Russia at war 1941-1945

During the days that followed, the Russian press continued, on the face of it, to follow the German line. Thus, on April 10, together with the news that German troops had occupied both Copenhagen and Oslo, the Soviet papers published under a three-column heading

the "Memorandum of the German Government" which, they said, had been read over the radio by Goebbels. Two days later, TASS, in a message from Oslo, referred to Quisling as "the new head of the Norwegian Government". However, it did not deny the continued existence of the "other" Norwegian Government.

After that the German and British communiqués, as well as TASS reports from London

were published with a certain air of neutrality and impartiality. In a variety of ways the fact was emphasised that the Soviet Union kept strictly neutral in the Scandinavian war.

For example, on April 12, there was an angry official TASS denial of a New York Times story that most of the German troops that had occupied Narvik had travelled there by way of Leningrad and Murmansk.

Yet there seems little doubt that, in the eyes of the Soviet leaders, the war was spreading much too near home. Although at the time nothing was published about it in the Soviet press, much is made in the Soviet History of the War of the way in which direct Soviet diplomatic intervention saved Sweden from being occupied by the Germans: "After the Nazi invasion of Denmark and Norway, the Soviet Government informed Count

Schulenburg, the German Ambassador in Moscow, that it was definitely interested in the preservation of Swedish neutrality."

[ IVOVSS, vol. I. p. 395.]

According to Soviet diplomatic documents quoted by the History, "both the Swedish Premier and the Swedish Foreign Minister, in addressing (Mme) A. M. Kollontai, the

Soviet Ambassador, warmly thanked the Soviet Union for having restrained Germany

and for having saved Swedish neutrality".

Meanwhile, the Soviet press went on with its rather routine and seemingly "neutral"

coverage of the war in Norway, with occasional surveys stressing the general ineptitude of the Anglo-French operations. The last of these surveys appeared in Pravda on May 9, and concluded that the Germans had as good as won. On the following day the Germans

struck out in the west.

Inside Russia the most important developments during the Norwegian war concerned the reorganisation of the Red Army. On May 8, 1940 an ukase of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet announced the creation of new military titles—Major-General,

Lieutenant-General and Army General, in addition to the already existing title of Marshal of the Soviet Union.

[These replaced the clumsier and less "distinguished" titles, such as "Army Commander of the 1st Rank", the equivalent of "Army General".]

At that time four men held the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union: Voroshilov,

Timoshenko, Shaposhnikov and Kulik.

[Shaposhnikov, a highly professional soldier whom the Soviets had inherited from the Tsarist Army, was to be Chief-of-Staff during a large part of the 1941-5 war; he retired, in the end, owing to ill-health. Kulik, on the other hand, was a political upstart who was to fade out soon after the beginning of the war. He was to be blamed for much of the unpreparedness of the Red Army in 1941, and, in particular, for having failed to equip it with up-to-date machine-guns and other automatic weapons, which at first placed the

Russian infantryman at a terrible disadvantage against the German soldier.]

At the same time Voroshilov was appointed Deputy Premier and Chairman of the

Defence Committee of the USSR; his previous post of Commissar of Defence went to

Timoshenko. Corresponding titles were also created in the Soviet Navy. During the

months that followed, the press was filled with army nominations and promotions,

complete with pictures of all the new generals, which filled four pages of Pravda for days and days. Coinciding with the German invasion of France, this unprecedented publicity given to hundreds of Red Army generals was no doubt calculated to have a reassuring

effect on the public.

Chapter V RUSSIA AND THE FALL OF FRANCE-BALTIC

STATES AND BESSARABIA

During my war years in Russia I put these two questions to a great number of people:

"What did you feel about the Soviet-German Pact?" and "At what point, while the Pact was in force, did you begin to have serious doubts about it? "