Russia at war 1941-1945

either wiped out by the Germans, or forced to surrender. Boldin admits that, during the first few days of the trek, the morale among some of his own soldiers was low, especially as a result of German leaflets saying: "Moscow has surrendered. Any further resistance is useless. Surrender to victorious Germany now." Yet most of them were not desperate, but angry.

*

The first-hand accounts of Generals Fedyuninsky and Boldin confirm that Stalin and the Army High Command still seemed, even at the twelfth hour, to have hoped to avoid the war. It was not until the night of the invasion that urgent directives were sent out to the army secretly to man the gun emplacements along the frontier; to disperse the aircraft concentrated on the frontier-zone airfields, and to get the troops and anti-aircraft defences into a state of military preparedness. No other measures were prescribed and even these orders came too late.

Thus General Purkayev recalls that when he started moving his troops to the frontier, the war had already begun several hours before. Another commander, Army-General Popov,

recalls that when the Germans started their air raids on Brest-Litovsk it all came as a complete surprise. A regiment which was rushed to the frontier from Riga was

intercepted by superior German forces advancing north and practically exterminated.

The official Soviet History admits that in many frontier areas the Germans broke all resistance within a short time. Many troops went into battle completely unprepared and the Germans had little difficulty in breaking through the frontier defences. The Soviet air force was almost wiped out over large areas. During the first days of the war German bombers raided sixty-six airfields, especially those where the most modern planes were concentrated. Before noon, on June 22, 1,200 planes were destroyed, 800 of them on the ground. The Central Sector suffered the heaviest casualties of all—528 planes were

destroyed on the ground and 210 in the air.

There were practically no reserves in the frontier areas; telephone and telegraph

communications were disrupted in the very first hours of the war; army units lost contact with each other; some front commanders lacked the necessary operational and strategic training, and the experience required for the command of large operational forces in war conditions. Throughout the day the Soviet General Staff was unable to gain a clear idea of what was happening.

[IVOVSS, vol. II, pp. 20 and 28-29.]

Issued at 7.15 a.m. on June 22, the first directive of the General Staff to the frontier troops reflects their ignorance of the true situation and, seen in retrospect, has the ring of bitter travesty:

1) Our troops are to attack enemy forces with all the strength and means at their disposal, and to annihilate them wherever they have violated the Soviet border.

2) Our reconnaissance and combat aircraft shall ascertain where enemy aircraft

and land-forces are concentrated. By striking mighty blows our aircraft are to

smash the main enemy troop concentrations and their aircraft on its airfields. These blows are to be struck anywhere within sixty to a hundred miles of German

territory. Memel and Königsberg are to be heavily bombed. Until further notice, no air attacks are to be made on Finnish or Rumanian territory.

This order, given after the Soviet air force had already been practically eliminated, could, naturally, not be carried out. By the end of June 22, the left flank of the German Army Group Centre had already advanced far beyond Kaunas, where it had routed the Russian 11th Army, now in disorderly retreat from Kaunas to Vilno.

No doubt, here and there, the Russians were able to hang on, as for instance the garrison of the Citadel at Brest-Litovsk, which, although surrounded on all sides and constantly bombed and shelled, held out for over a month, till July 24. When the Germans finally captured the Citadel, most of its defenders were dead or severely wounded. The main

German forces in the area, however, by-passed Brest-Litovsk and pushed thirty-five

miles east on the very first day of the war.

The first official communiqué, published at 10 p.m. on June 22, was probably intended to prevent panic or bewilderment among the Soviet population: