Stalingrad by Antony Beevor Read Free Book Online

night and in forests. These two advantages, above all night-fighting, were to prove far more important than the Germans realized.
    The German commanders had believed that no society run by political terror could defend itself against a determined attack from outside. The warm welcome from civilians convinced many Germans that they would win. Devout Ukrainians, who had suffered one of the most terrifying man-made famines in history, greeted the arrival of military vehicles with black crosses as symbolic of a new crusade against the anti-Christ. But Hitler’s plans of subjugation and exploitation could only strengthen the ‘rotten structure’, by forcing even those who loathed the Stalinist regime to support it.
    Stalin and the apparatus of the Communist Party quickly recognized the need to shift their rhetoric away from Marxist-Leninist clichés. The phrase ‘the Great Patriotic War’ appeared in a headline in thefirst issue of
Pravda
to appear after the invasion, and Stalin himself soon took up this deliberate evocation of ‘the Patriotic War’ against Napoleon. Later that year, on the anniversary of the October Revolution, he went on to invoke the distinctly unproletarian heroes of Russian history: Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy, Suvorov and Kutuzov.
    The preservation of Stalin’s personal reputation was greatly helped by the political ignorance of the majority of the population. Few outside the
nomenklatura
and the well-connected intelligentsia linked him directly with the refusal to acknowledge the threat from Germany and the disasters of late June. Stalin, in his broadcast of 3 July, did not, of course, take any of the blame. He addressed the people as ‘brothers and sisters’, and told them that the Motherland was in great danger, with the Germans advancing deep into the Soviet Union. On balance, this admission strengthened the mood of the country with its unprecedented frankness, because until then the official communiqués had spoken only of heavy losses inflicted on the enemy. It was nevertheless a great shock to many, such as the students of Stalingrad technical university, waiting to mark the advance of Red Army troops into Germany with flags on their wall-map. When the ‘shocking and incomprehensible’ advance of the Wehrmacht became clear, the map was hurriedly taken down.
    Whatever one may think about Stalinism, there can be little doubt that its ideological preparation, through deliberately manipulated alternatives, provided ruthlessly effective arguments for total warfare. All right-thinking people had to accept that Fascism was bad and must be destroyed by any means. The Communist Party should lead the struggle because Fascism was totally devoted to its destruction. This form of logic is captured in Vasily Grossman’s novel,
Life and Fate. ‘
The hatred Fascism bears us’, declares Mostovskoy, an old Bolshevik who had fallen foul of Stalinism, ‘is yet another proof – a far-reaching proof – of the justice of Lenin’s cause.’
    Political arguments were, however, of secondary importance for the majority of the population. Their real stimulus came from a visceral patriotism. The recruiting poster, ‘The Motherland Calls!’, showed a typical Russian woman holding the military oath and backedby a sheaf of bayonets. Although unsubtle, it was deeply effective at the time. Huge sacrifices were expected. ‘Our aim is to defend something greater than millions of lives,’ wrote a young tank commander in his diary exactly a month after the invasion. ‘I am not speaking about my own life. The only thing to be done is to lose it to some advantage for the Motherland.’
    Four million people volunteered or felt obliged to volunteer for the
opolchentsy
militia. The waste of lives was so terrible, it is hard to comprehend: a carnage whose futility was perhaps exceeded only by the Zulu king marching an
impi
of his warriors over a cliff to prove their discipline. These untrained soldiers, often without