Stalin's General (18 page)

On the evening of June 21 Purkaev, Zhukov's old chief of staff in Kiev, telephoned Zhukov to say a German deserter had come forward and warned that German troops were moving to their jumping-off areas and that the attack would begin the next day.
²¹
It seems unlikely this event alone would have provoked much anxiety; there must have been other stimuli to provoke the actions that followed. Indeed, it is quite possible that the prompt to action came from Stalin himself. He was the only one who possessed the full range of intelligence, not only from the GRU but from other intelligence agencies and from political and diplomatic sources. It must have been clear to Stalin that an attack was a distinct possibility, even though he might have wished otherwise. At 8:50
P.M
. Zhukov and Timoshenko began an hour-and-a-half meeting with Stalin in his Kremlin office.
²²
The result was a directive issued to the Leningrad, Baltic, Western, and Kiev military districts warning that a German surprise attack was possible on June 22 or 23. The districts were ordered to avoid provocative actions of any kind but to bring their forces up to a full state of combat readiness. This directive was sent to the districts a little after midnight on June 22.

The German invasion of the Soviet Union began just before dawn. Leading the assault across a 1,000-mile front were 152 German divisions,
supported by 14 Finnish divisions in the north and 14 Romanian divisions in the south. Later, the 3.5-million-strong invasion force would be joined by armies from Hungary and Italy, by the Spanish Blue Division, by contingents from Croatia and Slovakia, and by volunteer units recruited from every country in Nazi-occupied Europe.

The invasion force was organized in three massed army groups: Army Group North attacked from East Prussia and fought its way along the Baltic coastal lands toward Leningrad; Army Group Center advanced toward Minsk, Smolensk, and Moscow; while Army Group South headed for Ukraine and its capital, Kiev. Contrary to Soviet expectations, the main German attack was concentrated north of the Pripyat Marshes, in the direction of Leningrad and Moscow. The German code name for the invasion, Barbarossa, was in honor of Frederick I (“Red Beard”), the Holy Roman emperor who led a twelfth-century crusade to liberate Christianity's holy places from Muslim control. (See
Map 6
: Operation Barbarossa, June–December 1941
.)

The strategic goals of the invasion had been set out by Hitler in his directive of December 18, 1940:

The German intention was to employ much the same tactics as they had in Poland and France. Concentrated columns of powerful armored divisions would punch their way through enemy defenses and encircle Soviet forces from the rear. The German panzers would be followed by infantry divisions tasked to destroy encircled enemy forces and secure captured territory.

Moreover, the Germans planned a
Vernichtungskrieg
in Russia—a war of destruction, of extermination. Not only the Red Army but
also the entire Soviet communist regime was to be destroyed. According to the Nazis' anti-Semitic ideology the Soviet Union was a Judeo-Bolshevik state—a communist regime under Jewish control and influence. Nazi racist ideology also defined the Slavic peoples of Russia as an inferior race of
Untermenschen
or subhumans. Unlike the Jews the Slavs were not slated by the Nazis for extermination or expulsion, but they were destined for servitude and slavery.

The war Hitler wanted to wage against Russia was ideological. “The war against Russia,” he told his generals in March 1941, “cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion; the struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness.” To this end Hitler issued decrees exempting German soldiers from punishment for any atrocities they might commit in Russia and ordering them to execute all communists on the spot. Contained in these orders was the germ of the Holocaust, which began with the German execution in 1941–1942 of more than a million Soviet Jews. They were also at the root of the savage German treatment of Soviet POWs—three million of whom died in captivity in appalling conditions of starvation, disease, and maltreatment.

As details of the invasion began to filter through to Moscow, Zhukov and Timoshenko returned to Stalin's office at 5:45
A.M
. They stayed for nearly three hours and a second directive was issued at 7:15
A.M
., instructing troops to destroy enemy forces that had crossed the border but not to cross the frontier themselves without special authorization. The air force was instructed to attack enemy air and ground forces and to mount strikes on German territory to a depth of 60–100 miles but not to overfly Finland and Romania without special permission. Later that day, at 9:15
P.M
., a third directive was issued stating that the main German attacks centered on the Suvalki salient on the Lithuanian border in the northwest and on the Zamost'e region south of the Pripyat Marshes. While in these areas “the enemy has achieved considerable success … in the remaining sectors of the state border … the enemy attacks have been beaten off with heavy losses to him.” In response the Northwestern and Western Fronts were ordered to attack the enemy in the Suvalki region and to capture the enemy territory by June 24. In mounting this counterattack the Western Front
was ordered to deploy two mechanized corps in a powerful counterstroke against the flank and rear of the Germans' Suvalki grouping. In the south the Southwestern Front was ordered to attack, encircle, and destroy enemy forces in the Zamost'e region and then to head for Lublin—100 kilometers west of the Soviet border—and capture the Lublin region by June 24. In this operation five mechanized corps were to be deployed, together with the Front's entire aviation force.
²³
This third directive closely resembled the scenario envisaged during the January war games and in the March and May war plans, except that the counteroffensive in the south was slightly less ambitious and was to be launched immediately rather than after a period of preparation and mobilization.

In his memoirs Zhukov was keen to distance himself from the third directive. According to his version of events he was telephoned by Stalin at 1
P.M
. on June 22 and ordered to leave straightaway for Kiev and the Southwestern Front to act as the representative of the High Command. “By the end of the day I was at the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party in Kiev, where Khrushchev was waiting for me.” After he arrived at the Southwestern Front, says Zhukov, Vatutin rang him to tell him about the third directive and Stalin's order that his signature be affixed to it. Had it been up to him, claimed Zhukov, he would have waited until the situation was clearer before ordering counterattacks.
²⁴
The problem with this story is that Stalin's office diary records Zhukov, along with a number of other senior military officers, as present at a meeting from 2 to 4
P.M
. It is likely that this meeting discussed not only the situation at the front but the question of implementing long-laid plans for counteroffensive action. Moreover, according to Bagramyan's memoirs, Zhukov did not arrive at the Southwestern Front until after the third directive had been received.
²⁵

Zhukov wanted to distance himself from the directive because its implementation had disastrous consequences, but given his own offensivist proclivities there is no reason to suppose he was not fully in favor of the course of action it outlined. Indeed, it is difficult to make any sense of the decision to send him—the chief of the General Staff—to Ukraine at this critical time except on the assumption that he was sent specifically to supervise the implementation of the massive
counteroffensive mandated by the third directive. The General Staff had long expected Ukraine to be the main theater of action and that was where the bulk of Soviet forces were deployed. It is likely that Zhukov himself proposed that he should go to the Southwestern Front—his former command—to assist in implementing plans that he himself had helped to draw up. In the event, Zhukov's sojourn in the southwest was brief. By the afternoon of June 26 he was back in Moscow and back in Stalin's office.
²⁶

While Zhukov was in Ukraine the Southwestern Front's attempted counteroffensive floundered, although the counterattack did delay the German advance into Ukraine for a short time. This was not surprising given that the German attack on Ukraine was relatively light and the Southwestern Front was the strongest on the USSR's western borders, consisting of four armies, eight mechanized and seven rifle corps, and one airborne corps. The story on the Western Front, where Pavlov faced the Germans' strongest forces, was completely different. Zhukov later was highly critical of Pavlov, particularly regarding the Western Front commander's loss of control over his frontier forces. But the biggest problem Pavlov faced were the orders from the General Staff to implement the third directive, which required him to send his second-echelon forces deep into the Bialystok salient that jutted into central Poland. This exposed his forces to a massive German double-encirclement maneuver that closed its pincers just east of Minsk—an operation that trapped thirty Red Army divisions and resulted in the capture of 400,000 prisoners. When Minsk fell to the Germans toward the end of June, Pavlov's Western Front—the Red Army's second largest formation—effectively ceased to exist. (See
Map 7
: The Border Battles, June 22–July 9, 1941
.)

It was in this context that Zhukov was urgently recalled to Moscow by Stalin. According to Zhukov, Stalin visited the Defense Commissariat twice on June 29 and “on both occasions reacted violently to the situation that had developed on the western strategic direction.”
²⁷
Another witness to this event was Politburo member Anastas Mikoyan, who recorded in his memoirs that when Zhukov was unable to say what casualties had been incurred Stalin turned on him: “What is the General Staff for? What is the Chief of Staff for, if during the first days of war he loses his head, is not in communication with his forces,
doesn't represent anyone and doesn't command anyone?” According to Mikoyan, Zhukov “burst into tears and ran into another room. Molotov went after him … 5 to 10 minutes later Molotov returned with an outwardly calm Zhukov, but there were still tears in his eyes.”
²⁸
While it is difficult to believe Mikoyan's story, which was undoubtedly concocted as part of the Khrushchevite attack on Zhukov and was designed to discredit him personally, it does capture the tensions between Stalin and his High Command during these disastrous early days of the war.

There is also a story that after the German attack Stalin lost his head and descended into a depression, which he did not snap out of until urged to do so by his Politburo colleagues. According to Zhukov, however, “Stalin himself was strong-willed and no coward. It was only once that I saw him somewhat depressed. That was the dawn of June 22, 1941, when his belief that war could be avoided was shattered. After June 22, 1941, and throughout the war, Stalin firmly governed the country.”
²⁹

On July 1 Stalin removed Pavlov as commander of the Western Front and named Timoshenko in his place.
³⁰
Shortly after, Pavlov was arrested along with his chief of staff, his chief of communications, and other senior officers of the Western Front. Announcing the arrests in a resolution dated July 16 Stalin made it clear that he intended to deliver an object lesson for any senior officer who broke discipline.
³¹
When he was first arrested Pavlov was accused of involvement in an anti-Soviet conspiracy but when the military tribunal sentenced him and the others to death on July 22 it was for cowardice, panic mongering, criminal negligence, and unauthorized retreats.
³²
In effect, Pavlov had been scapegoated for June 22, 1941, for the disastrous mistakes of the Soviet military-political leadership, including those of Stalin, Timoshenko, and Zhukov.