus also fought on Soviet soil, skipping ranks from Lieutenant-General to Field Marshal in one year, and storming farther east than any other high commander in the German army: to Stalingrad.

Oddly, none of the survivors of this group were ever even tried! -- not Brauchitsch, not Galder, not Marx, not Paulus, not even Colonel von Greifenberg who ran the preliminary calculations under Galder's oversight, nor Major-General Brandt who happened to be there when Hitler received and approved the plans on December 5th. Stalin never executes Paulus or even puts him on trial back in the Soviet Union, even though he's a Soviet POW!

By comparison, on February 17, 1941, Jodl was busy devising a plan for an invasion of India through Afghanistan! (JMH, 1961, #5, p.88) His plans assumed the fall of the Soviet Union, and the defeat of the Red Army, but he didn't make the plans for that. Suvorov goes so far as to suggest that Keitel and Jodl were convicted at Nuremberg only for making fantasy plans for conquering Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, India, and Egypt. Stalin, incidentally, will organize a putsch and invade and take over Iran, during World War II. Soviets will also invade and do their best to take over Afghanistan later in 1979, for nearly ten years.

Welcome to May, 1941, comrades! It's going to be an exciting next several months, full of.... ahem... surprises...  ^-^  >:D


May 1st, 1941: Pravda edition 120 (issue 8528), salts its first page of windy rhetoric with only two quotes, both from Stalin: "What has been achieved in the USSR can be achieved in other countries as well." Pravda also prints on its first page the People's Commissar for Defense Order #191, issued by Timoshenko, warning "every company, Army, Air Force and Navy squadron as well as aboard all ships" to "be prepared for surprises" and the "tricks" of foreign enemies -- also citing Stalin directly here. The enemy is shrewd and underhanded, says Pravda, but patriotic Soviets will foil his schemes by liberating people across Europe from the scourges of war and massive bloodshed.

Soviet patriots, from civilians and private reservists all the way up to Stalin, will absolutely not be prepared for the surprise of Nazi invasion, a little more than a month and a half from now.

For that matter, the slogans about preparation for surprises will stop on June 22, 1941, rather than reminding people how often Stalin and his high command had warned them to be prepared for surprises during the past two months! Later Soviet historians and Party bureaucrats do not appeal to the wisdom of the Party apparatus in preparing people so often for surprises in May and June of 1941. Soviet propaganda never once (per Suvorov) ties its prior propaganda about the civilians and military preparing for surprises, to fighting a defensive war on its own territory: despite Nazis lining up on the border and removing barriers to invasion! (As the Soviet Chekists, border guard death squads, will also be doing...)

Suvorov implies that Pravda reprints its opening essay later on May 6th; see there for more contents.

May 1941: two of the missing sequence of 28 Armies, the 23rd and 27th, secretly activate in the western military districts, along with the missing 13th and 9th Armies from the Finnish invasion. More on these later...

May 1941: Stalin orders the preparation of another five Soviet Airborne Assault Corps, to be completed by August.

As important as those are, neither of them are as remotely important as what happens today, however! -- worth starting a new subsection, forty-nine days before Barbarossa.


May The Fourth Of Stalin Be With You, Every One!
-------------------------------------------------------

May 4, 1941: Stalin signs the top-secret Politburo decision to appoint a new leader to replace Molotov as the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, i.e. as the public head of the Soviet Government.

The new leader whom Stalin appoints is, let's see... checking the envelope...

....

gasp!

...the winner is... Stalin himself!  <:-) <:-) \m/  :clap: :clap: :clap: <:-)  ::)

The faithful and competent Molotov remains as his deputy.

We'll be pondering the significance of this as we go along.

May 5, 1941: Stalin officially and publicly becomes the head of the Soviet Government.

When the Soviets eventually capture German intelligence documents, they will learn that the German leadership is completely baffled (at first) by this decision, unable to reach a satisfying explanation.

The move concentrates no more power into Stalin hand; he had already long since done that. Once accepting (taking) the post of General Secretary in 1922, Stalin for almost twenty years has avoided all other state and government posts. He has controlled everything, yet was officially responsible for nothing -- even today his apologists point out he never officially ordered this suspicious activity or that atrocity to happen. Stalin the mere party secretary has no official ties to the Great Purge, for example; that was Ezhov, who was the People's Commissar for Interior Affairs, and who shouldered all public responsibility. Thus the Russian nickname for 1937-38, "Ezhovshchina"! This policy will continue in some odd ways throughout the war, as will be seen later; but to give a famous example (otherwise beyond the scope of collating the Icebreaker thesis): when Stalin personally meets in conferences with Churchill and Roosevelt, Stalin will never say no. He will subtly signal Molotov to do that for him -- Molotov will even receive the nickname "Mr. Nyet"! All agreements and concessions will come from Stalin; all demands from Molotov.


But despite his penchant for secret control, which has served him extremely well from the early 20s until now, from now on, Stalin must now take public responsibility for his decisions, including any mistakes.

Did this improve or even just change how he managed the system? Admiral Kuznyetsov, at that time already a Central Committee member and the People's Commissar for the USSR Navy, will later remark (JMH, 1965, Vol 9, p.66), "When Stalin took charge of the chairmanship of the Council of People's Commissars, the management system remained virtually unchanged." In other words, Stalin still ran things like a mafia boss from the shadows.

But now he can take public responsibility for something that he feels super-confident about taking credit for! -- confident enough to step into the light as the man in public control.

May 5, 1941: according to the memoir of Soviet Admiral Kuznyetsov ("On the Eve", p.313), once Zhukov had become Chief of the General Staff (back in February) "a very important directive was prepared, targeting Germany for military district and fleet commanders as the most likely enemy in a future war." Well, duh. That seems like a standard and obvious directive. Would they think Italy to be a more obvious enemy?! They had just run two wargames in the first half of January with Germany as the obvious enemy, defending current Nazi territory from a Soviet invasion!

Nevertheless, this very important directive from February has sat around waiting at General Staff HQ for a few months, until being transmitted for action to military district headquarters all along the border on this day. Suvorov occasionally calls it the M-Day packet (and even named one of his books after it), partly because Soviet generals themselves gave it that nickname. Suvorov never explains where the nickname comes from, but the tacit implication is that it's named after this day, May 5th, when the packets are delivered to Soviet military leaders -- the same day Stalin takes full public command of the Soviet Union.

Suvorov says there are many indications that all District HQs receive (their versions of) the M-Day packet on the same day, one such source being Bagramayan. (In Icebreaker, Suvorov may have a typo about whether this directive is sent May 6th, but he connects it to this day more explicitly; and possibly some leader and HQs may receive their packets a day later.) Suvorov says that current and eventual Soviet Marshals often talk in articles and memoirs about this top-secret directive on what sounds like should be a blatantly obvious topic, but they rarely ever quote from it. At the time of "Icebreaker" (or some later edition), Suvorov had found only one sentence partially quoted, by Anfilov in his "Immortal Feat", p.171: "...be prepared on a signal from General Headquarters to launch lighting strikes to rout the enemy, move military operations to his territory, and seize key objectives."

Note the reference to General Headquarters -- in Soviet doctrine, this only comes into existence once the Soviet Union goes to war. You do not need orders from GHQ to launch a lightning defense against an invasion, however! -- you do not need a Soviet General HQ to exist yet at all! You just need standing orders to defend, with as much defensive preparations as you can get. Soviet doctrine actually protects the rights of any soldier to shoot to kill anyone attempting to reach whatever the soldier is guarding, and severely punishes any soldier who fails to shoot!

In a war of defense, General HQ (activated upon the start of such a war or shortly before when High Command realizes Russia is about to be invaded) expects to receive information about the preliminary defensive action at the start of the invasion, so that it can make reasonable adjustments to standing defense plans as necessary. But these orders, expected from General HQ, whatever they were, instead anticipate all the armies on the western military districts to be leaping into coordinated action upon a command from GHQ that they are to be expecting and waiting for: a coordinated action to rout the enemy and move military operations onto his territory. This command will definitely not be issued on June 22 when the Nazis invade across the border -- local commanders will be paralyzed waiting for orders, or scrambling for ad hoc action in accordance with best guesses as to GHQ expectations, while GHQ will struggle to figure out what to do. (And notice that GHQ will formally exist by then! We'll definitely be getting back to that.)

As Suvorov puts it, a war of defense starts with soldiers, then sergeants, then company commanders, going up the chain of command to the top as battle is joined. A war of offense starts with a command from the Commander-in-Chief, transmitted down the command chain by the Chief of the General Staff, to front commanders, then to fleet and army commanders, then to corps and division and brigade commanders, eventually to sergeants and their troops. Rank-and-file are the first to find out about the start of a war of defense, and they tell everyone up the chain of command. Rank-and-file are the last to find out about the start of a war of aggression. In a war of defense, millions of soldiers each start on their own; in a war of aggression they all enter, as close as possible, as one.

Putting it another way: German commanders on the border have all been instructed to be prepared, on a signal from Nazi General Headquarters, to launch lighting strikes to rout the enemy, move military operations to his territory, and seize key objectives. And that is what they will successfully do. Russian commanders on previous borders had previously all been instructed to be prepared, on a signal from Soviet GHQ (once it has come into existence for this purpose, of course), to launch lightning strikes to route the enemy, move military operations to his territory, and seize key objectives. Which they had always previously done before, invading other nations (not always successfully, or with only partial success, as in Finland.) Russian commanders currently on the border are now all instructed to be prepared, on a signal from Soviet General Headquarters, to launch lightning strikes to route the enemy, move military operations to his territory, and seize key objectives. There will be some sporadic and ultimately failed attempts at this, 48 days from now -- which will fail because the Nazis will have already started invading first.

The GHQ will not pick up their phones, or use any other means (down to the most primitive), to tell their border commanders, "Do your May 5th orders now!" or "Do May 5th order variant number 10!" On June 22, the "very important" May 5th orders about "lightning attacks" moving military operations onto enemy territory, in a directive (according to other indirect references in other memoirs) specifying Germany as the most likely target for military action, will become instantly even-more obsolete as all the Soviet tanks designed to work best on super-highways, even the ones rolling out of the factories near the western border on June 21st.

While we will be getting back to more M-Day discussion later, there won't be much more of it, for the reason already mentioned here: Soviet GHQ will never order anyone to open their packets and follow their instructions.

(I should clarify here that the HQ for the General Staff isn't quite the same thing as GHQ. There's always a General Staff, and they always have a central HQ. General Headquarters is supposed to be distinctly different, as the center for active combat operations.)

May 5, 1941: on the same day that Stalin takes public command of the Soviet Union, and sends the M-Day packets out to military leaders, Stalin also addresses military academy graduates (and professors up to general rank), from sixteen Red Army academies and nine faculties of civilian universities, as well as representatives of the Red Army and the Fleet High Command (including the People's Commissars in both organizations and the Chief of the General Staff), at a Kremlin reception in the convention hall of the Great Kremlyovski Palace, speaking for (by his standards) an unusually long 40 minutes. All full and candidate members of the Politburo arrive with him (except for Krushchev, who is holding a Central Committee plenary meeting in Kiev.)

The last time Stalin had addressed academy graduates was in 1935, shortly before he started the Great Purge. This speech, not being delivered to people he plans to put in prison or in a hole in the ground (or both) within the next two years, is top-secret instead! -- a much darker and more serious deed than the Purge is on the way!

Later some attendees give indications (such as in JMH, 1978, #4, p.85, and the "History of the Second World War", Vol 3, p.439), that Stalin spoke about the German Army being the Soviet Army's most likely adversary. Zhukov in his "Recollections and Reflections" (p.236) reports that in his usual question-and-answer format, Stalin asked three times if the German Army was invincible, and three times answered no. Why did Germany lose World War I? Because they fought on two fronts, of course!

This would seem to be a major propaganda tool, but the speech is not made public; not in May, despite other speeches and articles calling out the crimes of the Nazis, not in June before or after Barbarossa, not in July when Stalin starts publicly rallying the people for defense. (Stalin also reportedly speaks about Germany fighting under the flag of conquering other nations, so under that flag they would not be successful. This might be regarded as some nearsighted irony, considering what Stalin has been preaching along with his crew since 1917!)

Suvorov has in his possession the unpublished memoirs (at least at the time of "Chief Culprit") of eventual Air Force Major-General M.V. Vodopianov, the very first Hero of the Soviet Union. Present at the speech, he says that the listeners correctly understood Stalin to be hinting about attacking Germany, filling the room with applause and cheer.

The General Secretary of the Comintern, the Bulgarian Communist Georgi Dimitrov, will write in his diary that Stalin is in an extremely good mood, and that during the banquet following the speech Stalin twice makes a toast. The first is to the commanders and the professors from the military academies; the second is to the health of artillerymen, tankers, and aviators. (This is printed the next day in Pravda's May 6th, 1941 edition.)

A third toast, focused on by Suvorov for special attention, is given by Lieutenant-General A.K. Sivkov, who toasts Stalin's peaceful foreign policy. But Stalin interrupts -- which Suvorov extensively quotes (from the Russian Center for Storing and Studying Documents of Recent History, Fund 558, Index 1, Document 3808, Sheet 12): "Allow me to make a correction. A peaceful foreign policy secured peace in our country. A peaceful foreign policy is a good thing. For a while, we drew a line of defenses until we re-armed our army [and] supplied it with modern means of combat. Now, when our army has been rebuilt, our technology modernized, strong for combat, now we must shift from defense to offense. In conducting the defense of our country, we are compelled to act in an aggressive manner. From defense we have to shift to a military policy of offense. It is indispensible that we reform our training, our propaganda, our press to a mindset of offense. The Red Army is a modern army, and the modern army is an army of offense!"

One should keep in mind after reading this, what Stalin has been writing, speaking, and authorizing and inspiring, already in propaganda for decades! -- he plans to train and lean even more toward offense now, than he has been doing already!

A few days after the speech and the banquet, by the way, General Sivkov is discharged (per Eduard Muratov's "Six Hours with Stalin at a Reception in the Kremlin", #7 (1993), p.285. This citation looks strange, by the way -- why would there be seven volumes of this?? It looks more like a JMH citation format, and is probably a typo.) The JMH in 1995, #6, p.6, will agree that in essence Stalin is telling his audience to prepare for war and to disregard any official propaganda about peace instead.

The secrecy of this speech is sufficiently peculiar for Suvorov to take note of it, and he infers Stalin had been talking about attacking Germany, thus its secrecy. However, in later editions of "Icebreaker", Suvorov acknowledges that the speech (along with what he calls the secret protocols of the Politburo's calling of Stalin as the public head of state), was eventually published by the Moscow Democracy Fund in 1998, in the anthology "The Year 1941, 2nd Volume".

Suvorov has access to this anthology; he quotes from it not uncommonly. He even knows the pages numbers for the speech, apparently: 158-162. But if Suvorov knows that much, why bother making educated guesses about the content? He quotes extensively whatever he can find from other people about the speech; he quotes Stalin extensively regarding the rebuttal to the peaceful foreign policy toast. Why doesn't Suvorov quote even one direct line from this academy speech?

Whatever its merits may be in how the suggestions of the speech fit into the immediate, local, and extended context, Suvorov's omission of material directly from the speech cannot help but seem conveniently suspicious (at least to me).

May 6, 1941: whatever the content of the secret speech yesterday, Soviet Military Intelligence Colonel Starinov in his memoir (p.186) reports, "In early May 1941, after Stalin had addressed the reception for military academy graduates, all barrier-building and mine-laying was curtailed even more." On the same page, "Engineering command of the Red Army sent a request for 120,000 railroad mines of delayed action. In the event of an invasion, this amount would have sufficed to paralyze the German army's supply routes from the rear, on which it was entirely dependent. But instead of the requested amount, they sent... 120 mines!"

Defensive preparations, already minimized and produced mostly for show at the border where the Nazis can see them (as the Nazis have been doing where the Soviets can see them), reduce even farther. Where do these defensive reductions even-farther-happen? Right on the border, as per captured Nazi intelligence documents who, throughout May and June, report that in fact the Soviets were removing mine fields and other barriers at the border.

The Germans would know, because they have been doing it, too, that the removal of the last minimal border defenses is an indisputable final step in priming to launch an offensive.

May 6, 1941, Pravda editorial (i.e. written by Stalin or inspired by his notes): "Raging just beyond the borders of our Motherland is the conflagration of a Second Imperialist War."

Notice: this is being called by the name of the war predicted by Lenin's Marxism, necessary to break down the property owners so that the final worldwide revolutionary war of the workers can rise up and seize control of all property, materials, and means of production.

"The full weight of its woes is pressing down on the shoulders of the toiling masses. People everywhere want no part of war. Their gaze is fixed on the land of socialism," i.e. the true socialism of the USSR, not Hitler's national socialism, "reaping the fruits of peaceful labor. They rightly see the armed forces of our Motherland -- the Red Army and our Navy -- as the tried and true bulwark for peace... Given the current complex international situation you have to be prepared for all kinds of surprises..." Russians are to regard people around the world as looking toward and hoping for the Soviet Military, to rescue them from the war of woes and provide them peace! -- the peace of becoming one of the Soviet Socialist Republics.

Stalin however, after many years of intensively (even murderously) strong work, is somehow not prepared for one kind of surprise! -- on the way in a little more than a month...

Suvorov in Icebreaker either mixes up his dates, or implies that this was originally printed by Pravda on May 1st, thus reprinted on May 6th. In Chief Culprit he is consistent about May 6th.

Since for whatever reason(s) Suvorov ends up splitting references to the Pravda article between May 1st and May 6th, I'll take a moment to combine them in one entry for convenience.

Whether May 1st and/or (reprinted on?) May 6th: "Raging just beyond the borders of our Motherland is the conflagration of a Second Imperialist War. [...] The full weight of its woes is pressing down on the shoulders of the toiling masses. People everywhere want no part of war. Their gaze is fixed on the land of socialism reaping the fruits of peaceful labor. They rightly see the armed forces of our Motherland -- the Red Army and our Navy -- as the tried and true bulwark for peace..." Quoting Stalin, "What has been achieved in the USSR can be achieved in other countries as well."

Timoshenko passes along (via the People's Commissar for Defense Order #191) to "every company, Army, Air Force, and Navy squadron, as well as aboard all ships" this warning from Stalin, "Given the current complex international situation you have to be prepared for all kinds of surprises..." and for "tricks" of foreign enemies. Suvorov goes on to apparently paraphrase: The enemy is shrewd and underhanded, says Pravda, but patriotic Soviets will foil his schemes by liberating people across Europe from the scourges of war and massive bloodshed.

May 8, 1941, the Soviet radio agency TASS broadcasts a Refutation: "Japanese newspapers are publishing a Domei Tsushin news agency dispatch saying... the Soviet Union is massing military forces on its western borders... a concentration of immense proportions." This is of course entirely true, but Japan doesn't mean the First Strategic Echelon. Japan is talking about the gigantic logistic transfer of armies from the Far East, which started and has been increasing since late autumn 1940.

"Passenger traffic has accordingly been halted along the Siberian railway, to allow for redeployment of troops from the Far East to the western frontier. Large-scale force redeployment to the same area is underway also from Central-Asia... A military mission headed by Kusnetsov has left Moscow for Teheran. Its aim, the Agency notes, is to have air bases granted to the Soviet Union in central and western parts of Iran. TASS is authorized to state that this suspiciously sensationalist Domei Tshushin report, lifted from an unnamed United Press correspondent, is a product of the delusions of its author... as no 'large-scale concentration of military forces' exists and none is being envisaged. The grain of truth the Domei Tsushin report does embody -- and crudely distorts -- is that availability of better quarters in Novosibirsk has indeed prompted redeployment from around Irkutsk of a single rifle division. Everything else in the Domei Tsushin dispatch is pure fantasy."

In August, while the teeth of Barbarossa are biting down hard and deep, Soviet troops will invade Iran and build air bases for themselves (and a whole lot else), but that is somewhat beside the point. In all of Suvorov's research for Far East bases during this period, he found no evidence of any division unloading at Irkutsk or any other such base. Whether Irkutsk, Novosibirsk, Chita, Ulan-Ude, Blagoveshhensk, Spassk, Iman, Barabash, Khabarovsk, or Voroshilov, divisions only loaded. They only un-loaded on the western frontier. He even found a book published in the Trans-Baikal Military District (in other words Irkutsk) talking about the peculiar boom in divisions being shipped out, every last one bound for the western border. This hadn't started on May 8th, of course; it had started long before.

May 12, 1941: Graf von Schulenburg, German's Moscow ambassador at this time, in a secret report to Nazi high command, declares, "I do not know of any Soviet domestic issue serious enough to prompt Stalin to take such a step." He's talking about Stalin arranging to be the public instead of secret commander of all authority in the Soviet Union, back on May 4th and 5th.

"I could claim greater assurance in saying you have to look to foreign policy to explain why Stalin chose to take the highest post in government. [...] Stalin has set himself a foreign policy goal of enormous importance, one he hopes to reach on his own." The ambassador means that the only explanation which might make sense, is that Stalin hopes to take personal and public credit for reaching this enormous foreign policy goal. He has become so incredibly assured of reaching this enormous goal, whatever it is, that he has come out of the shadows of his government to assume highest responsibility, and highest credit, for the success. But what could this foreign policy triumph be?

Eventual Marshal of the Soviet Union Ivan Bagramayan will later in his memoir ("This is How the War Began", 1971, p.62), offer an explanation matching Schulenburg's in essence but with a little more detail: "In May the international situation remained tense. The Soviet Union was preparing to rebut. This is exactly how we in the military district HQ had interpreted Stalin's appointment [of himself!] as the Chairman of the People's Commissars Council."

So this foreign policy goal will be a rebuttal of the tense situation, a rebuttal so important that Stalin wants public and formal credit for leading it. Okay, but what is this 'rebuttal' supposed to be? What foreign policy problems would Stalin be so eager, and so confident of success, to publicly take leadership to rebut?

By May 1941, the Nazis have crushed many nations, so there could be no problems with the governments of those nations. Stalin has successfully arranged a truce with Japan, and has washed his hands of their involvement in China and the Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere generally. Stalin might have problems with Vichy France, but he was on good terms with the Republic and remains so with its exiled leaders. Britain remains friendly to Stalin and keeps offering outstretched hands of teamwork (and also invitations and suggestions for Stalin to hit Hitler in the back while the hitting is good, and stop World War II already!) Roosevelt is warning him of dangers and allowing American technology to flow freely into the USSR for Stalin to use as he sees fit.

Who else remains? Is Stalin coming out into the open to deal with a foreign policy problem concerning icepicks in Mexico? Will he be settling down fellow militant socialist Mussolini somehow?! What other pressing foreign policy problem remains for Stalin to personally resolve? There's a Chinese civil war going on, and Stalin is supporting the Chinese communists of course, but does anything show that he is preparing a foreign policy achievement so grand and historical in importance that he finally wants to take public and official credit for it by doing something, anything, in China at this time? Heck, he's stripping his Far East military districts of their armed forces and commanders and sending them westward to face... hm, who's over there...

Oh, right, Nazi Germany is gathering on his borders!  ::)

Okay, let's see, resolve that greatest of tense foreign policy issues, how: establish an unshakable peace with the Nazis? But Molotov already did that and then Stalin broke it in Romania. Stalin's offers of an alliance with the Axis powers afterward were insultingly unrealistic in the concessions he demanded for doing so. Stalin may have professed friendship forever with the Nazis a little while back when Japan signed a friendship agreement with the Soviet Union, but Stalin will continue to send Molotov to meet with Nazi leaders (or try to) until June 21st -- he won't try to do that himself.

Resolve that greatest of tense current foreign policy issues by leading an armed struggle against Nazi aggression? Maybe -- Stalin learned to expect Hitler to attack sometime in mid-July, thanks to the intelligence he received 11 days after Hitler finally signed off on Barbarossa. But Stalin hasn't been preparing to defend against that coming attack, and won't start preparing now. Also, he'll be so mortified to be caught off-balance by the Nazi blitz, that he'll try to vanish back into the shadows again and let someone else deal publicly with the bad news! (At least at first.)

Resolve that greatest of tense current foreign policy issues by invading Nazi territory? Hm...

Almost a year earlier, on August 18, 1940, Pravda had promised the Soviet people in a typical propaganda: "Then, when Marshal of the Revolution [not an official title or post] Comrade Stalin so signals, hundreds of thousands of pilots, navigators, and paratroopers, will swoop down on the enemy, crushing his head with full might of arms, the arms of socialist justice. Soviet air legions will bring happiness to humankind!" Pravda (i.e. Stalin through Pravda) was not talking about crushing an enemy's head in a defensive war, but about starting the final revolutionary world war on Stalin's order; and a little more than a month from now, Stalin will go to far lengths to avoid giving the official order to smash the invading Nazis!

As General Secretary and shadow dictator, Stalin could give whatever order he wants, and it will be obeyed -- but he couldn't take the full and public credit for it. For the first time in 19 years, Stalin can now take full and public credit for any successful order he gives.

Remember, back on May 5th (and 6th perhaps in some cases) -- the same day Stalin publicly took over formal leadership of the Soviet Union -- every Soviet Commander (per Rokossovsky's memoir, "A Soldier's Duty", p.11, for example), was given for his safe a "special secret operational packet": "Red Packet Letter M", nicknamed among those who receive it as the "M-Day Packet". What is in this packet? Generals are forbidden to open it. Opening the Red Packet was permissible only on the directly transmitted order of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR (currently Timoshenko, who gets his orders privately from Stalin), or from Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. Up until May 5th, that had been Molotov, who got his orders privately from Stalin; and up until May 5th, the drafted orders of the M-Day Packets had been sitting around since late February doing nothing!

Now Comrade Stalin has taken Molotov's public office; and now, on his orders, the M-Day packets have been distributed.

If Stalin gives the order to open those packets, he himself will be the one who goes down in history for giving that order, not Molotov.

And yet, when the Nazis invade 40 days from now, Stalin (nor Timoshenko who will still be the Defense Commissar) won't give any order to open those packets of super-special-secret military orders.

The Walking Dead
--------------------

May 13, 1941: Soviet General Headquarters sends orders to prepare to redeploy the Second Strategic Echelon from eastern areas to the western front.

This is interesting for several reasons, including because General HQ shouldn't exist yet! -- the Soviet Union isn't supposed to be at war, and in Soviet doctrine General HQ doesn't exist until then.

Of course, even in Soviet Russia a General HQ doesn't pop into existence at once upon the sheer decree of the Politburo; it is set up beforehand. Specifically, the General HQ won't formally come into formal existence until a Politburo decree of June 21st, whereupon its direct Force Command shall be, ta-daaa! -- the armies of the Second Strategic Echelon: the ones now being ordered to move across most of all of Russia.

The leaders of the Soviet GHQ are already secretly directing the commanders of seven of the interior Military Districts (aside from Moscow), to deploy one new army in each of the seven MDs; engage all district HQ staff and troops in the formation of these armies; and personally take command of the new armies.

Their numbers are so vast, and the rail network is already so overloaded with a logistic transfer that started late last year and slowly began accelerating in February 1941, that the armies already formed and now ordered to prepare to move will not be able to even start moving for a month. But the new interior MD Armies will also need a month to form up and be ready to move. Their target date for readiness: June 13th.

This morphing of MD officers and troops into Army officers and troops, and their deployment, will leave each MD commanded by high-ranking but less talented generals who will be crucially short of remaining staff, and who have never commanded an army or MD before -- nor will again. Some MDs will need a few months before a new general arrives to command them. The Siberian MD (per the Soviet Military Encyclopedia, Vol.7, p.33) won't get a new commander until 1942! (But it doesn't much matter: all the Siberian Gulags will pack up and move west, too.) As long as Russia isn't invaded, however, the new eastern MD commanders will not need to do more than keep up with a previously standardized production schedule. If this grouping of Soviet armies is planning to invade somewhere, they could even reduce their home MD workloads by capturing supplies and material!

Everything will hum along fine with much less oversight -- unless the Soviet Armies are caught out of position and disastrously overrun by a surprise invasion, in which case the interior MDs not only risk being also overrun on defense (and their own materials captured by the invaders), but must also deal with emergency relocation and production simultaneously, with crucially short staffs.

Any defensive war might be fatally lost by this move, unless the armies at the border are producing epic defensive barriers.

(The armies at the border are not producing epic defensive barriers, and will be caught out of defensive position in a disastrous surprise invasion a little more than one month from now.)


Trans-baikal (with Urals MD Deputy District Commander Lukin, a gulag veteran) becomes 16th Army (composed largely of gulag veterans); this starts out as 32nd Rifle Corps, 5th Mechanized Corps, and the 57th Tank Division. That's a super-army already, but it will be bulked up later! -- we'll be tracking it as we go.

The Urals MD, which Lukin helped command, becomes 22nd Army; comprised of the 51st and 62nd Rifle Corps. A high ranking functionary arrives to take over once they depart.

North Caucasus MD becomes 19th Army, heading for the Cherkassy Fortified Sector at the border, complete with a German Communist deputy commander, General Max Reiter -- who is already at the FS making secret preparations. The 19th will be beefed up, but starts with 25th and 34th Rifle Corps (the latter with five divisions), 26th Mechanized Corps, and the 38th Rifle Division.

Orlov MD? That's 20th Army, under Lieutenant-General Remezov; consisting of 61st and 69th Rifle Corps, 7th Mechanized Corps, and 18th Rifle Division.

Volga MD? Hundreds of officers from District Commander Lieutenant-General Gerasimyenko and District Chief of Staff General Gordov, on down, simply switch out "Volga MD" with "21st Army", and keep their ranks and duties -- just not in Volga MD itself anymore. This has the 63rd and 66th Rifle Corps, and the 25th Mechanized Corps. They go camp in someone else's Military District! -- as secretly as possible, with even the host MD Commander knowing as little as possible about their arrival and deployment and plans!

Siberian MD? That's 24th Army, consisting of the 52nd and 53rd Rifle Corps, plus the 23rd Mechanized Corps.

Last but not quite least, Kharkov MD becomes 28th Army, with the 30th and 33rd Rifle Corps and the 69th Mechanized Corps.

Besides these, several independent corps receive orders to prepare for deployment westward, including the 31st Rifle Corps, the 27th Mechanized Corps, and perhaps most specially the 9th Special Rifle Corps. (We'll be keeping track of its specialty. ;) )

Final total, seventy-seven divisions, not counting a huge swarm of currently unattached sub-divisional combat and auxiliary formations (regiments, battalions, brigades, etc.)


In one single day a month from now, on June 13th, from Archangelsk in the north to Kuban in the south, and from Oryol in the west to Chita in the east, the old military-territorial order will vanish -- packing up, or standing on alert ready to load up, as mobile Armies. ALL divisions of ALL interior Military Districts will leave for the western frontier, to camp as official Armies in someone else's Military District -- and not under the command or oversight of those western MD leaders.


Several of these new Military District armies feature commanders who are formally "Commanders": remember, these are political prisoners released but not yet shifted to the new "General" ranks Stalin installed earlier.

CorCom Petrovsky, for example, released in November 1940 and ordered to put together the 63rd Rifle Corps, activates as part of the new 21st Army from the Volga MD today. All three of his divisional commanders are former prisoners: two BrigComs and a colonel (not counting any number of majors, captains, and lieutenants filling out Second Echelon ranks). The 67th Corps, also in the 21st Army, teems with BrigComs; one even leads the Corps, future Colonel-General Zhmachenko.

Both corps of the Urals MD 22nd Army are lead by BrigComs: Povyetkin for 51st Corps, Karmanov for 62nd. Two of the divisions are filled with 'lumberjacks', super-black right to the top: BrigCom Adamson's 112th Rifle (a curiously English name), and BrigCom Zygin's 174th.

"Glance at chiefs of staff, chiefs of artillery, combat engineers, logistics, and any other service branch or combat arm: all are fresh out of jail," Suvorov avers; dozens more division and corps names and "Com" ranks could be provided, not even counting the brigades, regiments, and battalions. Each remains a dead man walking until given a modern Soviet rank after proving their devotion in battle (and even that is no guarantee). Stalin arms the dead men with weapons and power, and sends them to the western border.


What about Moscow Military District? Its high-grade troops are not directed today to start morphing into an army and preparing to roll out in a month. Its high-grade troops are directed instead to go join First Echelon armies, or to join Second Strategic Echelon 20th Army. Moscow MD's commander Tulenyev remains behind with his HQ staff -- for now.  ^-^


If insurrection breaks out in the Soviet interior, even in Moscow's area, no one will remain to even decide to suppress it: a job for NKVD troops, but their divisions have already moved west some time ago. Fortunately for Stalin, insurrection won't break out; but he clearly needs these armies to be ready in the west for something more important than securing his tyranny over the Soviet heartland after decades of The Great Terror.

May 13, 1941: Soviet high command decides that, on top of activating all remaining Second Strategic Echelon forces who haven't already started heading west, they should also edge the First Strategic Echelon even closer to the border with Nazi territories.

Cramming sixteen armies (in eight Military Districts) closer to the border is not an easy logistic maneuver despite the relatively short distances; it will take exactly one month for them to start moving -- in synch with the start of departure for the main bulk of the Second Strategic Echelon for the west. Keep in mind, the logistic network is already crammed with troops moving westward right now!

One month from now, practically every Soviet military force in all of Russia will either be moving west, or starting to move west, by long or short distances, or partway there already.

Altogether, this will be the greatest logistic operation in all of human history, down to the present day of May 13th, 2020.

We will definitely be getting back to this later.  :coolsmiley:


May 14, 1941: wait, are there still civilians between the First Echelon and the border??

Ack! Soviet high command issues orders them to be forcibly deported by NKVD troops.

This will start exactly one month later.

Entries are about to start stacking up, as you might expect, in the approach to June 13th (for reasons most people won't know about even grogs ;) ), and then from June 13th to June 22nd (for an ultimate reason most people know about especially grogs  :coolsmiley: ).

Thus until Barbarossa kicks off I'll be aiming to spread the material out for an entry every (current) day, rather than posting what happened on May 24th on May 24th for example. Some entries will still be longer than others, but this way I won't have to drop half of a whole thread, and all of a whole other thread, about two historical days (13th and 21st of June, 1941), all at once!

So for today's entries:


May 20, 1941, the Nazis start the largest airborne operation in Germany's history, to capture Crete. Defenders are 14,000 Greek troops, and 32,000 British.

Several days later, without having superiority in numbers, German paratroops and the followup airmobile main assault forces, will take control of the island and annihilate the more numerous British and Greek forces.

Military experts at the time unaminously conclude that this is an ingenious rehearsal by Hitler for invading the British Isles.

Aside from Stalin having set up, having unleashed, and having significantly supplied Hitler's ability to do this sort of thing, this operation also illustrates how devastating an air-mobile assault army can be, even going up against superior force numbers.

Now imagine that Hitler had two million such air-mobile troops, with hundreds of thousands of close support strike craft, several thousand tanks capable of swimming across large bodies of water (even crappy tanks) -- and then following up with several times as many more troops spearheaded by many thousands of speedy tanks better than what Hitler actually has, and many hundreds of heavy tanks unlike anything Hitler or anyone else in the world can field! (...almost anyone else in the world.  ^-^ )


May 24, 1941, Britain's largest military ship in the Atlantic, the battlecruiser Hood, fights the Nazis' largest battleship Bismarck. One direct hit to the Hood causes it to explode and sink in a matter of minutes; only three crewmen survive out of 1,421. The Bismarck of course was built using significant amounts of raw materials provided by Stalin's trade agreements with Nazi Germany; and a significant proportion of its fuel is Soviet oil.

May 25, 1941: Zhukov and Bagramayan each separately later (in their memoirs) confirm the arrival of 31st Rifle Corps in the Kiev Special Military District, Zhitomir sector.

The 31st Rifle Corps was formerly stationed in the Far East; which necessarily means this Corps had to be somewhere on the Trans-Siberian rail line when TASS radio issued its May 8th refutation of massive logistic transfers out of the Far East being only fanciful delusions!

In his own memoirs, eventual Colonel-General Lyudnikov (today currently only a Colonel but in charge of his division) says that once his 200th Rifle Division had deployed, fully mobilized, and integrated with 31st Rifle Corps, they headed straight for the German frontier. We'll be getting to that a little later. Thanks to Barbarossa (and a bunch of other logistic troop movements in the way, some of which haven't even started yet) they won't finish their trip.

By the way, yes, you read that correctly. It wasn't a typo (or anyway that's how it is printed in "Chief Culprit"). Lyudnikov is with the 200th Rifle Division. Unless that's a typo by Suvorov's English translator (or in his notes), this necessarily implies either that at least TWO HUNDRED rifle divisions exist, or plans exist to bring them into existence soon.

That's merely rifle divisions: not motorized rifle divisions; not mechanized; not armor; not airborne; not special; just plain old bog-standard Soviet rifle divisions. Sometimes those get shifted with upgrades into being motorized or mechanized, keeping their prior division number, but the point is that two hundred rifle divisions do not count many more OTHER upgraded types of divisions.

Now of course, some of those rifle divisions may only be container units at the moment, for filling out and topping up with reservists later. On the other hand, the reserves are being called up, as noted in previous entries: the 200th Rifle Division for example is fully mobilized by the time it integrates with the 31st Rifle Corps at Zhitomer, and will be marching toward the frontier with a full roster.

May 26, 1941: up until today only one nation in the world had succeeded in doing anything practical about the need for heavy tanks: the Soviet Union.

Today, Nazi Germany signs off on the start of project development for the Mk4501 (Mark 45 ton model 01), which will eventually become the Panzer VI "Tiger".

It will eventually go into service early in 1943, by which time the weight will have inflated to 57 tons. The Soviets have had heavy tanks in production since 1933.

The Nazis are starting sketches today; the Soviet Union actually has heavy tanks in service, in production, in experimental trials, and in further design.

Nazi Germany and the USSR share the first two places in heavy tank production -- sort of (because the Nazis aren't in production yet). There is nobody in third place. According to Suvorov, generals and designers in other nations did not even think of drafting a heavy tank on paper! (I have to regard this as doubtful, btw.)

May 26, 1941: the Urals Military District commander is ordered to redeploy two rifle divisions to the Baltics (per Professor Kvostov's and Major-General Grylev's article in "Communist", 1968, #12, p.67.) But this is just the tip of the logistic iceberg of things happening today (including as reported in the same article.)

Trans-Baikal Military District and Far Eastern Front are told (per Kvostov's article) to get ready to dispatch another nine divisions westward, including three tank divisions.

The 16th Army is already loading onto the Trans-Siberian railway, with 22nd and 24th Armies preparing to follow. Eventual Major-General Lobachov (also spelled Lobachev) was at that time a member of 16th Army's combat operations council. In his memoir "Tough Row to Hoe" (aka "Arduous Roads"), 1960, p.123, he talks about how the Chief of Staff receives an important encoded message from Moscow on this day (May 26th), commanding an immediate loading and departure -- which, of course, means they had to have received orders to prepare for departure already some time ago, or it would have been impossible to start loading and departing that very day. Destination? "Westbound". The tanks could get loaded more quickly (highly unlikely), or were already loaded onto rail wagons (more likely), or were perhaps needed at the destination first, so Lobachov sends them onward, to be followed next by 152nd Division. In this case Army HQ and attached units would bring up the rear, rather than going ahead first to make preparations for arrival. This was typical of a combat action deployment, or at least a simulation of combat action deployment: you don't roll the HQ staff off the trains into enemy fire! But after a fond and hearty send-off by 5th Corps commanders, "everybody thought it sure sounded as though we soon would be talking not about gearing up for combat, but about real action." In other words, not a drill, and they would be unloading already geared up to fight upon deployment!

Lobachov, Chief of Staff Colonel Shalin (a future chief of the GRU), and Army Commander General Lukin (gulag veteran in charge of this predominantly gulag army), are the only three who know the Army is bound westward; every other general is just-as-secretly told they're bound for the Iranian border -- a totally ludicrous misdirection for an expected defensive combat deployment. Lower ranking commanders are told these are practice maneuvers; wives are told the Army is headed for a new camp. (But Lovachov recalls that his wife knows he is going to war; because she reads the Soviet newspapers! Suvorov says he has interviewed hundreds of people from that time who were all sure war was about to start. How did they know? Unanimously: Soviet newspapers.) The Nazis have been meanwhile telling their own generals, beneath the highest front line commanders, that Sea Lion, the invasion of Britain, will finally kick off, and that they will be unloading on the north European coastline for embarkation -- not on the Russian border.

In any case, Lukin warns that the trains must go out tonight, and on following nights -- specifically at night, so that there will be as much delay as possible in people knowing the 16th Army is leaving at all. Also, there will be no stops at major or even mid-sized stations, for operational security; and no one is allowed off when stopping at minor stations. The entire Army, including its top headquarters, is transferred in freight cars with doors and windows sealed.

Later in 1945, with Soviet invasion forces headed to Manchuria, there will be some secrecy involved but not to this extent: generals will be wearing normal officer uniforms riding normal passenger trains, but they will not be bundled off in freight cars and forbidden to exit for eleven days! (Or rather for more than 11 days: at this time, a passenger train would take a minimum of 11 days to cover the Trans-Siberian route, but cargo trains such as what's moving the 16th Army go slower!)

Some of this security could be explained by the origin of the 16th Army (composed from gulag veterans), but all the incoming armies are treated much the same way. Then again, all Second Echelon Armies have a significant proportion of 'black' units.

Does Lukin expect the 16th Army to be on the way to defend against a Nazi invasion? No, he has been outfitting it as strike army, in effect as a second-wave covering army (to cover for armies arriving on the enemy's territory after he does). He later explains why his Army will be caught unprepared to even start setting up defenses: "We were preparing to fight on the enemy's home ground." (JMH, 1979, #7, p.43)

In the same article, by the way, eventual Marshal of the Soviet Union Vasilyevsky, who will launch the surprise attack into Manchuria in 1945, tells the readers that Lukin should be believed about his army's purpose: "There is much unvarnished truth in what he says."

May 29, 1941: a "Russian-German Phrase Book" is published in Moscow; by June 5th or 6th, identical phrase books start rolling off the presses in Minsk, Kiev, Riga, and other cities. Altogether, 6 million are printed (per Suvorov in Icebreaker, but apparently corrected to 5 million later in Chief Culprit). In all Soviet books, including military textbooks, the price is on the last page, except for those books and instructions related to the conduct of battle. The copy Suvorov will stumble upon in the Military-Diplomatic Academy of the Soviet Army, has no price: the books are treated like ammunition, handed out to troops during training exercises, and before or during battle. (Suvorov provides photos of the cover and some sample pages in Chief Culprit.) Who by? The People's Commissariat for Defense, Military Publishing Division. Who for? "Combat soldiers and officers." "This phrase book," it states, "is designed to assist Red Army combat soldiers and junior commanders in gaining proficiency in German words and expressions." Notice that senior commanders are presumed to have such knowledge already; which makes sense, seeing as how many of them have been assigned loyal Soviet German officers as aides over the past few years!

But for all the lesser ranks, such a book might be handy if the Nazis invade, perhaps. Typical phrases are translated from Russian to German first in Cyrillic (phonetically to help Russians speak the words), then in Latin letters -- apparently so that Russians can point to the questions for Germans to read in their own language. Sample answers are also printed the same way.

Let's see, what are some of the questions? "Where have SS soldiers hidden?" Not sure why SS soldiers might be hiding while invading the Soviet Union, but that sounds optimistic at least! "Where else have paratroopers landed?" Certainly something you'd want to know if capturing Nazi paratroops in your backfield. "Take me to them!" Always handy, including for the prior examples.

"What is the name of this station?" The Russians might not know that I suppose. Russia is a very big place. Presumably the Nazi invaders would know where they are trying to go... "Bring the conductor! Where is the fuel? Where is the garage? Gather and bring here [x number] horses [and other sample farm animals], we will pay!" Wow, how generous to pay the Nazi invaders for bringing captured food animals to the Soviet defenders! Truly, is this not the triumph of communism?!

"Stop the broadcast, or I will shoot you!" For stumbling upon an invading communications post no doubt.

"Where does this road lead?" Useful -- but why not ask a Russian local about this? Or an officer with a map? Or sergeant? "Where is the river?" "Where is the bridge?" "What is this river called?" ...I feel like these are questions a Soviet soldier or junior officer would be rather desperate to ask a Nazi invader...

"Where is the Bürgermeister?" ...what?! Well, maybe the Nazi invaders have captured a Russian village, and have already transferred their government over it, and the soldiers are liberating it. "Where are the German soldiers hiding?" Eh, reasonable, get them to rat on their fellow invaders. "Is there an observation point on the steeple?" ...what? What is a steeple?! Have the Nazis (of all people) started building western churches in captured Soviet towns already!? Their architectural hegemony is clearly intense!

"Where is the water? Is it drinkable? Drink it first yourself." Imagine Soviet soldiers defending their Motherland, entering a Russian village, taking out their phrasebook to speak to defeated Nazi invaders, and reading syllable by syllable, "Trink-en See zu-erst man selbst!"

"No need for you to be afraid! The Red army will be here shortly!" The Nazi invaders might be dubious about this statement, to say the least. Meanwhile, until the Red Army gets here: "Where are the markets?"

::) ^-^

A former Soviet diplomat, Nikolai Berezhkov, will write in his memoirs later, "With a Diplomatic Mission in Berlin", how when accompanying Molotov to Berlin in 1940, a German printing press worker once brought to the Soviet embassy a German-Russian phrase book of the same kind. For the Soviet embassy, the book was solid proof that the German army was preparing to invade the USSR; and indeed those preparations were starting after the summer of 1940. But don't worry! -- these little Soviet books will come in handy, too! Just not for several more years: until the Soviets are finally invading Germany.

A short entry today to balance out the longer one yesterday.

Summer 1941: Zhukov completes recovering and activating the former Polish naval base near the city of Pinsk -- more than 300 miles from any ocean, in the forested swamps of the Pripyat River (a tributary of the Dnepr). Stalin had demanded the base be ready by May 1941, and Zhukov got it done, though up until June 22nd the base will still be gearing up to full activation (at which time the base will have other concerns all of a sudden. ;) )

Zhukov with understandable pride (and motivations, in context!) will mark it in his "Memoirs and Reflections" (p.225) along with all other Soviet Naval bases in the first half of 1941.

The Pinsk flotila includes four 263-ton Zhelezniakov class armored boats, plus five other 'monitors' captured from Poland ranging from 130 to 150 tons. Altogether the Pinsk flotilla has 66 river warships and cutters, a squadron of airplanes, a company of the newly formed Soviet Marines, and other units (per Shirokorad's "Ships and Cutters of the USSR Navy 1939-1945", pp.741-56.)

As for why Stalin wanted a naval base more than 300 miles from any ocean... well if the hints given from back in its initial report entry didn't explain it, don't worry, that'll become clear eventually. This will eventually be perhaps the most famous Soviet naval base in the mid-20th century! -- just as Stalin and Zhukov had planned, more or less!

(Though not for defending the Soviet Union.)

Bit of a grab-bag today; a longer entry coming tomorrow...

Welcome to June, 1941! Just in case you were wondering, and for the very last time: Soviet fighter and bomber airfleet training manuals continue to focus teaching one massive ground strike instead of dogfighting. This will be painfully relevant twenty-two days from now... :hide:


June 1941: say, how's the Palace of the Soviets coming along? Haven't thought about that for a while. The steel frame for its lower levels has been erected. Construction has been unavoidably delayed by the monstrous production levels of war material, of course; but should start up again more briskly, soon! (This is as far as it will ever get in construction.)


June 1941: this month Nazi U-boats will sink sixty-one British merchant ships, totaling 431,000 tons (per Churchill's semi-autobiographical "The Second World War", Moscow edition 1998, vol.3, p.80). One imperial ton equals 1.016 metric tons. This year has been very bad for British shipping: January, 320,000 tons; February, 402,000; March, 537,000; April, 654,000 (!!); May, 500,000. Well, that's kind of an improvement last month, right? Not entirely -- the numbers are decreasing partly because the United Kingdom is running out of merchants!

You can thank Soviet rare earth elements sold to Hitler by Stalin (as well as Soviet oil) for contributing to this stunning naval victory in the Battle of the Atlantic over the dominant naval super-power of all world history up until now. Without chromium and vanadium, to give only two examples, you not only don't get fancy marine-grade screwdrivers; you also don't get marine-grade engines capable of withstanding the temperatures and pressures needed to run your subs (and other boats and ships) on oil instead of boiled water.

Early June 1941: in "My Mission in Life: Memoirs of an Aircraft Designer" (p.252), Stalin's personal aide Yakovlev, eventually an Air Force Colonel-General, attests that "at the end of May or the beginning of June" a meeting was convened at the Kremlin to deal with concealment and deception.

What kind of deceptions? Troops would be told they were going on maneuvers; the generals would know better, but only the highest ranking generals and marshals (or some of them) would be given accurate deployment locations and schedules. Actively misleading your own troops is much more important to offensive than defensive operations: secrecy in defense can amount to being told no more than "defend this line" or this town or fort or road or forest or whatever. You might hide the mission from them until the point of departure, but Soviet leaders are hiding this mission not only after the point of departure, but after the forces arrive in their deployment area! (Nazi High Command at this time is doing exactly the same, involving "Sea Lion".)

Eventual Marshal of the Soviet Union Zakharov gives an example of the thickness of this veil of secrecy (in "Historical Issues", 1970, #5, p.42, possibly meaning "JMH"). "In early June, Colonel Rumyantsev, in charge of military liaison with railway lines serving Odessa Military District, stopped by my office -- I was then District Chief of Staff -- secretly to inform me that Znamyenka Station had in recent days seen 'annushkas' passing through, coming from the Rostov area and bound for offloading in the Cherkassy sector. 'Annushka' had become the military liaison people's moniker for 'division'."

The point is that Rumyantsev is confused about the pass-through of these divisions, and is secretly asking for clarification from Zakharov, who can't help because he doesn't know anything about it either, despite being Chief of Staff for the Odessa Military District: an absolutely crucial lynchpin in Soviet border operations!

"Two days later, I received from Cherkassy [sector] an encrypted message asking for permission to take over a few of our district's depots for storing the belongings of troops coming into the area from the Northern Caucasus. Since our District HQ had not been advised any troops were to be massed here, I used a secure line to call the Ops Section at General Staff."

Now the Chief of Staff for an entire Military District is calling secretly up the chain of command in confusion, about divisions massing in his area that he himself has never been told about.

"Ops Duty Chief Anfisov came to the phone. I told him about the encoded message I had gotten and asked for clarification. Anfisov answered that the cable was to be shredded forthwith, that Cherkhassy [sector] would receive necessary instructions from General Staff, and that [Military] District Headquarters was not to get involved."

General Staff has told the Odessa MD Chief of Staff that the sector has blundered in asking an otherwise perfectly reasonable request up the normal chain of command, and that the HQ of the Odessa Military District should forget and ignore the divisions massing here.

Why did the Odessa MD Chief of Staff call up to Moscow rather than asking his own troop commander about it? Zakharov explains: Lieutenant-General Cherevichenko, the Odessa Military District commander, and his immediate superior in the chain of command, also knows nothing of divisions passing through and deploying at the border sector of his MD!

Soviet MD commanders and their Chiefs of Staff are people invested with enormous authority and power: for all practical purposes, the are the military governors for hundreds of thousands or even millions of square miles, and over millions of people, or even tens of millions, civilian as well as military. They are held responsible for absolutely everything happening within their District, and not only involving military operations! As MD commander, a general must during wartime also pool resources for the war: population, industry, transportation, communications networks, agriculture, natural resources both for food and production.

Yet even inside his safe, a cable meant for the eyes of the District Chief of Staff alone, poses some kind of threat, and must be immediately destroyed! -- and the MD commander himself is kept in the dark, told not to pay attention.

Don't worry, though! Soon enough, Zakharov will be the one deploying in secret through his Military District, while folks back at MD headquarters are told not to talk about multiple military commands in the same district...

Thirty-one days out from the anniversary of Barbarossa in current history!  :coolsmiley: (Or is it thirty-two? -- too lazy to check my math for sure.)

June 2, 1941, twenty days before Operation Barbarossa: the Nazi SS start forcibly deporting civilians living on the eastern border.

They are not being deported to protect them from a Soviet invasion, but because Hitler plans to invade Russia in two or (eventually) three weeks and is about to move his forces even closer to the border than they already are. As the first example of this push-up, once the SS troops have finished the deportation, they themselves stay put, getting ready for death squad actions in Russia.


Early June 1941: eventual Soviet Marshal Moskalenko, commander at this time of the First Artillery Anti-Tank Brigade, learns that Nazi troops are starting to take down barbed wire on their side of the borders with Soviet territory. He regards this as irrefutable proof that they are about to invade. (From "On the Southwestern Front" p.24.)

Guderian arrived in the area back in spring, and has been directing the quick construction and placements of light "assault fortifications", of the sort he threw up in about a week, before he invaded Poland -- although since May this has been mostly busy-work for show to the Soviets.

The Nazis have, of course, been watching the Soviets setting up similar light fortifications off to the side of main axes of advance, for almost a year.

The Nazi high command knows exactly what their own efforts really mean; they must know what the very similar Soviet efforts also mean, although the Nazis do not yet know how extensively the Soviets have been preparing in their backfield. (The arrival of the Second Strategic Echelon will take the Nazis totally by surprise, for example, as well as uncovering the extensive Soviet tank factories created near the front line.)

June 3, 1941, from today's Directive of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army: "Leninism dictates that a socialist country, using the favorable world situation, must take on the initiative of making military advances against the capitalist surroundings with the purpose of widening the socialist front... Leninism's motto, 'defend your land on foreign soil', can at any moment turn into practical action."

Nineteen days before Barbarossa, the chief political leaders of the Red Army are emphasizing (again) that the troops should be ready to make military advances into foreign soil, at any moment, in order to widen the spread of international socialism. The "favorable world situation" "dictated" by Leninism refers to opposing nations being weakened by the Second Imperialist War, and/or mass uprisings of workers across the world against property owners (which is the classical Marxian way for the final revolutionary world war to start.)

June 6, 1941: sixteen days before Barbarossa, Hitler and his innermost circle receive word that the Soviet government is intending to move out to Sverdlovsk, significantly east of Moscow.

Göbbels writes some very unflattering things in his diary about this plan.

This, however, is counter-intelligence: Sverdlovsk is a bogus command post. When things do turn really critical, Stalin will transfer many Soviet government agencies and foreign embassies to Kuibyshev, not to Sverdlovsk -- and then only the agencies deemed expendable enough that the Soviet high command doesn't need them!

The actual defensive crisis redoubt is a massive set of underground tunnels driven into the Zhiguli range; a construction masked by the Kuibyshev hydro-electric power station, which will not be built here but at another site upstream because this area is unfit for a power station! But it's great for a bedrock-burrow command post, in a final defensive regroup. Suvorov finds no indication that the Nazis ever knew about the Zhiguli bedrock-bunkers, or even the surface-level Kuibyshev defensive capital.

However, the Soviet leadership isn't planning to move there yet.

(Suvorov claims that after graduating with honors from the Frunze High Command Army School in Kiev, with honors, in only three years rather than the normal four, he was assigned his second duty, after a stint in the Carpathian Military District, to the Volga Military District headquarters in Kuibyshev -- still the unofficial capital of the Soviet Union even in peacetime! All the political, economic, and military data processed about other nations in Moscow, was analyzed simultaneously and independently, so that rationales and conclusions by each set of teams could be compared to each other. Suvorov served on such teams, before being sent to a top-secret Soviet Army Academy; graduating from an accelerated course in three years; and then being sent as attachê to the USSR Permanent Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, where he spent four years processing military intelligence information.)

Memorial Day today in current history, May 25, 2020!

As you can see below, we're starting to get up to June 13th, 1941; so the end of this thread approaches! -- but we have a few more things to check on before June 13th arrives.


June 9-12, 1941: the 9th Special Rifle Corps, commanded by Lieutenant-General Batov, is secretly redeployed from the Trans-Caucasus to the Crimea.

We've heard a little about them before, so now it's time to reveal why they are "special": because they are the first Soviet rifle corps to be configured, armed, and trained, for amphibious assault. (Note that they are not the Soviet Marines, who are part of the Navy as would be expected.)

The Odessa Military District Troop Commander Lieutenant-General Cherevitchenko (later Colonel-General), receives them and orders their deployment during these days (having embarked weeks earlier of course.) We only know this from Zakharov (in "Historical Issues", 1970, Vol.5, p.44). Cherevitchenko never says one word about it in his own memoirs or articles, despite this Rifle Corps being an amazing achievement of Soviet training!

At least Zakharov knows about this Corps arriving in his Military District; despite commanding his MD, he has no idea (yet) that a whole 19th Army under Lieutenant-General Konyev (later a Marshal of the Soviet Union) and his deputy Lieutenant-General Reiter (a graduate of the German Red Army training academies!), is being secretly assembled in the Odessa MD.

Does General Konyev speak of the assembling of this secret army? Nope, he starts his memoirs in 1945. What about Batov, commander of the special amphibious assault corps? We learn in his book that he was the deputy commander of the Trans-caucasus Military District -- so why was he deployed to the Odessa MD in charge of a "special" corps? Why were corps units and formations being drilled in quickly loading into and assaulting from Black Sea Fleet combat vessels onto foreign shores? Why do they specialize in seizing and destroying oil wells and derricks once on land? Why does this Corps get special indoctrination from top-level representatives of the Chief Directorate of Political Propaganda about waging "liberation war on aggressor territory"? Why, on June 13, 1941, will every member of 9th Special Corps get a Russian-Romanian pocket phrase-book?

Suvorov can find these details (though not their explanations) about Batov's Corps as side-notes and asides in other accounts; not in Batov's. But this is typical: high-level commanders tend to be chatty later about secret details of other formations, not about their own.

Early June 1941: Lieutenant-General Professor Karbyshev, of the Corps of Engineers -- the man who designed and oversaw creation of the Stalin Line in the 1930s, and who has overseen creation of the weirdly oriented Molotov Line since late June 1940 -- deploys personally to the western border with the nation's most elite combat engineers.

Arriving at the beginning of June, he writes back to his friends in Moscow that the war has already begun (Germany won't invade until June 29th, when Stalin will be taken by surprise).

He isn't writing back to complain that war has already begun, or to warn them about it, but to arrange a victory party with them!

This party won't be back at Moscow: he plans for them to come forward to where he will be, "on the scene of victory".

Meanwhile, he is attending and evaluating exercises for teaching Soviet troops how to fight across wet gaps and for teaching the most recent generation of T-34 tanks how to overcome anti-tank barriers. These are purely offensive maneuvers against enemy defenses.

Early June 1941: Colonel Professor Illya Starinov of Military Intelligence, and NKVD Colonel Vauphsassov, had both been involved in creating and leading the partisan brigades for the security corridors, and (for Starinov) the epic Fortified Sector defenses behind the security corridors; and both colonels had also been surprised at the orders from Stalin to deactivate the partisans and the garrisons and uproot or bury the defensive structure of the Sectors and corridors. What have they and the Soviet partisans been doing since autumn 1939?

The former defensive partisans have been reassigned to paratrooper assault units (in an airmobile arm already over a million strong back in autumn 1939, nearly 40 thousand in parachute assault, now bolstered with new regiments and stand-alone battalions to be assigned to normal divisions); to NKVD SpecOps penal units; or to special infiltration units on the western borders. The chronicle of the "Order of Lenin Moscow Military District", p.177, records (per Suvorov) three regiments of three battalions each of parachute assault troops formed from disbanded defensive partisans, each battalion numbering from 500-700 paratroops.

Starinov (author of "Mines Awaiting Their Moment", frequently cited by Suvorov) is sent to the western border with written orders in his pocket from People's Commissar for Defense Marshal Timoshenko, and subordinate to him alone. After the German invasion starts, Starinov will be assigned as deputy to the Partisan Movement Supreme Commander for Strategic Disruptive Operations ("thus becoming the Red Army's Commando #1", as Suvorov puts it). Starinov will later plan, lead, and carry out "Operation Concert" and "Operation Rail War", in 1943, each operation having the simultaneous participation of over one hundred thousand partisans and commandos. Starinov is no mere party apparatchik! He will be on the border literally on the evening of Barbarossa.


June 1941: according to the JMH, 1983, #9, p. 31, nine separate NKVD blocking regiments, plus a reserve blocking battalion and blocking squad, are assigned behind the Southern Front line.


Early June 1941: Colonel Rodimtsev, commander of the 5th Airborne Brigade, 3rd Airborne Corps, along with his men, start learning German -- first and foremost, among other languages. He and his men are far from the only troops cramming German lessons in early 1941, however.

June 12, 1941, ten days before the Nazi invasion: Stalin creates Airborne Forces Command. This (wartime!) organization directly commands the second new five airborne corps, being assembled on Stalin's order since May, effectively grouped now into the world's first airborne army organization.

It should be noted that while the order to create the Army HQ came on this date, the corps themselves will not be finished filling out until well after the Nazis have invaded. But the paratroops, parachutes, and fighting material already exist; so despite being invaded by a blitzkrieg against which airborne assault is essentially useless, the whole second set of five corps will still gear up for airmobile operations in August, as Stalin previously decreed!

6th Air Assault Corps will be commanded by Major-General A.I. Pastrevich, housing 11th, 12th, and 13th Airborne Assault Brigades in the Moscow Military District.

7th AAC, Major-General I.I. Gubarevich, housing 14th, 15th, and 16th AABs, in Povolzhie.

8th AAC, Major-General V.A. Glazkov, housing AABs 17, 18, and 19, also in the Moscow MD.

9th AAC, Major-General M.I. Denissenko, housing AABs 20, 21, and 22, in the Ivanov Military District.

10th AAC, Colonel (not a General) N.P. Ivanov, AABs 23, 24, 25, also in Povolzhie, specifically the Gorokhovets camps.

Notice also that while these corps have been assigned into the equivalent of an Army HQ container, they're still essentially three-brig divisions plus support, just like the prior five. Also worth noting is that the new triple-brigs aren't being assigned to divisions to be added to the current corps with the original triple-brigs being assigned to their own proper divisions. Is that because they're running out of qualified commanders? -- maybe: there's a colonel in charge of one of these "corps" currently! But container organizations typically show an intention to fill out the remainder later, and much of an AAC's striking power wouldn't be in parachute assault troops and glider assaults, but in normal forces being brought in later by normal air transports, or even rolling up on the ground afterward.

Having these forming up in the backfield, compared to the far-forward deployment of the first five Airborne Assault Corps, makes a difference in why they don't have corps-level commanders yet, but it also begs the question of why the first five AACs are deployed so far forward to begin with! The overall implication is that Stalin expects the first group of AACs to be in action long before August, so that restructuring them now into the new Airborne Forces Command would greatly hamper their operations.

Aside from the thirty airborne assault brigades of the ten airborne assault corps, another six detached airborne assault brigades and several separate airborne assault regiments either already exist or will by August.

Aside from those, a significant number of parachutist landing battalions have been created as units attached to regular Soviet infantry. The 55th Rifle Corps has been cycling these battalions through training, along with some other corps, per (eventual) Marshal Ivan Bagramian, since the start of the year.

None of these ten airborne corps (the first or second group) is (apparently) the set of airborne corps which will be air-lifted later during an offensive in 1943 -- that will be a third whole other set of airborne corps, first commissioned and then filled out at the very depth of the German invasion!

Of the first group of five corps, only one will ever fight as an airborne corps, during a counter-offensive near Moscow. But not one of the five new Airborne Forces Command corps will ever fight as an airborne corps. The many divisions-worth of troops of these ten corps will get used eventually, however: in an epic fashion to be narrated later!

June 12, 1941, ten days before Barbarossa: the Kiev Special Military District receives a "top secret, special importance" directive from Zhukov and Timoshenko (found in the Central Archive of the Defense Ministry of the Russian Federation, Fund 16, Index 2951, Case 261, Sheets 20-21), stating, "During the time period June 15 to July 10, 1941, the 16th Army with the following components will arrive on the territory of the Kiev Special Military District: the command of the army with service personnel; 5th Mechanized Corps (of 13th and 17th Tank, and 109th Motorized Divisions); 57th Tank Division; 32nd Rifle Corps (of 46th and 152nd Rifle Divisions, and 126th Corps Artillery Regiment)... I forbid all open telephone and telegraph communication with the arrival, unloading, and placement of the new troops. Nobody except you, members of the [Kiev MD] Military Council, and the chief of staff in the district, can know about this... All units arriving to the territory of the district have been issued false names, listed below. The false name is to be used in all correspondence, including on envelopes of top secret documents."

Four armies and nine separate corps make up the Kiev MD already! -- and troops have been arriving in mass since the second half of May! Now the super-strong 16th Army, currently being shipped from beyond western Russia, will be arriving in equally super-secret fashion: so secret that they're traveling under false names, which must be used in all official correspondence, even within the limited high-command of the MD who are allowed to know about their arrival and deployment.

But the Kiev MD is about to get even busier than this, earlier than this, starting tomorrow...


Next up: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY (http://www.grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=24540.msg669903#msg669903)