IceBreakChron X: THE DAY OF TRUTH

Started by JasonPratt, June 22, 2020, 08:00:02 AM

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JasonPratt

July 7, 1941: Stalin sends a telegram to Southern Front Commander Army General Tulenyev, demanding Bessarabia be held no matter what, "bearing in mind that we need Bessarabian territory as a staging area for organizing our offensive." Stalin is still not thinking about defense. An offensive from Bessarabia means an attack on Romanian oil fields.


July, 1941: a few weeks earlier, on the day before Barbarossa, Major-General Petrov's 27th Mechanized Corps, created in the Turkestan Military District, was secretly on the way to join the recently re-created 9th Army, joining two other mechanized corps there, and bringing 9th Army to twenty divisions (including six armored). At full strength the seven corps would have had 3341 tanks.

Petrov had himself taken a different train to Moscow while his troops were en route, in order to receive his orders in person. This was very typical of final maneuvers before Barbarossa, remember: a corps is formed in the interior in, or rather from, a Military District; and then while its equipment, troops, and most of its officers are on the way to the western border, the Corps' top commander rides to Moscow for orders delivered to him in person -- not by courier, which wouldn't be secure enough for whatever Stalin was planning at the border, but which would have allowed the General to stay at least somewhere near his corps.

When Hitler invaded, the 24th Mechanized Corps had been caught on the rails, and Petrov had been caught away from them. He never receives his orders for which he was riding to Moscow.

He does however receive orders about what to do with his 24th Mechanized Corps: in the teeth of the Nazi blitz, at the time of the most desperate crisis of the Soviet Union, he is ordered to disband 24th Mechanized Corps!  :o :wow: :timeout:

Are they being punished somehow??! No, or anyway not any moreso than all the other Mechanized Corps of the Red Army: the same July, after the 24th is disbanded, every single one of the twenty-seven Soviet Mechanized Corps, each organizing over one thousand tanks (not counting other armored fighting vehicles) are also disbanded!!

Now of course the divisions and sub-units of the corps won't simply go home and wait for the end. I had been going to quip that neither will the tanks be detonated unused -- except that this happens with some notorious frequency! Why?? Because the tanks on the trains aren't near their ammo and fuel and crews. Stalin could have M1A2 Abrams tanks from a portal into the future, or Battletech-style mechs built from captured alien tech on those trains, and they would be just as useless, or rather worse than useless because the Nazis could capture them intact and then take the time to fuel, crew, and ammo them up! (Using captured Soviet ammo lying out on the ground near the border, or stacked in railcars near the border!)

The Mechanized (i.e. armored, panzer) Corps planned to be of key use on the Nazi border, where they were being dispatched. They are not useful enough now, in the most desperate defense against the Nazis, to stay organized as corps.
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JasonPratt

July 8, 1941: say, whatever happened to poor, doomed Golikov, who bet his life, with solid backing from Stalin, that Hitler wasn't ready to invade and certainly not on June 22? How many and what kind of exquisite tortures does Stalin have inflicted upon Golikov before liquidating him like every other former not-yet-GRU chief, none of whom failed this disastrously (or even failed at all)?

Hm, well, let's see here...

....checking...

...huh: none!  :o

Today, July 8th, Stalin entrusts Golikov to travel to Britain and the United States as Stalin's personal representative, on personally delivered instructions.

After this very important, and very successful, mission, Golikov will go on to army command; and then to front command; and that's before being named by Stalin, in 1943, to the post of Deputy People's Commissar of Defense for Senior Officer Staffing! -- which means Golikov will select and place senior officers for Stalin! Even Beria didn't get that job! After Stalin's death, Golikov will even become, someday, a Marshal of the Soviet Union.

In Golikov's memoirs, he says not one word about why Stalin didn't liquidate him the moment Barbarossa started. This riddle will prey upon Suvorov's mind, in his own career, until he solves it at the GRU Academy and corroborates it with research at GRU Headquarters: i.e. Stalin knew and understood Golikov's invasion prediction strategy, and rationally realized that Golikov had faithfully carried out this plan with meticulous effort. It was no fault of any Soviet leader that Hitler decided to invade without the slightest winter preparations to signal his invasion.

We'll be catching back up with Golikov before the end of the war, when he will arrive in the nick of time with Soviet heroes to save Russia and (and Stalin's Soviet Union) from certain defeat! -- more on this later.
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JasonPratt

Come to think of it, what happened to Major-General Vasilevsky, who spent May 1940 through June 1941 working on strategic deployment plans for Soviet armed forces in what eventually became the Northern, Northwestern, and Western Fronts? In other words, he worked on the war plans for the Karelian, Baltic, and Byelorussian regions.

The troops of the Northern Front, under his plans, let the Finnish troops (of all people) through to Leningrad from the north; the formations of the Northwestern Front fell apart under his plans, letting Nazi troops through to Leningrad from the south: together they accomplished setting what Suvorov calls the worst blockade in human history! The troops of the Western Front in Byelorussia were meanwhile almost instantly surrounded and crushed, leaving the way to Moscow wide open.

Does Stalin order anyone to go shoot Vasilevsky in the head as a maliciously incompetent traitor to the people of the Motherland? Nope! -- one month later Stalin appoints Vasilevsky to the position of head of the Operations Directorate of the General Staff (replacing Meretskov, who also doesn't get a bullet in the head for the failure of all his plans), entrusting him with drafting all plans on all fronts in all directions!

Vasilevsky will walk the path from Major-General to Soviet Marshal faster than anyone else: only one and a half years. Stalin will entrust him personally with the defeat of the Nazi armies near Stalingrad, the defeat of the Nazis at Kursk, and eventually the war against Japan.

Meretskov, whom Vasilevsky replaces, will be teamed up with him in command of the 1st Far Eastern Front in 1945. General Purkaev, former commander of the Southwestern Front, formerly commander of the Kiev Military District, will get command of the 2nd Far Eastern Front, by the way. Major-General Malinovsky, commanding the 48th Rifle Corps on the Romanian border where there were no German troops, but which had to retreat anyway from being destroyed by mere Romanian forces, will be put in charge of the most powerful Trans-Baikal Front in 1945, under Vasilyevsky: once again placed where the enemy is most vulnerable.

Their plans will all be principally the same as on the Nazi front before June 22, 1941; even identically the same in some ways -- but this time they shall succeed: the strong Japanese garrisons won't blitz them first while they're aligned completely out of defense! Marshal Meretskov's Front will also receive all his command staff from Karelia: they have massive experience in breaking through the Mannerheim Line once upon a time, which will perfectly serve them in overrunning occupied Eastern Asia.
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JasonPratt

#33
Late Summer 1941: sometime during this period, 1st Lieutenant Yakov Dzhugashvili is captured by the Nazis.

In the protocol of his interrogation, he is asked why Soviet artillery seems so incompetent, since on examination it looks very well designed. Were they not trained? Yes, he replies, Soviet artillery is superb, and he was trained very well. It is just that "The maps let the Red Army down, because the war, contrary to expectations, unfolded to the east of the state border." (Reported in "History of the Motherland", #4, 1993, p.26.)

Direct aiming and firing are only a small fraction of the work of artillery; most of the time artillery shoots beyond their line of sight. Moreover, the Nazis in 1943 will conclude about Soviet topographical services, in "Petermanns geographischen Mitteilungen", Vols 9 and 10 (page uncited by Suvorov), that "It turned out that in Soviet Russia, a map-making industry was created that surpassed everything that had ever been done before in its size, organization, volume, and quality of work." Yet Yakov and his artillery comrades have been let down by Red Army maps -- because they were expecting to shoot at targets to the west of the state border, not to the east in defense of Soviet territory against an invasion.

In JMH #10, 1992, p.82, Lieutenant-General A.I. Lossev will reveal some interesting details about what maps did exist at the time: "Storages of topographic maps, located unreasonably close to the border, were either seized by the enemy, or destroyed by the enemy during the first bomb raids. As a result, the troops lost one hundred million maps."

Now that is very curious, so many maps being so "unreasonably" close to the border as to be wiped off the map (so to speak!) at the start of the war -- caught by the Nazi invasion. But it is even more curious that all these maps did exist but had not been given to the Soviet troops yet!

It is also partly untrue that the Nazis were responsible for the loss of all those maps: in a 1970 JMH article, #12, p.22, Lieutenant-General M.K. Kudryavtsev (who under Stalin was the director of the topographic services of the Red Army), will report that during the first days of the war, Soviet troops in the Baltic, Western, and Kiev Military Districts (apparently only there per Suvorov?) are ordered during retreat to destroy over two hundred railcars of their own topographical maps.

The smallest railcar in the Soviet Union in 1941 could carry twenty tons, so even if only smallest cars were used that would be four thousand tons of maps in the three districts. More specifically, Kudryavtsev said that on average each railcar carried 1,033,000 maps. That average works out to 206,600,000 maps!

Now, of course, the Soviets would not want the Nazis to get their hands on defensive maps of Soviet regions, very reasonably. But why would vastly more than TWO HUNDRED AND SIX MILLION defensive maps of Soviet regions be sitting around in railcars at the western borders? Moreover, why not save some of those maps, since some could reasonably be saved? -- why destroy twice as many as the Nazis themselves overran?

Perhaps relatedly, millions of Russian-German and Russian-Romanian phrase books were burned along with those maps, so that only a few now exist in Soviet archives for Suvorov to find later.

But, wait, recall back to what Yakov said! He was not left without any maps at all! -- his maps just let him down. So he and his fellows had been given great maps after all, and also no maps at all? Yes, he has very good topographical maps -- for Nazi territory (some copies of which were also recovered by Suvorov), and he has only been trained to shell those areas, west of the border.

A letter from one of his friends, a certain junior lieutenant in the reserves named Victor, dated June 11th (Suvorov claims the 21st elsewhere, either a typo one way or another, or perhaps he is reporting the send date and also the receipt date), is found in Yakov's pocket: "I am at the training camps. I would like to be home by fall, but the planned stroll to Berlin might hinder this."

Nazi intelligence officers show the letter to Yakov and ask him to clarify what kind of stroll to Berlin his friend was planning; the interrogation record says Yakov quietly mutters, "Damn" after reading it.

Hitler will mention this letter himself in his May 18th, 1942 table talk (p.303 of Piker's edition).

Incidentally, Yakov happens to be the son of Josef Stalin.
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JasonPratt

August, 1941: the outstanding leader Petrovsky, who has been a militant supporter of the Communist revolution since joining the assault on the Winter Palace at age 15, had eventually been given charge of the 1st Moscow Proletarian Rifle Division at age 20; and at age 35 had risen to Deputy Commander of the Moscow Military District. However, he was caught up in the Great Purge, and sent to prison.

Released in November 1940, he was ordered to put together the 63rd Rifle Corps, which activated in June, featuring many 'blackshirt' units, in the 21st Army, part of the Second Strategic Echelon. BrigCom Fokanov and BrigCom Rakovsky, political prisoners with the old command ranks, were assigned to command two of three divisions in his Corps. Colonel Prishchepa was also released from prison, despite not having "Commander" rank, and given the remaining divisional command.

Petrovsky's talent, even as a political prisoner, is well-recognized by Stalin, by his peers, by his troops, and by his Nazi enemies, even in the disastrous early weeks of Barbarossa. After fierce fighting, 63rd Rifle Corps is surrounded in August, and rather than lose this commander, Stalin and his high command commute his sentence, converting him up to modern Soviet 'general' ranking, and promoting him to Lieutenant-General in command of the whole 21st Army.

Stalin orders him to abandon the largely penal 63rd Corps to destruction; but Petrovsky refuses, requesting a delay, and using the plane sent for him to evacuate some wounded instead.

Petrovsky extracts his 'black corps' from blitzkrieg encirclement, and heroically leads them in an attack upon the rear of a Nazi force to rescue fellow 'black division' 154th Rifle (led by Brigade Commander Fokanov). Taking them under command, he breaks the Corps and the Division out together -- but is mortally wounded and must be left behind on the field of his victory.

German soldiers discover and recognize his body; and Nazi headquarters orders him to be buried with full military honors, with a huge cross over his grave reading in German: "Lieutenant-General Petrovsky, Commander, 'Black Corps'."

More detail about the 63rd Corps can be found in JMH 1966, #6; in the Soviet Military Encyclopedia Vol.6, p.314; and in General Plaskov's memoir "With Cannons Thundering", p.163.
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JasonPratt

August, 1941: virtually all of the thousands of BT tanks are progressively abandoned by the Soviets in the face of Hitler's surprise deep-penetration attack. Hitler's forces are nailing vast numbers of these tanks as they sit clustered up in tank parks near their fuel and ammo, ready to load up and roll out, or overrunning them strung out apart from their crews and/or supplies on rail lines. But Hitler is also using equipment better suited than the BTs to fighting armored and even unarmored foes, on Russia's rough 'goatpaths' and terrain. There are no reports of the BT units fighting or operating untracked even once in Russia -- despite being designed that way and taught by Soviet military doctrine and textbooks, which did not expect the BTs to be fighting much with their tracks on. On the contrary, Soviet textbooks stressed that the most important component of the wonderful BT series was the wheels, and the speed achieved by its autobahn-quality wheels.

All 4200ish of the floating Soviet tanks are also scuttled, being useless in defense against a Nazi attack. Four thousand amphibious PzI and II equivalents are no longer needed: they are blown up, burned, broken, sunk, or just abandoned -- after commanders order the fuel and ammunition salvaged, where possible. The best, and the only, amphibious tanks in the world on June 21st, 1941, became unnecessary on June 22nd. Stalin could not sail them wherever he had been planning.

Even the Soviet tanks which might have been (and in some cases are being) better at fighting on defense in Russian terrain, have been left without fuel, ammunition, or spare parts -- because on the orders of the People's Commissar for Defense, Marshal of the Soviet Union Timoshenko, and the Chief of the General Staff, Army General Zhukov, tens of thousands of tons of spare parts for tanks, and hundreds of thousands of tons of ammunition and fuel for tanks, were brought out to the very borders of Soviet Russia, where in the first few hours of the war they all fell under fire or into the hands of the enemy. Consequently, the best Soviet tanks must also be progressively abandoned, along with most of the finest Soviet artillery, none of which are in defensive arrangement.

Once the mud and snow arrive, however, any surviving BT series tanks in the backfield will work better, paradoxically: like every Soviet tank, they'll have superior ground pressure distribution to anything the Nazis are fielding. They just have to be careful not to blast apart their transmissions with their overpowered engines meant for superhighway quality zooming.
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JasonPratt

August 1941: Stalin calls Illyushin personally (unsourced by Suvorov, but in "Chief Culprit" he calls the time "several days" after Barbarossa starts) and orders him to put the rear gunner back into the IL-2 design going forward. Stalin now expects them to defend against enemy aircraft.

But once again, it is impossible to simply redesign and refit the complex IL-2, unlike the Su-2. Production would have to be stopped; and production during the Nazi invasion simply cannot dare to be stopped. So the IL-2 continues being produced as a single-seater for a while.

In order to get around the massive problems in recreating the machinery necessary to produce a two-seater armored fusilage, Stalin will eventually approve a compromise: the rear gunner's position (which still needs redesign and alteration to the line production to add back in), will retain the single-seat armored construction -- and so will be unarmored aside from some plywood. To keep from affecting fuel and bomb capacity too much, his position will be as open-air as possible, which will at least allow him to bail out through the bottom of the tail area easily (if high enough to parachute)!

Usually however the tail gunner will only get off some bursts before being slain, and the craft will be back to one crewman again for the rest of its voyage.

In the years 1941 and 1942, the average lifespan of an active IL-2 will be only ten or thirteen flights before destruction. Only by the end of 1942 will the slapdash rear gunner solution be implemented within the crushing demand for replacements for this wunder-waffen.

Had a proper rear gunner been provided from the beginning, that average lifespan would have been tens or dozens of flights. The thousands of IL-2 produced during this time would have continued surviving longer for more operational sorties; and might have turned the tide of the war earlier all by themselves! As it was, the half-assed reintroduction of the rear-gunner only improved craft survivability against enemy fighters by a little bit. The best trained IL-2 pilots before the war, died quickly after the start of the war. Typical pilot replacement training will be 90 minutes of flight time (such as with one of Suvorov's military academy instructors, Hero of the Soviet Union and eventual Air Force Major-General Alexander Kuchumov.)
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JasonPratt

#37
For Russia In Her Agony
---------------------------

November 1941: back in February 1939, there was not even hestitation about the new Ammunition Narkomat putting its new ammunition factories up near the border. In January 1941, there was not even hesitation about creating new support factories near the border for producing the components to assemble into ammunition. So, how did that work out for the Soviet Union?

As N.A. Voznessensky reports (in "War Economics of the USSR during the Period of the Great Patriotic War", 1947, p.42), "From August [not even counting late June through July?] to November 1941, the German troops took 303 Soviet gunpowder, shell, and missile factories, which had a production capability of supplying 101 million artillery shells, 32 million mines, 24 million air bombs, [and] 3600 tons of TNT. This constituted 85 percent of all output from the Ammunition Narkomat." Not all these factories had been made since 1939, but Stalin's government didn't only start building those factories near the border since then either. This had been a running habit.

In addition to this, the mobilization reserves of the most valuable raw materials had been concentrated in those factories, including lead, tin, and forged steel. Most of this raw material could not be easily destroyed; it all goes to the National Socialists now, with all captured means of production, to be used against their international socialist enemies.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
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JasonPratt

November 1941: Stalin cancels production of the practically unarmored Su-2 and related successors. The IL-2, being very armored, can become a useful close-support weapon in a sky filled with enemies (even without a rear gunner yet); but the Su-2 and its direct successors cannot.

Fortunately, Stalin hadn't frightened his neighbors and the world by ordering production to start on a hundred and fifty thousand Su-x light bombers yet! That might have been a fatal diplomatic disaster under the current circumstances.

Meanwhile, now that Stalin is in a defensive war, he needs fighter aircraft produced in quantities large by even Soviet standards. Aviation designer S.A. Lavochkin urgently needs a powerful, reliable engine to modernize his LaGG-3 fighter. No problem! -- Soviet industry is already ready already to mass produce the M-82 engine at a moment's notice! Name your quantities, the Su-2 order won't need them! Lavochkin will install the newly upgraded engine design, and the renowned La-5 fighter, beloved by pilots, will be born.

Soviet industry is also prepared to mass produce the rapid-firing ShKAS machine guns for the Su-2; and bombs for the Su-2; and those 82mm and 132mm rockets. And Soviet industry does start mass producing them -- for other aircraft. Moreover, in the blink of an eye the Red Army will also have thousands of Stalin's Pipe Organs on the ground, in simple trucks but with a mass explosive terror weapon to launch in its operations.

Communist propaganda and historians will call the amazing Pipe Organs an entirely new weapon system developed from seemingly nowhere, barely produced before the war, an economic miracle: demonstrating the superiority of communism to capitalism! In fact, Stalin had been about to produce millions of those rockets anyway, just not for his iconic trucks -- a weapon system much less effective than the Su-2. Artillerists must first receive information about their targets, several kilometers away, unable to be seen usually, or specks at that distance, or a broad non-target area. Pilots would seek out specific targets in their assigned areas, hit up close, report back the results, and the next wave would adjust. The other fine aircraft to carry these rockets could be mass produced by any other standards, but not by the standards planned for the Su-2; the Katyushas will demonstrate in a vague yet epic and iconic fashion what terror Stalin's foes could have been facing instead from millions of rockets.

Still, even after losing all his aluminum supplies, all his aluminum factories, and most of his aircraft and motor factories, Stalin's Soviet Union will go on to produce 38,729 IL-2 and (its successor toward the end of the war) IL-10 aircraft, amazing wonders of the war, incomparably more complex than the Su-2 variants and direct successors; not even counting the other tens of thousands of other combat aircraft, all more complex than the abandoned "Ivanov". The IL-2 will be, and down to the publication of "Chief Culprit" will remain, the most mass-produced warplane of all time.

What about the mass-trained Ivanov pilots? Like their aircraft, they are of no use in a defensive war, so they are told to pick up rifles and help form the Third Strategic Echelon. Most famously, massive numbers of them will help fight for Stalingrad (per "Kraznaya Zvezda", Dec 15, 1992) -- where they will help literally outnumber the rifles available for Soviet defenders by two to one!
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
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JasonPratt

Third and Fourth Quarter of 1941: Stalin creates ten whole armies of sappers for building defenses against the German army. He waits until after Hitler has invaded Russia to do this.


During the war, P.K. Ponomarenko will be Chief of the Main Staff of the Partisan Movement (under Starinov). After the war (and long after Stalin's death, in the new Soviet anti-Stalinist regime), he will voice his anguish and frustration in a JMH article, Vol.1, 1962 (page uncited by Suvorov): "Stalin's incorrectly aimed statements that, if attacked, we would fight only on enemy territory led to the complete dismantling of all efforts to harness the experience from previous partisan wars and to develop corresponding mobilization directions. As a result, the initial phase of the war was marked by a particularly difficult effort to organize the partisan movement. The Party had to pay dearly for Stalin's mistakes."


Colonel Rodimtsev and his men of the 5th Airborne Assault Brigade, 3rd Airborne Corps, will be stripped of their parachutes and related airborne assault equipment, and be given more defensive armaments. As commander of the 42nd Guards Division (created from former Airborne troops), he and his men will bleed white while famously holding the final houses on the Volga River in Stalingrad.

Ten air assault corps, around one hundred thousand men, are sent to the trenches to stop the blitz; one hundred fifty thousand if we count the separate air assault brigades and reserve elements. This is like using a magnetic levitation speed train to haul bricks. But hm... where are the more-than-a-million parachute trained infantry mentioned by Pravda? These must be some of them, but...
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
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JasonPratt

Autumn 1941: Sorge sends a report to Stalin, backed with evidence, that Japan will not enter the war against the Soviet Union. His evidence shows instead they are planning to go to war in the Pacific against Britain and the United States.

He doesn't only get evidence for this; according to the "Hearings on American Aspects of the Richard Sorge Spy Case, House of Representatives Eighty-Second Congress, First Session, August 9, 22, and 23, Washington, 1951", Sorge actually contributed significantly toward convincing Japan to attack and conquer the Pacific. This is why Sorge can produce hard information proving Japan will soon be too busy to team up with their Axis partner Germany against the Soviet Union.

Thanks to this data, Stalin will release the ten divisions being trained in the Far East, to come westward later this year, to the rescue of the Battle of Moscow.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
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JasonPratt

Artillery Colonel-General Volkotrubyenko reports in JMH, 1980, #5, p.71, that in 1941 Western Front alone lost 4,216 artillery ordnance railcars.

That was only artillery shells, not other ammunition.

That was only one front; there were five administrative fronts at the border.

The ammunition had been sitting in railcars at the border, close enough that they could not be salvaged when Hitler invaded. At least those shells were not just sitting out on the ground near the border! -- but the Soviets also lost an unthinkable amount of artillery shells that had been laid out, since April 1941, on the ground near the border, upon the orders of the artillery chief directorate. There had been no more room in storage, so the chief had ordered the shells to be put where they ought first to be used.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

#42
1941 and 1942: with Moscow under threat, the steel beams of the nascent Palace of the Soviets are dug out and used for fortifications including anti-tank barriers.

The Palace has been used for propaganda promotion for years, and will still be used for some time to come, but eventually the site will become a 129.5 swimming pool (after being an unsightly but well-guarded hole in the ground until 1958).

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior will be rebuilt between 1995 and 2000.


September 8, 1942, after two years of crushing defeats all up and down western Russia, including a totally failed attempt at a strategic counter-offensive in the Southern sector, you might think Stalin was ready to despair.

Winston Churchill, reporting back in a speech at the House of Commons today, after his famous diplomatic visit to Moscow, thinks otherwise.

From the Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons Official Report, "It is very fortunate for Russia in her agony to have this great rugged war chief at her head." For context, you should keep in mind that Churchill despises Stalin as a thug, and correctly stands as his greatest immediate foe after Hitler. But the British Parliament needs some reassurance. "He is a man of massive outstanding personality, suited to the sombre and stormy times in which his life has been cast;" largely by Stalin's own plotting, of course, "a man of inexhaustible courage and will-power and a man direct and even blunt in speech, which, having been brought up in the House of Commons, I do not mind at all, especially when I have something to say of my own! Above all, he is a man with that saving sense of humor which is of high importance to all men and all nations, but particularly to great men and great nations. Stalin also left upon me the impression of a deep, cool wisdom and a complete absence of illusions of any kind."

That doesn't sound much like the man who supposedly fled in a panic unable to face his failures upon the Nazi invasion! -- but then, he wasn't really fleeing the Nazis, or even his people, so much as withdrawing to see if his government would stage a coup to overthrow him, after a week of failing to turn the growing disaster around.

And despite continuing disasters, Stalin has been dealing out his ace cards recently this year, with more on the way, so his calm and confident attitude shouldn't be too surprising.

What aces are those?! -- I've mentioned them before in earlier entries...  ^-^

But let us turn now to regard the East Front from the perspective of the Nazis (under Suvorov's Icebreaker thesis), from Barbarossa through to the end of the Great Patriotic War.

In case you'd like an Icebreaker-related spoiler for how this match is going to end, however...


Winter 1943: once again a flotilla is created on the Dnepr; once again it motors up the Pripyat; and once again Soviet engineers are recreating the canal from Pripyat to the Bug, just as Stalin had demanded must be ready by the spring of 1941 -- and just as had been completed, on schedule, under Zhukov, who took understandable pride in this little Soviet Navy base more than five hundred kilometers from the nearest salt water.

Admiral Grigoyev takes command of the new flotilla in the Kiev area, and in an article of the JMH (1984, #7, p.68) recalls a conversation with Zhukov:

"'The Pripyat [said Zhukov] will let you cross over to the Western Bug, the Naryev and the Visla, on the way to Warsaw, and from there transit to the rivers of Germany... Who knows, maybe all the way to Berlin!'

"He wheeled around, fixed me with a searching gaze and repeated, stressing every word, 'All-the-way-to-Berlin! Eh?'"

The admiral and his little fleet will in fact go all the way to Berlin -- providing an iconic snapshot for Soviet naval history, of the Soviet Navy ensign against the backdrop of the Reichstag!


[Next up, the grand finale: AGAINST THE POWER THAT RISES IN THE EAST!]
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!