The USSR political leaders understood that a military conflict with Nazi Germany was inevitable
By Anatoly Dokuchaev
The songwriters argued that the enemy would be defeated with small losses, with a mighty blow, and on his own territory. In fact, a very high price had to be paid for the victory, and the preparations had been carried out long before the war started.
Given its surprise, Hitler and his associates planned to finish the Eastern campaign in three or four months. However, the German Blitzkrieg began to stall on the very first day of the aggression. Pilots of the 123rd Fighter Aviation Regiment shot down thirty Fascist planes in the Brest Fortress area, and gunners of the 636th Anti-Tank Regiment southwest of Šiauliai burned down fifty-nine German tanks and assault guns during the day. The further the Wehrmacht advanced across Soviet territory, the stronger the resistance became. And this is despite the fact that by the beginning of the aggression the German troops had been fully mobilised, were in full combat readiness, had extensive experience in combat operations, and surprise gave them a huge advantage.
It was seemingly impossible to explain the “political blindness” of the Soviet leadership at that time. But there are such explanations. Very concrete strategic reasons had a deterrent effect on Soviet military preparations before the outbreak of the war. Moscow feared that if Hitler succeeded in making out that the Soviet Union was the initiator of the conflict, it could have stimulated rapprochement between Berlin and London. And then the USSR would have had to wage war against a broader coalition of States. Even the US President Franklin Roosevelt, who supposedly sympathized with the USSR in the conflict with Germany, used cunning.
At a meeting of the chiefs of the staff in May 1941 he stated: «Unless Stalin provokes an attack by Germany, the United States will support the USSR, otherwise we will not interfere.» This is one more explanation why the Soviet leadership, while strengthening the western borders, sought not to give Berlin the slightest occasion to blame the USSR for unleashing the war.
In fact, the USSR had been preparing thoroughly to repel any possible large-scale aggression, which is why it succeeded in breaking the backbone of Nazi Germany and its numerous satellites. But, as Stalin believed, two years were not enough for the Red Army to become more combat-ready. Today Joseph Stalin’s phrase at the First All-Union Conference of Workers of Socialist Industry on 4 February 1931 is well-known: «We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we will do it, or else we will go under.» And the USSR walked this path successfully.
During the pre-war “five-year plan” periods 9,000 new large enterprises were built in the country. The second five-year period of 1933-1937 became that of a real boom in all spheres of State life. Over that time about 4,500 large industrial enterprises began operating throughout the country, including such industrial giants as the Uralvagonzavod, the Kramatorsk Heavy Machine Tool Building Works, the Krivoy Rog Metallurgical Works, the Novotulsky Metallurgical Works, the Azovstal, the Zaporozhstal, etc. At the same time, duplicates of industrial giants were opened in the eastern regions of the country, which demonstrated the Soviet leadership’s foresight.
As a result, in 1940 gross industrial output increased by 7.7 times compared to 1913, by thirty-eight times compared to 1920, and the output of mechanical engineering and metalworking by 512 times. The USSR ranked first in Europe and second in the world in terms of machine-building products, oil extraction and tractor production. We even made use of the American Great Depression of the 1930s to modernise our industry. At that time the Soviet Government was buying up not only the best weapons at low prices, but also entire factories for the production of weapons and civilian goods. Thus, the Stalingrad Tractor Factory was built in the USA, dismantled, transported to Stalingrad and reassembled in six months. On 17 June 1930 the first STZ-1 tractor rolled off its assembly line. And during the war BM-13-16 Katyusha rocket launchers were installed on STZ-5 crawler tractors.
Now it is clear that there were enough realists among the USSR leadership who understood that fighting with small losses and only on the foreign territory does not always work. If there had not been such understanding, it would hardly have been possible to remove 1,523 industrial enterprises from the frontline to the rear areas in a fantastically short span of time by late 1941. The unprecedented relocation of an entire country’s industry from the west to the east and the almost instant start of production of everything necessary for the front in new locations became possible only because the country had professional engineering and working personnel, as well as energy and technical infrastructure prepared in advance in many regions.
On 6 October 1941 the evacuation of the tank production of the Leningrad Kirov Factory to Chelyabinsk began. Units of the Stalingrad Tractor Factory, the Kharkov Motor-Building Factory and other enterprises were evacuated there as well. According to general estimates, every fifth vehicle produced for the front was made in Chelyabinsk: 18,000 tanks, 48,500 tank engines, 85,000 sets of fuel equipment, and 17.5 million pieces of ammunition. It is noteworthy that mass production of T-34 tanks was mastered in just thirty-three days.
This would not have been achieved without the creation of a fully-fledged defence industry in the pre-war years, which was ahead of the other sectors of economy in terms of gross output growth. During the three years of the third five-year period (1938–1940) the annual growth of the entire USSR industry averaged 13.2 percent, and the defence industry – thirty-nine percent. Between August 1940 and June 1941 the stock of military products and strategic raw materials almost doubled. Aviation and tank factories, enterprises for the production of artillery guns and small arms were built and provided with advanced equipment.
It enabled us to increase the production of military equipment significantly. Between January 1939 and June 1941 the USSR industry supplied the Red Army with 17,745 combat aircraft, over 7,000 tanks, including the legendary T-34 and KV, about 30,000 field guns, and almost 52,400 mortars. The Navy received dozens of up-to-date ships that rivalled the enemy ones during the war.
These figures leave no doubt that the USSR political leaders understood that a military conflict with Nazi Germany was inevitable and were preparing the country for the upcoming war. The words «Ready for Labour and Defence of the USSR!» became the principal slogan. A mobilisation system was created and started working in the country. All enterprises had mobilisation plans in case of war – a network of military commissariats covered the country’s whole territory. Aviation clubs conducted pre-conscription training for young people, with Osoaviakhim (the Society for the Assistance of Defence, Aircraft and Chemical Construction) and the Red Cross Society having particularly many members.
In a word, the country was preparing on all fronts. But then it turned out that even this was not enough for a large-scale confrontation with virtually the whole of Europe.
Did the Germans have a chance?
Let’s put the question another way: did Nazi Germany have the opportunity to win in the confrontation with the USSR? The answer was given by history itself. And yet… In terms of numbers, Germany’s economy did not surpass that of the Soviet Union, albeit Berlin took control of the economic resources of almost all European States. And Hitler, who, as we know, viewed the USSR as a colossus with feet of clay, believed that this would be sufficient. The war on two fronts did not bother Berlin either.
Back in early 1941, troops under the command of Erwin Rommel were sent to help the Italian units being defeated by the British. Hostilities between the Germans and the British continued with varying success till May 1943. There was an active war at sea. On 11 March 1941 the US Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act, allocating $7 billion to help the UK with weapons and other munition. So, Germany had to divert its military resources to fend off these threats.
Yes, in June 1941 Hitler and his close circles used the main trump card: surprise, and an insidious strike on Soviet military and industrial facilities gave Germany a significant advantage. But Berlin was confronted by the enormous military potential of the USSR and a combat-ready army that did not waver before the Wehrmacht, whereas the Western armies surrendered to Hitler without much resistance. In order to justify themselves, the West started spreading myths about the supposedly insurmountable military advantage of the Nazis. It was adopted by Soviet cinema, where the German Army is portrayed as the height of perfection: its soldiers are spick-and-span, each holding a Maschinenpistole – an MP 38/40 submachine gun, which became one of the symbols of the Nazi war machine. However, the MP 38/40 was never the Wehrmacht’s main small arm.
They armed drivers, tankers, special forces detachments, rear guard detachments and junior officers of the ground forces with them.
The German infantry was armed for the most part with the Mauser 98k magazine carbine, which was superior to the Soviet Mosin magazine rifle of the 1891/1930 model in weight, but lost in aiming range. In addition, the German rifle was more expensive and more difficult to manufacture.
As for the MP 38/40 submachine guns, they were also in no way superior to similar Soviet weapons – the PPD–38 and especially the PPSh-41, which became a symbol of the Second World War. Between 1941 and 1945 about 6 million Georgy Shpagin submachine guns were produced. The conclusion of Christopher Chant, a Western expert in small arms, is worthy of note: «The PPSH is exceptionally reliable and durable. The PPSH was even a favourite weapon of the Germans who valued it for its reliability and magazine capacity. They would often throw off their MP 40 to take the Soviet PPSh.»
As for the Wehrmacht’s armoured vehicles, they were not superior to those of the Red Army. The best tank of the armoured forces of Nazi Germany at the beginning of the aggression (1,000 of them were produced) – Pz.Kpfw IV (T-4) – was inferior in many respects to the Soviet T-34 tank and the heavily armoured KV-1 tank with 76 mm guns. The German tanks Pz.Kpfw II (T-2) with 20 mm automatic cannon and Pz.Kpfw III (T-III) with 37 mm and 50 mm guns were even weaker in many respects.
By the beginning of the war, the Luftwaffe fleet was generally superior in quality to the Soviet Air Force. Let’s name only the most famous fighters: Messerschmitts Bf-109 (Me-109) and Bf-110 (Me-110), Focke-Wulf Fw-190, Heinkel He 111 bombers, Junkers Ju.87. German pilots had significantly more flight hours, and many had combat experience (Spain, Poland, France, the UK, etc.). Today some historians pay attention to this aspect. However, it is a well–known fact that in April – May 1941 a delegation of the German Industrial Commission headed by the Military Air Attache to Moscow Colonel Heinrich Aschenbrenner visited Soviet aircraft factories and gave quite high assessments to the Soviet aviation industry. And these were objective assessments. During the twenty-seven days of combat from 22 June to 19 July 1941 the German Air Force lost 1,284 aircraft of all types on the Eastern front, which is more than two months of fighting in the Battle of Britain.
But Hitler’s Germany had a chance of success… If Soviet soldiers and officers, as on the Western front, had started to surrender all to a man, but this did not happen: most of the units fought steadfastly and even heroically; if the Soviet defence industry had stopped producing for the military in the first weeks, but the output of military equipment only increased; if the USSR had had no reserve armies by the beginning of December 1941, but they were there and struck the enemy near Moscow, after which the Wehrmacht formations retreated westwards and it became clear that the Blitzkrieg had failed… If… But history doesn’t tolerate the subjunctive mood. 9 May 1945 is our great holiday.
