Stalin's Folly: The Tragic First Ten Days of World War II on the Eastern Front by Constantine Pleshakov

Reassessing the Soviet response to the Nazi invasion of Russia, the author portrays Stalin as an ineffective military leader who allowed hundreds of thousands of his soldiers to be slaughtered in the first ten days of the invasion. Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly The subtitle of this provocative and useful work by a noted historian (The Tsar's Last Armada) accurately describes its subject. The author supports the revisionist thesis that Stalin was not deceived about Hitler's ultimate intentions, only their timing, and was planning a preemptive attack into Poland and the Balkans--in 1942. Soviet deployments certainly make this plausible, as do other factors, such as the failure to build up defenses on the new Soviet border after stripping the old ones of most of their weapons and troops. The Germans, as is well known, struck first, and the result was a Russian military disaster of such proportions as to influence history to this day. The book is well-balanced, moving from the Kremlin, where Stalin was in denial and Zhukov was at least keeping his head, to soldiers of every rank from general to unarmed private. With his talent for assembling gripping narratives out of long-suppressed sources, Pleshakov will bring joy to fans of John Erickson. (May 5) Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Stalin's actions immediately preceding the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union remain somewhat murky because historians cannot search relevant Russian archives. Yet tantalizing but circumstantial evidence suggests Stalin intended to preempt Hitler by launching his own war, a proposition that historian Pleshakov accepts and to which his title refers. Whatever plot the Soviet dictator harbored, the blitzkrieg blasted it to pieces on June 22, 1941, and the ensuing, catastrophic two weeks dramatically unfold in this forceful account. Pleshakov, who displayed excellent popular pitch in The Tsar's Last Armada (2002), adeptly commands the available sources and narrates the destruction of the frontline Soviet armies and the chaotic reports of the disaster that reached Moscow. Tracking the retreats of generals and missions of Stalin's emissaries to ascertain the situation, Pleshakov arrives at the moment--the German capture of Minsk--when Stalin apparently went into a swoon; he plainly expected to be overthrown. Illustrating the terrible totalitarian maelstrom with vignettes of individual fates, Pleshakov powerfully portrays the opening shots of the most destructive war in history. Gilbert Taylor Copyright American Library Association. All rights reserved Review Pleshakov, already author of outstanding and wonderfully readable books on Soviet foreign policy and the 1904 Russo-Japanese War, delivers an accessible, scholarly and gripping narrative that tells of Stalin's biggest mistake and the mayhem of the first days of Barbarossa. --Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar and Potemkin: Catherine the Great's Imperial Partner Stalin's failure to prepare for Hitler's sudden attack in June of 1941 takes on terrible new meaning in Constantine Pleshakov's gripping book. Trained as an historian, but interpreting newly available sources with a novelist's eye and ear, Pleshakov provides devastating sketches of Stalin and his generals, heartbreaking descriptions of ordinary soldiers and civilians awash in the chaos of war, new revelations about Stalin's own secret planning for a preemptive attack until Hitler beat him to it, and biting, trenchant analysis of how the rout and despair demonstrated the utter failure of the Soviet system, yet inspired the Red Army to fight its way to the heart of the Third Reich four years later. --William Taubman, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Khrushchev: The Man and His Era A stimulating, and often fruitfully provocative account of the array of complex and self-contradictory irrationalities with which Stalin mishandled, and barely survived, Hitler's attack in 1941. And, as background, a striking overview of the human suffering that resulted. --Robert Conquest, author of The Great Terror and The Dragons of Expectation This is a very lively account of a most deadly moment in modern history. Pleshakov knows how to tell a story, and his portrait of Stalin, based on fresh evidence from the Russian archives, is a devastating depiction of colossal incompetence. --Joseph J. Ellis, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of His Excellency: George Washington, American Sphinx, and Founding Brothers About the Author Russian-born Constantine Pleshakov is the author of The Tsar's Last Armada The Flight of the Romanovs, and Inside the Kremlin's Cold War. He is a visiting prefessor of history at Mount Holyoke College. Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1 WAR GAME JANUARY 2, 1941: THE KREMLIN The end of 1940 was grim. Two armies, one clad in gray, the other in khaki, were destroying the Old World. They had thrown themselves at Europe abruptly and ferociously, like ants attacking a cake left on a garden table. And like ants, they arrived in geometrically impeccable columns, never questioning their right to devour the trophy. The ants were of two different species. The grays took orders from the German Fhrer, Adolf Hitler; the khakis closed ranks around the Soviet leader, or vozhd, Joseph Stalin. Having been dismissed by cultured European politicians, cartoonists, and sketch writers as pests that could be stamped out by the civilized world in a flash, the ants had proved their worth by 1940. France crumbled under the wheels of German tanks in less than three weeks. The British force on the continent, expected to save the day, was decimated at Dunkirk. As headlines shouted about the impending demise of these two great powers, pillars of the West since the days of the Crusades, smaller European nations such as Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Norway wriggled under German occupation, their cries unheard by the panicking world. At the other end of the continent, the Red Army grabbed Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia and tore away chunks of Poland, Finland, and Romania. In both the west and the east, killings were performed speedily and expertly: troops swept through the ancient cities, blind to decorum, and the punitive squads followed immediately to scavenge, to cleanse, to kill. Hitler's men looked for Jews and Communists; Stalin's went for the exploiting classes. The proud and elaborate European order, which had taken centuries to create, was smashed in less than a year, because the two armies acted in accord. Hitler let Stalin do what he wanted to on the fringes of Europe, and Stalin turned a blind eye to the plight of the West and even reined in his fifth column abroad, the fanatically anti-Nazi Comintern. But this was not a partnership of equals - Hitler snatched the best pieces, and Stalin collected the crumbs. Kaunas was a poor match for Paris, the port of Riga didn't fare nearly as well as that of Rotterdam, and Romanian Cabernet hardly deserved the name when compared to the French varieties. At the end of 1940 a weird lull fell over Europe. The two armies had reached an impasse. Germany's hunger could not be sated by the annexation of the few lesser countries, like Yugoslavia and Greece, that were still stubbornly maintaining their sovereignty. The Germans had to launch a spectacular conquest to justify their roll across Europe; that was what all other empires had done at the peak of their might, and that was what Adolf Hitler had promised the German people. They had few options. One was to invade Britain, another the Middle East; yet another was to strike at the Soviet Union. At the end of 1940 nobody knew which path Hitler would choose. Virtually every person in the Soviet Union had heard about Mein Kampf, Hitler's manifesto, published years before and now distributed to German newlyweds as a state gift. In the book Hitler promised the Germans virtually unlimited living space, lebensraum, on the immense plains between the Danube and the Urals, which now belonged to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, formerly the Russian Empire. Since August 1939 the two countries had been allies, but few Soviets doubted that the deal would be short-lived. They also knew that almost every prominent general in the USSR had been shot during the Great Purge, and the talent and vigor of the men who replaced them had yet to be tested. No matter how much the newspapers bragged about the prosperity of the Communist motherland, people knew that just ten years before, few households had had electricity and people had been signing papers with an X because they couldn't read or write. The workers building power plants, factories, and dams still lived in wooden shacks and muddy holes. In 1932 the government ordered so much grain from Ukraine, with its unsurpassed black earth, that its people suffered a fierce famine. Meanwhile, Germany was a nation of science, efficiency, and advancement. None of this bode well for the nations that had been forcibly herded into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics over the course of the past twenty-three years. The Red Army, whose soldiers were drafted from urbane Leningrad and arrogant Moscow, demure Byelorussia and warlike Chechnya, Islamic Uzbekistan and Buddhist Buryatia, froze in suspense, anticipating the vozhd's instructions. But as yet no order had come its way. In the fall of 1940 the Soviet people discovered thatt their woods were studded with an amazing number of mushrooms. Highly prized as a delicacy by both rich and poor, mushrooms rarely survived thhhhhe month of September, since they were enthusiastically picked and then pickled, boiled, fried, dried, and sauted. However, in 1940 the mushrooms were so plentiful that no matter how many were gathered, many more sprang forth - not just the uninspiring yellow chanterelles and the barely edible scarlet russulas, but also the czar of the forest, the delicious and beautiful King Boletus. In a country devastated by economic barbarism and political ineptitude, such a surprising harvest should have been a welcome supplement to a meager diet. It wasn't. Every adult in that superstitious land knew that the unusual abundance of mushrooms meant just one thing: war. In the early evening of January 2, 1941, the generals were summoned to the Kremlin. The order came without warning. The generals were important, and so was their mission in Moscow - they were attending an annual conference - yet nobody was sure whether the heir of Lenin, the genius of all times and peoples, Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin, would deign to see them. Regardless of the awe the leader inspired in their hearts, the generals knew that he must have been alarmed by what was happening in the west of the country. The strongest army in the world, Hitler's Wehrmacht, rustled and coiled along the border like a gigantic serpent, and it was hard to believe that its intentions were peaceful. The very fact that they had been summoned to the conference indicated that the vozhd was concerned about the state of the army. Conferences of military leaders were held annually, but this assembly was extraordinary. Usually the gatherings were attended by district commanders, their commissars, and chiefs of staff, but this time they were joined by a number of army, corps, and even division leaders, and the meeting was to be followed by a comprehensive strategic game. The generals were uneasy. The most recent execution of military leaders had occurred less than two years before. All of the participants in the conference had benefited from the carnage, as the murders had created lucrative vacancies. However, they could not be sure that the butchery would not resume, this time destroying them as it had destroyed their predecessors. Also, they were confused. Throughout the 1930s they had been taught that Nazism was a belligerent and therefore dangerous ideology. Now, however, their country was bound to Nazi Germany by a pact and also by the joint conquest of Eastern Europe. Throughout the conference week, five reports and fifty presentations were made. One report definitely stood out: that supplied by the commander of the Kiev Military District, Army General Georgy Zhukov, on The Nature of Modern Offensive Operation. Zhukov thought big. In his view, to win a war, an army group had to use at least eighty-five rifle divisions, four mechanized corps, two cavalry corps, and thirty air force divisions. In all, Zhukov suggested, a strike would involve about 1.5 million men, 8,000 aircraft, and 5,000 tanks. Nobody had ever fought a war like that. Whether the generals agreed with Zhukov or not-and some found his presentation presumptuous- he inspired respect. The man was remarkably vigorous, ambitious, and blunt, qualities all but lost to the army in the recent purge. He looked like he had stepped in from another, happier age, when ingenuity and risk-taking were still the marks of the military man. Zhukov was not the only star of the conference. The commander of the Western Military District, Colonel General Dmitry Pavlov, also delivered a rousing report. Pavlov compared tank operations of World War I to those currently unfolding in Europe. The differences were staggering. During the Battle of the Somme, Pavlov said, tanks had advanced two and a half miles in three hours, and that had been trumpeted as a major success. In May and June 1940, however, the German panzers had crushed all of France in seventeen days. Pavlov sounded motivated and keen, and his presentation was well received. In a way, his report complemented Zhukov's, advocating aggressive use of modern weaponry, but after Pavlov spoke the two generals began to look at each other apprehensively, as their rivalry became clear. On New Year's Eve the junior corps and division commanders were sent back home. Senior generals started preparing for the strategic game, which would pit the Reds against the Blues - or the Soviets against the Germans. Unexpectedly, before they began, the generals were told that Stalin required their presence. By 1941 the Kremlin was four and a half centuries old. The Italian architects invited to build it must have felt overwhelmed by the task. For starters, the grand prince of Moscow, Ivan III, needed a castle that could withstand any deadly attack, and Muscovite Russia was endowed with unfortunate strategic terrain: it was remarkably flat, with no significant natural obstacles to deter an enemy's onslaught. It was also landlocked by three assertive powers, Sweden, Poland, and the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans' vassals, the Crimean Tatars, looted Russia every spring, so they knew their way to Moscow well; they had recently pillaged and burned the Russian capital. So, among other things, the Kremlin had to be fireproof. Ivan wanted the new castle to inspire artistic respect too. After the collapse of Byzantium, he had married its heiress, Zo Palaiologos, and he regarded himself as a successor to the glamorous rulers of Constantinople. In other words, the fortress had to look like a palace. There had never been a shortage of land in Russia, so the prince designated a huge chunk of it for this project, which made the architects' task even more challenging. After their initial frustration, the Italians performed valiantly. The new fortress was virtually impenetrable. Its walls were thirty feet high and ran for almost a mile and a half, forming a firm ring atop a hill. That made the Kremlin one of the largest structures in Europe. It was among the gloomiest, too. The red brick with which it was built looked dull even on a sunny day, and its towers were extremely tall and loomed menacingly over the city. Its roofs were shaped like nomadic tents, giving the aura of a military camp. For security reasons the castle was built as a huge triangle, so that the sentries on its towers would have a good view of the walls, but its shape was uncompromisingly sharp. On maps the Kremlin looked like a pointed tooth biting into Moscow's flesh. Ironically, given the monolithic nature of the word kremlin today, every major Russian city used to have such a structure. A kremlin - the word means citadel in Russian - crowned a hill on a riverbank, and each time nomads attacked from the steppes or a rival prince from the woods, the townsfolk sought shelter behind its walls. There they could count on two things, water and prayer, for every kremlin had a church and a well. As for other essentials, like food and cover, these were reserved for the prince and his army. Gradually kremlins became extinct. The Kremlin devoured them. The rulers of Moscow crushed their opponents and destroyed their castles. Peter the Great, the illustrious westernizer, wanted every Russian city to look like Amsterdam, so kremlins had to be torn down to provide the space needed for baroque chapels and neoclassical mansions. Two centuries after Peter, the Bolsheviks launched their own orgy of reconstruction when revolution delivered Russia into their hands. Kremlins gave way to factories, streetcars, and Marxist statues. But the Moscow kremlin was spared: it became the seat of a government that was afraid of its own people and therefore used the Kremlin's protective walls and watchtowers to powerful effect. Few at the time of the revolution knew that Lenin was more coward than hero. Politically courageous, he simply could not handle physical danger. As soon as the civil war started, he fled the front in Petrograd (as St. Petersburg was then called). A hastily commandeered train took him and his accomplices to Moscow, where cars rushed them to the Kremlin. Lenin didn't like what he saw. The walls were indeed high and thick, but the structure was populated by a coterie of palace servants, priests, monks, and nuns. Lenin firmly ordered them out. He also called for the destruction of the monasteries and Romanov monuments on the grounds and gleefully participated in the demolition himself. Soon the citadel was spacious and quiet. The only intruding sound was the cawing of crows. In 1918, Russians were dying of starvation and there was not much for the crows to scavenge in the garbage bins of Moscow. But food could always be found in the Kremlin. Scanning the citadel for leftovers, hundreds of birds assembled on its spires. The guards started shooting them, but the noise upset Lenin even more than the crows' noise, and the hunt was called off. Uninterested in luxuries that he could easily afford, Lenin lived in a tiny apartment with his wife and sister. His tastes were spartan, and the apartment looked like a ward in an orphanage: tidy, gray, minimalist, with narrow and bumpy iron beds, crippled tables, and shabby chairs. Lenin didn't spend much time there anyway, preferring his study, which was conveniently located just across the hallway. That was where he did all his writing and worked for the survival of his new utopian state. At night the Kremlin felt particularly eerie. When the crows were asleep and few people and cars were around, the citadel was completely silent. The steps of a bodyguard pacing the cobblestone yard produced an alarming echo. The engine of an automobile roared like a highland brook. The Kremlin's palaces were abandoned, its churches locked, its past discarded. With its svelte white bell towers resembling lilies and its golden church domes like thistle globes, the citadel bore the look of a petrified garden. In the days of the czars, every Muscovite could see the ruler. All anyone had to do was go to the Kremlin on a big church holiday - the czar would be there, spectacular in his golden robes studded with jewels, possibly even distributing candies and linen scarves to the faithful. By the 1940s, though, very few people had access to the Kremlin. Its image was printed on countless posters, stamps, and postcards, but for most people the place was unreal, much like the mysterious demigod who now inhabited it. The generals walked into Stalin's office at 7:30 p.m. Even the few who had seen the vozhd in person couldn't take their eyes off the man. From a distance - say, in a convention hall - Stalin looked unimposing: a short, stooping, thickset, visibly aged man. But in a smaller space he was an overwhelming presence. The first thing people noticed was his bright light- brown eyes, which were nearly yellow: weirdly intense, discomforting, almost animalistic in their quiet alertness. All his other features - his low brow, thick hair, mustache, pockmarks - seemed to fade away in the enigmatic glow of his eyes. The vozhd spoke slowly, quietly, and clearly, carefully punctuating each sentence with a pause, almost never sitting down while he talked but wandering around like a restless beast. Occasionally he would stop directly in front of a visitor, deliberately entering his private space and staring him right in the eye. By Soviet standards, Stalin's office was large, its walls richly paneled with oak, the table covered by an ostentatious green cloth. Portraits of Marx, Engels, and Lenin were the sole decorations on the bare walls. The furniture was uncomfortable, and Stalin's desk was littered with piles of papers and maps. The only organized objects were the tele- phones and a bunch of freshly sharpened colored pencils. Those close to Stalin knew that he preferred blue ones. That night the vozhd was in a bad mood. He barely nodded to the generals before embarking on a long and scathing criticism of their leader, Semen Timoshenko, the people's commissar of defense. Stalin announced that he had spent the whole night of December 30 going through a draft of Timoshenko's speech, editing it line by line, only to find that Timoshenko had presented the unsanctioned version the following day. Now all his corrections were useless. Timoshenko has made a mistake, he snarled. Each time the vozhd became angry, he got noticeably pale and his eyes grew cold. Few dared to contradict him at those moments. The generals could not understand what had annoyed him so much, since Timoshenko's concluding remarks at the conference had been extraordinarily cautious. In all likelihood, Stalin had something else on his mind. After lecturing the generals on the virtues of respect and discipline, the vozhd finally asked, When is the game? Tomorrow morning, Timoshenko answered, visibly unnerved. All right, go ahead . . . But do not let the commanders relax . . . Who will be playing for the Blues and who for the Reds? Army General Zhukov will be playing for the Blues, Colonel General Pavlov for the Reds. Even Stalin must have appreciated the casting of the rival generals in these roles, but he didn't let on if so. At 9:45 the generals left the Kremlin, feeling intimidated and depressed. The encounter had made Georgy Zhukov all the more determined to win the following day. He was a Soviet poster boy, and as such, he couldn't afford to fail. Copyright 2005 by Constantine Pleshakov. Reprinted with permission by Houghton Mifflin Company.