The fight against “panic-mongers,” “cowards,” and “saboteurs” was a centerpiece of Stalin’s military policy during the summer of 1942, and fear and panic were indeed a problem. Given the hardships of battle and the long string of defeats, troop morale was inevitably low. But as during the Terror, Stalin’s tendency to see saboteurs and wreckers as the root of all failures had no basis in reality. The mental state of Soviet soldiers in the face of the well-organized might of the German Army was just one of many threads in the tangled web of reasons for Red Army retreats. Often orders were disobeyed because they were poorly conceived or simply not realizable. Draconian measures at the front did not guarantee victory. A few weeks after Order No. 227 was issued, the Germans reached the outskirts of Stalingrad.
Beside cowardice and treason, another explanation for Soviet defeats that featured prominently in Stalin’s mind was that Hitler was not distracted by a second front in Western Europe. Within the top leadership, the Nazi leader’s ability to concentrate his forces on the Soviet front due to inaction by the Allies was a frequent source of anger and frustration. After heavy pressure from Stalin, during a visit by Molotov to Great Britain and the United States in May and June of 1942, Churchill and especially Roosevelt expressed their intention to open up a second front that autumn. These vague promises began to look increasingly chimerical as the situation worsened on all fronts. To soften the blow of his failure to open a European front, Churchill went to see Stalin in Moscow.
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On 12 August 1942 the two men had their first face-to-face meeting. Stalin found himself in a weakened position due to the numerous defeats suffered by the Soviet side. Meanwhile, the Allies’ losses in North Africa and the Mediterranean gave them an excuse for delaying a French landing.
Stalin did not hide his irritation at Churchill’s explanation. The atmosphere during the first hours of negotiations was extremely tense. The Soviet leader, abandoning diplomacy, disparaged the Allies’ wavering and advised them not to fear the Germans. Churchill was just as blunt. He reminded Stalin that Great Britain had been battling the Nazis for a full year, an unmistakable reference to the fact that Britain was already at war with Hitler while Stalin was helping him carve up Poland. With these reproaches out of the way, the allies, who greatly needed one another, settled down to serious discussion. Having given a great deal of thought to his negotiation strategy, Churchill delivered his good news: a landing of American and British forces was planned for the northern coast of French Africa that fall. Stalin took this opportunity for conciliation. He praised the new plan, and subsequent talks went more smoothly. Stalin made the friendly gesture of inviting Churchill to his Kremlin apartment for his last night in Moscow, 15 August, where the evening passed convivially.
The conclusions to be drawn from Churchill’s visit were clear. The USSR would be able to count on its allies mostly for material assistance. Stalin told Churchill that his country particularly needed trucks and aluminum. For now, the Germans could continue fighting on the Eastern Front without worrying about a serious challenge from the West, and the Red Army would continue to suffer defeat and failure. In the south the Germans had entered Stalingrad, had captured the important Don and Kuban agricultural regions, and were drawing near to the petroleum deposits of the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia. According to official Soviet statistics, from January through October 1942 alone, 5.5 million Red Army soldiers had been killed, wounded, or captured.
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Gradually, however, the formation of new armies and the heroism of the defenders of Stalingrad and the Caucasus allowed the front to stabilize. Hitler’s shortage of manpower, as he simultaneously pursued several difficult objectives, also helped shift the momentum. In the ruins of Stalingrad, Soviet troops fought German divisions in pitched battle. By all appearances, this was a replay of late 1941. The battered German armies could advance no farther. Having inflicted huge losses, the Red Army now had an opportunity to seize the initiative. The question was how and when to strike back.
STALINGRAD AND KURSK
The counterstrike came outside Stalingrad. This famous Soviet victory was the culmination of heroic efforts and huge sacrifices by the entire country. It showed that Stalin, too, had finally learned from past defeats. The well-prepared Soviet offensive outside Stalin’s namesake city began on 19 November 1942. A few days later, Germany’s 330,000-man force in Stalingrad, led by General (soon to be Field Marshal) Friedrich Paulus, was surrounded. After thwarting German attempts to break through the encirclement, on 2 February 1943 Soviet forces finally compelled the enemy to capitulate. The protracted battle cost the Germans hundreds of thousands of soldiers and officers. More than 90,000 were taken prisoner, including Paulus himself. The victory marked a major turning point in the war.
Despite this impressive triumph, Stalin continued to act with caution. In planning the new campaign, the Soviet Supreme Command tried not to spread its forces too thinly. The main counterstrike was focused on the Southwestern Direction, where the enemy had already suffered huge losses and was largely disorganized. Hoping to repeat the success of Stalingrad, in January 1943 Stalin ordered the encirclement of the German forces retreating from the North Caucasus. Elsewhere, counteroffensives in the Voronezh and Kharkov Directions made promising beginnings. And on 18 January 1943, at the northern end of the vast Soviet-German Front, the Leningrad Blockade was finally broken and the city again became accessible to Central Russia via land. The liberation of the country’s long-suffering historic capital had enormous symbolic and emotional significance.
Amid the rejoicing, Stalin’s comrades were eager to crown him with victor’s laurels. On 19 January 1943, during a visit to the Voronezh Front, the chief of the General Staff, Vasilevsky, joined the front’s leaders in addressing a coded message to Molotov, Beria, and Malenkov. They proposed that following the “unparalleled successes of our troops at the front,” Stalin deserved the title “generalissimo of the Soviet Union.” The telegram described Stalin as the “organizer of our victories, a genius and great commander.” The members of the top leadership, who may very well have inspired this initiative in the first place, greeted the proposal with enthusiasm. On 23 January Molotov, Beria, Malenkov, and Mikoyan signed a motion to that effect and placed it before the Politburo. Nevertheless, it wound up being filed away.
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Stalin must have felt that his elevation to the rank of generalissimo was premature. Despite hopeful signs, many hard battles lay ahead. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet families were still receiving the dreaded notifications that a loved one had been killed in action. Stalin eventually got the title of generalissimo, but later, after final victory in 1945. For now he settled for the gold-embroidered shoulder boards of a marshal. The resolution elevating him to that rank was published on 7 March 1943. Before Stalin, in January and February respectively, Zhukov and Vasilevsky were also given this honor.
The rank of marshal was more than sufficient for now. Events at the front soon showed that the Red Army was not safe from further defeats. Significant victories came in the form of the liberation of the North Caucasus and Stavropol and Krasnodar Krais. On the other hand, the Red Army could not carry out its plan to encircle German units in these areas. The enemy managed to maintain its numbers and retreat to the Donets Basin, the lower reaches of the Kuban, and the Taman Peninsula. Soviet forces were successful during early 1943 along the Voronezh, Bryansk, and Southwestern Fronts. Voronezh was liberated in January, and Kursk, Belgorod, and Kharkov in February. But soon the momentum shifted back to the Germans. One reason for this shift was some bad decisions by the Soviet Supreme Command. The Soviet armies were attacking along a broad front, but the enemy, which had stealthily concentrated its forces at strategic points, counterattacked. In March it again occupied Kharkov and Belgorod. The Red Army achieved only modest results in its Western Direction offensive, and its efforts in February and March along the Northwestern Front were not effective.
In April through June 1943, a strategic lull set in as the two sides prepared their summer campaigns. As the Soviet military leaders’ memoirs make clear, nobody doubted that the Germans would strike first at the Kursk salient. By attacking the flanks, the Wehrmacht could encircle and destroy the large number of Soviet forces within the salient and recapture the strategic initiative. The Germans knew that unless they could eliminate the Kursk salient, they would face serious danger. Yet there was some question as to whether the Germans would attack at all. Deciding against an anticipatory offensive, Stalin agreed to meet the enemy from a well-prepared defensive posture, in the hope that it would allow the Red Army to crush the German forces and transition to an offensive posture from a much stronger position.
The decision to focus on defense shows that Stalin was learning from past mistakes. Whereas earlier he had preferred large-scale lightning attacks before the enemy had time to regroup, he now understood the need to wait, plan, and prepare. Restraint was not easy for him. Twice in May, intelligence suggested that the Germans were about to strike. Soviet forces were put on high alert, but each time proved to be a false alarm. According to General Vasilevsky, in both cases Stalin favored a preemptive attack. “It took quite an effort by us, by Zhukov, me, and Antonov,
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to convince him not to do that,” Vasilevsky wrote.
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June came, and the Germans still did not attack. Stalin was uneasy and again began pondering a first strike. This time, too, he listened to his generals, who convinced him that it would be advantageous to wait out the enemy.
The generals were right. The Battle of Kursk began on 5 July 1943 and continued until 23 August. Huge forces, a total of 4 million troops, were arrayed on both sides. This was a major tank battle, and the Soviet side had twice as many as the Germans. The Nazi leaders still hoped that superior organization and up-to-date weaponry—especially the Tiger and Panther tanks—could earn them another victory. It might have turned out that way had they not also faced superior numbers and a more mature and better-prepared force. After wearing down the enemy through a week of fierce fighting from a defensive posture, the Red Army struck back.
At the height of the counteroffensive, in early August 1943, Stalin visited the front for the first and last time. During the early morning hours of 2 August he boarded a special train disguised to look like a freight carrier that stopped close to his dacha. The part of the front closest to Moscow, the Rzhev-Vyazma salient, the site of preparations for an offensive operation, was chosen for the visit. After arriving at the closest train station, Stalin and his entourage continued by automobile. He spent 3 and 4 August visiting the command posts of each front and meeting with the leaders planning offensives. Here he learned that Soviet troops had retaken Orel and Belgorod. Stalin telephoned Moscow and ordered an artillery salute in honor of this victory. The visitors returned to the train for dinner, and on the evening of 5 August it left for Moscow. Stalin returned to his Kremlin office.
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Stalin did not like to travel even in peacetime and left Moscow only for vacations. Officially, he was inspecting preparations for the Smolensk offensive operation. In fact, there was no military necessity for this, and his visit did nothing to prevent the operation’s failure. The real reason for the trip lay in what we now call “optics.” The leader of a country at war has to show solidarity with his army and a willingness to share in its hardships. During the first stage of the war, when Moscow itself was on the front line and Stalin’s presence in the besieged capital was of tremendous political significance, solidarity could be demonstrated by his staying in place. Stalin must have understood that even after the tide of war began to turn, such demonstrations were important to sustain his reputation as an involved and compassionate leader.
Stalin managed to transform his sole visit to the front lines into a matter of routine. During the summer of 1943 he conducted a heated correspondence with Roosevelt and Churchill. In response to the Allies’ refusal to open a second front in northern France in 1943, Stalin refused to participate in summits and grew dilatory in his correspondence. His explanation was that he was too busy rallying the troops. In early August he wrote to his coalition partners: “I have just returned from the front.… I have had to make more frequent visits to the troops than usual.” “I have been compelled to personally spend more time in various sectors of the front and put the interests of the front before all else.”
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After returning from the Western Front, Stalin again had to turn his attention to developments in the south, where the Kursk offensive was still raging. The Battle of Kursk put an end to any chance for a German victory, but most of the Nazi forces escaped encirclement and withdrew to prepared defensive lines. Building on Soviet successes, the Supreme Command organized offensives in Ukraine, Crimea, and the Central Direction. The German forces switched to a defensive posture, launching only intermittent counterattacks. The most important developments were taking place at the southern end of the Soviet-German Front. In September the Red Army managed to capture the German bridgehead on the right bank of the Dnieper. At the same time, Hitler’s forces were pushed out of the economically important Donets Basin and, to the south, Novorossiisk and the Taman Peninsula. In the predawn hours of 6 November the Red Army liberated the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. By the autumn of 1943, Hitler’s forces had been rendered incapable of large-scale offensives. The Red Army advanced six hundred kilometers to the south and three hundred to the west, but these impressive victories came at the expense of heavy losses inflicted by a still capable enemy. Furthermore, many of the objectives assigned by Headquarters were not met. Soviet forces had made little progress in the Western and Northwestern Directions. The attempt to liberate Crimea had failed, and fierce counterattacks by the Wehrmacht made it impossible to build on the ousting of the Nazis from eastern Ukraine. The Germans were managing to evade a decisive blow. The successful approach used in Stalingrad, of encircling and liquidating enemy army groups, could not be repeated. The bloody war would not end any time soon.