The impact of the war on the Soviet Union: Operation Barbarossa and the Stalinist reaction; the course of the war; the USSR under occupation and the fight-back; the Soviet economy; mobilisation and evacuation of industry; foreign aid
The defeat of the Germans: reasons and results; post-war reconst...
Outbreak of War:
- more prepared than other combatants → centralised command and propaganda structure = react quickly to
mobilise and deploy population (which was x3 German Reich) + much greater industrial capacity (third 5yp for
armaments production)
- BUT purges of officer corps + stalin’s conviction that Hitler would not attack in 1941 = initially USSR experienced
dramatic early losses of men, industry and territory → 20 million soldiers and civilians were killed in the ‘Great
Patriotic War’
- Nazi-soviet (Molotov-Ribbentrop) pact intended to safeguard Soviet security against Western attack → but did Stalin
remain oblivious to Hitler’s ultimate aim of invading/occupying Russia
- Stalin maintained a fear of foreign threats throughout the 1930s (isolated within European diplomacy) → inaccurate
to state that he did not expect invasion from the West
- Highly skeptical of French/British motives → even till 1941 he supplied Germany with essential war materials →
there was an expectation that fighting would only start following a diplomatic crisis e.g Poland 1939 and that the Red
Army would be able to push back and fight on enemy territory
- Great Patriotic War → taken from 1812 Patriotic War tsarist russian victory over Napoleon → for ideological
influence → misleading, many people were unwilling to fight for Stalin e.g Ukraine
- German motives: lontstanding Nazi ambition of eastward colonial expansion = room for German farmer settlers +
German economy access to raw materials of south Russia + transfer of living space to ethnic Germans as
populations driven north or starve to death → everything preconceived with the initial presumption that Russians
were subhuman + Nazi view of Bolshevism as Jewish-Slavic conspiracy
Operation Barbarossa and the Stalinist reaction:
- Invasion of such large scale = preparation could not be concealed → for months before, observers knew it was likely
→ millions of German troops had been moved to soviet borders
- A week before, Richard Sorge (Comintern double agent in Japan) sent information to the Moscow Kremlin (fortress)
with hard evidence of Germany’s massive assault on Western Russia → Stalin refused to believe it and wrote ‘this is
German disinformation’ in response
- General Golikov + Admiral Kuznetzov quoted agents in saying the concentration of German troops meant war was
imminent → agents in Japan and Berlin even gave exact date of German attack (22 June 1941)
- Stalin also received intelligence the British but he remained distrustful of them → did not change his policy perhaps
because his policy was not prepared for war as he expected plenty of warning before an impending attack on the
Soviet Union → he failed in rationalising Hitler’s intentions
- Stalin closed off military options and left his country wide open to save his diplomatic options
- Earthworks and fortresses had not been built + Soviet army was in the middle of redeploying its forces and the
frontiers were lightly manned + armament factories not moved to the safety of the east = Hitler keen to act
- Military paralysis in 1941→ failure of leadership in adjusting its strategic thinking, propaganda maintained the fiction
that nothing unexpected had occurred = referencing Germans arriving on the edge off Leningrad was punished as
‘defeatism’ = delayed possibility of tactical retreat until too late
- Barbarossa refers to Friedrich Barbarossa 12thC Holy Roman Emperor
- Early morning 22cnd June 1941, 150 divisions of the Wehrmacht + 5000 aircraft invaded the Soviet Union along
Western border → large scale ‘blitzkrieg’
- Wehrmacht had assembled huge forces on Soviet frontiers → 2800 tanks + 4950 aircraft + 47,000 artillery pieces
and 5.5million troops = biggest ground invasion in history
- Stalin could not believe it for a while = German forces continued without resistance until 6:30am 3 hours after the
attack he ordered to fight back!
- Germans used deception to generate element of surprise e.g portraying eastward preparations as a deception
against the British = false sense of security then disguised aggression as defensive preparation against USSR then
as mere psychological pressure on Stalin → possibility professional assessment of German intentions destroyed in
purge of the army
- Stalin was supported in his decisions by Politburo members e.g Zhdanov and Malenkov → they all distrusted
Roosevelt and Churchill more than Hitler → hoped to to remain spectators while Europe burned
- Stalin had a ‘personal battle with reality’ and retreated to his dacha in Moscow outskirts, refusing to instruct/speak
→ German forces advanced easily into a leaderless, directionless Russia → Politburo members approached him on
30 June and asked him to be chief of:
, - State Defence committee (GKO): created in June 1941 following German invasion and was put in charge of the
Soviet war effort with Stalin at it’s head → Politburo realised powerful war cabinet needed to enforce ‘the rapid
mobilization of all forces of the peoples of the USSR’ → had the force of law binding everyone dealt with
strategy/administration of armed forces to economic production/supply of labour/materials + FP, propaganda,
ideology etc. directly responsible for defence of Moscow/Leningrad
- GKO promoted a more effective adjustment and mobilisation of resources
- Addressed the people on the radio 3 July, calling them to undertake total war against the treacherous Germans, to
leave them nothing but a wasteland to conquer
- Stalin exercised his formidable leadership skills → urged population to defend ‘Mother Russia’ using the scorched
earth policy → ‘blow up bridges and roads, damage telephone lines, set fire to forests and stores’ → make conditions
unbearable for the enemy and foment GUERRILLA WARFARE everywhere
- Purposefully nationalistc rhetoric → pravda already referred to the conflict as the Fatherland war
- 56.7% of all Soviet losses in the war were taken in initial campaign (17.5k of 24k tanks destroyed here)
- First month of war, 319 units sent into battle and nearly all destroyed
- End of september → 3 prongs of German attack had succeeded (north Leningrad, central Moscow and in the south
the Black sea)
The course of the war → the USSR under occupation and the fight-back:
- A war of attrition → each side hopes to win by wearing the other down
- The longer the war went on, opportunities for Russian triumph increased → from near defeat in 1941, Soviet forces
drew the Germans deeper and deeper into Russia until invaders became overstretched and vulnerable
- Losses of men, machinery and territory → 5.9 million troops killed or captured + 90% soviet tanks destroyed + air
force neutralised + nearly ⅔ military supply dumps captured in first month
- Stalin promised a ‘wasteland’ to the invading forces = destruction of anything that could not be taken (similarly Hitler
had ordered a ‘vernichtungskrieg’ war of annihilation) (scorched earth methods and guerilla warfare)
- Baltic states/Ukraine esp. German troops welcomed as liberators and men collaborated in the arrest and murder of
Jews/party members
- Occupation was brutal → villages burnt to the ground and civilian lived in holes in the ground → crimes of German
soldiers against civilians = unpunished
- Chaos as Germans spread eastwards → red army surrounded and outgunned = limited resistance and deserted
largely (2,663,000 killed in action + 3,350,000 taken prisoner, 2 million of these died from mistreatment)
- The initial Soviet collapse was stunning even to Germans → element of surprise?/Stalin’s deficient leadership in the
opening months of the invasion → Stalin was preoccupied with Western threat and was unprepared for this type of
war → focus of FYPs was heavy industry and rearmement, expecting an offensive war = mobilisation not geared for
defence, rather a pre-emptive strike
- Overall 5.2 million troops became prisoners of war (4 million shot/died in captivity)
- A war to protect mother Russia population roused for the defence of the motherland
Siege of Leningrad → Sept 1941- Jan 1944
- Leningrad located at the easternmost point of the gulf of Finland → by 25 september the German army Group North
had cut off the land route from Leningrad to rest of USSR and blockaded the port → began the 900 day siege
- City had not fallen due to the intervention of General Zhukov → 43 years old, made his name by arguing against
Stalin’s demands for counter-offensives (got him demoted to head of reserve front)
- 8 sept Zhukov visited Leningrad and replaced Voroshilov and organised the defence of the city with Leningrad leader
Zhdanov → evacuated 500,000> citizens before land route cut off (planned to evacuate another 500,000)
- City turned into a defensive camp → workers militia of 36,000 organised and streets barricaded → suburbs
converted into a complex of defences, mined and filled with obstacles + air raid shelters were built → but aimed to
continue life as normally as possible
- Stalin was aware that Hitler wanted to besiege the city rather than take it → Hitler hoped the city would starve once it
was cut off
- German attack lasted until 25 September 1941 → then Hitler decided to divert his forces to the assault on Moscow
- But city was still in a precarious position → daily shelling and bombing maintained + ration cards issued were
insufficient to feed whole population (by december soldiers/workers received 8 ounces a day and civilians received
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