http://www.plp.org/misc/ww2cd852.html

Red Army Blew Away Hitler’s Wehrmacht

(Originally published in PL Magazine supplement to Challenge-Desafio, May 8, 1985)

"German freedom is possible only at the expense of Russia," declared Hitler, summing up in 10 words his whole foreign policy. Russia contained the land, labor and raw materials German big business coveted. To conquer them, the rest of Europe had to cooperate, one way or another.

So, despite the impression created by countless U.S. and British movies, World War II was basically fought for, and decided in, the Soviet Union. From 1941 to 1945, over 80% of the Nazis’ total fighting strength was deployed against the Soviets.

The West turned out to be a pushover. It took the Nazis about three months of fighting, using less than a third of the army, to conquer those ruling classes of West and Central Europe who wouldn’t collaborate with them. Poland’s generals ran away in a week. Denmark fell in a day. Norway’s government fled in three weeks. Holland’s last four days. On their way to France, Belgium held them up two weeks before the King caved in, but while in Belgium the Nazis defeated the French army and trapped the bulk of Britain’s combat forces. France lasted 11 more days. The Yugoslav barons couldn’t decide whether to join Hitler or fight him. Hitler decided for them; they surrendered in 11 days. The Greek reactionaries, aided by a new British army sent to uphold Britain’s interests in the Balkans, were overrun in three weeks.

End of war in the west and south. Europe was safely fascist. There was no further fighting from Europe’s ruling classes. From this point on, only the partisans resisted. But all this was an appetizer for the main course, necessary but secondary. The Nazis mouths watered for the Soviet Union.

On June 22, 1941, more than 3.5 million German troops, aided by Finns, Rumanians, and Hungarians, launched an attack on the Soviet Union along a thousand-mile front. The German "Blitzkrieg" (lightning war) tactic was to punch through defense lines with paratroopers, tanks and mechanized infantry, and loop around, cut off and capture huge pockets of encircled enemy troops. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers were taken prisoner in the first few months. But many continued to fight on, breaking out of encirclement, and forming partisan bands behind the fascist lines.

This was the Nazi strategy:

* In the north, advance on Leningrad from Finland, "wipe it from the face of the earth," and murder its population, destroy the northern Soviet armies, capture the northern nickel mines and northern ice-free ports.

* The main blow was two-pronged in the center: with one prong, drive up the Baltic States to Leningrad. With the other prong, roll through Byelorussia, then swing north, thus trapping the remainder of Soviet forces. Then capture Moscow, communications hub of the country and site of its armaments industry, in the decisive political and economic victory.

It was intended to be a short war. The Germans had no experience in long wars. Nazi arrogance did not admit the possibility of resistance. On October 8, 1941, the Nazis announced: "For all military purposes, Soviet Russia is done with."

UNPLEASANT SURPRISES

But the Germans had never met fighters like the Soviet troops. "The Russian troops… [act] in striking contrast to the Poles and the Western Allies," wrote the German commanding general. "Even when encircled, the Russians stood their ground and fought." Then there turned out to be more Soviet soldiers, and better equipped, than the Germans thought possible. "I realized soon after the attack was begun," said the leader of one of the German Army groups, "that everything written about Russia was nonsense."

Fresh Soviet divisions kept appearing from nowhere, stretching the German lines thin. Soviet fighter planers appeared from nowhere, too, depriving the Germans of air superiority. Soviet tanks, especially the "Stalin T-34", so heavily armored that German anti-tank shells bounced harmlessly off them, were a complete surprise.

The Nazis began implementing their infamous "Commissar Order," which decreed death to every Communist Party member and Red Army officer. Red Army soldiers taken prisoner were starved or worked to death. Captured partisans were hanged. Jews were exterminated. This oppression only served to stiffen the resolve of the working people of Russia to rise up at every opportunity and strike the fascists with fierce class hatred.

All along the front there were thousands of acts of heroic resistance. Heroim became ordinary, and history does not record the ordinary. It was common for Soviet troops to fight to the last man. Here is an example of their morale: a handful of Black Sea sailors defended their firing point in a small village until they were all dead. When the point was recaptured by the Red Army they found this note:

"Russia, my country, my native land! Dear Comrade Stalin! I, a Black Sea sailor and a son of Lenin’s Komsomol, fought as my heart told me to fight. I slew the beasts as long as my heart beat in my breast. Now I am dying, but I know we shall win. Sailors of the Black Sea Navy! Fight harder still, kill the mad fascist dogs! I have been faithful to my soldier’s oath. [signed] Kalyuzhnyi."

By November, the Germans had lost nearly 1 million men. But they followed their plan relentlessly, pouring in troops. They surrounded Leningrad, but were never able to capture it. It appeared to move of the world that the USSR was beaten. Its navies were isolated, two-thirds of its agriculture and industrial base were captured, much of its air force was destroyed on the ground, whole armies were captured or wiped out. By the beginning of November 1941, advance Nazi units could see the spires of the Kremlin as they pushed into Moscow’s suburbs.

MOSCOW

The Politburo and the Supreme Soviet Command led by Stalin had no thought of abandoning the capital. It was not their intention to hand Hitler such an important symbolic victory. The workers were of equal resolve. Moscow’s defense was based on the workers’ militia fighting in close support of the Red Army. The workers poured out of their factories armed with rifles, lead pipes, Molotov cocktails.

Advance Nazi motorcycle units were smashed. Then it looked as if a Nazi tank brigade would break through. This is how they were stopped by Col. Panfilov’s anti-tank brigade:

"After a massive air attack, German tommy-gunners tried to break into the Soviet trenches, but were driven back by rifle and machine gun fire.

Then a second attack was launched by a fresh unit supported by twenty tanks. Using anti-tank rifles, hand grenades and gasoline-filled bottles, the Panfilov men crippled fourteen of the tanks and the other six were driven back.

Shortly afterwards, the wounded survivors were again attacked by thirty more tanks. It was then that Commissar Klochkov turned to the soldiers, saying, "Russia is big, but there is nowhere to retreat because Moscow is behind us." One by one the Soviet soldiers were being wounded and killed in a merciless fight that lasted four hours. The severely wounded commissar threw himself under an enemy tank with a bunch of hand grenades and blew it up. The Germans, having lost eighteen tanks and dozens of men, failed to break through…

The leadership in Moscow made plans to counterattack with reserves skilfully gathered, armed and hidden from the Nazis. In the face of the Nazi attack, Stalin remained in Moscow, though the government and foreign diplomats were evacuated. On the anniversary of the revolution, November 7, with the enemy firing from the suburbs, Stalin addressed a mass rally in downtown Red Square. This demonstration of confidence was vital in strengthening the morale of the entire Soviet people.

On December 5, the Soviets counterattacked with 100 divisions. The fascists were thrown back 40 miles from the gates of Moscow in hard-fought winter warfare. This was the first major defeat for the Nazis in World War II. The Nazi advance was stalled.

The Russians used the first period of the war to evacuate first the Jews, and the key factories, and then anyone else they could, eastward, to the Ural Mountains, Siberia and Central Asia. What they couldn’t evacuate, the Soviet people burned and destroyed –the famous "scorched earth" policy – to deny anything useful to the Nazis.

In Asia, under harsh conditions, communist-led workers, men women, old people and youth, set up their relocated factories literally in the fields, converted them to war production, and labored 12 to 1 hours a day, many of them sleeping by their machines.

War is based on production and political morale. The freedom-fighting Soviets out produced the slave labor of Nazi-occupied Europe. Tanks, rifles, fighter planes, uniforms and ammunition poured off the assembly lines to be transported thousands of miles to the fronts and the strategic reserves. The Soviet people held on through that first winter and spring. As summer 1942 approached, the Nazis again seized the initiative. Now they tried an indirect approach.

STALINGRAD

They aimed an offensive south at Stalingrad, center of the critical remaining war production, and the southern oils fields. Without oil and productive capacity, the Soviets would have to surrender. In August, the Nazi 6^th Army launched massive air, artillery and tank attacks. They drove the Red Army from the open fields into Stalingrad itself. Then the Germans pushed into the city.

The Soviet 62^nd Army fought to the death for literally every building in the city. Their orders from Supreme Headquarters were: "Not one step back." Their mission was to pin down the enemy to buy time for a counterattack to be launched. Every day brought a new crisis. The Nazis threw division after division at the beleaguered defenders until the Nazis had captured 80% of the city. Finally the Soviets controlled only a small strip of land. They based their defense on three large factories, a housing project, a hill and a boat landing where supplies and reinforcements landed and wounded were evacuated. At their backs was the Volga River. On the far bank was their artillery support.

The Germans pushed forward. The 62^nd Army was cut in two. Chuikov, the Soviet commander of the city, then ordered his fighters into the factory strong points themselves. Nazis and communists fought each other from behind lathes and mazes of machinery. Chuikov organized small groups of 6 to 8 men each, trained in hand-to-0hand combat. The defense was based on them. Unbelievably, unimaginably, the heroic workers continued production at the tank factory. They drove each newly built tank directly from the assembly line into battle.

Finally, in January 1943, preparations for the counterattack were complete. To the total surprise of the German command, Stalin and General Zhukov launched a counterattack with over a million fresh, well-armed rese4ves striking from the north, west and south in huge pincers. Outflanking and outfighting the Nazis, they linked up, encircling the Nazis, who had encircled the 62^nd Army. The Nazis were trapped, but refused to surrender on Hitler’s direct orders. In the next few weeks, 240,000m Nazis were killed. The remaining 91,000 gave up. The Battle for Stalingrad cost the Nazis 1,500,000 men and used up 7 months of Germany’s total war production. The Soviet victory was the strategic turning point of the entire war.

KURSK

The summer of 1943 saw one last Nazi offensive, Operation Citadel, marked by the Battle of Kursk, the greatest tank battle in history. The Nazis hoped to surround a Soviet bulge in their lines and encircle the Soviets as they had been encircled at Stalingrad. They marshaled over 900,000 men in 50 divisions, with 10,000 artillery pieces, 2,000 planes and over 2,700 tanks.

But the Red Army countered with a force of 1.3 million soldiers, 20,000 artillery pieces, 3,130 planes and 3,600 tanks. They achieved superiority in arms and had high morale inspired by class hatred and optimism for a communist future.

The monumental battle began as the Nazis launched a massive assault and broke through several defense lines. But the Red Army had prepared a defense in depth that met the fascists with withering fire from battlefield strong points. In addition, over 200,000 partisans were fighting behind Nazi lines, helping to cripple German troop movements and communications.

The high point of the battle came when the main Soviet tank army hit the Nazi tank advance head-on. Thousands of tanks clashed in the open fields, while overhead dogfights raged. By the end of the afternoon, the Nazi Panzers [tank divisions] were burning piles of junk, or in full retreat. From this point on, the Nazis were unable to mount even tactical offensives anywhere on the Soviet front. The summer of 1944 saw one Red Army victory after another. The Nazi troops were rolled up all along the front and were driven out of the Soviet Union. They were chased through Eastern Europe all the way to Berlin.

The prestige of the Red Army, communism and Stalin soared all over the world. The Red Army and the Soviet people had borne the brunt of the war. The partisan movements in Europe and Asia were led by communists. European-wide revolution loomed as the logical results of the Second World War.

CONCLUSION

The defeat of fascism in World War II by the Soviet people should inspire us with confidence in the boundless courage, wisdom and self-sacrifice of the working class, whose best is brought out by communist leadership. Let us take a long, hard look at ourselves and each other, correct our weaknesses in a comradely way and fight harder against the class enemy. We have many battles to fight in an uphill struggle if humanity is to be liberated from racism, imperialist war and capitalist oppression. We have no choice but to fight these battles if we want to see an egalitarian society and if we are to be worthy of the heritage of our Soviet comrades of the Second World War.

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