Russia at war 1941-1945

offensive, the Supreme Command did not use its reserves rationally. In the course of the subsequent winter campaign, the Stavka scattered its reserves unnecessarily: nine new armies were thrown in: two were sent to the Volkhov Front, one to the North-West Front, one to the Kalinin Front, three to the Western (Moscow) Front, one each to the Briansk and South-West Front—

When, at the final stage of the Battle of Moscow, conditions were thought

favourable for encircling and routing of Army Group Mitte, the Stavka no longer had the necessary reserves, and the strategic operation, which had been successfully developing, remained uncompleted. If massed forces had been concentrated against

Army Group Mitte—i.e. on the decisive "Western" Front—this Army Group would undoubtedly have been smashed.

3) The concentrated use of the air force at the initial stage of the Battle of Moscow could, for a number of reasons, not be kept up.

4) Partisan activity in the enemy rear was of great value to the Red Army, and had, according to Guderian's admission, a very depressing moral effect on the German troops.

But many mistakes were also made in the conduct of partisan warfare;

As it turned out, the constitution of large and vulnerable partisan formations

proved a major error... The enemy did not have to deal with numerous and elusive

small partisan bands over wide areas. Instead, he resorted to large military

operations in the areas of partisan activity. This compelled the partisan units to adopt defensive tactics, which are not in the nature of partisan warfare, and their losses, therefore, were very heavy.

*

Stalin's Order of the Day on Red-Array Day on February 23, 1942 and on May-Day 1942

sounded, paradoxically, less optimistic than his two speeches in November 1941 with the Germans right outside Moscow. He no longer suggested that the war would be won "in six months, perhaps in a year".

The hatred of the Germans had, if anything, grown since the Battle of Moscow. In

recapturing numerous towns and many hundreds of villages, the Russian soldiers got

their first first-hand experience of the "New Order". Everywhere the Germans had destroyed whatever they could; all but three houses had been burned down at Istra, for instance, where they had also blown up the ancient New Jerusalem Monastery. In several towns and villages, which the Red Army entered, there were gallows with "partisans"

hanging from them. Later, in 1942,1 explored some of the towns and villages that had been occupied then destroyed by the Germans—it was always the same grim story.

The Germans in towns and villages round Moscow; the Germans in ancient Russian cities like Novgorod, Pskov and Smolensk; the Germans in the suburbs of Leningrad; the

Germans at Tolstoy's Yasnaya Polyana; the Germans at Orel, at Lgov, at Shchigry, the old Turgeniev country, the most Russian of all the Russian areas. They were robbing, and looting and killing; when they were retreating they would burn down every house, and in the depth of winter civilians were left without house and home. Nothing like this had happened to Russia before—except under the Tartar invasions. The anger and resentment against the Germans, mixed with a feeling of infinite pity for the Russian people, for the Russian land, defiled by the invader, produced an emotional reaction of national pride and national injury which was extraordinarily well reflected in the literature and music of 1941 and the early part of 1942.

Some of the best poems, though unknown at the time—they were not published until

1945—reflecting the bitter anxiety during the first months of the invasion, were written by Boris Pasternak—

Do you remember that dryness in your throat

When rattling their naked power of evil

They were barging ahead and bellowing

And autumn was advancing in steps of calamity?