Stalin's General (19 page)

The former chief of the General Staff, Meretskov, was arrested when Pavlov was tortured into naming him as a co-conspirator in an anti-Soviet plot. However, although subjected to a severe interrogation by the security police, Meretskov was released without charge and, in September, sent to serve as a representative of the High Command in the Leningrad area, where he remained until 1945.
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A number of high-ranking officers of the Red Air Force also fell victim to
Stalin's wrath when they were arrested and blamed for allowing the devastating attacks of the Luftwaffe on Soviet airfields on June 22, 1941. Among this group was Zhukov's old rival from Khalkhin-Gol, General Shtern, who had the misfortune to be in charge of Soviet antiaircraft defenses when the Germans invaded. Like the others, Shtern was shot without trial in October 1941.

This military purge was one of a number of measures the Soviet dictator took to bolster his regime as the Red Army's defenses crumbled and it was forced to retreat deeper and deeper into the Russian interior.
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On June 30 Stalin issued a decree establishing the State Defense Committee (in Russian: GKO—Gosudarstvennyi Komitet Oborony). Devised as a sort of war cabinet, the GKO, chaired by Stalin, was charged with directing and controlling all aspects of the Soviet war effort.

On July 10 the Stavka (headquarters) of the Main Command, established under Timoshenko's chairmanship on June 23, was reorganized as the Stavka of the Supreme Command, with Stalin as chairman. That same day the five Fronts of the Red Army (Northern, Northwestern, Western, Southwestern, and Southern) were placed under the supervision of three multi-Front strategic Directions (
Napravlenii
). Placed in command of the three directions were the members of Stalin's cavalry clique. Marshal Voroshilov was sent to command the Northwestern Direction, Marshal Timoshenko to the Western Direction, and Marshal Budenny to the Southwestern Direction. On July 19 Stalin was named people's commissar for defense, and on August 8 he became supreme commander of the armed forces. With Stalin's appointment as supreme commander, the organization and direction of the entire Soviet war effort had been placed under his personal control. (See
Diagram 1: The Structure of Soviet Military and Political Decision-Making During the Great Patriotic War
.)

Stalin was convinced the Red Army's initial defeats and retreats were partly the result of indiscipline, particularly among those in command positions. Stalin's solution was the same as that adopted by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War: the assertion of greater political control over the armed forces. On July 16 the political propaganda directorate of the Defense Commissariat was reorganized as the Main Political Administration of the Red Army (in Russian
GPU—Glavnoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie RKKA). Simultaneously, the Institution of Military Commissars was reintroduced into the armed forces. This meant the reappointment of political officers, who would have the power to veto command decisions and would act as deputy commanders at every level of the armed forces. On July 20 Stalin and the new head of the GPU, General Lev Mekhlis, issued a directive to all political commissars stressing their special responsibility for maintaining discipline in the armed forces and for dealing harshly with cowards, deserters, and panic mongers. On July 17 a GKO resolution established a special department (Osobyi Otdel') of the NKVD (Narodnyi Kommissariat Vnutrennykh Del—People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs) charged with the struggle against spies and traitors in the Red Army and armed with the authority to execute any deserters on the spot.

On August 16 Stalin issued Order No. 270. Signed by Zhukov, among others, this directive to all members of the armed forces instructed that cowards and deserters were to be eliminated and that any commander displaying shyness in the face of battle was to be immediately replaced. Units finding themselves encircled were instructed to fight to the last man. Most harshly, Stalin announced that henceforth the families of cowards, deserters, and traitors would be liable to arrest. A few days later Stalin ordered that the names of senior commanders and commissars missing in action should be listed, together with those of their close relatives. The first of these lists was to be submitted to the General Staff by September 8 and thereafter on the 1st and 15th of each month. On September 12 Stalin directed front-line commanders to form “blocking detachments” (
zagraditel'nye otriady
) to stop Red Army soldiers from fleeing to the rear and ordered them to liquidate the instigators of panic or anyone running away from battle.

With Timoshenko now in charge of the Western Direction, directives to the armed forces from the General Staff via Stavka were issued in Zhukov's name. Many had an air of unreality about them as Zhukov issued instructions for costly counterstrokes that gained little, attacks that were impossible to carry out, and advances that turned rapidly into retreats.
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Meanwhile, the situation on the ground was
going from bad to worse. By mid-July the Germans had penetrated 200–400 miles into the USSR across a broad front.

That Zhukov did not lose his composure in the face of the growing disaster is evident from the records of conversations he had with commanders at the Front
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and, more indirectly, from the General Staff's efforts to distill the lessons of the war. On July 15 Zhukov issued a Stavka directive to all Fronts on “the utilization of the experience of war.” The directive set out five conclusions from the experience of the war so far. First, the mechanized corps were too big and unwieldy and should be disbanded and replaced by separate tank divisions that would come under army-level command. Second, armies with a large number of divisions had proved difficult to control and should be reduced to smaller field armies with no more than five to six divisions. Third, rifle divisions had found it difficult to repulse enemy tanks in the absence of tank units of their own. The solution was to disperse small tank units throughout the infantry divisions. Fourth, the significance of cavalry had been underestimated—a conclusion that must have warmed the cockles of Zhukov's cavalryman's heart. In a situation where the front line was very long and the enemy's rear extended several hundred miles, deep cavalry raids could play an important role in attacking enemy supply lines. Finally, large air corps had proved inefficient and it would be better to organize air regiments consisting of about thirty aircraft each.
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While Zhukov shared the responsibility for the fundamental errors of Soviet military strategy and its consequences—above all the consequences of attempts to implement the offensivist doctrine during the early days of the war—he performed quite well as CGS, not least by keeping his head as the disaster of June 22, 1941, unfolded. Why, then, did Stalin remove him from the post at the end of July? According to Zhukov's account he was removed because he disagreed with Stalin about the evacuation of Kiev. The meeting with Stalin that led to his dismissal reportedly took place on July 29. When Zhukov suggested the Red Army should withdraw to east of the Dnepr River and hence abandon Kiev, Stalin flew into a rage. “How could you hit upon the idea of surrendering Kiev to the enemy?” Unable to restrain himself, says Zhukov, he retorted: “If you think that as Chief of the General
Staff I'm only capable of talking nonsense, I've got nothing more to do here. I request to be relieved of the duties of Chief of the General Staff and sent to the front.” Stalin allegedly replied, “if that is how you put it we'll be able to do without you.” Zhukov was sent away but was called back half an hour later and told by Stalin that he was replacing him with Shaposhnikov. When asked by Stalin where he would like to be posted Zhukov replied that he was willing to do anything, even command a division. Stalin told him not to get so excited and then appointed him to command the Reserve Front preparing an offensive in the Yel'nya area.
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Upon such self-serving vignettes Zhukov reinforced his reputation as a forthright commander who could tell Stalin what he did not want to hear. No doubt Zhukov often did tell Stalin what he really thought, but is this particular story true? An unpublished version of his memoirs in the Russian archives tells a different story:

Given Zhukov's evident desire to get directly into the fight, this is a more likely version of events. Another problem with the version of the story in Zhukov's published memoirs is that the meeting with Stalin on July 29 did not take place, at least not according to Stalin's appointments diary. Zhukov saw Stalin on July 20 and again on August 5 but not in between.
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Furthermore, the announcement that Zhukov had been appointed commander of the Reserve Front was contained in a Stavka order dated July 30 signed by him and Stalin and Shaposhnikov's appointment as CGS was not announced officially until August 10.
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It would seem, then, that Zhukov's departure from the General Staff was both orderly and consensual.

Zhukov's published account was designed to distance him from any blame for the disaster of the Kiev encirclement. By early August
the German Army Group South was on the approaches to Kiev and the question arose of withdrawing Soviet forces from the Ukrainian capital. Zhukov says he continued to urge Stalin to order such a withdrawal even after he ceased to be CGS, but the Southwestern Front command itself was against such a move and advised Stavka accordingly. On August 18 Stalin and Stavka issued a directive that Kiev must not surrender.
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By the end of August, however, the Red Army had been forced back to a line of defense along the River Dnepr and Kiev lay exposed at the end of a long and vulnerable salient. At this point General Heinz Guderian—the famed German tank commander—and his 2nd Panzer Army was detached by Hitler from Army Group Center and ordered south to attack the Southwestern Front from the rear and threaten the encirclement of Soviet forces in and around Kiev. Zhukov warned Stalin what was happening
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but the dictator was confident that a new Front—the Briansk—commanded by General A. I. Yeremenko, would be able to deal with this threat. However, Yeremenko failed to stop Guderian and on September 7 the military council of the Southwestern Front requested permission to withdraw some forces to the Desna River to protect their right flank from Guderian's advance. Stalin authorized a partial withdrawal on September 9 but when he spoke the next day to General M. P. Kirponos, commander of the Southwestern Front, he told him, “your proposal to withdraw forces … we consider dangerous.… Stop looking for lines of retreat and start looking for lines of resistance and only resistance.”
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On September 13 Kirponos's chief of staff, Major-General Tupikov, submitted a report to Shaposhnikov that said complete catastrophe was only a couple of days away. Infuriated, Stalin dictated the reply himself: “Major-General Tupikov sent a panic-ridden dispatch … to the General Staff. The situation, on the contrary, requires that commanders at all levels maintain an exceptionally clear head and restraint. No one must give way to panic.… All troops of the front must understand the need to put up a stubborn fight without looking back.”
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Notwithstanding Stalin's exhortations, the end came quickly. On September 17 Stavka finally authorized a withdrawal from Kiev to the eastern bank of the Dnepr.
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But it was too little too late; the pincers of the German encirclement east of Kiev had already closed. Four Soviet
armies, forty-three divisions in all, were encircled. The Southwestern Front suffered some 750,000 casualties including more than 600,000 killed, captured, or missing during the battle of Kiev. Among the dead were Kirponos and Tupikov. One survivor was Bagramyan, Kirponos's chief of operations, who managed to fight his way out of the encirclement.

Had Zhukov foreseen all this at the end of July? It is doubtful. Indeed, on July 28—the day before he was supposedly dismissed by Stalin for urging the evacuation of Kiev—Zhukov co-signed with Stalin a directive forbidding the 63 Rifle Corps from withdrawing to the east bank of the Dnepr.
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It is also important to remember that Zhukov's harping on the Kiev debacle in his memoirs, in particular the negative role played by the local leadership, had a score-settling dimension. The political chief in Kiev was Nikita Khrushchev, who sacked him as minister of defense in 1957 shortly before he began writing his memoirs. Another of Zhukov's targets was Yeremenko—the failed savior of the Southwestern Front—who was Khrushchev's right-hand man during the attack on Zhukov's military record when he was dismissed. Zhukov's desire to defend himself and to puncture the reputations of Khrushchev, Yeremenko, and others led him to compose distorted accounts of other wartime events, too.