Solonin Presentation scheme К оглавлению как управлять

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1. 1 Why are new versions that disprove earlier interpretations of the events of WWII possible? Exactly half a century passed between the horrible summer of 1941 and the moment of the Soviet Union’s collapse. During that time tens of thousands of books and academic articles comprehensively analyzing the events of that war were written in the Soviet Union. Is it possible for another study to appear and disprove the conclusions at which thousands of Soviet historians arrived unanimously? Yes. It certainly is possible. Moreover, it is absolutely necessary. Why? Because thousands of books and articles were written by “fighters on the Party’s ideological front” (as they proudly called themselves). And war is war. Speaking the truth is treachery. Telling a lie is a matter of valor and heroism. The military-historical mythology that the Party “soldiers” created had the “patriotic upbringing of the working class” as its goal; that is, the manipulation of the collective consciousness with the support of censorship, an “iron curtain” for hiding from the rest of the world, and repression of dissidents. The attempt to search for historical truth was called a “manifestation of bourgeois objectivism” and was quite openly condemned. Moreover, the conscientious study of military history would be extremely difficult even for the subjectively honest historian. Stalin’s totalitarian empire (the USSR) was not defeated (as was the “Thousand Year Reich” of the Nazi criminals, as a result of WWII). None of the highest Soviet statesmen that survived Stalin (neither Timoshenko, the People’s Commissar of Defense, nor Zhukov, the head of the General Staff, nor Molotov, the People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs, nor Beria, the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs, nor their deputies or subordinates) stood before an independent court or parliamentary committee. The Soviet state archives (including the military archives) were tightly shut for half a century to researchers who had not been engaged by the authorities. Even these days an immense mass of documents remains inaccessible to historians. That is why critical revision of the Soviet propaganda version of the Great Patriotic War is absolutely necessary. К оглавлению ►

1. 2. In the summer of 1941 the Red Army suffered a shattering defeat that was unprecedented in history. Soviet “historians” called the things that happened to the Red Army in the summer of 1941 “temporary misfortunes, ” “forced retreats, ” “losses in frontier battles. ” Such formulations have intentionally diminished the acuteness of the problem and made the search for the real reasons of the events that occurred unnecessary. Common sense and the personal experience of any mature person immediately suggest that “temporary misfortunes” happen in the activity of practically any system, so why should he be surprised that the Red Army also suffered once from “temporary misfortunes”? In the summer of 1941, however, something different happened: the world’s largest land army suffered a shattering defeat. It turned out to be equally incapable of either defense or offense. History hadn't known a Military catastrophe on such scale. In the course of several weeks the army lost heavy armaments (tanks, airplanes, and artillery systems) the creation of which took 10 years of the hardest labor and the immense raw material resources of the world’s wealthiest country (the USSR). In the first 15 -20 days of the war, the Germans advanced 350 -500 km in depth and occupied territory amounting to 700 thousand km 2 in area, which is approximately three times larger than the territory of Poland that the Wehrmacht occupied in September of 1939; it is also six times larger than the [combined] territory of Belgium, the Netherlands, and the patch of northeastern France the Wehrmacht occupied in May of 1940. These gigantic territories, lost by the end of autumn 1941, had to be returned later at the cost of many millions of victims within the next three years of war. 2 К оглавлению ►

1. 3 The losses of the advancing Wehrmacht were significantly smaller than the Red Army’s losses. The enemy achieved its phenomenal success while paying a comparably small price. In 1941 the successfully advancing Wehrmacht’s losses turned out to be many times smaller than those of the defensive party (the Red Army); moreover, the ratio of manpower loses was expressed in two-digit numbers. This reality contradicts all the canons of military science, since the combat losses of the attacking party should be larger than the losses of the defensive party. A backwards ratio is, rather, possible in cases such as when white colonizers sailed to Africa with cannon and rifles to attack aborigines who defended themselves with spears and mattocks. A completely different situation prevailed on the USSR’s western border in the summer of 1941: the defeated Red Army significantly exceeded its enemy in its amount of military equipment. 3 К оглавлению ►

1. 4. The defeated Red Army significantly exceeded the Wehrmacht in number For half a century Soviet “historians” talked about how the “Wehrmacht’s forces were predominant in number” and about the “manifold advantage of the enemy in tanks and aviation. ” Such statements cannot be termed either myth or error. They were conscious and deliberate lies. The Red Army exceeded its enemy in all of the most important quantitative indicators, in particular in number of tanks and tank (mechanized) formations and also in the number of airplanes and aviation escadrilles. The Red Army command’s capacity to build up forces in the course of the war that had begun was many times larger than the Wehrmacht’s. К оглавлению ►

1. 5. Soviet military equipment was not inferior to the leading world examples in terms of its tactical and technical characteristics. The Red Army was undoubtedly and many times superior to the enemy in terms of volume of equipment. But it was also not inferior to the Wehrmacht in terms of “quality, ” if we understand this term as encompassing the tactical-technical characteristics of arms. In terms of the quality of its tanks and anti-tank defense weapons, of the quality and mechanization level of the artillery, and of the level of equipment of forces with means of radio communication, the Red Army could have been considered one of the best armies of its time. 5 К оглавлению ►

1. 6. Sudden assault – myth or reality? Another reason for the defeat was termed by Soviet historians “Germany’s sudden assault. ” Let us immediately note that the extremely militarized Soviet Union was the only one of the Second World War’s European participants the defeat of which is traditionally explained by a “sudden assault” (not counting, of course, Luxembourg and Albania). For all the others, a concentration of troops near the border and a subsequent invasion did not add up to a “surprise. ” Surely, strategic surprise is out of the question – the Soviet Union was persistently and for a long time preparing for war. The numbers pertaining to the Red Army’s size that were adduced earlier and the level of its technical equipment constitute the most persuasive proof of this. The Soviet Union and the Red Army were getting ready not just for any war, but were specifically and precisely preparing for war against Germany. Besides which, the developed operational war plans stipulated dealing the Wehrmacht a shattering blow and attacking all the way to Berlin, Prague, and Vienna. Covert mobilization and strategic deployment of the USSR’s military forces began BEFORE, and not after, the German invasion; as far as it is possible to judge from the few declassified documents, it began in May of 1941. The thesis that the enemy succeeded in achieving an effect of tactical rapidity is far from indisputable. Soviet intelligence was continuously monitoring the concentration of German troops on the USSR’s western borders, while the military command (both in Moscow and in the border military districts) gave, a few days before the actual beginning of combat, an entire range of orders about the troop combat readiness. In any case, the surprise that gave the enemy the “benefit of the first blow” can be taken as a reason for the defeat and destruction of the border outposts and of some of the units of the western border troops’ first echelon, but not for the whole long chain of Red Army defeats in 1941 -1942. We have to remember that the Red Army suffered its worst defeat not during the first days and weeks of the war, but in September-October of 1941, when more than a hundred divisions were destroyed in the Kiev and Vyazma “kettles. ” No less shattering were the defeats in the spring of 1942 near Kerch and Kharkov. It is understood that “surprise” at that point was out of the question. 6 К оглавлению ►

1. 7. The incompleteness of the strategic deployment (“the enemy got the chance to defeat the Red Army part by part”). Recently, thesis about the “sudden attack” has been significantly modernized in the work of contemporary Russian historians. Right now it is acceptable to talk about “the incompleteness of strategic deployment” or the “under-mobilization of forces” and that this lead to a situation in which “the enemy got the chance to destroy the Red Army part by part. ” From the point of view of correspondence with the actual picture these claims are, overall, accurate. By the morning of June 22 the strategic deployment of the forces of the First and the Second Strategic echelons was still far from complete. The enemy indeed crushed the Red Army part by part: in the first 10 -15 days the forces of the western border districts (the First Strategic Echelon) were defeated (in a range of cases encircled and destroyed) and the majority of heavy expensive equipment (tanks and airplanes) was lost. Then, in the period from July 5 -10 and until the middle of August, there were defeated the forces of the Second Strategic Echelon that had arrived in theater (mainly rifle divisions; the echelon had far fewer large tank formations). All these are indisputable facts. Much more complex and open to dispute is the answer to this question: what was the reason here and what was the consequence? Was it the incomplete mobilization and deployment that became the reason for the months-long series of defeats, or the chaotic retreat of the troops that started in the first days (or even hours) of the war? Or was it also the panicked escape of the civil administration (the Party secretaries and NKVD employees, that is) that did not allow for finishing within the scheduled terms the mobilization that had occurred earlier? 7 К оглавлению ►

1. 7 (continuing) First of all, it’s necessary to establish the quantitative parameters of the problem. The delayed announcement of open mobilization (it happened only after the actual beginning of combat) undoubtedly weakened the Red Army’s fighting strength, but did not bring it down to zero. The scheduled terms for the complete mobilization of the formations of the fronts’ first echelon added up to only several days or even hours. In the western border districts, rifle divisions – the foundation of land armies of that time and (what’s particularly important in this case) the main force in defense – had at the beginning of combat already been completed with personnel and equipment to the extent of up to 70 -80% (and more) of the planned numbers. In accordance with the Soviet command’s pre-war plans and calculations, the troops of the western districts, relying on two lines of permanent fortifications (the so-called Molotov Line and the Stalin Line) and on natural obstacles (numerous border-area rivers flowing in a meridional direction) could and should have held off the attack of the enemy’s significantly larger forces for a week or two. This time was sufficient enough to complete the main tasks associated with the mobilization and strategic deployment of the Soviet military. Finally, the massive size of the country itself served as a natural “damper” that cushioned the first enemy’s blow. As strange as it might seem, this incompleteness on the part of the strategic regrouping was in a way beneficial: on the morning of June 22 no more than 10% to 15% of total Red Army formations were subjected to the enemy’s first blow; most of the military did not suffer any losses in the first days of the war. As a rule, the troops of the Second Strategic Echelon entered combat already fully equipped according to the requirements of the wartime plan; that, however, led to no noticeable change in the character of the battles’ and operations’ outcomes. 8 К оглавлению ►

1. 8. Main thesis: the human factor was the reason for the defeat Mark Solonin asserts that the main reason for the military catastrophe of 1941 lies beyond problems pertaining to operational skill, tactics, or the quantity or quality of arms. Moreover, if those categories had been the determining ones in the military conflict, then the Red Army’s victory would have been prompt and inevitable. In the shortest formulation, the answer to the question about the reason for the defeat can be boiled down to five words: THE RED ARMY DIDN’T FIGHT. Separate units, subunits, and persons did fight, often with great persistence and selflessness. If they had not, the Germans would have walked all the way to Vladivostok. If the organized army had fought, the war could have ended in October of 1941 in Berlin. But that did not happen. Not two armies, but the Wehrmacht of fascist Germany on one side, organized and working like a well-oiled clock, and an almost unmanageable armed crowd on the other side, met on the battlefields in the summer of 1941. The result of the collision of an army and a crowd could not have been any different than it was. Even an immense number of top-flight arms will not allow a crowd to beat an army. In defeat, an unorganized crowd will pay with losses that will exceed the enemy army’s loss many times. The reason for the Red Army’s transformation into an unorganized crowd has nothing to do with the notorious “absence of means of communications” or with a mythical “sudden attack. ” The reason, the consequence, and the main substance of the army’s elemental collapse were the mass failure to carry out orders, mass desertion (both open and covert), and mass surrender. The Soviet Union was not ready for war from the point of view of the “human factor. ” In complete contradiction to what Soviet propaganda hammered in for decades, the Red Army was inferior to its enemy not in the number of guns, tanks, and machineguns, but in readiness, skill, and will of the soldiers to do their duty. In collision with real, persistent, and firm opponents, it turned out that the Red Army had many tanks but not enough motivation for armed struggle. 9 К оглавлению ►

1. 9. Is objective evaluation of an army’s fighting spirit (motivation) possible? What could serve as the criteria? Tanks can be counted, the thickness of armor can be measured, and the actual piercing capacity of anti-tank shells can be checked in an ordnance yard. Is it possible, though, to measure “fighting spirit, ” to estimate the absence or presence of motivation within quantitative parameters? Or must all discussions of these issues inevitably come down to juggling “convenient” excerpts from the reminiscences of war veterans? Yes, it is possible, although certainly measuring “fighting spirit” is much harder than counting the number of divisions, guns, and echelons with ammunition. The goal of Solonin’s study was exactly to search for criteria that would allow for the objective (quantitative) estimating of such a subjective category as the “human factor. ” 10 К оглавлению ►

1. 10 The main evaluation criteria The informational breakthrough, the declassification of numerous archive funds that occurred at the beginning of the 1990 s, has allowed for study of the structure of the losses in the Red Army’s manpower (the correlation between those who were killed, wounded, went missing, and were captives). This is the first indicator, and a very informative one: in the “normal” army, that is, the fighting one (and not the scattering one), the number of those who went missing, were taken captive, or deserted comes to single percentages of the total number of losses. In the summer of 1941 at a range of fronts the number of those who went missing was many times larger than the number of those killed! The declassification of a large mass of documents (including the NKVD archives and the trophy Wehrmacht documents) made it possible to directly estimate the number of deserters and prisoners. . The overwhelming result of these calculations was the following: the total number of deserters and captives in 1941 was almost twice as large as the initial size of the Red Army’s active fronts. Rigorous study of the documents allowed for detecting an unusually high percentage of non-battle equipment losses (tanks, guns, and aircraft). Nothing of this sort was found when analyzing the losses of 19431945. The “mortality” among tanks that transpired in the summer of 1941 was never observed before or after. The only rational explanation for this is that an immense amount of warlike equipment was abandoned by personnel during their panicked retreat. К оглавлению ►

1. 11 Additional criteria for evaluating the moral state of society and the army The indicators mentioned above do not exhaust the list of those criteria that allow for objectively estimating the moral and political state of Soviet society and its military. The mass draft dodging that took place in the summer of 1941 stands as an obvious proof of the absence of motivation. The incredibly fast pace of the Wehrmacht’s advance, the speed with which the German army forced the crossing of a full-flowing river and “broke through” two lines of permanent fortifications, can also be seen as an indirect, yet sufficiently demonstrative, criterion. Another illustration of the Red Army’s low morale is the duration of battles in encirclements. While the encircled Wehrmacht formations stood up in the Demyansk Pocket and Stalingrad Kettle for several months, encircled Soviet armies (Minsk, Uman, Kiev, Briansk, Kerch, and Kharkov) inevitably ceased organized resistance within several days. Mass collaboration with the occupiers and the participation (in many cases quite voluntary) of tens of thousands of Red Army ex-servicemen in punitive actions against the local population and Soviet partisans is indisputable evidence of Soviet society’s moral decay. The low level of activity of the Soviet Air Force and particularly of the Navy deserves special attention and further study. (Inefficiency and unproductiveness could depend on many subjective and objective factors, in particular on a low level of activity that in a range of cases acquired a distinct character of covert desertion. ) 12 К оглавлению ►

1. 12. Appraisal of the situation by the Soviet government and the Red Army command: the opinion of contemporaries and of participants in the events. Contemporary readers often take a declaration about the low morale in the Red Army circa 1941 as “sensational and scandalous. ” The Red Army command the country’s supreme military and political leaders, however, very promptly (by mid-July of 1941) lost any illusions or hopes about “mass heroism unprecedented in history. ” Numerous orders and headquarters’ directives leave no doubts on that matter. Nor were the clear-eyed people who lived through those tragic events mistaken in their evaluations about what was going on in the army. 13 К оглавлению ►

1. 13 Discussion of the REASONS for such a low level of motivation falls beyond the framework of this study. It represents a separate scientific issue. The goal of Solonin’s study was to search for criteria with which to objectively estimate morale in the Red Army circa 1941, based on found criteria. This study established a fact: in reality (and contrary to the propaganda myths that press upon mass consciousness even now), motivation to take part in combat among Red Army soldiers and officers was quite low, which was reflected in mass desertions, mass surrender, and mass abandonment of military equipment to the enemy. Eventually, it was precisely problems with the “human factor” that led to the military catastrophe of the summer of 1941. As for what caused this low motivation, that’s a separate and extremely complicated issue that lies not only beyond Solonin’s study, but beyond the framework of military-historical science as such. In a general way it is obvious that it is in principle impossible to identify one single reason. Motivation is a complicated alloy of skills and desire; moreover, both these components are interconnected. The low level of professionalism among the Red Army command personnel, the rupture of the military tradition that occurred in the 1920 s and 1930 s, the paralyzing effect of the mass repressions of 1937, the ruin of the peasants and orchestrated famine at the beginning of the 1930 s, the “demobilizing” effect of demonstrative cooperation with Hitler in 1939 -1941, the anti-Soviet attitudes among the majority of the population in the annexed territories of Poland the Baltics, the destruction by terror of the habit and readiness to express personal initiative – this is a far from complete list of the possible reasons for the moral and political decay of Soviet society, and of the Red Army as its component. 14 К оглавлению ►

1. 14 Why this concept faces incredible resistance (a society without a future needs a myth about its glorious past). Over 220 thousand copies of Solonin’s books have been published in Russia. Dozens of articles and interviews with the author have been published. His books have been translated and published in Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. He gave lectures at universities in Tallinn, Vilnius, Bratislava, Boston, and Washington. Solonin’s concept did not remain unnoticed – in Russia, rather, it faced acute rejection. We’re talking here not so much about the reaction (or rather deafening silence) of the functionaries of official Russian historical science, but rather about the outraged voice of the “broad masses of people. ” Such a reaction to a well-documented scientific study is regretful, but is not an accident. The critical evaluation of one’s past and the ability to admit mistakes is a luxury available only to a healthy society that calmly and confidently looks to the future. A country that is attempting to suppress its sense of inferiority with warlike yells and tribune calls requires a comforting fairytale about the glorious past, about a “golden age” that, at least, existed at some point. Fear about the future inevitably turns into furious resistance against the bitter truth about the past. 15 К оглавлению ►

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