* In response to the Nazi invasion of the USSR, the British and Americans pledged to do all they could to help. Unfortunately for the Soviets, "all they could do" didn't amount to much for the time being. However, in the face of stubborn, if not always very well organized, Red Army resistance, the invasion was slowing as German losses mounted and supply lines stretched. Still, by the middle of September 1941, the Nazis had captured Kiev in the south and had Leningrad under siege in the north, with vast tracts of the USSR under German control.
* British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had long been an enemy of Bolshevism, having helped support White forces working against the Reds during the Russian Civil War two decades earlier. Churchill had never restrained his criticisms of Stalin and his ugly regime. However, on the evening before the invasion, Churchill had announced to dinner guests that the USSR was going to be attacked, and declared that Britain and the United States should do everything to help the Soviets. Later his private secretary, John Colville, asked him how he could make such an abrupt turnabout. Churchill replied: "I have one purpose, the destruction of Hitler, and my life is much simplified thereby. If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons."
The next day, the German invasion went forward on schedule, smashing through Soviet defenses. Churchill had been courting the Soviets for months; although it had been an exercise in frustration, it had at least paid off in revealing to Stalin that the British had been telling the truth all along. The prime minister addressed the British nation, employing his gift for oratory to the fullest: "No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I have for the last 25 years. I will unsay no word I have spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle now unfolding."
Churchill knew there were those who thought letting the Red and Nazi predators bleed each other dry was to Britain's benefit. He disagreed, pointing out that once Hitler swallowed up the USSR, there would be nothing to prevent his absolute domination of Europe. Churchill concluded, with his dramatic command of the English language: "We will never parley with Hitler and any of his gang. We shall fight him by land, we shall fight him by sea, we shall fight him in the air, until with God's help, we have rid the earth of his shadow and liberated its peoples from his yoke. Any man or state who fights against Nazidom will have our aid."
US President Franklin Roosevelt was more cautious in speaking out, but Roosevelt felt that the United States should go to the aid of the Soviet Union. As Oscar Cox, one of the administration's staffers, put it in a memo to the president: "Our practical choice is clear: whether or not we like Russia's internal and other policies, we will aid Russia, in our national interest, to eliminate the far more immediate danger to our security from Hitler's already partially executed plans to rule the world."
The USA was already providing military assistance to the British under the "Lend-Lease" program, passed in March, in which the USA financially underwrote and shipped war material to the UK. Now the president wanted to provide similar assistance to the Soviets, though at the outset they would have to pay for what they got. On 23 June, the US government added an American declaration of support for the USSR's struggle.
Roosevelt was aware that Stalin's rule was a tyranny, but the president's perception was that the Soviets were not particularly interested in far-flung conquests. As Roosevelt put it, a week after the invasion: "Now comes this Russian diversion. If it is more than just that, it will mean the liberation of Europe from Nazi domination -- and at the same time, I do not think we need to worry about any possibility of Russian domination."
The citizens of the Baltic States might have disagreed with that assessment, and Roosevelt has long been criticized for what has often been judged his naivete about America's Soviet ally. In reality, Roosevelt had few sticks to use against the USSR, and so he had little alternative but to rely on carrots. Certainly, no matter how troublesome the Soviets were, they were still killing Germans, and every German they killed was one less that Americans would eventually have to fight. If American weapons helped the Soviets kill even more Germans, or helped them kill so many Germans that Americans wouldn't have to fight at all, all the better -- and there was no sense in using hard bargaining against the Kremlin. As for what Stalin might do in Eastern Europe, that was a concern, but not at all as much as what happened to the Western democracies.
Besides, Roosevelt saw the forced alliance between the USSR and the West as an opportunity to bring the Soviet Union out of its isolation to work as a partner in shaping the post-imperialist, post-colonialist world that he saw as following the war. In hindsight, Roosevelt was going too far in his inclination to the optimistic, being insufficiently aware that Stalin was more thug than statesman. Still, on the basis of FDR's knowledge his assumptions were perfectly reasonable, and for the time being there were plenty of justifications for America to take a soft line with the USSR.
However, all that Britain and America could provide for the moment was moral encouragement. Britain was slowly rebuilding strength after the disasters in the West during the spring of 1940, and America's mobilization for war was only then ramping up. There was also the problem of getting war material to the USSR, since shipping was in short supply and suffering from German U-boat attacks. Churchill judged that it would be impossible to deliver any serious quantity of supplies before mid-1942.
Many American conservatives and isolationists doubted that supporting a criminal regime like Stalin's was a good idea, but the American Communist Party, having done an about-face to support Hitler when the Nazi-Soviet Pact was signed in 1939, did another about-face and joined the cry against Hitler. The British Communist Party was a bit slower to react, but turned around on 25 June to support the war against Hitler. In the occupied countries of the Continent, Communist cadres began to ramp up resistance campaigns.
* With the Soviet Union and Britain now faced with a common enemy, Stafford Cripps was much more welcome in the Kremlin and no longer had to put up with snubs. A British military mission, under the direction of General Noel Mason-MacFarlane, was sent to Moscow to back up Cripps, arriving on 27 June 1941. The British also had a very capable code-breaking effort, codenamed ULTRA, that was listening in on German communications in the East, and the British embassy was now passing on the intelligence from ULTRA to the Soviets. The exercise was codenamed VULTURE, with the source of the intelligence disguised.
However, dealings between the two supposed allies were not at all congenial; on 29 June, the Soviets simply handed Cripps an extensive list of military supplies required by the USSR from Britain, while they absolutely refused to share any real information with the military mission. As annoying as it was, the British did want to help, but there was little they could do over the short term. They did promise to provide more help in the future, signing an Anglo-Soviet military assistance pact on 12 July 1941.
The Soviets were not much more civil to the Americans. Stalin's ambassador to the USA, Konstantin Oumansky, was described by an American official as "insulting in his manner and speech", inclined to demand everything as if it was "a natural right", and quick to protest all disagreements as if they were "heinous offenses." The Americans swallowed their annoyance as well. On 8 July, Oumansky had presented the US government with a huge "shopping list" that asked for thousands of aircraft, tens of thousands of antiaircraft guns, and massive quantities of everything else. There was no way the request could be met over the short term, but Roosevelt wanted to at least reassure Stalin that the United States understood the gravity of the Soviet Union's situation, and was putting aid to the USSR high on the priority list.
On 27 July, Roosevelt sent his aide Harry Hopkins to Moscow. Hopkins was in charge of Lend-Lease for the moment and wanted to determine Soviet requirements. Hopkins spoke with Stalin in two sessions lasting a total of eight hours. Stalin spoke Russian to Hopkins in a flow, hardly bothering to allow the interpreter to keep up, detailing in fairly accurate terms the military situation, and outlining what the United States needed to provide to the USSR to help beat Hitler. Hopkins was particularly impressed with the fact that Stalin's shopping list included substantial requests for industrial tooling and materials. Had the Soviets believed they were in danger of imminent defeat, they would have just wanted weapons they could immediately put into the fight, but it was clear Stalin was thinking in terms of a protracted war.
On receiving feedback from the sessions, in early August Roosevelt discussed the matter with his cabinet. The president was highly emphatic, even hot at times, insisting that everything needed to be done to help the Soviets and that bureaucratic obstacles needed to be kicked down. In the aftermath, Oumansky was given further assurances that the commitment of the US government to support the Soviet cause was dead serious. The truth of that was demonstrated by the fact that Roosevelt was then pushing hard for the US to pick up the bill for aid to the USSR by bringing the Soviets into the Lend-Lease program; the appropriate legislation would be passed in September.
However, given the staggering disasters suffered by the Red Army over the previous month, few in London or Washington were confident that the Soviet Union would survive no matter what was done. That made no difference. Even if the Hitler won, his victory would have to be made as expensive as possible. Altruistic or cynical, either way the logic behind military aid to the USSR was hard to argue with.
In the meantime, Hopkins was returning from Moscow to personally brief the president. He made his way to Newfoundland, where Roosevelt and Churchill engaged in their first face-to-face meeting of the war, devising the "Atlantic Charter", which was signed on 14 August. The Atlantic Charter stated that the US and Britain had no territorial ambitions in the conflict with Hitler, and outlined the principles on which the postwar world would hopefully be run.
The Soviets publicly endorsed the charter, though Stalin was privately disgusted. The whole exercise seemed abstract, even flippant, while the USSR was fighting for its life, and the US and Britain had announced war aims and policies without consulting him. The British and Americans were aware that Stalin might not be happy about a two-way conversation in which he wasn't involved, and to reassure him that steps were taken at the Atlantic Charter meeting towards three-way talks.
BACK_TO_TOP* The British might not have been able to provide much in the way of weapons for the moment, but they quickly demonstrated that they were in dead earnest. The British were aware that there were German agents in Iran and suspected that the country's ruler, Reza Shah Pahlavi Kabir, was sympathetic to the Nazi cause. The British had a refinery at Abadan, at the north end of the Persian Gulf, which provided a port from which supplies could be offloaded and then shipped by rail north to the USSR. If the Shah went over to the Germans that connection would be cut, and the Germans would have control over Iran's oilfields.
The Shah was given pointed suggestions that he get rid of the German agents -- but on 21 August, he replied with a refusal, citing his nation's neutrality. The British and the Soviets then secretly agreed to invade Iran. Britain had a division of Indian troops near Abadan and armored units elsewhere in the area, while the Soviets had forces in Azerbaijan, in the USSR north of Iran. On 25 August, citing threats to Iranian security from German agents, the British and the Soviets informed the Iranian government that Iran was to be occupied.
So it was done. British and Soviet forces joined hands after three days of movement from south and north against ineffective resistance, and Iranian forces surrendered.
* The Iranian connection to the USSR was now secure. Churchill was not a remorseless monster like Stalin, but he was perfectly capable of ruthlessness and had demonstrated it. Stalin no doubt admired this. That did not mean Stalin was softening his demands for more help from the British and the Americans. The Soviet ambassador to Britain, Ivan Maisky, pressed the British government for more action. Maisky met with Churchill personally on 4 September to present the Soviet Union's demands.
Churchill found the demands annoying. Stalin was acting as though the USSR was doing Britain a great favor by simply fighting for its own survival. It could be argued that it was, and certainly British citizens understood that the Luftwaffe bombers that had been pounding Britain's cities at night since the fall of 1940 had turned their unwelcome attentions elsewhere. On the other hand, the Soviets had a fight on their hands whether they liked it or not, and the British, although hard-pressed themselves, were doing what they could to help -- in spite of the fact that the Soviet Union had reacted with "stony composure", as Churchill had put it, when nations in the West were overrun by the Nazis.
Churchill, not noted for a mild temper, grew hot at Maisky's wheedling and shot back at him: "Remember that only four months ago we in this Island did not know whether you were coming in against us on the German side. Indeed, we thought it quite likely that you would. Even then we felt sure we would win in the end. We never thought that our survival was dependent on your action either way. Whatever happens, and whatever you do, you of all people have no right to make reproaches of us."
Maisky, confronted with a snarling bulldog, backed up: "More calm, please, my dear Mr. Churchill!" Maisky would be more tactful in the future. Churchill did send a message to Stalin that material assistance was on the way. However, in response to Stalin's demands for a landing in France, the prime minister pointed out that half-baked British military actions that were certain to end in defeat, even if they could be performed at all, would help Hitler more than they would Stalin. The most Churchill's senior military advisers could recommend were deception operations -- sham invasion plans to make the Germans keep forces in the West. Churchill did take a personal interest in making sure that the Soviets were kept up to date on the latest ULTRA intelligence, but that did little to make Stalin happy.
* At the end of September, representatives of Britain and the US went to Moscow to talk with Stalin, as per the arrangement set up at the Atlantic Charter meeting. Churchill sent Lord Beaverbrook, the minister of supply, and Roosevelt sent Averell Harriman, his special envoy to Britain. Harriman, the son of a railroad baron and fabulously wealthy, had done business with the Soviet regime before the war, and had a balanced view of the Soviet state.
The meeting was elevated as the "First Moscow Conference", with the two men speaking with Stalin for three days. The first day's session was agreeable enough, with Stalin briefing his visitors on the military situation. However, the next day, Stalin was fidgety, strained, and nervous. Things were not going well at the front, it seemed, and Stalin interrupted the talks several times to make phone calls. That evening, he was brusque with his guests, "much dissatisfied with what we were offering", as Harriman put it.
The final session, conducted the next evening, went much better. Beaverbrook and Harriman agreed to massive shipments of planes, tanks, guns, trucks, jeeps, destroyers, food, raw materials, and hundreds of thousand of boots. Beaverbrook reported that at the end, Stalin beamed like "sunshine after rain." Visitors would eventually find this the typical pattern in meetings with Stalin: first agreeable, then hostile, then agreeable again, as if Koba were conducting a one-man "hard-cop soft-cop" act.
The shipments were to begin immediately, but of course such an enormous effort couldn't get off the ground quickly. In the meantime, the Soviet Union was more or less on its own, with Stalin whining bitterly to his cronies that the British and Americans were deliberately throwing the USSR to the German wolf.
BACK_TO_TOP* By the end of July 1941, despite their remarkable victories, German commanders and even Hitler himself were beginning to realize that their intelligence had grossly underestimated Soviet strength. Although the Germans had taken hundreds of thousands of prisoners, the Red Army seemed to have an endless supply of replacements. Even when surrounded, Soviet troops often fought on when they knew their situation was completely hopeless, and some Soviet fighter pilots, knowing they were outclassed, took to ramming German bombers; remarkably, they sometimes even survived. Stories made the rounds among German troops that the Soviets actually trained dogs carrying explosive charges to run under German tanks and blow them up. It is still argued whether this was actually done -- but given the determination if not the skill of Soviet resistance, German troops found it easy to believe.
The Germans had lost hundreds of thousands of men, with a good fraction of them killed. These were severe casualties by any standards, and the only compensation was the Red Army had suffered far worse. Even ignoring combat losses and damage, maintaining such a huge offensive, particularly in the primitive field conditions in the Soviet Union, meant a lot of wear and tear, and an increasing degree of simple exhaustion. Little relief was available; the Fuehrer was emphasizing new weapons production at the expense of materials needed to support the offensive, and of course the Reich didn't have the reserves of manpower to relieve cut-up frontline formations.
Furthermore, although the original German plan had suggested that supply problems could be reduced by "living off the land", the Soviets were becoming increasingly efficient at ensuring that all that was left on the land were cinders and ashes, further straining German logistical capabilities.
On 4 August, Hitler flew to Army Group Center's headquarters in Borisov, east of Minsk. The offensive seemed to be dragging on, and so Hitler decided that the focus needed to be shifted to the USSR's economic assets. That meant increasing the pressure to the south, to seize the oil fields of the Caucasus, and to the north, to take Leningrad. Such actions would undermine the Soviet ability to make war and provide resources for the German war machine. In addition, Hitler had a perfectly sensible concern that his offensive spearheads were too far out on a limb logistically, and vulnerable to attack on the flanks.
On arrival, Hitler informed Field Marshal von Bock that he was to halt his drive towards Moscow, and that the panzers of Army Group Center were to be used to support a drive by Army Group South to capture Ukraine, with smaller forces diverted to support Army Groups North's push on Leningrad. Panzer Generals Guderian and Hoth protested loudly. Moscow was only 320 kilometers (200 miles) away, and most of the Red Army was defending the city. Once the Red Army was destroyed, the rest of the USSR might well fall with the city. Guderian flew to Berlin on 23 August to argue for a continued drive on Moscow. The Fuehrer heard him out, then went on at length about the economic need to seize Ukraine and the Caucasus region. Senior staff officers present said nothing to contradict Hitler, and Guderian left the meeting empty-handed.
* By mid-July, Army Group South had advanced deep into Ukraine, performing an encirclement of three Soviet armies around Uman, south of Kiev, in the process. The Germans wiped out the pocket in early August, taking more than 100,000 prisoners. Guderian's panzer group was then shifted south to assist in the capture of Kiev itself. By the end of August, the Red Army had moved to a line west of the Dnieper, though the Soviets held on to Kiev on the east shore of the river and to Odessa, on the northwest corner of the Black Sea, which could in principle be supported by sea. By this time, the Luftwaffe was in range of Moscow and was hammering the city. Citizens hid in the subway.
Although Stalin was no military strategist, he was arrogant and ignored the advice of his generals, even though many of them were very competent. Following Stalin's misguided orders, the Red Army continued to suffer reverses. With German Army Group South moving to trap Red Army forces in Kiev, Zhukov suggested to Stalin that Red Army forces there were threatened with encirclement and suggested they withdraw to a more defensible line. Stalin replied that the suggestion was "rubbish". He did not want to give up Kiev, and still thought he had a choice in the matter. Zhukov submitted his resignation as chief of staff; Stalin accepted it.
Similarly, on 11 September Marshal Budyenny, commander of the Soviet Southwestern Front, requested permission to withdraw from Kiev and escape the trap. Stalin refused, but he did order Budyenny to return to Moscow. Budyenny was an old crony of Stalin, one of Voroshilov's lieutenants from Civil War days -- a fun-loving, virile man with a huge mustache who looked like a romantic bandit, and had something of the personality of one. Stalin was particularly fond of him, and liked having him around; Stalin may have also begun to wonder, with good reason, if his old buddies were particularly effective generals and that they shouldn't be in charge of frontline armies. In any case, Stalin ordered Colonel-General Mikhail Kirponos to take Budyenny's place.
At the end of August and the first two weeks of September, the Germans encircled Kiev, linking up well behind the city on 16 September. Stalin granted permission to withdraw on 17 September, but the trap had snapped shut, and though the Red Army troops inside the trap fought desperately to break out, few succeeded. Kirponos was killed in action -- which was just as well, considering his alternatives.
Four Soviet armies were completely destroyed. Kiev itself fell on 26 September 1941, with the Germans claiming the capture of over 600,000 soldiers. With such losses, the Red Army no longer outnumbered the Germans and there were no more reserves to be spared. By 24 October, German Army Group South was in Kharkov, a major industrial center in Ukraine; by the end of October the Germans were in Crimea, and by the end of November they had seized most of the peninsula except for the fortress city Sevastopol; and on November 20 the Germans entered Rostov-on-Don.
BACK_TO_TOP* In the meantime, on 8 August, Field Marshal Von Leeb's Army Group North, supported by armor from Army Group Center, renewed its offensive towards Leningrad. By the end of August, Army Group North was within 48 kilometers (30 miles) of the city. Simultaneously, the Finns pushed the Red Army back in offensives to the north and south of Lake Ladoga, reclaiming the territory lost in the Winter War. However, the Germans would find them reluctant to do much more than that.
The only delay in the German offensive was due to the stubborn resistance of isolated Red Army units in Tallinn, in Estonia. The Soviets held out in Tallinn for a month and then tried to evacuate by sea. They were hit hard by the Luftwaffe and German artillery, which sank 16 warships and 34 transports, though many Soviet soldiers managed to escape by sea.
On 8 September, Army Group North had sealed off the land approaches to Leningrad. The Germans had been bombarding the city with artillery since 4 September, and on 6 September the Luftwaffe bombed Leningrad as well, causing great damage and in particular burning down a major food depot. Stalin concluded that the Soviet commander in Leningrad, his old friend Voroshilov, was not up to the task of defending the city. Zhukov was called to the Kremlin, where Stalin congratulated him on the competence he had showed fighting the Germans, and then asked: "Where will you be off to now?"
"Back to the front."
"Which front?" Stalin asked, indulging his inclination to toy with people. Zhukov was only startled for a moment, then shot back: "The one you consider necessary."
"Then go to Leningrad. It is in an almost hopeless situation." Zhukov flew into the city the next day, 9 September, his plane evading German fighters. Zhukov's irritation at being attacked was aggravated when the guards at the headquarters for the Leningrad Front refused to let him in, since he lacked a pass. Zhukov had to swallow his annoyance -- all Soviet officers knew Red Army soldiers were trained to do what they were told without question, and the regulations applied to Zhukov as they did to everyone else. He had to wait 15 minutes to be granted admission.
Zhukov went to Voroshilov and presented him with a note from Stalin, which read: "Hand over the command of the Front to Zhukov and fly to Moscow immediately." Zhukov sent Voroshilov away curtly, and proceeded to terrorize the generals who had been fumbling the defense of the city, sacking one on the spot. Voroshilov went back to Moscow, expecting to get a bullet in his head, but Stalin was fond of Voroshilov and spared him.
Zhukov mobilized the citizens of Leningrad to fight. Voroshilov had ordered the Baltic fleet to be scuttled. Zhukov rescinded the order and had the warships turn their big guns on the Germans to pound them at long range. Voroshilov had ordered factories rigged for destruction; Zhukov had them returned to production of war materiel. On 17 September, he sent out an order to his officers saying that any retreat would be punishable by death. With the city isolated, however, it was no longer practical to evacuate those who could not contribute to its defense, such as children and the old. There would be a ghastly price to pay for this failure.
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