IceBreakChron VI: UNBEARABLE DECISIONS

[JasonPratt]

June 22, 1940, one year to Barbarossa: Soviet radio broadcasts a TASS report, authored by Stalin himself (as German Ambassador Schulenburg accurately identifies to Molotov when discussing this report afterward). "There are rumors abroad that on the Lithuanian-German border, 100 if not 150 Soviet divisions are massed..." Well, no, the Red Army newly occupying the Baltic States is transferring its air bases, staff headquarters, communication centers, and strategic supply resources on the East Prussian border; but there aren't one hundred divisions there -- one hundred divisions couldn't fit there, much less one hundred and fifty!

Suvorov regards this as a typically Stalinesque concoction; not a single British, French, or USA press outlet cites such fantasy figures, so far as he could find. Having attributed to Western papers what they had not printed, Stalin rebuts what they haven't printed and then continues: "Responsible Soviet circles take the view that those spreading these wild rumors know exactly what they want: to cast a shadow on Soviet-German relations. These gentlemen, however, are passing off as fact their own unavowed wishful thinking. They evidently cannot grasp the obvious fact that the good-neighborly relations that have developed between the USSR and German as a result of the non-aggression pact [i.e. the Molotov-Ribbentropp Pact from almost a year ago] cannot be rocked by gratuitous rumors and pathetic propaganda." (Pravda prints this TASS radio report on June 23, 1940.)

The number of divisions mentioned by Stalin is roughly correct; they are just not on a single border, Lithuania or otherwise, nor on all the Western borders -- yet. They exist far back inside the USSR. Five Soviet armies have been sparring with the Japanese along the Far East border; the other twelve armies are oriented toward Germany and Romania, though not at the border yet.

Stalin has taken an important boulder of truth (the amazing and troublesome number of divisions); and attached it to a clearly untrue claim (all parked on the Lithuanian border); in order to discredit the truth by association. And to make the actual situation on the Lithuanian border look less imposing by comparison!


June 25, 1940, a little less than one year until Barbarossa: Churchill writes his first letter commonly seen as warning Stalin (whose government Churchill has been opposing since 1918) about Hitler's intentions.

Suvorov doesn't quote the message, but he did find a salient part in a reply from Stalin, printed in R. Goralski's "World War II Almanac: 1931-1945", p.124, "[T]he Soviet Union's policy is to avoid war with Germany," which sounds as though Stalin understood Churchill to be recommending a pre-emptive attack, "but Germany may attack the Soviet Union in the spring of 1941, if by then Britain has lost the war." This is part of a conversation Stalin had with British Ambassador Cripps, concerning Churchill's letter.

[JasonPratt]

June 26, 1940: a little less than one year until Barbarossa. Since creating the new Soviet/Nazi border (with Soviet cooperation, and at Soviet invitation) in 1939, Hitler has been building new fortified sectors along the border. Unlike the Stalin Line, or the prior German Oder Line (long abandoned and converted to non-defensive uses), these new sectors are pushed right up next to the border where the Soviets can see them, with practically no defenses in front of them (in other words, no security corridor). They are constructed in peripheral areas, and so will not obstruct the eventual blitzkrieg rush of Nazi forces racing to invade Soviet territory, although they will be able to offer some offensive support. Until May 1941, intensive construction on these marginalized fortified sectors will go on day and night, in plain view of the Soviet border guards who will duly send reports (from the Collected documents and materials of the USSR Border Guards 1939 to June 1941, Documents #344 & #287.) After this date, construction will be reduced to near non-activity; for example, out of eighty (relatively light) combat facilities planned for the border river San, the Nazi leadership will only get around to finishing seventeen. While their neighbor was weak Poland, Nazi forces raised behind their borders fortifications of massive firepower and prime defensive protection -- although one week before invading, the Nazis started building light fortifications on the Polish border for the express purpose of pretending to be only interested in defense while preparing to support the first minutes of an explosive blitz across the Polish border. Once Poland was crushed and their next enemy on the new border became the immeasurably more powerful Soviet Union, the Nazis abandoned their old ultra-strong fortifications far in their backfield, and created rather light defensive facilities at a snail's pace, off to the side of a potential armed invasion -- by either side in either direction.

The Nazis aren't stupid or crazy; they just don't plan on staying on the border very long, much less to defend it! They will be gathering strike-force groups along the main attack axes, stripping peripheral rear areas for usable equipment, and covering side areas with relatively light fortifications, which they let the Soviets see them doing as "defensive" preparations while they hide their assault groups nearby. Since the Nazis are planning to launch a surprise attack, and planning to support their attack with their fortified sector pillboxes, there is good reason to build those pillboxes right up next to the borders, with no security corridors needed in front of the pillboxes -- at best those would only get in the way of the Nazis' own planned attacking forces! Nor will the Nazis waste concrete and steel on making heavy support bunkers: they are planning to surprise assault deep into enemy territory where the bunkers could never go, so the bunkers would quickly be useless.

[JasonPratt]

June 26, 1940: according to Anfilov, in "Immortal Feat", p.162, after continuous work in destroying the prior "Stalin Line" (since September 1939 or even earlier since late August at the signing of the Molotov Pact), Stalin directs launching construction of a new line right along the new Soviet-Nazi border. These new fortified sectors became nicknamed, with intentional irony, "the Molotov Line" at Soviet Staff Headquarters. Their designer will be once again Professor Karbyshev.

Artillery Commander-in-Chief N. N. Voronov, in his memoir, "Serving in the War", p.172, writes, "How could our leadership, not having put up needed defense cordons on the new 1939 border, take the decision to disarm and liquidate the fortified sectors on the former frontier?" But Voronov at the time held the rank of Colonel-General in the Red Army. He would have known what was happening at the time. What he is really complaining about (in Suvorov's estimation), is the order of events: the Molotov Line should have been built first, then the Stalin Line razed.

But why would Stalin smash the Stalin Line at all?! 1940 has already amply demonstrated that two defensive lines would be better than one: the Soviets had broken through the Finnish Mannerheim Line, and in so doing they had forced Finland to yield to Stalin's immediate demands, without even having to invade the rest of Finland -- because the Finns knew that behind that line they had nothing! The Nazis had meanwhile just outflanked the French Maginot Line, and for France the war was over. Neither France nor Finland had had a second defensive line.

Stalin has already spent over 120 billion rubles (by Grigoryenko's calculations) on creating a sea-to-sea set of Fortified Sectors no enemy could have pierced. Even if he disbanded the garrisons to use elsewhere, why destroy the line? Using the same industrial might, and with the time he had been provided, Stalin could have created another two or perhaps even three such lines.

Did the Molotov Line need the artillery? But it has been more than half a year before the decision was made to even start the Molotov Line, and orders had come down (per Soviet Marshal Zakharov in "Historical Issues" magazine 1970, No. 5, p.33) to cut back on Fortified Sector arms production or cut it off, period. Nor did anyone give an order to start up defensive artillery production again upon starting the Molotov Line construction! -- but the factories were running full blast, producing assault weaponry and ammo. Also in 1939, defensive arms from the original Fortified Sectors had been put into storage. In the Western Special Military District (i.e. Belarus), 193 combat facilities were built on the Molotov Line between late June 1940 and late June 1941, but by June 26, 1940, 876 Stalin Line facilities had already been stripped of their much greater firepower. (Suvorov claims other Military Districts featured even more striking proportions; for example by June 26th three entire Fortified Sectors in the Odessa Military District had been stripped of massive firepower.)

Worse, later (in spring 1941), the Stalin Line will be (mostly) dynamited off the face of the Earth, on Stalin's orders. Suvorov, as a former military analyst, claims this runs against common military regulations, based on thousands of years of experience: obsolete defenses can and must be expanded upon and improved, not destroyed. Regulations demand that soldiers on defensive duties keep making anti-tank ditches, for example: have you made ten already? Then make that eleventh! A 10th century tower stands; in the 13th century its owners build walls around it; in the 17th century, its owners build bastions around that; in the 19th century, parapets are added; in the 20th century, pillboxes outside. As long as the older defenses stand strong, they are not destroyed; and they are not destroyed except to be replaced with new defenses.

Unlike the Stalin Line, the Molotov Line (almost a year later) is being built so the enemy will see it (no camouflage); in peripheral areas out of the way of the flow of troops across the borders; without any security corridor to buffer Nazi approaches to the line; and with a casual attitude. Half of all Molotov Line resources will be poured into the Baltics; but colossal numbers of Soviet troops will be gathered in Ukraine and Byelorussia in 1941, supposedly because of an anticipated thrust of Nazi invasion -- far from the Baltics, far from the bulk of Molotov Line construction (such as it is). Byelorussia will get 25% of Molotov Line resources; the Ukraine (per Anfilov's "Immortal Feat", p.164), only 9%.

Tactically, not only strategically, the Molotov Line is set off to the side, such as at Brest. No less than six reinforced-concrete bridges cross the border river, some of them for railroads. The new Brest Fortified Sector is being built far off to the side, 27 thousand meters north, where there aren't any bridges! -- yet these bridges have massive strategic value, especially on defense: the main axis of the German blitzkrieg will be Warsaw-Brest-Minsk-Smolensk-Moscow.

Rear defense perimeters aren't built for the Molotov Line, and are not even planned, per Lieutenant-General Zotov's Collected Works, p.175. But Zotov will also report (in his own "On the Northwestern Front 1941-1943" memoir, 1969, p.172), that shortly before June 22nd ten sapper battalions will arrive from the Far East at the Baltic Special Military District (no longer merely a Military District anymore by then), mobilized and completely armed according to wartime regulations.

Did the Red Army's Military Engineers' Branch Headquarters (MEBH) consider using the old Russian border forces at Brest, Osovets, Grodno, Peremyshyl, and Kaunas, or at least their nearby more modern revetments from World War One? Starinov from "Mines Awaiting their Moment", p. 177, "The MEBH Commander proposed taking advantage of old Russian border fortresses and creating barrier zones. That proposal never was, in fact, accepted: 'Pointless,' so they said."

Who are "they"? The Molotov Line was ultimately designed and implemented by the Lieutenant-General of Military Engineers Professor Karbyshev: the man who had just spent nearly ten years designing and perfecting the leading defensive project of world history to that day, the Stalin Line. Above him stands Zhukov, who has never before made one serious mistake and who never would again. But once he becomes Karbyshev's immediate superior, "the fortified sectors on the old borders went right on being stripped of armaments, while construction on the new borders was held to a snail's pace." (Starinov, p.178)

"Back when I used to be a Soviet officer," writes Suvorov, "I had occasion to see German and Soviet pillboxes on opposite banks of one and the same little creek. If you show pictures of those pillboxes to an expert, he will not be able to pick out which are German and which Soviet: they are twins." No security corridor; off to the side of the expected action; relatively thin 8-inch armor plating; roughly 5-foot walls and head cover; inadequately camouflaged.


I labeled this and the prior entry June 26th for a reason, though not specifically for a reason involving this (notably parallel!) information. This is a snapshot of what's going on today, when the actual event happens next...

[JasonPratt]

Winding the Mousetrap(s)
-----------------------------

It's time to explain why those preceding entries were important for context on this date: one of the Soviet Union's shortest wars kicks off today, but with more proportionate importance than any other Soviet war!

June 26, 1940: four days after the fall of France, Stalin (not even bothering to go through Molotov!) orders Zhukov to invade Bukovina and Bessarabia (currently owned by Romania) for more "liberation crusades".

The missing 9th Army, miserable veteran of the hellish Winter War assault, once a pompous corps of three rifle divisions labeled an "army", now reappears, "specifically created to handle this important mission" (per Soviet historians in the Journal of Military History, 1972, #10, p.83.)

It has not been created, exactly; it never ceased existing, but was put in reserve, its 'container' HQs given skeleton crews. Now the most aggressive of Soviet commanders runs it through its preparations. Rokossovsky, just released from prison with a new encouragement to prove his loyalty and ability, inspects it on the eve of the liberation crusade. The Front Commander is Zhukov himself. (Note that a 'front' is created when the Soviets are about to invade somewhere.) In the Winter War, the 7th Army played the role of covering army, to allow the 9th and other small rifle corps nearby (dressed as armies) to invade; that didn't work out so well. Now the 9th Army takes the role of covering army; it will perform splendidly (partly because there is no epic Slavic security corridor here to crack open.) 9th Army will vanish once again after achieving this crucial victory. But don't worry -- it will return to Romania's border in about a year!

Altogether Stalin, back on June 9th, directed forty divisions (32 rifle, two motorized, six mounted cavalry) in thirteen corps (ten rifle corps, three mounted corps) to mass at the border. Along with them came fourteen separate brigades: eleven tank brigades, and three paratroop brigades. What about support? -- sixteen heavy artillery regiments and four strong artillery battalions; plus twenty-one fighter and twenty-four bomber regiments. Total troops, 460,000 soldiers and officers, using twelve thousand artillery tubes, three thousand tanks, and two thousand planes.

Not all these troops could arrive since June 9th, of course; they could only barely begin to start to arrive! But being present already isn't necessary. Yet.

Wait, back up, the commander of this assault army, Rokossovsky, had been released from prison? Yes, from a gulag even (not merely Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, bad as that could be) and not only him! As one-time convict Mikhail Dyomin writes in his memoir, "Fixer", p.26, "Virtually all of Rokossovsky's army was labor camp inmates." Suvorov is somewhat inconsistent about his claims and implications in Icebreaker for this point: he stresses "In all his days Rokossovsky commanded just a single army -- the 16th." But he also implies that Rokossovsky commands the restored and amped-up 9th Army for this operation; and he states that the 'black' gulag armed units start being created from prisoners at this time in June 1940. Perhaps Rokossovsky only visits this army for an independent inspection to see how Zhukov (and whoever else commands the 9th at this time) handles gulag troops, for his own application later in command of his only army the 16th? At any rate, despite being a gulag prisoner himself once, and despite commanding the 16th Army during the disastrous opening of Barbarossa, Rokossovsky shall rise to one day being a Marshal of the Soviet Union. In his memoir, "A Soldier's Duty", p.136, he will later write, "Life taught me you can believe even people who, back when, for some reason or other, have run afoul of the law. Give folks like that a chance to redeem themselves, I say, and you will see the good inside them come to the fore: love for our Motherland, for their own people, and a striving to do their utmost to reward the trust placed in them will make them courageous fighters." So he will have solid experience commanding 'black' gulag units.

We'll be getting back to these famous, and infamous, 'black' units later...

[JasonPratt]

June 28, 1940: thanks to the Winter War, the Romanian government realizes that if Stalin commands the Red Army to annihilate somebody, the Army will sustain whatever losses it takes to accomplish this order.  \m/

To stop the Soviet invasion while the forces are still gathering, Romania agrees to cede Bukovina and Bessarabia, including a few dozen square miles of territory along the Danube, down at the delta of the river's mouth.

Stalin has already prepared a Danube flotilla to deploy in immediately -- redeployed from the Dnepr Flotilla Stalin which Stalin disbanded in autumn 1939, having no need to defend the Dnepr anymore, in Stalin's strategy, after Hitler has (publicly) started a second World War!

The larger vessels must be carefully convoyed in calm weather along the often notorious Black Sea coast; the smaller vessels must be hauled in by rail. The new flotilla features around 70 craft (5 monitors, 22 armored motorboats, plus 36 other motorboats), plus the 96th Fighter Squadron, a special rifle company, the 17th Machine Gun Company, the 46th Special Anti-aircraft Artillery battalion, a Danube shore defense sector consisting of six batteries of different calibers -- not all of them intended for air defense, thus the "special" designation! (For more information, see Shirokorad's "Ships and Cutters of the USSR Navy, 1939-1945", pp.778-88; "Encyclopedia of The Great Patriotic War, 1941-45", p.255; and A. Vakhumut's article "First Days of War on the Danube", JMH, #9, 1970, pages uncited.)

The Soviet banks are treeless and exposed, where the Romanians can post forces on their banks to keep watch -- sometimes as close as a thousand feet from Soviet craft. In a defensive war, especially if the Nazis surprise invade from Romania, the Danube fleet will be hopelessly trapped with no room to maneuver and no way to escape the delta, except for perhaps a few seaworthy ships. But in a surprise attack the few semi-seaworthy ships would be targeted first, giving them no chance to lift anchor and cast off. No one bothers to build and revetments for the the shore artillery, which includes 130mm and 152mm cannons, leaving them as mobile -- and as exposed to enemy attack! -- as possible.

Fortunately, there is little need for them to defend the Danube delta, which is hundreds of square miles of impassable swamps and hundreds of treacherous lakes. The mobile cannons and immobilized river craft might have to defend against local Romanian troops (and still be destroyed), but not against a proper invasion here.

70 mobile river craft in the delta, and mobile artillery on the banks, all have only one way to go: upstream. But they cannot feasibly go upstream without a supporting invasion of Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Germany.

The Danube Flotilla, pitifully doomed in a war of defense (as eventually happens), poses a lethal threat to Germany if its cannons can travel 80 miles upriver to shell the strategic bridge at Cernovoda, disrupting oil supplies from Ploeshti to the port of Constance. Once the flotilla works its way another one hundred kilometers upriver from there, shelling as it goes, eighty percent of the entire continental German war machine, land sea and air, would slowly grind to a halt, having stopped getting fuel.

[JasonPratt]

After the Soviets "liberate" Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and the Romanian regions of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, 9th Army pulls back into secrecy, to emerge later along with the 13th (another of the second Finnish invasion trilogy). For the first time in Soviet history, no Soviet army disbands, even nominally, after the border-area "liberations"; but the Soviets have nothing left in Europe to "liberate", aside from Germany, Romania, and Nazi-occupied regions! The formation of Soviet Army organizations will accelerate, but for now Stalin sends many men and boys home to help with the harvest. The orders to move forty divisions onto the border remain in effect, just slowed down. For a while.

Soviet historians will agree that Bessarabia was needed to threaten the oil fields ("History of the Second World War, 1939-1945", Vol.3, 231-32): "From the Bessarabian territory, the Soviet air force could keep Romanian oil industry, which was the main supplier of oil to Germany, under constant threat." Okay, well, threatening the oil is great and all, but a mere threat to the oil fields leaves Hitler and the Nazi party able to keep making war upon Europe.

While striking at the oil (at least by threat) makes sense, why Northern Bukovina? This Soviet history has a curious rationale (same pages), "Northern Bukovina was needed because through its territory went a railroad of strategic importance, which stretched from Odessa through Kishinev, Chernovtsi, to Lvov, and which had a European track [i.e. of western European gauge width] which enabled it to allow usage by railroad cars from all over Europe." In other words, this area becomes a strategic staging node where a Soviet line running parallel to the border (from Odessa to Lvov) can connect to a western European rail line.

Is the goal to defend the Soviet line from assault along this one European line? Maybe by covering the Soviet line with deploying armies? But the Soviet history (from fifty years later) doesn't quite put it that way: the focus is on where that handy European railway, running westward, can go.

When Stalin seized his half of Poland (largely gifted to him by Hitler after Nazi conquest) in 1939, he also got half of Poland's locomotives and railway wagons. But they were useless in the Soviet Union rail gauge, being too narrow (with the western European gauge); and the Polish area rails had been rapidly replaced with the wider Soviet gauge. If Stalin advances into Europe, he would doubtless be trying to revise the gauge to Soviet standards -- just as Hitler will do in Barbarossa going the other way -- but having a bunch of locomotives and wagons with the narrow gauge would help supply his troops more quickly moving forward for a while. Half of Poland's rolling stock wouldn't be enough to supply the millions of tons of ammunition, arms, liquid fuel, and spare parts, but it would make a significant start. The ceding of Bessarabia just so happens to give Stalin control of another 141 engines, 1866 covered rail wagons, 325 half-covered wagons, 45 rail platforms, 19 cisterns (steam locomotion still being important at this time), 31 passenger cars, and 2 luggage cars (per "The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and Its Consequences for Bessarabia: a Collection of Documents", 1991, p.51). Still not really enough, but another significant start. Later on July 31, 1940, Romania will sign an agreement to transfer another 175 locomotives and 4375 cars to the USSR by August 25th. (per "Foreign Affairs Documents: 1940 thru June 22 1941", 1998, 23:1:519-20.) Keep in mind, these are all western gauge cars and engines, totally useless in the Soviet Union per se!

The capture and collection of rolling stock might seem incidental; but Stalin is not only converting captured rail gauge to Soviet standards, he's demanding and getting more western-gauge rolling stock that he cannot possibly use anywhere except in western Europe!

[JasonPratt]

June 30, 1940: Sea Lion begins! -- sort of! Nazi armed forces seize Britain's Channel island of Guernsey. This is the first time since the Norman Conquest itself, in 1066, in almost one thousand years of British history, that an enemy has captured any part of the British Isles.

Stalin on this day (or possibly the next, Suvorov differs between Icebreaker and Chief Culprit on this) receives Churchill's first letter, written back on the 25th, commonly seen as warning Stalin that Hitler might attack him someday. As Admiral N.G. Kuznetsov will put it (from his memoir "On the Eve of...", 1966, p.321), "Stalin, of course, had more than enough grounds for thinking that England and American were seeking to have us collide head-on with Germany." Upon receiving any letter from Churchill, under the increasingly dire circumstances of the United Kingdom, Stalin could guess its contents without even reading it: please open a second front as soon as possible! You don't defensively open such a front, of course, nor collide head-on with Germany by standing still. According to Nazi General Jodl (per Liddell Hart's "The Second World War", p.151), Hitler often tells his generals that Britain's only hope now is a Soviet invasion of Europe.


June 1940: speaking of seizing a British Channel island by naval invasion -- the same month Hitler finishes off France, the Soviet marine infantry are born.

No marine infantry is assigned to the two blue-water navies, nor to the two home-seas fleets. The Amur Naval Flotilla, guarding the Soviet Far Eastern frontier, receives no marine infantry either. The Dnepr River fleet was disbanded in 1939, but has been split into the Danube and Pinsk Flotillas. One marine company is assigned to the Soviet Pinsk Flotilla in the forests of Byelorussia, near the headwaters of the Pripyat. Marine infantry in any army can be good defenders, but strategically they are meant to invade and establish beachheads; and no significant defenses are being established at Pinsk (nor, for that matter, along the canal being refurbished and expanded between the Pripyat and Bug Rivers).

The first Soviet Marine Brigade in history, several thousand strong, under command of the Soviet saboteur Colonel Parafilo, is assigned to the coastal Baltic fleet. These infantry marines are not provided with extensive defensive fortifications. The only foreseeable targets for this offensive force: Germany, specifically East Prussia riverine and coastal land targets; or the Aland Islands, in accordance with Plan S.3-20, where the other Finnish nickel mines are located, and where the Soviet Navy and Air Force can shut down Sweden's transport of iron ore to Hitler.

The Soviet Navy doesn't put Marines in the newly created Danube Navy base; but no worries! At least two divisions of the Soviet 14th Corps, the 25th and 51st Rifle Divisions (commanded by Chapayev and Perekop respectively), have started intensive training for marine invasion operations.

[JasonPratt]

July 13, 1940: Hitler has ordered a drastic and widespread reduction of his armed forces, for rest, refit, and harvesting, while considering plans for invading Britain. Today, on Stalin's orders, Molotov hands German Ambassador Count von Schulenburg a transcript of Stalin's June 30th conversation with British Ambassador Cripps, regarding Churchill's June 25th recommendation. This includes Stalin's comment that "Germany may attack the Soviet Union in the spring of 1941, if by then Britain has lost the war." This part remained the same (apparently), but Stalin doctored other parts. In Suvorov's estimate, the doctored transcript (no text given) tells Hitler, yes, we have had talks with the British Ambassador but we refused to team up against you, as you can see from this transcript; and so, feel free to wage war without worrying what's happening behind you! -- your friend Stalin only wants peace and will never attack you, even though we expect you to attack us next year if things have gone well for you!

Later during the Nuremburg Trials, Ribbentrop will record notes about this time: "A major build-up of Soviet forces in Bessarabia was of serious concern to Adolf Hitler in terms of its impact on pursuing the war against England. Under no circumstances could we do without the -- for us vitally important -- oil in Romania. Were Russia to press on even farther there, we would find our further pursuit of the war dependent on Stalin's goodwill. Such prospects, naturally, had to arouse Hitler's suspicions about Russian policy. He told me that for his part he was giving thought to military measures, not wanting to let the East catch him napping."

July 16, 1940, Hitler signs Directive #16, concerning preparations for landing troops in Great Britain, codename Sea Lion. The plan expects the operation to be completed by August 15th!  :o

Surely he doesn't intend to conquer and occupy Great Britain within four weeks!? No, he probably intends to knock Britain out of the war far enough for Churchill's government to fall, replaced by a peace part who, if not quite the British Vichy, will settle for isolation and the resumption of neutral trade on the seas.

This is my own guess, not Suvorov's who makes no guess about the ludicrously short expectation for the operation. But I have reasons for thinking Hitler had this victory in mind, since it resembles some other plans, which we'll be getting to very, very soon...  ^-^

[JasonPratt]

July 21, 1940: Hitler and his generals have been wargaming the Bessarabian situation. Soviet troops have stopped, but what if Stalin orders them to continue on toward the oil fields one day? In case of such emergency, perhaps the ten Nazi divisions north of Romania could strike somewhere else, creating a threat that Stalin would have to respond to?

Wargames are run on the maps. Ten divisions are insufficient. Twenty? Same results. How many would be needed to stop Stalin from hitting the fields?!

They reluctantly conclude that defending Romania against the 40 Soviet divisions continuing to gather (albeit very slowly) on its border, will be too difficult to do without exposing Western Poland, East Germany, and even Berlin, to a strike by the other Soviet forces gathering on that more northern border.

Besides, defending the oil fields with modern firepower, against modern firepower, is worse than pointless: shelling and bombing will send the oil fields up in flames anyway, which will not be helpful for any defenders nearby either! Three thousand Soviet tanks and two thousand airplanes are more than enough to reach the oil fields and ignite a fire, after all!

Romania at this time has exactly 60 tanks, FT-17s, with a maximum speed of 9km/h. The Soviet BT-7M tanks growling up to the border have an official speed of 86km/h, in reality much faster once they shed their treads for autobahn-quality roads! -- but on the good Romanian valley grounds, they could easily reach speeds of 40 to 50 km/h, or up to 80 without their tracks on Romanian roads: three hours of plain driving time to get the first ten tanks to the oil fields. To help those 60 slow Romanian tanks, Hitler currently has at most ten weak infantry divisions: all his air force, all his tanks, all his heavy artillery, are still mopping up in Western Europe, with all his best generals. Where are those ten divisions at least? -- in Poland and Slovakia. None in Romania.

Hitler this month has voiced, for the first time, the idea that the Soviet Union may pose a great danger, especially if Nazi forces invade Britain, or try to secure another oil line by helping Italy's failing invasion of North Africa. Zhukov only needs to move another 60 miles deeper into Romania, and that will be the end of Nazi Germany. Stalin refuses to move the troops away from Romania, and has even created a Danube river assault fleet with only one obvious purpose! -- to go after the oil lines by another route! Stalin's assurance that he only wants peace, even if Hitler might attack him next spring, seems very jarring in this context. Hitler had already started planning blitzkrieg operations against Russia along the Polish and Prussian borders; that timetable will need to be moved up. A lot.

There can be no possibility of defeating the Soviet Union, of course, even if Hitler takes all of Russia west of the Urals. But Hitler doesn't need to conquer and claim Russia -- not yet anyway.

He just needs to goad Russia into getting rid of Stalin, and Stalin's government, by catching all Soviet armies out of position where they can be easily slaughtered.  :bd:

Today on July 21st, 1940, Hitler orders General Field Marshal W. Brauschitsch to start developing a specific plan for war in the East. Tomorrow, Brauschitsch will entrust Halder, the chief of general staff for ground forces, with fully evaluating all the different potentialities for bringing the entire Wehrmacht against the Red Army.

[JasonPratt]

In Suvorov's estimation, Stalin blundered by not sending Zhukov on to hit the Romanian oil fields at the start of July 1940. However, in my own estimation, while striking the oilfields at this time (and the vulnerable Baltic Sea supply lines) would have ground Hitler to a stop, Stalin did not have anywhere near enough troops ready yet to seize and occupy all of Europe, even from Hitler's control. On Suvorov's own theory, Stalin is using Hitler as a sort of "covering" army-group to wreck havoc in Europe while Stalin slowly gathers his forces together to take everything. Also, there is another factor, obvious from Suvorov's own theory, which explains Stalin's choice to take a step toward the oil but not go too far yet -- which I shall discuss in a late 1940 entry.

Two years from now (June 27th, 1942), at one of his table talks (page 477 of Piker's edition), Hitler will reminisce, "It is absolutely obvious that the Soviets were determined to direct the unfolding of events in the Balkans in the direction necessary to them, and in that manner to transform the area into launching grounds for an attack on us and the remaining countries of Europe. And, doing everything possible to achieve this goal, they simultaneously declared readiness to sign trade agreements with us, which would seem to be favorable to us but would in fact cut us off from our oil sources as soon as their preparations for the decisive coup were finished. In the summer of 1941 they intended to deliver a crushing defeat to Romania, for it was the only country, except Russia, that delivered oil to us."

Oh, right! -- the only other significant supplier of oil for the German war machine, is Stalin's Soviet Union.

This by the way refutes the idea that the Nazis had solved their fuel problem by developing synthetic oil. They were definitly working on that! -- but they just as definitely weren't anywhere near ready to use it in any quantities; and even if they could produce synthetic quantites, it would only be a secondary fuel for non-combat purposes. Synthetic fuel can never compete in quality with fuel made from petroleum. With low-quality fuel, the best warplane in the world will be weak, slow, and clumsy. Also, synthetic fuel is expensive: seven to twelve times as much cost as the production of fuel from petroleum. It is not at all like the cost of using potato stalks for wood pulp. But aside from quality, Germany could only by 1941 produce 4.1 million tons of synthetic fuel: one-fifth of the bare minimum requirements for oil that year of around 20 million tons (not counting Germany's allies who also didn't have oil supplies and so also had to be supplied by Germany.) (cf Ya.T. Eiduss, "Liquid Fuel in the War", 1943, p.74-75.)

Germany does have access to other smaller oil wells. Altogether in 1941, Hitler will receive a total of 1.3 million tons from Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, Hungary, and Poland combined. Together with synthetics, that amounts to 5.4 million tons of the bare minimum 20 million.

How much was Romania sending? Another 5 million tons in 1941. Also not remotely enough! -- but without it living and fighting would be made impossible.

Where was the other ten million tons of the budgeted fuel coming from? One short answer is, it wasn't: Germany has to make do on about half its budgeted supply. The other short answer is: Soviet Russia! -- not enough to make up the budget, but enough to scrape by a little better.

[JasonPratt]

July 1940: one month after denying crazy levels of military buildup, featuring 100 to 150 divisions, as rumors designed to sour Nazi/Soviet diplomatic relationships, the next created Soviet army appears, this time on the German border -- the Soviet 26th Army.

But wait! The prior two armies, still state secrets, were the 16th and the 17th! Previously the Soviets have always designated armies in sequence; the next organization of corps should be the 18th Army. What's going on?!

The answer is that Armies 18 through 28 had already long since been authorized (one against Japan, ten against Germany). The 26th happened to be the first one to go active. Why was it the first one? -- because it was the next one perched closest to Germany.

23rd and 27th Armies will secretly activate later in May 1941, along with the reappearance of the 13th and, a few weeks later, the missing 9th Army. The remaining eight armies (including the missing armies from the Finnish invasion) will activate or re-activate on June 13, 1941.


July 1940, by order of General Meretskov, thousands of commanders, up to general rank, start carrying out reconnaissance along the entire western border.

Meretskov had been doing this himself along the Finnish border for practically all of 1939, starting in January, before the Soviet invasion. But don't worry! -- he's on the same job here, too, in comradely solidarity, not simply passing along orders for others to do it! From "In the Service of the Nation", p.202ff, "I personally carried out prolonged observation from forward border posts... Next, I traveled all along the border, visiting units stationed there..."

He'll keep on doing this up until practically June 21st, 1941, after which he will have a very rude interruption in his recon schedules.

[JasonPratt]

July 29, 1940, Major General Erich Marcks is appointed to Halder's staff as an aide for developing the specifics of the eastern campaign, and starts planning today.


August 4, 1940: from an article in Pravda (author unsourced by Suvorov), "The pillars of the world are trembling, the ground slipping out from under people and whole nations. Blazes are raging, the thunder of cannons shaking oceans and continents alike. Like mere feathers gone with the wind, countries and powers are disintegrating... How gloriously, wonderfully beautiful it is when the whole world is being rocked to its very foundations, when the mighty are crumbling, the great crashing to the ground!" The author thinks this is all wonderful and beautiful because it hastens the day when the subsequent revolutionary world war, of the workers against the property owners, will kick off.

August 5, 1940, the Soviet Union incorporates the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic.

August 18, 1940: from an article in Pravda (author unsourced by Suvorov), "Each war like this brings us closer to that happy day when people will be killing people no more." The author means that this will be due to the workers rising up for a final revolutionary world war against the property owners, seizing all means and resources of production (including human resources), handing over control of all that production to the few elite leaders to manage during the socialist era, from which will eventually come the communist era, according to Marxian theory.

Also August 18, 1940 (unclear from Suvorov if this is the same article): "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!"

Say, how many parachutists does the Soviet Union have on this day anyway? According to this issue of Pravda, the Soviet Union already has more than one million trained parachutists! Suvorov adds (in "Chief Culprit") that in light of declassified documents, it is clear that this number is a deliberate lie: the real number is closer to two million parachutists -- each one trained in infantry assault tactics!

(Suvorov is doubtless wrong to claim that Pravda editors, and/or the article's author, are trying to calm fears of Soviet aggression by hiding the real number -- he makes this claim in a paragraph of "Chief Culprit" where he doesn't have the texts near at hand which he cites elsewhere from this edition, which are a triumphant paean to world military invasion conquest, including by landing those over-one-million-cough trained parachutists. The true rationale must have been to brag about Soviet might while leading any running dog capitalist pigs reading Pravda to underestimate the force level.)

The preceding quote (Suvorov isn't clear) might be from the essay written by Air Force General Georgy Baidukov in this same Pravda edition, where he writes, "What happiness, what joy will stream from the eyes of those who here, in the Kremlin Palace, will adopt the last republic into the brotherhood of peoples the world over!"

Oh? Well, gosh Comrade, what does this last adoption of the final republic into the brotherhood of worldwide people look like? "I can picture it clearly: bombers smashing enemy factories, railway junctions, bridges, depots and entrenchments; fighter-bombers raining lead onto troop columns and artillery emplacements; landing craft setting their divisions ashore far behind enemy lines. The awesome might of the air fleet of the Land of Soviets, together with our infantrymen, gunners, and tankers, will do its sacred duty to help oppressed peoples rid themselves of their executioners!" Baidukov will rank as one of the top ten heroes of the Soviet Union, and will rise to the rank of Air Force Colonel-General. In this enormous article, Baidukov envisions bringing the final republic into the USSR by smashing its people in offensive air operations, along with ground operations of course; typical for a Soviet war of "liberation". Nothing about a war of defense, of course. The final war of liberation will start, as all such Soviet wars do, by a command from Comrade Stalin.

[JasonPratt]

August 19, 1940, one year after Stalin and the Politburo decided that the second world war has started by Stalin's decision to decline teaming up with Britain and France to stop Hitler from invading Poland, and rather to cooperate with Hitler so that he will invade Poland and drag Europe into an exhausting world war: Communist propaganda continues cheering on Germany's elimination of more and more states, governments, armies, and political parties. Today's Pravda calls it "Modern war in all its terrible beauty!"


August 21, 1940: in Mexico, the lonely Leon Trotsky has been flattered by Ramon Ivanovich Lopez, a fellow Soviet ex-patriat and Spanish Communist (traveling under the name of Jacques Mornar Vandenrein), whose idealistic Trotskyite articles the founder and first commander of the Red Army greatly appreciated. Today, while the elderly Trotsky is alone in his office with Ramon, bent over with his failing eyes to read the latest essay, when Ramon pulls an icepick out of his trenhcoat and plants it fatally in Trotsky's head.

The police arrest Ramon at the scene of the crime, but he refuses to testify about his motives. The Mexican court sentences him to twenty years in prison. On May 6, 1960, he'll be released three months early for good behavior, whereupon he will travel to the USSR and under his real name, Ramon Mercader, he will be awarded (by the late Stalin's successor) with the title Hero of the Soviet Union with the additional "Golden Star", and the Order of Lenin: the highest civilian awards in the Soviet Union. Mercader will also be given a position as a researcher at the prestigious Marxism-Leninism Institute of the Central Committee of the Soviet Union Communist Party. People will grimly joke, even at that time, that Mercader must be writing a multi-volume dissertation on "Alternative Uses for Icepicks"!

The motive for Trotsky's execution will be a mystery: it makes so little sense, that it will be commonly blamed on Stalin's personal vendetta and paranoid insanity; because despite being as important as Lenin to the Communist International movement once upon a time, by 1940 (and for a long time before then) Trotsky had no longer posed a political threat, having only a few followers and less than no political influence.

He did however keep writing warnings about how Stalin planned to invade Europe with the Red Army, as a base for taking over the world, using Hitler as a tool for this purpose.

[JasonPratt]

September 1, 1940, thanks to Stalin sending troops home for at least some harvesting, the Red Army here reaches its minimum troop numbers since Hitler invaded Poland one year ago: 3,423,499. This is still rather more than the approximately 1,871,600 men of the Red Army on September 1st of last year! -- and unlike the majority of 'mobilized' troops in the call-up during the September political crisis that year, these are all in active service somewhere, mostly training.

From this point the Red Army's numbers will only increase. After all, the universal conscription law from one year ago allows for (and foresees a need for) the preparation of not only three and a half million; not only five million; not only ten million; but EIGHTEEN MILLION troops!

Hitler will put a boot down on much of that preparation; though that won't save Hitler and his own face-crushing regime.


September, 1940: per JMH, 1976, #1, page not given by Suvorov, Bagramayan starts studying Carpatian (Carpathian?) mountain passes at this time, if not even earlier, "scouring a sizeable part of the border." Orders were passed along back on July 1940, remember, for all commanders up to generals and marshals, to start scouting the Nazi borders.

[JasonPratt]

October 1940: the pre-GRU sends Sorge another message inviting him to come home and be shot in the head -- as a procedural caution, and also because he's now regarded as a malicious defector for not agreeing to come home and be shot in the head as a procedural caution!

His reply, "Can I count on returning home once the war is over?" He then lists how much he has done for Soviet authorities. Suvorov says many of his (relatively few) messages published by Soviet military intelligence are like this.


October 7, 1940, from the Wehrmacht Chief of Staff Colonel-General Halder's diary: "An air war on two fronts is impossible." Hitler has told his generals to start planning for Barbarossa, but the Nazis don't have the aircraft and pilots and other support personnel (like ground crews and repair crews) and supplies to do that and also keep the Battle of Britain going.

October 31, 1940, on All Hallow's Eve, Hitler calls off the air assault on Britain.


November 7th, 1940, from Marshal of the Soviet Union Timoshenko, in his People's Commissar for Defense Order #400 (i.e. an order to the Red Army): "In Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia [the tiny Baltic State nations conquered by Stalin's Soviet Union back in the summer], we destroyed the power structure of working-class-hating landowners and capitalists. The Soviet Union has grown significantly and pushed its borders westward [by the Red Army's invasions]. The capitalist world has had no choice but to tremble and cede to our will. We, as Red Army fighters, though, will not now thump our chests and rest on our laurels!"

In other words, the Commissar for Defense is issuing an official decree to the Red Army, that he does not plan to stop the Red Army's expansions westward, but intends to continue westward to break the power structure of the capitalists. The next nation westward now is national-socialist Germany and its captured territories, plus its strategic oil ally, Nazi Romania; but all capitalist nations are also being aimed at through Germany!


November 1940: Stalin disbands his three air armies, having already effectively halted Soviet strategic aviation. He has other plans for using those factories, resources, and personnel.