Russia at war 1941-1945

In the munitions industry there was a serious shortage of ferroalloys, nickel, and non-ferrous metals. There were also desperate shortages of aluminium, copper and

tin. The loss of the Donbas with its highly-developed chemical industries, and the evacuation of the chemical industries of Moscow and Leningrad, resulted in a sharp drop in the output of explosives. Out of the twenty-six chemical plants evacuated to the east only eight had reached their destination by the beginning of December, andonly four of these had started production.

Between August and November 1941, 303 munitions plants were out of action; these

used to produce every month many millions of shells, air bombs, shell-cases,

detonating fuses, hand-grenades and some 25,000 tons of explosives.

There was a growing disproportion between the number of guns produced and the

amount of ammunition available for each gun. In the second half of 1941 the front was chiefly using the ammunition reserves accumulated in peace-time. But after six months, these reserves were practically down to zero, while current production was fulfilling the army's needs only up to fifty or sixty per cent...

Apart from these heavy losses, Soviet industry also suffered from a serious shortage of manpower. The annual average of workers and employees in the national economy had

dropped from 31.2 million in 1940 to 27.3 million in 1941; in November this figure had dropped to 19.8 million. Some had been left behind in the occupied areas; others were still on their way to the east. But on November 9, while the Germans were still

prophesying the imminent fall of Moscow, the State Defence Committee laid down

precise plans for the speeding up of production in the east, and, in particular, it stipulated that, in 1942, 22,000 planes and 22,000 to 25,000 heavy and medium tanks be produced.

Just as Russia was becoming industrially more and more dependent on the east, by the end of 1941 she had become almost equally dependent on the east for food.

The war had seriously lowered the efficiency of agriculture. Most of the men in the

villages had been called up, including the tractor drivers who had been called up to drive tanks. Many of the horses, automobiles and tractors had been requisitioned for the Army.

Practically all the agricultural work in Russia during the war was done by women and adolescents. In many kolkhozes the ploughing was reduced to the most elementary forms, while at harvest-time the population of the whole neighbourhood, including town-dwellers, was mobilised to help. Horses were used when they were still available, and when there were still tractors, they were usually fitted with gas generators, because of the oil shortage.

The territorial losses suffered in 1941 had an almost catastrophic effect on Russian food supplies. Before the war, the territory overrun by the Germans by November 1941 had

produced thirty-eight per cent of the cereals, eighty-four per cent of the sugar, and contained thirty-eight per cent of the cattle and sixty per cent of the pigs. By January 1, 1942, the number of cows in the Soviet Union (not counting those in the occupied areas) had dropped from 27.8 million to 15 million and the number of pigs had dropped by over sixty per cent.

The Volga country, the Urals, Western Siberia and Kazakhstan were to become the

Soviet Union's "food base" for the greater part of the war. The areas under cultivation were greatly extended, and crops which had not been grown in these parts before, like sugar-beet and sunflower, were introduced. With the loss of the Don and Kuban country in the summer of 1942, the dependence on the "eastern food base" was to become even greater.

Chapter X BATTLE OF MOSCOW BEGINS— THE OCTOBER

16 PANIC