Russia at war 1941-1945

... Let us not rely on rivers and mountains. We can only rely on ourselves.

Thermopylae did no stop them. Nor did the Sea of Crete. Men stopped them, not in

the mountains, but in the suburban allotments of Moscow. We shall kill them all.

But we must do it quickly; or they will desecrate the whole of Russia and torture to death millions more people.

[ Red Star, August 13, 1942.]

And on another day he wrote:

We are remembering everything. Now we know. The Germans are not human. Now

the word "German" has become the most terrible swear-word. Let us not speak. Let us not be indignant. Let us kill. If you do not kill the German, the German will kill you. He will carry away your family, and torture them in his damned Germany... If you have killed one German, kill another. There is nothing jollier than German

corpses.

These two propaganda themes were to continue, both before and after the fall of Rostov.

But after its fall, a new note was also sounded—partly in support of the organisational changes being introduced into the Red Army. Self-pity and hatred of the Germans were no longer enough. Partly no doubt to explain to an acutely anxious country the disasters that had befallen the Red Army since May, the new line now taken was that the Army

itself was largely to blame for what was happening—and not the Government—or Stalin.

In retrospect the violent criticisms of the Red Army that were made at this time seem unfair. They ignored the fact that in the summer of 1942 the Russians were still seriously short of heavy equipment, and that along most of the front in the south the Germans had a great superiority in tanks and, especially, in aircraft.

After the fall of Rostov there was a ruthless tightening up of discipline in the army—

ruthless to the point of summary executions, all down the scale, for disobeying orders or displaying cowardice. Then too there was a propaganda drive in which the soldier's and the officer's personal honour and loyalty to his regiment were constantly invoked. One over-enthusiastic propagandist pointed out that even when a regiment received orders to retreat, it was still a blot on the regiment's reputation. More important still, it was impressed upon the soldiers that the country was disgruntled and disappointed in its own army. Political commissars were called upon to circulate among the troops plaintive and contemptuous letters received from soldiers' relatives.

Finally the post-Rostov changes marked the beginning of a rise in the status of officers in the Red Army. There was for instance the creation of new military decorations for officers only: the Orders of Suvorov, Kutuzov and Alexander Nevsky—significantly named after the "Great Ancestors".

[There had already been an Alexander Nevsky Order under Nicholas II who had

conferred it in 1912 on Poincaré, then French Prime Minister. Suvorov was Catherine II's most famous general, and Kutuzov was the victor of Napoleon in 1812.]

This was part of the drive, which was to take on spectacular proportions soon afterwards, to create something like a new officer caste which would be thoroughly competent and, at the same time, smart and decorative. The "old warhorse", slovenly in his attire and easygoing in his soldiering, was more and more discredited in the post-Rostov

propaganda drive. Before long, the dual command of officer-and-commissar was to be

scrapped once again in favour of the officer's "sole command".

It was not until the height of the Stalingrad battle that epaulettes and a lot of gold braid were added to officers' uniforms—epaulettes like those which angry soldiers had torn off their officers' shoulders back in 1917. Out of the fire and smoke of Stalingrad the gold-braided officers emerged; in this gold braid the fires of Stalingrad were reflected, as it were. It was that which made those gold-braided epaulettes so popular and acceptable.

[Much of this gold braid was imported from England, and the Russian request for vast quantities of it at first struck the British (as an Embassy official told me at the time) as

"absurdly frivolous". They did not grasp the full significance of these exports until later.]