Russia at war 1941-1945

The Battle of Yelnya, south-east of Smolensk, which went on throughout the whole of

August, was not a major battle of the Soviet-German war, and yet one has to live back into the fearful summer of 1941 to realise how vital it was for Russian morale.

Throughout August and part of September it was built up by the Russian press and by

Russian propaganda out of all proportion to its real or ultimate importance, and yet here was not only, as it were, the first victory of the Red Army over the Germans; here was also the first piece of territory—perhaps only 100 or 150 square miles—in the whole of Europe reconquered from Hitler's Wehrmacht. It is strange to think that in 1941 even that was considered a vast achievement.

After the capture of Smolensk, the Germans were held up along most of the Central

Front; but they had managed to drive a wedge south-east of Smolensk, capturing the town of Yelnya and a number of villages.

According to Guderian, there was some dispute among the German generals whether to

defend the Yelnya salient, or to evacuate it; in the end it was decided to evacuate it, though at heavy loss of life—which clearly suggests that the Russians actually drove the Germans out, after weeks of heavy fighting. The price paid in human lives by the

Russians for this "prestige victory" had been very high, and when, later in October, the big German offensive had started against Moscow, the Russians in what had been the

Yelnya salient were doomed to encirclement.

Although, until then, foreign correspondents had not been allowed at the Front, the

Yelnya victory was something that called for worldwide publicity, and seven or eight were taken in cars on a week's trip, beginning on September 15. What, in retrospect, was so striking about it was a certain tragic pathos of the whole scene. Tragic was the town of Viazma, exposed to constant air attack from near-by German airfields; more tragic still were the young airmen at the small fighter airfield near Viazma—who, with their seven or eight sorties a day over the German lines, were on a constant near-suicide job; tragic, too, was the completely devastated countryside of the "Yelnya salient", where every village and every town had been destroyed, and the few surviving civilians were now

living in cellars or dugouts.

Viazma, where we arrived in the late afternoon, looked almost normal, in spite of a large number of soldiers and bombed houses. It was a harmless little town, with its few

government buildings in the central square, and a few derelict churches, and a statue of Lenin, and the rest of the town a mass of quiet provincial streets, with wooden houses and little gardens in front of them, and rows of rough wooden fences. In the gardens grew large sunflowers and dahlias; and old women, with scarves round their heads, chatted in front of the garden gates. The place could not have changed much since the days of

Gogol.

The interview we had on that first night at Viazma with General Sokolovsky, at that time General Konev's Chief of Staff, was in the circumstances reassuring. He spoke in a quiet, even voice, describing what the Russian army had done on this Central Sector during the past few weeks. He attached the greatest importance to the fact that the Russians had stopped the German advance beyond Smolensk; claimed that "several German armies"

had been smashed up in the last month, and that, in the first days of September alone, they had suffered 20,000 casualties; several hundred German planes had been shot down in this sector over a number of weeks. The blitzkrieg as such, he said, was over, and the process of "grinding down" the German war machine had now started in real earnest, and the Russians had even succeeded in recapturing a considerable slice of territory in this sector. To check the Russian counter-offensive, the Germans had had to bring up

reinforcements in the last few days.

He thought German communications were being seriously interfered with by the

partisans in the enemy rear. He also thought that Russian artillery was greatly superior to German artillery, though he admitted that the Germans still had great air and tank

superiority. Another important point he made was that the Russian troops all had

polushubki (sheepskin jackets) and other adequate winter clothes and they could stand even fifty degrees of frost; the Germans could not stand up to it. It was significant that he should, already then, have attached the greatest importance to the part winter was soon going to play. As an afterthought he said that he could only speak of the Central Front, and could not speak with first-hand knowledge of Voroshilov in the north and Budienny in the south, where, indeed, the situation was then extremely serious.

Asked whether, in view of what he had said, a new German offensive against Moscow