Russia at war 1941-1945

[B. S. Telpukhovsky, Velikaya otechestsvennaya voina Sovietskogo Soyuza, 1941-5. (The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union). (Moscow, 1959), p. 39.]

The hostility with which the Russians were surrounded in parts of the Western Ukraine only recently incorporated in the Soviet Union, is well illustrated in the memoirs of General Fedyuninsky, who tells of how, in May 1941, his car broke down in a village

near Kovel:

There gathered around us a crowd of about twenty people. No one was saying

anything. Some, especially the better-dressed ones, smirked maliciously at us. No one offered to help. No doubt, there were among them some poor people, who

sympathised with us, who had received land from the Soviet authorities, and who

were later to fight bravely in the Red Army or in Partisan units. But now they were silent, frightened by rumours of an early arrival of the Nazis and by threats from the kulaks and the Bandera boys.

[General I. I. Fedyuninsky, Podnyatyie po trevoge (Raised by the Alarm). (Ministry of Defence Publishing House, Moscow, 1961). Bandera was a "Ukrainian Nationalist" who later openly collaborated with the Nazis.]

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What were the first days of the war like in the frontier areas invaded by the Germans?

The memoirs of some of the Russian soldiers published in the last few years, especially those of General Fedyunin-sky and of General Boldin, give a striking picture of those events.

[General Fedyuninsky, op. cit., General I. V. Boldin, Stranitsy Zhizni (Pages from my Life). (Ministry of Defence Publishing House, Moscow, 1961).]

In April 1941 Fedyuninsky (who was later to play a distinguished role in the war—

especially in breaking the Leningrad blockade) was appointed commander of the 15th

Infantry Corps of the Special Kiev Military District, with his headquarters in the West-Ukrainian town of Kovel, some thirty miles east of the border between the Soviet Union and German-occupied Poland, and on the main line to Kiev.

At the time of my arrival in Kovel, the situation on our Western frontier was

becoming more and more tense. From a great variety of sources, and from our army

and frontier-guard reconnaissance, we knew that since February German troops

had begun to concentrate along our borders... Violations of our air-space had been on the increase in recent months... At that time we did not yet know that Stalin, disregarding the reports of our intelligence and of the commanders of our frontier districts, had badly misjudged the international situation and particularly the

timing of the Nazi aggression.

The general found that the troops in the frontier areas were still on a peace footing and that the reorganisation was proceeding very slowly. The new planes and tanks which

were to replace the obsolete models were arriving only at a very slow pace. The older officers, including some who had served in the Tsarist army, took a serious view of the coming war, but among the younger soldiers and officers, there was a good deal of

deplorable complacency.

Many of them thought that our Army could win an easy victory and that the

soldiers of any capitalist country, including Nazi Germany, would not fight actively against the Red Army. They also underrated the military experience and the

enormous technical equipment of the German Army. When the showdown came,

the might of the German Army came as a complete surprise to some of our officers.