Russia at war 1941-1945

spitting blood first at Bakhchisarai and then at Simferopol. And here there were

traitors who denounced him to the Germans. And the Germans did not forgive all

that he had done for his country and for Sebastopol...

[ Borisov, op. cit., p. 176.]

I was to see Sebastopol in May 1944, after it had been recaptured by the Russians; I was then to hear many more harrowing stories of those last agonising days of Sebastopol in June and July 1942. All that was known in Moscow in July 1942 was that very few of the defenders of Sebastopol had got away. Twenty-six thousand Russian wounded were said

to have fallen into German hands, besides an unspecified number of other soldiers. The Germans claimed to have captured 90,000.

[This figure is not necessarily exaggerated. According to the postwar Soviet History, there were 106,000 Russian troops, including 82,000 combat troops, at Sevastopol, when the final German onslaught began, as against 203,000 German and Rumanian troops,

including 175,000 combat troops. The vast German-Rumanian superiority in equipment

was greater still, except in guns—

German-

Soviet

Rumanian

Guns of all

780

606

kinds

Tanks

450

38

Aircraft

600

109

]

In Moscow one thing had been clear: after the German victory at Kerch in May, the fate of Sebastopol was sealed; the only question was how long it would hold out. It held out longer than could reasonably have been expected, and this heroic defence was contrasted, not without some sarcasm, especially by Ehrenburg, with the "gutless" surrender of Tobruk only a week earlier.

The news of the imminent fall of Sebastopol had been broken as gently as possible to the Russian people; but the Russian reader had learned to read between the lines. Each

communiqué adjective was, as it were, a code word which meant something quite

definite. Thus, "fierce fighting" (ozhestochennyie boi), "stubborn fighting" (upornyie boi) and "heavy fighting" (tyazhelyie boi) meant three different things; "heavy fighting" meant that things were going very badly; this phrase was more and more frequently used in the communiqués on Sebastopol during the last fortnight the city held. On June 25

Sebastopol was "holding out against superior enemy forces"; on June 28, Pravda already spoke of the "immortal fame of Sebastopol"; on June 30, Ehrenburg wrote in Red Star—

The Germans boasted: "We shall drink champagne on June 15 on the Grafsky

Embankment"... Experts foretold: "It's a matter of three days, perhaps a week."

We knew how many planes they had, and they knew how hard it was to defend a

city with all its roads cut. But they forgot one thing: Sebastopol is not merely a city.

It is the glory of Russia, the pride of the Soviet Union. We have seen the capitulation of towns, of celebrated fortresses, of States. But Sebastopol is not surrendering. Our soldiers do not play at war. They fight a life-and-death struggle. They do not say "I surrender" when they see two or three more enemy men on the chessboard.

This was clearly a crack at Tobruk. However, the end of Sebastopol was now clearly in sight. On July 1 the communiqué said:

Hundreds of enemy planes are dropping bombs on our front lines and on the city.

They are making more than 1,000 sorties a day. Every defender of Sebastopol is

endeavouring to kill as many Germans as possible.

And, on July 3, the communiqué said that, after a siege of 250 days, the Soviet troops had abandoned Sebastopol on the order of the High Command.

Three days later Admiral Oktiabrsky who had escaped from Sebastopol by submarine

with other top military leaders, published in Pravda a detailed account of the battle of Sebastopol, turning a military defeat into a great moral victory. He gave some

unbelievably high figures of the German and Rumanian losses (300,000 killed and