Long read as an example of political-military ignorance or even blind trust in the Third Reich, the extremely cautious approach taken by Stalin in the weeks leading up to the outbreak of hostilities now appears in an entirely different light: “The relatively open concentration of Wehrmacht forces along the Soviet border, the violations of Soviet airspace and numerous other provocations had only a single purpose: to draw the main forces of the Red Army as close to the border as possible. Hitler wanted to win the war in one gigantic battle.” Even valiant generals were enticed by this trap. Expecting an onslaught, they insisted on a massive relocation of troops toward the border. However, “Stalin categorically rejected this demand, insisting on the need to maintain large-scale reserves at a considerable distance from any conceivable front line.” After the war, studying the material left behind by the German architects of Operation Barbarossa, marshall Georgy K. Zhukov recognized the correctness of the line pursued by Stalin: “Hitler’s command was counting on us bringing our main forces up to the border with the intention of surrounding and destroying them.”
As a matter of fact, in the months following the invasion of the USSR, arguing with his generals, Hitler observed: “The problem is Russian space. Infinite vastness of territory makes concentration on decisive points necessary.” [...] Only one week later he is forced to acknowledge that Operation Barbarossa had seriously underestimated the enemy: “The Russian preparation for war must be described as fantastic.” Transparent here is the gambler’s habit of externalizing the blame for his own failures with rationalizations. And yet, similar conclusions are reached by the British military strategy scholar earlier cited: the reason for the French defeat lies “not in quantity nor in quality of equipment, but in their theory”; further, General Gamelin’s excessively advanced deployment of the army had a disastrous effect, because it “largely cast away his strategic flexibility”; a similar mistake was made in Poland as well, driven by “national pride and military over-confidence.” None of this happened in the Soviet Union.
More important than the individual battles is the overall picture. “The Stalinist system was able to mobilize the immense majority of the population and nearly all resources”; particularly “extraordinary” was “the Soviet ability” — in such a difficult situation as the one that arose in the first months of the war — “of evacuating and later reconverting to military production a considerable number of industries.” Yes, “created two days after the German invasion, the Evacuation Committee managed to move to the East 1,500 major industrial companies, after titanic operations of great logistic complexity.” Moreover, that process of relocation had already begun in the weeks or months before Hitler’s aggression: As early as May 1941 General Antonescu, who had recently assumed power in Romania, informed his German allies that “blacksmiths in the outskirts of Moscow had been ordered to transfer their equipment to the interior of the country.” This is further confirmation of the fanciful character of Khrushchev’s accusations.
And yet there’s more. The foreboding of war felt by Soviet leadership is traceable in the direction in which they took the industrialization of the country. Breaking radically with preexisting strategy, they identified “Asian Russia as a key point,” distant and sheltered from possible aggression. Indeed, Stalin had repeatedly and vigorously insisted on this point. On 23 June 1931, he pushes forward the project to “to create a new coal and metallurgical base in the East — the Urals-Kuznetsk Basin […] a metallurgical industry in Siberia […] a new base for non-ferrous metals in Kazakhstan and Turkestan.” [...] With these developments the great territorial expanse of the Soviets begins to assume its full potential, making the execution of the lightning-strike strategy favoured by the German high command more difficult than ever.
It’s precisely the industrial apparatus built in preparation for the war that presents the Third Reich with its biggest and most bitter surprises, as demonstrated by Hitler’s notes.
29 November 1941: How can such a primitive people manage such technical achievements in such a short time!
26 August 1942: The fact that Stalin has raised the Russian standard of living is unquestionable. People don’t go hungry [at the moment when Operation Barbarossa was launched]. In general, it’s necessary to recognize that they have built factories of similar importance to Hermann Goering Reichswerke where two years ago nothing but unknown villages existed. We come across railway lines that aren’t even marked on our maps.
At this point it’s worthwhile to consult three very distinct scholars — one Russian, two Western. The first, who at one time directed the Soviet Institute of Military History and who participated in the militant anti-Stalinism of the Gorbachev years, appears motivated by a desire to resume and radicalize the indictment of the Khrushchev report. However, the results of his research compel him to arrive at a more nuanced judgment: without being an expert — much less the genius portrayed by official propaganda — already in the years before the start of the war Stalin was deeply engaged on matters of defense, the defense industry, and the war economy as a whole. At the strictly military level, it’s only through effort and mistakes, including serious mistakes, and “thanks to the hard practice of daily military life,” that he “gradually learns the principles of strategy.” In other fields, however, his thinking proves to be “more developed than many Soviet military leaders.” Thanks as well to the long experience of managing political power, Stalin never loses sight of the central role of the war economy, and he contributes to the strengthening of the USSR’s resistance with the relocation of war industry to the interior: “it’s almost impossible to overestimate the importance of that enterprise.” Finally, the Soviet leader paid great attention to the moral-political dimension of the war. In that field, he “had totally unconventional ideas,” as shown by the “courageous and far-sighted” decision to celebrate the anniversary of the October Revolution on 7 November 1941 in a besieged Moscow harassed by the Nazi enemy. In conclusion, one can say that, with respect to career military officers and his inner circle, “Stalin demonstrated his more universal mindset.” We could add that it’s a mindset that doesn’t neglect any of the smallest aspects of the life and morale of the soldiers: informed that they had run out of cigarettes, and thanks in part due to his ability to handle a “Herculean workload,” during the Battle of Stalingrad he finds time to “telephone Akaki Mgeladze, Party boss of Abkhazia, where the tobacco was grown: ‘Our soldiers have nothing to smoke! Tobacco’s absolutely necessary at the front!’”
In their positive evaluation of Stalin as a military leader, the pair of British and American authors go even further. While Khrushchev stresses the overwhelming initial successes of the Wehrmacht, the first of the aforementioned experts references these same facts in very different terms: it’s not shocking that the “greatest invasion in military history” had achieved initial successes; however, the response of the Red Army after the devastating blows by the German invasion in June of 1941 was “the greatest feat of arms the world had ever seen.” The second scholar, a professor at an American military academy, draws a comprehensive appraisal that accounts for the long duration of the conflict, the attention given to the rear as well as the front, the economic and political aspects, as well as the more properly military dimension of the war. He speaks of Stalin as a “great strategist,” indeed “the first true strategist of the twentieth century.” This overall judgment finds full agreement with the British scholar earlier cited, whose basic thesis, summarized in the cover flap of his book, identifies Stalin as “the greatest military leader of the twentieth century.” One can, of course, debate or qualify such flattering judgments; however, the fact remains that, at least as far as warfare is concerned, the portrait drawn by Khrushchev has lost all credibility.
Domenico Losurdo, How to Cast a God into Hell: The Khrushchev Report (2008).
