Russia at war 1941-1945

posts and demoted to the rank of corps commissar. Mekhlis and the officers of the Kerch group were accused of having "wasted hours arguing about the situation at fruitless sessions of the War Council", instead of acting. In particular, they had been too slow in withdrawing the troops to the Turkish Wall, and this had been fatal to the whole

defensive operation.

[Ibid., p. 406.]

Although some publicity was given at the time to the disgrace of Mekhlis, one of the villains of the Army Purge in 1937-8, little, if anything, was said about the holocaust among the other officers responsible for the Kerch disaster. It seems obvious that the demotion of Mekhlis was at least partly intended as a political operation (he was deeply detested by the "younger" generals); but how far he (and the other officers) were used as scapegoats for a perhaps inevitable failure (for German air superiority at Kerch was overwhelming) is anybody's guess. What is certain, however, is that the Kerch disaster paved the way for an even greater disaster: that of Sebastopol. After the liquidation of the

"Kerch front", von Manstein was free to concentrate all his forces in the Crimea against Sebastopol which had held out ever since October... Sebastopol was, however, a "noble", not a "shameful" disaster.

Like the Battle of Kiev in 1941, the so-called Battle of Kharkov in May 1942 was to

become the subject of some of Khrushchev's angry posthumous recriminations against

Stalin.

According to the present-day Soviet History, the Soviet Supreme Command had made numerous mistakes in its planning of the spring operations. First, because of the

concentration of enemy forces in that area, it had expected the main German blow to fall on Moscow:

Instead of concentrating large forces on the south-western and southern front, and creating an insuperable defence in depth in these areas, the Siavka continued to strengthen the Briansk front, whose main forces were protecting the Tula-Moscow

axis.

Secondly, the Soviet Supreme Command simply over-rated its own strength and under-

rated that of the Germans:

In planning large offensive operations in the summer of 1942 which would clear the invaders out of the Soviet Union, and so liberate millions of people from the German yoke, the Soviet Supreme Command over-rated the successes of our winter

offensive, and had not taken sufficient notice of the fact that, after the defeats it had suffered, the German army had restored its battle-worthiness, and was still full of offensive possibilities.

[ IVOVSS, vol. 2, p. 404.]

The Russian rout at Kharkov in May 1942 was more heavily concealed from the public

than almost any other Russian defeat; perhaps the great rapprochement then in progress with Britain and the United States had much to do with it, or perhaps also the fact that Stalin himself—at least according to present-day accounts— had played a leading role in conceiving and, worse still, in persisting in, this disastrous operation.

In March 1942 the Supreme Command had considered a plan for a large offensive in the Ukraine which would carry the Red Army all the way to a line running, north-to-south, from Gomel to Kiev, and then, roughly along the right bank of the Dnieper, through

Cherkassy, and on to Nikolaev on the Black Sea. Owing to shortage of reserves, this plan was abandoned in favour of a more modest offensive, the main object of which was the liberation of Kharkov. One Russian blow was to be struck from the north of Kharkov, the other from the south—from the so-called Barvenkovo salient which the Russians had

recaptured during the winter.

It so happened that the Germans were planning an offensive in the same area, but the Russians got in their blow first when they started their offensive towards Kharkov on May 12. The real trouble was that Russian superiority in the area was far from

overwhelming and, worse still (as events were soon to show) the Germans had powerful mobile reserves in the neighbourhood, and the Russians had not. The Soviet historian, Telpukhovsky sums up this battle as follows:

To smash our offensive, which had begun on May 12, a strong formation of German