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History, Reference, Research, and GrogTalk => Military (and other) History => Topic started by: JasonPratt on May 29, 2020, 06:31:25 PM

Title: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on May 29, 2020, 06:31:25 PM
For the prior thread of my Icebreaker Thesis Chronology project, click here (http://www.grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=24444.msg667653#msg667653).

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


At long last we have arrived at entries for June 13th, 1941 -- which I'll try to time to be done on our current June 13th this year. After which, the entries will seriously spike to try to be done in time for June 22nd. Just like the final moves in Stalin's Grand Strategy preparation!  :coolsmiley:

So, why is June 13th so important? -- enough that references to this day dwarf the recollections of June 22nd (the catastrophic invasion of Russia by the Nazis) in officer memoirs and interviews afterward?? And why did I title this thread "The Greatest In All History"?

I think I've already said why in some earlier posts, but I'll be explaining it again soon. Allow me some cheap drama meanwhile!  ;D

Tomorrow's first entry for this day in history will be (relatively) more mundane, and fairly brief, but I decided to set up the thread and its crosslinks tonight.
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on May 30, 2020, 10:32:15 AM
June 13, 1941: nine days before the Nazi invasion, the head of the Foreign Press Department of Germany's Propaganda Ministry, Karl Böhmer, is standing before a Nazi People's Tribunal; because back on May 24th, he had let an intoxicated tongue wag about future relations with the Soviet Union -- for which he had been immediately arrested.

Now he labels his utterances as drunken ravings: of course there will be no war between Germany and the Soviet Union! He is punished harshly.

Goebbels complains in his diary about Hitler personally taking care of this case, because doing that calls too much attention to the Soviet situation.
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on May 30, 2020, 10:30:45 PM
Since I'm likely to be out of pocket at odd times 'tomorrow' (May 31st current history), I'm posting the next entry a couple of hours early, strictly speaking. ;)


June 13, 1941: nine days before the Nazi invasion, TASS (the Soviet news agency, run by the government, ultimately by Stalin) puts out a story announcing the start of full redeployment of the Second Strategic Echelon to the western areas of the USSR.

The Soviet government doesn't call this what it truly is, of course: TASS claims this is a routine transfer of reservists heading for maneuvers.

In reality:

it is the single greatest logistic triumph in all of human history!

-- after the previous one, for moving elements of the First Strategic Echelon to the western border.

Why is this one greater when the prior one involved moving more divisions? Because the Second Echelon aren't the only divisions on the move. More on this soon.

The TASS statement also asserts, "Germany is abiding by the terms of the Soviet-German non-aggression pact as unswervingly as the Soviet Union," which is very strictly true although phrased in a misleading way (since both sides are preparing to torch that pact fatally), and adds, "these rumors [about preparations underway for a German invasion of the USSR] are clumsy propaganda concocted by forces hostile to the USSR and Germany, keen on unleashing war on a still wider scale..." Who are these hostile forces? "British Ambassador to Moscow Cripps", "London", and "the English press". Leading Soviet newspapers will print the report the next day (June 14th).

After the war ends in 1945, Stalin will purge the TASS, but not on charges of treasonously misleading the Soviet people to be unprepared for a Nazi invasion. And anyway, not only does the report bear his signature style, but he had to have approved a draft. This is why afterward not only the Western press, but even the Soviet press -- still under Stalin's tight control! -- will ridicule Stalin himself for this report.
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 01, 2020, 08:52:47 AM
This leads to the question: who is Stalin even trying to convince here, that rumors of an invasion by Germany are only clumsy falsehoods made by traitors and enemies, particularly the British government (down to names of ambassadors), who want to see the World War spread to Russia?

He has not been telling this to his military commanders; he has been telling them to get ready to fight, and to fight hard, and to disregard any propaganda about peace, and lately also to be ready for surprises! Eventual Marshal of the Soviet Union Vasilyevsky will later say in his memoir ("Life-Long Cause", p.120), that the June 13 TASS statement was "followed by no fundamentally new instructions regarding the Armed Forces nor any revision of decisions already adopted." Nothing changed for the General Staff's job, nor in the People's Commissariat for Defense (the Narkomats), and "nothing was supposed to change... But because no directives followed it, we quickly realized that [the TASS statement] was irrelevant both for the armed forces and for the nation as a whole." (My emphasis.)

(Note: in "Chief Culprit", the footnotes for chapter 34, which focuses on June 13, 1941, are badly out of synch, leading to problems with citations, starting here. In "Icebreaker" the footnotes are correct but not as extensive. I've done my best to resynch the Chief Culprit footnote references, a task which quickly gave me blinding headaches! -- but I may have missed a few.)

The USSR Ministry of Defense Archives, Collection 344, Catalogue 2459, Dossier 11, p.31, is a sample of orders coming down to military districts, for example in the Baltic MD, opposite in character to the TASS report; thus also in military newspapers (as reported by Vice Admiral Azarov's memoir "Odessa Under Siege", p.16.)
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 02, 2020, 08:36:00 AM
According to Khvostov and Major-General Grylev, writing in "Communist", 1968, #12, p.68, on June 13th, Molotov summons the Nazi ambassador to Moscow and hands him the text of the TASS statement.

Meanwhile, in London, the home and origin of this infamous conspiracy (according to the TASS release), Soviet Ambassador Maisky meets with British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden -- but not to throw a tantrum and demand the recall of British Ambassador Cripps!

Instead, they have a friendly discussion about the steps Great Britain would take to help the Red Army "if in the near future war breaks out between the USSR and Germany": the same phraseology and word order of the TASS Statement, not specifically if Germany attacks Russia! ("History of the Second World War 1939-1945", Vol.3, p.352)

Among the specifics: direct use of British air power in combat operations to support the Red Army, military supplies, and military command coordination between the two countries.

Remember, the Soviet Union currently stands not only in a non-aggression treaty but even a Friendship Treaty with Nazi Germany! -- and on this very day the USSR is blaming the British government and its ambassadors for spreading false rumors of crazy-strong Nazi and Soviet military buildups on the border, for the purpose of goading the two sides into war with each other!

Stalin does not abrogate the Nazi Friendship Treaty; he tells Molotov to tell the Nazi ambassador that they are still fast friends, while handing him his own copy of the TASS Statement, and uses the TASS Statement to unmask "those who want to widen the war".

Maisky will later, after the war, write "Who Helped Hitler", blaming Great Britain and France, Hitler's victims, for "countless victims and sufferings" by, supposedly, helping Hitler start WW2.
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 03, 2020, 07:26:55 AM
Also on June 13, 1941, nine days before the Nazi invasion, the remaining eight specter armies (after the historical 17th, breaking the prior Soviet record dating back to Lenin's Revolution!), activate for organized operations: 18th, 19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd, 24th, the 25th (against Japan), and the 28th.

Some will be rolled up immediately to help the First Strategic Echelon (the 23rd having been already activated for this purpose); others (including the previously activated 16th Army, itself matching the previous record for maximum Soviet armies) will be part of the Second Strategic Echelon.

Are these normal armies (perhaps even only small or medium sized rifle corps in effect)? -- or strike armies?

Typically they are two corps of three divisions each, not a strike force and a little small for conventional armies, but some are receiving special training (like airborne assault operations for the Siberian 24th.) Most will have no mechanized corps (i.e. tank corps by Soviet political nomenclature), but that makes sense for the distances that most will have to be railed, including over (or off) the Urals. But there are standalone mechanized corps in the west which can be added to beef up any army; and the armies forming off the Urals will have tanks. Once the "covering armies" of the First Echelon have taken up their beachhead positions (analogically) on enemy territory, their own mechanized corps can be transferred to the leaner Second Echelon anyway. But some, like the 16th and 19th armies, will be strike and super-strike armies (with mountain strike capabilities for the 19th). More on these later.

(Suvorov is a little porous about which armies count as First or Second Echelon, due to some of the Armies after the 15th being slated for immediate support of the front-line covering armies. The 17th and 25th Armies are slated to stay in the Far East in case Japan gets frisky again.)

Note that, according to the Central Archive of the Defense Ministry of the Russian Federation, Fund 16, Index 2951, Case 406, Sheets 109-19, three of these armies by themselves (the 21st Army from the Volga MD; the 22nd Army from the Urals MD; and the 16th Army from the Trans-Baikal MD), need a total together of 939 railroad trains! "Trains" is how Suvorov's English translation of "Chief Culprit" describes them; even for three armies that seems excessive, so perhaps he meant 939 railroad wagons? No, he means trains (from his description a little afterward in the same chapter 34 of "Chief Culprit", though on a different topic): "thousands of railroad cars are needed for the transfer of even one army. They have to be sent to the station of departure, loaded with the army, heavy weapons, and reserves [and all kinds of supplies], and then cross thousands of kilometers." So yes, he means around eighteen thousand rail cars for these three out of the total eight armies. (As will be seen later, while one of the new armies is supposed to stay behind to help guard the Far East, in practice most of its troops will be deployed west, too.)
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 04, 2020, 08:12:10 AM
To reiterate, on June 13th , 1941, the Soviet Union launches the largest troop transfer in human history so far! -- even down to the present day!

Why? Because everything of the 56 divisions already deployed up next to the border (in the previous record troop transfer of human history!), is ordered to move even closer, as far as humanly possible: they don't have far to go, but their orders for synchronized movement were sent one month earlier (May 13th) along with the other more distant preparations. On top of that another 114 divisions of the First and Second Strategic Echelon, whether near the border or still much farther back in-country, are ordered to move up to the border. (The other 21 divisions are NKVD, already at the border, so effectively also First Echelon but not counted that way by Suvorov, which also affects his tallies occasionally.)

Five of the eight missing but now activated armies immediately deploy westward (per General Shtemyenko's "General Staff during the War Years", p.26): "Right before the beginning of the war, under the strictest secrecy, additional forces began to gather in the border forests. Five armies were transferred from the depth of the country toward the borders." The other three armies are being readied (per General S.P. Ivanov's "Opening Phase of the War", p.211.)

Why not all eight at once? Partly because one of them is intended to stay near Japan; but mostly because February, March, April, and May, had already seen freakish record-breaking levels of railway military transport bringing troops westward. Now another 77 tank, motorized, and rifle divisions (of the Second Strategic Echelon), plus hundreds of unattached reserve regiments and battalions, are on the move from the Far East westward: even after years and even decades of preparation, there aren't enough railcars and rail wagons for all the armies! (cf G.D. Plaskov's "Artillery Thunder", 1974, p.125.)

For example, from "Transport in the Great Patriotic War, 1941-45", 1981, p.41, "From May through early June, the USSR transport system had to trans-ship some 800,000 reservists... These transport operations had to be conducted under cover..."  It is interesting that this citation describes these as reservists; does the author mean this statistic isn't even counting the troops of the standing core of the divisions?

From eventual Colonel-General Lyudnikov (JMH, 1966, #9, p.66), "In May... an airborne corps was massed in the Zhitomir area and forests to the southwest." Marshal Bagramayan from his JMH article (1967, #1, p.62), on May 25th, "Our forces welcomed the command of 31st Rifle Division from the Far East... During the latter half of May an order came down from General Staff directing us to take in from North Caucasus Military District the command of 34th Rifle Corps, four 12-thousand strong divisions and one mountain ranger division... In short order we had to find room for virtually an entire army... At the end of May one after another troop train started pulling into the district. Ops turned into something like a dispatch center flooded by information about arriving troops." By June 13th, not enough railcars had returned back east (from prior trips west) to embark everyone; only the strong majority of armies could go.
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 05, 2020, 12:45:40 PM
Meanwhile on June 13, 1941, as previously noted, the armies of the First Strategic Echelon already stacked at or near the western border, start shifting on this day even closer to the border. Currently they number only (!) three million troops, but their numbers are growing steadily.

Eventual Marshal of the Soviet Union Kurkotkin will later write (in Soviet Armed Forces Logistics in the Great Patriotic War 1941-45, p.216), that central stockpiles suddenly empty out at this time, with virtually no clothing and footgear remaining.

Why? -- because the military units marching toward the international border are carrying with them all their reserves of clothing and footwear.

He means armies, corps, and divisions, on the Soviet western front, are hauling around clothing and footwear for millions of reservists who aren't even there -- yet.

This means their leaders expect multi-millions more to come get their clothing and boots from the First Strategic Echelon: not from the supply depots, more safely in the rear, from which the reservists could safely deploy to fill out defensive formations.
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 07, 2020, 10:13:29 AM
Whoops, forgot yesterday's entry!

Part of this shift toward the border by the First Echelon (and early arrivals from the Second Echelon), involves corps headquarters stepping into a second stage of redeployment. Forests near the border have already been chosen by the corps' Operations Sections; approved by the senior commander of each corps; and cordoned off by initial security sweeps. Starting today (June 13th), engineers and communications types arrive to start setting up screening and comm systems. The comms officer for each HQ will eventually arrive to make sure everything works; then the HQ contingent itself will appear.

Suvorov notes that in the later recollections of marshals, generals, and admirals, their details about June 13th unquestionably dwarf their details about June 22nd. This is partly due to the organizational activation of the remaining specter armies (up through the 28th); partly due to the remaining Far Eastern Armies being told to embark and get moving westward that very day (except at night, not during the day, with unprecedented levels of secrecy); partly due to the armies already on the border having been told a month ago that today they will start moving even closer to the border -- and partly due to a technical detail in their operational orders.

Major-General Biryukov of 186th Rifle Division, 62nd Corps, Urals Military District, is a typical example (from a JMH article, 1962, #4, p80), "June 13, 1941, we received from military district headquarters a directive "of special importance", in accordance with which the division was to move to a 'new camp'." Biryukov himself puts quotes around 'new camp', by the way: he knows perfectly well he isn't talking about a new camp; not a new permanent station anyway.

"Where the new quarters would be, was not divulged even to me, as division commander. In fact, only while passing through Moscow did I learn our division was to be massed in the forests west of Idritsa." That new location is in Byelorussia; deploying in forests, means a secret deployment, just like the Nazis have been doing, and will continue to do, on their side of the border. They will join the 22nd Army container organization activated on this day (Lieutenant-General Yershakov in charge).

According to the History of the Red Banner Ural MD (1983, p.104), the 186th is one of the last to roll out. "The 112th Rifle Division was the first to begin loading. On the morning of June 13th, the train left the small railroad station... Other trains followed. Then began the loading of units from the 98th, 153rd, and 186th Rifle Divisions." After the 186th, the 170th and 174th Rifle Divisions followed, then artillery, sapper, and finally anti-tank units (the only properly defensive units in this army!)
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 07, 2020, 10:22:06 AM
The technical detail here in their operational orders, which will draw special attention in memoirs and interviews later, is the term "of special importance".

This is a technical term in the Soviet military (per Suvorov), similar to secret or top-secret, with two differences: first, "special importance" orders are the highest level of security documents capable of leaving the Kremlin (the next more secret being "secret file", for which only one print is made, never to leave the Kremlin); and second, "special importance" orders are never given to division-level formations in peacetime, only in wartime, and then only in situations of (as it says) special importance. Some divisions in four years of war afterward never received such ultra-secret wartime orders.

But plenty of division-level units get that "special importance" order on June 13th! -- including, for example, all the divisions in the Urals Military District.

One of many such records of that order, is the "Directive from the People's Commissar for Defense of the USSR and the Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army, to the Military Council of the Kiev Special Military District", kept in the Central Archive of the Defense Ministry of the Russian Federation, Fund 16, Index 2951, Case 21, Sheets 20-21. This directive, signed by Zhukov and by his superior Timoshenko, orders the "transfer [of] all deep-rear divisions, and corps commands with the corps formations, to new camps closer to the state border..." There's the 'new camp' term which Biryukov archly emphasized, by the way. "[K]eep the transfer of troops completely secret. March at night and conduct tactical training [along the way]. Take along with the troops all movable reserves of ammunition and fuel."

This is referring to the five rifle corps and four motorized corps camped behind the four more forward armies already in the Kiev MD. According to this directive, the 31st, 36th, 37th, 49th, and 55th Rifle Corps started moving to the border. These aren't opportunistic paper corps either: each is three divisions with 966 artillery (guns and mortars), 2100 machine guns, and more than 2000 automobiles (trucks and cars), plus 50,000 troops and officers. Thus five corps total a quarter of a million men. That doesn't even count the four motorized corps yet, but the order applies to them, too!
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 07, 2020, 10:25:40 AM
Bagramayan, at this time a colonel and the chief of operational staff at the Kiev MD, will write in his memoir "How the War Began", pp.64, 77, "We had to prepare all operational documentation that dealt with moving five rifle and four motorized corps," the ones just mentioned, "from the positions of permanent location to the border zone." The 'new camps' aren't regarded as permanent locations.

"[...] They took with them everything necessary for action. The move was conducted at night to secure secrecy."

Remember, there are four armies stacked up to the Kiev border already! -- Bagramayan back on May 25th was already having difficulty receiving all the new troops up there, including for example the four 12-thousand strong divisions and one mountain ranger division of the 34th Corps.
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 09, 2020, 07:33:42 AM
Eventual Colonel-General I.I. Lyudnikov, at this time a colonel in command of the 200th Rifle Division of the 31st Corps (and remember what that "200th" designation casually implies by the way!), is carrying out this order under Bagramayan's orchestration of all this mess -- after receiving his own surprise arrival troops back in May! From his autobiography "Through the Eye of the Storm", 1973, p.24, "The district order that came down to Divisional Headquarters on June 16th, 1941, directed us to move out on a full campaign... in full deployment... and mass together in the forests 10 to 15km northeast of the border town Kovel. The move was to be made secretly, only at night, on forested terrain."

Colonel (later Lieutenant-General) Plaskov commanded the artillery for the 53rd Division of the 63rd Corps, stationed on the Volga River. A fine defensive position, if they had been preparing for defense, but they've been training to move out. On this day, (as he writes in "With Cannons Thundering", p.125), Military District Commander Gerasimyenko called all senior command personnel to Corps Commander Petrovsky's office. Plaskov remembers that he and his fellow commanders were "a little edgy" because "something major was up", and the normally calm and unflappable Petrovsky was agitated.

Petrovsky orders them to fully mobilize the corps and gear them up to wartime strength using their iron reserves and all assigned personnel not yet called in. The MD Commander hinted they were merely moving on maneuvers, but everyone understood differently: not once had they ever gone on practice maneuvers with their full iron reserves of live ordnance and supplies, and with all reservists (who cycle in and out of training so that they can be busy in the fields or in factories or wherever. Harvest time is coming and they will not be available for harvest! -- despite prior years of murderous famine.)
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 10, 2020, 08:33:30 AM
June 13, 1941: during prior preparations, new factors unique to the Second Strategic Echelon were being introduced -- the aforementioned "black" uniforms. As the Nazis (themselves no strangers to elite black uniformed troops!) eventually start running into the unexpected Second Echelon, they will find regiments, battalions, and brigades wearing unusual black uniforms. Some divisions and even corps have so many of these units, that the Nazis will informally dub them "black divisions" and "black corps"; and as a general rule the Nazis shall quickly come to regard them as hard and dangerous fighters.

On this day, for example, General Remezov of the Orlov Military District is completing the conversion his MD forces into the core of the 20th Army, receiving in much of the Moscow Military District forces under his command -- and also 69th Rifle Corps, known soon to the Nazis as a 'black corps'.

Suvorov, before his defection, was allowed to attend a party for Military District Headquarter veterans, featuring the retired General Remezov. He kept very quiet, appreciatively listening to tales of the Great Patriotic War among the veterans. Friendly arguments broke out, he noticed, upon diverging details that each seemed to know about and so, naturally, that each wanted to learn more about from other officers.

One feisty veteran colonel at this party, wanted General Remezov to publicly explain why the 69th Rifle Corps, in his 20th Army, was known to the Nazis as a Black Corps. Suvorov noticed that Remezov kept changing the subject to his command of the 56th Army (not the 20th) later in the winter of 1941, when many of his troops had to use the black greatcoats of railway workers due to a lack of provisions (captured by the Nazis of course).

That wasn't what the veteran colonel was asking about, and Suvorov implies he never gets a straight answer from Remezov. But as noted in earlier entries, the "black" units are predominantly or entirely comprised of gulag troops, typically with commanders who also had been imprisoned in the gulags -- and still bearing the older style of Russian "Commander" ranks (and uniforms and insignia) rather than the new Soviet General ranks.
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 11, 2020, 08:26:14 AM
Edited to compile this entry with the grand finale for June 13th, since topically the final portions all go together.
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 13, 2020, 10:36:05 AM
June 13, 1941: it must be stressed, and will be stressed again, that the orders sent out a month ago for the interior Military Districts, to activate at this time, involve more than only the interior MDs converting directly into Armies and deploying westward.

Something similar is happening at five border Military Districts: the MD headquarters are converting to Front headquarters, and except in the case of Leningrad's MD (which is set farther back between two other Fronts, but which still becomes the Northern Front vs Finland) they are deploying forward secretly from their decent (and even impressive) command bunkers, to hasty camps closer to the border.

Specifically, on this day the People's Commissariat for Defense orders headquarters of these Military Districts to activate as Fronts (which, per Suvorov, don't exist in Soviet doctrine unless the nation is at war in active combat operations) and move out to field command posts, leaving behind the expected second-deputy commanders required by Soviet military doctrine for administering Military Districts during Soviet invasion operations.

Leningrad doesn't receive orders to move its converted Front HQ forward, so doesn't need and doesn't get the second deputy commander for backfield organization. But from this day forward (until the disaster of Hitler's invasion collapses things backward for different areas), the Baltic will have a secretly established Northwestern Front, commanded by MD General Kuznyetsov, from a recently established secret base near Panevyezhis; and also Baltic's Military District will continue under Kuznyetsov's newly created second deputy Safronov, still headquartered in Riga. (Suvorov dryly quips that this is like having two bosses in one communist party, or two dons in the same mafia!)

In his later Collected Works, p.196 of "On the Northwestern Front [1941-1943]", Major-General P.M. Kurochkin, then in charge of communications for Northwestern Front, later a Lieutenant-General in charge of Soviet Communications Forces, will write, "In the Panevyezhis area, headquarters command and office staff started to arrive. District Command, in fact, became Front Command, though until the war began it formally kept its District label. Left in Riga was a group of generals and subordinate officers given responsibility for running the district." For example, while Kurochkin personally heads Front communications, his own deputy Colonel Akimov is running the original Baltics MD counterpart.

Naturally, this secret redeployment of MD HQ toward the border as the new Northwestern Front was no practice maneuver! -- as Kurochkin was well aware. From his "Front Calling", p.117, "We were setting up the tactical super-structure for running combat operations." From page 115, same memoir, "All planning documents, frequencies, call letters, and authentication codes were kept at military district headquarters for distribution to the troops in the event of war. With radio stations dotting the district numbering a good several thousand, militarizing their operations would have taken at least a a week. Before that task could be completed, time ran out."

Notice, on June 13th Kurochkin doesn't know time is running out yet: switching peace-time communications over to providing war-time Red Army support was all activated, not on the hypothesis that an enemy might suddenly attack and force all but instant conversion, but on the premise that Moscow would send a warning signal at a time of its own choosing.

Kurochkin throws himself into getting comms up and running for the still-secret Northwestern Front, handling it "as though a series of tests". To avoid rousing the enemy's suspicion with any sudden flare-up of chatter over new military channels, he uses the civilian land-line net; but this will not be much of a strain,  because back in 1939, the government-run communications system was totally militarized, subservient to the armed forces, by the People's Commissariat for Communications, answering directly to the Commissariat for Defense. The overall national communications network became a key component of the military communications system, with USSR Communications Commissar Peresypkin becoming an official deputy to the Red Army Communications Chief.


Rounding out the remaining three Special Military Districts, Byelorussia will have a secretly established Western Front commanded by MD General Pavlov from a forest command post near Lyesna Station; and also Western Special Military District will continue under Pavlov's newly created second deputy, Lieutenant-General Kurdyumov, still headquartered in Minsk.

Ukraine will have a secretly established Southwestern Front, commanded by Colonel-General Kirponos, from a clandestine command center in a string of dugouts hastily thrown up near Ternopol; and also Kiev Special Military District will continue under Kirponos' newly created second deputy, General Yakovlev, back in their wonderful and massive bunker complex in the Kiev suburb Brovary. Bagramayan will later attest, in his memoir "Thus the War Began", p.83, that Zhukov dispatched a special encrypted cable "to keep this [newly activated arrangement] top-secret, and accordingly to warn military district headquarters personnel." The remaining MD staff are put on notice to keep their lips zipped about anything like an alternate military authority in Kiev Special MD.

Last but not least, Odessa will have a secretly established Southern Front, commanded by MD Colonel-General Cherevichenko; and also Odessa Military District will continue under Cherevichenko's recently filled second deputy, Chibisov.
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 13, 2020, 10:42:50 AM
This catches up with June 13th events, on current June 13th.

As you might be expecting, the Soviet military and government will be very busy between now and June 22nd, 1941. How busy?

Busy enough that to fill out Suvorov's account of the preparations, and analyze the situation, between now and current June 21st, I'll be posting roughly fourteen and a half pages of material every day, starting tomorrow June 14th through our June 21st this year!

:o

(I'll slow down a lot from June 22nd onward, with an aim to finishing the series before the end of August, maybe around August 22nd, my brother's birthday.  8) )
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 14, 2020, 11:08:30 AM
Back to the previous supercharged posting schedule! -- prepare for takeoff!  :D

June 14, 1941: eight days before Barbarossa, the NKVD SOF (Special Operations Force), starts forcibly deporting civilians living on the western border -- an operation ordered for this day one month previously (as shown in the May 14th entry). "Most of them never again saw the sun rise over their native land," claims Suvorov.

They are not being escorted to protect them from a Nazi invasion, which Stalin doesn't think will happen yet.

Stalin is currently moving his already-deployed First Echelon Forces even closer to the border than they already are. As the first example of this push-up, once the NKVD SOF have finished the deportation, they stay put.

Instead of disassembling pre-assembled SOF battalions, such as into regular infantry defense arrangements, Stalin decides there aren't enough at the border yet and orders the creation of new SOF battalions and even new SOF regiments on the border -- and then the creation of 2nd Division SOF -- and then creates a whole NKVD SOF corps organization to be the home of multiple divisions! This corps will be commanded by NKVD Division Commander Shmyryev, with Chumakov as its Commissar and NKVD Colonel Vinogradov as its Chief of Staff.

Westbound, no one will remain to clean with a whole eventual corps of secret police death squads, packing howitzers and tanks, except for people in Nazi territory -- and not nearby in Nazi territory anymore. The Nazis are finishing clearing their own civilians near the border, out of the way of their coming invasion of Russia.
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 14, 2020, 11:16:36 AM
June 14, 1941, eight days before Barbarossa, and one day after calmly preparing people to not bother noticing the even-larger logistic transfer of the Second Strategic Echelon as it begins: the Soviet news agency TASS puts out a calm report that there will be no war, while Stalin's NKVD special operations forces are removing civilians living on the border.  ::)

Meanwhile on this same day, the Odessa Military District Military Council convenes to re-create (or rather to de-merge) the 9th Army, with headquarters in Tiraspol on the Romanian border (per JMH, 1978, #4, p86.)

On the northern end of the western front, the Military Councils for the Baltics Area Special Military District, sign onto a plan for redeploying a number of divisions and separate regiments into a belt along the border line. General Ivanov also reports (in "Opening Phase of the War", p.211), "Simultaneous with moving forces forward from deep within the country, an undercover regrouping of formations began within the military districts near the border. In the guise of shifting the location of summer encampments, units were pulled closer to the frontier... Most redeployments took place at night..." Note my emphasis: he knew the summer encampments were a ruse.

From the official history of Kiev Military District, 1919-1972, p.162, "On June 14th, under the guise of maneuvers, Major-General Alyabushev's 87th Rifle Division was moved up to the international frontier." This historical document also bluntly calls the maneuver explanation a guise or a ruse!

Could any of these deployments be for the purpose of finally starting defensive operations? Zhukov in his "Memoirs and Reflections" (p.242) explains: "People's Commissar [or NarKom] of Defense S.K. Timoshenko [who sent out the June 13th directive] recommended to military district troop commanders to have formations conduct tactical maneuvers toward the international frontier..." for practice? for defensive preparations? "...to pull forces closer to areas designated for covering deployment." Remember, in Soviet doctrine going back at least as far as 1932, covering deployment means invading enemy territory to create massive safety zones for followup armies to safely arrive by logistic transport and safely deploy into combat formations within enemy territory, safely preparing for more offensive action. "Covering state borders" of Finland in December of 1939, for example, meant "preparing to invade Finland".

Zhukov goes on to note that, "The districts carried out this recommendation, albeit with one major qualification: a significant part of the artillery stayed put." Strictly speaking what he means is that a significant part of the artillery didn't have to go on the move. Rokossovsky, at that time Major-General of the 9th Mechanized (i.e. tank) Corps, clarifies why so much artillery stayed put, in "A Soldier's Duty" (1997, p.8 ): "The order to send the artillery towards the borders had been given somewhat earlier." The arty didn't start moving forward, because they had already moved forward!

Meretskov, four-star general and Deputy People's Commissar of Defense at this time: "On my order the mechanized [i.e. tank] corps conducted maneuvers. In the context of training, the corps was moved into the border area and indeed left there. I then told Zakharov, that Major-General Malinovsky's [48th Rifle] corps was in the [Odessa Military] district and was also to be moved out into the border area during the maneuvers." ("In the Service of the Nation", p.204.)

Ah, so this was a training maneuver, done in the context of training. That seems clear enou-- wait, no, Malinovsky in his JMH article, 1961, #6, p.6, reports, "Already on June 7th the Corps pulled out of the Kirovograd area into Beltsy and was in place as of June 14th. That repositioning [my emphasis] was masked as major maneuvers." The training maneuver explanation was a mask for what they were really doing.
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 14, 2020, 11:30:31 AM
Meretskov is a busy man during this time. He has ordered all military councils of the western Military Districts to send out their frontline army commands to their field headquarters by June 22nd and 23rd. He's probably talking to Zhakarov personally today, face to face, not by phone. Note the deadline by the way! -- and remember, they think Hitler will invade in mid-July, if he's going to go at all, which at this point they think he won't be doing this year! They have no idea he's planning to kick off on June 22nd. Or even earlier actually! -- Hitler will have delayed several times to dial in plans a little more tightly. Hitler was finished with preparations enough by now (June 14th) that the Soviets could have already been dealing with the Nazi blitz today.

Between June 13th and June 22nd (perhaps starting even earlier?) Meretskov will be zipping around the front line like a rocket! -- starting with a tour of the outer perimeter of the Kiev Special Military District with MD (now also secretly Southwestern Front) commander Colonel-General Kirponos. "From Kiev [and touring with Kirponos] I headed down to Odessa, joining District Chief of Staff Major-General Zakharov..." who is currently in charge of all forces and headquarters at the front, while his commander is busy escorting back the 9th Special Corps. "Together we then went to the Romanian border belt: there we are, looking over there, some military types looking back at us."

From Odessa, the Deputy People's Commissar for Defense makes a dash for Byelorussia, teaming up with General Pavlov to scan German territory on the secretly created Western Front border. Then to Moscow, in and out; and onward to the secretly created Northwestern Front, the Baltic Military District. He doesn't stay to tour the front here, but don't worry, Northwestern's / Baltic's commander Colonel-General Kuznyetsov is out touring the front.

Finally, Meretskov completes his rounds by meeting with (secretly created) Northern Front's commander Lieutenant-General Popov -- also not at his headquarters back in Leningrad (the only Military District which isn't splitting off its command staff to new Front HQ positions near the border). Where is Popov? Out touring the Finnish border, where Meretskov joins him! Just like old times for Meretskov, touring the Finnish border again!

From Anfilov's "Immortal Feat", p.65, "In June, right up to their invasion of the USSR, [Nazi commanders] Brauchitsch and Halder drove out to visit the troops time and again." Remember, when regular border scouting is being done by higher and higher ranks, this does not bode well, in increasing proportion, for the people on the other side of that border! In effect, a commander of level-x scouting the other side of the border, is planning to deliver x-level amount of ammunition downrange onto the other side of that border: company, battalion, regiment, on up.

When the generals in charge of front commanders start arriving at the border on a regular basis? -- the people on the other side of that border are about to eat allllllll the ammunition!

As you might recall from earlier entries, Meretskov instituted such border scouting for commanders up through divisional and corps level, all the way back in the summer of 1940. Even division and corps commanders based far in the rear would visit the border from then until now, and with increasing intensity.

Rokossovsky, at the time Major-General of a mechanized corps, stationed near but not right on the frontier, recalls later (unsourced by Suvorov) how he would often drop in on fellow corps General Fedyuninsky, whose corps was on the border itself. Fedyuninsky reminisces in his own memoirs about regular visits from fellow generals -- such as, for example, Rokossovsky! Suvorov says you can run across hundreds and even thousands of recollections like these in the memoirs of Soviet marshals and generals who are commanding at this time.

Even Military District commanders, as noted, have been visiting the frontier -- even the Moscow Military District Commander, of all people! But then, he has been planned, back as far as February 1941, to show up on the border as a high ranking commander around now. He isn't here yet, but we shall see if he gets here...

Meanwhile, now not only Military District Commanders (secretly activated as Front Commanders) are touring the border more regularly, but the Deputy People's Commissar for Defense himself is making a whirlwind tour of all the western borders! -- a man who currently outranks even Zhukov (who took his prior job back in February)! But Zhukov has been living and working on the border more or less continuously for many months already, especially after he took over Meretskov's prior job on border work.
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 14, 2020, 11:44:13 AM
Artillery Major-General Moskalyenko, in charge of High Command Reserve 1st Anti-Tank Brigade (eventually a Marshal of the Soviet Union), recalls in his "In the Southwestern Sector", p.21, how Major-General Potapov, the commander of 5th Army's tank forces, discussed the June 13th TASS Statement with him: "Pick some people who know what they're doing militarily, and send 'em up to the border. Have 'em reconnoiter, check out the lay of the land and watch what the Germans are up to. Fact is, you'll find it useful, too."

An anti-tank commander does have some business on the front lines during a defensive operation: anti-tank guns are a major component of defense against any modern invasion since the end of World War One, and increasingly so! There might even be some reason for local anti-tank commanders to look over what the Nazis are up to on the Nazi side of the border, since you would want to know lines of approach and sighting, in order to snipe off Nazi armor on the way to invade you, and ideally before they even cross your border.

However, the brigade commander for a high-command reserve has no defensive business touring the front line.

His brigade will never see action on the original front line in a defensive war, one way or another: his brigade will only be thrown into the defense from high command reserve, if the enemy has already breached through battalions, regiments, divisions, corps -- when the enemy has already overcome so much defense that their attack threatens the whole army and high command needs a last ditch defensive stand prepared at a place where there is no more doubt where the enemy plans to go (else the enemy will just drive around the anti-tank brigade).

Or rather, that's when an army or front's defensive reserves will be deployed. But Moskalyenko commands a high-command reserve brigade: his job is to arrive to stiffen the line in a final emergency for the breach of an entire front of armies, once the emergency has become totally strategic in scope. His brigade should never see the pre-war border; it means nothing to them, unless they are making plans to cross it -- long after the Soviet front advances over the border. Until then his brigade must be positioned hundreds of miles away from it so that he has the maneuverability to be deployed where the ultimate strategic defensive failure needs the most catastrophic emergency firepower.

There is one other scenario however.

The greatest array of military power ever assembled in all of human history, is deployed (and deploying) on the Soviet side of the Lvov salient. If this Soviet force moves forward, their right flank will be exposed to a potentially very strong Nazi counterattack. To protect the advance, an enormously strong anti-tank force -- let's say one of brigade size -- would be very helpfully deployed at that part of the border as a covering force to help protect against that Nazi counterattack.

So, where does Potopov end up deploying Moskalyenko? On the right side of the Soviet Lvov salient, up next to the border. But not deployed farther back in defensive layers. (Incidentally, why does Potopov even have the authority to deploy a high-command strategic reserve unit like the 1st Anti-Tank Brigade...?!)

As typical, sappers go with Moskalyenko, to look over what the Nazis are doing on the other side of the border. An anti-tank commander might want to know where to shoot the incoming enemy on the other side of the border -- which can work just as well for early offense -- but even local battalion sappers have less than no reason to be looking over enemy territory in preparing to defend against an invasion, much less sappers organic to higher levels of command, least of all high command reserve units. Of course, sappers are great as an attachment for even a high command reserve defensive brigade! -- they can help throw up last-minute defensive arrangements around your emergency-deployed heroic stop-gap brigade, once it arrives to where the enemy has breached, dozens or hundreds of miles back inside your territory. But if they're going to be familiar with any territory, they need to be familiar with the brigade's potential deployment areas. Not areas across the border. They should be studying how to protect approaches across the Dnepr where the high command 1st Anti-Tank brigade might be deployed in a strategically catastrophic emergency. Not studying hostile pre-war territory -- not in a strategic defensive plan.
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 14, 2020, 11:47:58 AM
June 15, 1941, seven days before Barbarossa: Ribbentrop circulates top-secret cables among his ambassadors, projecting top-level negotiations with Moscow. "The Fuehrer is going to sort out relations and raise new demands." Nazi ambassadors are instructed to secretly pass this information along to selected individuals -- the idea being to select individuals who will spread it 'secretly' around to their close confidants, so that other governments will hear of it! For example, the Nazi government ambassador in Budapest is instructed to relay this as a special secret to the Hungarian president (per "It Must be Published", p.167)

On this same day, Sorge sends a cable alerting that the Nazis will invade on June 22nd.

His reputation has been somewhat restored thanks to his Japanese operations, but since he has no proof to send with this message, the GRU (rightly so, as Suvorov says) puts no faith in it. At best it's suggestive; but Stalin has been closely monitoring the non-existent winter-gear preparations for the Nazis, so he knows they couldn't possibly be about to attack to seize all Russian property and means of production -- which is what he and his subordinate leaders ideologically expect from their fellow militant socialist, who after all has been doing exactly this across Europe so far.
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 14, 2020, 01:33:02 PM
June 15, 1941, seven days before Barbarossa: the headquarters of five military border districts dispatch combat orders to their army, corps, and division level generals, building on the top-secret May 5th directive.

These orders also remain top-secret, but are quoted a little more afterward than the May 5th directive. For example, the order sent by Baltic Region Special Military District HQ to its army and corps commanders, says (unsourced by Suvorov), "We must be ready at any moment to carry out our combat mission." Not a mere practice "maneuver mission", per the TASS radio announcement two days earlier (although maneuver missions for training have already been going on for months anyway). Which combat mission? To seize objectives on foreign territory, in line with the May 5th directive sent out by Stalin on the day when he became the public head of state for the first time in 19 years. (Suvorov does not provide references, however, for the specific detail of assault in the June 15th combat orders, at least so far as Chief Culprit.)

Eventual Major-General Iovlyev, then commander of 64th Rifle Division, of the 44th Rifle Corps, 13th Army, as he reports later in JMH, 1960, #9, p.56, "On June 15th 1941, Western Special Military District Commander Army General Pavlov directed divisions in our Corps to prepare for full-strength redeployment... the destination we were not told." But (per JMH, 1961, #6, p.6), the destination is up even closer to the border. The Military Council of the Baltic MD (per the "Soviet Military Encyclopedia", Vol.6, p.517) approved a similar plan for relocating a row of divisions and regiments closer to the border zone yesterday on June 14th.

Colonel (eventually Colone-General) Sandalov, Chief of Staff of 4th Army, Western Special Military District, from "Overcome" (aka "The Bydone"), p.71, "On 4th Army's southern flank a new division appeared: 75th Rifle. It had pulled up out of Mozyr and in the woods set up a carefully camouflaged tent city."

General Meretskov, Deputy People's Commissar of Defense, will later say (in his memoir "In Service to the People", p.204), "According to my orders, training exercises of the mechanized corps were conducted. The corps was brought out, as part of the training, to the border zone and left there. Later I told Zakharov that the corps of Major-General R.I. Malinovsky was also in the area, and must also be brought to the border zone as part of training exercises."

Major-General Zakharov, Chief of Staff of Odessa Military District, from "Historical Issues", 1970, #5, p.45, "On June 15th, under the guise of maneuvers," notice the ruse, he knew it wasn't just maneuvers, "the command of 48th Rifle Corps as well as of 74th and 30th Rifle Divisions was concentrated in the forests a few miles east of the town of Beltsy." Zakharov goes on to note that this guise also involved 16th Tank Division. Corps command and corps units are put on combat alert, although they are absolutely not on alert for Hitler to invade one week later.

Eventual Marshal of the Soviet Union R.I. Malinovsky, the Major-General in command of that 48th Rifle Corps, confirms (JMH, #6, 1961, p.6), "The corps left the Kirovograd region for Beltsy on June 7, and on June 14th it was in its place. This move was disguised as extensive training exercises." He also knows the training explanation is fake.

Bagramayan, then Colonel Chief of Operations for Kiev Military District, in "Thus the War Began", p.64, talks about the preparations needed to get ready to move five rifle and four mechanized corps from permanent base areas forward into the border zone. They receive the go-order today on June 15th. The five rifle corps, stepping off first, carried all requisites for combat operations. Why did they march first and not the presumably faster and offensively harder hitting mechanized corps? Because this move was at night to keep them under cover: easier to move rifle than mechanized corps at night. Colonel Lyudnikov, at that time commanding the 200th Rifle Division of the 31st Rifle Corps, adds (in "Through the Eye of the Storm", p.24) that they had to move not only at night but through wooded areas -- not so great for a Rifle Corps either, but this would have been extra hard on the Tank Divisions. They end up massing in the woods 6 to 9 miles northeast of the border town of Kovel.


The greatest logistic movement in all history, doesn't only move land forces. Sandalov from "Assignment: Moscow", p.63, "Beginning 15 June, we start to get new combat equipment. The Kobrinsky and the Pruzhansky Air Regiments take in cannon-carrying Yak-1 fighters, the assault regiment IL-2 aircraft, the [dive-]bomber regiment Pe2s."

That means 10th Combined Aviation Division is starting to receive delivery of 247 of the newest aircraft (62 per fighter regiment, 63 per assault regiment, 60 per bomber regiment). They still keep their old aircraft.

9th Combined, also stationed nearby in a forward base, also has 176 of the latest MiG-3s, along with several dozen Pe-2s and IL-2s, but on June 21st another 99 MiG-3s will finalize preparations to be shipped to Orsha Airbase (per "Soviet Army Command and Staff in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945", p.41) Orsha will receive the order to take delivery of them on the day Hitler is invading.
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 15, 2020, 07:08:29 AM
WITHIN THE FINAL WEEK
----------------------------

June 16, 1941, six days before Barbarossa, Great Britain sends an actual warning about Nazi invasion to the Soviet Union.

British ambassador Cripps happens not to be in Moscow so the warning is handed to the Soviet ambassador in London, Maisky, who immediately transmits the message to Molotov in Moscow.

Not counting the mobilized Romanian army, Britain warns that 80 Nazi divisions are gathered in Poland along the border, 30 in Romania, and 5 divisions in Finland and northern Norway, for a total of 115 divisions. Detailed descriptions of each division are included.

This information is absolutely precise; Suvorov grades it as "outstanding work".

Five days later, that number will go up to 125 divisions in the Nazis' own First Strategic Echelon.
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 15, 2020, 07:34:12 AM
June 16, 1941, six days before Barbarossa, General Zhukov sends out Memorandum #567240 from the Chief of Staff of the Red Army to the People's Commissariat of Soviet Aviation Industry, ordering 7500 gliders to be manufactured for use.

Specifically, he wants 500 5-seat gliders; 1000 11-seat gliders; 300 20-seat gliders; and 200 hydroplane 11-seaters, to be ready in 1941. These are on top of the gargantuan number of gliders already manufactured and finishing off for use in 1941 -- and by the same token, these extra gliders will be totally wasted if they are not also used before mid autumn 1941!

The remaining 5500 gliders are ordered for 1942, which can't be started until spring weather comes around again (allowing them to be safely stored), and just like this year they will be totally wasted if not used before mid autumn '42.

Also keep in mind that they cannot be stored outside, and the glider hangers are already totally full; but then of course the prior gliders will be totally wasted if not used before mid-autumn this year, whereas if they're used this year then there will be room for new gliders.

As it happens, of course, all the gliders will in fact be wasted six days from now, being totally useless on defense and unable to be feasibly rescued. But the Stalin and his government don't know that yet.
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 15, 2020, 07:50:40 AM
June 16, 1941: Colonel I.A. Khizenko's memoir, "The Pages that Came Alive: Diary of a Political Officer of the 80th Lenin Rifle Division", 1963, p.5, starts with the chapter "Marching Toward the Border". He writes about his division in the 37th Rifle Corps, "In the evening of June 16, General Prokhorov [commander of the 80th Rifle] gathered all staff personnel for a conference. He declared an order from the commander of the Kiev Special Military District, to move the divisions to a new region of concentration... There are talks that the impending march will be an unusual one."

This citation is a little unusual because Suvorov, for whatever reason(s), doesn't quote often from political officers: the officers assigned by the Kremlin to military units (land, sea, and air), to ensure political correctness is taught and enforced.


Speaking of political operatives assigned to military units...

June 17, 1941, five days before Barbarossa: in accordance with the massive military retraining and rank-granting efforts of the March 1940 Politburo resolution, to bring bureaucrats of Triandafillov's sovietization strategies into better cooperation with invading Soviet military forces, another 3,700 Party bureaucrats are drafted into uniform.

The plans for the next Soviet invasion and occupation, wherever that might perhaps be  ::) :-" , have been calculated to be a little too short on instant occupational bureaucrats: over one hundred thousand such new military administrative officers wasn't enough yet!

Or, more likely, over time since March 1940, the normal attrition of retirements, criminal arrests, etc., among the bureaucracy, has required a new influx to replace the lost members. But this does serve as a handy reminder that Stalin thinks he needs over ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND new military administrative officers to act as instant Soviet governing liaisons with the military somewhere soon.
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 15, 2020, 07:59:38 AM
June 17th-18th, 1941: during this night, according to Colonel Khvaley, at that time the Deputy Commander of the 202nd Motorized division, of the 12th Mechanized Corps, 8th Army ("On the Northwestern Front [41-42]", p.310), his division moves out on field maneuvers. What kind of field maneuvers? Oh, you know, the kind of field maneuvers where a whole motorized division (as the Colonel puts it) "just happens to" end up deploying past the border posts, sitting literally on the international border!

Colonel Chernyakhovsky, 28th Tank Division commander in that same 12th Mechanized Corps (later four-star general), receives an order later that day on the 18th, "...upon receipt of this order, [you are] to bring to combat readiness all units in accordance with plans to initiate a combat alert without, however, sounding that alert. All is to be done quickly, quietly, calmly, and discreetly, with proper amounts of supplies to be carried by hand or vehicle as needed for sustenance and battle..." (reported by him in a JMH article, 1986, #6, p.75.)

In other words, the Tank Division commander is to quietly order everything as though he has given a combat alert to his divisions, except without actually giving a combat alert. Supplies are to be distributed now from any stockpiles, to be carried by hand and vehicle. They will eventually be run over by the German invasion near Shaulya (aka Siauliai), but P.P. Poluboyarov (eventually Marshal of Armored Forces, at that time Colonel, Chief of Northwestern Front Mechanized Forces Command, reporting in his own "On the Northwestern Front [41-43]", p.114) says the 28th Tank Division is ordered to move out of Riga, bound for the frontier, where part of its corps is currently setting up in between the border posts and the border! -- the tanks just won't get there in time.

But they were rolling out on the 18th prepared for combat operations at the border, carrying their supplies in hand and packed in their vehicles, as if a combat alert for the start of hostilities had already been given -- just not officially. And, of course, these combat orders aren't preparing them to repel an invasion at all.
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 15, 2020, 08:14:39 AM
June 18, 1941: four days before the Nazi invasion, NKVD Byelorussia Border Troops Chief Lieutenant-General Bogdanov decides to evacuate all military families from his area of command. While such an action might be a general punishment, usually commanders do this when they soon expect fighting.

Somewhere around this time (Suvorov doesn't provide a date), all Soviet railways are ordered to switch to military time (same time for everyone regardless of time zone), and to consider themselves as having started combat operations. (Per Anfilov's "Immortal Feat", pp.32-33.)


June 18, 1941: Major-General Zaporozhchenko, in JMH, 1984, #4, p.42, recalls what he knew, or subsequently learned, of the final Nazi deployment. "The culminating phase of [their] strategic deployment, carried out over the course of several nights prior to h-hour, was the clandestine advance of clusters of strike forces into staging areas for the offensive. Cover for the [eventual] advance was provided by troops from reinforced battalions pushed up to the border in advance and charged with holding each division's assigned sector of the front until main-force elements could get there. Forward-basing of airpower began in the last few days of May and had run its course by June 18th. In the process, fighter and tactical air-support aircraft were concentrated at bases located within 25 miles of the frontier, bombers no more than roughly 110 miles away."

During their strategic transfer, the Nazis are in very unfavorable positions: their front lines aren't ready to defend against an assault; their only solid defenses are off to the side and have had plenty of time to be spotted in by Soviet guns; their troops moving forward in the backfield are clogging up the rail lines, cannons aboard one train, ordnance aboard another. Combat battalions detrain where there are no headquarters; HQs get off where there are no troops. The Nazis haven't set up adequate communications yet, for security reasons, and existent radio nets have been largely silenced until they start their invasion. The Nazi forces have not bothered setting up or expanding or improving quarters for the winter of 1941, because they expect to be done in three weeks of fighting and in any case don't plan to be spending their winter this year at the Soviet border. Meanwhile huge quantities of Nazi troops along with supplies, aircraft, field hospitals, HQ contingents, and airbases, are stacked up on the Soviet border, with hardly anyone privy to what's going to happen four days from now: that information is the top-secret domain of only the uppermost Nazi command echelons.

These steps are being mirrored by the Soviets.

The only differences are scale (the Soviets are much more numerous) and the timing -- the Soviets started earlier, but due to such large numbers and the distances to travel, they haven't all arrived yet; plus they have a second large set of armies on the way as of June 13th, at which time their air bases also started moving forward.

Stalin started ahead, but by June 18th he is behind Hitler in preparation. Still, everything done by Stalin and his high command, and rated as stupidity by historians for defensive preparations, is being done by Hitler and his high command and rated as brilliant preparations for a surprise invasion.

Roughly speaking, Hitler is now relatively two weeks ahead of Stalin. And maybe not even that far ahead. The same article in this issue of the Journal of Military History (published by the Ministry of Defense of the USSR, requiring approval of its contents by the minister of defense as well as the chief of the General Staff), on page 34, says Hitler's attack derails Stalin's plans. (Not directly quoted by Suvorov.) That makes no sense if Stalin is preparing to defend or even to counterattack; on the contrary, the attack would signal that it's time to put the defensive plan into action! -- perhaps with significant adjustments, but troops and their leaders shouldn't have to improvise and change their plans completely around.

What will happen once Hitler has finished forming up at the border? History tells us, but so does theory. General Sikorsky, Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Army, knows: "You cannot keep playing a strategic waiting game beyond the point when all your forces are fully mobilized and assembled." He says this in "The Next War" (p.240), a book published in Moscow by permission of the Soviet General Staff for Soviet commanders. But Soviet military science already knew this, as in "War and Revolution", 1931, #8, p.11, "Under present-day circumstances the worst tactic to pursue during the start-up phase of a war is a waiting game." This goes back to the mobilization theories of Shaposhnikov in 1929. Late cold-war Soviet strategists still agreed in 1986.

Zhukov, Timoshenko, and former Marshal of the Soviet Union Voroshilov (now a Politburo member) know from first-hand experience: once you mobilize, either your Army degrades to useless, or you fight.

Once Hitler finishes moving up to the Soviet border, he must go, or his army is ruined, and probably his economy with it.

Once Stalin finishes moving up to the Nazi border...
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 15, 2020, 08:17:17 AM
Undated quote from then-Colonel Starinov's memoir "Mines Awaiting Their Moment", p. 179, where he remembers with critique how Soviet Marshal Kulik was berating him: "Misnamed, that's what your division is. In tune with our doctrine they should've called it the Breaching & De-mining Division. Then [your troops'] thinking would've also come around. Instead, they've kept harping on defense, defense... Enough already! [...] Sapper, get me mine pickers, mine sweepers -- and be quick about it!"

But on the Soviet side, all mines have already been defused, all barriers lifted (Suvorov says, implying Starinov is talking about a time shortly before Barbarossa).

Marshal Kulik is complaining that the commanders of the engineering division keep talking and asking about defense, and so aren't cooperating with the prevalent Soviet strategic and operational doctrine -- where such a division should be concentrating on assaulting enemy defenses (e.g. breaching and de-mining German defenses), not putting up and strengthening defenses against enemy invasion!

Starinov reports (same page) that Army General Pavlov's Western Special Military District Headquarters (already secretly renamed Western Front, indicating an expected start to military action) is similarly complaining that, despite having removed all Soviet defenses, the training in removing defenses has not been up to the required standards.
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 15, 2020, 08:22:58 AM
June 18th-19th 1941, four and three days before the Nazi invasion: the Black Sea Fleet conducts sweeping offensive maneuvers, including the first Soviet practice landing of an entire division (from Batov's 9th Special Rifle Corps) by amphibious assault against an enemy shore. High ranking commanders arrive from Moscow to observe the operation.

Describing this later in his memoir "Odessa Under Siege" pp.3-8, Vice-Admiral Azarov will write, "Everyone involved in the maneuvers felt they weren't staged out of the blue; that soon the time would come for the skills acquired to be put to use in war." They aren't expecting to put these skills to use, amphibiously invading an enemy, in a defensive war, however, which will catch them by surprise.

Theoretically there are only three options: amphibious invasion of Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey. The week before (on June 13th, the day of the TASS Statement), every soldier down to the rank and file of the 9th Special Rifle Corps received a Romanian-Russian question and answer book; not for tourism, but with military questions to ask and answer. The Corps must quickly be supported, however, or else land additional corps behind them, for which no preparations seem to be made; the only nearby overland troops to support any such amphibious invasion must come through Romania.

Fortunately they have some other more immediate reinforcement options practicing nearby, on these same two days, June 18th and 19th! -- the 3rd Airborne Corps practices dropping its divisions to secure enemy airports and then airlanding the rest of the corps. The entire corps command itself lands by parachute and/or glider, along with staffs down to brigade level.

14th Rifle Corps also continues to train its river assault marine-grade infantry divisions, to be landed from Danube Flotilla vessels; while 3rd Airborne Corps practices invading somewhere in chutes, gliders, and transports; while 9th Special Rifle Corps practices invading somewhere from warships in the Black Sea Fleet. They are not practicing to defend against a Nazi invasion from Romania (or anywhere else). But they are practicing their military questions in Romanian, and learning how to interpret answers.
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 15, 2020, 08:26:41 AM
June 19, 1941, three days before Barbarossa: Stalin personally calls Lieutenant-General Yeremenko away from command of the original Soviet 1st Army, to come to Moscow for new orders.

On the way out of the Far East, he would have preferred to turn over 1st Army to his deputy, Major-General Berzarin (or Byerzarin. Suvorov's translators provide alternate spellings.) But in Late May, Bezarin had already been called by Stalin to Moscow, to secretly give him command of the Baltics-based 27th Army, a short distance from the Nazi frontier.

Yeremenko truly cherishes the 1st Army, and does not want to turn it over to Shelakhov whom he regards as a "staff rat"; his next pick would have been Major-General (eventually Lieutenant-General, and Red Army Airborne Assault Forces commander) Glazunov, who in early 1941 was in charge of 59th Rifle Division for the 1st Army, at the Far Eastern Front. He is in fact the only remaining competent general: all of Yeremenko's other deputies, corps commanders, and experienced division commanders, have already been scooped up and reassigned westward by Stalin. Yeremenko shoots off an encoded message to the General Staff; and Moscow agrees that while division to army commander is one giant leap, Glazunov is truly deserving of a vastly more important command. So of course, Moscow thanks Yeremenko of reminding them of Glazunov -- and promptly orders Glazunov, by encrypted cable, to turn over his division and rush for the Romanian frontier to take charge of 3rd Airborne Assault Corps!

Every Soviet airborne assault force, including those just transferred from the Far East, are massed on the western borders, or a few remaining eastward are about to embark on the way there. But they don't have enough experienced combat leaders, so as part of the June 13th westward surge, Stalin also pulls infantry and cavalry generals, like Glazunov and Zhadov, also Generals Usyenko, Karitonov, and Bezuglom, to warp-morph them into airborne assault commanders: not the best way to use them on defense, or even for a counterattack.
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 15, 2020, 08:40:00 AM
June 19, 1941, three days before Barbarossa: eventual Hero of the Soviet Union and Major-General, A.A. Sviridov, is today commanding the 144th Separate Reconnaissance Battalion of the 164th Rifle Division of the 17th Rifle Corps (essentially a mountain corps) of the 12th Army (essentially a mountain army), posted in the Lvov-Chernovits bulge, on the Romanian border.

Sviridov will write later (oddly uncited by Suvorov), "Our division replaced border guards at the river Prut. Leaving the state border, they handed a fortified shoreline to us." They are close enough that "we heard the cries from Romanian villagers: the peasants were being relocated further away from the borders." He draws the obvious conclusion: "All of us Soviet warriors were preparing to fight the enemy only on his lands."

NKVD squads have already forcibly removed Soviet peasants from in front of the Soviet force, dismantling all the mines and barbed wire; June 19th happens to be the bloodiest day of forced Soviet relocations from the White Sea to the Black Sea.

Notice that Sviridov's division is replacing border guards. Neither Zhukov, nor Timoshenko, nor any other military authority has the power to order the guards to leave the borders: the guards aren't under their jurisdiction, but are subordinate only to Beria, the NKVD commissar. On the other hand, Beria doesn't have the slightest authority to order the army units to replace his people on the border! So how exactly did this happen? -- who could give this order? Only one man could have ordered Beria to remove the border guards, and also order Timoshenko to move the army divisions forward to the borders to replace them: Stalin.

Another pertinent, and soon to be disastrous, detail: the river Prut, bordering into Romanian territory, runs parallel to the river Dniester a little farther back into Soviet territory. In order to get to these vacated NKVD posts, the recon battalion has to cross the Dniester (on bridges where the Soviets have totally removed the defensive mines) onto a long strip of land between the two rivers. But they aren't alone; and they aren't really in fortifications. The entire 164th Division will be moving in with them over the next three days! -- not only bringing supplies (both 'soft' like food and 'hard' like ammo), not only bringing headquarters onto this exposed strip of land, but even hospitals. (They will certainly be needing those soon...!)

There are fifteen thousand soldiers in the 164th Division, plus many cannons, many trucks and cars. The "fortifications" are more like wooden border posts; nobody has even dug trenches or foxholes, and no one is doing it now: they don't plan to stay here.

Looking ahead to the bridge over the river Prut, into Romania, Sviridov knows it isn't mined either. The good news is that the Soviet 96th Mountain Division is crammed into this slice of land between the rivers with the 164th! -- another 13,000 troops with all their gear (admittedly more lightly armed for mountain warfare), hospitals, communication groups, and headquarters. The bad news, is that this is one of the places in Romania that the Nazis do intend to attack from.
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 15, 2020, 08:47:15 AM
June 19, 1941, three days before Barbarossa: Northwestern Front (formerly Baltic Military District) communications commander Major-General Kurochkin has been zooming around up at the still-secret Northwestern Front Headquarters in the Panevyezhis area (while his deputy back in Riga keeps up Baltic MD comms), using landlines to prepare several thousand radio stations in his district to flip over from peacetime to wartime Red Army support, pursuant to expected orders from Moscow.

In his "On the Northwestern Front", p.195, he recalls that today, Northwestern Front Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Klyonov gives him a curious order: "It's a go, per the master plan. You know what I mean?" "'Yes, absolutely!' I declared."

Suvorov suggests that Kurochkin doesn't tell his readers what this master plan was -- perhaps Suvorov is obscuring what Kurochkin says here? But the Soviet generals do have some master plan, one that Kurochkin presents Klyonov as being cagey about even in personal conversation; a master plan now on go.

Kurochkin describes how he goes about implementing his side of "the master plan" (ibid, p.118), "The District Communications Office dispatched documentation on how to set up radio links... to the various army headquarters and to formations subordinate to the District itself. All these documents were to be appropriately adapted as they made their way down through corps, division, regiment, and battalion command levels, ultimately reaching those staffing each radio station. That, as I have already said, would have taken no less than a week."

He is talking about the distribution of top-secret intelligence, of the kind you only distribute and act upon during a war, being distributed out to thousands of end-users to act upon. This will take at least a week, and then after that the master plan which requires these war-time secrets to be distributed, will activate. Once Kurochkin starts this process, those secrets cannot be put back in the safes; they must be used or else totally voided for replacement later.

Perhaps Chief of Staff Klyanov expects a Nazi invasion? If so, he must suffer a brain embolism between now and three days later, because he adamantly dismisses the possibility of Nazi invasion while it is happening and refuses to do anything about it. Klyanov wasn't a big fan of defense anyway; back in 1940 he had berated Zhukov himself, with Stalin watching, about how Zhukov (of all people) wasn't being competent enough for Klyanov's standards, at understanding how to prepare and deliver a surprise attack!
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 16, 2020, 05:57:03 PM
June 19, 1941, three days before Barbarossa, Zhukov telegraphs Kirponos, the current commander of the Kiev Special Military District, "The People's Commissar of Defense [Timoshenko] has issued the following orders: the command should leave for Ternopol by June 22, 1941, leaving the subordinate district commander in Kiev... The selection and transfer of front command is to be kept top secret, and the district staff personnel should be notified of said secrecy." (From the Central Archive of the Defense Ministry of the Russian Federation, Fund 48, Index 3408, Case 14, Sheets 442-44.)

Zhukov also sends out similar telegrams today to Baltic MD Commander Kuznetsov, and to Western MD Commander Pavlov. Kuznetsov should be arriving at the newly established Northwestern Front HQ at Panevezhis on June 22 or 23; and the same should be happening for Pavlov and his staff at Obuz-Lesni.

There's a very good reason why creating a "front command" like this should be kept secret: in Soviet Doctrine, "fronts" and their headquarters only exist when the Soviet Union is at war!
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 16, 2020, 06:16:06 PM
June 20, 1941: Chief of Staff Major-General Zakharov, picks up most of Odessa MD's officers today, and rolls them over into 9th Army's HQ.

Odessa MD commander Cherevichenko is still on the way back from the Crimea, having gone over to pick up 9th Special Corps (formed in the Caucasus as an amphibious assault group, intended and trained to operate from Soviet Black Sea Fleet ships), to bring them back to his new Southern Front HQ, also at 9th Army. They're still training for their "Special" role of being the Soviet Union's first amphibious assault Corps, so he's had some understandable delays returning with them -- not even counting the congested Soviet transportation network! He'll be caught on the trains when Hitler invades two days from now.

As Zakharov takes over 9th Army HQ, and sets up Southern Front HQ for Cherevichenko's expected arrival, he raises 9th HQ to combat alert status.
Title: Re: IceBreakChron VIII: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Post by: JasonPratt on June 16, 2020, 06:19:59 PM
June 20, 1941, two days before Barbarossa: Lieutenant-General A.I. Yeremyenko (also spelled in English Eremenko, later a Marshal of the Soviet Union), having arrived in Moscow after a hard day's travel all the way over from commanding 1st Army (i.e. over in the Far East where it was created), recollects (in "When the War Began", 1964, p.109) that on this day 13th Army Headquarters was ordered to relocate command of the Western Military District from Mogilev to Novogrudok.

This isn't the same as the conversion of MD high command into Fronts -- that's already happening. This is the movement of the Military District HQ remaining behind the (secretly created) Front, up closer to Front HQ.

Remember, Military Districts in Soviet doctrine (per Suvorov) are meant to be staging areas for offense, with only a secondary mission of temporary defense. In defense, the MD command should stay back some distance, not only to be safe from the threat of attack, but also so that they can organize big-picture defensive deployments and re-deployments more easily in the backfield.

Even on offense, the whole point to having a second deputy-commander of a MD, is to take over duties of the original commander and his first deputy, acting as military governor of the District and helping organize the logistic supply of its relevant Front HQ. Now the Western MD HQ is being called forward, out of its great defensive structures, and even more importantly out of its previously established command-and-control network, to set up governorship and logistic duties in an area not suited for either defense or for the MD's logistic support of the Front.

A Military District command headquarters would be suicidal, even on a normal offense plan, to move closer to the front -- unless they're the ones expecting to attack with such overwhelming power that the MD HQ would be under no threat of disruption from the enemy's defenders. Then it makes perfect sense to be closer to where the action is going to be, in order to make up-to-the-minute adjustments, especially for the deployment of reserves into critical portions of the attack, and to start creating network extensions into the newly conquered regions.

So, who will be left in charge back at the original well-developed MD HQ, for collaborating with the new forward position of the MD officers? No one at all!

From Yeremyenko's hindsight recollection, of course, this order will pave the final stone of disaster for the Western Front two days from now. He's arriving in Moscow today to receive secret orders about something, but he's about to get very involved unexpectedly in the fate of Western Front...

[Next up: The Day Before (http://www.grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=24587.msg671530#msg671530) that disaster...]