IceBreakChron VII: COUNTDOWNS

[JasonPratt]

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

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

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


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

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

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


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


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

[JasonPratt]

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[JasonPratt]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[JasonPratt]

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

[JasonPratt]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[JasonPratt]

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

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


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

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

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

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

[JasonPratt]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[JasonPratt]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[JasonPratt]

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[JasonPratt]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[JasonPratt]

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

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

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

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

[JasonPratt]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[JasonPratt]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[JasonPratt]

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


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

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

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

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

[JasonPratt]

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

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

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


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

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

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

....

gasp!

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

The faithful and competent Molotov remains as his deputy.

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