Stalin's General (16 page)

IN THE SUMMER OF 1941 THE RED ARMY ENDURED A SERIES OF DEFEATS
greater than that experienced by any other army in history. Within weeks of the launch of the German invasion of Russia on June 22, 1941, the Red Army had suffered millions of casualties. Within months it had been forced to retreat to the gates of Leningrad and Moscow. By autumn 1941 Hitler's plan to conquer Russia during the course of a single Blitzkrieg campaign was poised to succeed and the existence of the Soviet Union as an independent state hung in the balance.

It is central to Zhukov's biography that when the disaster of June 22 befell the Red Army and the Soviet people he was chief of the General Staff and bore primary responsibility for planning and preparing for the expected war with Germany. At the end of July 1941 Stalin removed him from the post of CGS and put him in charge of a Reserve Front tasked to mount a counteroffensive against the Germans in the Smolensk area. In his memoirs Zhukov claimed he was removed as CGS not because of his failings in that role but because he enraged Stalin with a proposal to withdraw Soviet troops from Kiev
¹
—a claim designed to distance himself from the loss of half a million troops when the Germans encircled the Ukrainian capital in September 1941. Actually, his posting to the Reserve Front was not a punishment by Stalin or even a demotion. It was an important mission, one that Zhukov relished and carried out with great success. Indeed, his Yel'nya offensive of August–September 1941 was an early turning point in the
Soviet-German war. The Red Army's first major victory over the Wehrmacht, it delayed the German advance on Moscow for a vital several weeks.

Zhukov was named CGS on January 14 but did not take up the post until February 1. He was made a deputy defense commissar as well as CGS and on March 15 was given additional responsibilities for military communications, fuel supplies, air defense, and the running of the General Staff Academy.
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His newfound status as CGS was also recognized in his election as an alternate member of the Communist Party Central Committee (i.e., he could attend its meetings but not vote) at the 18th Party conference in February 1941. In theory the Central Committee was the highest decision-making body of the party; in practice it was dominated by Stalin and the Politburo. While Zhukov's election to the Central Committee was important to him personally, as a party member it signified little of political substance. It was, however, highly important as a symbol of the unity of the party and the military.

Now a member of the Soviet elite, Zhukov was given an apartment in an exclusive block in Granovsky Street, a quiet side street across the road from the Kremlin. Among his neighbors were Marshals Budenny and Timoshenko, while Voroshilov, the former defense commissar, lived in the building next door. This was to be the Zhukov family home for nearly twenty years, their residence surviving even Zhukov's period of exile in the provinces after the war.

Zhukov spent his first month as CGS in intensive study of the activities of the General Staff. There was much to learn and his need to master its functioning was becoming more urgent by the day. The countdown to war was well advanced and the evidence mounting that Hitler was preparing to attack.

For a time after the signature of the Nazi-Soviet pact in August 1939 it seemed the cooperation between Germany and the Soviet Union would turn into a permanent partnership. There was extensive political, economic, and military collaboration between the two states. The Soviet Union became a major supplier of raw materials to
the German war economy. In return the Germans supplied machinery, manufactured goods, and armaments. Stalin supported Hitler's call for peace after the German conquest of Poland, while the führer lent political support to the Soviets during the Winter War with Finland. German U-boats were allowed to establish a base on Soviet territory north of Murmansk. Both sides refrained from propaganda attacks on each other, in contrast with the 1930s when the Soviets had led an antifascist ideological crusade against Nazi Germany and the Nazis had identified the communists (and the Jews) as their main enemy.

Relations between Stalin and Hitler began to sour in summer 1940 when Germany conquered France. Stalin had assumed the Second World War would be a rerun of the First World War, with the Germans and the British and French bogged down in a protracted struggle in Western Europe. Now Stalin found himself faced with a partner who dominated continental Europe and threatened to overwhelm Britain, too. While Stalin was prepared to ally with Hitler, he did not trust him. In response to the magnified German threat in July 1940 the Soviets occupied the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania and expanded into Romania—the Bessarabian operation that Zhukov had been involved in when he headed the Kiev Military District. Stalin also tried to negotiate a spheres of influence deal in the Balkans with Germany and its fascist ally, Benito Mussolini's Italy. This move was rebuffed by Hitler, who extended his protection to Romania and called a halt to further Soviet territorial encroachments.

Stalin intended his actions as defensive steps and as a prelude to negotiations with the Germans about a new Nazi-Soviet pact. Hitler, however, considered Soviet actions aggressive and they prompted him to revive his plans to seek
Lebensraum
in the east—German expansion into, and the colonization of, Russia.

The crisis in Soviet-German relations came to a head in November 1940 when Stalin sent his foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, to Berlin to negotiate with Hitler. These negotiations failed when the Soviets rejected Hitler's offer of a junior partnership in the German-Italian-Japanese Axis. His offer spurned, on December 18, 1940, Hitler issued his directive on Operation Barbarossa—the code name for the invasion of Russia.
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Reports of a coming German attack had been trickling into Moscow
since mid-1940 from a variety of sources—military, political, and diplomatic. In early 1941, when the Germans began active preparations for invasion, the trickle of information became a stream and then a deluge. Zhukov was not privy to the full range of intelligence that crossed Stalin's desk but he was a routine recipient of information coming from the most authoritative source: Soviet military intelligence.
⁴

Commonly known by its Russian acronym GRU (Glavnoe Razvedyvatel'noe Upravlenie—Main Intelligence Administration) Soviet military intelligence was a department of the General Staff. In 1941 it was headed by Deputy CGS General F. I. Golikov. Zhukov was not sent all the information generated by the activities of the GRU but he did receive the most critical intelligence and Golikov's summaries of information on the buildup of enemy forces along the Soviet frontier were of utmost importance to Soviet war planning and military preparations.

On March 10 Golikov submitted a report to Stalin, Zhukov, and Timoshenko on the strength of the German armed forces. According to Soviet estimates in September 1940 the Germans had 228 divisions including 15–17 tank divisions and 8–10 motorized divisions. Six months later the Germans had 263 divisions, including 20 tank and 20 motorized. During that same period there was significant shift of divisions (10 percent) from Western to Eastern Europe, where 47 percent of German strength was now concentrated. Of particular importance for the Soviets was that German forces in Eastern Europe had been repositioned and were now concentrated in the southeast (i.e., opposite Ukraine).

On March 20 Golikov presented a summary of intelligence reports that indicated a German attack on the USSR in spring 1941. Most of these reports, noted Golikov, came from Anglo-American sources and he concluded “the most likely date for the beginning of military action against the USSR is after victory over England or after the conclusion of an honourable peace with Germany. Rumours and documentation that the war against the USSR is inevitable in the spring of this year must be considered as disinformation emanating from English or even, perhaps, German intelligence.” This report of Golikov's has been widely criticized, including by Zhukov, the suggestion being that
the intelligence chief was telling Stalin what he wanted to hear. However, Golikov's subsequent summary reports presented the information on the concentration of German and allied forces along the Soviet border more dispassionately. On April 4 he reported the relocation of German troops from west to east was continuing, including the transfer of a further 6 infantry and 3 tank divisions. On April 16 he reported there were 78 German divisions in East Prussia and German-occupied Poland and noted, too, reports of the evacuation of Wehrmacht officers' families from the Warsaw area. Golikov's report of April 26 stated there were now 95–100 German divisions on the Soviet border. By May 5 this estimate had increased to 103–107 and by May 15 to 114–119, with 23–24 divisions massed against the Baltic Special Military District; 30 divisions against the Western Special Military District; and 33–36 against the Kiev Special Military District. On May 31, Golikov reported there were 120–122 German divisions on the Soviet border and noted a significant strengthening of the Germans' right flank (opposite Ukraine) following the release of units involved in the invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia in April 1941. At the same time Golikov noted that the Germans still had 122–126 divisions deployed against the British (in all theaters, including North Africa and the Mediterranean) and speculated that they still had in mind an invasion of England.
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These ominous developments surprisingly were not seen as
immediately
threatening by the Soviets. The explanation for this apparent paradox is that the Soviets had begun with an exaggerated view of the overall strength of the German army, which they estimated to have reached 300 divisions by spring 1941, when the actual figure was nearer 200. From that perspective the 120 divisions the Soviets estimated to be ranged against them was neither disproportionate nor at the level to be expected on the eve of an invasion.
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In response to the buildup of German forces the Soviets continued with their own military preparations. One of the first General Staff documents to bear Zhukov's name was MP-41—Mobilizatsionnyi Plan 1941. Dating from mid-February 1941, this was a plan to expand the number of troops in the Red Army from just over four million to more than eight million. Included among the 300 planned divisions would be 60 tank and 30 motorized divisions, which would be organized
into 30 three-division mechanized corps. The bulk of this force (6.5 million troops) would be located in the USSR's western military districts. The mobilization plan involved the call-up of nearly five million reservists, including 600,000 officers and 885,000 NCOs. It is not clear when the Soviets expected to complete the mobilization, but certainly not before the end of 1941. In the event, by the time the Germans attacked in June the Red Army had its 300 divisions—including 198 rifle, 61 tank, 31 motorized, and 13 cavalry—but many of these were understrength and total military personnel fell a million short of the target. A little under three million troops were deployed in the western districts, the bulk in the southwest where 97 divisions, including 27 tank divisions, were located.
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MP-41 was a plan the General Staff had been working on since summer 1940, so it is unlikely the recently appointed Zhukov had a great deal of input. Zhukov probably had more say in the revised Soviet war plan of March 8, 1941, but the changes to the existing plan—dating from October 1940—were not extensive. The March plan estimated the Germans had 260 divisions, about 110 deployed against the Soviet Union. However, the assumption was that after the end of the war with Great Britain the Germans would be able to deploy 200 divisions against the USSR supported by 70 divisions from Romania, Hungary, and Finland. To meet an attack by this force the Soviets planned to deploy at least 250 divisions in their western districts. Crucially, the March plan, like the October plan, assumed that the main German attack would come in the south, although an attack in the north from East Prussia was not ruled out. The planned Soviet response was to be a massive counteroffensive from the Ukraine into southern Poland.
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It would seem that in mid-May 1941 yet another version of the Soviet war plan was prepared. However, the provenance and status of this document is complicated and controversial. Dated May 15, 1941, the document in question was handwritten by General A. M. Vasilevsky, at that time deputy chief of operations, and corrected by Vatutin, his immediate superior. It was entitled “Considerations on the Plan for the Strategic Deployment of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union in the Event of War with Germany and Its Allies” and signed in the name of Timoshenko and Zhukov—hence the common but inaccurate
appellation “Zhukov Plan.” In essence the May plan was the same as the October 1940 and March 1941 plans: absorb the German attack and then counterattack in the main theater of operations with the aim of destroying the bulk of enemy forces and fighting the war on foreign soil. (See
Map 5
: The Soviet Plan for an Offensive War Against Germany, May 1941
.) But there was a new element in the May plan that has been the subject of much discussion—a proposal for a preemptive strike: