Germans Retreated from Moscow

レニングラード陥落間近

By 21 August 1941, a German north-easterly thrust almost cut off Leningrad’s link with the rest of Russia. Voroshilov… took command alongside with Zhdanov. Both men had much to prove but as Leningrad was gradually enveloped, they struggled to keep Stalin’s confidence. (p. 339)

Zhdanov took control of every facet of Leningrad life, declaring famously: ‘the enemy is at the gate.’…
Voroshilov meanwhile displayed the admirable courage that he had shown at Tsaritsyn…. The old cavalryman could buckle swash but was unable to stabilize the front.
Stalin was unmoved by the heroic ineptitude of this beau sabreur. His warmth towards Zhdanov was cooling fast…. (p. 339-340)

On the 21st Stalin, realizing the desperate situation, ordered Molotov and Malenkov, armed with his full authority, to descend on Leningrad and designate a scapegoat, marking Zhdanov’s fall from grace. ‘To Voroshilov, Malenkov, Zhdanov… Leningrad Front thinks of only one thing: any way to retreat… Isn’t it time you got rid of these heroes of retreat?’ But they also had a bigger unspoken mission: should Leningrad be abandoned?
… suddenly the train could go no further and stopped at the little station of Mga, twenty-five miles east of the city. The magnates could see a German bombing raid up ahead but they did not realize this was the beginning of the German advance that would encircle Leningrad only two days later: Mga had been the last way in…. (pp. 340-341)

ジューコフ、レニングラードへ

They found Zhdanov just about holding things together, but comforting himself with drink and struggling with his asthma…. He was now close to collapse….
… ‘I fear,’ Stalin wrote hysterically to Molotov and Malenkov, ‘Leningrad will be lost through imbecilic folly, and all Leningrad risks encirclement. What are [M.M.] Popov [front commander] and Voroshilov doing?.... They’re busy looking for new lines of retreat…. This is pure peasant fatalism….’
On their return, the emissaries advised Stalin to scrap Voroshilov’s North-Western Axis and sack the First Marshal who spent ‘all his time in the trenches’. Meanwhile Schlüsselberg, the fortress on the Neva, and Mga, fell. Voroshilov did not tell Moscow, and when Stalin discovered these prevarications, he was outraged.
On 8 September, Stalin summoned Zhukov to his flat….
‘Then go to Leningrad at once… The situation is almost hopeless there…’ and [Stalin] handed Zhukov a note to Voroshilov that read: ‘Hand over command to Zhukov and fly to Moscow immediately.’ Stalin scrawled to Zhdanov: ‘Today Voroshilov’s recalled!’ (pp. 341-342)

Zhukov and Zhdanov succeeded in making the storming of Leningrad very costly for the Germans. Hitler hesitated, cancelled the assault and ordered instead that Leningrad be starved into submission and then razed to the ground: the 900-day siege of the city had begun….
There were 2.2 million people trapped in Leningrad. That December alone, 53,000 died and there would be many more to follow…. Cannibalism flourished: it was not rare to find a body lying in the hall of an apartment block with thighs and breasts carved off. Between now and July 1942, it is estimated that a million people died in Leningrad.
Zhdanov, assisted by his respected Second Secretary, Alexei Kuznetsov, won back Stalin’s respect and that of the Leningraders. They gradually became heroes as they shared the plight of their citizens….
In November, they ordered the building of the “Road of Life’ across the ice of Lake Ladoga which became the city’s only channel for the supply of food…. (p. 343)

ジューコフ、今後は首都モスクワを指揮

Hitler switched his Panzers to Operation Typhoon, the grand offensive against Moscow, designed to deliver the knockout blow to Soviet Russia. Guderian’s Panzers surprised and then outflanked the Briansk Front just as Stalin welcomed [Canadian press baron and a British War Cabinet member] Lord Beaverbrook and Averell Harriman [the US envoy who had come to negotiate military aid to Russia]. (p. 344)

… On October 3, Guderian took Orel, 125 miles behind the supposed Russian front line. Yeremenko’s Briansk and Budyonny’s Reserve Front were smashed: 650,000 Russians surrounded…. (p. 345)

At dusk on 7 October, [Nikolai] Vlasik sped Zhukov straight (from Leningrad) to the Kremlin flat where Stalin… was chatting with Beria. Probably ‘unaware of my arrival’, in Zhukov’s words, Stalin was ordering Beria to ‘use his “Organ” to sound out the possibilities of making a separate peace with Germany, given the critical situation…’ Stalin was probing German resolve but there was no moment when Hitler was less likely to make peace than when Moscow seemed to be falling. Beria is said to have arranged a second prove, either using a Bulgarian ‘banker’ or the Ambassador again but with no results. (p. 346)

… At 2.30 a.m. on the 8th, Zhukov called Stalin…: ‘The main danger now is that the roads into Moscow are virtually undefended.’ And the reserves? Stalin asked:
‘Encircled.’
… The next morning, Stalin ordered Zhukov to return to the Western Front headquarters north of Mozhaisk and take command.
There he found Molotov, Malenkov, Voroshilov and Bulganin indulging in an ugly hunt for the scapegoat… (pp. 346-347)

Zhukov stiffened the resistance though he possessed only 90,000 men to defend Moscow. He fought for time, with the fray reaching unprecedented frenzies of savagery. By the 18th, Kalinin had fallen on the battlefield of Borodino…. (p. 347)

Stalin controlled every aspect of the battle….
Again and again, he raised the intensity of cruelty…. First he unleashed his ‘scorched earth’ policy to ‘destroy and burn to ashes all populated areas in the German rear to a depth of 40-60 kms from the front line’…. Beria wrote to Mekhlis during the Battle of Moscow to report that 638,112 arrested, while [Victor] Abakumov reported to Stalin that in one week, his Special Departments arrested 1,189 and shot 505 deserters. Now on the front near Moscow, Bulganin’s ‘interceptor battalions’, set up to terrorise cowards, arrested 23,064 ‘deserters’ in just three days. There is a myth that the only time Stalin ceased the war against his own people was during 1941 and 1942; but during that period, 994,000 servicemen were condemned, and 157,000 shot, more than fifteen divisions.
Beria was also liquidating old prisoners: on 13 October, Poskrebyshev’s wife, the once effervescent Bronka was shot, an event, like the murder of the Svanidzes, that could only have happened on Stalin’s order…. On 3 October, Beria liquidated 157 ‘celebrity’ prisoners such as Kameneva, Trotsky’s sister ad Kamenev’s widow, in Medvedev Forest near Orel. On the 28th, Beria ordered the shooting of another twenty-five, including the ex-Air Force commander, Rychagov, who had answered back to Stalin about the ‘flying coffins’. The 4,905 unfortunates on death row were dispatched within eight days. (pp. 348-349)

[Beria, Malenkov and Kaganovich] advised Stalin to evacuate to Kuibyshev.
[On the 16th] Stalin proposed to evacuate the whole Government to Kuibyshev, to order the army to defend the capital and keep the Germans fighting until he could throw in his reserves…. (p. 350)

… the moment finally arrived [to decide whether to leave Moscow for Kuibyshev], probably late on the evening of the 18th….
Stalin called Zhukov and asked him: ‘Are you certain we can hold Moscow? I ask you this with pain in my heart. Speak the truth, like a Bolshevik?’ Zhukov replied that it could be held. ‘It’s encouraging you’re so certain.’… (p. 353)

When [Stalin] got back to the Kremlin, he gathered his guards and told them: ‘I’m leaving Moscow. You’ll stay here with me.’… (p. 354)

The Panzers were still advancing on the frozen snow and threatening to encircle Moscow. Zhukov had no reserves left. Having lost three million of his soldiers since June, Stalin’s notebook was virtually empty….
… In Berlin, the Reich Press Office declared that ‘Russia was finished’ but Stalin’s iron husbandry of his reserves, coupled with Zhukov’s brilliant and brutal fighting, was telling on the Germans whose machines were beginning to suffer from the mud and ice while their men were freezing and exhausted. They again halted to prepare for a final push, convinced that Stalin’s resources were exhausted. But there was a page in the notebook that they had forgotten.
Stalin’s Far Eastern Army, 700,000 strong, guarded against Japan but in late September, Richard Sorge, the spy Stalin called a brothel-keeper, reported that Japan would not attack Russia. On 12 October, Stalin discussed this with his Far Eastern satraps who then confirmed Tokyo’s lack of hostile intentions from local intelligence. Kaganovich arranged non-stop trains that, within days and hours, rushed 400,000 fresh troops, 1,000 tanks and 1,000 planes across the Eurasian wastes, in one of most decisive logistical miracles of the war. The last train left on the 17th and these secret legions began to mass behind Moscow. (pp. 355-356)

Just before eight 0’clock [on November 7], in a snowstorm and with biting winds that preserved them from German air attack, Stalin led the Politburo up the steps to the Mausoleum, just like old times…. (p. 358)

ソ連軍の反撃。独軍、モスクワから撤退

On 13 November, Stalin called Zhukov to plan the counter-attack to put the German attacks off balance. Zhukov and Commissar Bulganin felt that their resources were so low that they could not attack but Stalin insisted. ‘What forces are we to use?’ asked Zhukov.
‘Consider it settled!’ Stalin rang off but immediately telephoned Bulganin:
‘You and Zhukov’re giving yourselves airs. But we’ll put a stop to that.’
Afterwards Bulganin ran into Zhukov’s office: ‘Well, I got it really hard this time!’ he said.
The counter-attacks were subsumed in the grinding German offensive of 15 November, the last push to take Moscow. The Germans broke through. Again Stalin asked Zhukov: could he hold Moscow?
… Zhukov fought the Germans to a standstill on 5 December, having lost 155,000 men in twenty days. Effectively, Hitler’s Blitzkrieg had failed. On 6 December, Stalin delivered three new armies to Zhukov and ordered a grand counter-offensive on the four nearest fronts. The next day, Japan attacked America at Pearl Harbor.
Zhukov drove the Germans back two hundred miles… Zhukov and Bulganin ordered [I.M.] Golubev, commander of the Tenth Army: ‘Tomorrow will be the birthday of Stalin. Try to mark this day by the capture of Balabanovo. To include this message in our report to Stalin, inform us of its fulfillment not later than 7 p.m. 21 December.’ The Battle of Moscow was Stalin’s first victory, but a limited one. However, he was immediately over-optimistic, telling the visiting British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden: ‘The Russians have already been in Berlin twice (in 1760 and 1813) and will be a third time.’ It would take millions more dead and almost four years to reach Berlin…. (pp. 358-359)

On 5 January, the over-confident Supremo gathered Zhukov and the generals to hear the plan for a massive offensive from Leningrad to the Black Sea to capitalize on the German defeat before Moscow.
… Zhukov criticized the offensive, saying the army needed more men and tanks. Voznesensky was against it too, saying he could not supply the necessary tanks. Stalin insisted on the offensive, at which Malenkov and Beria attacked Voznesensky for ‘always finding insuperable and unforeseen’ objections. ‘On that,’ said Stalin, ‘we’ll conclude the meeting.’… (p. 359)