Stalin was much more effective in the area of propaganda. Taking advantage of the relative tranquility at the front in early November, he ordered that the usual celebration be held to honor the anniversary of the October Revolution. He understood that carrying on with this annual event in the besieged capital would have a tremendous propaganda impact. On the eve of the anniversary, 6 November, a huge celebratory gathering was held at the Maiakovskaia metro station. A train parked at the station was set up with a cloakroom and tables of food for party and military leaders. Speeches in honor of the revolution’s anniversary were followed by a concert, but the centerpiece of the event was Stalin’s address to the country, only his second public appearance since the war had begun. Clearly he was expected to provide some sort of explanation for the German forces’ ability to take so much Soviet territory and to offer some idea of what lay ahead. When would the war end? This was the question on the mind of every Soviet citizen. The
vozhd
admitted that the danger hanging over the country “has not only not receded but has intensified.” Overall, however, he was optimistic. Citing huge (and fictitious) German casualty statistics, he pronounced that Germany’s human reserves “are already drying up,” while the Soviet Union’s reserves were “only now being fully deployed.”
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The following day, the anniversary itself was marked with a military parade through Red Square. This was a risky undertaking since a few days earlier, on 29 October, German planes had dropped a large bomb right on the Kremlin. A total of 146 people were injured and 41 were killed.
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The Luftwaffe could certainly strike again. In anticipation of this possibility, a parallel parade was held in Kuibyshev (today’s Samara), the city chosen as the reserve capital should Moscow fall. In case of an attack during the Moscow parade, radio coverage of the celebration would switch to Kuibyshev. No such attack took place.
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Stalin addressed the parading troops with a short speech delivered from atop Lenin’s Mausoleum. He recalled the glorious victories of prerevolutionary commanders and of the Bolsheviks during the Civil War. Speaking of the coming German defeat, he was so bold as to speculate on the timing: “In just a few months, just a half year, perhaps a year, Hitler’s Germany will collapse under the weight of its own crimes.”
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This assurance seems to reflect his understanding of the military situation, and it soon led him to demand an offensive on all fronts.
The celebrations in Moscow—especially Stalin’s speeches—were part of a major propaganda campaign through every possible medium. The military parade on Red Square was captured on film, but for some reason Stalin’s speech was not. It was decided to stage the speech in an improvised studio. A mockup of Lenin’s tomb was built in one of the halls of the Great Kremlin Palace, and Stalin repeated his speech for the cameras on 15 November.
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In December, movie theaters began showing
The Parade of Our Troops on Moscow’s Red Square on 7 November 1941,
including the reenactment of Stalin’s speech. Over seven days, beginning December 4, two hundred thousand viewers watched the film in Moscow alone. Hundreds of copies were sent to towns across the country.
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On the same day Stalin reenacted his speech for the cameras, after lengthy preparations the still overwhelming forces of the Wehrmacht launched a new attempt to take Moscow. The advance covered significant ground and in some areas managed to reach the boundaries of the Soviet capital. Nevertheless, the Red Army, bolstered by a constant stream of reinforcements, was able to prevail. Just when the Germans had used up their last reserves and had come to a halt, the Red Army, almost without pause, launched a surprise counteroffensive. By January 1942 the enemy had been driven back 100–250 kilometers from Moscow. Finally there was true cause for celebration.
THE DEFEATS OF 1942
The offensive by Soviet troops outside Moscow, together with successes on other fronts, inspired hope throughout the entire anti-Nazi world but also exposed the Red Army’s weakness and the enduring advantage of the Wehrmacht. Soviet troops demonstrated a strong will to fight but could not achieve some important objectives the Soviet leadership placed before them. Meanwhile, the Germans dug in and prepared their own counteroffensive.
On 10 January 1942, Red Army units received a letter critiquing past operations and looking ahead to upcoming ones. The tone and style of the letter suggest that much of it was written by Stalin. It was generally critical of the way in which German defenses had been breached during the December counteroffensive. The widely dispersed actions by the Red Army, which was stretched thin along the entire front, were characterized as incorrect. “The offensive can achieve the necessary effect,” it read, “only if we create a force capable of overwhelming the enemy in one sector of the front.” A second major failing was the poor use of artillery. “We often throw the infantry into an offensive against the enemy’s defensive line without artillery, without any artillery support, and then complain that the infantry is not advancing against a well-defended and dug-in enemy.… This is an offense, not an offensive—an offense against the Motherland, against the troops forced to endure senseless casualties.”
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The Supreme Command demanded regular artillery support for attacking units, not just during the preparatory stages of an offensive. Here too the main emphasis was on concentrating artillery where the thrust of the attack would be focused.
These were sensible and important observations on the perils of frontal attacks, which entail large casualties, and the need to concentrate forces and maneuver skillfully. But in planning the winter campaign of 1942, Stalin ignored his own warnings and insisted on attacking on all fronts at once. He wanted the swift, victorious conclusion to the war that he had promised during his 7 November 1941 address. This idea was also expressed in secret documents. Stalin’s basic assumption, apparently based on the intelligence reports he was receiving, was that Germany had used up its reserves. In his 6 November 1941 speech he claimed that the Germans had lost 4.5 million men during four months of war, and the subsequent reports he received tended to support these fantastic numbers. For example, German casualties as of 1 March 1942 were estimated at 6.5 million.
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These figures, five or six times higher than the actual ones, were probably the result of the usual Soviet system of distortion, in which the
vozhd
was told what he wanted to hear.
The plan for the summer campaign, approved in March 1942, provided for a shift to strategic defense and a buildup of reserves for the next offensive. Stalin wound up issuing orders that conflicted with this decision and led to the staging of offensive operations in multiple sectors. “After reviewing the plan of action adopted for the summer of 1942, I must say that its weakest aspect is the decision to conduct defensive and offensive actions at the same time,” Marshal Vasilevsky wrote several decades later.
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This opinion also prevails in scholarly literature on the subject.
During the summer of 1942, offensives were planned for Crimea, the Central Direction, and around Kharkov and Leningrad. Stalin was heavily involved in the planning of these operations. In matters of staffing, where he was, as usual, worried about selecting leaders capable of acting decisively, his personnel choices again reveal his shortcomings as supreme commander. He sent Lev Mekhlis, the head of the Red Army’s Main Political Directorate, to represent Moscow in Crimea. Mekhlis, who had served as Stalin’s secretary, was fanatically loyal to the
vozhd,
energetic, decisive, and ruthless, but he was completely ignorant of military science.
Voroshilov was assigned to the Volkhovsky Front, outside Leningrad, despite having been earlier dismissed from the Leningrad Front for incompetence. His special relationship with the
vozhd
allowed him to turn down this assignment, infuriating Stalin. On 1 April 1942 the Politburo adopted a decision, dictated by Stalin, subjecting Voroshilov to savage criticism. The disclosure of his reason for turning down this command was obviously meant to embarrass him. The former defense commissar was quoted as saying that “The Volkhovsky Front is a difficult front” and that he did not want to fail at the job. The Politburo resolved to “(1) Recognize that Com. Voroshilov did not prove himself in the work assigned him at the front. (2) Send Com. Voroshilov to perform military work away from the front lines.”
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This was an empty gesture: Voroshilov was not banished from Stalin’s inner circle. Nevertheless, the resolution, which became known to a wide circle of top officials, may have been a warning to others.
The Southwestern Command was not a particular source of Stalin’s complaints. Aware of his inclinations, the front commander, Timoshenko, and military council member, Khrushchev, proposed an offensive to retake Kharkov. After confronting objections from the General Staff, Stalin decided to maneuver. He approved the Ukrainian operation but pronounced it an internal matter for the front’s commanders. This decision did not change anything, but it relieved Stalin of some responsibility for how it turned out.
The poorly conceived plans for the offensive led to more heavy losses and damaged the overall strategic situation. The first disturbing sign was defeat in Crimea. The German counteroffensive, launched on 8 May 1942, crushed Soviet troops in twelve days and sealed the fate of the Crimean city of Sevastopol, which had been under siege for eight months. Large-scale heroism was not enough to prevent catastrophe. The city fell in July after the Germans brought in significant forces from other fronts. According to the Sovnarkom’s chief of administration, Chadaev, Mekhlis tried to make his excuses to Stalin in person, waiting outside the
vozhd
’s office. Chadaev described what happened when Stalin appeared in the doorway: “Mekhlis jumped up from his seat: ‘Hello, Comrade Stalin! Permit me to report.’ Stalin paused for a moment, looked Mekhlis up and down, and with a voice filled with emotion pronounced: ‘Damn you!’ He then headed straight into his office and slammed the door. Mekhlis slowly lowered his arms to his sides and turned toward the window in distress.”
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The following day, 4 June 1942, Stalin signed a Supreme Command directive to the military councils of all fronts and armies on the reasons for defeat in Crimea. The style of the directive, which pointed out that the Crimean forces had been crushed despite having a significant numerical advantage, suggested he had a hand in composing it. The commanders in Crimea, including Mekhlis, were accused of incompetence and inability, removed from their positions, and stripped of their rank.
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Nevertheless, Mekhlis did not fall out of favor with Stalin and continued to be given important posts. Zhukov later speculated that Stalin was relatively lenient in punishing those who had directed the Crimean catastrophe “because he was aware of his own personal responsibility for it.”
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The effort to retake the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkov was also planned with Stalin’s full support. The attack began on 12 May and at first seemed to promise success. A few days in, however, everything changed. The Germans, who were thought to be focused on capturing Moscow, were in fact planning a decisive offensive in the south. Timoshenko’s poorly conceived plans for Kharkov only made their task easier. Despite warnings that the huge Soviet force now risked encirclement, Stalin refused to halt the attack on Kharkov in order to deal with this threat. By the time he decided to suspend the offensive, it was too late.
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According to General Staff statistics, 277,000 Red Army troops were lost—killed, wounded, or captured—in the Second Battle of Kharkov.
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The Germans had again been handed a strategic advantage. Hitler’s forces were now able to move quickly toward the Caucasus and the Volga.
Stalin placed the blame for this defeat squarely at the feet of his commanders, although they were not castigated as harshly as those involved in the Crimean debacle.
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A few months later, on 24 September 1942, Georgy Malenkov, who had been sent to represent Headquarters at the Stalingrad Front (constituted primarily from the forces of the Southwestern Front), wrote to Stalin: “While we’re on the subject of Timoshenko.… Now that I’ve been able to see how he’s been working here, I can say that Timoshenko looks like a good-for-nothing, indifferent to the fate of the Soviet government and the fate of our motherland.”
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Given Malenkov’s usual caution, we can assume that he was expressing an opinion with which he knew the
vozhd
would agree. As with Mekhlis, however, Stalin kept Timoshenko within his inner circle but used him for less critical assignments.
Accusing generals of mistakes and a lack of decisiveness was a leitmotif of Stalin’s directives throughout 1942. The generals themselves took a different view. Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, for example, wrote in his memoirs that the defeats during the summer of 1942 stemmed from the fact that Headquarters kept repeating the mistakes of the early stages of the war. Commands from the top “did not correspond to the situation” and “only played into the hands of the enemy.” Instead of gradually pulling troops back to lines prepared in advance (in the summer of 1942, the River Don), Headquarters kept demanding counterattacks. Troops hurriedly moved toward the Germans “with no time to concentrate, on the fly, went into battle disorganized against an enemy that under these circumstances enjoyed a huge numerical and qualitative advantage.… This was all done in a manner that had nothing to do with the military science we were taught in the colleges and academies, during war games and maneuvers, and it went against all the experience we acquired during the two previous wars.”
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Refusing to recognize any fault on the part of the Supreme Command, Stalin continued to attribute failure solely to the cowardice, treachery, or, at best, incompetence of his subordinates. The ultimate expression of this logic was the notorious Order No. 227, issued on 28 July 1942, just when the German advance in the south seemed unstoppable. Stalin, who undoubtedly wrote the order himself, was exceptionally harsh: “Panic-mongers and cowards must be exterminated on the spot.” Commanders “who retreat from battle positions without an order from above [are] traitors against the Motherland.” He demanded that commanders be put on trial, starting with army commanders who sanctioned unauthorized retreat. The order provided for the creation of penalty battalions and companies, the ranks of which would be filled by people arrested for violating the Stalinist code of conduct, to be used as cannon fodder at the start of attacks. Anti-retreat units became a regular part of the army and were tasked with “shooting on the spot panic-mongers and cowards in the case of panic and disorderly retreat by division units.”
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These units were not disbanded until October 1944.