v1.0.1 / chapter 2 of 15 / 01 mar 08 / greg goebel / public domain
* The rise of the Soviet state under Stalin and the threat that state posed to the nations of Europe had helped create Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime in Europe. Although Stalin and Hitler were natural enemies, their mutual fear and loathing led to an odd result: the two dictators decided to become allies. It was strictly an arrangement of convenience, of course. The two knew they would betray each other sooner or later, and as it turned out it was Hitler who bettered Stalin at that game.
* In 1936, the Spanish Civil War broke out, with General Franco and his Nationalist forces moving against the leftist Republican regime. The conflict gave Fascism and Communism a worldwide stage on which to trade blows. Hitler found the war convenient, since it distracted world attention from German rearmament; Stalin similarly found the war convenient, since it distracted world attention from his purges. Hitler sent the 8,000 man air-land Condor Legion to augment Mussolini's large-scale aid to Franco. Stalin sent 3,000 Soviet "volunteers", along with fighters and pilots, tanks and crews, to support the Spanish Republicans. The war was an excellent testing ground for new weapons and tactics for both sides.
Franco's Nationalists would crush the Republicans completely in the spring of 1939. Franco was aided by the fact that the Republicans spent an excessive amount of effort fighting among themselves, conducting lunatic purges that dissipated energy and spread demoralization. Stalin sent agents of the NKVD, the new name for the OGPU, along with the fighters and tanks, and the NKVD men hunted down Trotskyites and anarchists ruthlessly. Stalin proved more interested in crushing his internal enemies than in winning the war.
However, the war proved a significant propaganda victory for Stalin. The Soviets seemed to Westerners to be making a valiant stand against Hitler and Fascism, while Stalin kept his own brutalities hidden. Many Westerners became Communists, and some, like Kim Philby in Britain, were recruited by the NKVD to become spies. When the war was over, the Soviet military advisors and NKVD men returned to the USSR. They had been contaminated by contact with the West, however, and had been out of sight and so out of control. To Stalin, they were suspect, and many of the senior officers among their ranks were murdered.
Mikhail Kotsov had been a war correspondent in Spain, and had become a Soviet star for his reports from the battle lines. In May 1937, Kotsov was called back to Moscow, where he was ordered to report to Stalin. He met Stalin the company of Molotov, Voroshilov, and a few other of Stalin's cronies. Stalin asked him questions about the war, and Kotsov answered as best he could. Then Stalin began to clown around in a strange way. He stood up, put his hand on his heart, and asked: "How do they address you in Spanish? 'Miguel' or something?"
"Miguel", Kotsov answered, correcting Stalin's slight mispronunciation.
"Don Miguel, we honorable Spaniards thank you for your excellent report."
"I serve the Soviet Union, Comrade Stalin."
Kotsov was dismissed and turned to leave, but as he got to the door Stalin called after him: "And do you own a revolver, Comrade Kotsov?"
Kotsov was baffled, but replied: "Yes, I do, Comrade Stalin."
"And you are not planning to shoot yourself with it?"
"No, Comrade Stalin. I never even thought of it!"
"Well, that's excellent, Don Miguel! All the best, then, Comrade Kotsov."
Kotsov told this story to his brother, the famous political cartoonist Boris Yefimov. In hindsight, the performance was similar to the way a cat toys with a mouse before devouring it, but neither Kotsov or Yefimov took the matter seriously. Mikhail Kotsov was then arrested and sentenced to ten years in prison. Yefimov went to the judge to inquire about his brother's health, and the judge reassured him that he was fine. In fact, Kotsov had already been executed.
* Stalin kept the Soviet propaganda machine in full gear to denounce Hitler and the Nazi regime, though events would soon prove there was less to it than met the ear. At the League of Nations, Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov appealed to western nations to help confront Germany, and in London, Soviet ambassador Myske was sounding out the British and French. The diplomatic measures were not resoundingly successful. Stalin did not trust the West and he was not trusted in return, particularly since the "ComIntern" (the Communist International movement) was busily engaged in subversive "agitprop (agitation-propaganda)" against Western governments, with particular effect in France.
In March 1938, Hitler annexed Austria unopposed. Once again, Britain and France failed to respond to a gross provocation. Now Hitler turned his attention to Czechoslovakia, angrily denouncing the "persecution" of ethnic Germans in the Czech Sudetenland and mouthing threats at Prague. By the end of the year, the British and French, through the mediation of Mussolini, pressured Czechoslovakia into ceding the Sudetenland to Germany. Since the Sudetenland contained the only practical defenses against a German invasion, Czechoslovakia was now defenseless.
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, returning from the signing of the Munich Pact that ceded the Sudetenland to Germany, announced in a phrase that has become a historical exercise in irony: "Peace for our time." Winston Churchill said: "The governments of France and Britain had to choose between shame and war. They have chosen shame." In early 1939, Hitler occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia and declared that the country no longer existed.
Given how devious Stalin was, it is unclear that he was ever really sincere about courting the West. His diplomatic overtures may have been nothing more than a way of raising the stakes in a potential deal with Hitler. If so, now it was time to make such a deal. Despite the noisy and acid accusations flying back and forth between the two countries, since neither dictator was overly burdened by a sense of principle there was no real obstacle to coming to a convenient agreement.
The prize in the deal was Poland. Hitler wanted to expand East, and Poland was clearly the first target. As long as Hitler was devouring Poland, Stalin saw no reason why he should not get a piece of the pie as well, since it was valuable property in itself and would serve to provide further buffer space between Moscow and Berlin. It may have been precisely what Stalin had been planning all along.
* In March 1939, the 18th Party Congress met in Moscow. Applause for Stalin was loud, continuous, and strained, since everyone knew any sign of a lack of enthusiasm might be fatal. Indeed, it is said that there were NKVD agents among the crowd looking for anyone who seemed insufficiently motivated. 60% of the delegates from the previous Party Congress were dead by this time. That was the visible tip of the iceberg. In the 1937:1938 timeframe, there had been from 7 to 8 million arrests and at least a million executions. At a site near Minsk, one mass grave held 30,000 bodies.
On the fifth day of the Congress, the news reached the body that Hitler had occupied Czechoslovakia. War was clearly imminent. Although Stalin had little faith in France and Britain, he still allowed Maxim Litvinov to make one last appeal for collective security against Germany. The appeal went nowhere; the French and British were clearly not going to do anything. On May Day, the USSR conducted its annual military parades. Observers had long realized that the lineup of figures on the podium with Stalin was a significant hint for who was important and who was not in the leadership circles. German diplomats realized that Maxim Litvinov, the advocate of collective security with France and Britain, was not there.
The next day, Hitler was told that Litvinov has been replaced by Vyacheslav Molotov as foreign minister. To the Fuehrer, the news was like "a volley from a gun". In July, Molotov told the German ambassador to the USSR that the Soviet Union sought better relations with Germany. Diplomatic contacts and negotiations intensified, even as the propaganda machines of both nations continued to pour out mutual abuse. On 11 August, an Anglo-French military mission arrived in Moscow to discuss military cooperation. The effort was half-hearted, and they were wasting their time anyway.
Hitler hesitated to invade Poland as long as there was a strong possibility that the Soviet Union might intervene against him. The diplomatic feelers seemed to be moving too slowly, so on 20 August Hitler personally wired Moscow, suggesting that the Nazi foreign minister, Ribbentrop, go there in two days. On 23 August, Ribbentrop flew to Moscow. His trip did not exactly go smoothly; the haste in which the meeting had been arranged led to a bureaucratic mixup , and his airliner had been fired on by Soviet border defenses and forced to land. The snarl was cleaned up and matters moved on.
The Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact was drawn up quickly and signed. Stalin drank a toast to Hitler, though when Ribbentrop drafted a bright and enthusiastic press release, Stalin suggested that be toned down a bit in light of the fact that the two nations had been "pouring filth over each other" for years. The pact had secret clauses, one of which acknowledged the right of USSR to occupy the Baltic States, with the Soviet Union paying Germany a large sum in compensation for Hitler's claims in Lithuania. Another secret clause detailed the partition of Poland. Soviet Anti-Fascist propaganda was ordered stopped immediately. In fact, the term "Fascist" was banned from public media, and would not resurface again officially for the better part of two years.
On seeing a news report of the pact, cadets at a Soviet military staff college thought it was some sort of prank. Those who believed it were shocked. Some Communists in other nations finally saw Stalin for what he was, a cynical tyrant, though many Reds went into denial and simply toed the party line, even when it meant they had to turn around to do it. Intelligent observers knew the pact meant war.
* The British, though unprepared, had swallowed enough of Hitler's assurances. Within two days, Chamberlain signed a treaty binding Britain to go to war if Poland were invaded.
On 31 August 1939, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels claimed that Poland had attacked German towns near the Polish border. A raid was staged with SS men in Polish uniforms, with a concentration-camp prisoner killed as a prop. The Germans invaded Poland the next day. On 3 September, the British kept their commitment to the Poles and declared war on Germany. The French joined the British within hours.
The Wehrmacht swept through Poland in the first "Blitzkrieg (Lightning War)". The Polish Army fought back as well as it could, but the Poles were overwhelmed. Luftwaffe bombers pounded Warsaw. Soon Stalin made his move, invading Poland from the East on 17 September 1939, two weeks after the beginning of the German invasion. German and Soviet generals conferred to coordinate their actions, and Luftwaffe aircraft were allowed to use Soviet air bases near Minsk in their operations against the Poles.
Within six weeks, Poland had ceased to exist. German and Soviet troops performed a collaborative military parade for their military leaders near the fortress of Brest. The NKVD moved in behind Soviet soldiers, and arrests, deportations, and executions began. Roughly 15,000 Polish officers were trucked off to Katyn Forest near Smolensk and were not seen alive again. Polish farmers were forced into collectives and young Polish men were conscripted into the Red Army. They would not prove enthusiastic soldiers.
* Stalin was entirely pleased to see the Western powers at each other's throats. He believed they would weaken themselves fighting each other, and in the meantime they would not be in a position to interfere with Soviet aggressions. Things seemed to be going his way at the other end of the Soviet Union as well. The Japanese across the border from Siberia in Manchukuo had been a potential threat that weighed on Stalin's mind, but for the time being that problem had been triumphantly resolved.
There had been a short border clash between Japanese and Soviet troops in the summer of 1938. The fighting flared up again in May 1939, escalating by the end of June to a full-blown border war involving hundreds of thousands of troops. The Red Army had been getting the worst of it, until General Georgy Zhukov was sent to take charge. Zhukov had joined the Tsar's army during World War I, having gone over to the Red Army in 1918 to then rise steadily up the ranks. Zhukov put his troops on the defense and built up forces and supplies. This was time-consuming since he was in a remote and unimproved region with long and thin supply lines, but by mid-August he was ready to attack. He had put much effort into deception operations to mask his preparations and the Japanese Sixth Army was taken by surprise.
Zhukov demanded tight coordination between infantry, armor, and artillery, and showed little concern for casualties. The Japanese were encircled, though they managed to escape the trap with considerable losses. By the first week of September the fighting was over, the battle of Khalkin-Gol having proven a Soviet success. It would prove a template for Zhukov's later operations, both in its overall strategy and in its general indifference to the lives of Soviet soldiers.
Although the border conflict attracted little worldwide attention since it had been upstaged by events in Europe, the action was strategically significant. The Japanese, despite a widespread belief in their own military invincibility, were not inclined to get into a fight with the Soviets again any time soon, allowing Stalin to focus on Hitler for the time being. It was also a propaganda victory that avenged Russia's humiliation in the Russo-Japanese war.
* Encouraged by this success, Stalin overreached himself. He had attempted to negotiate with the Finns to obtain strategically important Finnish territory that would help defend Leningrad. The Finns were open to the idea of adjusting their borders somewhat, trading Soviet territory for Finnish territory, but Stalin also wanted to establish a naval base at Hango, well to the west; the Finns didn't like that idea. After two months of negotiations that went nowhere, on 30 November 1939 Stalin invaded Finland with 29 divisions. The Finns faced the invasion with only nine divisions.
Red Air Force bombers kicked off the attack with raids on Helsinki and other cities. The Soviet divisions were organized into five armies and drove into the country all along the frontier. Stalin was confident that Finland would be conquered in two weeks or so, with Red Army troops given instructions on how they should conduct themselves when they reached the Swedish border. However, the Finns were prepared for the attack. They had built stout defensive lines, and in the northern parts of the country, roads and other facilities along the border had been left undeveloped to channel attacks into kill traps. Soviet intelligence was so poor that the invaders simply blundered into them, to be cut down in rows.
Stalin had expected the Finns to sue for peace immediately. Instead, they loudly protested the bombings of their cities in the world press, with Soviet propaganda foolishly claiming that all the bombers had dropped were breadbaskets. The Finns provided pictures of bomb damage -- including hits on the Soviet embassy -- and began to refer to Soviet bombs as "Molotov breadbaskets". Finnish leader Augustus von Mannerheim was strong-willed and competent, directing a stubborn defense; two Soviet armies driving up the Karelian Isthmus were stopped cold at the system of fortifications known as the "Mannerheim Line". Three other Soviet armies driving into Finland in the center of the borderline were hit with flanking counterattacks and badly chewed up. One of these three armies, the Soviet 9th Army, was cut off and completely destroyed.
Soviet troops advancing through the frontier forests found them wintry deathtraps, one soldier saying: "There was no enemy visible anywhere. It was as if the forest was doing the shooting all by itself." The Finns would disappear into woods if the Soviets tried to chase after them in force. If the force was too small, it was likely to be ambushed and completely wiped out. One Ukrainian private wrote: "They are swatting us like flies."
In the north, the Soviets did achieve success by seizing the Arctic port of Petsamo, which was in an important nickel-producing area. However, the great Soviet giant had been humiliated. The army purges had did much to wreck the Red Army, and now the weakness of the Soviet giant was in full view for all the world to see.
The Winter War lasted for four months, through one of the harshest winters in memory in a region where winters were normally harsh. The Red Army finally sat down, got organized, and set up a proper offensive using eleven more divisions and large quantities of tanks and aircraft. The Finns were forced to capitulate and cede important territories to the USSR.
The victory was a bitter one for Stalin. Over a million of his soldiers had been committed to battle and at least 200,000 of them had been killed. One Soviet general was said to have remarked: "We have won enough ground to bury our dead." Stalin was indifferent to the suffering of his people, but he could not conceal that the Red Army was weak and inept. He began an immediate program to repair the damage he had done to the military. There was a major reorganization in early May 1940, with some competent officers placed in top positions. Zhukov, who had been brought west late in the Winter War, became chief of staff of the Red Army.
However, Stalin still wanted the military under his thumb. Inept toadies were retained in high positions, and signs of independence by others were not tolerated. When a senior Red Air Force general named Rychagov was criticised in a meeting with Stalin and others for excessive numbers of crashes, he replied angrily that he was being given "flying coffins" and not airplanes. Stalin replied coldly: "You should not have said that." Rychagov was promptly arrested and later shot.
Hitler did not fail to take the Winter War into account, seeing in it more evidence of Stalin's untrustworthiness, as well as evidence that the Red Army was a paper tiger. The friendship of two thieves still continued in public. In December, Stalin turned 60 years old, and Hitler sent him cordial greetings; Stalin proclaimed in return their "long-lasting" friendship. The Soviets sold the Germans grain, oil, and other raw materials, in accordance with trade agreements that followed on the coattails of the non-aggression pact, and Stalin even arrested German Communists who had fled to Moscow. They were handed over to Hitler's Gestapo, to be tortured and executed. Stalin went so far as to allow the Germans to set up a U-boat base near Murmansk, though it never became operational since the British sank the first two submarines sent there, and events quickly rendered it redundant anyway.
* In the West, a "Phoney War" prevailed, with France and Britain in a largely defensive posture. There was little action, and little pressure was put on the Germans. The quiet did not last.
On 8 April 1940, Hitler invaded Denmark and Norway. Denmark was swiftly occupied. An Anglo-French expeditionary force attempted to defend Norway and inflicted substantial naval losses on the Germans, but Norway fell within a few weeks. Its fjords provided excellent naval bases for the German Navy's ships and submarines. In the wake of the Norway fiasco, Neville Chamberlain resigned and Winston Churchill became Prime Minister.
On 10 May 1940, the same day Churchill took office, Hitler invaded the Low Countries and France. Three German Army groups participated in the offensive, with the main weight of German armor provided to Army Group A, operating through southern Belgium and Luxembourg.
The Germans were faced by the Belgian and Dutch armies, three French army groups, and a highly mobile British Expeditionary Force (BEF). German Army Group B swept into Holland and northern Belgium, quickly rolling back resistance, and drawing a French army group and the BEF north along the coast to meet them. It was an enormous trap. German Army Group A swept through the center of the French lines and swung northwest towards the coast. By 27 May, Anglo-French forces along the coast were encircled. By 5 June, the pocket was all but eliminated. However, most of the BEF and many French troops were evacuated across the English Channel from Dunkirk. 330,000 men were evacuated, though they lost most of their equipment.
Churchill tried to rally resistance against the German offensive through France, but Hitler's Wehrmacht was unstoppable. The German divisions turned south. Army Group B reached the Seine below Paris on 9 June. Army Group A broke through French lines to the northeast of Paris on 12 June and charged into the interior of the country, while Army Group C, facing the French Maginot Line, jumped in and help complete a massive encirclement of French forces. Surviving French forces were in wild flight, and on 17 June the French government capitulated. On 22 June, Hitler accepted their formal surrender. Hitler returned from accepting the French surrender to Berlin, where he was given a hero's welcome.
Stalin closed down Soviet embassies as the nations of the West fell to the German juggernaut, in recognition that these nations no longer had an independent existence. Stalin made casual inquiries about the construction of an artistic work to commemorate the fall of France and Britain. He seemed oblivious to the fact that once Hitler had secured his empire in the West, he would be free to turn to the East without interference. In the meantime, in June 1940, while Hitler was preoccupied in the West, Stalin swallowed up the Baltic states, annexing Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, including the small German territorial concession in Lithuania. The NKVD immediately moved in and instituted the terror in which NKVD agents had become so practiced.
At the end of June, Stalin also demanded that Rumania cede important border regions to the USSR, and these regions were quickly occupied by the Red Army. Rumania was a German ally and the Reich's main source of oil. The Rumanian territories occupied by the Soviets gave Stalin a position from which he could threaten Rumanian oilfields. Hitler moved more forces into Poland to counter Soviet moves, and signed treaties with Finland, Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria to allow the movement of German forces through their territories. Stalin, alarmed, offered concessions to Berlin.
Stalin also took care of smaller items. He had a score to settle with Leon Trotsky, his old rival, who had sought asylum in Mexico and was publishing annoying blasts against Stalin in the leftist press, with titles like "Stalin, Hitler's Quartermaster" and "The Heavenly Twins, Hitler & Stalin". Trotsky knew that Stalin had a long reach, but though Trotsky was at heart just as ruthless as Stalin, he was courageous and did not try to hide. A Red agent named Ramon Mercador infiltrated Trotsky's household and, on 20 August 1940, smashed in his skull with a mountain-climbing pick. Many sources give the weapon as an "ice pick" which is sort of true but misleading; the mountain-climbing pick was a favorite weapon of NKVD agents, since it was easy to carry and conceal, and was very lethal.
Koba's orders were implemented by Lavrenti Beria, who had become head of the NKVD in 1938 following the arrest and execution of his predecessor. He had become one of the most indispensable of Stalin's cronies; pictures show a balding man, appearing sinister behind round glasses and usually wearing a slight, contemptuous smile. It was said that his hobby was rape: his men would pick up an attractive girl and take her to his quarters, where he would give her a glass of drugged wine that would render her agreeable. Afterwards, she would be thrown back out on the streets. Who could they complain to? The law? Beria was the law, or what passed for it.
* Winston Churchill was determined to carry on the fight with the Nazis, and began a diplomatic effort to persuade Stalin that it was in the Soviet Union's best interests to fight Germany. Stalin was unmoved and rejected the overtures. He had no trust in Adolf Hitler, but everything seemed to be working well for the Red cause. He was perfectly happy to see the Western nations wear themselves out, while he took advantage of the situation to seize more territories for himself.
As for Germany, Stalin believed he could deal with that problem later. Stalin did not believe that Hitler would attack the USSR while the British were still actively fighting the Reich, and judged that there was no way that Hitler would be able to turn on the Soviet Union before the spring of 1942. Besides, Hitler usually conducted a propaganda offensive against a victim before taking action, which would give Stalin warning that an attack was coming.
In reality, Hitler had decided to deal with the USSR on his return from accepting the surrender of the French. Although he had spoken against conducting a war on two fronts in MEIN KAMPF, the French had been taken completely off the playing board, and he believed that Britain had been more or less militarily neutralized and might even come to terms with the Reich soon enough. He carried on an air campaign against Britain in hopes of encouraging British citizens to dump the pigheaded Churchill. Hitler failed to understand that instead of turning the British people against Churchill, the bombing raids had exactly the opposite effect, with the citizenry taking Churchill as a role model and asserting a resilient national stubbornness.
An attack on the Soviet Union was still very risky, but Hitler saw clearly that the risk of delay was worse than the risk of moving too quickly. The Soviet Union was rearming and the Red Army was being reorganized. The Soviet Union represented a growing threat to Hitler's Reich, and the Reich could not expand without taking control of Soviet resources. Besides, if the USSR was knocked out of the game completely, Britain would have lost a major potential ally in the war against Hitler, and might decide to finally give up the fight.
Hitler had logical reasons to invade the USSR as soon as possible and no particular inclination to show his hand with belligerent propaganda. After a few days of consultation with key advisors, on 31 July 1940 he announced to his generals his intent to attack the Soviet Union within a year. Hitler's generals later claimed they were unhappy with the idea, but this appears to have been self-serving hindsight. The dismal performance of the Red Army against Finland seemed to prove that the USSR was no match for Germany. Hitler told his generals: "You only have to kick in the door, and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down."
Hitler signed "Order 18", formally stepping up preparations for the invasion of the USSR. He continued to go through the motions of building up a fleet of landing craft to invade Britain, though given British naval superiority there was no prospect of actually doing so. The activity would in principle intimidate the British and also help lull Stalin into complacency. Hitler was already talking to the Japanese to seek assistance in an attack on the Soviet Union. The Japanese, however, had nothing to gain from a fight with the USSR, and would sign a non-aggression treaty with Stalin in April 1941.
* In the meantime, the false front of the thieves' friendship was beginning to wear thin. In November 1940, Molotov went to Berlin at Hitler's request. Hitler proposed that the USSR join the Axis, claiming that Britain was all but beaten and that the Soviet Union should work with the Germans to help carve up the British empire. Molotov, notoriously single-minded and impassive, simply replied with a list of complaints about hostile German actions in Finland and Rumania. The two sides were not communicating, which was just as well for the Soviets since Hitler was clearly engaging in a deception operation. On the last night of the conference, 12 November 1940, British bombers raided Berlin. Molotov could not restrain himself from asking Ribbentrop: "If England is beaten, why are we sitting in this shelter?"
Molotov went back to Moscow empty-handed. Stalin remained complacent, though he must have become more nervous as events unfolded. The Soviet Union had no allies and its military remained in a disorganized and demoralized state. In truth, Stalin had committed himself so thoroughly to the friendship of convenience with Hitler that he could not admit to himself that it might backfire drastically. He was the Great Leader. He was infallible. No one dared defy him. He could not be wrong.
* Hitler knew that a long campaign against the USSR would be dangerous. He told his generals that the Red Army had to be decisively defeated in no more than ten weeks, and that the whole campaign could not last more than 17 weeks. Hitler was concerned about having to fight during the notoriously difficult Russian winters, and he also knew that the Reich didn't have the logistical capability to support a long war.
The German attack plan, codenamed Operation OTTO, was constrained by Russian terrain, particularly the huge region of swamps, bogs, and forests known as the Pripet Marshes that stood in the center of the path of an advance into the Soviet Union. The Pripet Marshes were 480 kilometers (300 miles) wide and 240 kilometers (150 miles) deep. An attack would have to flow around the north of the marshes toward Minsk and around the south of the marshes toward Kiev.
The planners of the operation assumed that the Soviets would establish major forces north and south of the marshes, with a reserve in the rear near Moscow. Three army groups were to mass on the border of the USSR, with Army Group North assigned to drive from East Prussia north towards Leningrad, which had extensive armaments industry; Army Group Center assigned to drive from East Prussia and Poland through Minsk and Smolensk and on towards Moscow; and Army Group South assigned to drive from southern Poland and Rumania towards Kiev, the heart of the Ukraine.
Once Leningrad and Kiev on the flanks were secure, Army Groups North and South would converge on Moscow to help Army Group Center crush the Red Army for good. The generals spent four months working on the plan for OTTO, which evolved to a modified plan named FRITZ, and tested their plans with large-scale military exercises, but Hitler was not happy with their concepts. Hitler thought seizing Moscow was irrelevant. The real objective was to destroy the Red Army. Hitler did not want to end up like Napoleon, isolated in Moscow while the Russians cut his supply lines. In December 1940, he cancelled FRITZ and put a new plan in its place. The new plan was codenamed Operation BARBAROSSA, meaning "Red Beard", for the German 12th-century emperor Frederick I, who had died on a crusade. According to legend, Barbarossa would rise again when the German people needed him the most.
Hitler insisted that the Red Army must be destroyed in the western regions of the Soviet Union, in front of a line defined by the Dvina and Dnieper rivers. Army Group North would drive towards Leningrad as before, but its primary objective would be to drive Soviet forces into the Baltic States, where they would be encircled and destroyed.
Army Group Center would drive beyond Minsk and towards Smolensk in a two-pronged attack designed to encircle Soviet forces in the region, and then destroy them. Army Group Center would then move from Smolensk to help Army Group North in the drive on Leningrad. Capture of Leningrad would give the Germans a valuable port to help support further offensive operations. Although a number of senior officers disagreed, Hitler did not believe that Moscow was all that important. Its capture could wait. Army Group South would move on Kiev as in OTTO and then curve south along the Dnieper to isolate Soviet forces in the region and then wipe them out. With Soviet forces in the Ukraine eliminated, Army Group South would then move on to the industrial regions of the Donetz Basin and the oilfields of the Caucasus.
Once these operations were complete and most of the Red Army was destroyed, then all three army groups would converge on Moscow to finish the offensive. The Germans would consolidate their new territory, establishing a defensive border line anchored at Archangel in the north running south along the river Volga. There was no thought of advancing farther; an advance to the Pacific through what was mostly wilderness would have been a logistical monstrosity, and Hitler knew he didn't have the resources to try, or for that matter much reason to care. With the Red Army destroyed and the most valuable assets of what was once the USSR in German hands, Hitler's new eastern empire would be secure. The industrial regions of the Volga Basin and the Urals would be smashed by the Luftwaffe, ensuring that what remained of the Soviet Union would not be able to regain strength. No doubt the Bolsheviks would come to terms, however humiliating they found them.
The German Army's panzer divisions were to spearhead BARBAROSSA. However, the senior commanders of these forces did not like the plan. General Heinz Guderian, who had developed armored blitzkrieg tactics and demonstrated their effectiveness in the conquest of France, pleaded with Hitler for a bolder stroke that would take advantage of the army's mobile formations. Guderian wanted the armored divisions to plunge as deeply as possible into the USSR, even if they had to be supplied by parachute drops. The deep thrusts would complete disrupt Soviet defense plans and the infantry divisions following the armored spearhead could mop up the disorganized Red Army.
Hitler rejected Guderian's proposal. The armored divisions would operate as components of the rest of the offensive. In fact, they would mostly be under the senior command of infantry generals who had more conservative ideas about tank warfare. Guderian's disgust was greatly aggravated by the fact that he had grave doubts that an attack on the USSR was wise, and few doubts that it would be very difficult.
The conquered territories would be completely subservient to the Reich. Some ethnic groups, such as the Balts, were regarded as sufficiently Aryan would be "Germanized" and made obedient subjects. Slavs would be enslaved, or simply allowed to starve to death to free their lands for settlement by Aryans. Jews and other undesirables would of course be eliminated.
Late in the planning Hitler issued two orders, one that stated that all Soviet political commissars captured were to be promptly executed, and another that German soldiers who mistreated or killed Soviet civilians were not to be disciplined. Both orders were brutal, and the order giving German soldiers a license to do whatever they liked to the populace was contrary to every concept of conduct and discipline the German officer corps had ever believed in. Some officers refused to accept the order. One wrote in his diary after seeing it: "This kind of thing turns the German into a type of being which had existed only enemy propaganda." He was a minority. Some German Army officers were downright enthusiastic about such harsh measures.
* The Commander of the German Army (Oberkommando des Heeres / OKH) in 1938 was Werner von Brauchitsch, a competent but not brilliant general, chosen more for his loyalty to Hitler than for his abilities. Brauchitsch had operational control of the Army during the blitzkriegs against Poland and the West, but he had little say in the overall planning of the war. When he opposed Hitler on logistical planning for the attack in the west, the Fuehrer browbeat him at length and would not allow him to resign.
Many senior German officers didn't need to be told to toe the line. The OKH chief of staff, Colonel General Franz Halder, was optimistic as well. He agreed that the war would only last ten weeks at most, and there was no strong effort to arrange the production of winter clothing for a longer campaign. They were suffering from "victory fever", a belief in their own infallibility as proven by the easy campaigns in the West. Guderian wrote in his memoirs that senior Wehrmacht officers had eliminated the word "impossible" from their vocabulary.
