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Where World War II was won and lost
Stalingrad
By Antony Beevor, Penguin, 2000
Reviewed by Per-Åke Westerlund
"NEVER BEFORE had a civilian population suffered so
much", writes the British historian Antony Beevor in this in-depth and
well-written book. Beevor cites the ravages of war, mass executions, starvation,
cannibalism and epidemics, but offers as well a detailed basis for political and
military-strategic analysis.
In 1939, Stalin sealed his treaty with Hitler, the hitherto
official mortal enemy of the USSR. The Soviet foreign minister, Molotov,
proclaimed that it now was Germany "that strives to end the war as fast as
possible while England and France, which yesterday were making noises against
aggression, are in favour of continuing the war and against an armistice".
With the treaty Stalin openly shared responsibility for the Nazi occupation of
Poland in the autumn of 1939.
Hitler’s attack on the USSR in June 1941 was a logical
conclusion of the aspirations of German imperialism to get revenge on the
Russian revolution and to conquer raw material and slave labour. The attack was
predicted by Hitler himself, as it was by the Marxists lead by the exiled Leon
Trotsky, but the assault still caught Stalin unaware. Days before the German
attack, Stalin ordered the army not to respond to what he termed ‘provocations’.
Beevor shows how Stalin’s "tyranny included a marked element of
cowardice" and that until the last minute he hoped for reconciliation with
Hitler.
The German assault was of unprecedented dimensions: three
million German troops, plus their allies, participated with 3,350 tanks. Within
five days they advanced 200 miles and captured 300,000 Russian soldiers. During
the first three weeks 6,000 Soviet aeroplanes were destroyed. Within a short
period the German army was 65 miles west and 100 miles north of Moscow. But not
even this successful army could be stretched without limit. They lacked
maintenance, the troops were exhausted and frost injuries followed the winter of
1941-42. The next offensive had to wait until the summer.
The most important targets were Ukrainian agriculture and
the oil in Caucasia, to end the regime’s dependence on imports. Hitler
demanded seven million tons of grain from Ukraine in the summer of 1941, which
led even the Nazi leaders themselves to predict starvation for millions in
Ukraine.
Beevor points out that the methods of the Nazis forced the
enemies of Stalin to defend the Soviet Union. Russians and other Slavic people
were regarded as inferior by the Nazi ideologues, and this position was accepted
by the officers. 33,771 Jews were executed after the conquest of Kiev. The first
experiment with Zyklon B in Auschwitz was made on Russian prisoners. 60,000
prisoners from Stalingrad were used as slave labour in Germany. In total three
million Soviet prisoners died.
Beevor argues that "the crusade of Hitler revived"
the civil war in Russia following the revolution, when the new Soviet government
defended itself against the invasion of foreign troops and the White, often
anti-semitic, Tsarist armies. But the workers’ regime of 1918-20 had by this
point been supplanted by the dictatorship of Stalin.
The USSR entered the war severely weakened militarily.
Stalin’s mass purges of real and possible oppositionists had greatly affected
the armed forces: 36,671 officers were executed in 1936-38, among them the
leading general Tukhachevsky. But, writes Beevor, "the great advantage of
Stalin in comparison to Hitler was that he lacked ideological scruples".
While Hitler was blinded by his objectives and his belief that he was
invincible, Stalin was prepared for ever new turns. Beevor underlines Stalin’s
"desire for vengeance" as an important factor, which confirms the
analysis of Stalin made by Leon Trotsky in his biography of the Russian
dictator. Trotsky showed Stalin lacked any ideology or long-term plan, but
rather acted to keep and extend his own power and prestige.
Without ceremony Stalin returned to the military thinking of
the 1920s, which had been developed by Tukhachevsky, and reinstated several of
his disciples. Total mobilisation was ordered, including of female soldiers. The
USSR could rely on and use all the advantages of the planned economy to the
maximum. In 1942, more than 2,000 tanks were produced every month, compared with
Germany’s 500. As with other economic leaps under Stalinism, this was achieved
by merciless pressure on the workers. It was a planned economy run as a military
organisation. The political criticism, however, was alive. "For a young
Soviet citizen the most shocking experience in the field was not their
coarseness but their outspokenness in political questions", tells Beevor.
The soldiers demanded improved conditions and were against the privileges of the
rulers.
Stalingrad (today Volgograd) on the river Volga was
strategically well-placed to cut off the oil supply from Caucasia to the rest of
the Soviet Union. To Stalingrad Hitler sent his 6th Army led by the general
Paulus, who was extremely loyal to Hitler but was more a staff officer than a
field officer. The German troops arrived at the city on 23rd August 1942. In the
first week 40,000 civilians were killed. Soviet losses in holding the centre of
Stalingrad on the western bank of Volga were enormous. Of the 11th firing
battalion only 320 men out of 10,000 survived.
Hitler was now at his peak. General Rommel was
simultaneously victorious in North Africa and seemed to have Egypt and the oil
fields in the Middle East within reach. Hitler therefore gave the order that the
6th Army should occupy Stalingrad parallel with an offensive against the oil
fields further south. But to occupy Stalingrad meant ‘rat-war’ in basements
and houses destroyed by bombing. The railway station, for example, changed ‘owners’
15 times within five days. The over-stretched German forces could no longer move
forward. General Paulus and his officers, however, trusted Hitler and the high
command to come up with a solution.
Meanwhile the Soviet counter-offensive was prepared with the
aim of surrounding the entire 6th Army in the Stalingrad area. This offensive
gained immediate successes. Encirclement became a fact on November 22nd:
290,000 soldiers were trapped. Until capitulation in January, 400 per day were
evacuated, most of them injured. But the air bridge promised by Göering was
never realised. The food rationing led to starvation and diseases. One German
doctor reported: "On the operating table we were forced to scrape lice from
uniforms and skin with a spatula and throw them into the fire". 20,000
soldiers lay injured in the basements of the ruins of Stalingrad. The 6th Army
lacked fuel and ammunition, but were ordered by Hitler to fight to the last man.
The five-month battle left 485,751 Red Army soldiers dead, and roughly equal
numbers for the German army and its allies. After the German capitulation 91,000
prisoners were taken, of which 5,000 survived and returned to Germany in the
1950s.
Stalingrad was the beginning of the end for the Nazi regime.
Just before, Rommel had lost the battle at El Alamein. Hitler lost the
initiative. Beevor’s book is filled with accounts from aristocratic German
generals who had subordinated themselves to the Nazis and become dependents of
the regime. Many of them now lost their faith in Hitler, some of whom planned
the assault on Hitler carried out in 1944. Their criticism was mainly concerned
with the military defeats, not fascism as such.
Stalin kept a low profile during the huge defeats at the
beginning of the war, which were caused by his purges and mistakes. After
Stalingrad, he became the ‘Great Commander’ and the personality cult became
even more extreme. He received ‘the sword of Stalingrad’ from the king of
England via Churchill at the summit of the allied leaders in Teheran, and
respectfully kissed the blade. The regime of Stalin became more nationalistic.
He dissolved the Communist International in May 1943 and rehabilitated the
orthodox church in September the same year. Panslavism was cultivated and old
tsars were praised as heroes. Within the military the old command structure was
restored. Stalin actively tried to recruit some of the captured German generals.
He had most success with Arno von Lenski, who later sat in the ruling ‘political
bureau’ of the GDR.
The outcome of the war strengthened Stalinism globally.
Eastern Europe was now within the power of Stalin and the Chinese revolution
followed soon after. The Stalinist ‘communist’ parties reached their
strongest support in 1944-45. Stalingrad played no small part in this, showing
that workers and the planned economy, despite the dictatorship, were able to
defeat fascism.
Second to the books of the Finnish author Väinö Linna,
this is the best book on war I’ve read.
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