IceBreakChron X: THE DAY OF TRUTH

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

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JasonPratt

June 22, evening: Stalin openly took the head of the Soviet Government, back on May 5th, for the first time in 19 years, expecting to take the credit for some foreign policy triumph, so enormous and so assured that he was willing to come out of the shadows where he had effectively ruled without official responsibility for decades.

Tonight it is his responsibility to address the nation to break terrible news: Nazi Germany has invaded the Soviet Union, and the Red Army is already losing badly, disastrously. He has a legal duty to do so as the official leader of all Soviet people. He took this responsibility from Molotov a little more than a month ago.

Now he hides behind Molotov, his deputy, leaving him the shamed responsibility to address the nation on radio with the terrible news.

This same evening, the third directive of Stalin's official reign, orders the Red Army to smash the invading enemy. Stalin refuses to sign it. It is issued (per the "History of the Second World War", Vol 4, p.38) over the signatures of "the People's Commissar of Defense Marshal Timoshenko, the Communist Party Central Committee Secretariat Council Member Malenkov, and the Chief of the General Staff General Zhukov".

What!? -- what does Malenkov, merely a Council member of the Secretariat Council, have to do with this?? (Suvorov doesn't say why Malenkov was substituted in for Stalin and his own highest office.)

Zhukov, in his "Recollections and Reflections", page 251, recalls that General Vatutin said Stalin endorsed this draft of Directive #3, and ordered Zhukov to sign it.
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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RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

Once Hitler starts the invasion, the Second (as well as First) Strategic Echelon will be used for defense -- yet still not at first!

Why does it take some time for the Second Echelon to be deployed for defense?!

General Kazakov (JMH, 1972, #12, p.46), "Once the war had begun, [the Second Echelon's] mission had to be radically revamped."

What was their mission? General Zemskov (JMH, 1971, #10, p.13), "These reserves we were forced to use, not for offense, as planned, but for defense." The offensive planning and arrangement of the Second Strategic Echelon was so strong, that shifting them over to defense required radical revamping.

But what was Second Echelon's offensive mission? General Ivanov's memoir, "Opening Phase of the War", p.206: "Had First Strategic Echelon forces succeeded... in taking combat operations to enemy territory even before our main-force deployment," and notice the classic plan dating back to 1932 for the First Echelon to be used during the opening of the final worldwide revolutionary war: First Echelon invades onto enemy territory BEFORE the main invasion force even arrives to deploy, "Second Strategic Echelon was to build on First Echelon efforts and mount a counterattack in line with our overall strategic objective."

General Ivanov is talking about a "counterattack" similar to the, cough cough, "counterattack" staged by Soviets invading Finland and other areas previously. Remember Soviet ideological military doctrine: the overall strategic objective involves the Red Army, facetiously or otherwise, counterattacking the counterattack of property owners who are busily striking back at some kind of revolutionary workers uprising to seize the property of the property owners.

When Soviets talk about a "liberation crusade", they have been talking about just such "counterattacks", whether or not there was any kind of worker uprising in the target area for property owners to defend against -- a defense treated as an "attack", notice, to be "counterattacked" against by the Red Army!

More than 50 years later, the official version of the Winter War was still that Finland, in suicidal insanity, threw a few artillery shells at the most powerful army on its border, the strike army which just happened to be in formation for invasion, thus providing a pretext for "counterattack".

Anyway, we can be sure that General Ivanov means "first strike" by the politically correct euphamism of "counterattack", because that was explicitly his plan for such action in this same memoir (p.281) as "preparations for and launching of a sudden first strike, together with opening of a new strategic front." Of course, you can have a surprise first strike on a foe you're currently at peace with (thus opening up a new strategic front, otherwise the strategic front would already exist, being at war already) -- but NOT while also being a counterattack response to your foe's attack upon you!
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

#17
June 22, 1941: in the chapter "Stuka Pilot" of "Bombs Away!" (Moscow 2002 edition, pp. 30, 35), the Stuka (Ju-87) pilot Hans-Ulrich Rudel, who will complete 2,430 battle missions against the USSR, describes the start of the war against the Soviet Union, "By the evening of the first day, I had completed four trips beyond the frontline to the area between Grodno and Vokovysk. We saw huge masses of tanks and trucks there. We mostly saw KV-1, KV-2, and T-34 tanks." He mostly saw the latest models, in other words. But they weren't doing anything; they were parked near trucks for preparation of fuel and ammo and crews, not in defensive formation. "We bombed tanks and anti-aircraft guns."

June 23, 1941, Stuka pilot Rudel continues his memoir, "The next day, we first flew out at 3am, and finally returned at 10pm. One had to forget about normal rest during the night, so we made use of every available minute to fall down on the grass by our airplanes and to sleep... Even on my first mission, I noticed innumerable fortifications built along the borderlines. They stretched for many hundreds of kilometers deep into Russian territory." Oh, so the Soviets were preparing for defense after all? "And yet, they were partly unfinished!" He's charitably generalizing the description then, based on what he thinks would be reasonably accurate. These aren't bases built for serious defense, no matter how far into the backfield they're stretching, but are minor defenses for marking out distinction areas between organizational containers, from battalions upward (companies he might not have seen). That's why they look "unfinished".

"We flew over unfinished airbases: in some places, the concrete landing strips were just being constructed." These are forward assault bases of course, just like what Rudel is flying from. "Even at such airbases, however, one could find a few aircraft waiting. We saw, for example, along the road to Vitebsk, which our troops were advancing upon, one such almost-finished airbase with many 'Martin' bombers." These are Western lend-lease aircraft! "They either did not have enough fuel or enough crews. While flying over these numerous airbases and fortifications, we all had the same thought in our heads: how lucky we were to have struck first! It seemed that the Soviets were feverishly readying the groundwork for an attack against us. And which other Western country could Russia have attacked? If the Russians had completed their preparations, there would have been almost no hope of stopping them... The highway Smolensk-Moscow was the target of many raids; it was packed with huge amounts of Russian military equipment and supplies. Trucks and tanks were lined up one after another almost without any intervals, often in three parallel columns." Not spread out in defensive works. "If all this massive machinery had attacked us... There were no difficulties in attacking so enticing a target. In a few days, the entire road was transformed into a pile of rubble."

June 23, 1941, the Soviet 1st Long-range Bomber Aviation Corps carries out a massive strike against military targets in Koenigsburg (an East Prussia major port city near the Lithuanian border) and Danzig (the German pocket city on the Polish border coast, farther west from Koenigsburg). They are following orders sent at 6:44am yesterday morning -- orders to act according to a pre-arranged plan (per A.B. Shirokorad's "Russia's Northern Wars", 2001, p.702.) The Aviation Corps will continue trying to carry out these orders for several days.
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.
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RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

#18
Stumbling Colossus
----------------------

After Stalin's death much later, Nikita Krushchev will recount that in 1941, having found out about the Nazi invasion, Stalin panicked, retreated to his dacha-fortress outside Moscow; and having become totally apathetic he completely kept out of all affairs, did not receive anybody, did not ask about developments on the front, and did not answer telephone calls. After a week of extreme depression, only on July 1st did the members of the Politburo manage to force him to return to the reins of power.

This story will be accepted and repeated in thousand of books and essays, serving as a main evidence of Stalin's unreadiness for war.

It also happens to be mostly a lie.

After 1991, the Soviet archives became more accessible, including logbooks documenting visitors to Stalin's Kremlin office from 1927 to 1953. An entry for June 21, 1941 -- a busy day indeed -- reads, "The last [visitors] left at 11pm".

Stalin has been receiving visitors at his office since 5:45am, working eleven hours without breaks. His visitors today naturally include Molotov, Beria, Timoshenko, Mekhlis, Zhukov, Malenkov, Mikoyan, Kaganovich, Voroshilov, Vyshinski, Admiral Kuznetsov (the Front and former MD commander being busy elsewhere, understandably), Dimitrov, Manuilsky, Vatutin, Kulik, and others, including the elder master of mobilization himself, Shaposhnikov.

Stalin might have passed out at 11am, but that would not be typical for his frenetic pace before Barbarossa, when after visiting hours he would work on documents, make telephone calls, or simply leave his office to work at his Kremlin apartment or at his fortress-dacha. According to the logbook, on some subsequent days Stalin kept receiving visitors for twenty-four hours, with short breaks. Despite Khrushchev's claims, Stalin's return to the shadows wasn't due to depressed apathy: during the first seven days of the Great Patriotic War, Stalin worked as much as humanly possible -- typically herding his troops into an attack, not giving orders for defense.


June 23, 1941, the second day starts early at Stalin's office after visitors ceased back around 11pm; reception begins at 3:20am! Visitors will end sometime early on the following morning of the 24th, for a little while.

June 23, 1941, the membership of the General Headquarters is publicly announced -- it already secretly existed on June 21st. In fact, the General HQ which was set up on that day is abolished, including Force Command for the Second Strategic Echelon! The former GHQ, in its mobile armored train fleet based outside Vilnius, isn't useful anymore in a war of desperate defense.

Of course, Stalin as the ultimate public authority, has put himself on this (newer-than-new!) ultimate military leadership body -- but he has turned down command!

Well.... he turns down public command anyway. Zhukov, in his "Recollections and Reflections" (p.251), recalls, "Given the existing hierarchy, Timoshenko [who was given command] could take no fundamental decisions anyway, not independently, not without Stalin. Effectively, there were two Supreme Commanders: de jure, by virtue of a decree, People's Commissar Timoshenko, and de facto, Stalin."

Stalin reverts to his standard operating procedure: he makes the crucial decisions, and takes any credit he cares for; other people bear official responsibility, in case things go badly.

The Politburo will, in effect, force Stalin to take on the official position of People's Commissar of Defense a month later, and then the position of Commander-in-Chief on August 8th. Until then, while he's busy all day and night giving orders and trying to salvage the disaster, he dodges all public and official responsibility for a war of defense -- until his own government forces him to take it up again.

However, there will be a short break after the first week, which is what Krushchev will later base his anti-Stalin propaganda legend upon. More on that incident when we get there...
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

June 24, 1941: on this day, or possibly on the 26th (Suvorov's account somewhat differs depending on his topic), Stalin removes Artyomyev from leadership of the NKVD 7th Chief Directorate, the directorate of the Rapid-response Force armies of motorized rifle divisions (MRDs). We shall have to learn in a few days (on the 26th) whether he is put up against a wall and shot for his MRDs being untrained, unsupplied, and improperly deployed, for a war of defense!

No new leader is provided; and no further NKVD motorized rifle divisions are created. The current armies of NKVD MRDs will be reconfigured into standard Red Army rifle divisions. For example, 8th NKVD MRD becomes 63rd Red Army Rifle Division; 13th becomes 95th; 21st becomes 109th.

As Major-General Nekrasov later reports in JMH, 1985, #9, p.29, twenty-nine such divisions are transferred from the NKVD to the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. Later throughout the war, many of these will be reinforced and renamed into Guards units, using elite air-mobile troops (now without their air-mobility which isn't needed anymore in a war for driving a German invasion out of Russian soil).

While no new NKVD motorized rifle divisions are created from 1941 forward, Stalin still retains some in their secret-police configurations. They will be eventually deployed during the Soviet "liberation" invasions of Central Europe and Germany -- following behind the Red Army to pacify enemy civilian areas now in the rear of the advance, just as they were designed to do.
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

June 25, 1941, visitors start early at Stalin's Kremlin office today, 1am sharp. They will end the following morning of the 26th. (Unsure if Suvorov doesn't provide notes for the 24th, or if I've accidentally erased them; or possibly the Kremlin's logbook simply continues through the 24th without any breaks at all!)


June 25, 1941: at the Danube River Flotilla base, rivercraft and shore artillery will be quickly destroyed by local enemy forces if the Romanians launch an attack, because they are not aligned for defense. So far they have survived because no one is bothering to invade the Soviet Union here, which would be crazy.

Fortunately, the Soviet 14th Rifle Corps has divisions massed in the Danube sector, as well as the 79th NKVD Border Guard detachment (i.e. secret police death squads with howitzers and tanks). They have been planning in advance for the start of war against the Nazis, and have been drilling exhaustively. Black Sea airpower has been conducting active combat operations to open the way for them to head upriver at the start of the war; so, three days after the start of the war, in lieu of receiving any clear orders one way or the other, they start their mission!

Fortunately, the Black Sea Fleet surface warships have appeared near the Romanian port of Constanza to unleash an intensive artillery barrage -- the type used as a preparation for Soviet troops to come ashore. They've been preparing for this, but there's a big problem: the 9th Special Rifle Corps was caught on the trains, rolling overland to meet up with the Fleet! Yet the Fleet sailed without them, to go bombard the Romanians; they know there's another Corps on the ground which has been practicing river marine assaults.

On the Romanian border, Soviet river assault craft ferry Soviet assault rangers across in the vicinity of the city of Kilia, covered by the Soviet mobile cannons on the bank, as well as by Rifle Corps and Rifle Division artillery shelling. These rangers seize a staging area, with covering fire provided by NKVD scouts that had landed on the river bank earlier. (Reported in "Guarding Soviet Borders", p. 141.) Regiments of the 51st Rifle Divisions follow them across the river into Romania promptly. Soviet assault forces move with resolve, daring, and speed, in a combined force attack with highly-coordinated river craft, airpower, artillery from the banks and ships as well as far afield: everything has been worked out, synchronized, coordinated, tested and retested many times over. It is a textbook operation.

Similar NKVD elite troops stand ready on boundary-lines northward where the Nazis are striking instead, but are proving totally unprepared to repulse attack or to defend bridges, surrendering almost without a fight.

When the western end of a border bridge has to be captured, they show total preparation, skill, and bravery; when the eastern end of a border bridge has to be defended, the same types of soldiers show total lack of preparation. They have never been taught to defend their side of the bridge.
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

June 25, 1941: Soviet airpower was mauled on the ground in the first few minutes of the war, but 487 aircraft from Baltic and Northern Fleet stage a surprise joint raid on Finnish air bases today, with a spirited and daring performance.

From the staff report of the Northern Front, reported in M. Solonin's "June 25: Stupidity or Aggression?", 2008, pp.442-3, "The air force of the front and of the armies started on 6:20am to carry out, by bomber formations, the task of exterminating the enemy's air force on his airfields... Bombed were all known airfields of the southern part of Finland."

Nazi Germans aren't mentioned in the Soviet report, and Finland hasn't declared war on the USSR: the Soviets simply strike without declaring war, in violation of their own peace treaty signed with Finland back in spring 1940!

But since the Nazis have been attacking for three days now, Finland's own combat air patrol is up, and everyone is ready to receive visitors. The bombers pay a very heavy price, and nothing can be done to follow up their attack.

This undeclared war assault (among several others by land and sea) upon Finland, just so happens not to be brought up during the Nuremburg Trials, of course.  ::)
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

June 26, 1941 -- let's check in on how the Soviet invasion of southern Romania is going, down near the Danube River Flotilla!

About as well as can be expected, all things considered: the red flag is raised above the central cathedral in the Romanian city of Kilia. Soviet forces now hold a nearly 45-mile stretch of Romanian territory, a major springboard for further invasion. The flotilla, having supported this invasion, is getting ready to fight its way 80 miles up the Danube to kill the Nazi army's fuel supply. There is no resistance; it might take one night. 3rd Airborne Corps stands ready to be airlifted for the assist, from bases in the Odessa area.

Later in 1944, a weaker flotilla with no heavy patrol boats would fight upriver 1250 miles to end the war in Vienna; in 1941 the flotilla was far more capable and faced much less resistance from the enemy. The 4th Long-range Bomber Aviation Corps even starts bombing the Ploeshti oil fields! Under circumstances where almost the entire Soviet Air Force had been crushed on the ground, they still manage to muster enough punch to reduce Romania's oil output by 50 percent! -- for several days.

There is only one small, tiny, gigantic problem: Hitler invaded Russia, not the other way around, and the invasion corps behind the Flotilla (with its amphibious assault groups now in front of the Flotilla), has no support beyond the Black Sea Fleet bombarding from offshore.

Had they still gone ahead, the Flotilla might have won World War Two in one night, almost single-handedly along with the 4th Aviation Corps. But they were supposed to wait for coordinating orders, to be sure they got the invasion done correctly: not merely to stop a world war in its tracks! If this is supposed to be a liberation crusade of all of Europe (or farther), as per Soviet political doctrine since at least the 20s, then they can't just go upstream tonight and end the war by themselves. That might not be expedient.

So a river flotilla and a rifle corps wait in, and near, captured Romania, until they are withdrawn.

In June 1940, with no one threatening war with the Soviet Union, dozens of Soviet river warships arrived in the wake of a Soviet invasion of areas held by Romania, and parked 80 miles downstream of the main fuel artery of the Nazi war machine; next month, Hitler and his generals came to the bleak conclusion that defending the oil link to Romania would be too difficult, thanks to encroachment by the Soviet Union. Ironically, being in position to end the war overnight, the Danube flotilla helped convince Hitler to invade the Soviet Union first.

When the Rifle Corps withdraws, the Danube fleet will be mostly unable to retreat, having to scuttle most of its craft. Huge stockpiles meant to feed and fuel the flotilla simply have to be dumped.
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

June 26, 1941: Moscow Military District was left headless one day before Barbarossa when, according to an arranged plan (going back at least as far as February 1941), its commander Tulneyev was promoted to be commander of the newly created Southern Front. His officer staff was already on the way to establish command in Vinnitsa; his promotion was a special formality held until the last moment, because "Fronts" in Soviet doctrine only exist once Soviets have gone to war.

Now with the Nazis invading Russia, taking Stalin and his generals by surprise (because they weren't expecting, thus weren't preparing for, a defensive war against the Nazis), someone must be promoted to command the Order of Lenin Moscow Military District, the premier MD in Soviet Russia.

Who will that be? Lieutenant-General Artyomyev of the NKVD Tactical Forces Command! -- under whose leadership the armies of NKVD Mobile Response Divisions were so totally unprepared to defend against an invasion, that they're now being disbanded into normal rifle divisions! Fired from his job back on the 24th (or maybe today, Suvorov is unclear), he's promoted to command the Moscow MD, instead of being shot in the head.

Stalin also appoints NKVD Forces Divisional Commissar (later Lieutenant-General) Telyegin as a member of MMD's military council.

These are SpecOps veterans and secret police terror squad commanders. Telyegin for example served with NKVD Interior Forces during the Great Purge as MMD Political Commissar, so he knows the territory well. Even during the years of the Great Purge and the decades of the Great Terror, the Military Districts stayed under military command. Now the MMD has been put under command of two NKVD Divisions and twenty-five stand-alone NKVD extermination battalions. Moscow has to make do with what it has, and it has no more Red Army combat units. Whereas, it does have need for coup suppression veterans.

Telyegin will recall later that when "new people" (his Chekists) arrived at MMD HQ, they had to "spend quite a bit of time and effort getting to know the District's make-up, mission, and potential." Since the Chekists are none too well versed in proper military affairs, poor Brigade Commander Khripunov (notice his old style rank) is released from his gulag to help them out, becoming Section Chief for the MMD. (As you might expect, former GRU agent Suvorov relishes in any embarrassment or incompetence from his old institutional rivals in the pre-KGB!)

But why? Why cripple the interior Military Districts like this at all, if no war was being planned, or even if only a defensive war was expected? Death Squad (with howitzers) Commander Telyegin explains: "Inasmuch as the assumption was that the war would be fought on enemy territory, the pre-war depots of in-country military districts -- with M-Day reserves of arms, equipment, and ordnance -- were moved up into districts near the border." (JMH, 1962, #1, p.36)

Notice his reference to the M-Day packets, by the way: the plans in those red packets, whatever they were, involved needing reserves of arms, equipment, and ordnance near the border -- so many that the most important Military District in all the Soviet Union had to be denuded of its material, sent up to the border (to be captured or destroyed when the Nazis attacked instead of whatever the M-Day plans had been.)
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

Soon after Hitler invades on June 22nd (Suvorov doesn't supply a precise date), Stalin will fire Army General Papov of the Western Front (secretly created several days or more before Barbarossa), and replace him with Lieutenant-General Yeremenko (a future Marshal of the Soviet Union.)

As you may recall from a prior entry, Yeremenko was on the way to Moscow (from his prior command of the 1st Army) for marching orders to carry out some mission, when he was redirected to take Pavlov's command.

Suvorov will later meet and talk with Marshal Yeremenko, and will try to politely question whether he knew or ever learned his original orders. Suvorov's impression is that Yeremenko never found out -- and also that Yeremenko was surprised and fascinated to learn that also on the same westbound trains were Kurochkin, Sivkov, Kurdyumov, Zhadov, Petrov, and Luchinsky. In gratitude, Yeremenko will reveal to Suvorov the prior informaton about his deputy, Bezarin.
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

Late June: too many Soviet airbases were crammed up within 80km of the border, many falling under the tracks of German tanks on the first day (or even on the first hour!), after being bombed and strafed back to the stone age from the skies.

It doesn't matter a whit how good or obsolete Stalin's air force is compared to Hitler's, if they're caught on the ground or by tanks and mechanized infantry. Stalin could have teleported fourteen thousand 21st century jet fighters and ground-attack strikers back in time, and any of them on the ground would have suffered the same.

The loss in planes is compounded by the loss of unimaginable reserves of fuel, ammunition, and other supplies, without which conducting an air war with even the surviving planes and pilots must range from ludicrous to impossible. Of course, much of this can be used by the Nazi forces, extending their campaign from two to three weeks!

On top of all this, the absolute chaos in command and control will further hamper any effective Soviet air response in compounding ways for days on end afterward, even from air bases not yet struck.

Beyond the air base losses and their snowballing consequences lurching forward, must be counted all the Soviet planes, and their supplies, and their pilots, which are lost on freight trains still riding toward the front, or ready to fight but parked at factories near the front.

Keep in mind, if Stalin had struck 36 hours before June 22, Hitler's air forces would have been in much the same hell! -- though not entirely as bad, because Hitler's air forces had already arrived at the front, and wouldn't have also been caught in strategic transit. Also, Hitler's air forces don't suffer from crippling overspecialization in training, design, and command planning, even with their blitzkrieg orientation, so that would have helped the survivors in being able to shift over from blitz to defensive missions.


Colonel A.I. Rodimtsev will recall later (as a Colonel-General) in his memoir, "Motherland, These Are Your Sons", p.29, talking with Lieutenant-General M.A. Purkaev, the Southwestern Front Chief of Staff, about frustration in not being able to launch their planned airborne operations. Purkaev astutely and dryly explains the reality created by the surprise Nazi attack, "Yes, the situation is now such, Comrade Rodimtsev, that it is easy to find one's way behind the enemy's lines without a paratroop drop! Some of our units and even large formations are already encircled." But everything had been prepared already for such now-useless landings.
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

Late June: trains transporting the 24th Army are stretched over thousands of miles; which would normally be impressive because they were one of the last Far Eastern units to embark for the west, after they ran a final airborne assault practice operation back on June 21st -- the day before Barbarossa!

Its commander, Lieutenant-General Kalinin, abandoned the Siberian Military District (upon the May 6th orders), now unled, converting its officers and troops into the 24th Army. Currently he is in Moscow, trying to figure out how to keep his scattered army fed in the opening weeks of Barbarossa. In his "Past Battles Remembered", pp.132-133, he tells how he arrives for a meeting with the secretary of the Party's Moscow City Committee, who calls the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs.

Wait, what? That's odd: why is Kalinin getting into contact with the PCIA, through the MCC, and not the Red Army General Staff Logistics Command? Well, Logistics Command staff are overburdened right now, all things considered!

Some comrade at the PCIA (explains the MCC Secretary) has a great deal of experience in food logistics, and used to handle this for the building of the Volga-Moscow canal. Around twenty minutes later, "a tall, strapping NKVD troop commander, belt tightly drawn and sporting three diamond-shaped insignia on his collar, strode into the Secretary's office." Kalinin doesn't name this impressive death-squad leader, but his insignia marks him with a rank, contemporary for this time, equivalent to general. He takes over handling food logistics, having commanded gulag labor forces during the construction of that canal, and gets the 24th Army arranged into the start of a deployment. This is probably NKVD Major-General Konstantin Rakutin, who will very soon take charge of the 24th Army (and its gulag-based 'black units') after the first few battles, replacing Kalinin, and leading it to some distinction.

Why is Rakutin replacing Kalinin? Because Stalin personally orders Kalinin back to Siberia. Going to jail for incompetence in training his army in airborne operations to hit the enemy on their own turf?! No. Because the Siberia MD still has no replacement?! No, it will remain leaderless until 1942.

Kalinin is going back to raise another ten divisions, essentially a whole new army! From his memoir, p.182, "The formations were created in places where there had been no military units at all before. My job started, in fact, with a visit to these localities." Oh? Hm, what kind of Siberian localities are these? "My first sortie took me to a Siberian town. Back a few years before the War, out in the middle of nowhere and deep in the forest, a barracks city was built there to house lumberjacks. This, in fact, was used to billet units of the formation taking shape. Impenetrable taiga virtually ringed the settlement." Oh, lumberjack barrack cities! -- such as what Solzhenitsyn writes about in his three volumes of the "Archipelago Gulag".

Kalinin is there to raise an entire 'black army' from gulag inmates! He's just being carefully evasive about his descriptions: he is visiting these "locales" where he hadn't raised troops before; selecting prisoners as troops (and officers) for his new army; and then sending them to be billeted in this other now-empty "lumberjack city". Why was this one empty? Kalinin had been there before already, when he converted the Siberian MD into the 24th Army!

The 24th Army's heavy composition of gulag inmates explains why a NKVD Major-General (Rakutin) was eventually put in charge of the 24th Army; and why an unnamed NKVD general-rank officer (probably also Rakutin) was assigned for logistics in Moscow.

But the 24th Army's composition also explains why Kalinin, back in Moscow, didn't call up Logistics Command to gather and feed his strung-out army, but rather called up the MCC to get in touch with the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs: that's a very polite and indirect title for one of the governing bodies of secret police death squads! -- and they have direct oversight of the Chief Directorate of Labor Camps!

As Suvorov colorfully puts it, Kalinin is only a half-breed Chekist, so Stalin puts his army under the command of a pure-breed Chekist who knows how to handle those "lumberjacks" from Siberia. Kalinin did a good job raising a partially "lumberjack" army -- one with airborne assault capability! Now he is going back home to raise a more fully "lumberjack" army.

What are these ten new divisions for? "Where do you start?" (same memoir, p.182-183) "What do you concentrate on most in troop training: defense or offense?" Well, DUH YOU'RE IN THE MIDDLE OF A NAZI INVASION RIGHT THIS MOMENT KALININ! YOU'VE BEEN IN ONE FOR A FEW BATTLES ALREADY!

"The frontline situation remained tense." That's an understatement. "Red Army troops were still locked in heavy defensive fighting." So you must start training these ten new divisions for defense, instead of, let's say, for airborne offensive assaults, right?

"Combat experience showed we had by no means always done a good job of defending." Again, duh to the power of ultra-duh! You hadn't trained or kitted your army for defense. "Our defensive positions were often woefully flimsy. Sometimes even the outer perimeter lacked a set of trenches. The defenders' battle order more often than not consisted of a single line and meager reserve back-up, sapping the troops' ability to hang on." Yes, having to deploy into fields off train wagons into areas totally unprepared for any defense, and with comrade armies totally unprepared for any defense, while your own army is totally unprepared for any defense, will result in such problems.

"Often, ill-prepared as the men were for fighting tanks, it was no secret they quaked at the sight." You have had ample opportunity since at least September 1st, 1939, to get your men prepared to face Panzer Corps. Ah, but of course you were training them to fly behind the panzers, in blue-sky conditions of Soviet air supremacy, and thus to drop into the enemy's rear where they would face few if any panzers, nor need to carry anti-armor weaponry to amount to anything.

At any rate, you have now thoroughly explained why, if you aren't going to be shot as a traitor to the Motherland, you need to dang well start training your next army in defensive... uh... "Defense in our view has never been and is not now the primary way to fight... In other words, troops have to be trained to take the fight to the foe... I shared my views with the commanders. Our unanimous conclusion: focus training on thoroughly drilling offensive operational tactics."

The Nazis are threatening the very existence of the Soviet regime; Kalinin is painfully well aware that the Red Army is unprepared for defense, and is suffering badly for it; Kalinin has been personally sent back by Stalin's orders to the "lumberjacks" of Siberia to raise ten new divisions; defense is easier to train than offense, and the Soviet Union needs these divisions desperately soon! -- so obviously, in Soviet Russia, teach these new troops nothing but offense! Everyone agrees, this is the right thing to do!

When reality just breaks attempts at satire, only sarcasm remains.  :P

From Anfilov's "Immortal Feat", p.517, "Strategic defense was a type of combat operation imposed [by the enemy], not planned in advance." Suvorov says this is how Soviet military textbooks regard strategic defense; in Soviet military regulations, strategic defense did not rate a single word. Not only did the Red Army have no strategic defense plans, it did not deal even in purely theoretical terms with problems encountered in conducting operational level defense. The Soviet military, and even the civilians, had been trained, and propagandized, to master defensive challenges by offensive means. As Pravda put it back on the day the Soviet Politburo regarded World War II to have already begun, August 19, 1939: "It is precisely the best interests of defense that demand of the USSR sweeping offensive operations on enemy territory, something that in no way contradicts the nature of defensive war." Not a single pre-war operational maneuver (per Suvorov) had even ever practiced for counter-attack! -- the topic had not even been theoretically considered! "The matter of counter-attacking... prior to the Great Patriotic War, had not been raised." ("History of the Soviet Union's Great Patriotic War, 1941-1945", Vol.1, p.441.)

Yet Vasilyevsky says that in the final year before the war, generals and junior officers at General Staff, as well as at Military District and Fleet headquarters, were putting in 15 to 17 hour days, with no time out for weekends or for leave. Bagramayan, Sokolovsky, Shtemyenko, Kurasov, Malandin, "plus many more" (says Suvorov), agree. Some reports say Generals Anisov and Smorodinov were working 20 hours a day on average. Zhukov had been sending up even minor officers for court-martial and capital punishment, for on-the-job negligence; back in his preparations to invade Mongolia, he had sent up seventeen officers to die in only four days. Since February 1941, when becoming Chief of the General Staff, Zhukov has been driving all Soviet generals at typically epic Zhukov-levels (levels that General Staff veterans will later recall as worse than even the Great Purge), to train and prepare -- to not even do counter-attacks.

Yet Stalin does not shoot Zhukov or any other high-ranking General for not being prepared to even counter-attack. They all prove to be brilliant strategists, and everyone in the preceding list ends out the war at four-star general or higher. He does not even rebuke them.

The Navy Admirals are somewhat different; they do have operational defensive plans.

"The Fleet in the Great Patriotic War", p.117, shows the Black Sea Fleet's prewar mission was to engage in "active combat operations against enemy vessels and transports around the Bosporus and other approaches to enemy bases, backed up by land-based forces as they made their way along Black Sea shores." This, as Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Gorshkov reports, counts as a defensive mission, including similar plans for the Baltic and Northern Fleets. But notice, the "defensive" mission involves picking off enemy navies from approaches to enemy bases, while the land-based forces advance onto enemy bases on the shore! The Black Sea Fleet had even helped develop amphibious deployment of the 9th Special Rifle Corps! In prior entries for this chronology, we've seen what this "defensive" operation looked like down with the Danube Delta Flotilla.

The Baltic Sea Fleet subs are caught stacked like sardines in a can, at their docks, with the crews unable to even surge, even though the Baltic Sea Surface Fleet set sail on June 21st with combat orders to intercept "the enemy's" (i.e. Germany's) lines of naval supply. But other Baltic Sea subs had already been at sea, and on June 22 they did set out immediately for German shores with the mission of "sinking all enemy ships and vessels by right of unlimited undersea war" (per Baltic Sea Fleet Commander Order of June 22, 1941.) The order does not even exempt hospital ships under the flag of the Red Cross! Same day, the Soviet Black Sea Fleet subs set out for the shores of Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey, to snipe enemy vessels leaving their ports.


The Red Army has been designed, equipped, and trained, like a giant crocodile. When carefully creeping up on its prey and then lunging, it is an overpowered one-hit killer without a match in the world. When the crocodile suffers a savage surprise attack, such as from another crocodile, the crocodile cannot raise up quills like a porcupine. It has only one skill, nothing else, and thus a one-track mind: its only plan, attack.

In JMH, 1986, #5, p.49, Major-General Mikhalyev acknowledges the Soviet command did not plan on using Southern and Southwestern Fronts for defense or even counter-attack: "The assumption was strategic goals were going to be attained by having Front troops resolutely go on the offensive." Zhukov was caught at Moscow when Hitler attacked, but was going to take command of oversight of both Southern and Southwestern Fronts. Until June 30, 1941, he keeps insisting on offense, demanding from Front commanders nothing but offense.

It takes Zhukov until July to reach the conclusion that the gravely wounded crocodile cannot attack.
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.
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RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

So, we've learned the fate of the Danube Delta Flotilla. How about the other less-strong remnant of the Dnepr River Flotilla? -- the Soviet Naval Flotilla of the Pripyat River Swamps?

They will be scuttled and sunk in the first weeks; they fight bravely against the invasion, but they are practically worthless on defense. The Dnepr-Bug Canal will be dynamited where the Soviets can still reach it.


June 28, 1941, sometime today, Stalin learns that the Western Front has been pocketed: the 4th Army destroyed; the 3rd, 10th, and 13th Armies encircled.

He asks for a more detailed report of action on the entire border area, to be delivered tomorrow. This will affect his busy schedule for the first time.
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

June 29, 1941, one week into the Nazi invasion: the logbook for Stalin's Kremlin office records no visitors for the first time since the start of Barbarossa.

The cause isn't far to seek: upon arriving early at the People's Commissariat of Defense, Stalin is receiving the most complete description so far of the true extent of failure across all fronts -- a line longer than the eastern coastline of the United States from Maine to the tip of Florida.

Stalin explodes in anger at Timoshenko and Zhukov, bringing the latter to tears! Anastas I. Mikoyan, in his memoir, "The Way It Was: Reflections on the Past", 1999, p.380, will recall that after leaving the Commissariat, Stalin says, "'Lenin left us a grand legacy, and we, his followers, flushed that legacy down the toilet.' We were shocked," Mikoyan will say, "by that statement. Was everything lost for good? In the end, we ascribed those words to Stalin's emotionally affected state."

Stalin leaves Moscow for his fortress-dacha, to try to get some rest after the worst week of his life.


Stalin has brought the Soviet Union to a disaster point: it can only survive another catastrophic harvest, from which he has called away all the young men, and many of the old men, too, if they take the harvest of western Europe instead. The USSR must either collapse now, or else its troops must be eliminated so far that the nation can survive not having to feed them. Moreover, the Soviet Union (as Reagan and often his predecessors understood, on either side of the Iron Curtain) can only survive if its people have no clear way to compare their lives with the lives of people in surrounding capitalist nations. Complete victory is only possible on a global scale; but the Soviet government cannot expect to capture the rest of Europe in bulk now, and from there springboard to paint the map of the world red without borders: easy to imagine if you try, but hard to achieve in practice! And this can only doom the parasitic Soviet system to a lingering death, feeding upon its own people instead.

But maybe the Soviet Union will not even survive another day or two.

Maybe Stalin himself will not even survive...


June 30, 1941, no logbook entries in the Moscow office today. Stalin waits in his dacha. This is the event that Krushchev will later, after Stalin's death, distort (per Suvorov's research) to paint the man as a lazy coward who refused to do anything at first to help the nation.

Politburo member Anastas Mikoyan, in his memoir (p.391), recalls visiting Stalin's room with a deputation including Molotov, Beria, Malenkov, among others. "We came to Stalin's dacha. Found him in the small dining room, sitting in his armchair. Upon seeing us, he seemed to shrink into the armchair, then to look at us questioningly. Then he asked: 'What did you come for?' He had a wary, strange look on his face -- and the question he asked was no less strange. As a matter of fact, he should have summoned us all himself! I had no doubts: he had decided that we had arrived to arrest him. Molotov, speaking for us all, said that power had to be concentrated if the country were to get back on its feet, and that a State Committee of Defense had to be created. 'Who's in charge?' asked Stalin. When Molotov answered that he, Stalin, was in power, the latter looked at Molotov with surprise, but said nothing. 'Fine,' he eventually pronounced."

This lack of relief and gratitude might seem surprising, but Stalin can appreciate the full weight of what has been lost: without taking Europe, without expanding the Soviet Union's borders into capturing new and fresh property and means of production for the government to exploit in capturing more and more such territory and people, the USSR must sooner or later crumble. It is primarily governed by a criminal gang of bank robbers, after all.

Stalin returns to power with a careless wave of his hand, at first like a symbol and flag around which the remnants of a crushed division could rally. But, to his credit, Stalin does have, and does do, vastly much more than that: he has resources still to call upon to save the nation indeed! Stalin will work hard, and successfully, to achieve that goal.

Yet the goal of his life, charted from his first days of authority after World War I under Lenin? -- the goal which he thought he would achieve in becoming, at long last, the open leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics?

That goal has died.

And its ongoing death may yet doom the Soviet government sooner rather than later, for all that Stalin knows today.
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

A Colossus Grim and Shredded
--------------------------------------

July 3, 1941, Stalin makes his first public appearance to pull Soviet morale together.

KGB Major-General O.D. Gotsiridze will remember (in "Literaturnaya Gazeta", August 20th, 2002, page uncited; and apparently also interviewed by A.B. Zubov, in "Continent", #84, 1995), "Before July 3, when Stalin made a public appearance, it was completely unclear as to what we were to do. Everyone had thought that the war would be quick and on foreign soil." You cannot have a quick defensive war on foreign soil, of course.

He continues (or possibly this is from Zubov's interview now, but Suvorov is unclear), "The complete demoralization among our troops occurred because... the people had planned to fight on the enemy's territory, and [my emphasis] our military commanders were dreaming of a blitzkrieg no less than the Germans were. But everything turned out not quite so happily. [...] The sudden need for defense turned into a total retreat on all fronts for the troops and the people."

The Soviet military commanders weren't merely "dreaming" of a blitzkrieg -- no less than the Germans were merely dreaming about it. The plan had been to fight on enemy territory, and suddenly there had been a catastrophic need for defense instead.
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!