Stalins Folly notes Constantine Pleshakov This book is about Josef Stalins military mistakes in the year leading

up to the German invasion of June 1941, and in the month of one-sided fighting that followed. Stalin's various purges had killed off all of the best people throughout the Soviet military and government. Lower-ranking survivors were promoted to fill the vacancies, resulting in widespread incompetence and fear-based sycophancy towards Stalin. Zhukov was one of the rare exceptions. Josef Stalin

Stalin was a paranoid man who was deeply mistrustful of all other people. As such, he was quick to dismiss the advice and ideas of his advisers and top spies, especially when they disagreed with him. By 1940, Stalin was highly isolated. His last wife had died, his children had grown up and rarely talked to him, and he had no true friends. His advisers were mostly incompetent sycophants. Without any confidantes to correct his mistakes, the flaws in his thinking fully manifested themselves in his decisions. Stalin had a poor military mind. His involvement with military plans usually created problems. Stalin was a strange character. He was very late to rise and to sleep. He preferred being alone during many of his off-hours. As hobbies, he collected wristwatches and tended a garden.

Stalin had reason to disbelieve intelligence reports that Hitler intended to attack him:

The warnings--which came from many different sources--had been steadily coming in since 1940 and had always proven wrong. Many of the sources, which included leaders within the British, American and Yugoslav governments, stood to gain from German-Soviet animus, and thus had reasons to try to trick Stalin. Stalin knew this.

But some of the intelligence was credible:

Some of the spies were loyal Communists who had infiltrated foreign diplomatic and government circles. They had no reason to lie. There were hundreds of German intrusions into Soviet territory, and they were clearly aimed at reconnaissance and sabotage, and they got more frequent as June 1941 approached o Spy planes flying dozens of miles into Soviet territory o Hundreds of disguised German spies and saboteurs had crossed the border (a minority were apprehended) Soviet intelligence had detected German mechanized units--which are offensive in nature--close to the USSR's border.

Firsthand accounts from the border noted that German troops became notably meaner and more closed-off since 1939.

Stalin received all of the intelligence reports personally, but withheld some of them from his top advisers, so they didn't know how dire the situation was becoming. Stalin's belief that Hitler would not attack the USSR was logical:

It would have been a basic strategic error and an unforgivable repeat of Germany's main WWI blunder to start a two-front war. Had Germany acted rationally, it would have defeated Britain before trying to attack the USSR. In 1940, it didn't look like this could be accomplished until 1942. Germany's behavior in 1941 seemed to further confirm Stalin's belief: The Germans pursued Britain into North Africa and also invaded Yugoslavia and Greece (which had British troops in it). The focus clearly was on eliminating Britain in the Mediterranean and in the British Isles themselves, and the remaining German troops were spread too thinly as occupiers across Europe to spare enough manpower to attack the Soviet Union. The German high command recognized these same military realities, and as such overwhelmingly disagreed with Hitler's initial order to invade the USSR. However, Hitler--who had the irrational mentality of a gambler--overrode them. Stalin's big mistake was not understanding Hitler's way of thinking. [Perhaps this underlines a more general difference between their ways of thinking. Both were cruel and brutal, but Hitler was more risk-taking. Stalin might have had a cruder, more conservative way of thinking.]

However, Stalin's military posture for the USSR was not logical:

In 1940, Stalin had already decided to attack Germany to eliminate Fascism and hopefully install a Communist government. He wanted to simultaneously take over all of Eastern Europe for the same purpose. (Hitler's mistrust of Stalin was therefore justified.) Unfortunately, Stalin never fully fleshed out his invasion plans. He only shared them with a minority of his top generals, and he waffled over many important details, including the year of the attack (1942 at the earliest). Such an offensive would require a preliminary mass build-up of Soviet troops, supplies and weapons just a few miles from their opponents' borders. As such, Stalin had ordered the necessary fortifications, airfields, supply dumps, and bases to be built in far forward areas (including Occupied Poland) for the future offensive. But even though none of them were finished and hence were still worthless, he ordered the bulk of his armies in 1940 to occupy positions near them, again, just a few miles from the USSR's borders with Germany and Romania. A few of Stalin's braver generals (including Zhukov) warned him that this might lead to a disaster. If the Germans did a surprise attack, the main body of Russian troops would have only a few hours' warning from the time the Germans crossed the border to the time they were being attacked. Soviet troops in far forward areas could be easily attacked from any number of unexpected directions and surrounded. They could be quickly cut off from retreat and in any case lacked the space to maneuver and regroup against an attacking force. The generals suggested holding the main body of troops at existing fortifications

deeper inside the USSR. Stalin ignored this advice since it went against his assumption that Hitler wouldn't attack until 1942. Insiders on both sides reported that Stalin and Hitler felt a strange kinship for one another:

Both had personal histories of ruthlessness and backstabbing. Both were ideological fanatics. Both were bent on expansionism and had conquered weaker countries. Both were very brutal and had no problem killing, enslaving or abusing large numbers of people. They spoke admiringly of each other in private sometimes and felt like they understood the other's way of thinking. For this reason, they both plotted to destroy the other from the beginning. [Both also had a variety of chronic health and mental problems]

The Soviet military was weaker than most knew

On paper, it was very large (almost 5 million men) and had huge amounts of weapons, planes and equipment. In reality, its troops were badly trained, its leadership was poor owing to the purges and to Commisars being able to countermand any order, and most of its weapons and equipment were outdated or so badly maintained that much of it couldn't be fielded at any given time. Many small arms all the way up to planes and tanks were broken at any given time. Soviet logistics and communications were also bad. The railway network and roads weren't capacious enough to handle mass movements of Soviet troops even within their own territory, so the USSR couldn't quickly bring the full weight of its military to bear against an invader. The military telephone network was not extensive enough, and military radios were not yet in widespread use in Russia. There was pervasive incompetence and lack of initiative within the Soviet military. The Russo-Finnish War (1939-40) had exposed all of these flaws.

Examples of conservative and misguided Red Army thinking

The Red Army took too long to approve newer, better weapons and equipment thanks to bureaucratic red tape and to conservative thinking among top generals. The delayed adoption of field radios and prolonged reliance upon "trusted" telephones for communication was a good example of this. Another example was the rejection of the 76mm USV-39 towed artillery piece in favor of a 107mm gun. Tests had shown that the USV-39 had excellent range, was good for normal artillery bombardment and was also an excellent antitank gun that could penetrate the armor of any German tank, but Stalin and his top artillery general Kulik decided to needlessly bypass it for the 107mm gun because the latter was bigger. It was a waste for various reasons, and the decision was belatedly reversed after the Germans invaded. The Katyusha multiple rocket system was also rejected, again because Stalin and Kulik arbitrarily decided that it "was too weird." Few Soviet pilots were trained to fly at night.

The basics of effective military defense

Fortifications should be set back from the border, outside the range of artillery and most warplanes that the enemy could launch from within his own territory. The defensive line should be as flat as possible. Salients should not be occupied by defenders since they can be easily surrounded with pincer attacks and then destroyed. The border should be closely monitored by relatively small numbers of friendly troops. As soon as the enemy crosses, the main line of defense farther back is notified, giving it time to prepare. Bridges, passes, railroads, and other choke points between the border and the main defensive line should all be heavily defended but also wired with explosives. They should be destroyed if necessary to slow down the enemy advance. Retreating is OK. Border zone troops should be trained to do fighting retreats to the main defenses, focusing on slowing the enemy down as much as possible. Second lines of defenses should be prepared in case the first line falls. Everyone down to low-ranking officers should know in advance what the rally points and contingency plans are. The line of fortifications should function as a safe zone where friendly units can gather, regroup, and counterattack out of to drive the enemy back. Communication and transit networks in your own territory must be excellent. Backup communication systems and travel routes must be in place in case primaries are knocked out. Your troops must be able to quickly move around in the rear and to get to the defensive line fast. Roads, bridges and railroads should be upgraded while there is still time.

The Soviet Far East armies

The conclusion of a peace treaty with Japan in April 1940 allowed Stalin to start moving troops from the Far East to the western USSR for the planned offensive. The movements were done piecemeal and the large numbers of troops in the west were disguised as being part of training exercises. Stalin also ordered additional conscriptions to bulk up his army. All told, he needed 3 million troops to take over Eastern Europe and Germany. According to his calculations, the men would be ready by summer 1942. Once Hitler invaded, Stalin dramatically accelerated the transfer of soldiers to the West. The effect of knowing his eastern flank was secure cannot be overstated. The Axis Powers' failure to coordinate against the USSR was a crucial strategic mistake. [Once Hitler was defeated, Stalin sent all his armies back to the east and attacked Japan to devastating effect.]

Soviet tanks were technically superior to most German tanks, but they were poorly maintained, so fewer could be fielded at once. Soviet tank doctrine was also obsolete at the start of the war, with tanks being viewed as support units for the infantry. (French mistake) Some Soviet tank generals had pushed for a switch to Blitzkrieg doctrine, but by the start of the war, they were still in the minority. The Soviets were still relying on telephones instead of radios as their primary means of communication. The problem was telephone lines could easily be disrupted by cutting the cables.

The Soviets had made no effort to protect their telephone cables from this by burying them or using men to guard their telephone poles. They could have at least done this near their border with Germany. The hundreds of German spies who had infiltrated the USSR in the months preceding the June invasion had extensively mapped the telephone cable network. Right before the invasion happened, German saboteurs cut hundreds of cables, with devastating effects. The German invasion of June 22, 1941

In the days leading up to the German attack, the evidence for a German invasion increased exponentially. Notably, a few days before, German diplomats and their families started evacuating the embassy in Moscow. Reliable Soviet spies in Germany, Japan and other countries all reported that Hitler was going to attack around the middle of the month. Stalin continued to disbelieve it, but his behavior was visibly very agitated. He stayed up the entire night before the invasion (it happened at dawn), reviewing intelligence reports and meeting with his senior advisers. With only a few hours to spare, he very painfully came around to the certainty of a German attack, but was also concerned (and probably hoped) it might be a small border incident engineered to provoke an excessive Soviet counterattack that would give the Germans an excuse to massively retaliate (the Germans just did this with Poland). Stalin's order to his front line troops thus warned them of an impending German attack, but didn't authorize them to use full force in response. This was profoundly confusing since it marked a total reversal of the Soviet propaganda up to that point that the Germans were strong allies, and since ambiguous instructions were given about how to respond. Right as a surge of clarifying phone calls started coming in from frontline units, the Germans cut the telephone wires. The attack started soon after that.

Stalin's behavior in the few days before and after the German invasion was counterproductive and irrational.

Instead of working round the clock to address the crisis, for the most part he stuck to his normal routine of waking late and working until late at night, with just the standard amount of time budgeted for meetings with advisers in between. This was especially problematic since the fighting started at daybreak and ended at nightfall and Stalin insisted that many major military decisions go through him. Soviet forces couldn't receive permission for various battlefield actions for several hours because Stalin was out of sync (i.e. - always a couple hours behind) with battlefield developments. Stalin also refused to stay in the Kremlin the whole time to make management easier, and he frequently retired to his personal dacha in the suburbs of Moscow. [Hitler's micromanagement of his own forces later in the war was even more disastrous. Hitler was also a night owl who spent a lot of time in various personal mansions away from central government districts. His top advisers had to waste time commuting to his house for late-night meetings. On D-Day, the Allies invaded the beaches of Normandy at dawn, which was hours before Hitler normally woke. Rommel had anticipated that landing site and had said repeatedly that the Axis would have only a few hours in the beginning to repulse them if they hoped to

repulse them at all. Rommel needed tanks to counterattack, but was unable to move them without Hitler's permission, and Hitler didn't wake up until it was too late.] He also experienced mood swings (that were abnormal for him) during the period, sometimes becoming enraged, sometimes becoming closed-off and visibly depressed, and other times appearing normal. The strange combination of behaviors and routines, incongruously suggestive of extreme anxiety but also a lack of urgency, is reminiscent of Hitler's behavior during similar crises.

The Luftwaffe destroyed the Soviet Air Force on the ground in the first hours of the invasion.

The Soviet planes were, like the rest of the USSR's military forces, stationed very close to the German border. The Soviet pilots only had a few minutes' warning time once the Luftwaffe crossed the border. Construction of new airfields had not finished, so the planes were crowded into existing airfields where there was no room to hide or spread them out. They were very easy targets for German bombers.

Throughout the Soviet Union, few people understood how bad the German invasion was. The media was government-controlled, and the government lied about the losses of territory and men to downplay Stalin's mistakes and to keep people calm. Soviets living away from the front lines couldn't see for themselves what was happening. Red Army units on the front lines were also cut off from each other and from Moscow thanks to severed communications and German encirclement, so they couldn't see how bad the broader situation was either. Only Stalin's inner circle had enough information to grasp how bad things were. It took weeks for the government to fully admit to the Soviet people how dire the situation had become. Stalin continued to make bad military choices after the invasion

He further worsened the Red Army's lot by ordering frontline units to stand their ground and in some cases to counterattack the Germans. It was an elementary mistake. The units had already suffered heavy losses and should have retreated to establish a defensive line deeper inside the USSR. Stalin's orders were given by the end of the first day of the invasion and weren't rescinded until the units were destroyed. The counterattacks were poorly conceived and often entailed Soviet forces marching for days in the heat, without enough supplies (like food, water and spare parts for vehicles). By the time they engaged the Germans, they were exhausted and depleted. The top Soviet generals like Zhukov were aware of these factors and as such knew that the counterattacks would probably fail. Only Stalin--with his poor military mind--couldn't see the problems.

Though Germany and the USSR were both militaristic, totalitarian countries, their military cultures (and resulting battlefield performance) were very different

Germany: The generals down to the NCO's were trained and encouraged to seize the initiative and to be creative. There had been no purges, so the commanders were very competent. The generals came from aristocratic families with long military traditions

(many of them in fact disliked the Nazis but were proud to fight for Germany). More open to new technologies and doctrines. USSR: The Red Army was a top-down controlled structure where obeying orders from the very top was the most important virtue. Stalin mistrusted the military and had purged its best leaders and replaced them with less-competent people who were loyal to him above all else. The result was a monolithic organization where individuals were afraid to take risks, including calculated risks on the battlefield that would probably pay off. The Red Army was not as open to new technologies and doctrines.

German air superiority was devastating

Attackers roamed the skies at will and inflicted terrible damage on Soviet forces. As soon as Soviet counterattacks were detected, German aircraft swarmed them. Constant German air attacks against refugees retreating along roads also worsened the existing panic. From the beginning, the Luftwaffe exercised no restraint against civilian targets.

The Russian tank forces suffered from many problems, including:

Overall inferiority to German tanks, except with the T-34 and KV-1 (which later inspired the IS-1). Problematically, there were few T-34's and KV-1's in the western USSR when the Germans invaded. Major logistical problems owing to the tanks using different types of fuel (diesel vs. gasoline; several different grades of gasoline) and main gun ammunition. A single tank corps would be comprised of too many different types of tanks. Poor maintenance meant many Soviet tanks broke down before reaching the battlefield, or were not able to leave their bases at all. On the battlefield, Soviet tank tactics were crude and disorganized compared to the Germans. This was due largely to poor training, lack of combat experience and few radios for the tank commanders to talk to each other.

The Russians' panic during the first week of the invasion was severe

Millions of civilian refugees headed east. Many Red Army soldiers surrendered, got rid of their guns and uniforms and tried to run away, went insane, shot themselves in their hands or feet so they could return to rear areas for medical treatment, or committed suicide. All of these things started happening on the first day of the invasion. Many crazy, anecdotal stories exist from this confused period.

The non-Russians of the western USSR were generally relieved at the German invasion. Some of them even fled westwards during the confusion of battle.

Many Ukrainians, Estonians, Lithuanians, and other minority groups were happy to be liberated. They had been struggling against Russian domination for centuries, had been

briefly independent during the interwar years, and felt persecuted and oppressed by Stalin. Hitler made a major mistake by not treating these groups with respect. Had the Germans given them autonomy, lied to them about continued independence after the war was over, and not brutalized and starved them, the minorities would have helped Hitler and at the very least would not have resisted German occupying forces. Hitler thought they were all subhuman Slavs and he ordered his troops to mistreat all of them. Hitler and many other Germans also arrogantly believed that their racial and military supremacy was so great that they wouldn't need the help of the non-Russian Slavs to beat the USSR.

Ethnic Russians, however, reacted very differently

In spite of the colossal defeats, blunders and surrenders in the early weeks, there were many individual Russian soldiers who fought with inhuman courage and self-sacrifice. All German units regularly encountered such fanatics and learned how hard the Russians were capable of fighting under the right conditions. Once war was declared, there was a surge in genuine patriotism among ethnic Russians, and millions of them (including many women) throughout the USSR volunteered for the Red Army. Recruitment stations were overwhelmed. The number of volunteers grew as people learned about the scale of their country's initial losses. The Soviet and German armies were both full of many highly motivated, fanatical soldiers.

The German soldiers were surprised by what they encountered in the USSR

They were shocked by the vastness and lack of development of the USSR. The wilderness stretched on forever. The roads were few, and where they existed, of poor quality. Even major roads between cities were narrow and often just made of dirt, which instantly turned to mud once it rained. The Germans had mobility problems from the beginning. The Germans came from a small, highly developed country with excellent roads. There was also a culture shock. The Russians lived impoverished, technologically backward lives compared to the Germans, especially in the vast countryside. The houses were small and run-down, and whole families slept together on the floor of the same room. The Germans had never seen such primitive people and villages. Everyone wore strange, old-fashioned clothing, spoke an alien language, had almost pagan religious icons and churches, and had strange habits. In many ways, the USSR didn't feel European at all. Living arrangements were poor for the Germans. The villages had no extra buildings or refinements for the Germans. The cities had been destroyed by the Luftwaffe and by the retreating Red Army. Throughout the USSR, the Germans found few things to steal and few comfortable places to inhabit. This was in sharp contrast to their experience invading France and the Low Countries. [Recall all the stories from 1944 and 45 when the Allies were advancing through France and the Low Countries: American troops dealt with

civilians who were culturally similar to themselves, often found nice houses or chateaus to stay in, found cheese and bottles of fine wine in cellars, could go to Paris for recreation, etc. The Germans experienced the same in 1940-44. The USSR had no such pleasures.] In so many ways, the German experience in the USSR was shocking and miserable from the beginning.

The Germans were cruel to the Soviets from the beginning:

The Luftwaffe heavily bombed civilian areas of cities and deliberately attacked retreating refugees. The German army abused, starved and murdered many of the Russian POW's they took. In part this was because they were unprepared for the massive numbers of prisoners they would take in the first weeks of the war. The Germans immediately started stealing food and anything valuable once they entered the USSR. The civilians were already low on food as it was. Within a few weeks of taking control of an area, German forces would set up concentration camps and cruel methods of governance. They primarily targeted Jews and Communist officials, though many civilians of other types were also punished for little reason.

The combined effects of Stalin's military mistakes, German air superiority, and poor/severed Red Army communications with frontline units can't be overstated. Stalin insisted that Minsk be held at all costs. This was another example of poor military thinking that led to many pointless deaths.

Minsk was indefensible because it lacked fortresses and natural features like rivers, mountains or swamps that favored the defense. Minsk was a small city (~250,000 people) whose only real significance lay in the fact that it was Belorussia's capitol. Stalin demanded that it be held at all costs because it had symbolic value in his eyes. The Red Army forces in and around the city should have just cut their losses and retreated east to form a sensible line of defense. The city was going to fall no matter what. The Luftwaffe area bombed the whole city before the Wehrmacht entered it on June 29-only a week after the invasion started. As a "precautionary measure," the Germans quickly arrested all men between 18 and 45 in Minsk--30,000 people--and packed them into a improvised prison camp only 1 sq mile big just outside the city. The area had no buildings and the prisoners were not given tents or any type of shelter. Over the next several weeks, more than 100,000 Red Army POW's captured near Minsk were also sent to the holding camp while the Germans figured out what to do with everybody next. Hundreds of Russians died in the camp each day thanks to untreated injuries/illnesses, starvation, and abuse from their guards. Stalin was crestfallen after Minsk was lost, and he retired to his personal house for the whole next day and accepted no phone calls or visitors.

Stalin later admitted to his top generals that he had "fu*ked up" in his initial handling of the war.

Major military defeats in 1905 and 1917 had spurred overthrows of past Russian governments. Stalin was afraid members of his inner circle would do this to him in the days after the Germans invaded, but remarkably they remained loyal. Stalin's contingency plans

There is some evidence that Stalin secretly offered to give Hitler the western republics of the USSR in exchange for a peace treaty, but either the message was not passed along by diplomats of neutral nations, or Hitler got the offer and decided to ignore it. Stalin was never willing to surrender the whole USSR and talked of withdrawing into Siberia if necessary to continue the war. Considering the vastness of the Soviet Union, Stalin's forces could have kept fighting for a long time. Stalin also had large amounts of slave labor in gulags throughout the eastern wilderness that he could have used to keep fighting the war for years.

The generational trauma of the Soviet people

Hundreds of thousands of children had lost their fathers or been made orphans in the 1930's thanks to Stalin's purges. Millions more lost one or both of their parents in WWII. Millions of Soviet children were caught up in Nazi-occupied areas and suffered directly as a result. Poor childhood nutrition and health care was the norm during this extended period for various reasons. Soviet orphanages were always horrible. Millions grew up in households where they were abused or neglected by parents who behaved badly thanks to the psychological traumas of Stalin's dictatorship and to the war. The result was a traumatized generation. [The cohort born between the start of WWI and the end of Stalin's rule was physically and psychologically damaged compared to generations before and after. Doubtless the "damaged" cohort passed on some behavioral, social and possibly biological problems to even younger generations. A social "echo effect" might still exist today.]

Zhukov's first big plan was to scrape together whatever troops he could and form a hasty, 300mile long defensive line southwest of Moscow to stall the Germans while the city itself was fortified. Zhukov and Stalin knew that the line would inevitably be destroyed, but it was the best they could do. (Zhukov's ability to coldly sacrifice tens of thousands of his own men at one time earned him a reputation for ruthlessness during the war. Stalin admired this quality.) The strategy worked, and by the time the Germans finally broke through in the fall, they were too weak and overextended to take over Moscow. The garrison at Moscow--which had been heavily reinforced with troops transferred from the Far East and included many T-34's and KV-1's--would stage a major counterattack in the winter of 1941 that would drive the Germans back from around the city and inflict their first defeat of Operation Barbarossa.

By the end of 1941, 39% of the USSR's population--74 million people--lived under German rule. Why the situation turned around for the Red Army after the early disasters

Stalin became more hands-off. He did no further purges of high-ranking generals for the rest of the war, and began promoting generals based on the battlefield competence rather than their political reliability. As a result, the top commanders in 1945 were almost totally different from 1941. He stopped interfering with the development and fielding of newer, sometimes unorthodox weapons and equipment. [Hitler, on the other hand, became more controlling as the war went on and Germany's fortunes soured. His meddling only made the situation worse.] The commissars stopped interfering as much with the decisions of military commanders. The USSR opened diplomatic relations with Britain and the U.S. and began receiving large amounts of military aid and other supplies.