Military History of The Soviet Union During World War II - Hitler Breaks The Pact

Hitler Breaks The Pact

During the early morning of June 22, 1941, Hitler broke the pact by implementing Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of Soviet held territories and the Soviet Union that began the war on the Eastern Front. Before the invasion, Stalin felt that Germany would not attack the Soviet Union until Germany had defeated Britain. At the same time, Soviet generals warned Stalin that Germany had concentrated forces on its borders. As well, two highly placed Soviet spies in Germany, "Starshina" and "Korsikanets", had sent dozens of reports to Moscow containing evidence of a German attack. Further warnings came from Richard Sorge, a Soviet spy in Tokyo working under cover as a German journalist.

Seven days before the invasion, a Soviet spy in Berlin warned Stalin that the movement of German divisions to the borders was for the purpose of waging war on the Soviet Union. Five days before the attack, Stalin received a report from a spy in the German Air Ministry that "all preparations by Germany for an armed attack on the Soviet Union have been completed, and the blow can be expected at any time." In the margin, Stalin wrote to the people's commissar for state security, "you can send your 'source' from the headquarters of German aviation to his mother. This is not a 'source' but a dezinformator." Although Stalin increased Soviet western border forces to 2.7 million men and ordered them to expect a possible German invasion, he did not order a full-scale mobilization of forces to prepare for an attack. Stalin felt that a mobilization might provoke Hitler to prematurely begin to wage war against the Soviet Union, which Stalin wanted to delay until 1942 in order to further strengthen Soviet forces.

A theory suggested by Viktor Suvorov claims that Stalin had made aggressive preparations beginning in the late 1930s and was preparing to invade Germany in summer 1941. Thus, he believes Hitler only managed to forestall Stalin and the German invasion was in essence a pre-emptive strike, precisely as Hitler claimed himself. This theory was supported by Igor Bunich, Joachim Hoffmann, Mikhail Meltyukhov (see Stalin's Missed Chance) and Edvard Radzinsky (see Stalin: The First In-Depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives). Other historians and especially Gabriel Gorodetsky and David Glantz reject this thesis. General Fedor von Boch's diary states that the Abwehr fully expected a Soviet attack against German forces in Poland no later than 1942.

In the initial hours after the German attack commenced, Stalin hesitated, wanting to ensure that the German attack was sanctioned by Hitler, rather than the unauthorized action of a rogue general. Accounts by Nikita Khrushchev and Anastas Mikoyan claim that, after the invasion, Stalin retreated to his dacha in despair for several days and did not participate in leadership decisions. However, some documentary evidence of orders given by Stalin contradicts these accounts, leading some historians to speculate that Khrushchev's account is inaccurate.

In the first three weeks of the invasion, attempting to defend against large German advances, the Soviet Union suffered 750,000 casualties, and lost 10,000 tanks and 4,000 aircraft. In July 1940, Stalin completely reorganized the Soviet military, placing himself directly in charge of several military organizations, which gave him complete control of his country's entire war effort; more control than any other leader in World War II.

A pattern soon emerged where Stalin embraced the Red Army's strategy of conducting multiple offensives, while the Germans soon overran each of the resulting small newly gained grounds, dealing the Soviets severe casualties. The most notable example of this was the Battle of Kiev, where over 600,000 Soviet troops were quickly killed, captured or had gone missing.

By the end of 1941, the Soviet military had suffered 4.3 million casualties and the Germans had captured 3.0 million Soviet prisoners, 2.0 million of which would die in German captivity by February 1942. German forces had advanced c. 1,700 kilometers, and maintained a linearly-measured front of 3,000 kilometers. The Red Army put up fierce resistance during the war's early stages. Even so, according to Glantz, they were plagued by an ineffective defense doctrine against well-trained and experienced German forces, despite possessing some modern Soviet equipment such as the KV-1 and T-34 tanks.