For the prior thread of my Icebreaker Thesis Chronology project, click here (http://www.grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=24420.msg667161#msg667161).
For the Table of Contents and Introduction thread, click here (http://www.grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=24392.0).
Transformations
------------------
March 13, 1940, on the same day as Finland sues for peace, the Politburo releases a decree "On Military Retraining and Regrading of Party Committee Cadres and the Conditions for the Mobilization into the WPRA": all "Party Committee cadres shall go through systematic military retraining, so that whenever they may be called into the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army or Fleet they will be able to perform in positions appropriate to their qualifications." The People's Commissar for Defense gets the job of grading these Party bureaucrats and commissioning them with freshly minted military ranks. The Party thus transforms from a para-military to full military government.
What appropriate military roles are high-ranking government bureaucrats qualified for?!
Don't worry, these appointments are not mere political cronyism! The recent Soviet military invasion of Finland demonstrated a need for the new Soviet civic powers, brought along and installed after invasion (as well as prepared beforehand secretly within the target nations), to cooperate better under and with military authority.
Some bureaucrats already have military training, others have none; but the concept is to bring them all more fully into military command and control by giving them related military training and ranks. This is no small effort: from May 1940 through February 1941, 99,000 reserve political cadres including 63,000 leading "Party committee cadres" will be given military training (including drafting into the Army), examinations, and military ranks.
But what need do the Soviet Union leaders expect to have, for such an incredible number of after-invasion political operatives, being trained to cooperate with the military in pacifying invaded areas? :-"
Spring 1940: the Ribbentrop-Molotov takedown of Poland has added a new potential security corridor, naturally difficult, 125 to nearly 190 miles across, with a poor railway network. "The area favored defenders and facilitated setting up barriers." (Yeremyenko, "When the War Began", p. 71) The Poles had made amazing use of these defenses during the first Soviet invasion in the early 1920s; but had been fatally distracted by Hitler in 1939.
Former 7th Army Commander Meretskov, now Chief of the General Staff, recent veteran of defeating the Finnish Mannheim Slavic-style security corridor -- regarded by military leaders around the world as impossible to defeat by even a modern army! -- now has an opportunity to build up a new security corridor in Poland, to defend against the Nazi foe.
Hundreds of miles of neutral Polish depth have been removed out of the way of Soviet and Nazi borders at Stalin's diplomatic command, so he can't count on that anymore; but on the other hand the Soviet Union has more property and resources to survive on while making preparations for, let's say, the next two years! (A two year plan set up by the Politburo and the Supreme Soviet, ultimately by Stalin, back in mid-August, for starting the final revolutionary world war to take all property under control of their government.) Besides, Russia has been adding epic defensive borders throughout its expansions for centuries (crippling Russia's own economic growth in the process), and the Soviet Union started up again after the last failed invasion of Poland in 1920.
Meretskov has historical, institutional, and personal experience to draw upon for creating a barrier no army in the world could ever hope to bash through, even without neutral Poland helping as a first line of defense. True, Stalin doesn't have ten whole armies of defensive sappers yet (those would come after Barbarossa has fully started, in the second half of 1941), but Meretskov has the resources to expand the Soviet security corridor to depths and densities heretofore undreamed of!
So, Meretskov's orders to secure the western border of Russia:
1.1) Destroy (or rather finish destroying) the defensive security belt already set up along the western borders.
1.2) Disband all demolition teams prepared to defensively destroy Soviet rail transport and infrastructure.
1.3) Pull all dynamite off the Soviet bridges, so that they cannot be detonated in defense against an invasion. (Note: do this before disbanding the demo teams!)
1.4) Deactivate all Soviet defensive mines. "Mines are powerful things," writes Marshal of the Soviet Union G. I. Kulik, "yet tools for the weak and defense-minded. We do not need mines as much as we do mine removal." (Suvorov unsourced quote at the start of "Icebreaker" chapter 9.) Mines are tools for defense, and defense is for the weak, not for the mighty Soviet Red Army and its plans!
1.5) Level Soviet defensive barriers.
2.) Create no such belts in the newly gained Polish territory which is naturally primed for such defensive belts.
3.) Deploy Red Army main-force elements right along the border, without any security corridor to act as their defensive buffer in case the Nazis invade them.
4.) Move all strategic Red Army supplies up to the border, from deep within Russia.
5.1) Launch high-priority development of a huge air-base and transportation network at the former western borders, running primarily east-west (not primarily north-south back and forth behind defensive lines).
5.2) The one-way rail lines on this side of Poland? Upgrade them to two-way lines. Do not add defensive plans to destroy the lines in case of German invasion. In fact, lay new tracks right up to the German frontier.
6.) Inactive bridges in Poland seized by the Soviets are not to be destroyed. Their defensive dynamite is removed (unused by the Poles thanks to having been captured so completely, largely thanks to the Nazi invasion striking from the north, south, and west, forcing emergency re-deployments.) Former 4th Army Chief of Staff Colonel Sandalov, will complain later in his memoir "Overcome", p. 99: "Why did [our] 4th Army's sector have that many [four] bridges across the Bug [river] anyway?" 4th Army will be caught asleep by the German blitzkrieg over the bridges, and destroyed, providing the Germans access to the rear of the super-strong Soviet 10th Army which receives an epic defeat thereby, allowing Guderian to race toward Minsk. Sandalov, the man in charge of those bridges, is not put up against a wall and shot for catastrophic dereliction of duty, or even as a scapegoat for poor orders from higher up. On the contrary, he is promoted eventually to Colonel-General, winning distinction in many operations, thanks to his chief character-trait: meticulous preparations to the last detail, leaving nothing to chance.
The Nazis ceded the bridges to Soviet control after the parceling of Poland, and did not demand their destruction, only that they would not be used -- which until Barbarossa they were not. Hitler had his reason for not demanding the defensive destruction of the bridges: he planned to use them to invade Soviet territory. And he eventually did.
From Starinov's "Mines Awaiting Their Moment", p.175: "In the west, our country already found itself face to face with fascist Germany's powerful military machine [thanks to the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact]... The threat of invasion loomed over England... Familiar with preparations for mounting barriers in areas close to the [former] border, I was simply stunned: even what we had succeeded in putting up from 1926 to 1933 had been virtually leveled. No longer were there any ready-to-use charges being stored near major bridges and other assets. Not only were there no [demolition] brigades, there were not even any special [demolition] battalions... The Ulyanovsk Institute -- our only academy for turning out highly competent commanders to head detachments equipped with radio-controlled mines -- had been converted into a communications training facility."
1940, date of the incident unsourced by Suvorov: Marshal of the Soviet Union Brezhnev, in his 1978 memoir "A Speck of Land", portrays a meeting of Party propagandists in Dnepropetrovsk.
"'Comrade Brezhnev [says the team tasked with promoting Soviet propaganda, being portrayed here by Brezhnev], we are supposed to explain [Soviet] non-aggression, that it is for real, that whoever does not believe it is carrying on provocative conversations. Still, ordinary folks don't believe it much. What should we do: explain [non-aggression policy] or not explain it?'
"In those days [Brezhnev remarks], you were faced with quite a few knotty issues. Around the Hall four hundred people all were waiting for my answer; the luxury of time for reflection I did not have.
"'Explain it, absolutely!' I said. 'We'll keep right on explaining [Soviet non-aggression policy], until in fascist Germany there won't be even one stone left standing atop another!"
1940: a canal system had been originally built in the 1770s-80s (after proposition in the 1600s) by the last king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, connecting the Bug River to the Pripiyat through tributaries. After decline and disuse, it was partly rebuilt in the 1920s by Poland, to house the Riverine Flotilla of the Polish Navy at Pinsk. Their purpose had been to help support Poland against another Soviet invasion (after the 1920 war), but during the 1939 invasion they had been scuttled and sunk. Suvorov, for whatever reason, is somewhat misleading about Soviet work on the canal and the reconstitution of the Pinsk Naval Flotilla, but there is also misleading information elsewhere which doesn't cover his material.
The Soviets apparently start trying to refloat, repair and rearm the flotilla in 1939 through 1940, as well as rebuilding the (damaged?) port facilities; but some significant number of the new Pinsk Flotilla are coming (per Suvorov) from the lesser half of the previous Dnepr Flotilla disbanded in 1939 upon the Nazi (and then Soviet) invasion of Poland.
Suvorov also implies (in "Icebreaker") that it was the Soviets who dug the canal system from Pripyat River to the Bug; but (as he footnotes in "Chief Culprit") that system had been dug in the 1770s and 80s as the Royal Canal, and the Poles themselves had already partially restored it starting in 1837, with the main work conducted from 1846-48. From 1851 the canal served as the shortest route between Eastern Europe and the Rhine-Atlantic waterway system. In 1919 and 1920 it was completely abandoned once again, during the Soviet invasion(s) of Poland.
Nevertheless, per Suvorov (unsourced), Stalin orders the Red Army (eventually bolstered by the appointment of Zhukov) to work on the Canal with the aid of thousands of gulag prisoners under command of the NKVD. 14 miles of new canal were built near Kobrin to straighten the old canal; Suvorov reports a total of nearly 80 miles were dug under command of Colonel (later Corps of Engineers Marshal) Aleksey Proshlyakov. The Soviet Union at this time owned only a small part of the Bug River, around Brest, beyond which the Bug veers sharply to Warsaw. Suvorov claims that during this time, the Bug carried no commercial traffic, and that even the reconstructed and enlarged canal system was not used for commercial traffic (still too small for heavy tonnage vessels). Conditions are horrible: equipment sinks into the swamps, so the only way to complete the canal by Stalin's deadline is to dig everything by hand. Nobody will know how many gulag prisoners, and soldiers for that matter, died renovating and redigging the canal.
The only mission for the (newly rebuilt) canal was to let ships reach the Vistula Basin and any points west along the Vistula. The Soviet Pinsk Flotilla had all its prows pointed westward, in an area where turning back toward the (narrower and shallower) headwaters would be difficult: the Pripyat being only 160ish feet wide at this new Soviet Naval base, at least five hundred thousand meters from any salt water! Stalin (per Suvorov) has demanded that the canal system be ready by summer 1941, and partly thanks to the eventual oversight of Zhukov they will succeed -- backfilling (not adding) any anti-tank ditches in the area while they go.
post-Winter War: the Soviet Armies of the Finnish border invasion are being redeployed elsewhere (sometimes after nominal disbanding). The 15th Army, one of the new trilogy raised to help defeat the Finnish security corridor, will surface in the Far East. 8th and 9th will move to the borders of the Baltic nations and Romania respectively.
April 14 to April 17, 1940: the Kremlin assembles a council of the supreme command staff to discuss, in Stalin's presence, the Winter War's events. They decide among other things that the 203mm howitzer clearly isn't strong enough to destroy dedicated defensive bunkers created by a nation as rich and powerful as Finland! ::) What could they do then against a nation more powerful and well-equipped than Finland?!
The Soviets do have a 305mm howitzer, but had not brought many to the Winter War theater for obvious reasons: they could hardly operate 205mm guns in those conditions! Still this gun now becomes the prime bunker buster (per "The Winter War, 1939-1940", Vol.2, p.239). This 1939 model B-18, the latest available, weighs 45.7 tons, and fires a shell weighing 330 kg (not counting the powder bags of course). Muzzle speed is 530 m/s, maximum range 16.6 kilometers.
This naturally begs the question of which nation-more-powerful-than-Finland, whose defensive bunkers the Soviets are planning to hit with this weapon...
May 1940: the pre-GRU sends Richard Sorge another message inviting him to come home and be shot in the head as a procedural caution -- also because he's a defector now for not agreeing to return to be shot in the head as a procedural caution. His reply, "Of course, given the current military situation we are postponing return home. Once again assure you, this is not the time to address that issue." By now he ranks as a malicious defector.
Hey, remember the Great Purge of the Soviet military, when Tukhachevsky and his allies were rounded up and shot, and a bunch of other Soviet officers were also arrested but only a relatively small fraction were shot?
May 5, 1940: today the Deputy People's Commissar of Defense, E.A. Shchyadenko, signs the "Report of the Chief of the Command of the Staff Personnel of the Red Army of the Defense Commissariat of the USSR". Well, that sounds sufficiently important! What's this report about?
The concluding phrase of the report sums it up: "Those unjustly dismissed are returned to the army: 12,461 in total by May 1, 1940." This is more than the 10,860 who had been arrested during the Great Purge (1600ish of whom had been slain in the process, during the arrest or shortly afterward).
Wha---how?!? :o :o :o
This number includes many who had been arrested but who have survived in prison until now; and many who had been dismissed from service for political reasons but who had not been arrested.
In effect, the Soviet Union has regained all the officers arrested in the Great Purge and more! -- indeed, while not all the arrested officers (still surviving) return at this time, it is known (claims Suvorov) that the main mass of the remaining officers dismissed for political reasons during the Purge, whether they were arrested or not, will also return after this day, especially in the first half of 1941; for example future Army General A.V. Gorbatov.
Shchyadenko who received and presented the original document about dismissed commanders in 1938 will often be quoted by post-Stalin Soviet propaganda, with the implication that Stalin shot forty thousand of his officers, thereby fatally crippling the Red Army before Hitler's invasion. Shchyadenko's report about the return of most of those who had been dismissed and arrested for political reasons (i.e. "unjustly"), is not nearly so often quoted!
Post-Stalin Soviet propaganda will teach that Stalin executed all the intelligent people and left only idiots in command of the army. German Major-General F.W. von Mellentin, who fought for the Nazis against the Red Army, will have a different opinion in his memoir "Tank Battles 1939-1941", 1998, p.244, "The Russian high command knows its job better than the command of any other army."
May 8, 1940: Nazi state radio announces that Great Britain is planning to invade the Netherlands; while mocking reports, as "ridiculous rumors" propagated by "British warmongers", alleging that two German armies are being moved up to the Dutch border.
May 10, 1940, two days after mocking reports of two German armies being moved up to the Dutch border, the Nazis invade Holland and Belgium as part of a two-prong preparation and invasion of France -- who will be unexpectedly conquered within two months!
The point is this: once Hitler starts moving his armies to the border, he has a very limited window before he can launch surprise operations; during which he tries to sow confusion by blaming the people trying to sound the warning about his invasion, for trying to foist a war or even invade the victim themselves.
Hitler now has ten armored divisions by the way. Better than six? Well, sort of: in effect he still has the same number of tanks (although the proportion of better to worse tanks is better now); but that same number of tanks has been divided into ten divisions rather than into six!
May 1940, Boris Shaposhnikov, father of Soviet mobilization theory, is promoted to the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union, and Deputy of the People's Commissar for Defense.
May 1940: the Red Army until now had designated brigade commanders and upward as "Brigade Commander", "Division Commander", "Corps Commander", and "Army Commander", with small red diamond-style insignias: one for brigade command, two for division, and so on.
This month, Stalin introduces generals' ranks, replacing the diamonds with braids and stars. From brigadier rank upward these are Major-General, Lieutenant-General, Colonel-General, and Army General. (For ease of reference, Suvorov usually applies these ranks backward to equivalent force-commander ranks before this date.)
A government commission carries out an across-the-board reclassification of all senior commanders; and they do not simply shift designations. Most BrigComs become Major-Generals, but some go back to Colonel, and BrigCom Muzychenko promotes to Lieutenant-General. Many Army Commanders demote to Colonel-Generals, such as Gorodovikov, Pavlov, Voronov, and Shtern. Army Commander Kachalov gets demoted twice to Lieutenant-General. Corps Commander Zhukov becomes the first General in the Red Army to be awarded five stars, the first Army General; only two other officers will hold this rank for a while along with him. (Suvorov calls this five-star in Chief Culprit and four-star in Icebreaker. There may be an interpretation error; 5-star would be Marshal of the Soviet Union, 4-star should be Army General, the rank above Colonel-General.)
By June 1940, one thousand and fifty-six of the highest rated "Coms" are translated to generals or admirals, with shifts according to their abilities. But for Stalin, one thousand generals aren't enough. There are so many brigades, divisions, corps, and armies being formed, that generals are often commanding above their rank, and colonels are commanding brigades: no fewer than one hundred colonels are assigned to divisional command! Colonel-Generals should command corps, but Colonel-not-General Fedyuninsky shall serve as the 15th Rifle Corps leader in the 5th Army!
But why transition from the by-now-traditional Soviet "Commander" to "General" title at all? Stalin has no problem purging ranks when he wants to; bullets and imprisonment for (supposed) treason, are much more insulting than demotions, so he isn't trying to spare feelings while he makes adjustments in command ability!
The answer is that, once Hitler turns his back on Stalin to invade the Lowlands and France, Stalin suddenly starts creating job opportunities for talented commanders, and currently a large number of talented Soviet rank "Commanders" are sitting in Lubyanka Prison or in gulags. Quickly many are freed! -- most have been freed, or called back from political dismissal, by May 5th (according to the prior entry on that day), and practically all the rest will be freed from prison by May 1941, and put back to work.
If you're wondering why it sounds like there's a distinction between those freed before May 5th, who are given an apology for their "unjust" imprisonment or dismissal, compared to those set free from prison and given commands again after May 5th -- well, good catch, that's exactly right!
Some re-instituted brigade+ commanders are given apologies that a mistake was made in their case; these are shifted to the newly created General category, like Major-General Rokossovsky (one day to be a Marshal of the Soviet Union). Other Commanders released from prison however -- and this is the important distinction -- keep their "Commander" rank: rank, insignia style, uniform style; BrigCom, DivCom, CorCom. (No ArmComs anymore; those are always commanded by Generals now.)
Both classes of arrested high-rankers have been condemned to die in prison, by long or short methods, then suddenly one group are whisked out, to be given cushy first-class rail transport, filled out at Party-elite health spas, handed back reins of power -- and (as Rossokovsky will put it in his memoirs) given "chances to redeem themselves". The other group are given reins of power, but not usually the new General rank: their old outdated pre-imprisonment ranks of Commander stay the same with all the distinctions, and they are given no guarantees they won't go straight back to prison (or to a firing squad). Performance results may guarantee survival and (relative) freedom.
DivCom Vorozheykin, for example, will be released to become airpower commander for Second Strategic Echelon's 21st Army; by July 1941, despite the disasters of Barbarossa, his performance will earn the shift to Air Force Major-General: a brigadier rank, but no longer a gulag rank. By August 1941, he will be promoted to Red Army Forces Chief of Staff; by 1944 he will be Marshal of the Air Force.
BrigCom Gorbatov, as another example, will be released next year on March 5th 1941: "March 5th I consider the day I was reborn", comparing his ordeal to being buried alive in a coffin during Chekist interrogation and dug out again to continue; something he either saw done or experienced firsthand. An interrogator, releasing him, is assigned as his personal aide: "Here's my number, call me if anything happens, no matter the time, count on me to help!" Gorbatov takes with him a bag of mending patches and galoshes, plus pitch-black pieces of sugar and dried biscuits which he had been keeping in case he got sick and couldn't go for food -- no food would be brought to him. Those will serve as memoirs, and as reminders of what had been done to him -- and might still be done to him again. (From his memoir "Years...Wars", pp.168-169) He becomes Deputy Commander of the 25th Rifle Corps, 19th Army, in the Second Strategic Echelon. He shall also be shifted to General, and promoted to commander of all Soviet Army Airborne Assault forces.
"Coms" will be used for reinforcing the First Strategic Echelon, too. BrigCom Zybin gets 37th Rifle Corps; DivCom Magon, 45th Rifle Corps (both 13th Army); BrigCom Tkachov, 109th Rifle Division in the 9th Special Rifle Corps (more about why it was titled "Special" later!) BrigCom Ivanov becomes Chief of Staff for 6th Army. DivCom Sokolov, CorCom for 16th Mechanized Corps, 12th Army; DivCom Burichenkov, commander of Anti-Aircraft Artillery, Southern Sector. DivCom Alekseyev, Commander of 13th Army Aviation. BrigCom Krushin, Chief of Staff Northwestern Front Aviation; BrigCom Titov, Chief of Artillery, 18th Army.
But many of the newly not-generalized "Commanders" won't be assigned to First Echelon service -- but rather to the Second Strategic Echelon. More about this later...
First half of 1940, undated by Suvorov: General Pavlov, Army General for the Western Special Military District, calls a meeting with his army commanders and chiefs of staff. Preparations are underway for command-and-staff maneuvers, in order to fine-tune how commanders, headquarters staff, and communication networks, are to handle their mission early in a war.
What kind of war? The kind of war where the "Western Front", indicating the start of military operations, must be secretly created (because the start of military ops is also secret)' and where Soviet headquarters will be expected to relocate westward.
4th Army Chief of Staff Sandalov will recall later (as a retired Colonel-General, in his memoir "Overcome", p.65), that at this meeting he joked about where 4th Army headquarters is supposed to relocate -- because at this meeting the plans are for 4th Army HQ to be at the border already! It must be stressed that in a defensive war, HQs should be protected as far back from the front line as feasibly possible, so as to direct defenses in a big picture. Even in a normal offensive war, the HQs aren't supposed to be parked practically at the front line. This only makes sense in a surprise blitzkrieg invasion, such as what the Nazis and Soviets have already done (on much smaller scales) since September 1939; and such as what the Nazis will be doing on June 22nd next year.
General Pavlov, the fourth ranking officer in the Red Army (which is why the Western Special Military District is practicing to become the Western Front HQ), called the meeting together; but he has a special guest attending: the third ranking officer, Army General Tulenyev, commander of the Moscow Military District. It makes sense for the MMD to have such an incredibly high ranking general, just on principle, but to say the least the MMD is not near the border! -- what is he doing here, at a meeting to coordinate headquarters for the armies of the eventual Western Front for moving farther westward? Did he have nothing better to do with his time as, effectively, the military governor of Moscow and its surrounding areas?!
At the risk of spoiling the story much: one day next summer, before the Nazis invade, all his divisions will pack up and be assigned to other armies either already at or moving toward the western border; whereas he shall send all his staff to prepare for the creation of his command of a Front Headquarters. So he has some vested interest in seeing how the eventual Western Front, under his peer Pavlov, is organizing subordinate army headquarters (some of which will be receiving Tulenyev's divisions next summer). In fact, he currently expects to be commanding the Western Front! -- it won't be until February 1941 that Zhukov will insist for Tulenyev to be assigned as commander of the (already planned) Southern Front.
Sandalov meanwhile (as he recalls in his "Overcome" memoir), is explaining to 4th Army Commander Lieutenant-General (and future Marshal of the Soviet Union) Chuikov, recently transferred from the Far East, in deference to General Tulenyev to be sure he has the details correct, "Once enough troops from interior districts have moved up, to reach critical mass, at 4.7 miles per division [translated from metric kilometers], you can advance and be sure to prevail." He's checking with Tulenyev, because a number of those "interior divisions" will come from his Moscow Military District, and also because Tulenyev is currently slated to take command of the Western Front.
Notice that the expectation is that once critical mass is reached, the armies will advance to victory -- that's an offensive move. And, per Suvorov, 4.7 miles per division, about 7.5 kilometers, is a goal for Soviet offensive doctrine.
These plans, of course, are being made before or during Hitler's invasion of the Low Countries and France. Nazi presence on the new shared border(s) is at an all-time low.
Middle and late 1940: during the 30s, Germany had created the Siegfried Line up near the border of French Territory -- and on the periphery of Germany's actual (and previously historical) lines of invasion into France. After Hitler defeats France, he will abandon the Siegfried Line. As reported by Mallory and Ottar, "Architecture of Aggression", p.123, the Germans turn the combat structures over to farmers for storing potatoes. Some facilities they lock from the inside, and then wall up the other exits from the outside. Later, when the Nazis fail to repel the Allied invasions of Europe, the Siegfried Line will have to be re-manned; but the Line had not been in the way of huge moving German forces (who had not attacked against the opposite Maginot Line), so it had not been blown to pieces on Hitler's orders. Yet the keys to some of those steel doors have been lost by 1944 -- no one had thought that Germany would need the Line again.
May 25, 1940, the Soviet government issues a directive that 65 civilian ships must be transferred and adapted for military use to the North Sea fleet; 74 to the Baltic fleet; 76 to the Black Sea Fleet; and 101 to the Pacific fleet. The directive also orders all major shipyards, being under the command of the Shipbuilding Narkomat, to start a regime two extended shifts. For all practical purposes, this is equivalent to wartime production.
May 28, 1940, Belgium capitulates to the Nazis.
May 31, 1940, the heat of the German blitzkrieg in Western Europe. Most of the British Expeditionary Force has fled western Europe from Dunkirk with no equipment, leaving behind all tanks, all artillery, all towing equipment, 63,000 automobiles and trucks, more than half a million tons of ammunition and supplies. (The remainder will evacuate from Normandy ports later under similar danger.) Despite the miracle of Dunkirk's evacuation, British casualties still total more than 68,000. Fewer than one hundred obsolete tanks are left on the British Isles (per Peter Chamberlain and Chris Ellis, "British and American Tanks of World War II", 1969, p.66.)
The British fleet is blockading the German navy. Hitler has two options remaining: fight Britain's fleet, for which he needs his own powerful fleet able to win against Great Britain; or arrange peace with Great Britain -- for which Hitler also needs a powerful fleet, because an enraged Britain will obviously not negotiate with a weak Germany, but would instead demand (at the least) his immediate withdrawal from all occupied territories.
Hitler's most modern ship, the cruiser Lutsow, is still unfinished, and he lags far behind Britain in the number of above-water ships. However, Hitler is also suffering from a terrible deficit in raw materials, mainly thanks to that British blockade which he needs to defeat!
Part of Hitler's answer is to counter-blockade with his submarine fleet; but this does not get him his own raw material supplies. Part of his answer will be to try to force Britain's population to demand peace from their leaders, by destroying Britain's meager airforce in the upcoming Battle of Britain (which will start in July). But Hitler's sub fleet and air forces need those raw materials to operate, much moreso for replacing lost equipment!
What can Hitler do? Who will save the Third Reich now?!
Good friend Hitler! Have no fear! It is your good Comrade, Uncle Joe! :D <:-)
He is already selling you such supplies, though he professes neutrality, yes? He will simply sell you more of what you need to keep your war going! Ah, well, your stolen gold, though valuable, friend Hitler, is no longer valuable enough. But your technology and weaponry, your newest planes, cannons, communication devices, firearms and so forth... what is this? You cannot finish your most modern cruiser? Why, this is worth much fuel and rare minerals for your submarines and planes! Have no worries!
So on this day, the unfinished German cruiser Lutsow arrives in Leningrad, escorted by neutral Stalin's forces through the blockade, delivered to the shipyard of shipbuilding plant #189. A true cruiser, unlike the overarmed destroyer leader Tashkhent (which has finished arming up with the Soviet 130mm cannons this month, entering Black Sea Fleet active duty), this one was not designed from the start to Soviet specifications, so Soviet weapons cannot be mounted. It was decided between the Soviet and Nazi governments that the Lutsov would be built completely according to German designs, and armed with German weaponry supplied by the Nazi government. These are being installed at Leningrad's shipbuilding yard #189. The Lutsow will later be given a Russian instead of Prussian name. Stalin will authorize it to be named the Petropavlovsk.
June 9, 1940: the new People's Commissar for Defense, Marshal of the Soviet Union Semyon K. Timoshenko (who replaced Voroshilov last month, and who served with Meretskov in command of the Winter War), signs a directive on the creation of a Southern Front.
General G.K. Zhukov is nominated to command that front, consisting of the 5th, 9th, and 12th armies.
"Fronts" in Soviet doctrine are only created in wartime, so while the Southern Front doesn't exist quite yet, its creation means the Red Army is planning for a war.
Target: southern Romania.
This little war will be freakishly important to the history of Europe and the world -- in ways nobody involved with this war will be expecting. More on it soon...
June 12, 1940, the order for a total military blockade of Estonia is given to the Soviet Baltic Fleet (per documents published from the State Archive of the Russian Navy, archived on February 19, 2005, at the internet "Wayback Machine", en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_Soviet_Socialist_Republic#cite_note-14).
June 14, 1940, the world's attention is focused on the fall of Paris to Nazi Germany. The Soviet naval blockade of Estonia goes into effect. Two Soviet bombers(!) shoot down a Finnish passenger airplane flying from Tallinn to Helsinki carrying three diplomatic pouches from the US legations in Tallinn, Riga, and Helsinki.
June 16, 1940, Stalin declares that the 1939 mutual assistance treaties with (i.e. forced on) the Baltic States have been violated, and gives six hours for new Soviet governments to be formed! -- from a list of persons for cabinet posts that he helpfully provides! Soviet NKVD border troops go raid Baltic State border posts in Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia.
While the world (starting with Moscow's own propaganda!) continues to mock the Red Army's inability to conquer Finland, the governments and military leaders of the Baltic States had carefully watched the Winter War, and from their observations drew a different conclusion:
the Red Army is capable of carrying out impossible orders, with practically no preparation on a spur of the moment, and will not be stopped by any number of casualties.
To avoid bloodshed and open war, they give orders not to respond to the Soviet ultimatum by forceful resistance.
June 17, 1940, the Red Army deploys from its 1939 military bases within the Baltic States, joined by another 90,000 troops rolling in over the borders, to conquer Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia.
Suvorov exaggerates a little when he says they surrendered without firing a shot. In Estonia, only the Independent Signal Battalion stationed at Raua Street in Tallinn resists, with a battle running several hours until sundown: several casualties including one death on the Estonian side, about 10 killed and more wounded on the Soviet side. Military resistance ends with negotiations and the battalion surrenders to be disarmed.
June 18, 1940, Soviet military operations for the occupation of the Baltic States are complete.
June 21, 1940, the civic occupation of the Baltic states is completed. Rigged, extraordinary single-part parliamentary elections will be held on July 14-15, with a threat running in main Communist newspapers (such as the Estonian Rahva Hääl) that it would be extremely unwise to shirk elections: only enemies of the people stay at home on election day!
For more information on the Soviet takeover of the Baltic States in 1940, see (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_occupation_of_the_Baltic_states_%281940%29) and related links.
June 21, 1940, one year and one day from Barbarossa: even going back to the days of the Civil War, including after the official formation of the USSR, no army has been designated higher than 16th; and only during the Civil War had a 16th Army been created. Today the Soviet Union, in peacetime and without directly expecting invasion from abroad (which will catch them by surprise about one year later), exceeds its previous maximum total of Armies: Marshal Timoshenko signs the People's Commissariat of Defense Decree #4, para 3, forming the 16th and the 17th Armies in the Trans-Baikal region.
Two years earlier, the nation had not been able to afford even one such Army (aside from the loose Red Flag group). Stalin hides the existence of the 16th and especially the 17th Army's creation as long as he can.
He has other reasons to hide the 16th than its milestone as the prior high watermark of Soviet army organizations: this army, precursor of the Second Strategic Echelon, is deliberately designed to be manned by gulag convicts.
It will be commanded until August 1941, by General Lukin, a purge victim and gulag veteran, destined to win distinction in fierce fighting near Smolensk; to be seriously wounded and taken captive; to have a leg amputated;and to be recognized as a hero by the Germans (why? for being persecuted by Stalin, and yet staunchly defending his people). He shall refuse to collaborate, endure four terrible years as a POW, and then Lukin shall be freed -- only to be returned to a penitentiary (though not again a gulag). Lukin's successor to 16th Army command in August will be an eventual Marshal of the Soviet Union, Rokossovsky, also a gulag veteran of the purge.
16th Army is aimed to go westward; 17th Army is intended to stay as garrison in the Trans-Baikal District, which alone of Military Districts has two national areas, the other being in Mongolia. One might expect that the 17th Army is intended to guard against the Japanese retaking the area, or even invading the Soviet Union by the back garage door (so to speak) cutting off the entire Far Eastern Sector! Maybe so, but even in 1940 the 17th Army will be slimmed down to such an extent that for lack of generals the position of deputy army commander will eventually be held by Colonel Poluboyarov. He does a good job though! -- good enough that next summer before Barbarossa, he will be called away to Moscow, just like the T-BMD Commanders, to receive personal orders (not by courier) before being sent to the Northwestern Front HQ.
Wait, like the other commanders (plural)? Yep! Lieutenant-General Remezov commands the MD first this year, 1940, but he will be transferred to command Oryol Military District, which he'll be secretly preparing to transmute into 20th Army and lead it to the German frontier. Then very briefly at the end of this year will come Lieutenant-General Konyev, recently commander of the original Soviet 2nd Army in the Far East Front HQ; but in April 1941, he will be transferred to command of the Northern Caucasus MD, where he'll be secretly preparing to transform it into 19th Army, a mountain-strike formation, and lead it to the Romanian frontier. After him, Lieutenant-General (eventually four-star Army General) Kurochkin will take command, and he'll be the one who finishes transforming T-BMD into 16th Army -- but Remezov starts it, and Konyev will continue it.
16th Army is created by transferring the officers and troops of the Trans-Baikal MD directly into the army 'container' organization. Later this will happen more smoothly with other interior Military Districts; 16th Army is a first conversion test. For example, Major-General Chernyshov used to command the 152nd Division, before being promoted to Chief of Staff, Combat Training for the entire MD. However, as (eventual) Major-General Loboachov relates in his memoir, "Hard Row to Hoe", p.147, "when the Army moved out, Pyotr Nikolayevich declared he would go off to war with his divisions -- and managed to have himself reassigned to the 152nd." Once the T-BMD converts to the 16th Army, the commander (whoever that is) in charge of the 152nd would normally stay in command, now in the 16th Army organization not the MD; but in this case Chernyshov pulls rank and privilege to get assigned back into command of the 152nd.
While typically the interior MD commanders will just shift over to becoming the general of the transformed Army, in this case Kurochkin will eventually send the 16th Army on its way west, doubtless heaving a sigh of relief at having completed his herculean task (with sufficient secrecy). However, on June 13th next year, he will be ordered to report on the double to Moscow to get his next assignment. He'll be on an express train approaching Irkustk when Barbarossa launches next June 22nd. So, with Kurochkin gone, who will be left as the military governor of the region?
No one at all! -- including not 17th Army's deputy commander Poluboyarov who will already be on the way to the Northwestern Front; but not his superior for the 17th Army either. After mid-June 1941, the T-BMD won't get a new commander until sometime in September, 1941.
We'll be covering this again next year as part of the epic day, and week, of June 13th, 1941: a day more Soviet commanders refer to in their memoirs, in more detail, than the start of Barbarossa! Why?! -- we'll see why later.
June 22, 1940, one year to Barbarossa: France falls, concluding the Nazi whirlwind summer campaigns "Case Yellow" and "Case Red" (Fall Gelb und Fall Rott).
Hitler had enough missiles and shells to do this, rather more quickly than even he and (most of) his generals had expected! But he has nothing left if Stalin goes for Germany now. Almost all his armies are in Western Europe, not on his Eastern Front -- which is now an extended border with Stalin's Soviet Union, with no one between as a buffer zone! Hitler has still not shifted Germany over to a wartime production schedule, so he has no strategic reserve even if his armies could magically teleport back over in time to stop Stalin.
Hitler starts securing France and the Lowlands against invasion from Britain (and any allies she might find), which includes sharply stepping up submarine wolfpack raids on Britain's shipping lines (now that Hitler has ports directly out into the Atlantic). It also includes starting preparations for next year's possible Sea Lion campaign, the invasion of Britain (for which the Battle of Britain in the air serves as further preparation -- but mostly a disruption campaign hoping to bully and terrorize Britain into seeking peace for a while). But while he will start the Battle of Britain soon in July, he will still keep Nazi Germany on a peacetime rate of war production!
That sounds insane (and Suvorov often treats Hitler like a fool for not going to a wartime production regimen), but (as Suvorov also acknowledges when this fits his presentation better ::) ) Hitler has no choice.
Germany started the war tied by thousands of fragile strings to the rest of the world. Conducting the Anschluss of the Ruhr and Austria; softly (and later more forcibly) taking over Czechoslovakia; conquering Poland, then Denmark, then Norway, then Belgium, then Holland, then Luxembourg, then France: none of that has solved Germany's raw material supply problem (except maybe iron ore from Norway, and moreso from alliance with neutral Sweden.) Perhaps conquering Yugoslavia and Greece later? Nope! Allying with Romania as a Nazi state puppet helps a lot with the oil, but not enough with other things. Seizing control of huge properties filled with few raw materials has not brought any war-material advantages to Germany, even though Hitler now also controls their means of production. France and Belgium, like Germany itself, has powerful steel-casting industries, but not much iron ore. Bootsoles to battleships need that steel, the lack is so bad that German leaders as high as Goering are seriously considering the possibility of building locomotives from concrete instead! (from Albert Speer's "Memoirs", 1997 Smolensk edition, 1997, pp.312-13.) Thirty-percent of the Nazi metallurgical industry's demand for iron ore is being supplied by neutral Sweden (with Nazi guns to her head) from the richest ore mines in Europe (per Alisov and Khorev's "Economic and Social Geography of the World", 2001, p.448) -- but that's a long way from the very north of Sweden, and across the same Baltic Sea that the Soviet fleet is glaring at. Bridges damaged during Hitler's invasions must be repaired with wooden logs, not steel beams. Damaged railroads must convert secondary lines to single instead of double lines in order to use the rails for repairing the primary lines.
Hitler is also getting much of his lumber from the inexhaustible forests of Sweden and Finland. This is needed for building and restoring railroad ties (between the rails), and for shoring up coal mines (also needed for forging steel). Despite the extensive forests of central Europe, including in Germany and Austria (such as the legendary Black Forest), before Germany invaded Poland there was already a yearly timber shortage of about 6 million tons. This has not been reduced! Instead of wood pulp, they are using potato foliage. (Hitler talks about this himself in his June 5, 1942 table talk, archived by Piker, p.348.)
It is impossible to fight a modern war without nickel; but Germany has no nickle deposits. Finland has the nickel. Notably, during the Winter War, Stalin succeeded in capturing the nickel mines at Petsamo! This by itself accounts for 70 percent of Germany's annual nickel requirements: Stalin had reduced Hitler's ability to make war, so far as to grind him to a halt, unable to stop the Allies from rescuing Europe! -- but then in the spring of 1940 (a few months previously to this date), Stalin returned the mines to Finland according to his peace treaty.
Or rather, not returned entirely: the nickel is now mined according to joint Soviet-Finnish shareholding companies, with the participation of Soviet engineers and workers; and Stalin insisted that the director of the entire operation be a Soviet citizen. Of course, nickel from Petsamo goes to the Soviet Union; but Stalin is allowing Hitler to import it, too, and in the quantities Hitler needs to keep making war. (per the Soviet "History of the Second World War, 1939-1945", Vol.4, p.329.) The Soviet 104th Rifle Division, of the 42nd Rifle Corps, of the 14th Army, under Major-General Morozov, is standing right outside the nickel mines -- keeping Hitler in the war.
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.
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.
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...
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...
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.
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!
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.
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... ^-^
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Final Straws
------------------
November 12, 1940: in a conference with Hitler in Berlin, Molotov presents a long list of territorial claims on behalf of the Soviet Union, especially for German forces to withdraw from Romania. Hitler refuses, claiming a need to garrison his ally, in other words to protect Romania against attack. There is only one probable, or even possible, nation who might attack Romania at this point: the Soviet Union. Hitler asks Stalin, through Molotov, to withdraw Soviet troops from the Danube delta. He gives them a few weeks to consider; but they will not agree to withdraw.
November 13, 1940, Molotov asks Stalin for instructions "about China, Turkey, and our interests regarding the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea." Stalin advises, "Do not expose our interest in Persia... If the Germans suggest a division of Turkey, you can show our cards." Stalin adds that Hitler should be told that the Soviets could propose an Alliance with the Axis but that this "[would] not be possible without a guarantee of our control of Bulgaria and the passage of our troops into Bulgaria." (From the "Foreign Policy Archive of the Russian Federation", Fund 059, Index 1, Case 2314, Sheets 32-33; also from Storage 059, List 1, File 2315, Sheet 35-35a.)
November 13, 1940: this evening, the British air force bomb Berlin, despite assurances from the Nazi government that this could not and would not ever happen. Hitler's diplomatic meeting with Molotov which starts in a luxurious reception room, ends in an underground bomb shelter.
During the meeting, Molotov repeatedly reminds Hitler that without Soviet raw materials, German victories in Europe would have been impossible, and that it will be impossible to continue: "The current status would not have been achieved without the influence of the German-Russian agreement [of August 1939] on the great German victories." (from "It Must be Published: USSR-Germany 1939-1941", p.112.) From the "Foreign Affairs Documents: 1940 thru June 22, 1941", 21:2:61-62, "As far as Germany is concerned, these [1939] agreements secured a safe rear for Germany and played a major role in the development of a military campaign in the West, including France's defeat." From "It Must Be Published", p.112, "Germany, not without the help of the pact with the USSR, was able so quickly and with military glory to execute its operations in Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Holland, and France."
Don't let that wash by without special notice: the Soviet Union is formally and repeatedly acknowledging here that the Nazis would have been unable to wage war effectively without Soviet supply help! The Soviet government insists upon this for diplomatic leverage reasons; and the Nazi government accepts this is true but is regarding that to be beside the point of threatening the Romanian oil supply.
In reply, Hitler tells Molotov that Germany has conquered so much territory in one year of war, that Germany will need one hundred years to develop it. In other words he has no reason to be looking for more living-room (lebensraum) in the direction of Russia. This is true! -- and factors into what Hitler's goals must be in Barbarossa next year, i.e. NOT TO CONQUER AND CONTROL THE LAND (yet).
Moreover, Hitler offers for Germany and the Soviet Union to both move to the south of their borders if space is needed. Molotov agrees to this, in principle at least, but adds that the issue of the Danish straits Store Baelt and Lille Baelt must be discussed, as well as the straits between Denmark and Sweden and Norway (Sund, Kattegat, and Skagerrak). These straits however are a strategic necessity for Nazi Germany who already occupies Denmark.
Hitler tells Molotov, "While the war is going on, Germany is extremely interested in receiving nickel and timber from Finland." Hitler wants to know if Stalin is preparing another war against Finland; and, if so, could it be postponed to a later date? Molotov answers that Finland is already in the Soviet sphere of influence, as per the original 1939 Pact, and so Hitler must remove his troops. Molotov "did not understand why Russia had to postpone the realization of its plans by six months or even a year. After all, the German-Russian pact did not contain any time limits and within their respective spheres of influence neither of the countries had its hands tied." (per "It Must Be Published", p.115.)
Hitler replies that, if Molotov is talking about violating spheres of influence and positioning troops, Stalin has already violated that agreement by invading northern Bukovina and putting troops into it. Why would Stalin bother doing that? The Soviet Union has more than enough oil for both its own internal needs and for export (as Hitler himself benefits from); whereas Nazi Germany absolutely depends on Romanian oil, and will fight to protect it at any cost, including sending a huge number of German troops to Romania -- hinting that Stalin should move away from the Romanian oil. (See also "The Year 1941" Vol.1, p.377.)
Molotov acknowledges that the Soviet Union did indeed take something from Romania, and did indeed violate the 1939 pact on spheres of influence. But the Soviet Union will not give up what it has taken; and also, by the way, Stalin now wants Southern Bukovina and Bulgaria! "The fate of Romania and Hungary also interests the Soviet Union, and under no condition can it ever be indifferent to it!" (per "It Must Be Published", p.125)
Hitler reminds Molotov that they had agreed about the division of Europe in 1939. Molotov replies, "The USSR considers last year's agreement fulfilled, with the exception of the question of Finland... Now it is time to talk about a broader agreement between the USSR and Germany." (from the Foreign Policy Archive of the Russian Federation, Fund 059, Index 1, Case 2315, Sheet 35.)
During these talks tonight, Molotov does not raise questions about the security of the Soviet Union, but Hitler brings up questions of safety from a Soviet invasion of territory crucial to Germany. He receives no satisfactory reply. In the morning, Molotov returns to Moscow. "After Molotov's departure, Hitler gathered his most trusted subordinates, and clearly let them understand that he planned to invade Russia." (Basil Henry Liddel Hart, "The Second World War", Moscow edition, 1976, p.145.)
November 25, 1940: the Soviet Union proposes, to the German ambassador in Moscow, a peace pact between Germany, Italy, Japan, and the USSR -- and repeats the list of demands handed over by Molotov to Hitler 13 days ago. Stalin demands the following areas to be handed over to the Soviet Union:
1.) Pechenga, the only Finnish port on the Barents Sea, and Porkkala-Udd, the strategically located peninsula on the Baltic Sea controlling the entrance to the Gulf of Finland. (Germany has no business requiring Finland to give up anything of the sort, of course.) Also, all Nazi troops must leave Finland.
2.) Naval bases on the Danish side of the straits of Kattegat and Skagerrak, controlling access to the North Sea and to the Baltic. (This would allow the Soviet Union immediate access out of the corked bottle of the Baltic, and would totally surround Hitler's Scandavian naval supply lines.)
3.) A Yugoslavian naval base on the Adriatic Sea. (This would give Stalin a diplomatic pretext to insist upon transition rights for Soviet Naval forces out of the Black Sea and into the Mediterranean.)
4.) A naval base in the Greek port of Thessaloniki. (Ditto! -- and these bases, as per Stalin's invasion of the Baltic States, would be staging grounds for Soviet infantry to erupt from.)
5.) The province of Southern Bukovina in Romania. (Not simply to complete a set! -- this would allow Stalin to stage forces within the Carpathian mountains themselves, instead of only near the mountains. Also, of course, nearer to those all-important Nazi oil fields.)
6.) Bulgaria. Not ceding the whole nation of Bulgaria per se, but relinquishing Nazi interest in favor of being in the Soviet sphere of influence. This has some historical weight at least, in regard to prior Russian pan-Slavic diplomacy, although Bulgaria would be pressured by the Nazis into signing a direct Soviet alliance, which of course would be an immediate permission for Stalin to put in all the troops he wants.
7.) Turkish bases in the Bosporus and Dardanelles. (These would ensure the Soviet Navy could get out to the other Mediterranean bases, and also serve as staging areas for Soviet land forces. The Axis powers have no business ceding Turkish bases, of course.)
8.) Iranian bases in the Persian Gulf. (This would instantly control the flow of Middle Eastern oil to the rest of the world; though again the Axis have no business ceding Iranian territory.)
9.) Land territories south of the Baku-Batumi line (in eastern Turkey, north of Iraq and Iran) transferred to the Soviet sphere of influence. (This isn't the same as ceding actual territory -- belonging to other nations outside the diplomatic agreement! -- but rather just an agreement that the Nazis won't complain if Stalin invades and conquers those areas, as staging for further conquests into the Middle East.)
10.) Last but not least, Japan's renunciation of its oil concessions in the province of Northern Sakhalin. (Essentially undoing Russia's loss to Japan back in their own war before WW1.)
As you might expect, the Axis Powers have no interest, or even capability in some cases, of meeting such ludicrous demands -- not unless Italy and Germany conquer Turkey and Iran first, for example! (Admittedly, they were making plans to get around to that eventually.) The Axis do not bother responding.
November 25, 1940: on the same day that Stalin sends that list of insultingly preposterous demands to the Axis Powers (as part of an offered Axis Alliance with the USSR), the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR, Marshal of the Soviet Union S.K. Timoshenko, and Chief of General Staff of the Red Army General K.A. Meretskov, sign a directive to the staff of the Leningrad Military District (Meretskov's former post before and during the Winter War). Only one original is produced, no copies, and it is labeled top-secret and "of special importance" (a label applying to military operations in wartime).
This directive, extensively quoted by Suvorov in "Chief Culprit", effectively establishes a Northern Front (north of Lake Ladoga in effect, up to the Arctic Ocean), and a Northwestern Front (run from the LMD), for conquering Finland in the event of a war against Finland alone. This plan of action is given the name "S.3-20", and the potential Fronts are ordered to go into action at the moment of a receipt of a coded telegram with the signature of the chief of the general staff reading, "Commence execution of plan S.3-20." (per "The Year 1941", Vol.1, pp418-23.) The directive has no defensive language, such as the typical qualification "if the enemy wages war upon us". Soviet armed forces, land and sea and air, are simply instructed how and where to advance, upon receipt of the command, to the Gulf of Bothnia, to the Aland Islands, and to the Swedish border. The other significant Finnish nickel mines used by Hitler, are at Aland, and of course the Petsamo mines already have a Soviet division standing guard on them; moreover, once the Aland Islands are taken, they act as a sea and air base to obstruct (or redirect!) Swedish iron ore from reaching Germany.
These instructions formally refute the notion that Stalin needed to conquer and occupy the Baltic States to protect himself from Hitler. On the contrary, had Hitler been fool enough to attack them, Soviet forces would have had two or three days to prepare to receive visitors at the Fortified Sectors along the Baltic borders, while Stalin would have easily launched naval and air raids, along with infantry action, to shut down Hitler's access to crucial levels of iron, nickel, and wood. True, Hitler could still have tried with a two week balance of supplies in reserve, but in that case he would not be catching the Red Army (and naval and air force and marines) completely out of defensive arrangement, nor would he be capturing empty Soviet Fortified Sectors for his own use. He would have bounced off the Soviet defenses, and two weeks later that would be the end for him.
A mere announcement from Stalin about the obvious results might have prevented any foolhardy Nazi expeditions. Regardless of what Hitler thought about the Winter War's performance originally, by summer 1940 (when Stalin was taking the Baltic States) Hitler and his generals had decided that Stalin's armies were far too dangerous to meet with German defenses, much less to meet within Soviet defenses, and so must be pre-emptively attacked at their own forming-up areas out of defensive arrangement. Had Stalin in the summer of 1940 declared "Baltic territory will be defended from Nazi aggression as if it was our own," Hitler would have had a reasonably clear object lesson from anything he had learned about Japanese incursions into Mongolia. (Certainly Japan had learned that lesson!) But had Hitler tried anyway, it wouldn't have mattered: Stalin could have shut him down in the attempt, without invading and occupying the Baltic States himself.
But of course, the Soviets had invaded and occupied the Baltic Republics less than 25 years ago already -- while declaring them to be a proper springboard for conquering Imperial Germany in the name of world revolution!
November 26, 1940, from Wehrmacht Chief of Staff Colonel-General Halder's diary, "Horse-drawn carriages for anti-tank weapons." To be fair, they have to break some of their non-direct artillery into pieces for horse-drawn carriages, too. "We have no limbers." Oh. Well, if you don't have any Puerto Rican frozen fruit treats, then maybe you should try conquering Puerto Rico and seizing its property and resources for the people of... wait, wait, sorry! -- he means two-wheeled carts to lift the weighted tail of an artillery piece off the ground (the tail which backstops the gun from rolling when shot, usually), so it can be pulled by a horse.
Soooo, you're going to have to draw your anti-tank guns with horses, but you'll be dragging the tail of the gun behind on the ground...? Oh, no no no no, it's much worse than that! -- because cannons are drawn pointing backward so they can get into position properly for shooting! Your horses will have to pull the guns backward against the tail of the guns! :hide: Sure hope there won't be any mud where you'll be dragging those guns with their tails digging forward into the ground like a plow!
Anything else to report? "We have no capacity to supply our troops in Bulgaria with mountain equipment." Nazis must avoid fighting in Bulgarian mountains; or Nazi troops in Bulgaria must avoid fighting in mountains; got it, don't start a fight in Romania then.
"We have not a single snow-cleaning machine." Be done before it snows, that's the plan.
What if you have to take over some cities along the way? "It is impossible to maintain a strict control over the large cities of France." Hm, you'll need to be done and gone fast enough not to need to control any large cities like for example Smolensk. Or literally any city on the road to Moscow. Or Moscow, of course, but you should win long before then.
"The empire's railroads in the future will be unable to work under such strain as today." This quote doesn't make much sense; Suvorov should have included some context! But his point of course is to debunk the idea that Nazi Germany won by being an amazing technological powerhouse against the primitive backward Slavic goofballs and their goat trails for roads. (Though the goat trails for roads is correct enough at this time.)
November 27, 1941, Halder's diary again: "Operations to take over the endless Russian spaces will not be successful." Well, to be fair, you haven't heard details about the actual operational goal yet, but yes, of course, obviously. (Or maybe Suvorov has omitted some context showing that Halder knows the plan and is commenting on why the Nazis won't in fact be trying to conquer the endless Russian spaces...?)
November 29, 1940: a large strategic game on maps starts in Berlin, supervised by Major-General Friedrich Paulus, the First Oberkvartirmeister (Over-quartermaster) of the General Staff of the Ground Forces. This game is divided into three stages: first, the invasion of Soviet territory by Nazi troops with border battles; second, the Nazi advance to the Minsk-Kiev Line; third, the destruction of the Red Army's final reserves, assuming any are to be found east of that line. The German team doesn't work out how they would reach Kursk, Moscow, or Stalingrad. Here, by the way, Suvorov explicitly acknowledges (in "Chief Culprit") that Hitler was not desperately trying to do something he could never have done, by conquering Russia, or even west of the Urals, or even as far east as Moscow, in one autumn. "The generals thought that one blow would bring down the entire Soviet Union and send the Red Army on the run." This is a reference to Hitler's famous quip about kicking in the door to collapse the whole rotten house. The main debriefing of all stages of the game ends on December 13th.
The game is run in real-time, so two full weeks to December 12th, with another day for final debriefing. This is highly direct evidence that, regardless of any further goals, Hitler and the Oberkommand intends to achieve their victory over Stalin in three weeks: two weeks nominally with a cushion of a week.
End of 1940: east of the Trans-Baikal and (to some extent) Siberian Military Districts, is the Russian Far East region. Starting toward the end of 1940, whole divisions and corps along with their generals and other officers are being secretly transferred westward from the Far East at an ever-increasing pace. This includes many top-level commanders without equivalent or even sometimes any replacements; for example, Major-General Kotov, the Chief of the Operations Division of Far Eastern Front HQ, was called back west and no one took his place.
Colonel Grigoryenko at the Far Eastern Front HQ, later a Major-General himself, will recall (unsourced directly by Suvorov) that along with many other top field commanders, Soviet High Command called away Lieutenant-General (later Marshal of the Soviet Union) Ivan Stepanovich Konyev, commander of the original Soviet 2nd Army, assigned to the creation and deployment of a mountain-strike army (the 19th Army) in the Northern Caucasus MD, after a brief stint commanding the Trans-Baikal MD, to be deployed on the Romanian frontier; and Lieutenant-General (eventually four-star Army General) Markian Mikhailovich Popov, commander of the original Soviet 1st Army.
Lieutenant-General Vasily Ivanovich Chuikov will be sent to command the 4th Army, where by next year he will be dryly joking with Sandalov about how obvious the Soviet fortifications are on the border where the Nazis can see them! Popov will be commander of the Northern Front on the western border before June 22nd, 1941.
December 3, 1940, Halder's diary again: "The fuel situation is bad. The tire situation is very bad." Unclear if this also applies to the wargame operation the Nazis are currently testing, but yep, that's why you're planning to win in three weeks! With two weeks of supplies!
December 4, 1940, Halder's diary again: "Too little artillery." Again, unclear about whether this also applies to the ongoing operational wargame.
December 13, 1940, the same day as the general debriefing of the Nazi wargame simulating Barbarossa, Halder's diary again: "Capturing Moscow does not have much significance (in Hitler's opinion)... the air forces are facing a war on two fronts." While the main air war will be on the East Front, the British will be steadily scaling back up their own attacks on the mainland -- and moreso if the United States ever gets into the war! The Nazis must at least try to defend their industry from being harassed, or bombed back to the horse and cart age (...moreso than they already are... ::) ), and that will divert air power from the Eastern Front.
December 18, 1940: five days after the general debriefing of the wargamed invasion of Russia, Hitler approves plans and preparations for "Operation Barbarossa", drawn up since he and his generals agreed in July that they would have to fight and beat the Soviet Union sooner rather than later. Expected time to win: three weeks. Operational supplies available: two weeks. (Moreso for some crucial supplies than for others, of course.) Colonel-General Jodl reports somewhere that in an argument with Guderian about Barbarossa, Hitler snipped, "You want to invade without oil! -- well, we shall see what comes out of this."
The great British war historian Liddle-Hart, having exhaustively researched this topic, later agrees with the conclusion reached by Hitler and his generals back in July 1940: if the Soviets will not withdraw, then the only way to defend the Romanian oilfields must be to launch an invasion somewhere else, strong enough and damaging enough divert the Red Army from the oil fields.
The attack must be powerful, sudden, and so strong that the planners eventually had to assign virtually all German ground forces and most of the air force. It cannot simply divert a threat to Romanian oil: it must outright win by shattering the Soviet armed forces beyond the government's ability to stay in power, and it can only win if the attack takes advantage of Stalin being similarly out of position to defend himself from attack.
The attack will be so large that German forces can only bring two weeks of supplies; but they know they can capture more at the border thanks to Stalin massing his own forces in a similar arrangement to their blitzkrieg preparations. They estimate they will need three weeks to win -- but their wargame, just played, ended in two weeks.
In the Open Directive #21, ordering Barbarossa, Hitler included, "The end goal of the operation is the creation of a protective barrier against Asian Russia along the line Volga-Astrakhan. In this manner, in case of need, the last industrial region the Russians have left in the Urals could be paralyzed using aviation."
Three weeks to conquer all of Russia!? Of course not. Three weeks to conquer Russia out to the Volga-Astrakhansk line? Not possible. Three weeks to simply conquer Moscow?! Not that either. Three weeks to reach the Caucus oilfields, capture, and secure them against Soviet reprisals?! Even less possible than conquering Moscow.
A handful of Nazi tanks might reach the right bank of the Volga, beyond Moscow, before autumn mud arrives, starting from the Polish or Romanian border, without any resistance, in late June. Walking there, maybe not possible; driving there in a tank, maybe. However, German tank motors don't have the range to reach that distance in one drive without falling apart and needing to be replaced -- twice! -- which naturally would take a day or two, twice. But they might get there by then, on Russia's notorious goat-path roads, and offroad where that might be better, if someone could reliably fuel them along the way.
To get long-range bombing bases on the other side of the Volga, Hitler has to solidly conquer and control Russia that far. Even without resistance, that's now a front line longer than the United States eastern coastline driving eastward. Those tank motors will still have to be replaced twice, even without military resistance; only now we're talking two or three weeks at best for each replacement, twice! That's assuming the motors are available, and can be gotten eastward in time (farther eastward each time.) This also assumes fuel can be kept going for all those tanks that far -- through friendly territory? Enemy?
Once the panzer corps arrive (around October, if everything goes right) and they secure the Volga-Astrakhansk line (on the right side of the Volga, having crossed the bridges of course), there are few air bases in the area, none of which are suitable for long-range bombers; and long-range four-engine heavy bombers will be needed to shut down Ural production from this range. Thus long-range bomber bases will need to be built. In October, the area is a bare, wet steppe. One month later it will be a bare, frozen steppe. All the equipment for making these bases must be brought out over the Volga, and supplied of course.
Now it is March 1942, let us say, and bases with personnel exist for enough long-range bombers to do the job, all of them being supplied by occult rituals researched by the Nazi magicians through more-or-less hostile territory between the eastern Volga area and Nazi-occupied western Europe thousands of kilometers away. Opps, Hitler has no long-range bombers in production yet! He has plans for them, but they won't arrive until 1943, assuming he can secure materials and manpower to construct them; meanwhile he has some very respectable medium-ranged bombers which can't do this job: they can do overflights for scouting the Ural production regions, carrying only fuel, no bombs, from bases on the Volga.
Now it is September 1943, and Hitler has the bombers. Meanwhile he has been building fuel lines from captured Caucasus regions to refineries to create fuel and lubricants for the bombers. Suppose he now has a minimum of one thousand all-weather long-range high-altitude bombers capable of operating in Russian steppe autumn rains and winter ice. How many bombs should he have on hand to get his bombing campaign going at last? Thousands of tons? Hm, no, far too little. Hundreds of thousands of tons? Getting there. There might need to be more than Hitler could throw at Great Britain from August 12th, 1940, to May 12th, 1941 -- which wasn't sufficient to shut down UK production! How are these bombs going to arrive on the eastern Volga region? -- they can't be piped in like oil! In fact they have to be carried by rail, and then by trucks where there aren't any rails. Hopefully the rail network is sufficient in this area for this purpose. (It probably is, despite Suvorov's assertion of few rail lines: after all, Stalin will be shipping an unimaginable number of rail cars through this region bringing the Second Strategic Echelon, and the eastern portions of the First Echelon.)
Suppose the rail lines offload near the new airbases (reasonably placed), so that transport trucks don't have to burn much fuel to get them to the airbases and onto the bombers. The Nazis might be strong enough to keep control of the gigantic front line, but they'll be spread very thin trying to keep control of enough rail line to supply the bombs and other supplies, and the personnel, to the airbases. Have we accounted for fighter escort, and combat air patrols to ward off counter-bombing?
None of that is happening in three weeks. Hitler and his generals know this. The end goal for this operation isn't something they intend to achieve in an "operational" timeframe. On the other hand, some of Hitler's generals didn't seem to grasp the concept, or maybe had a more pessimistic opinion about the whole rotten structure crumbling. Colonel-General Hermann Hoth, commander of the 3rd Tank Group, will write in his memoir "Tank Operations", Smolensk edition 1999, p.34, "The objective of destroying the centers of the war industry located farther east was delegated to the air force. These were utopian plans. The radius of action of German bombers then was one thousand kilometers. Even if it had been possible to reach the projected Volga-Arkhangelsk line (which was planned for one campaign, i.e. three to four months [unclear if this is his parenthesis or Suvorov's]), the bomber radius was not sufficient to disrupt the functioning of industry in the Ural and the Sverdlovsk regions. And even Sverdlovsk is not the end of the world." All true! -- but the feasibility of reaching that 'utopian plan' depends on whether the Soviet government can be made to collapse by destroying the vast bulk of its army quickly.
Colonel-General Heinz Guderian, commander of the 2nd Panzer Group, will recount (in "A Soldier's Memoirs", p.191), "When they unfolded a map of Russia before me, I could not believe my eyes. Everything that I considered impossible, I was supposed to make into reality?" Blumentritt, in "The Wehrmach's Fateful Decisions", p.76, reports General Field Marshal Karl von Rundstedt, Commander of Army Group South, complaining, "Just look at these vast territories! We cannot crush the enemy and occupy all of Western Russia from the Baltic to the Black Sea in just a few months!" But if the Red Army is crushed in three weeks, you don't have to occupy anything this year; you can go home for the autumn and the winter, let the Russians fight among each other over the corpse of the Soviet government (and over Lenin's tomb and Stalin's drawn and quartered body in the street), and come back later for a more focused campaign.
Once revolts are inspired against Stalin's cruel tyranny by destroying his military power, the oil in Romania is secure, and Hitler can focus on getting to more oil in the Caucuses and Middle East, at more leisure. He doesn't have to focus much on shutting down war production in the Urals (not to say the unspeakable distances beyond the Urals), because with the Soviet government in turmoil from civil war and revolutionary (or counter-revolutionary) uprisings, there will be very little organized industrial action against the Nazis for several years. By the time there might be organized industrial warfare again, airbases can be ready to go. (Maybe.)
All the Nazis have to do to win World War Two at this point, at least in Europe, is not be Nazis.
Also, it will help if Stalin doesn't have a giant wad of more armies already starting their deploying westward from beyond the Urals, with God forbid another giant wad of more armies scheduled to start on the way after that! If that happens, the Nazi invasion will probably fail, although having started up those steppes (figuratively and literally) to Leningrad, Rostov, and Moscow, they'll have to keep trying anyway and hope for the best. On the other hand, if Stalin has destroyed all his internal defenses, which would seem the height of insanity with Nazis on his border now (but which in fact Stalin has been doing since September 1939), then as long as the Nazis stop being Nazis, they still might be able to win if they can keep catching weak and untrained rookie armies de-training.
Spoiler: Hitler and the Nazis don't even try to stop being Nazis. ::) L:-) :crazy2: :uglystupid2:
And they will have no idea about the Second Strategic Echelon already on the way to the western border, much less the Third Strategic Reserve Echelon trained for occupational usage against civilian uprisings on a continental scale -- nor any idea about the totally separate air-mobile armies being prepared in the depths of Russia off to the side, which are not even being planned for deployment yet. They will not even be fully aware how large the First Strategic Echelon is!
Suvorov thinks Stalin has made a rare foolish move here, provoking Hitler by threatening that Romanian oil. Perhaps; but Suvorov can't figure out why Stalin made such an apparent blunder. Stalin could have triggered Germany's collapse by rolling on immediately to Ploeshti, or by waiting to see if Hitler would ever get around to invading Britain and then hitting the oil. However, Stalin takes one step into Romania (or two if the Danube fleet area counts), making preparations, and stops, clearly signaling his interest in the oil.
So, why would Stalin take that step at all and stop?
I think the answer is that Stalin, in accordance with his overall post-Leninist political strategy, and in concert with the other preparations which Suvorov reports, was thinking of taking all of Europe at one swoop. For that purpose, even just to hold the territory and pacify it, he needed not just the 1st Strategic Echelon, already gathering on the borders in the summer of 1940, along with the airmobile armies preparing to deploy behind the 1st Echelon for leaping over them, but also the 2nd Echelon he is starting to move in December of 1940, and the 3rd Reserve Echelon armies he is already working on. The 2nd Echelon has some quality troops, as well as a lot of merely warm bodies to overwhelm defenses and to hold ground; the 3rd Echelon mostly has warm bodies to hold ground, nearly useless in defense except as road-bumps for an enemy to waste resources climbing over.
But these are freakishly huge numbers of troops, being built up from Soviet universal conscription. They not only need to win Europe, they basically have to loot Europe to survive: as Suvorov reports elsewhere, Stalin's mobilization efforts during harvest season of 1939 mean that the harvests of 1939, and moreso 1940 and 1941, have been greatly curtailed. Stalin has to go in summer 1941 or send the troops back home to not-starve, probably with some real danger of disaffected troops staging a revolution against him (not unlike what happened when Lenin called for two million troops to lay down arms and come home, back in 1917.) If Stalin goes in 1941, that means the harvest will definitely not be cropped, so he must capture all of Europe and take their harvests.
Thinking on this larger scale, how can Stalin be sure to beat Hitler's military as quickly as possible? -- only if he goads Hitler into massing a similar invasion force on Stalin's border, far out of defensive arrangement, to be clobbered by Stalin's vastly much larger blitzkrieg preparations.
And Zhukov's limited invasion of Bessarabia decisively triggers that Nazi move.
It might still be a timing mistake, although on this plan the main timing mistake is that Hitler seems to have realized what Stalin was looking for (evidence of winter invasion preparations) and spoofed him on that, practically guaranteeing that Stalin would be caught off guard. However, Stalin would be well aware that (as Michael Caine puts it, playing Stalin in "When Lions Roared") "they [the Allies] will never accept so much red on the map. Never. Never!" Stalin and his regime have been declaring their intention to conquer the whole world as a constant political goal since at least 1919, even with the design of their diplomatic flag! A quick strike in 1940 might easily stop World War 2 by killing the Nazi supply of oil; but if the Nazi regime falls, and he doesn't have overwhelming force to swallow Europe immediately without German troops and equipment still in the way (and needing much less oil to defend their territory), the Germans might very well be supplied by the Allies to stop him in turn! Which, eventually, is what practically happens in 1945.
Stalin's best shot at taking all of Europe is to get the Germans in position to be totally and quickly wiped off the board before they can be bolstered by Allied aid, the way he himself has been bolstered by Allied aid.
And the step toward the oil just so happens to trigger the exact situation Stalin needs to win it all.
If he can strike with overwhelming power first.
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